Adam: Personal name and/or "Mankind"

[Peairtach]

This is a spin-off from another thread on Tremper Longman III here:-

http://www.puritanboard.com/f24/tremper-longman-53452/#post690884

I believe in an individual Adam, who married an individual Eve.

But how does this matter of the word "Adam" being both the Hebrew for Man(kind) and the personal name of the first man pan-out/tease-out etymologically?

 

[fredtgreco]

Adam is the first of his race, that is why mankind is called "adam."

 

[Peairtach]

Thanks.

That's a very clear and straightforward answer, Fred.

Does the available etymological evidence - which admittedly may be scant - back this?

Tremper Longman's aside is not the first time I've heard/read people trying to muddy the waters of an historical Adam by such a tactic. Wm. Sanford La Sor mentions it in his Survey of the Old Testament in order to try to muddy the waters.

 

[discipulo]

That’s also why Hosea 6:7 is often misinterpreted and translated for man or men, when it means the historical man Adam.

B. B. Warfield, Hosea VI.7: Adam or Man? in Selected Shorter Writings

Robert Reymond, the exegetical basis for the presence of a covenant in Genesis 2, Systematic Theology page 430

 

[dr_parsley]

Adam is the first of his race, that is why mankind is called "adam."

That sounds quite neat at first sight, but I'm not convinced it holds up to greater reflection. Imagine the first Hebrew reader or hearer, they know the word 'mankind' and they have no reason to think it's also a person's name in the story. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion" ... "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam..." (KJV) This would cause a "Who what where now?" moment in the reader and hearer because Adam has not been introduced.

It seems to me the narrative would explain it almost exactly as you have done. Without an explanation in the text, those first readers would have (must have) assumed that Adam here is Man, because "Adam" has not been introduced. There should have been a "and the first man was called Man; that's why man is called man". Explanations of names occur elsewhere and its absence here is confusing.

Note I'm not claiming that Adam in Genesis means "Mankind", I'm saying that it seems your explanation needs some work before it plausibly aligns with the text.

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

Well Paul in Romans 5 is pretty convinced it meant a literal, historical man and bases the entirety of his argument on the fact that Adam was just as real and historical as Christ was real and historical.

 

[Christusregnat]

Well Paul in Romans 5 is pretty convinced it meant a literal, historical man and bases the entirety of his argument on the fact that Adam was just as real and historical as Christ was real and historical.

Yes, but in order to remain theologically respectable, we must insist on (at least) the possibility that Paul was just condescending to his audience (as he does on so many occasions... NOT!).

Metrotheologically yours,

 

[Contra_Mundum]

It doesn't seem to me as though we should come to the conclusion that adam in the text is simply a generic referent, unless there is some reason for the general, rather than the specific.

1:26, the text reads "adam" or simply "man" without a definite article, but it has "and let them have dominion, clearly indicating that the whole "kind" is to have the characteristic image and dominion.

1:27, gives "God created THE man," including the definite article. God is both creating and naming here. What are you going to call him? And the "them," follows the sexual duality reference.

2:7, minute description of THE man's creation.
2:8, 2:15, THE man.

2:16, 18, 19 reads, "THE man" or "THE Adam." At some point in translation, one has to start using Adam as name, rather than description.

2:20, uses both "THE man," and "ולאדם לא־מצא עזר כנגדו", that is, "and to MAN, was not found a suitable helper." Even without the def. art., in the narrative flow, there can be little doubt as to the referent.

2:21, 22 (twice) you go back to "THE man" and the first instance of "isha" wife/woman.

2:23, ref. THE man, as well as isha (woman) and a self-referential "ish" (man).

2:24 the proverb has ish and isha.

2:25, has THE man (adam) and his isha.

3:6, the isha (woman) gave to her ish (husband)

3:8, THE man and his isha

3:9, 12 THE man, and he references "the isha" (woman)

3:13 God said to isha

3:15 the isha

3:16 God said to the isha, references "your ish"

3:17, and to ADAM, no definite article.


3:20 Adam, or the man, names his wife

3:21, God gave to adam (no def. art.)

3:22, 24 THE man.


The Man has to get his "name" from someone, in this case God. It's name-by-description.

I think the narrative is quite plain, and it doesn't make sense to read it as a narrative account, and miss out that one particular male is being referenced. And if so, that's his name. And he is continually called by that descriptive later in the genealogies.

4:1 the adam knew his wife, eve.

4:25 And adam (no def. art) again knew his wife

Again, it doesn't seem reasonable to me as though we should start with the default position that adam in the text is simply a generic referent. This does not seem to me to be the way in which a Hebrew listener would have gathered the facts of the story.

 

[discipulo]

Well Paul in Romans 5 is pretty convinced it meant a literal, historical man and bases the entirety of his argument on the fact that Adam was just as real and historical as Christ was real and historical.

Yes, but in order to remain theologically respectable, we must insist on (at least) the possibility that Paul was just condescending to his audience (as he does on so many occasions... NOT!).

Metrotheologically yours,

can you explain a bit more what you mean?

 

[TeachingTulip]

Well Paul in Romans 5 is pretty convinced it meant a literal, historical man and bases the entirety of his argument on the fact that Adam was just as real and historical as Christ was real and historical.

As did Paul in I Corinthians 15:45-49, naming "Adam" as the literal "first man."

Those who teach federal headship have no problem understanding literal "Adam" to be representative of all "mankind."

 

[Christusregnat]

Well Paul in Romans 5 is pretty convinced it meant a literal, historical man and bases the entirety of his argument on the fact that Adam was just as real and historical as Christ was real and historical.

Yes, but in order to remain theologically respectable, we must insist on (at least) the possibility that Paul was just condescending to his audience (as he does on so many occasions... NOT!).

Metrotheologically yours,

can you explain a bit more what you mean?

Discipulo,

There is a temptation for Reformed scholars to seek to be respectable with unbelieving or semi-believing scholars. This will cause distortions in Reformed theology and even in exegesis in order not to appear "extreme" or "fundamentalist". I was mocking this form of the fear of man.

Cheers,

 

[Peairtach]

Quote from Backwoods

Well Paul in Romans 5 is pretty convinced it meant a literal, historical man and bases the entirety of his argument on the fact that Adam was just as real and historical as Christ was real and historical.

I'm not disputing this. I'm just trying to understand the etymology of "Adam".

It might be of additional help in nailing down certain liberal/neo-evangelical/neo-Reformed cavils.

If what Fred says is correct the first man was given the name "Adam" by God, in a language which probably (almost certainly) wasn't Hebrew. Appropriate, as it expresses Man's relationship with the Earth, as Man is indeed the viceregent of the Earth. Even in eternity we will be in a New Heavens and New Earth.

"Adam" in the primeval language and later in Hebrew may then always have been intended both as a word for Mankind and the personal name of the first man (and has since become the personal name of other men).

Or the Hebrews knew the first man as "Adam" (from before the time of Moses?) and from that they derived a word, "Adam", for "Mankind".

What Bruce has said is also very instructive.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

As to the origin of the word, K&D are certainly close to the truth when we read: "Adam, from אדמה (adamah), earth, the earthly element, like homo from humus,..." Thus, whether Latin, or even I have read as found at times in the language of aboriginal peoples, the first ancestor is named "Dirt," cf. Gen 2:7.

***************************

On the previous topic:

Gen 5:2 "Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created."
(per ESV; the KJV uses "Adam" for "Man")


Gen 5:1, 3-5 (KJV; ESV same)
Gen 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;... {both refs use adam}

3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: 5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.



Hebrew child, after the first time you hear and comprehend this lesson, when you are two or three years old, has your parent made it clear to you that your first father is called by his generations "Adam"? Did they have what we call "Bible stories"? For sure. And then, after the exodus, you were given the law through Moses, and supposed to have the verbatim lessons ingrained in you in this form from childhood.

It is not a humanistic (in the old and proper sense) approach to the text, or even as story or tradition, to "pristinate" the Biblical narratives. As though they were not canonical material, a body of tradition. As though the normal hearers should have encountered the stories atomistically, or for the first time as an adult, or a few times possibly in a lifetime if they happened to hear some vagrant storyteller.

I suppose, what I'm getting at here is--even without 5:2, and the reference to "naming", when you hear your first parent referred to over and over as "The Man" "The Man" The Man", you are going to have one Figure in your mind, even if you also know that the word has a general referent as well (one that you participate in). The genetic connection only reinforces this mental link--you, him, humanity.

Then you have the text that follows (5:3-5), which drops the definite article, but makes it clear that one man is in view, using Adam exactly as another name (cf. 5:3 and 5:6).

So even if you are a convert to Jehovah, and you are hearing a new historical tradition (assuming your previous history was basically unintelligible or mostly incompatible with this version), how many times can you hear the story up to ch.3 or ch.5, and the next time through you miss the fact that "THE MAN" is Adam father of Seth?

 

[Peairtach]

There's enough info here - thanks to Bruce in particular, and Fred - to show that this point by those, like Tremper III, who wish to smuggle in the possibility of human evolution by pointing out that the Hebrew for Man(kind) and the personal name "Adam" are the same, is just them monkeying around with the Word of God.

What Tremper and others like him are trying to say by pointing this linguistic point out is, ''Adam may have been an individual, but then again, the Bible, by this linguistic ambiguity, leaves open the possibility he was not.''

It's good to understand it better and nail it down.

Not something I've seen dealt with before from an orthodox/non-evolutionist perspective.

 

[DMcFadden]

Searching for the answer in etymology is misguided, in my opinion.

I would think that anyone who accepted a Framework view of creation would have no problem with a similar literary analysis of Adam. The text is written as if it were an historical person in an historical narrative. If, one can read the larger structure of Genesis 1-2 as a literary convention, why not Adam as well? (BTW, I do not accept the Framework view and DO accept the historicity of Adam).

And, while we are at it, my old prof, Robert H. Gundry (Longman holds the RH Gundry chair at Westmont) got himself removed from the Evangelical Theological Society for maintaining that he accepted inerrancy AND believed that the Magi, the women in the birth genealogy of Jesus, etc. were not historical. He argued that the genre of Matthew was midrash, not reportorial history (e.g., the editorial page, not the first page of the newspaper). Therefore, we were free to disbelieve in the historicity of the Magi, that the four women were "really" in Jesus' lineage, etc. and still claim to believe in inerrancy.

That is what I was suggesting in another thread by saying that such "nuanced" scholarship may be brilliant and even sincere. However, when it comes to the 18 yr. old kid in the classroom, it is the instrument for dissuading many of them of the authority of the Bible.

 

[Peairtach]

Good biblical scholarship should always be "nuanced" in the best sense of the word, but if the "nuancing" goes further than the Bible's testimony about itself, being inspired, inerrant and infallible, then the "nuancer" / "nuanced scholar" must know that he has crossed the line, that his nuanced thinking is wrong, and that he must leave it, or come up with something in line with the Word's testimony about the Word.