And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
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Ephrem The Syrian
AD 373
Having spoken of the stillness, the extracted rib and the woman fashioned out of it who had been brought to him, Scripture describes how Adam said, "This time it is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh; let her be called woman, for she is taken from man. " [ Gen. 2:23 ] "This time" refers to the fact that she came after the animals and did not resemble them. For they came into being from the earth, whereas she "is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh." He may have said this of her as though in prophecy, or he knew it was the case from the visionary dream he had seen, as we suggested above.
Seeing that all species of animals had received from him a name on that very day, Adam did not call the rib that had been fashioned by her personal name "Eve," but called her instead "woman," the generic name applying to her entire kind.
Of my flesh: God did not, therefore, take a rib without flesh, nor perhaps did he replace flesh without a rib in Adam's side, though St. Augustine thinks he did. These words of Adam are attributed to God, Matthew xix., because they were inspired by him.
Woman: As this word is derived from man, so in Hebrew Isha (or Asse) comes from Iish or Aiss; Latin vira woman, and virago comes from vir. (Haydock)
But we do not find this allusion so sensible in any of the Oriental languages, as in the Hebrew, whence another proof arises of this being the original language. (Calmet)
"He led her to Adam," the text says, remember. "Now there is someone, bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh." [ Gen 2:23 ] Notice here, I ask you, dearly beloved, how along with this ineffable intelligence bestowed on him by God, which he demonstrated to us by the imposition of names he gave to all those species of brute beasts, he was endowed also with the prophetic grace. I mean, the reason why this blessed author taught us in the preceding passages that Adam was overcome by drowsiness and sleep so as to have no sense at all of what happened was that when you come to know that on seeing the woman he describes her creation precisely, you may have no doubt that he is saying this under the influence of the prophetic grace and the inspiration of instruction by the Holy Spirit. You see, when God led her to him, he said, without knowledge of anything that had happened, "Now there is someone bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh."
Yet some other translator renders it "This once" instead...
When this kind of second human being was made by God for man's assistance, that female was forthwith named woman; still happy, still worthy of paradise, still virgin. [On Veiling of Virgins 5]
He experienced the influence of the Spirit. For there fell upon him that ecstasy, which is the Holy Ghost's operative virtue of prophecy. But this (gift of prophecy) only came on him afterwards, when God infused into him the ecstasy, or spiritual quality, in which prophecy consists. [Treatise on the Soul 11;21]
Adam had already recognised the flesh which was in the woman as the propagation of his own substance ("This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh" Genesis 2:23 ), and the very taking of the woman out of the man was supplemented with flesh; but it ought, I should suppose, to have been made good with clay, if Adam was still clay. The clay, therefore, was obliterated and absorbed into flesh. When did this happen? At the time that man became a living soul by the inbreathing of God—by...
