In the Bible, Genesis 2 tells the story of how God created Adam from the dust on the ground, and then created Eve using one of Adam’s ribs. However Ziony Zevit, a renowned professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages from the American University in California, is making the (shocking to say the least) claim that an early mistranslation of the Hebrew word for a penis bone (or baculum) for the word rib has resulted in an inaccurate creation story.

This theory was first presented in the book “What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden”, published in 2013. It’s resurfaced in a paper recently published in Biblical Archaeology Review, reigniting a heated debate amongst Christian readers outraged at the idea.

The point of contention is centered on the Hebrew word “tsela”, which is the word used in the Old Testament of the Bible to describe the bone taken from Adam and used in the creation of Eve. The word shows up in the Hebrew Bible almost 40 times and is used to describe the side of a building, an ark or an altar, a side chamber, and a branch of a mountain. It’s consistently used to describe something which is off-center or lateral to the primary structure.