yummyfur

Did you read the definition of Adam that you linked to originally???, it clearly states the word is derived from adam which is listed as Strong's number 0119 which is adam not adom, and is defined as red.

I'll cut and paste from the site you linked to

Now if we go to Strong's 0119 which is referenced(Word Origin) above as the word from which 0120 adam is derived from it is defined as "to be red".

The proper Name Adam is Strong's 0121 which is below, notice even here they reference that the word means red. It lists as it's Word Origin as the same as Stron'g 0120 which is again Strong's 0119.

Now the word adom is Strong's number 0122, it's entry is below, notice it means red or ruddy and is derived from the same Strong's entry 0119 that all the above are derived from.
It seems pretty clear that adam means red as well as man both by these references and Josephus's concurrence.

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't see why the derivation is relevant. We're still talking about two different words. Even if Adam is derived from adom, it still is not synomous with adom. I would argue that within its context in Genesis it just meant "man."

I am willing to defer to anyone who actually knows Hebrew, though. My formal studies only extend to Latin and Greek.

Anat

yummfur, read your own quotes. As a verb adam means 'became red' or 'was made red' (past third person singular). But not as a noun. The only other place where Strong's translates adam as red is when it is used as a proper name, which I find dubious. A proper name shouldn't be translated. Its derivation can be explained or 'drash'ed, but that isn't the same as translating a name. (If I were to translate 'Mark wrote the letter' as if it was 'sign wrote the letter' I wouldn't be faithful to the original.)

yummyfur

Were talking about a Proper name Adam, it doesn't mean man either then, by your own argument. I'm not talking about the common noun adam, and in the original post Adam was capitalized, so I assumed the discussion was over the proper name Adam, and why he was named that. Since there is a verb adam, which is considered the root to all these words by some, and it means "to be red", it would be silly to argue that the proper name only means "man" and nothing else. That was my original point with the Josephus qoute, who states he was named Adam after the red earth he was formed from. If one can make the argument that the proper name Adam comes from the common noun adam, then one can make the argument it comes from the verb adam as well, especially since it is considered the originiating word to the common noun by many. By the way, you did notice that the verb adam is considered the originating word for the noun in that source?

Diogenes original argument was that the proper name Adam meant exclusively "man" and not "red", this is clearly debatable, which was my main point.

The word mark in english means sign(and vice versa), so there is no need to translate it. In English the capitalization tells me something is a proper name. I'm not sure I get your point. Mark is both a proper name, and common noun. What would be unclear would be "mark wrote the letter" because without capitalization we wouldn't be sure if you meant a person or were trying to be poetic or something.

The real question is should we derive the meaning of the name Mark from the English common noun mark. This would be wrong, as Mark the proper name comes from a different origins(Latin praenomen, possibly meaning war hammer). This is why I was saying you can't just say the proper name Adam means man, especially in the face of evidence that it might have come from the word "to be red" equally as likely or maybe even more likely.

To Diogenes, I never wrote that the noun adam is derived from adom, I wrote that the noun adam is derived from the verb adam which means "to be red". It's quite possible that the meaning of the common noun adam, came about because it was the name of what was considered to be the first man, but that doesn't mean that the proper name Adam came from a word meaning man. It's a veritable chicken and the egg proposition. My main point is that the proper name Adam could be derived from the verb adam "to be red", which then got formed into a common noun for man, because the holder of that name was considered the first and archtypal man. This seems to be the opinion of Josephus, so it is hardly the idiotic ravings of a white supremacists. Their arguments are silly, Adam=red, therfore Adam is white, can you get any sillier than that?. Also ruddy colored animals like horses and cows, which the noun adom is used for, are really copper colored, which would more likely be a brown skinned person, if we were going to use that kind of silly argument.

Diogenes the Cynic

I mistook the the second Strong's reference in your post (the adom section) for an etymology of Adam. My bad. I stand corrected. I don't feel qualified to continue any deeper with this. Can we talk about Greek?

Anat

yummfur, the Mark/mark ambivalence in my example is relevant to the discussion since Hebrew doesn't use anything like capitalisation to denotate proper names. Thus it is up to the reader to figure out whether 'adam' as a noun is supposed to be Adam or man. (Even relying on presence or absence of the definite article is not always possible because of some grammatical issues - for example to Adam would be l'adam, whereas to the man would be la'adam - the two would only differ in vowels, but would be spelled the same. Though there are many other situations where the definite article would be distinguishible in spelling, thus ruling out the possibility of a proper name.)

Regarding the biblical explanation of the derivation of the name Adam - it isn't given explicitly, but the closest thing is 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 for man, that appears twice in this verse is adam, whereas the word for ground is adamah. Whether or not this is valid linguistically, the author was evidently implying this interpretation (regardless of the color of the earth, btw).

Chili

But that makes sense because color (individualism) is not added until the fall of man in Gen. 3.

yummyfur

Quite true Anat, now I understand your point, determining wether Adam is a name or common noun can be problematic in some areas, actually it gets even more problematic than that. Because sometimes the Masoretic text has something that seems to be clearly "the man" (ha'adam), but the Greek Septuagint has transliterated Adam the name instead of it's usual anthropos in the same verse.

But this is largley not a problem for the text as a whole because it's fairly clear, at least for the second Genesis story, that "the man" being talked about also has the name Adam. Since this is clear, switching around "the man" with Adam doesn't cause any comprehension problems. There are clear areas where a proper name Adam is not in doubt in the second story. This would hold true for any work even with another name like Sam, and in english. If there is a clear link between using "the man" and Sam as refering to the same object. I can alternate using either without any confusion, but no one would then decide that because of this we should make the name Sam mean man. By this I'm not argueing that the common noun adam couldn't play a role in determing the meaning of the name Adam, it surely could. I'm arguing that it's mere presence in the text and the difficulty in sometimes determining which is which doesn't make it so.

The confusion in this area, is why in the Strong's entry that we have linked to in previous posts, adam, the common noun, has in the definition the name Adam. There are instances in Genesis, where it is unclear or the Septuagint varies, so some particular instance of the common noun adam(and many that are clearly comon nouns) get translated in some Christian works as Adam because of reference to the Septuagint.

Sure, adamah most likely plays a role in the meaning of the name or in wordplay. This is probably why Josephus says red earth, though he doesn't go into enough detail to know if this was his reason, it seems most likely. Of course many believe that the word adamah is derived from the verb adam anyway, so it would have that double meaning(some say there is a triple wordplay with with a play on dam as blood as well, though this is less convincing). I'm not trying to prove that Adam, the name, means red, as I have stated earlier, I don't think anyone can proove what the name means for sure. My point was threefold

1). adam is a word in Hebrew that designates redness

2.) This could play a role in interepreting the meaning of the name Adam, especially since it is considered the originating word for all the nouns incuding adamah.

3.) These arguments have been made since at least the 1st century CE, and is not a bogus and false argument made only by white supemacists. Their arguments are silly, for fairly obvious and different reasons, than Adam having the possible connotation of red.

I should have been clearer, but I was kind of just drifting by this thread and didn't have a lot of time. As an aside I think it is interesting that some think the Latin homo(man) is derived from humus(earth). Also interesting is the predilication for people in the Levant to be called after the color red/crimson, like the Phoenicians, and the Akkadian word kinahhu for Canaan, these have to do with the peculiar crimson cloth from the region.

To Diogenes, no problem, I realized you missed the entry when I just posted the link, and that's why I pasted it as well and it's a lot to wade through, and in hindsight I should have just posted the verb adam and not all the entries and their interactions, but I did want to show word origin.

Chili

T.S. Eliot has a play on the word a-dam that equates the first 'thou shalt not' with the dam to be crossed to get to the other side where we are earthly and hu-man in addition to heavenly as man. But that's just Eliot.