“Whether Jacob believed in his breeding techniques or whether God instructed him to perform it as a sort of rite, like Moses holding up his rod so that the Jewish army would prevail over the Amalakites, we do not know. In either case, God, not [some wild or] invalid theories of breeding, increased Jacob’s flock at the expense of Laban’s.”
I was hoping you would make this clarification.
But it does have the makings of a pagan story… more akin to the “confusing” of the tongues at the building of the tower. Great story - - but ultimately kind of silly.
I just went back and read Genesis 30:25-43. I noticed something interesting. The story is a combination of the miraculous and the practical. The stripped branches appeared to cause a change in the breeding of the sheep and goats. But Jacob was also applying some natural principles of animal husbandry. Notice he only laid down the branches when the strong animals were breeding and not when the feeble animals were breeding. So he ended up with strong but discolored animals. A joint effort of God and Jacob. All in all one of my favorite OT stories.
So, you contend that God went through each little rib cell, duplicated the X chromosome and zapped the Y chromosome in each cell, added some dirt or other unknown mass to raise it up to a reasonable rate, and thus made what is essentially a clone of Adam, minus a Y chromosome. And that explains why Adam was made first. That makes a figurative interpretation almost boring. A least just leave it as God miraculously created Eve, and I can respect that. I will excuse myself from the conversation but please carry on without me.