example of her birth from a man, or abnormal in terms of who is most closely associated with the acquisition of knowledge—the males—in the society whose literary work this Genesis myth represents. The untrue-to-life nature of the two situations is consonant with other aspects of the Eden story. Life broken up by death has not yet occurred and, indeed, the unreal prospect of living forever exists. The man and the woman are different from all other (certainly Hebrew or Near Eastern) men and women in