ADAM, the Hebrew word for "man"; when used without the article implying the human species (e.g., Gen. i. 26 and the familiar phrase "son" or "sons of man," i.e., a human being or human beings), with the article a human individual, correspond ing generally to the Latin homo and the Greek avOpunros. (The absence of the article in Gen. ii. lob and iii. 17 is probably acci dental, being due to the vocalization of the Hebrew text, not to its original consonants.) But in Gen. ii. 25 and v. 1 it may be a proper name, applied to the first man created. It is certainly in this sense that the word is employed in Gen. v. 2-6, and so it has been generally used, in the popular language both of Jews and of Christians.
The narrative of Gen. i. in giving an account of the "creation" of man does not necessarily imply that a single pair only was thus formed at the first. Throughout that chapter the impression the reader receives is that a large number of individuals in each species come into being at once. This, however, in its present form, is the later of the two narratives of creation, though it is probably a revision of a very ancient tradition, going far back behind the earliest appearance of Israel as a nation, and based on that common stock of thought which spread from Meso potamia over western Asia before the middle of the 2nd millen nium B.C.
With the narrative in Gen. ii. 4-25—the earlier in its present form—the case is different. Here we have most certainly the theory that all humanity is sprung from a single pair, a "man" and his "woman." The narrative is naïve in its detail and ele mentary in its theology. There is no account of the creation of the earth, or speculation as to how it came into being; it is assumed. There is, however, no life, whether animal or vegetable, and the ordinary processes of the weather have not yet begun. The clayey soil is moistened by "mist," and from this material "Yahweh," afterwards to be the God of Israel, models the figure of a man. Then He breathes into his nostrils, and so—breath being regarded as one of the primary "givers of life"—brings to life this earthen model. The next problem is what to do with this living toy, and Yahweh makes a proper home for him by planting a garden and making all kinds of useful trees grow in it. There is more to be done; the man's needs are far from being satisfied, for he will require suitable companionship. It is not enough that he should exist alone, and experiment alone can show what will satisfy him.
Yahweh's first attempt at providing a suitable companion fol lows the method by which the man himself has been made. All kinds of forms are modelled from the wet clay, and brought be fore the man. At the sight of each he makes some sound, and the sound, expressing as it does the man's attitude towards the creature, becomes its name. But in no case does the name thus spontaneously given suggest that the problem is solved ; the ex periment has failed. Another method must be tried. Yahweh throws the man into an anaesthetic slumber and takes a rib from his side, carefully mending the place afterwards. Then He "builds" the rib into a form, and brings that to the man. Now he exclaims "wo-man," and the terms in which he greets the new figure show that at last the experiment is successful. Ultimately from this pair the whole human race descends.
Here, then, we have certain theories about human nature, held by the Israelite of the middle monarchy. Though the view of God is crude and anthropomorphic, yet it is clear that He is the author of man's being. Man's nature is bipartite—it is as sumed that what is true of the common ancestor will be true of all his descendants. He consists of a body, made Of the same kind of material as the soil from which all things spring, together with another element, a life-soul, which does not come from the ground, but is imparted by God Himself. The difference between the sexes is recognized, as also the fact that they are mutually complementary, but the sex instinct is at present undeveloped.
Other familiar features of human life are thus left unexplained. Man no longer lives in the garden, nor finds that the soil always yields a generous response to his efforts. The sex life is strongly developed and the subordination of woman is generally rec ognized. The hostility between man and other creatures, es pecially the snake tribe, needs explanation, and all these facts are accounted for in the second narrative, that of Gen. iii., commonly described as the story of the Fall.
Such is the Biblical story of the first man, and, apart from genealogies in Gen. iv. 25, v. 1-6, Chron. i. 1, he is never men tioned again by name in the Old Testament. The narrative has affinities with others known to the ancient world, and the story of the Fall, at least, has a parallel in Ez. xxviii. Mesopotamians told of the formation of man from clay mingled with the blood of Bel, of Adapa, who narrowly missed attaining immortality, and of Ea-bani, made by Ishtar from clay, and seduced from his wild and primitive ways by a harlot. If all these have a common source with the Biblical narrative (which is quite possible), then we are more than ever impressed with the way in which the He brew genius for religion transmuted them, and, in spite of the crudities of language and thought, adapted them to universal re ligious experience.
Later thinkers and writers greatly expanded the story, and drew from it conclusions which were originally foreign to it. Rabbinic thought ascribed to Adam bef ore the Fall a superhuman grandeur. One legend indeed, followed in the Koran, relates that all the angels were ordered to fall down and worship Adam, and that Satan refused, on the ground that he was made of fire and the man of clay. Others ascribed to Adam's fall the mortality of the human race, though in the original story there is no sugges tion that man was originally created immortal. The doctrine of hereditary guilt appeared, and has formed the baSis of much Christian theology. Apart from a single reference in Jude 14 and the mention of the name in the Lucan genealogy of Christ, St. Paul is the only New Testament writer who mentions Adam. He regards him as a type or summary of the whole human race in its natural state, and contrasts him and his kind with the order of being that came into existence with Christ—"the sec ond Adam," the originator of the higher spiritual plane. To him the "natural" man is, as to the old Hebrew, bipartite, consisting of "flesh" and "life"; the man who is in Christ has received a third element, the "Spirit." And to Pauline thought Christ is the starting point at which this third element first enters, just as the "Adam" of Gen. i.–v. is the starting point of the lower human order. (T. H. R.)