The Androgynous Human

Genesis Rabbah 8:1 explores the scriptural phrase “Male and female He created them” (Genesis 5:2). Rabbi Jeremiah ben Elazar imagines the first human as androgynous, embodying both sexes in a single being. Rabbi Samuel bar Naḥman describes Adam as a two-faced creature, later split in two. These daring images push beyond the plain biblical text, showing how rabbis speculated about the nature of humanity, gender, and creation. Similar ideas appear in works of Greco-Roman philosophy like Plato's Symposium, in which primordial humans were also imagined as joined and later divided. The midrash adapts these motifs within their distinctly scriptural framework and finds a textual basis for them in the Torah.