- ‘I have procreated a man with Yahweh!’ (Genesis 4.1). The very language of this Hebrew text signals a bodily dynamic well beyond this, for the woman’s words are pointedly precise: she is claiming that Yahweh has fathered her first child. Although in her biblical form she is a human woman, her choice of vocabulary is the language of goddesses: in asserting that she has ‘procreated’ a man, she uses a specialized, technical term for divine reproduction also used of goddesses in the myths from Ugarit.
- https://www.academia.edu/2511767/Did_Eve_Acquire_Create_or_Procreate_with_Yahweh_A_Grammatical_and_Contextual_Reassessment_of_Genesis_4_1
Bokovoy argues for a different translation based off of the linguistics of Hebrew for Gen 4.1, which should say ‘I have procreated a man with Yahweh!’. In terms of Ugaritic, the root qny also appears linked with male deities and their divine power to procreate. The deity El is called qny w’adn ’ilm “(pro)creator and lord of the gods” (KTU 1.3 V 9). The use of both qny “(pro)creator” and adn in this single poetic line have parallel, although distinct meanings: “creator” and “lord/father.”18 This observation directly challenges a famous proposal made by Irwin that qny should be translated as “to be the parent of,” rather than simply “(pro)creator,” for the Ugaritic term adn in the context of divine epithets speciijically carries the nuance of “fatherhood/ parenthood,” i.e. one with the power to qny meaning “(pro)create” (William A. Irwin, “Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?,” JBL 80 (1961): 133-142). In some sense, there are Near-East parallels to this type of language begetting that YHWH would be a procreator in this linguistic sense.


Since Eve’s act of קנה occurred with Yahweh, the speciijic nuance of “acquire” or “obtain” often associated with the Semitic root is in this speciijic instance to be rejected. Despite the fact that as illustrated, such actions appear directly linked with creative acts in ancient Semitic thought, Eve’s statement would make little sense if conceptualized as “I have obtained/acquired a man with Yahweh.”
