Eve

🏷  Bible name Genesis Semitic pun · name   —   by Gerry · Jul 2020 · 1473 words

The name Eve, written חוה ḥwh Chavvah, is an obvious and admitted pun with חי ḥy chay for “life”. However, her name puns even better with חוה ḥwh chavah for “show” & “appearance”, spelled exactly like Eve’s name. Eve is also an in-story pun with חיוי ḥywy for “snake”.

Eve’s puns in a nutshell

Most Eve puns are related to the story, which is evidence that such stories are created from puns.

Eve as a pun with “show” & “appearance”

Eve’s admitted pun is with ḥy for “life”. But for the spooks, both Eve & life are puns with ḥwy for “show”. Cryptocracy is all about putting up a “show” for your subjects. Some forms of “show” are even spelled ḥwh, exactly like Eve. (I assume that “life” & “show” are etymologically related, as they overlap in the sense & spelling of “experience”.)

In her meaning of “show”, Eve complements Adam, whose spooky pun is “likeness” & “disguised as”. That’s why the 2 are made a pair.

This “show” pun is also officially attested by a comment in Jastrow’s dictionary, citing the phrase ḥwh lh ˀdm “Adam told her” from Genesis Rabbah, where ḥwh for “show” & “tell” is said to be a play on the name ḥwh “Eve”. You can read the full explanation in the aces & eights article.

חוה ḥwh Chavvah : Eve; “life,” the first woman — Old Hebrew (Strong)

Hebrew ḥwh = show, experience, impress

חוה ḥwh chavah : show, tell, declare — Old Hebrew (Strong)

חוה ḥwh chavah : to point; to show, teach, tell — Hebrew (Jastrow)

חוה ḥwh chavah : to show, declare; showed, he declared, made known, said, told, expressed — Hebrew (Klein)

חוה ḥwh : to experience, be deeply impressed by — Hebrew (Klein)

Hebrew, Aramaic ḥwy = show, demonstrate, appearance, experience

חוי ḥwy : to show; to announce, i.e., reveal previously unknown information; to display apparent behavior; to issue new currency; to demonstrate; to announce, tell; to indicate non-verbally, make a sign; to greet; to be informed; to appear, be manifest — Aramaic (CAL)

חוא ; חוי ḥwy; ḥwˀ : to show; to tell — Hebrew (Jastrow)

חווי ḥwwy : demonstration; self revelation, appearance — Aramaic (CAL)

Eve as a pun with “woman in childbed”

Straightforward names for the first man & woman would be something like “man” & “woman”, or “husband” & “wife”, or “father” & “mother”.

Adam is indeed a somewhat common word for “man”. But Eve is a rather obscure word for motherhood, in the sense of “[mother who has just given] life”. This doesn’t fit Adam’s name, which means just “man”, but not “father”. That is proof that the literal Biblical story wasn’t very important to the spook authors. Rather, they chose Adam & Eve for their hidden spooky puns which fit together perfectly: Adam means “disguise”, Eve means “show”.

Hebrew ḥy = life, woman in childbed

חיה ḥyh : midwife; woman in childbed — Hebrew (Klein)

חיה ḥyh : recovering; lying-in woman, woman in confinement; physician; midwife — Hebrew (Jastrow)

Eve as meaning “snake”

Why is it Eve who gets entangled with the snake, and not Adam? Because the word Eve also means “snake” in the Semitic languages.

The etymology is best seen in Arabic: The root ḥwy means “enclosing” & “coiling”, and the word for “coiling” snakes is derived from that. It may even be related to “life”. One explanation that both roots denote things that are held together, which includes “enclosing” & “coiling” around things, but also “life”, which holds body & soul together in a sense. (The weird Egyptian ankh symbol that looks like a sandal strap may furter evidence of that.) In any case, the spellings of the 2 word clusters overlap heavily, and thus make for good spooky punnery.

We now see that the age-old prejudice that women are the Biblical source of all evil is due to a cheap pun. The spooks knew that all along and have probably giggled about it for millennia, while seeding gender hatred from their lofty pulpits.

Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic ḥwy, ḥyh = coiling, snake, serpent

חיוי ḥywy; ḥywyˀ; ḥywˀ : serpent — Hebrew (Jastrow)

חיוי ḥywy : snake — Aramaic (CAL)

חווי ḥwwy : female serpent; reptile — Aramaic (CAL)

חויון ḥwywn : little snake — Aramaic (CAL)

חוייא ḥwyyˀ : Ophites — Aramaic (CAL)

حَيَّة ḥyʰ ḥayya : snake, serpent; worm, wyrm — Arabic (Wikt)

تَحَوَّى tḥwˀ taḥawwā : to contract, to shrink; to coil (of a snake) — Arabic (Wikt)

Eve & the serpent as a pun with “sin”

Why were Eve & the serpent linked to “sin” by the ancient spook authors?

Because there’s a dialectical spelling of חויא ḥwyˀ as עויא ˁwyˀ (with ˁAyin instead of Ḥet), which means “snake” & “sin”, both derived from “bending” & “twisting”. Of course women are not more “sinful” than men — it’s an ancient spook pun!

Hebrew ˁwh, ˁwy, ˁwyˀ = curved, bent, serpent, sin

עוה ˁwh : to bend, twist; committed iniquity, sinned; bent, twisted; perverse — Hebrew (Klein)

עוי ˁwy : to be curved, bent, crooked; to pervert, do wrong; to subvert, lay waste; to curve one’s self (like a serpent); wriggle — Hebrew (Jastrow)

עויא ˁwyˀ : curve; wrong, iniquity — Hebrew (Jastrow)

עויא ˁwyˀ : serpent; in Galilee they call a serpent ‘ivya (for ḥivya) — Hebrew (Jastrow)

Eve as sexual “desire”

Adam & Eve are often interpreted as gaining sexual knowledge from the Tree of Knowledge, even though nothing of the sort is mentioned in the scripture.

As usual, it’s a pun: Eve puns with אוה ˀwh avah for sexual “desire”.

That’s probably also why the spooks came up with the idea of saying sex is “sinful”, since this multi-pun also includes the word “sin”, see above.

Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with sex or other desires, it’s just a spook pun. Yes, some people can turn their desires into bad behavior, but that’s true for everything.

Hebrew ˀwh = desire, lust

אוה ˀwh : to incline, desire; covet, be desirous, long, lust after — Old Hebrew (Strong)

אוה ˀwh : to desire, long for; desired, longed for, lusted after — Hebrew (Klein)

אוי ˀwy : to desire, covet — Hebrew (Jastrow)

Eve as a pun with “shame”

The “shame” that Adam & Eve experience in the story may also be an Eve pun with “life”, as the root ḥy also means “ashamed”. It’s only attested for Arabic, but our ancient Phoenician spook authors might have known the meaning.

Arabic ḥy = shame, ashamed, bashful

حَيَاء ḥyˀ ḥayāˀ : shame, bashfulness, blush; bashful avoidance of a thing; fear of blame; rich produce; rain; pudendum, womb — Arabic (Wikt)

حَيِيَ ḥyy ḥayiya : to be ashamed (of) — Arabic (Wikt)

Adam & Eve as puns with “blood”

Adam & Eve may have been made a pair because they both mean “blood” (in addition to their spooky puns). Adam means “blood” directly. Eve means “blood” in the sense of “lifeblood”, though that’s only attested for Arabic. In any case, blood & life are obviously linked in the real world.

Arabic ḥy = lifeblood

حَيَاة ḥyˀʰ ḥayāh : life, lifestyle, lifetime; lifeblood — Arabic (Wikt)

Eve as made from a rib

Eve being made from a rib is also a pun:

Hebrew ṣlˁ = side, rib, sin

צלעה ṣlˁh : rib; (fig.) woman — Hebrew (Klein)

צלע ṣlˁ : side, rib; side of a hill or rock; wing of a building — Hebrew (Jastrow)

צלע ṣlˁ : to bend, hang over; to halt; to sin — Hebrew (Jastrow)

צלע ṣlˁ : halting; fall, sin — Hebrew (Jastrow)

🏷  Bible name Genesis Semitic pun · name