For now we see as through a glass, darkly

 For now we see as through a glass, darkly

 but then face to face;

now I know in part,

but then I will know fully

just as I also have been fully known.

(1 Corinthians 13:12)

In the Beginning

And the LORD  God  formed  man  of the dust  of  the ground,  and breathed  into his nostrils  the breath  of life;  and man  became a living  soul. 

Genesis 2:7

And the LORD  God  caused  a deep sleep  to fall  upon Adam,  and he slept  : and he took  one  of his ribs,  and closed up  the flesh  instead thereof;

And the rib,  which the LORD  God  had taken  from man,  made  he a woman,  and brought  her unto the man. 

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. 

Genesis 2:21-23

Down the Corridor of Time

The answer to the great mystery we all wished solved lies down the long corridor of time.  Of necessity, our vision cannot be clear and thus we strain to understand.

Wilson observed that: “The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques… the intellect was not constructed to understand atoms or even to understand itself but to promote the survival of human genes.”

What chance then do we have to understand our distant origins and how those origins in past environments speak to us today?  Did the Creator wish us to understand the profound, but elegantly simple mechanism that produced us?  Is the Bible to be understood as literal, as allegory, or as irrelevant to our quest for this understanding?

If the Bible is an allegory, are there clues within it, deliberately placed, waiting for a scientifically advanced people in some future generation to discover?

Does Adam’s rib have a particular significance?  All humans and other primates have 24 ribs, 12 on each side. So when God removed Adam's rib to make woman, he would have then left Adam with 23 ribs instead of the original 24, and then closed up the flesh.

This is of course a strange coincidence regarding the DNA of modern humans.  The human spermatozoon has 23 chromosomes and the human ovum also has 23 chromosomes.  But our Hominid ancestors would have been individuals with 24 chromosomes in the gametes, as do modern day Pongids (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons).  The whole Hominoid super family would have come from individuals with 24 chromosomes in the gametes.  Somehow, in becoming human we went from 24 to 23 chromosomes, just as Adam awoke from his deep sleep with only 23 ribs instead of his original 24.

Is this all coincidence, or is the answer to all our mysteries somehow encoded in the Bible in ways we are just beginning to discover?