Adam's Navel instead of Adam's Apple

Although it is invisible to me, I am convinced I have a sign on my back (or front) which says, "Please talk to me about anything and everything." It is this sign which has strangers in towns in which I am also a visitor ask for directions, desk clerks at hotels in small Texas towns asking for psychoanalysis, and seatmates on airplanes talking for the duration of flights. Perhaps I am too polite, but when folks talk to me in spite of my reading a book and listening to my iPod, I feel compelled to listen. A recent flight from Dallas to Washington, DC was no exception.

My seatmate on this particular flight was a very nice young man from Texas who won a contest hosted by the American Architectural Foundation for creating plans for an ideal school. At one point during the flight, I held an art book for him while he retrieved something else from his backpack, and I happened to notice a caption related to a picture of Adam by Michaelangelo about which there was some controversy due to the inclusion of a navel in the painting.

The question as to whether or not Adam had a navel gave me something to ponder for the last 30 minutes of my flight, and has yielded an interesting study topic. I am quite familiar with many of the traditional debates in the scientific and religious communities, and this was a new one for me.

I will readily admit that I don't pay much attention to religious art, primarily because unlike other historically-based paintings, there is no evidence to support what Christ, Paul, Peter, or Adam looked like. My personal background includes being raised with constant reminders that the pictures, whether from a famous artist or in Bible school materials, were man's guess as to the appearance of Biblical figures. Thus, while I may appreciate them from an artistic standpoint, it's been pretty much like all other art -- I either like it or I don't -- and I've never considered the accuracy of the renderings.The picture caption led me to realize that painters throughout history, but most specifically during the eras in which religious based art flourished, had a decision to make when rendering Adam. Michaelangelo, in a very famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, gave Adam a navel. Others avoided the issue by using foliage, strategically placed forearms, or the famous figleaf.

Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica in 1646 included an entire chapter to "Pictures of Adam and Eve with Navels" when he wanted to expose some of the "vulgar errors" present in the society of his day.

Another mistake there may be in the Picture of our first Parents, who after the manner of their posterity are both delineated with a Navel. And this is observable not only in ordinary and stained pieces, but in the Authentick draughts of Urbin, Angelo, and others. Which notwithstanding cannot be allowed, except we impute that unto the first cause, which we impose not on the second; or what we deny unto nature, we impute unto Naturity it self; that is, that in the first and most accomplished piece, the Creater affected superfluities, or ordained parts without use or office. For the use of the Navel is to continue the Infant unto the Mother, and by the vessels thereof to convey its aliment and sustenation.

Browne continues to refer to Adam's absence of a navel in his Religio Medici when he says:

But it is the corruption that I fear within me, not the contagion of commerce without me. ’Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me; ’tis I that do infect my self; the man without a Navel yet lives in me; I feel that original canker corrode and devour me; and therefore Defenda me DIOS de me, “LORD deliver me from my self,” is a part of my Letany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole World about him.

Philip Gosse presented a pro-navel argument in his 1857 Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. He asserts that even though Adam had no need for a navel, God gave him one. The argument is related to the notion of a "mature creation" in which God created the world to be functional, and therefore even though they were newly created, geological structures (i.e. mountains, canyons) and living organisms (i.e. trees, plants, animals) were in a mature state and would reflect "aging" even though they hadn't actually been through the process. This developed into the idea that because of Creation putting the world in a mature form, scientific efforts to document the age of the Earth and the universe as a whole cannot be reliable.

There are those who maintain the notion that Adam and Eve did have navels, although when they were placed there remains a subject of debate. The three primary theories are: Pre-Umbilicism, Mid-Umbilicism, and Post-Umbilicism.

Gosse's argument for a mature creation is at the foundation of the Pre-Umbilicism movement, in that it considers Adam and Eve to have been given navels at the moment of their creation. There are those in this movement who maintain that since man was created in the image of God, including physical characteristics, they suggest Adam and Eve were connected to God with some sort of cosmic umbilical cord. Pre-Umbilicism advocate occasionally go so far as to suggest that prior to Creation, God was a giant fetus attached to a large placenta. When the Big Bang occurred, God was severed from the giant placenta. God roused to realize He was God (complete with physical navel from the separation from the cosmic umbilical cord), and decided to create a universe from the remains from the explosion.

Mid-Umbilicism suggests that the navel of Adam is a scar. Our navels are the scar resulting from the separation of the umbilical cord shortly after birth. Adam was not born of a woman, and didn't have the scar resulting from that experience, but received his navel when the rib was taken from him to make Eve. In other words, his navel does not represent being of a woman, but rather woman being of him. Mid-Umbilicists do not believe Eve had a navel because there was no need. Some of this theoretical perspective believe that man being created in the image of God referred to the male species only, not the female, and therefore women were from an inferior creation. In this view, only men were destined for immortality.

Post-Umbilicism maintains the navels were given to Adam and Eve when they were driven from the garden and was a mark of being "separated" from God by sin. Just as babies bear the scar of being separated from their mothers, Adam and Eve bore the scar of being separated from their Creator.

Adam and Eve were the products of Creation, not natural childbirth, and did not have a need for navels or the related umbilical cord. Adam could not have been born of a woman because woman had not yet been created: "Then the Lord God formed man of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7). "For man does not originate from woman." (1 Corinthians 11:8). Similarly, Eve was not born of a woman. "So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.'" (Genesis 2:21-23)

To give Adam and Eve navels would leave the impression of their being the result of natural childbirth, and this would be a mistaken impression since they were divinely created. That God could bear false witness by putting a false impression mark on Adam and Eve would suggest He could lie in other contexts, and a deceitful God irradicates His perfection.

Ken Ham, as quoted by Gary Parker (1996) in Creation Magazine once said:

Lack of a belly button on Adam and Eve would be one of the biggest tourist attractions of the Pre-Flood world, as the grand-children and great-grand-children would come up and ask, 'Why don't you have a belly button?' And the could recount again and again, to generation after generation, how God had created the special by completed supernatural acts, and had designed them to multiply and fill the earth in natural ways that are equally a part of continuing care for what He created.

Given the inquisitive nature of small children, that notion isn't far-fetched.

So, back to the controversy surrounding Michaelangelo's rendition of Adam....

While I'd never before considered it, I think the artist was in error to put a sign of human birth on an image of someone divinely created. That is only my very human opinion, and while interesting to ponder, this matter has little to do with my salvation.

JEF