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18The LORD God also said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.”
19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and He brought them to the man to see what he would name each one. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
21So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he slept, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the area with flesh. 22And from the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man, He made a woman and brought her to him. 23And the man said:
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for out of man she was taken.”
I’m not sure which translation your class is using and I’m generally not very knowledgeable about Torah translations, however I can provide some light on the use of the word ‘apple’ in Christian Old Testament translations. I imagine a similar factor came into play in yours as well.
Apple was originally a broader word than that specific fruit. It meant any fruit. https://www.etymonline.com/word/Apple
Similar to Corn (like the English Corn laws applied primarily to wheat and rye) meant grain or small hard thing. There are a host of these words including deer (any edible forest game), fish (things that live in water), etc that have evolved in English over time to mean something more specific. So when we have translations that rely on earlier versions occasionally we get these linguistic issues.
For example, Priests used to be forbidden to eat anything but fish on certain days. There was a Papal decree that this included beavers. People began to make fun of this post reformation as a sign of corruption, not realizing that when the decree was written fish literally meant things that lived in the water, which would include beavers.
Sorry to write so long, but one other short thing, you had mentioned reading an interlinear translation. If anyone is interested, Blue Letter Bible provides a similar version with links to Strongs’ Concordance and copies of the Hebrew/Greek. http://www.blbclassic.org/Bible.cfm?b=Gen&c=2&v=18&t=NLT#18
That makes total sense. Similar to why King James version used “kill” in 10 commandments… Apparently it meant both murder and kill in those times. Thank you so much for your insights! Shanah Tovah
Also the tie in with why God has Adam name the animals before creating Eve was freaking brilliant. Wow
Thank you! If you did not get episode 146 it should be available now.