A Roman Emperor once tried to embarrass Rabban Gamliel with a joke that sounded, at first, like a theological objection.
"Your God is a thief," the Emperor said. "He put Adam into a deep sleep and then stole a rib from him."
Before Gamliel could answer, the Emperor's own daughter stepped forward. She was young, and sharp, and not inclined to let her father's provocation stand. She spoke up on the Rabbi's behalf.
"Father, let me tell you about this thief. Imagine a man broke into your house at night. He stole two earthen cups. In their place he left two golden ones. Would you call him a thief? Would you chase him down? Or would you send messengers out to the four corners of the empire looking for this remarkable burglar who leaves gold where he finds clay?"
The court was silent. Then the Emperor laughed. The joke had landed — but not where it had been aimed. God, the daughter was saying, took a rib and returned a wife. He took one person and returned two, bound to each other by a thing no bone alone could have produced. Whatever accounting you use, that is not theft. That is the most generous transaction anyone has ever described.
The exchange, preserved as exemplum no. 55 in Moses Gaster's 1924 collection The Exempla of the Rabbis, has parallels in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 39a) and Bereshit Rabbah 17. What makes the Gaster version striking is that the answer does not come from a Rabbi at all. It comes from a young woman — a gentile princess, no less — who sees the mistake in her father's framing faster than the experts around him do. The Rabbis preserved the story because they wanted the reader to notice something: the truth about the creation of Eve was obvious enough that even an outsider could grasp it, if she was willing to pay attention.