Well said.
No. Genesis 1:26-27 use adam without the definite article (“the adam”) as it appears in Gen. 2-3. I would never call you “the Mervin” as a name. Hebrew is like English in this instance. Adam used by itself can refer to humanity (a collective noun) or an individual named Adam (a proper noun). The context dictates which translation is most accurate.
With the definite article, it can be a count noun, “the human,” that’s the tricky part in this discussion. When do we gender it and when do we not, because individual humans do have genders (typically, in English).
Agreed.
It first doesn’t include the article (1:26) and then includes it (1:27).
This takes the repetition of the same name as having two different referents. The passage starts by saying it’s going to tell us what became of Adam (5:1a). Then Adam is a name God gives to humanity (5:2). Then Adam is a name for Seth’s father (5:3). But the point of the passage is that this is all the same Adam. The collective and individual dimensions are fused together. There is only one capital-A Adam in this passage.
Yes, I know. I hope I’ve done so.
For me, when I first read this interpretation (in Phyllis Trible’s God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality) it was a lightbulb moment. What’s helped is keeping in mind how ancient perspectives thought we thought with our guts (heart, kidneys, etc.). So when a living being is divided in two, one side becoming a woman and the other a man, an ancient audience sees that body and mind are split.
I know that from a modern perspective, it just sounds like cloning and leads to issues of how they could be different sexes and obviously they wouldn’t retain memories. But that’s reducing the story to modern science rather than allowing it speak in its own voice. The theme of one becoming two and two becoming one is central to the first half of the narrative.
Other readings of the Eden story end up with God telling the man what he shouldn’t do while the rest of the story depends on the woman knowing it. There are even claims that the woman was the first to add to God’s word, yet if we don’t add to Genesis, the woman never hears this command and it only applies to the man! Unless, of course, she and he both heard because the command was given before the one became two.
What, maybe the man Adam dreamt that God put him in a garden and paraded all the animals passed him to name. Before he had his first ever awakening?
Er… do you mean that?
[I mean, I know it’s the weekend and all, and you have a life, but…?]
And ooh!
We obviously think, in feedback loops, with our guts, stomach, bile duct, liver, pancreas, heart, bowels, bladder, skin, bones still We’re the same evolved creatures as then.
Memory fails me in old age. The point still stands; adam in 1:26 is a collective noun, not a proper name, and in 1:27 the singular ha’adam clearly serves as a collective because it includes both “male and female.” (Which is why no English translations, to my knowledge, translate ha’adam in v. 27 as a singular “the man.”)
Interestingly, the same thing happens with the pronouns for God. In 1:26, it’s the plural “our image,” and in 1:27 it’s the singular “his image.” Then in chapters 2-3, God is anthropomorphized and pictured as embodied, walking and talking with the humans in the garden. I take that as a necessary plot element to the story, not as a theological statement about God. There are lots of aspects of early Genesis that fit that description, yet they’ve been theologized beyond recognition. (I’m as guilty as anyone else here.)
It’s not the repetition of the same name. 5:1a is simply the Toledot formula (These are the generations of …) used to tie all of Genesis together. It signals the author/editor is making a transition, in this case from narrative to a genealogy that explains what happened to the humans and their progeny after they were kicked out of the garden. The Toledot formula names Adam because what follows is a genealogy of names. 5:1b-2 is a quick interlude to remind the reader that all of humanity, adam, was created in the image of God. 5:3 introduces the individual name “Adam” for essentially the first time, and the emphasis is on the fact that his son was born in the likeness of God, despite human sin and failure.
Summing up, adam isn’t a name throughout all three verses. In 5:1a it’s a personal name to introduce the genealogy that follows. In 5:1b-5:2 it’s a collective noun for all of humanity, harking back to Gen. 1. In Gen. 5:3 it’s a personal name to begin the genealogy. All of this is a literary device to make the transition from mythical past to a genealogy of names. The fluidity of the term adam is likely one reason why the author chose it rather than ’ish. Gen 5:1b-2 is most decidedly not a capital-A Adam, anymore than Gen. 1:26 is.
This still strikes me as bizarre. It’s the first I’ve heard of it, and dozens of objections come to mind, but I’ll focus on a couple.
First, how widespread was this belief? I don’t mean the ancient medicine part of it – thinking centered in the guts/heart. I’ve actually done some research on the subject and know that’s true. What I’m wondering is how widespread the belief was that ha’adam was literally split in two halves, dividing body and mind. Is there an ancient source for that idea, or is it the author’s conjecture? And if there is an ancient source, is it a one-off, or can it be found in other rabbinic writings?
Second, the idea of ha’adam having his “mind” divided and shared with Eve isn’t just logical nonsense, it’s literalism to the extreme for the sole purpose (that I can tell) of explaining how Eve heard directly from God (rather than from Adam) the prohibition against eating the fruit.
I think the point is pretty simple: It takes all of humanity, male and female and everything in between (a merism), to make a whole. I don’t see ha’adam pictured as being chopped in half, no matter how one translates Gen. 2:21-22.
The garden narrative is highly condensed storytelling. We aren’t told a lot of crucial details, like how “the man” knew what “die” meant. This strikes me as literalism in disguise. Sorry.
Sure, but just wait till you see what the rabbis did with that! 
I think that’s a strong parallel. Just as God is described with singular and plural grammar, so is adam. But that doesn’t mean that Genesis separates the singular God from the collective God or the transcendent elohim from the anthropomorphic Yahweh any more than it separates the singular adam from the collective adam. Instead, we get a more nuanced picture of God and humanity through the variations.
It’s odd to take the only verse where Adam is given as a name – by no less than God, and with no less than a full Hebrew naming formula – and argue that it doesn’t contain a name. “God…called their name Adam” is the most explicit and emphatic use of adam as a proper noun anywhere in the Bible.
The only viable way I’ve seen to argue that this Adam isn’t the same as the father of Seth is through saying these verses come from different source documents that understood Adam differently and so mean different things by the name. But if one values the work of the hands that pieced Genesis together, that view can’t hold. Those hands have made Adam one.
This isn’t about parsing different meanings for adam in different contexts. This is one context and one named character. The text begins a new section about the line of Adam that starts with how Adam was created and named and then how Adam produced a son. Although virtually all English Bibles obscure Adam in this passage wherever it doesn’t fit a man, the Hebrew does not.
The version that popped up in rabbinic writings had the original Adam being like conjoined twins, male and female, joined back-to-back. This was based in part on Genesis 1 saying God created a singular Adam as both male and female. Then, after God instructed this creature, God separated its male and female sides. Both man and woman retained knowledge from their short life as one conjoined person.
For sources, see Genesis Rabbah 8.1; Leviticus Rabbah 14.1; Berakhot 61a; Eruvin 18b. There’s a lot of weird stuff there. Compared to some of it, such as the Adam so big he filled the skies or the Adam so glorious even his heel outshone the sun, the conjoined male-and-female Adam is pretty tame.
It’s the same sort of logical nonsense as a talking snake and fruit that gives moral knowledge or unending life. I can see a literalist raising this objection, since they’ve usually already found ways to rationalize and tame all the other fantastic details in the story, but I don’t think you’re a literalist. I don’t see how this objection makes sense coming from you.
As for Eve hearing the command from Adam, that would be completely fine if the narrator had told us that. But to just tell us about the lonely human hearing the command and then have the central tension revolve around whether someone else will remain faithful to it is just bad storytelling. And the Eden story isn’t badly told.
I’ve heard it from multiple sources. Because “rib” is a mistranslation of tsela. The word means half in Hebrew. Maybe not the dividing the mind part, but I can see how that might be implied. Definitely that one whole was split into two sides.
Both the Greeks and the Persians had mythologies about androgenous humans,
the Greek version specifies 2 genders and 4 arms (I don’t recall the leg count).
The Persian account has revised humans (originally being dual-gendered) eventually being re-engineered as emerging from the earth by means of a large rhubarb
plant …. with word play on the red veins notoriously present on rhubarb leaves.
We all are familiar with the red/dirt word play on the Hebrew version of the
story.
G.Brooks
PS:
Democritus and other pre-Socratics viewed gender through a materialist lens, emphasizing physical “predominance” rather than the mythological “split” found in Plato’s later works. While their specific biological theories were Greek, the broader philosophical dualism they utilized is widely considered to have been influenced by Persian thought.
Democritus rejected the idea of humans as “split halves” of a spiritual whole. Instead, he proposed a theory of biological competition. Like other pre-Socratics, he held that the first humans arose directly from the earth, though his account focused on atoms colliding in a void rather than a divine split.
Empedocles offered a more striking parallel to the “split” myth. He described a primordial era where disparate body parts wandered the earth and combined randomly…. Before distinct sexes existed, he claimed “figures of double sex” (hermaphrodites) roamed the earth.
While the biological mechanics were Greek, the underlying structure of these theories—balancing opposing forces—mirrors Persian (Zoroastrian) dualism. The eternal conflict between Ahura Mazda (Good/Order) and Ahriman (Evil/Chaos) provided a template for pre-Socratic dualities like Empedocles’ Love and Strife or Heraclitus’ focus on opposing forces.
Reports from antiquity claim that Democritus and other thinkers were educated by Persian Magi, from whom they likely adapted the concept of a universe governed by the interplay of two primary, opposing principles.
These ideas support the notion that Genesis was a more recent work than most of the Bible, reflecting Persian ideas (not to mention The Garden/Paradise).
Here are some specific rabbinical ideas in this phase of Hebrew philosophizing:
As you mentioned, Rabbis noted a tension between Genesis 1 (where humans are created “male and female” simultaneously) and Genesis 2 (where woman is created from man’s side). To harmonize these, the Midrash and Talmud propose several models for the first human.
The Androgynos (Hermaphrodite): Rabbi Jeremiah ben Elazar taught that God originally created the first human as an androgynos—a single being possessing both male and female sexual characteristics.
Rabbi Samuel bar Nachman suggested Adam was created with two faces (one male, one female) or as two bodies joined back-to-back.
Separation, Not Creation: In this view, the “rib” (tzela) mentioned in Genesis 2 is interpreted as “side”. Or as Christy mentions, “Half”. But not half mind and half body, literally a HALF side of the body - a FRONT vs BACK SIDE. God did not create a new being but surgically separated the existing dual-gendered Adam into two independent individuals: Adam and Eve. This primordial unity is often viewed as a state of perfection, where the “Adam” embodied the full spectrum of human potential before the differentiation of sexes.
In Persian myth, the primordial human Gayomard is a singular, prototype being. Upon his death, his “seed” produces a rhubarb plant (with pronounced red veins on its leaves) that eventually splits into the first couple, Mashya and Mashyana. This “split from a single source” closely parallels the Rabbinic “splitting of the Adam”.
Yes, you know I’m on board with your project, which is why I brought it up. I have a slightly different view, which is that ha’adam and ha’issah both function as literary archetypes (representing humanity as a whole and every individual human) within Gen. 2-3. Outside the garden narrative, adam functions as a collective or an individual, depending on context.
The only place I think adam is totally ambiguous is Hosea 6:7 – But like Adam they (Israel) have violated the covenant (NASB). English translations are all over the place with this one. NIV, NRSV & NET Bible translate it as a place (At Adam); King James translates as a collective (like men); most modern literal versions translate it as a name like NASB.
I didn’t say it doesn’t contain a name. God named all of us collectively as “humanity.” Called their name, a plural. God did not name an individual, capital-A Adam in 5:1b-2. Just my opinion, but I think you’re flattening out the various uses of adam to make your point, and it’s really not necessary. I’m also confused that you seem to favor a literal Adam & Eve in some of these interpretations. Is that the case, or have I misunderstood?
I’m not arguing that at all. I’m arguing that within the garden narrative, ha’adam functions as a literary device called an archetype. Outside those two chapters, the meaning of adam is fluid – sometimes a collective for humanity, sometimes a reference to an individual.
Likewise, I view 5:1-3 as a literary device to make the transition from the creation of humanity, the “first sin” and the first act of violence (ch. 4) to the consequences for their progeny in the genealogy that follows leading up to the Flood. (Some might say the use of ha’adam in 4:1 is a singular. NIV thinks so.)
You’d better have a pretty good case when every single translator disagrees with you on the translation of 5:1b-2.
Interesting, but still bizarre and illogical, and I note the sources are midrash (medieval origins?). I also note that they take adam in Genesis 1 as a proper name. Obviously wrong. Their conjectures about Adam remind me of Ken Ham, who claims Adam had a photographic memory, was a mathematical genius and a musical prodigy. All of them were letting their imaginations run wild.
Except having the man’s mind divided is reading into the text, midrash/Ken Ham style, while a talking snake and fruit that gives knowledge or unending life are explicitly stated.
Yeah, I’m not a literalist, but I’m also not a fan of adding details to the story to fill in what’s missing in the narration. The fantastic details are the fantastic details. I prefer to interpret those according to the genre, which is myth. Interpreting Gen. 2:21 to mean the man’s body was split in half to make the woman is fine, metaphorically speaking, but claiming it meant his mind was also split so they had shared experience prior to her creation goes far beyond the text into the realm of logical nonsense based on literalism.
Good gosh. The narrator didn’t tell us, so it doesn’t matter to the story whether she heard the command from the man or God told her himself on one of their unreported “walks and talks” in the garden.
The “central tension” doesn’t revolve around someone else remaining faithful to the command. “Eve” is not just an individual; she represents all of humanity and every individual human in her confrontation with the snake. Her failure is paradigmatic of every human failure. “The woman” is “us” just as much as “the man.”
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I was specifically wondering about the mind part.
Interesting stuff. But I doubt the Persian influence on early Genesis or ancient Jewish beliefs until possibly after the exile. The elite were deported to Babylon where they were surrounded by Babylonian culture and mythology for generations. Cyrus ended that regime, but he also ended cuneiform as the lingua franca of the empire. From then on, alphabetic writing took over, and scribes were no longer trained to write by reading Babylonian mythology.
A significant Jewish community remained in Babylon for many centuries, hence the Babylonian Talmud. As for whether they were influenced by Zoroastrianism, I couldn’t say.
I recall in Hebrew class observing that if it weren’t for the vowel pointings there would be a lot more similar ambiguities.
Jay, it’s interesting how we get to pretty much the same destination, but along different paths. I won’t do a point-by-point, but I did want to respond to this:
The early translators didn’t. The Geneva, Bishops’ and King James Bibles all included Adam as a proper name in Genesis 5:1, 2 and 3. Hiding Adam in 5:1b–2 began after that, with several obvious causes:
New theories on the composition of Genesis led some translations to treat continuity within a proposed source as more important than continuity within Genesis. So when 5:1b–2 were linked to 1:26–27 while 5:3–5 began a new genealogical source, adam could be treated differently in each chunk.
Especially over the last century, maintaining Adam as a literal, historical first man became a big deal. There has been intense conservative pressure to make sure that every time Adam appears the wording is consistent with one man.[1] When adam is called “male and female” or “them,” different words are used. To justify the inconsistent translation of adam, translators may appeal to issue #1.
Especially over the last half-century, the generic use of masculine terms has become recognized as problematic. Generic masculines are now more likely to be read as actually meaning males. This has led to pressure to make sure humans generally are not referred to with male terms. Since Adam is a man’s name in English (though it isn’t in Hebrew), that means not calling humans Adam. To justify the inconsistent translation of adam, translators may appeal to issue #1.
I’m very sympathetic to issue #3. The problem is that Adam and Eve have become entrenched as the names in English, even though neither preserves the Hebrew well. Adam is loaded with gendered baggage the Hebrew adam doesn’t have, and Eve doesn’t match either the sound or the meaning of the Hebrew Khawah. But names don’t easily change in a language once they’re set. Khawah in Hebrew became Hewan in Greek, then Eva in Latin, then Eve in English. Translation isn’t usually like a game of telephone, but for names it can be.
The problem with going back and translating more accurately is that it removes the continuity, which is what names are supposed to establish. So even though upthread I used Human and Liv for the couple – names that actually attempt to translate what the Hebrew means – I reverted to Adam and Eve because otherwise I’d always have to re-explain what I meant. Names are incredibly sticky in translation. Because the proper noun form of adam in English is Adam, a man’s name, that means using the name is always going to imply maleness that isn’t present in the Hebrew.
So I understand why even progressive translations like the NRSV or CEV don’t show the name in 5:1b–2. To do so without hitting issue #3, they’d need to consistently switch the name Adam to something like Human or Mortal or Humanity. Not only in Genesis, but also in 1 Chronicles and even Luke, 1 Corinthians, Romans and 1 Timothy. (The same way other names are made consistent Bible-wide even though their Hebrew and Greek representations may vary.) And that would send the conservative crowd behind issue #2 into hysterics, since they would (incorrectly) take it as removing the historical Adam from the Bible.[2]
Anyway, I think that sufficiently explains why no modern English Bible translates adam in Genesis 5:1–5 in a way that reflects the Hebrew.
Except for the city name in Joshua. That hasn’t seemed to raise hackles. ↩︎
If accurately rendering the name in English actually did remove the historical Adam from the Bible, it would mean the historical Adam was not actually in the Hebrew Bible. But certainly the concept is not dependent on the English word used to represent it. ↩︎
Jay, I think you should reconsider your dismissal. The point I made was that
Persian mythology - - and Persianized Greek mythology which is even older - -
became especially influential precisely because literacy was no longer reliant
on cuneiform. There was now Greek influences and the continued use of
Aramaic.
Secondly, the areas of astronomy and religion CONTINUED to be based on
cuneiform.
The “Last Wedge” of the Last Known Tablet is an astronomical text from 75 CE (some sources date it to 79/80 CE). Byt scholarly use and the ability to read cuneiform persisted in isolated temple environments until the 3rd century CE. The script finally vanished entirely when these temple institutions were suppressed or declined under the Sassanian Empire.
Some academics compare this lingering presence of cuneiform to the explosion of
Magi influence, ironically, with the conquest of the Persians by the Greeks. Persian
priests, no longer enjoying support from a Persian Shah en Shah, had to spread out
to the elites of the Hellenistic world for career advancement - - which explains the
possibility of the story of the Magi at the very recent times of Jewish religiouis
assertiveness.
Essentially, starting with the Persian conquest of Babylon only 15 years after the
Babylonian exile, the Jewish priestly elite became increasingly bombarded with
new and old sources of religious and mythological ideas.…. to the point where the
average exile (the Exiles, not the “poor of the land” that stayed in Judea for 70
years) lost interest in writing and speaking Hebrew, hence Ezra read the Torah
to the people after the exile, the Levites had to provide an oral translation from
Hebrew into Aramaic so that the masses of returning exiles could understand
the “Holy Tongue”.
Post Script - the script change: the returning Jews adopted the Aramaic
square script for writing, replacing the original Paleo-Hebrew script used 70
years prior. The modern Hebrew alphabet used in 2026 is actually derived
from this Babylonian-era Aramaic script, not the one used in the original
Deuteronomy scroll.
G.Brooks
You look good without the mask! I may have to update my pic, too.
I should add a pic instead of the old NM 313 road sign. I adopted it when I moved to NM to a town called Bernalillo and found myself a block away from NM 313 (the original Rt. 66). I had been using 313 forever since it’s my birthday. I don’t live there anymore, so I guess it’s time for a change. Here’s the pic I use on social media.
I’m not dismissing your argument. (Must’ve missed the second part.) I’m saying Persian influence is unlikely to have influenced the writing of the Hebrew Bible prior to Cyrus. After that point, I’d need to see some archaeological evidence from Israel beyond conceptual connections. Obviously the Ptolemaic empire ruled Israel after 300 BC, and a Greek-style gymnasium was built in Jerusalem prior to the Maccabean Revolt, but what we recognize as the Hebrew Bible had already been completed before those events.
If Persian (or Magi) influence would show up anywhere, it would show up in the Babylonian Talmud. I don’t see it.
Lost interest in writing and speaking Hebrew? Evidence please. Most scholars that I’m aware of believe a great deal of the Torah was given final form during or just prior to the Exile.
The Ezra note is fascinating. I was just thinking about it the other day. What it says to me is that the Torah took final shape during the Exile. It was the property of the scribes and priests who could read and write. The people who had only heard bits and pieces from oral sources were finally presented with the final form, read out loud to them in their own language, and they were overwhelmed with emotion. Makes sense.
So, shall I consider your request for evidence in your first paragraph above,
dutifully answered as reflected in your second paragraph above?
G.Brooks
No. Just thinking out loud. Most of what you’re claiming is relatively new to me, and I’m naturally skeptical until I see the source of the info for myself and can judge its credibility. (Not that you’re not credible. haha)
There’s an interesting episode in Isaiah 36. Assyria has already wiped out the Northern Kingdom and has set siege to Jerusalem. The two sides send envoys to meet outside the city walls. Hezekiah’s men say, “Speak to us in Aramaic so the people on the wall don’t understand.” The Assyrians respond, “They’ll have to eat their own sh*t and drink their own p*ss just like you.” Then they yell out in Hebrew to the people on the wall.
That was about 700 BC. The Exile began about 600 BC. Ezra’s reading of Torah is about 425 BC. Languages and usage change over time, but 275 years is a short amount of time for Hebrew to fall into disuse.
On closer inspection, you’re putting too much stock into a possible translation of one verse. Nehemiah 8:8
*8 They read from the book, from the Law of God, [e]translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading.
e. Nehemiah 8:8 Or explaining
As I said, languages and usage change over time, so I think there’s an easy solution that covers either interpretation. Hebrew had changed over time, so people might not immediately grasp the meaning of what they heard and required explanation. (Like explaining Shakespeare to 21st century students.)
Also, the “people of the land” who had been left behind were surrounded by tribes and cultures that spoke Aramaic, and many had intermarried (see Ezra). I’m reminded of 2nd and 3rd generation Spanish-speakers here in New Mexico. They retain the language among family, but it’s no longer their native tongue. The same could be said for Native Americans, but that goes back many many generations.
We also have to transition between Hebrew being the primary spoken and written language in 700 BC to Aramaic being the primary spoken language in Judea by the time of Jesus, with Hebrew being a “dead” language used only in religious contexts. (Sorta like Latin in the Catholic church and academic discourse until the time of Martin Luther.)
I’ll reply with my own observations in the next post. The finer points of Hebrew are over my pay grade. I’m curious what @JRM thinks, if he has time to weigh in.
I don’t think blaming the “documentary hypothesis” works. If you look at the history of the major English translations, the Revised Version of 1885 (the first major rework of the KJV) reads like this:
The American Standard Version of 1901 is identical here. The main changes in both were to the New Testament in reaction to Westcott & Hort’s 1881 publication of The New Testament in the Original Greek.
The next major English translation is the Revised Standard Version in 1952. That’s the first to translate Gen. 5:1-3 differently:
Was the reason “new” theories of the composition of Genesis, which had been floating around since the 1700s and were famously given expression by Wellhausen in 1878? What was the reason for the change more than 75 years later?
The reason is straightforward, and it’s the same reason RSV controversially changed “virgin” to “young woman” in Isaiah 7:14. It was lexical, manuscript and archaeological evidence, not the documentary hypothesis.
The bigger deal was Isaiah. Evangelical groups immediately responded with the NASB and NIV translations 50 years ago. How did they handle Genesis 5, if maintaining Adam was the priority? Respectively,
These were explicitly Evangelical, conservative translations. Why then did they “hide” Adam?
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