It is ironic that this week's Old Testament text has often been cited as evidence for the pre-eminence of male over female. Feminist biblical scholars have even tended to shy away from this "second" creation story, preferring to concentrate on the more equitable-sounding simultaneous creation of male and female recorded by the priestly writer in Genesis 1:27. But the absorbing and quixotic tale told by the less linear Jahwist author (whom Harold Bloom in The Book of J [1989] argues was a woman) actually intimates a much more inter-related, mutually dependent connection between these human creatures that are God's handiwork.

Verse 18 begins this story with God recognizing the fundamental incompleteness of a creation populated only by the singular man. Whereas the first creation story is no…