The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK TEN 97 the soul of the man as well as his body had been made from the earth, it ought not to have been silent with regard to the soul of the woman for fear it would be thought to be transmitted as an offshoot of Adam's, if that theory is not true. Therefore, they say, there is no mention of God's breathing into her face because as a matter of fact the soul of the woman came from the man.
2. It is easy to refute this opinion. For if they assume that the soul of the woman was made from the soul of the man on the ground that Scripture has not said that God breathed into the face of the woman, why do they think that the woman received life from the man, since that also is not mentioned in Scripture? Hence, if God makes all the souls of human beings coming into this world as He made the first one, Scripture was silent about the others because what is stated as having occurred in the first case could have been reasonably understood as applicable also to the others. Accordingly, if Scripture ought to have given us any instruction at all on this point, with much greater reason it should have done so if anything happened in the case of the woman that did not happen in the case of the man; which would certainly be true if her soul came from his animated flesh, and if she did not, like Adam, receive her body from one source and her soul from another.
Scripture, then, should have informed us of this difference so that we might not think that Eve's soul was made in the way that Adam's was made according to the scriptural narrative. Consequently, since it does not say that the soul of the woman was made from the soul of the man, it is reasonable to assume that the writer by this fact wished to admonish us to suppose nothing different in her case with regard to the soul than what we had learnt about the man, that is, that the woman received her soul in the same way. Had that not been true, there would have been an obvious occasion to state the fact, if not at the formation of Eve, at least later when Adam says, This now 1s bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.2 How much more tender and loving it would have been if he had said, "and soul of my soul."
Nevertheless, these considerations have not solved this complicated question so as to bring me to adhere to one of these opinions as obvious and certain.