There’s a lot of weird stuff in the bible and so many ideas that have been misinterpreted over the years.

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Luckily we’ve got people like professor Ziony Zevit to help us out. The biblical scholar has come up with a theory that says we have been getting the whole Adam and Eve story a bit wrong.

He reckons that instead of Eve being created from Adam’s rib (which is pretty weird in itself) she was actually made from his penis bone. Obviously this has caused ripples within the Christian community.

In his recent book ‘What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden’ he points out that the Hebrew word ‘tsela’ in the Old Testament doesn’t actually translate as rib, but instead means limbs sticking out sideways from an upright human body.

Zevit added:

Of these appendages, the only one lacking a bone is the penis.

So his theory sort of proposes that the reason that guys don’t have a penis bone like most mammals is because they were actually given up to create women.

Quite frankly a person being made from any bone is a pretty mad philosophy, but Zevit’s opinions in particular have caused a bit of an uproar after a positive review of his book was published in a religious magazine.

After seeing the article in The Biblical Archaeological Review, angered readers wrote in with some pretty seething comments.

Sue Glaze from Maryland was so pissed off she even cancelled her subscription and said:

Come on now, Eve being created from Adam’s penis bone, rather than his rib?

That is plainly not a Bible teaching. I do not need and will not read articles that damage my faith or attempts to cause me to doubt what I know is the truth from the Bible.

Another reader, Rev Randall L Krabill, wrote:

I have never purchased a tabloid magazine in my life – and I have no intention of ever doing so.

I certainly didn’t realise that was what I was doing when I subscribed to BAR.

Blimey, those are some tough critics. The magazine did give the lecturer a chance to defend his position, although he didn’t say much and just wrote that the concept is based on analysis of the use of Hebrew in the Garden story.

I think that some of the comments there were pretty harshly targeting both Zevit and the magazine. I mean, if you’re going to believe that a big man in the sky whipped up a woman out of a bone, then surely the detail of which bone isn’t the bit that is hardest to get to grips with?

Still, it’s not the first time Christians have overreacted about something insignificant.