gstafleu

In gen 1:26 we have "Let us make man in our image." Does the word "man" here indicate the male, or the human being (like anthropos or Mensch). 1:27 "male and female he created them" would indicate the gender neutral version.

In 2:6 we have a repeat performance: "the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground." I gather from the footnotes in the NIV that the word "man" here is indeed the male, "adam." Is this correct?

Gerard Stafleu

Chris Weimer

Yes, the word is אדם. Usually it means "man" as in "human" (which was the original meaning of man anyway), but it can mean male as well. איש is the usual word for "man" as in "a male". But like the Greek, it's not a straight and fast rule.

angela2

Does the word used for man change after the creation of Eve?

Anat

Note that semitic languages have only 2 genders, so every noun is either male or female (though some can be used as either male or female). There are no neuter or genderless nouns in Hebrew. Also there is no capitalization, so sometimes it is not trivial to determine if a noun is personal or general. Use of the definite article helps with the latter.

Genesis 1:27 "And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them."

This mentions the creation of both a male and a female. It is up to the reader to decide if both were in God's image or only 'him'. The word used is 'adam', so could apply to both.

Genesis 2:7 "Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

The word is 'ha'adam' - the human, obviously a generic noun.

The same is used in verses 15-21.

22-25 "And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man said: 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.' Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."

The male person is still referred to as 'ha-adam', while the female is 'isha', because she was taken out of 'ish'. So the first time in which anyone is called 'ish' - specifically a male person, is when the first man refers so to himself.

The word 'ish' is used for man also in 24 "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." - where the relations between the sexes for generations henceforth are described.

Genesis 3:6 "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

The word for husband is 'ish', in agreement with 2:24.

But in 3:8 "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden toward the cool of the day; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden." The man is once more 'ha-adam'. Same for 9, 12.

I see that JPS translates 3:17 as "And unto Adam He said: 'Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying: Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.", but there is no way to know from the Hebrew whether the word is 'l'adam' (= to Adam) or 'la-adam' (= to the man, as before), ie it is impossible to tell if this was the moment Adam was named. Indeed, in verse 20 he is again 'ha-adam', as he is in 22 and 24, as well as 4:1. Verse 21 has the same ambiguity as verse 17, for the same reason.

I'd say the first time Adam is clearly a personal noun is 4:25 "And Adam knew his wife again; and she bore a son, and called his name Seth: 'for God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel; for Cain slew him.'"

And the interesting twist comes in 5:1-5, where Adam is clearly and consistently a personal noun, "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created."

So exactly where God is supposedly naming Adam, it is actually a personal name for both the male and the female?

Loomis

Another possibility is that not only were they made in God’s masculine image, but that they were also made in the feminine image of God’s messengers and attendants.

This is based on the hypothesis put forth by John Day and others who argue that Psalm 104 was the prototype for the first creation story. See Ps 104:4.

gstafleu

Anat,

that was a very interesting post, thank you. Let us use Human for the gender neutral version (Anthropos, Mensch), Man for the male variant and Woman for the female. What we then have in Gen 2 is that Human was formed out of the dust. Human was alone, and to end the loneliness Human was split into two: Man and Woman.

The interesting thing here is that this parallels other creation myths. (The following from Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God, Vol 1.) After mentioning Genesis, he says the following:
This is an extended form of the myth, but the theme of an Ur-human that was male+female and then was split is clearly there.

Next he quotes a bit from the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad:
Again we have the Ur-human which splits into Man and Woman, and this time it is done to combat loneliness! There is an interesting parallel with Gen 1 as well: "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" and "In the beginning this universe was but the Self in the form of a man." In both cases this initial sole-present androgynous god goes on the create Man and Woman in his image.

What is also interesting to note is that these two myths then explain that this initial splitting is the reason why Man and Woman always strive to reunite--and see this striving as a Good Thing. Genesis however, in a masochistic twist, also has Man and Woman unite--assuming that is what eating the fruit of the forbidden tree is all about--but that it sees this as a Bad Thing: they get kicked out of paradise because of it.

Gerard Stafleu