Male and Female

A zero or a total here is a statement about the files searched and nothing more: the Masoretic text, one edition of the Greek Old Testament, and the SBLGNT. No Dead Sea Scroll, no Greek apparatus and no rabbinic text is held as a corpus, so how Genesis 1:27 was read at Qumran is not measured here.

• TDNT, s.v. εὐνοῦχος — the eunuch in the Greek and Jewish world and in the New Testament.
• NIDOTTE / TDOT — זָכָר (zāḵār), נְקֵבָה (nəqēḇâ), סָרִיס (sārîs).
• A dictionary of biblical theology on image of God and marriage, for the frame Genesis 1–2 sets around both.

Most Bible dictionaries in print were written before the 2006 medical consensus renamed “intersex” and “hermaphroditism” as disorders (or differences) of sex development. Read them for the ancient world, which they know well, and not for the modern medicine, which they often do not. The articles named above were not opened for this page — they are where to start, not what this page relied on.

• Hayim Tadmor, “Was the Biblical sārîs a Eunuch?” in Z. Zevit et al. (eds.), Solving Riddles and Untying Knots (Eisenbrauns, 1995), 317–25.
• Mary Frazer, “Heads and Beds: On the Origin of the Akkadian Term for Eunuch or Courtier,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 9 (2022) 95–112.
• Harry A. Hoffner Jr., “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity,” JBL 85 (1966); Harold T. Vedeler, “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5,” JBL 127 (2008) 459–76.

• Plato, Symposium 189d–190d (c. 380 BC; not Scripture) — Aristophanes’ comic myth: humans were once τρία… γένη, three kinds (Lamb: “three kinds of human beings”), “not two as they are now” (Jowett) — each a double being, male-male, female-female and male-female, children of the sun, the earth and the moon, until Zeus cut them in half. Only one of the three was the “androgynous”; the myth explains desire, not the origin of the sexes.
• Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation 134 (early 1st century AD; not Scripture) — the man made “according to the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) was “an idea… incorporeal, neither male nor female”; the man moulded from dust in Genesis 2:7 is “man or woman, by nature mortal” (Yonge). Philo’s first man is sexless, not androgynous.
• Genesis Rabbah 8:1 (Palestine, c. AD 400–450; not Scripture) — Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar: when God created the first man, אַנְדְּרוֹגִינוֹס בְּרָאוֹ, “he created him androgynous”; Rabbi Samuel bar Nahman: he made him with two faces and then sawed him in two. The proof text is Genesis 5:2, “male and female he created them,” read as describing one double creature. The Babylonian Talmud gives the two-faces saying to Rabbi Jeremiah instead (Berakhot 61a; Eruvin 18a).

The early rabbinic law-books name two people the Bible never names. The tumtum is a person whose sex cannot be determined because the genitals are concealed; the androgynos has the features of both. Counted across the whole Mishnah, the androgynos appears 20 times in 14 paragraphs and the tumtum 16 times in 12, usually as a pair (both are named in 11 of the 15 paragraphs that name either) — in the laws of the festivals, of vows, of priests’ food, of inheritance, of purity. (Counted from Sefaria’s Hebrew base text, every hit checked by eye; other editions may differ by a few. Without the disputed chapter below: 18 in 12 and 15 in 11.)

One text gives the androgynos a whole chapter: in some ways like men, in some ways like women, in some ways like both, in some ways like neither. It closes with a rabbi — Rabbi Yose in the Tosefta, Rabbi Meir in the Mishnah texts that carry it — calling the androgynos בְּרִיָּה בִּפְנֵי עַצְמָהּ, “a creature unto itself,” which the sages could not decide was man or woman (the Tosefta’s wording is בריה לעצמו, printed in editorial brackets on Sefaria). Printed against the grain of this page: here is an ancient voice that came close to naming a third category. The text is a Tosefta passage (Bikkurim 2; numbered 2:2–6 on Sefaria, 2:3–7 in Lieberman) later copied into some editions of the Mishnah as “Bikkurim chapter 4”; most scholars hold it is not part of the original Mishnah (some editions print it as if it were), and the Jerusalem Talmud never comments on it.

• Mishnah Yevamot 8:4 (c. AD 200; not Scripture) — Rabbi Akiva distinguishes the סְרִיס אָדָם, the “eunuch of man,” made so by human action, from the סְרִיס חַמָּה, the “eunuch of the sun,” born so. The Talmud, citing Rabbi Ammi, glosses the second as one “impaired from his mother’s womb” (b. Yevamot 79b–80a) — the same idiom Matthew 19:12 uses in Greek, ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός, a stock biblical phrase. Jesus’ first two kinds correspond closely to the rabbis’ two kinds. His third — “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” — has no counterpart in the Mishnah.
• Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 75b (compiled c. AD 500; not Scripture) — Shmuel, as cited by Rav Yehuda, on Deuteronomy 23:1 (MT 23:2): פְּצוּעַ דַּכָּא בִּידֵי שָׁמַיִם כָּשֵׁר, one “crushed” by the hand of Heaven — not by human injury — is fit to marry into Israel. Printed against the grain of this page: the rabbis read the law that barred the injured man as not barring the man made so by God.
• Josephus, Antiquities 4.290–291 (AD 93/94; not Scripture) — expanding Deuteronomy 23: “Let those that have made themselves eunuchs be had in detestation… In like manner do you treat all that is of a monstrous nature when it is looked on; nor is it lawful to geld men or any other animals” (Whiston). His Greek word is Γάλλους, the Galli — the self-castrated priests; his first target is self-castration. But the next clause widens the rule to πᾶν τὸ νομιζόμενον τέρας, everything “reckoned a portent” by those who see it — a word also used of a monstrous birth — and he does not say whom it covers. Printed against the grain of this page: it may have reached the man born so.
• On the Syrian Goddess 51 (2nd century AD, attributed to Lucian; not Scripture) — at the festival of Hierapolis a young man “castrates himself” and “receives women’s raiment” (Strong & Garstang). This is the world Josephus wanted Jews kept clear of.
• Wisdom of Solomon 3:13–14 (Apocrypha — a valued witness, not Scripture) — “…blessed is the barren… And blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity… for unto him shall be given… an inheritance in the temple of the Lord” (KJV Apocrypha). The Greek of 3:14 has no “blessed”; it carries over from 3:13. The promise runs on the same theme as Isaiah 56; measured, the two share single words such as εὐνοῦχος and no two in a row.

• Eusebius, Church History 6.8 — the young Origen “took the words… in too literal and extreme a sense” and castrated himself; his bishop first admired it and later called it “most foolish” (NPNF). Justin, First Apology 29 (c. AD 155) records — approvingly, as proof of Christian chastity — a young Christian who asked the governor to let a surgeon make him a eunuch; the governor refused, and the youth remained single.
• Council of Nicaea (AD 325), Canon 1 — a man who “in sound health has castrated himself” may not serve as clergy; a man made a eunuch by physicians, by barbarians or by his masters may. Apostolic Canon 21 (late 4th century) goes further: a eunuch “born so,” if otherwise worthy, “may be made a bishop.”
• Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.15 (c. AD 200; the ANF prints this book in Latin only, and it is rendered here from that Latin) — the eunuch is so called “not because his parts have been cut off by force, nor even because he is unmarried”; the blessed are those who have made themselves eunuchs “from every sin” for the kingdom. Clement read Jesus’ third kind as continence chosen for God’s sake, not the knife; by the fourth century the church’s canons had shut the door on self-castration.

“Gender” comes through French from the Latin genus, “kind” — a cousin of Plato’s γένη. In English it named a kind, then a class of nouns (masculine, feminine, neuter), and from the fifteenth century, now and then, a person’s sex. Its modern sense — a social role, distinguished from bodily sex — dates from John Money’s “gender role” in 1955; “gender identity,” the inner sense of self, followed in 1963–64. The biblical writers therefore never use the category the modern question is asked in. Scripture speaks about bodies (male and female), about dress (Deuteronomy 22:5), and about eunuchs. A careful reader brings the modern question to those texts honestly, and does not pretend they used the modern word.

• Genesis 1:27 → 5:2 — the pair at creation and again at the head of the human family, both times with a blessing (1:28; 5:2).
• Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6 — Jesus quotes the line. Both verses share the five Greek words ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς with the Greek Old Testament — run 5, tie band 2 — and the two are Genesis 1:27 and 5:2, so the measurement cannot say which of them Jesus’ words stand closer to. Matthew marks the line as Scripture read: “Have you not read…?” The Mark figure is the one printed on this library’s Mark 10–11 page.
• Galatians 3:28 — “there is no male and female.” Paul writes neither… nor twice and then changes conjunction: ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ, male and female — the pairing of Genesis 1:27 in the Greek, and the ESV keeps the “and.” Read in its letter: Paul is saying who inherits the promise — all who are Christ’s, “sons of God, through faith” (3:26, 29) — not that the sexes have been abolished. The same apostle writes to wives and husbands as such (Colossians 3:18–19; Ephesians 5:22–33). In Christ, being male or female does not decide anyone’s standing before God.

Deuteronomy 23:1 · MT/LXX 23:2 — “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.” (θλαδίας καὶ ἀποκεκομμένος, “crushed and cut off.”) The law is about bodies that have been cut or crushed, and it does not use the word סָרִיס at all. It is the hardest verse on this page, and it is printed. (The rabbis later read it as barring the man injured, not the man made so “by the hand of Heaven” — b. Yevamot 75b, in Stage 2.)

Isaiah 56:3–5 — “…let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’… To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths… and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.” Measured on this library’s Isaiah page: Isaiah 56:3–7 and Deuteronomy 23:1–9 (MT/LXX numbering; English 22:30–23:8) share no run deeper than two words in either language, and every two is a pair of function words. The reversal is a reversal of content; the wording is not reused.

Acts 8:26–39 — an Ethiopian court official, five times called εὐνοῦχος, is reading Isaiah 53 in his chariot (Acts 8:32–33 quotes Isaiah 53:7–8), three chapters before the promise to eunuchs. Philip tells him the good news about Jesus. “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” Nothing did. The eunuch “went on his way rejoicing” (8:36, 39).

• Deuteronomy 22:5 — the Torah’s one law about men’s and women’s dress: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” The Hebrew כְלִי־גֶבֶר (LXX σκεύη ἀνδρός) is literally “a man’s gear”, and the verse uses גֶבֶר and אִשָּׁה, not the creation pair (no versification offset); one early rabbi read it as weapons (b. Nazir 59a), and Maimonides gave two reasons, one against idolatrous ritual and one moral (Guide 3.37). Its exact scope is debated, and this page does not settle it; that the law assumes a real difference between a man and a woman is not debated.
• Psalm 139:13–14 · LXX 138:13–14 — “…you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Said of every body — including the ones in the tables above.
• Romans 8:22–23 — “…the whole creation has been groaning… And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Every believer’s body waits for redemption, and the creation with it — not some bodies more than others.

• J. Lehtonen & G. A. Parker, “Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes,” Mol Hum Reprod 20 (2014) 1161–68; T. Janicke et al., “Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy,” Ecology Letters 29 (2026) e70426.
• M. Blackless et al., “How sexually dimorphic are we?” Am J Hum Biol 12 (2000) 151–66; L. Sax, “How common is intersex?” J Sex Res 39 (2002) 174–78; C. L. Hull’s critique of Blackless, Am J Hum Biol 15 (2003) 112–15.
• I. A. Hughes et al., “Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders,” Arch Dis Child 91 (2006) 554–63; U. Thyen et al., Horm Res 66 (2006) 195–203.
• G. Krob et al., Eur J Pediatr 153 (1994) 2–10; Z. Bayraktar, J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med 31 (2018) 542–47.
• M. Gershoni & S. Pietrokovski, BMC Biology 15 (2017) 7; A. H. Sinclair et al., Nature 346 (1990) 240–44.
• J. Money, Bull Johns Hopkins Hosp 96 (1955) 253–64; D. Haig, “The inexorable rise of gender and the decline of sex,” Arch Sex Behav 33 (2004) 87–96.
• Pew Research Center, 7 June 2022; Gallup, 20 February 2025 and 16 February 2026; MedlinePlus Genetics (Klinefelter, Turner, androgen insensitivity, congenital adrenal hyperplasia); S. Bojesen, A. Juul & C. H. Gravholt, J Clin Endocrinol Metab 88 (2003) 622–26.
• P. Berta et al., Nature 348 (1990) 448–50; P. Koopman et al., Nature 351 (1991) 117–21; “US proposal for defining gender has no basis in science,” Nature 563 (2018) 5; W. Oremus, Slate, 13 February 2014; American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5 “Gender Dysphoria” fact sheet (2013).
• H. Cass, Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report (NHS England, 10 April 2024); J. Taylor et al., Arch Dis Child 109 Suppl 2 (2024) s33–47 and s48–56; C. Noone et al., BMC Med Res Methodol 25 (2025) 128; M. McNamara et al., Yale white paper (2024; not peer-reviewed).

On the intersex figure. Fausto-Sterling’s group counted every departure from an ideal type; Sax counted only conditions in which chromosomal and bodily sex disagree, or the body cannot be classed as male or female. Each is consistent with its own definition, and the hundredfold gap between them is a gap of definition, not of data — both totals come from the same table. Hull (2003) argued the broad figure was also inflated by its sources; her corrected total is reported secondhand as about 0.37%, and this page could not read her letter to confirm it.

On “sex is a spectrum.” Some scientific editorials (e.g. Nature, 2018) define sex by a range of bodily characteristics and argue that no single trait settles it, given how variable chromosomes, hormones and anatomy are; the 2026 Ecology Letters authors answer that sex is defined by gametes precisely so that it holds “irrespective of variation” in those. Neither side proposes a third gamete.

On treatment of minors. This page gives no medical counsel. It records what one review measured: the independent review for England’s health service (the Cass Review, April 2024) called this “an area of remarkably weak evidence” — adding that results are “exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate.” Its systematic reviews rated 1 of 50 studies on puberty blockers as high quality and 25 as moderate, and 1 of 53 on hormones as high quality and 33 as moderate; the high- and moderate-quality studies were the ones synthesised. Critics have challenged the review’s methods (a Yale white paper, 2024; Noone et al., BMC Med Res Methodol, 2025), and the review’s defenders have answered them.

• DSM-5-TR (2022) — whether the revision kept the old clinic-based prevalence figures. No number from it is printed.
• Blackless 2000, full text — behind a paywall; its condition table is known through Sax (2002), who reproduces it, and through Hull’s letter (2003) as quoted secondhand; the condition values sum exactly to 1.728.
• Craigie and Tigay on Deuteronomy 22:5; the contents (not the existence) of Tadmor’s two articles on the sārîs; a Hebrew lexicon on the Akkadian origin of סָרִיס. None is relied on.
• The manuscripts of Mishnah “Bikkurim 4” — which ones carry it was not checked.
• The dictionary articles in Stage 1 — named as places to start, not opened.
• The corpus counts — exhaustive over 23,204 verse units of the Masoretic text, 30,348 of the Greek Old Testament (63 of the 64 CATSS files held; the Odes left out; one edition, not the whole Septuagint) and 7,927 of the SBLGNT. Where the Greek Old Testament has rival recensions (Judges A and B, for instance) a merged count can double a place. ESV quotations were taken from Crossway’s ESV API on 4 October 2026.

• Two is a blessing before it is a boundary. “Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man” (Gen 5:2). The first thing God does with the two is bless them; the first thing he calls them is one name.
• Hold both verses Jesus held. He quoted “male and female” as the pattern “from the beginning” — and, eight verses later, named without contempt the men born otherwise. A church that keeps only one of those verses is quoting half of Jesus.
• The eunuch got a better name. Shut out of the assembly by one text, promised by another “a name better than sons and daughters,” he was baptized on a desert road and “went on his way rejoicing.” In Christ no one is kept out of the people of God by what their body is from birth, or by what others did to it.
• Do not use the numbers as weapons. Every figure on this page is about a person who bears the image of God (Gen 1:27; James 3:9). The child with an atypical body, the man who learns at forty he has an extra X, the young person in real distress — each is owed truth and tenderness at once.
• Distress is real, and so is grace. Our own Statement of Beliefs says it: “We reject the lie that we must hide our wounds to be acceptable to God.” Whatever anyone carries about their body, the door of this church is the same door for everyone. If you are struggling with your body right now, you do not have to carry it alone: talk to a parent, a pastor (contact us) or your doctor — and if you are in crisis, call or text 988.

Step in response: read Matthew 19:3–12 aloud, all ten verses, without stopping at verse 6. Then pray for one person you know whose body, or whose sense of it, is a burden — by name, and without telling anyone you did.

Father, you made us male and female and blessed us before we had done anything at all. Thank you that Jesus spoke without contempt of those whom others turned away, and that the eunuch went home rejoicing. Give us your truth without hardness and your mercy without fear. Where any of us is at odds with our own body, meet us there, and not only once we have hidden it. Make us a people who honor every bearer of your image. In the name of Jesus, Amen.