In parthenogenesis, an ovum can divide without male flesh and or chromosomes. But it always results in the birth or creation of another female. So how can an ovum, in a quasi-parthenogentic manner (no Y chromosome) transform from female to male? In truth, and factually speaking, that seems impossible. And yet, as the great exegetes of scripture point out, it's precisely when you run into an intractable problem like that, that that problem is guarding a great and valuable truth, a secret (in this case the secret of the yod). This thread was started under the assumption that the solution to that seemingly intractable problem exists in the scripture, and that solving that problem will cause a ripple-affect effecting and correcting grotesquely terrible exegesis and interpretation of scripture from its very genesis to its final revelation.
The statement above is wondering out loud about the fact that technically speaking every ovum begins as female flesh (X chromosomal) and only transforms into male flesh if it's given a means to do so, come, so to say, from outside itself (i.e., sex). So if the first human begins as female flesh, as it does, and if it's created already pregnant with the first male, and it is, then there's the scientific problem that the ovum of the first birth has no means (Y chromosome) for transforming the mother's flesh into male flesh unless the ovum was fundamentally different from what ova are (X chromosomal, female)?
Which brings us to Professor David Biale's essa
y, Does Blood Have Gender in Jewish Culture? If, as Professor Biale's essay notes, circumcision blood is male, while menstrual blood is female (in the Talmud, as elsewhere), then the fact that ritual circumcision is historically, and mythologically, a wedding ritual performed under the chuppah, lends itself to solving the conundrum in this particular thread in a profitable way:
In the ancient world the lord always owned the firstborn (see
Exodus 13:2). -----For the pre-Jewish religions, god practiced
jus primae noctis every time a man married a woman. The firstborn was his. It was god's offspring, and thus became his "priest." ----All the firstborn were god's priests. His priesthood was made up of his own sons, whom he fathered
jus primae noctis. This being the case, the bride's marriage ritual paralleled the grooms. She went into the temple (the house בית of god) and deflowered herself on the divine "sprout" (Hebrew
zizs): usually a golden or wooden phallic ornament (Ezek. 16:17) salubriously prepared for her by "anointing" it with "oil" (Heb.
semen) so that her "firstborn" son would be born of the "anointing" (the "oil" or "
semen") belonging to god. Her firstborn is born of god’s fertility.
The firstborn belongs to god and becomes a
priest in the "house of god" since that's where he’s conceived. -----He's merely returning to the place of his conception when he enters the house of god (the temple) as a priest of god his father. He's merely returning to the "anointing," through which he was conceived, when he returns to the house of his father. Bride and groom both deflower themselves (tear the membrane of virginity) as a wedding ritual so that god can obtain his priests ----his firstborn----the first-fruits of his planting (Isa. 60:21).
The bride deflowers herself as a wedding ritual, in the house of god (the temple), while the bridegroom is deflowered by the bride's father-in-law (
hatan) so that he becomes a "bridegroom of blood" at the hands of the bride's father. The bride's father wants his grandson to become a priest (which requires him to be born of god) so that symbolically he deflowers his son-in-law (draws blood from his
membrum virile, brit milah) guaranteeing that his grandson will be a priest in the house of god (the temple).
Exegeting Circumcision, p.3.
Throughout Jewish symbolism, and most nakedly so in Jewish kabbalah, the blood of the ritual circumcision, unlike menstrual blood, is sacred, clean, pure, such that if, as the kabbalistic sages (say Rabbi Abraham Abulafia) imply, perhaps implicitly, that blood of circumcision is a surrogate for the semen involved in the first, Gentile, birth, then by means of that mystical surrogacy (blood rather than semen) we have not only the means for attempting to unravel the question concerning how the first human, if female, is slated to birth the first human male, but we also have a giant piece of the puzzle required to unlock the full meaning of Jewish ritual circumcision (
brit milah).
Therefore, the physical birth of the child is completed on the seventh day. The eighth day, the octave of birth, as it were, repeats the day of birth, but as a day of higher, spiritual birth for his Jewish mission and his Jewish destiny.
Rabbi Hirsch, Collected Writings III.
The first birth is by means of semen. On the other hand, the second birth, spiritual birth, Jewish birth, uses the blood obtained from the same organ the semen used as a deliverer to posit a second deliverer and a second delivery; perhaps a second firstborn male, come, so to say, to implicate Cain as a usurper who was conceived out of wedlock, as well as out of the God-dictated birth order designed in the original creation, birthing the cover up hidden in genes and texts, by various veils and falsehoods, in order to obscure the origin (Colossians 1:16), in, and from, the very beginning, and from the true sons of God.
John