The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK NINE 83 have existed except in this body of death,5° a body that is dead because of sin. What punishment could have been more deserved than that the body, made to serve the soul, should not be willing to obey every command of the soul, just as the soul herself refused to serve her Lord?
It is possible that God creates both body and soul from the parents: the body from their bodies, the soul from their souls. Or could it be that He creates souls some other way?5! But whatever is the case, it is not for some impossible task nor for any trifling reward that He creates the soul. And when it is devout and faithful to God, it conquers with the help of His grace the law of sin in the members of this body of death, which the first man received as a punishment; and thus it gains a heavenly reward with greater glory, showing how praiseworthy is that obedience which by virtue was able to triumph over the punishment deserved by another's disobedience.
CHAPTER 12
The animals were brought to Adam, and he named them (Gen. 2.19-20). There must be a figurative meaning 1n this event.
20. I think I have sufficiently searched for God's purpose in making the woman as the man's helper. Now we must try to understand why all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air were brought to Adam to be named by him, and why thereafter there seemed to be a need to create for him a woman made from his side since no helper had been found for him like himself among the animals.°?
There seems to me to be a prophetic meaning in what took place; but none the less it did take place, so that with the occurrence of the event established we are free to seek its figurative meaning. How are we to interpret the fact that Adam gave names to the birds and to the animals on the earth but not to the fish and all the creatures of the waters? If we examine the various languages of mankind, we see that these living beings