Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/188

 with the thought of mortality in $19$ (Kn.), are forced. The most suitable position in the present text would be before (so Jub. iii. 33) or after 4$1$; and accordingly some regard it as a misplaced gloss in explanation of that v. But when we consider (a) that the name Ḥavvāh must in any case be traditional, (b) that it is a proper name, whereas remains appellative throughout, and (c) that in the following vv. there are unambiguous traces of a second recension of the Paradise story, it is reasonable to suppose that v.$20$ comes from that recension, and is a parallel to the naming of the woman in 2$23$, whether it stands here in the original order or not. The fact that the name Eve has been preserved, while there is no distinctive name for the man, suggests that, is a survival from a more primitive theory of human origins in which the first mother represented the unity of the race.—the mother of every living thing] According to this derivation, would seem to denote first the idea of life, and then the source of life—the mother. But

title of 'Mother of all living' (see Gres. l.c. 359 f.). Precarious as such combinations may seem, there is no objection in principle to an explanation of the name Ḥavvah on these lines. Besides the Ḥivvites of the OT (who were probably a serpent-tribe), We. cites examples of Semitic princely families that traced their genealogy back to a serpent. The substitution of human for animal ancestry, and the transference of the animal name to the human ancestor, are phenomena frequently observed in the transition from a lower to a higher stage of religion. If the change took place while a law of female descent still prevailed, the ancestry would naturally be traced to a woman (or goddess); and when the law of male kinship was introduced she would as naturally be identified with the wife of the first man. It need hardly be said that all this, while possibly throwing some light on the mythical background of the biblical narrative, is quite apart from the religious significance of the story of the Fall in itself.—] Rob. Sm. renders 'mother of every ḥayy,'—ḥayy being the Arab. word which originally denoted a group of female kinship. Thus "Eve is the personification of the bond of kinship (conceived as exclusively mother-kinship), just as Adam is simply 'man,' i.e. the personification of mankind" (KM$2$, 208). The interpretation has found no support.