I agree, and I hope to talk about that soon. But first about those names…
Two days ago I watched a talk with Scot McKnight talking about his half of Adam and the Genome. My wife can attest that I cringed each of the three times he called Adam “Dusty”. The name means Humanity – not Dust, not Earth, not Clay, not Red, not Ruby, not Blood, not Skin, not Leather. There are similar Hebrew words that mean most of those things (skin/leather is from cognate Arabic words), but they are not the word 'adam. That word means humanity, or sometimes any particular human considered individually (kind of like the English “one”).
And then there’s another bone I have to pick with some Bible translations: rib. There’s no mention of a rib in the Eden account. The NET Bible translators’ note gives a good short summary, “Traditionally translated ‘rib,’ the Hebrew word actually means ‘side.’” So why is it traditionally translated “rib”? As far as I know, it’s because in other languages closely related to Hebrew, a similar word means rib. But in Hebrew, at least according to biblical usage, the word never has that meaning.
In the over three dozen occurrences of this word elsewhere in Scripture, it always means “side” or something closely related. After the Eden account, the word next appears – twice – in the middle of building instructions for the ark of the covenant:
You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side. (Exodus 25:12, NRSV)
Most occurrences similarly refer to the side of a building or structure (Exod. 25:14; 26:20, 26–27, 35b; 27:7; 36:25, 31–32; 37:3, 5, 27; 38:7; 1 Kings 6:34). The word is also used for beside a person (Job 18:12), beside an object (Exod. 26:35a), a hillside (2 Sam. 16:13), side walls (Exod. 30:4), side chambers (1 Kings 6:5, 8; 7:3; Ezek. 41:5–11, 26), and boards used for siding (1 Kings 6:15–16). That covers every occurrence in the Bible (save the ones under discussion).
Not only is the word never used in Scripture to refer to a rib or something like a rib, the meaning of “rib” doesn’t fit the immediate context. When the man first sees the woman, he exclaims that she is not only bone of his bones, but also flesh of his flesh (Gen. 2:23). She wasn’t just made from a rib. That’s a tradition as misleading as thinking the forbidden fruit was an apple. The woman was made from one side of the 'adam.