Adam

Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary

the name given to man in general, both male and female, in the Hebrew Scriptures,  Genesis 1:26-27;  Genesis 5:1-2;  Genesis 11:5;  Joshua 14:15;  2 Samuel 7:19;  Ecclesiastes 3:21;  Jeremiah 32:20;  Hosea 6:7;  Zechariah 13:7 : in all which places mankind is understood; but particularly it is the name of the first man and father of the human race, created by God himself out of the dust of the earth. Josephus thinks that he was called Adam by reason of the reddish colour of the earth out of which he was formed, for Adam in Hebrew signifies red. God having made man out of the dust of the earth, breathed into him the breath of life, and gave him dominion over all the creatures of this world,  Genesis 1:26-27;  Genesis 2:7 . He created him after his own image and resemblance; and having blessed him, he placed him in a delicious garden, in Eden, that he might cultivate it, and feed upon its fruits,  Genesis 2:8; but under the following injunction: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." The first thing that Adam did after his introduction into paradise, was to give names to all the beasts and birds which presented themselves before him,  Genesis 2:19-20 .

But man was without a fellow creature of his own species; wherefore God said, "It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a help meet for him." And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs, "and closed up the flesh instead thereof;" and of that substance which he took from man made he a woman, whom he presented to him. Then said Adam, "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man,"  Genesis 2:21 , &c.

The woman was seduced by the tempter; and she seduced her husband to eat of the forbidden fruit. When called to judgment for this transgression before God, Adam attempted to cast the blame upon his wife, and the woman upon the serpent tempter. But God declared them all guilty, and punished the serpent by degradation; the woman by painful childbearing and subjection; and the man by agricultural labour and toil; of which punishments every day witnesses the fulfilment. As their natural passions now became irregular, and their exposure to accidents was great, God made a covering of skins for Adam and for his wife; and expelled them from the garden, to the country without; placing at the east of the garden cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. It is not known how long Adam and his wife continued in paradise: some say, many years; others, not many days; others, not many hours. Adam called his wife's name Eve, which signifies "the mother of all living." Shortly after, Eve brought forth Cain,   Genesis 4:1-2 . It is believed that she had a girl at the time, and that, generally, she had twins. The Scriptures notice only three sons of Adam: Cain, Abel, and Seth; and omits daughters; except that Moses tells us, "Adam beast sons and daughters;" no doubt many. He died, aged nine hundred and thirty, B.C. 3074.

Upon this history, so interesting to all Adam's descendants, some remarks may be offered.

1. It is disputed whether the name Adam is derived from red earth. Sir W. Jones thinks it may be from Adim, which in Sanscrit signifies, the first. The Persians, however, denominate him Adamah, which signifies, according to Sale, red earth. The term for woman is Aisha. the feminine of Aish, man, and signifies, therefore, maness, or female man.

2. The manner in which the creation of Adam is narrated indicates something peculiar and eminent in the being to be formed. Among the heavenly bodies the earth, and above all the various productions of its surface, vegetable and animal, however perfect in their kinds, and beautiful and excellent in their respective natures, not one being was found to whom the rest could minister instruction; inspire with moral delight; or lead up to the Creator himself. There was, properly speaking, no intellectual being; none to whom the whole frame and furniture of material nature could minister knowledge; no one who could employ upon them the generalizing faculty, and make them the basis of inductive knowledge. If, then, it was not wholly for himself that the world was created by God; and if angels were not so immediately connected with this system, as to lead us to suppose that it was made for them; a rational inhabitant was obviously still wanting to complete the work, and to constitute a perfect whole. The formation of such a being was marked, therefore, by a manner of proceeding which serves to impress us with a sense of the greatness of the work. Not that it could be a matter of more difficulty to Omnipotence to create man than any thine beside; but principally, it is probable, because he was to be the lord of the whole and therefore himself accountable to the original proprietor; and was to be the subject of another species of government, a moral administration; and to be constituted an image of the intellectual and moral perfections, and of the immortality of the common Maker. Everything therefore, as to man's creation, is given in a solemn and deliberative form, and contains also an intimation of a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, all equally possessed of creative power, and therefore Divine, to each of whom man was to stand in relations the most sacred and intimate:—"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion," &c.

3. It may be next inquired in what that image of God in which man was made consists.

It is manifest from the history of Moses, that human nature has two essential constituent parts, the BODY formed out of pre-existing matter, the earth; and a Living Soul breathed into the body by an inspiration from God. "And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils (or face ) the breath of life, ( lives, ) and man became a living soul." Whatever was thus imparted to the body of man, already "formed," and perfectly finished in all its parts, was the only cause of life; and the whole tenor of Scripture shows that this was the rational spirit itself, which, by a law of its Creator, was incapable of death, even after the body had fallen under that penalty.

The "image" or likeness of God in which man was made has, by some, been assigned to the body; by others to the soul. It has, also, been placed in the circumstance of his having "dominion" over the other creatures. As to the body, it is not necessary to prove that in no sense can it bear the image of God; that is, be "like" God. An upright form has no more likeness to God than a prone or reptile one; God is incorporeal, and cannot be the antitype of any thing material.

Equally unfounded is the notion that the image of God in man consisted in the "dominion" which was granted to him over this lower world. Limited dominion may, it is true, be an image of large and absolute dominion; but man is not said to have been made in the image of God's dominion, which is an accident merely, for, before creatures existed, God himself could have no dominion; he was made in the image and likeness of God himself. Still farther, it is evident that man, according to the history, was made in the image of God in order to his having dominion, as the Hebrew particle imports; and, therefore, his dominion was consequent upon his formation in the "image" and "likeness" of God, and could not be that image itself.

The notion that the original resemblance of man to God must be placed in some one essential quality, is not consistent with holy writ, from which alone we can derive our information on this subject. We shall, it is true, find that the Bible partly places it in what is essential to human nature; but that it should comprehend nothing else, or consist in one quality only, has no proof or reason; and we are, in fact, taught that it comprises also what is so far from being essential that it may be both lost and regained. When God is called "the Father of Spirits," a likeness is suggested between man and God in the spirituality of their nature. This is also implied in the striking argument of St. Paul with the Athenians: "Forasmuch, then, as we are the Offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device;"—plainly referring to the idolatrous statues by which God was represented among Heathens. If likeness to God in man consisted in bodily shape, this would not have been an argument against human representations of the Deity; but it imports, as Howe well expresses it, that "we are to understand that our resemblance to him, as we are his offspring, lies in some higher, more noble, and more excellent thing, of which there can be no figure; as who can tell how to give the figure or image of a thought, or of the mind or thinking power?" In spirituality, and, consequently, immateriality, this image of God in man, then, in the first instance, consists. Nor is it any valid objection to say, that "immateriality is not peculiar to the soul of man; for we have reason to believe that the inferior animals are actuated by an immaterial principle." This is as certain as analogy can make it: but though we allow a spiritual principle to animals, its kind is obviously inferior; for that spirit which is incapable of induction and moral knowledge, must be of an inferior order to the spirit which possesses these capabilities; and this is the kind of spirit which is peculiar to man.

The sentiment expressed in Wis_2:23 , is an evidence that, in the opinion of the ancient Jews, the image of God in man comprised immortality also. "For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity:" and though other creatures were made capable of immortality, and at least the material human frame, whatever we may think of the case of animals, would have escaped death, had not sin entered the world; yet, without admitting the absurdity of the "natural immortality" of the human soul, that essence must have been constituted immortal in a high and peculiar sense which has ever retained its prerogative of continued duration amidst the universal death not only of animals, but of the bodies of all human beings. There appears also a manifest allusion to man's immortality, as being included in the image of God, in the reason which is given in Genesis for the law which inflicts death on murderers: "Whose sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his, blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." The essence of the crime of homicide is not confined here to the putting to death the mere animal part of man; and it must, therefore, lie in the peculiar value of life to an immortal being, accountable in another state for the actions done in this, and whose life ought to be specially guarded for this very reason, that death introduces him into changeless and eternal relations, which were not to be left to the mercy of human passions.

To these we are to add the intellectual powers, and we have what divines, in perfect accordance with the Scriptures, have called, "the Natural image of God in his creatures," which is essential and ineffaceable. Man was made capable of knowledge, and he was endowed with liberty of will. This natural image of God was the foundation of that Moral image by which also man was distinguished. Unless he had been a spiritual, knowing, and willing being, he would have been wholly incapable of moral qualities. That he had such qualities eminently, and that in them consisted the image of God, as well as in the natural attributes just stated, we have also the express testimony of Scripture: "Lo this only have I found, that God made man UPRIGHT; but they have sought out many inventions." There is also an express allusion to the moral image of God, in which man was at first created, in   Colossians 3:10 : "And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him;" and in  Ephesians 4:24 : "Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." In these passages the Apostle represents the change produced in true Christians by the Gospel, as a "renewal of the image of God in man; as a new or second creation in that image; " and he explicitly declares, that that image consists in "knowledge," in "righteousness," and in "true holiness."

This also may be finally argued from the satisfaction with which the historian of the creation represents the Creator as viewing the works of his hands as "very good," which was pronounced with reference to each of them individually, as well as to the whole: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good." But, as to man, this goodness must necessarily imply moral as well as physical qualities. Without them he would have been imperfect as man; and had they, in their first exercises, been perverted and sinful, he must have been an exception, and could not have been pronounced "very good." The goodness of man, as a rational being, must lie in devotedness and consecration to God; consequently, man was at first holy. A rational creature, as such, is capable of knowing, loving, serving, and living in communion with the Most Holy One. Adam, at first, did or did not exert this capacity; if he did not, he was not very good, —not good at all.

4. On the intellectual and moral endowments of the progenitor of the human race, erring views appear to have been taken on both sides.

In knowledge, some have thought him little inferior to the angels; others, as furnished with but the simple elements of science and of language. The truth seems to be that, as to capacity, his intellect must have been vigorous beyond that of any of his fallen descendants; which itself gives us very high views of the strength of his understanding, although we should allow him to have been created "lower than the angels." As to his actual knowledge, that would depend upon the time and opportunity he had for observing the nature and laws of the objects around him; and the degree in which he was favoured with revelations from God on moral and religious subjects.

On the degree of moral excellence also in the first man, much license has been given to a warm imagination, and to rhetorical embellishment; and Adam's perfection has sometimes been fixed at an elevation which renders it exceedingly difficult to conceive how he could fall into sin at all. On the other hand, those who either deny or hold very slightly the doctrine of our hereditary depravity, delight to represent Adam as little superior in moral perfection and capability to his descendants. But, if we attend to the passages of holy writ above quoted, we shall be able, on this subject, to ascertain, if not the exact degree of his moral endowments, yet that there is a certain standard below which they cannot be placed.—Generally, he was made in the image of God, which, we have already proved, is to be understood morally as well as naturally. Now, however the image of any thing may be limited in extent, it must still be an accurate representation as far as it goes. Every thing good in the creation must always be a miniature representation of the excellence of the Creator; but, in this case, the "goodness," that is, the perfection, of every creature, according to the part it was designed to act in the general assemblage of beings collected into our system, wholly forbids us to suppose that the image of God's moral perfections in man was a blurred and dim representation. To whatever extent it went, it necessarily excluded all that from man which did not resemble God; it was a likeness to God in "righteousness and true holiness," whatever the degree of each might be, and excluded all admixture of unrighteousness and unholiness. Man, therefore, in his original state, was sinless, both in act and in principle. Hence it is said that "God made man UPRIGHT." That this signifies moral rectitude cannot be doubted; but the import of the word is very extensive. It expresses, by an easy figure, the exactness of truth, justice, and obedience; and it comprehends the state and habit both of the heart and the life. Such, then, was the condition of primitive man; there was no obliquity in his moral principles, his mind, or affections; none in his conduct. He was perfectly sincere and exactly just, rendering from the heart all that was due to God and to the creature. Tried by the exactest plummet, he was upright; by the most perfect rule, he was straight. The "knowledge" in which the Apostle Paul, in the passage quoted above from   Colossians 3:10 , places "the image of God" after which man was created, does not merely imply the faculty of understanding, which is a part of the natural image of God; but that which might be lost, because it is that in which we may be "renewed." It is, therefore, to be understood of the faculty of knowledge in right exercise; and of that willing reception, and firm retaining, and hearty approval, of religious truth, in which knowledge, when spoken of morally, is always understood in the Scriptures. We may not be disposed to allow, with some, that Adam understood the deep philosophy of nature, and could comprehend and explain the sublime mysteries of religion. The circumstance of his giving names to the animals, is certainly no sufficient proof of his having attained to a philosophical acquaintance with their qualities and distinguishing habits, although we should allow their names to be still retained in the Hebrew, and to be as expressive of their peculiarities as some expositors have stated. Sufficient time appears not to have been afforded him for the study of the properties of animals, as this event took place previous to the formation of Eve; and as for the notion of his acquiring knowledge by intuition, this is contradicted by the revealed fact that angels themselves acquire their knowledge by observation and study, though no doubt, with great rapidity and certainty. The whole of this transaction was supernatural; the beasts were "brought" to Adam, and it is probable that he named them under a Divine suggestion. He has been also supposed to be the inventor of language, but his history shows that he was never without speech. From the first he was able to converse with God; and we may, therefore, infer that language was in him a supernatural and miraculous endowment. That his understanding was, as to its capacity, deep and large beyond any of his posterity, must follow from the perfection in which he was created; and his acquisitions of knowledge would, therefore, be rapid and easy. It was, however, in moral and religious truth, as being of the first concern to him, that we are to suppose the excellency of his knowledge to have consisted. "His reason would be clear, his judgment uncorrupted, and his conscience upright and sensible." The best knowledge would, in him, be placed first, and that of every other kind be made subservient to it, according to its relation to that. The Apostle adds to knowledge, "righteousness and true holiness;" terms which express, not merely freedom from sin, but positive and active virtue.

Sober as these views of man's primitive state are, it is not, perhaps, possible for us fully to conceive of so exalted a condition as even this. Below this standard it could not fall; and that it implied a glory, and dignity, and moral greatness of a very exalted kind, is made sufficiently apparent from the degree of guilt charged upon Adam when he fell: for the aggravating circumstances of his offence may well be deduced from the tremendous consequences which followed.

5. The salvation of Adam has been disputed; for what reason does not appear, except that the silence of Scripture, as to his after life, has given bold men occasion to obtrude their speculations upon a subject which called for no such expression of opinion. As nothing to the contrary appears, the charitable inference is, that as he was the first to receive the promise of redemption, so he was the first to prove its virtue. It is another presumption, that as Adam and Eve were clothed with skins of beasts, which could not have been slain for food, these were the skins of their sacrifices; and as the offering of animal sacrifice was an expression of faith in the appointed propitiation, to that refuge we may conclude they resorted, and through its merits were accepted.

6. The Rabbinical and Mohammedan traditions and fables respecting the first man are as absurd as they are numerous. Some of them indeed are monstrous, unless we suppose them to be allegories in the exaggerated style of the orientals. Some say that he was nine hundred cubits high; whilst others, not satisfied with this, affirm that his head touched the heavens. The Jews think that he wrote the ninety-first Psalm, invented the Hebrew letters, and composed several treatises; the Arabians, that he preserved twenty books which fell from heaven; and the Musselmen, that he himself wrote ten volumes.

7. That Adam was a type of Christ, is plainly affirmed by St. Paul, who calls him "the figure of him who was to come." Hence our Lord is sometimes called, not inaptly, the Second Adam. This typical relation stands sometimes in Similitude sometimes in CONTRAST. Adam was formed immediately by God, as was the humanity of Christ. In each the nature was spotless, and richly endowed with knowledge and true holiness. Both are seen invested with dominion over the earth and all its creatures; and this may explain the eighth Psalm, where David seems to make the sovereignty of the first man over the whole earth in its pristine glory, the prophetic symbol of the dominion of Christ over the world restored. Beyond these particulars fancy must not carry us; and the typical CONTRAST must also be limited to that which is stated in Scripture, or supported by its allusions. Adam and Christ were each a public person, a federal head to the whole race of mankind; but the one was the fountain of sin and death, the other of righteousness and life. By Adam's transgression "many were made sinners,"   Romans 5:14-19 . Through him, "death passed upon all men, because all have sinned" in him. But he thus prefigured that one man, by whose righteousness the "free gift comes upon all men to justification of life." The first man communicated a living soul to all his posterity; the other is a quickening Spirit, to restore them to newness of life now, and to raise them up at the last day. By the imputation of the first Adam's sin, and the communication of his fallen, depraved nature, death reigned over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; and through the righteousness of the Second Adam, and the communication of a divine nature by the Holy Spirit, favour and grace shall much more abound in Christ's true followers unto eternal life. See Redemption .

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

ADAM. — 1. In  Luke 3:38 the ancestry of Jesus is traced up to Adam. From what source the Evangelist drew his genealogy it is impossible to say. But when compared with that in the First Gospel, it clearly shows the purpose with which St. Luke wrote. As a Gentile, writing for a Gentile, he took every opportunity of insisting upon the universal power of the gospel. The effects of the life and Person of Jesus are not confined to the Jews; for Jesus is not, as in St. Matthew’s Gospel, a descendant of Abraham only, but of the man to whom all mankind trace their origin. See art. Genealogy of Jesus Christ. But further, St. Luke closes his genealogy with the significant words ‘the son of Adam, the son of God’ (τοῦ Ἀδάμ, τοῦ Θεοῦ). Adam, and therefore all mankind, had a Divine origin. The same Evangelist who relates the fact of the virgin birth, and records that Christ was, in His own proper Person, υἱὸς Θεοῦ ( Luke 1:35), claims that the first man, and hence every human being, is υἱὸς Θεοῦ. Thus the genealogy, which might at first sight appear to be a useless addition to the Gospel narrative, possesses a lasting spiritual value.

The truth placed by St. Luke in the forefront of his Gospel is treated in its redemptive aspect by his master St. Paul, who in four passages brings Adam and Christ into juxtaposition:

( a )  1 Corinthians 15:22. The solidarity of mankind in their physical union with Adam involves universal death as a consequence of Adam’s sin. Similarly the solidarity of mankind in their spiritual union with Christ involves universal life as a consequence of Christ’s perfect work.

( b ) In  Romans 5:12-21. this solidarity and its results are treated in fuller detail. (i.)  Romans 5:12-14. There is a parallelism between Adam and Christ . Adam ‘is a type of him who was to come’ ( Romans 5:14), in the sense that his act affected all men. Adam committed a ταράττωμα, a lapse, a false step—commonly termed the Fall. By this lapse, sin was as ‘a malignant force let loose among mankind’; and through sin came physical death. (St. Paul sees no occasion for proof of the connexion between sin and physical death; he unhesitatingly bases his position on the narrative in Genesis; see  Romans 2:17,  Romans 3:3;  Romans 3:19;  Romans 3:21). Were this all, the passage would implicitly annul human responsibility. But St. Paul, without attempting fully to reconcile them, places side by side the two aspects of the truth—the hereditary transmission of guilt, and moral responsibility: ‘and thus death made its way (διῆλθεν) to every individual man, because all sinned (ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον)’. Controversy has raged hotly round this phrase, Augustine and many other writers having understood the relative ω as masculine, and as referring to Adam; so Vulgate in quo . But there can be no doubt that ἐφʼ ᾧ must be taken in its usual meaning ‘because.’ Adam’s fall involved all men in sin, and therefore in death; but this was because all men (in full exercise of their free will) sinned. It would be out of place here to discuss the attempts that have been made to combine these two factors in the moral history of man (see Literature): strictly speaking, they cannot fully and logically he combined; but many of the most fundamental truths of the Christian religion can be arrived at only by the balancing of complementary statements. In  Romans 3:13-14 a qualification is entered, which causes St. Paul to ruin his construction, and omit the apodosis of which  Romans 3:12 forms the protasis. He feels obliged to explain that, sin being an offence against law, those who lived between Adam and Moses had no law, and thus did not transgress an explicit command as Adam had done. But the fact that death reigned throughout that period only shows that—not the guilt of individuals, but—the transmitted effects of Adam’s sin were at work. And it is this that makes him a type of the Messiah. (ii.)  Romans 3:15-17. The contrast is far greater than the similarity . The contrast between Adam and Christ is great:—In quality ( Romans 3:15). The one representative man, Adam, committed a παράττωμα; but over-against that must be placed the undeserved kindness (χαρις) of God, and the gift of righteousness arising from the kindness of the other representative Man, Jesus Christ. In quantity ( Romans 3:16). ‘One act tainting the whole race with sin, and a multitude of sins collected together in one only to be forgiven.’ In character and consequences ( Romans 3:17). Adam’s fall ushered in a reign of death; Christ’s work ensures that all who have received His kindness and His gift of righteousness shall themselves reign in life. (iii.)  Romans 3:18-21. Summary of the argument, in which it is further shown that Law ‘came in as an afterthought’ (παρεισῆλθεν), multiplying sin, but thereby only increasing the abundance of God’s kindness.

( c )  1 Corinthians 15:44-47. The two foregoing passages from St. Paul’s writings deal with the practical moral results of union with Adam and Christ respectively. These verses (i.) go back behind that, and show that there is a complete and radical difference between the nature of each; (ii.) look forward, and show that this difference has a vital bearing on the truth of man’s resurrection.

(i.) St. Paul maintains ( 1 Corinthians 15:36-44 a), by a series of illustrations from the natural world, the reasonableness of a resurrection from death. In Nature ‘every seed has its own particular body’—‘all flesh is not the same flesh’—the terrestrial differs from the celestial—there is a different glory of the sun, the moon, and the stars. So also it may be rightly held that it is possible for man to exist in two different states, one far higher than the other. Not only so, but ( 1 Corinthians 15:44 b, 45) there actually exists such an analogous distinction between man and man, as Scripture shows. The thought in  1 Corinthians 15:45 is arrived at by an adaptation of  Genesis 2:7 : Θ καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἄνθρωτος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν. These words relate only that after being lifeless clay, man was by God’s breath transformed into a living being. But St. Paul reads into the statement the doctrinal significance that the body of the first representative man became the vehicle of a ‘psychical’ nature, while the body of the Second is the organ of a ‘pneumatical’ nature. St. Paul’s trichotomy of man may he represented thus:

ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁ
ⲯⲩⲭⲏ =	ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲥⲱⲙⲁ	= ⲥⲁⲣⲝ

Everything in man that is not τνεῦμα may he called ‘psychical’ is so far as it is considered as ‘intellect,’ and ‘carnal’ in so far as it is thought of as the seat of the animal passions; both the adjectives ψυχικός and σαρκικός thus mean ‘non-spiritual.’ The second half of St. Paul’s statement—‘the last Adam became a life-giving spirit’—finds no exact parallel in the OT, but seems to be based on a reminiscence of Messianic passages which speak of the work of the Divine Spirit, e.g.  Isaiah 11:1-2,  Joel 2:28-32.

(ii.) But as the ψυχὴ ζῶσα came first and the τνεῦμα ζωοτοιοῦν last, so it is with the development of mankind; the spiritual must follow the psychical ( 1 Corinthians 15:46). As the first man was formed from the clay, and had a nature in conformity with his origin, while the second Man has His origin ‘from heaven’ ( 1 Corinthians 15:47), so among mankind there are those whose nature remains low and mean, tied to the clods of earth, and there are those whose nature has become heavenly ( 1 Corinthians 15:48). But this implies more ( 1 Corinthians 15:49). In his present state man is an exact counterpart, he visibly reproduces the lineaments and character, of the first man, because of his corporate union with him (ἐφορέσαμεν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ χοϊκοῦ). But the time is coming when we shall become the exact counterpart or image of the second Man (cf.  Genesis 1:26 f.), because of our spiritual union with Him (φορέσομεν καὶ τἡν εἱκόνα τοῦ ἑπουρανίον). The above follows the text of B a c g 17 aeth. arm. [Syriac ܢܠܒܫܝ is indeterminate]; and Theodoret distinctly is says to τὸ γὰρ φορέσομεν προρρητικῶς οὐ παραινετικῶς εἳρκεν The mass of authorities read φορέσωμεν, ‘from a desire to turn what is really a physical assertion into an ethical exhortation’ (Alf.); so Chrys., τοῦτʼ ἐστιν, ἃριστα πράξωμεν … συμβουλευτικω̈ς εἰσάγει τόν λὀγόν. But it is difficult to conceive how St. Paul, who has from  1 Corinthians 15:35 been leading up to the thought of the resurrection, could at the critical moment throw his argument to the winds, and content himself with saying, ‘according as we have been earthly in our thoughts, let us strive to be heavenly.’

It has been suggested that St. Paul adopted the designation of Christ as ‘the last Adam’ and ‘the second Adam’ from Rabbinic theology. But such a comparison between Adam and the Messiah was unknown to the earlier Jewish teachers. Passages adduced to support it belong to the Middle Ages, and are influenced by the Kabbala. See G. F. Moore, JB L [Note: BL Journal of Biblical Literature.] xvi. (1897), 158–161; Dalman, The Words of Jesus , English translation 248 f., 251 f.

( d )  Philippians 2:6. St. Paul speaks of ‘Christ Jesus, who being [in His eternal and inhereat nature, ὑτάρχων] in the form of God, deemed it not a thing to be snatched at (ἁρταγμον) to be on an equality with God.’ There is here an implied contrast with Adam, who took fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God said had made him ‘as one of us’ ( Genesis 3:22).

2. In  Matthew 19:4-6 ||  Mark 10:6-8 reference is made by Jesus to the account of Adam and Eve in  Genesis 1:27 ‘male and female created he them’ (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς). Pharisees came and asked Him whether divorce was allowable [‘for any cause,’ Mt.]. Our Lord’s answer is intended to show that the provision made for divorce in the Mosaic law ( Deuteronomy 24:1) was only a concession to the hardness of men’s hearts. The truer and deeper view of marriage which Christians should adopt must be based on a nobler morality,—on a morality which takes its stand on the primeval nature of man and woman as God made them. ‘To suit (πρός) your hardness of heart he wrote for you this commandment. But from the beginning of the creation “he made them male and female.” ’ And with this quotation is coupled one from  Genesis 2:24 (see also  Ephesians 5:31), ‘For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother [and shall cleave to his wife (Mt.)], and they twain shall become one flesh.’ The same result is reached in Mt., but with a transposition of the two parts of the argument. See Wright’s Synopsis, in loc. Thus Jesus bases the absolute indissolubility of the marriage tie on the union of man and woman from the first. In  Matthew 19:9;  Matthew 5:32 this pronouncement is practically annulled by the admission of the words ‘except for fornication’ (μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ, and παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας). See Wright, in loc. , who contends that ‘the Church (of Alexandria?) introduced these two clauses into the Gospel in accordance with the permission to legislate which our Lord gave to all Churches ( Matthew 18:18).’ See art. Marriage.

3. In  John 8:44 ἀνθρωποκτόνος may refer to the introduction of death into the world by the fall of Adam. But see art. Abel.

4. The parallel drawn by St. Paul between Adam and Christ may have been the origin of the tradition that Adam was buried under Golgotha. Jer. ( Com. in Mat. § iv. 27) rejects it, saying that it arose from the discovery of an ancient human skull at that spot. He also declines to see any reference to it in  Ephesians 5:14. But in Ep. 46 he says, ‘The place where our Lord was crucified is called Calvary, because the skull of the primitive man was buried there. So it came to pass that the second Adam, that is the blood of Christ (a play on אדם and הדם), as it dropped from the Cross, washed away the sins of the buried protoplast,* [Note:  Wisdom of Solomon 7:1.] the first Adam, and thus the words of the apostle were fulfilled,’—quoting  Ephesians 5:14. Epiphanius ( contra Haer. xlvi. 5) goes farther, stating that Christ’s blood dropped upon Adam’s skull, and restored him to life. The tradition is mentioned also by Basil, Ambrose, and others.

Literature.—Besides the works cited in the article, the following may be consulted on the relation between Adam and Christ: Sanday-Headlam, Com. on Epistle to Romans (pp. 130–153); Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine , ch. xvii.; Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin  ; Sadler, The Second Adam and the New Birth  ; Thackeray, The Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought , ch. ii.

A. H. M‘Neile.

Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology

"Adam" is both the proper name of the first human and a designation for humankind. God himself gave this appellation to Adam and Eve ( Genesis 5:1-2 ). The color red lies behind the Hebrew root adam [אָדֵם]. This may reflect the red soil from which he was made.

Adam was formed from the ground ( Genesis 2:7 ). Word play between "Adam" and "ground" ( adama [אֲדָמָה אֲדָמָה]) is unmistakable. It is important that Adam is identified with humankind rather than any particular nationality. The country from which the dust was taken is not specified. Rabbis believed it came from all over the earth so no one could say, "My father is greater than yours."

The word "formed" suggests the careful work of a potter making an exquisite art-piece. Into this earthen vessel God breathed the breath of life ( Genesis 2:7 ). These words describe vivid intimacy between God and man not shared by animals.

Adam was made a little lower than "angels" (or "God") at his creation and "crowned with glory and honor" ( Psalm 8:5 ). (Rabbis speculated the glory of Adam's heel outshone the sun.) He was commissioned as a vassal king to rule over God's creation. The words "subdue, " "rule, " "under his feet" ( Genesis 1:28;  Psalm 8:6 ) suggest kingship over nature but not over his fellow man.

Many elements present in Mesopotamian creation stories like Enuma Elish are absent. There is nothing about autocratic king ship lowered from heaven. No brick mold is given. Adam is not laden with the task of building temples and cities. He was not created to relieve Gods of tedious labor but to reflect God's care of the world of nature. God did not appoint death for Adam and keep life exclusively for himself as in the Gilgameth epic.

No shrub or cultivated plant had yet grown where Adam was created. He awoke to a barren landscape ( Genesis 2:5-7 ). His first sight may have been God planting a garden for him. He could clearly see that all good and perfect gifts come from the Lord God.

Man was placed into this beauty to "work it and take care of it" ( Genesis 2:15 ). Unlike the Sumerian garden story of Enki and Ninhursag, there was no gardener working for Adam. Meaningful, productive activity was always part of paradise. Adam was not placed there to be a vegetable but to grow them. Man was not created to be waited on but to join God in preserving and propagating creation.

Man was furnished with every pleasant, nourishing experience God could provide. He was warned about the tree of knowledge of good and evil (2:17). The Hebrew word for "know" includes the idea of knowing by experience. The forbidden tree contained the option of experiencing the opposite of what comes from the hand of God. God wished to spare Adam from pain and death but at the same time left him freedom of choice for options beyond the sphere of his provision.

Adam was not only a laborer but a thinker. God brought him all the animals to see what he would call them. Included in ancient ideas of naming would also be sovereignty over the item named. (Note that Hebrews brought before the king are renamed in  Daniel 1:7 ).

The first lesson Adam learned was that his work was too big to do alone. His inspection of the animal kingdom revealed no suitable helper. The one who would make his life complete came from his own rib. They would become one flesh ( Genesis 2:18-24 ). This is a far different scenario from the sexual escapades of Enki (= "lord of the earth") in the Sumerian garden story.

The most intelligent animal confronted humankind under whose feet he had been placed ( Genesis 1:28;  3:1 ). Was Eve selected because she would in some way be easier to deceive? Or was the more difficult subject taken first? It is noteworthy that no special efforts to persuade Adam are recorded. He seems to eat what he is offered without objection (3:6). It is, however, important to observe that Adam was called first as the one whose position of leadership made him responsible for the act (3:9).

The anticipation of being like God never materialized. Adam and Eve's state of existence was not enhanced but filled with misery and death. They would have to leave the garden to experience what life would be outside God's perfect will.

Paul Ferguson

See also Eve; The Fall; Theology Of Genesis

Bibliography . W. Brueggemann, Genesis  ; J. Davis, Paradise to Prison  ; L. Harris, Man—God's Eternal Creation  ; A Ross, Creation and Blessing .

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

ADAM . The derivation is doubtful. The most plausible is that which connects it with the Assyr. [Note: Assyrian.] adâmu , ‘make,’ ‘produce’; man is thus a ‘creature’ one made or produced. Some derive it from a root signifying ‘red’ (cf. Edom ,   Genesis 25:30 ), men being of a ruddy colour in the district where the word originated. The Biblical writer (  Genesis 2:7 ) explains it, according to his frequent practice, by a play on the word ’adâmâh , ‘ground’; but that is itself derived from the same root ‘red.’ The word occurs in the Heb. 31 times in   Genesis 1:5 to   Genesis 5:5 . In most of these it is not a proper name, and the RV [Note: Revised Version.] has rightly substituted ‘man’ or ‘the man’ in some verses where AV [Note: Authorized Version.] has ‘Adam.’ But since the name signifies ‘mankind,’ homo, Mensch , not ‘a man,’ vir, Mann (see   Genesis 5:2 ), the narrative appears to be a description, not of particular historical events in the life of an individual, but of the beginnings of human life (ch. 2), human sin (ch. 3), human genealogical descent (  Genesis 4:1;   Genesis 4:25 ,   Genesis 5:1-5 ). In a few passages, if the text is sound, the writer slips into the use of Adam as a proper name, but only in   Genesis 5:3-5 does it stand unmistakably for an individual.

1 . The creation of man is related twice,   Genesis 1:26-27 (P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] ) and   Genesis 2:7 (J [Note: Jahwist.] ). The former passage is the result of philosophical and theological reflexion of a late date, which had taught the writer that man is the climax of creation because his personality partakes of the Divine (and in   Genesis 5:3 this prerogative is handed on to his offspring); but the latter is written from the naïve and primitive standpoint of legendary tradition, which dealt only with man’s reception of physical life (see next article).

2 . Man’s primitive condition ,   Genesis 2:8-25 (J [Note: Jahwist.] ). The story teaches: that man has work to do in life (  Genesis 2:15 ); that he needs a counterpart, a help who shall be ‘meet for him’ (  Genesis 2:18;   Genesis 2:21-24 ); that man is supreme over the beasts in the intellectual ability, and therefore in the authority, which he possesses to assign to them their several names (  Genesis 2:19-20 ); that man, in his primitive condition, was far from being morally or socially perfect; he was simply in a state of savagery, but from a moral standpoint innocent, because he had not yet learned the meaning of right and wrong (  Genesis 2:25 ); and this blissful ignorance is also portrayed by the pleasures of a luxuriant garden or park (  Genesis 2:8-14 ).

3 . The Fall ,   Genesis 2:16 f.,   Genesis 2:3 (J [Note: Jahwist.] ). But there came a point in human evolution when man became conscious of a command the earliest germ of a recognition of an ‘ought’ (  Genesis 2:16 f.,   Genesis 3:3 ); and this at once caused a stress and strain between his lower animal nature, pictured as a serpent, and his higher aspirations after obedience (  Genesis 3:1-5 ) [ N.B . The serpent is nowhere, in the OT, identified with the devil; the idea is not found till Wis 2:23 ]; by a deliberate following of the lower nature against which he had begun to strive, man first caused sin to exist ( Wis 2:6 ); with the instant result of a feeling of shame ( Wis 2:7 ), and the world-wide consequence of pain, trouble, and death ( Wis 2:14-19 ), and the cessation for ever of the former state of innocent ignorance and bliss ( Wis 2:22-24 ).

On the Babylonian affinities with the story of Adam, see Creation, Eden.

A. H. M‘Neile.

Holman Bible Dictionary

 Joshua 3:16 Genesis 2:7  Genesis 3:19 Genesis 1-5  Genesis 2:20  Genesis 4:25 Genesis 5:1 Genesis 5:3-4 Genesis 5:5  1 Chronicles 1:1

Old Testament In  Genesis 1:1 mankind is the crown of God's creation. Mankind is granted a unique status, expressed as being made “in the image” of God, and is given dominion over the earth and its creatures, that is, made responsible for the earth. In   Genesis 2:1 the earth-boundedness of mankind is stressed: mankind is formed of the dust of the ground, thus dispelling any idea of the divine in mankind. The Lord God blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a “living, breathing thing,” the same phrase that is used to describe the animals in   Genesis 1:1 . Thus  Genesis 1:1 and   Genesis 2:1 together present both sides of the human situation: the unique relationship to God and the essential connection to earth.

 Genesis 3:1 relates the appearance of sin which consisted of the refusal of mankind to be content with being human and the desire to become divine. The Bible affirms that humans have dignity as humans; they do not have to try to become divine to find meaning. The serpent, the woman, and the man receive their sentences, one of which is the unequal relationship of the man and the woman as the result of sin. The separation which sin causes is emphasized in the account of the expulsion from Eden (  Genesis 3:22-24 ).

 Psalm 8:1 , like  Genesis 1:1 , celebrates the exalted status of mankind in God's sight and the dominion of mankind over God's creation. The biblical view of the worth of humans is to be contrasted sharply with the other views in the ancient Near East, especially in Mesopotamia, where the human being was created to be the slave of the gods. The tragedy of the human situation is the failure to celebrate mankind's unique status before God and through human effort to distort the divine intention.

New Testament The writer of Hebrews referred  Psalm 8:1 to Jesus, seeing in Jesus alone the realization of all that God intended mankind to be and the means for divine-human reconciliation. Paul twice used the contrast of Christ with Adam to clarify the achievement of Christ for mankind. In   Romans 5:12-21 , Adam is referred to as the type of the One to come, although the contrast is mainly negative. Just as sin entered the world through one man, Adam ( Romans 5:12 ), so the act of righteousness of one man, Jesus, leads to acquittal and life for all people ( Romans 5:18 ). In  1 Corinthians 15:1 , Paul used the Adam-Christ analogy to affirm the resurrection. As by a man came death, so by a Man has come resurrection ( 1 Corinthians 15:21 ). Just as the first Adam became a living being, so the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 15:45 ). Whatever the origin of this typology or analogy of Adam and Jesus, for Paul, Adam represented the old humanity with all its failures, while Jesus represented the new humanity as God intended humanity to be from the beginning. Through the sacrifice of Jesus, entrance into the new humanity is made possible.

Thomas G. Smothers

People's Dictionary of the Bible

Adam ( Ăd'Am ), Red, Red Earth. The name appropriated to the first man, the father of the inhabitants of the world; used, however, sometimes more generally, as in  Genesis 5:1-2, where the woman is included. This name was probably chosen to remind the man of his earthly nature, seeing that out of the ground his body was taken, though his soul, the breath of life, was breathed into his nostrils by God's immediate act. This history of his creation is narrated in  Genesis 1:26-30;  Genesis 2:7;  Genesis 2:15-25, a single pair being formed, to whom the earth was given for a possession, to replenish it with their children, to enjoy the fruits of it, and to have dominion over the inferior animate. We are told that "God created man in his own image" and after his "likeness;" not with respect to bodily shape, but with a likeness to God in moral attributes. This is implied by the expressions of St. Paul, who plainly considers righteousness and holiness the likeness of God.  Ephesians 4:24; Col 3:10. The phrase must also denote the possession of dominion and authority; for immediately it is subjoined "let them have dominion,"  Genesis 1:26, explanatory, it would seem, of the term "image." And so St. Paul calls the man "the image and glory of God," on the ground of his being "the head of the woman."  1 Corinthians 11:3;  1 Corinthians 11:7. The high intellectual power with which man was endowed is illustrated by his giving appropriate names to the lower animals.  Genesis 2:19-20. He was indeed a glorious creature, and would have been uninterruptedly and increasingly happy had he continued in his first estate of innocence. Adam's lamentable fall is next related. How long it was after his creation, ingenious men have puzzled themselves to discover, but in vain. By sin Adam lost his best prerogative. He had suffered spiritual death, and he was to suffer bodily death: dust as he was, to dust he should return. To his posterity he transmitted, therefore, a corrupted nature, which could be restored and recovered only by the power of the second Adam, a head of life and blessedness to all that believe in him.  Romans 5:15-16;  1 Corinthians 15:21-22;  1 Corinthians 15:45;  1 Corinthians 15:47-48. Of Adam's subsequent history we know little. We are expressly told that he had "sons and daughters," though the names of but three of his sons are recorded. He lived 930 years,  Genesis 4:1-2;  Genesis 4:25-26;  Genesis 5:3-5;  1 Chronicles 1:1;  Luke 3:38, and was probably contemporary with Methusalah about 240 years. Methusalah lived 600 years with Noah; Shem lived 150 years with Abram, and 50 years with Isaac, according to the Ussher Chronology, so that the history of the world before the flood might have been carried through three or four persons to the time of Moses. 2. A city near the Jordan, by which the waters were cut off when Israel passed over.  Joshua 3:16.

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Ad'am. (Red Earth).

1. The name given in Scripture to the first man. It apparently has reference to the ground from which he was formed, which is called in Hebrew, Adamah . The idea of Redness Of Color seems to be inherent in either word.

The creation of man was the work of the sixth day - the last and crowning act of creation. Adam was created (not born) a perfect man in body and spirit, but as innocent and completely inexperienced as a child. The man Adam was placed in a garden which the Lord God had planted "eastward in Eden," for the purpose of dressing it and keeping it. See Eden .

Adam was permitted to eat of the fruit of every tree in the garden but one, which was called "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," because it was the test of Adam's obedience. By it, Adam could know good and evil in the divine way, through obedience; thus knowing good by experience in resisting temptation and forming a strong and holy character, while he knew evil only by observation and inference. (Or he could "know good and evil," in Satan's way, by experiencing the evil and knowing good only by contrast. - Editor).

The prohibition to taste the fruit of this tree was enforced by the menace of death. There was also another tree which was called "the tree of life." While Adam was in the garden of Eden, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air were brought to him to be named. After this, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and took one of his ribs from him, which he fashioned into a woman and brought her to the man. At this time, they were both described as being naked without the consciousness of shame.

By the subtlety of the serpent, the woman, who was given to be with Adam, was beguiled into a violation of the one command which had been imposed upon them. She took of the fruit of the forbidden tree and gave it to her husband. The propriety of its name was immediately shown in the results which followed; self-consciousness was the first-fruits of sin; their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.

Though the curse of Adam's rebellion of necessity fell upon him, yet the very prohibition to eat of the tree of life after his transgression was probably a manifestation of divine mercy, because the greatest malediction of all would have been to have the gift of indestructible life super-added to a state of wretchedness and sin.

The divine mercy was also shown in the promise of a deliverer given at the very promise of a deliverer given at the very time the curse was imposed,  Genesis 3:15, and opening a door of hope to Paradise, regained for him and his descendants. Adam is stated to have lived 930 years. His sons mentioned in Scripture are Cain, Abel and Seth; it is implied, however, that he had others.

2. Man, generically, for the name Adam was not confined to the father of the human race, but like Homo was applicable to Woman as well as to Man.  Genesis 5:2.

3. A city on the Jordan, "beside Zaretan," in the time of Joshua.  Joshua 3:16.

American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

1. The progenitor and representative head of our race; formed of the dust of the ground, and made a living soul by the Creator's breath. He was the last work of the creation, and received dominion over all that the earth contained. That he might not be alone, God provided Eve as a helpmeet for him, and she became his wife. Marriage is thus a divine institution, first in order of time, as well as of importance and blessedness to mankind. Adam was made a perfect man-complete in every physical, mental, and spiritual endowment; and placed in the Garden of Eden on probation, holy and happy, but liable to sin. From this estate he fell by breaking the express command of God, through the temptations of Satan and the compliance of Eve; and thus brought the curse upon himself and all his posterity. Sovereign grace interposed; a Savior was revealed, and the full execution of the curse stayed; but Adam was banished from Eden and its tree of life, and reduced to a life of painful toil. His happiness was farther imbittered by witnessing the fruits of his fall in his posterity. Cain his first born son, and Abel the second, born in the likeness of their fallen parents, were ere long last to them-the one slain, and the other a fugitive. They probably had many other sons and daughters, but the name of Seth alone is given. Adam lived to the age of nine hundred and thirty years, and saw the earth rapidly peopled by his descendants; but "the wickedness of man was great upon the earth." At the time of his death, Lamech, the father of Noah, was fifty-six years of age; and being in the line of those who "walked with God," had probably heard the early history of the race from the lips of the penitent Adam.

The curse pronounced on man includes not only physical labor and toil on a barren and thorny earth, and the physical dissolution of the body, but also the exposure of the soul, the nobler part, to "everlasting death." In that very day he should lose the moral image of his Maker, and become subject not only to physical death, but also to God's eternal wrath and curse, which is death in the highest sense of the word, and is the doom which has fallen upon all his race. Such is the view of the apostle Paul; who everywhere contrasts the death introduced into the world through Adam, with the life which is procured for our race through Jesus Christ,  Romans 5:1-21 . This life is spiritual; and the death, in its highest sense, is also spiritual. So far as the penalty is temporal and physical, no man is or can be exempt from it; but to remove the spiritual and eternal punishment, Christ has died; and he who comes to him in penitence and faith will avoid the threatened death, and enter into life eternal, both of the body and the soul.

The Redeemer is called "the second Adam,"  1 Corinthians 15:45 , as being the head of his spiritual seed, and the source of righteousness and life to all believers, as the first Adam was the sorrow of sin and death to all his seed.

2. A city near the Jordan, towards the sea of Tiberias, at some distance from which the waters of the Jordan were heaped up for the passage of the Jews,  Joshua 3:16 .

Bridgeway Bible Dictionary

The name ‘Adam’, which is the name of the first human, is also the common Hebrew word for ‘man’, both man the individual and the human race as a whole. The root of the word appears originally to have meant ‘red’, and is the same as that for ‘red soil’. The two words are used together in the sentence, ‘The Lord God formed man (adam) of dust from the ground (adamah)’ ( Genesis 2:7).

Adam represented the climax of God’s creation. He shared his physical origin with other animals in being made of common earthly chemicals, yet he was uniquely different in that he was made in the image of God ( Genesis 1:27;  Genesis 2:7; see Creation; Humanity, Humankind ) God gave Adam a wife, Eve, who shared his unique nature ( Genesis 2:21-23), and this nature has passed on to the human race that has descended from them ( 1 Corinthians 15:45-49).

God placed Adam and Eve in a beautiful parkland for their time of testing and training. There they had opportunity to develop in body, mind and spirit, through doing physical work, making choices, learning skills, relating to each other and living in fellowship with God ( Genesis 2:15-23). But instead of submitting to God, Adam attempted to live independently of God and so fell into sin ( Genesis 3:1-7). In so doing he brought judgment upon himself and upon the whole human race which, in effect, existed in him ( Genesis 3:14-19;  Romans 5:12; see Death ; Sin ).

Only Jesus Christ can undo the damage that Adam has caused. Through his death, he becomes head of a new race of people, those saved by God’s super-abundant grace ( Romans 5:14-19). As Adam was the first of a race of people fitted for the physical life of the present age, so Jesus Christ is the first of a race of people fitted for the spiritual life of the age to come. As all who are in physical union with Adam share the deathly consequences of Adam’s sin, so all who are in spiritual union with Christ share the resurrection life that Christ has made possible ( 1 Corinthians 15:21-22;  1 Corinthians 15:45-49; see also Image ).

Adam lived 930 years, during which he fathered many sons and daughters ( Genesis 5:1-5; cf.  Genesis 1:28). The most well known of these were Cain, his firstborn; Abel, whom Cain murdered; and Seth, whom Adam and Eve considered a special gift from God to replace Abel ( Genesis 4:1-8;  Genesis 4:25).

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 Genesis 5

Adam was absolutely the first man whom God created. He was formed out of the dust of the earth (and hence his name), and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and gave him dominion over all the lower creatures ( Genesis 1:26;  2:7 ). He was placed after his creation in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate it, and to enjoy its fruits under this one prohibition: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

The first recorded act of Adam was his giving names to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, which God brought to him for this end. Thereafter the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and while in an unconscious state took one of his ribs, and closed up his flesh again; and of this rib he made a woman, whom he presented to him when he awoke. Adam received her as his wife, and 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." He called her Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Being induced by the tempter in the form of a serpent to eat the forbidden fruit, Eve persuaded Adam, and he also did eat. Thus man fell, and brought upon himself and his posterity all the sad consequences of his transgression. The narrative of the Fall comprehends in it the great promise of a Deliverer ( Genesis 3:15 ), the "first gospel" message to man. They were expelled from Eden, and at the east of the garden God placed a flame, which turned every way, to prevent access to the tree of life ( Genesis 3 ). How long they were in Paradise is matter of mere conjecture.

Shortly after their expulsion Eve brought forth her first-born, and called him Cain. Although we have the names of only three of Adam's sons, viz., Cain, Abel, and Seth, yet it is obvious that he had several sons and daughters ( Genesis 5:4 ). He died aged 930 years.

Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the whole human race. Evidences of varied kinds are abundant in proving the unity of the human race. The investigations of science, altogether independent of historical evidence, lead to the conclusion that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" ( Acts 17:26 . Compare  Romans 5:12-12;  1 Corinthians 15:22-49 ).

Morrish Bible Dictionary

The first man. The name is supposed to be derived from Adamah, 'earth, or red earth,' agreeing with the fact that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,  Genesis 2:7 . He differed from all other creatures, because God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, by which man became a living soul. He differed also in being made after the image and likeness of God: he was God's representative on earth, and to him was given dominion over all other living things, and he gave them names. He was placed in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, showing that occupation was a good thing for man even in innocence. God said also that it was not good for man to be alone, so He caused him to sleep, took from him a rib, and of this 'builded' a woman. Adam called her Isha for she was taken out of Ish, man: the two being a type of Christ and the church, in the closest union: cf.  Ephesians 5:31,32 .

Adam and Eve were permitted to eat of all the trees of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: of the which if they ate, in the same day they should die. Eve, being beguiled by Satan, ate of that tree; and at her suggestion, though not deceived as Eve was, Adam also took of it. Their eyes were at once opened, they knew they were naked, and hid themselves from God. They were transgressors, had fallen from their state of innocence, and acquired a conscience, and with it the sense of their own evil and guilt. When questioned by God, Adam laid the blame on Eve, ungratefully saying, "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." The ground was then cursed for Adam's sake: in sorrow he should eat of it all his life: thorns and thistles should be produced, and in the sweat of his face he should eat bread.

God made for Adam and Eve coats of skins and clothed them, foreshadowing the need for a vicarious sacrifice, and the righteousness that could only come to them through death. They were driven from the garden, and Cherubim with a flaming sword prevented them re-entering, lest they should eat of the tree of life and live for ever in their sin. Adam did not beget a son until after his fall: hence all mankind are alike fallen creatures.  Acts 17:26;  Romans 5:18,19;  1 Corinthians 15:22 . Adam lived 930 years and begat sons and daughters. We have no details of the life of Adam as a fallen man. Viewed typically as head of a race he stands in marked contrast to Christ, the last Adam.

Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary

The first man. The name implies the earth, from whence he was formed, which signifies red. It is worthy remark, that Christ is also called Adam. ( 1 Corinthians 15:45) And if we compare what the apostle saith of Christ, ( Colossians 1:15) with what is said of Adam, at the creation of the world, ( Genesis 1:26) it serves to explain, in what sense we are to limit the expression concerning him, who was formed from the earth as the first man. In that Scripture of the apostle, when speaking of Christ, he is called, "the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature." Hence we infer, that though the first Adam was indeed the first man, as manifested openly; yet the second Adam, so called, even the Lord from heaven, had a pre-existence in secret, and stood up the Great Head of his body the church, in the counsels of the divine mind, the Wisdom man, from all eternity. Indeed from this Wisdom man, this pattern, the first earthly man was formed. For so the charter of grace, at the creation, expressed it: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." ( Genesis 1:26) And if Christ was, and is, as the apostle was commissioned to tell the church, "the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature," nothing can be plainer than that the first Adam, so called, because indeed he was the first man openly, was created in the image or likeness of Him, who alone can be said to be the image of the invisible God, and in his human nature, "the first born of every creature." (See  Psalms 89:19;  Proverbs 8:22-31;  Micah 5:2)

Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types

 Genesis 5:2 (c) This man is a type of Christ in that he was the head of the human family, and

CHRIST is the head of GOD's family.

Adam was sinless in the first part of his life, and then deliberately and knowingly became a partner in Eve's sin in order that he might be with her, partake of her punishment, and continue to have her for his very own.

So our Lord Jesus was sinless and perfect.

• He willingly and knowingly took upon Himself the form of a servant,
• and was made sin for us that He might forever have us with Him. (See1Ti2:14). As by the sin of Adam all who are in Adam were made sinners, so by the obedience of CHRIST all who are in CHRIST are made righteous (  Romans 5:18).

 Romans 5:19 (b) Adam was the first of the earthly family and CHRIST is the first of the heavenly family. Our bodies are in the likeness of Adam, and in the new creation we shall be like CHRIST, the last Adam.

King James Dictionary

AD'AM, n. In Heb., Man primarily, the name of the human species, mankind appropriately, the first Man, the progenitor of the human race. The word signifies form, shape, or suitable form, hence, species. It is evidently connected with Heb., to be like or equal, to form an image, to assimilate. Whence the sense of likeness, image, form, shape Gr., a body, like. See Man.

Adam's apple, a species of citron See Citron also the prominent part of the throat.

Ad'am's needle, the popular name of the yucca, a plant of four species, cultivated in gardens. Of the roots, the Indians made a kind of bread. See Yucca.

Webster's Dictionary

(1): (n.) The name given in the Bible to the first man, the progenitor of the human race.

(2): (n.) "Original sin;" human frailty.

Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature

Adam, 1

Ad´am, the word by which the Bible designates the first human being.

It is evident that, in the earliest use of language, the vocal sound employed to designate the first perceived object, of any kind, would be an appellative, and would be formed from something known or apprehended to be a characteristic property of that object. The word would, therefore, be at once the appellative and the proper name. But when other objects of the same kind were discovered, or subsequently came into existence, difficulty would be felt; it would become necessary to guard against confusion, and the inventive faculty would be called upon to obtain a discriminative term for each and singular individual, while some equally appropriate term would be fixed upon for the whole kind. Different methods of effecting these two purposes might be resorted to, but the most natural would be to retain the original term in its simple state, for the first individual: and to make some modification of it by prefixing another sound, or by subjoining one, or by altering the vowel or vowels in the body of the word, in order to have a term for the kind, and for the separate individuals of the kind.

This reasoning is exemplified in the first applications of the word before us: ( Genesis 1:26), 'Let us make man [Adam] in our image;' ( Genesis 1:27), 'And God created the man [the Adam] in his own image.' The next instance ( Genesis 2:7) expresses the source of derivation, a character or property; namely, the material of which the human body was formed: 'And the Lord God [ Jehovah Elohim ] formed the man [the Adam ] dust from the ground [the Adamah ]'. The meaning of the primary word is, most probably, any kind of reddish tint, as a beautiful human complexion ( Lamentations 4:7); but its various derivatives are applied to different objects of a red or brown hue, or approaching to such. The word Adam, therefore, is an appellative noun made into a proper one. It is further remarkable that, in all the other instances in Genesis 2-3, which are nineteen, it is put with the article, the man, or the Adam.

The question arises, Was the uttered sound, originally employed for this purpose, the very phonetic Adam, or was it some other sound of correspondent signification? This is equivalent to asking, what was the primitive language of men?

That language originated in the instinctive cries of human beings herding together in a condition like that of common animals, is an hypothesis which, apart from all testimony of revelation, must appear unreasonable to a man of serious reflection. There are other animals, besides man, whose organs are capable of producing articulate sounds, through a considerable range of variety, and distinctly pronounced. How, then, is it that parrots, jays, and starlings have not among themselves developed an articulate language, transmitted it to their successive generations, and improved it, both in the life-time of the individual and in the series of many generations? Those birds never attempt to speak till they are compelled by a difficult process on the part of their trainers, and they never train each other.

Upon the mere ground of reasoning from the necessity of the case, it seems an inevitable conclusion that not the capacity merely, but the actual use of speech, with the corresponding faculty of promptly understanding it, was given to the first human beings by a superior power: and it would be a gratuitous absurdity to suppose that power to be any other than the Almighty Creator. In what manner such communication or infusion of what would be equivalent to a habit took place, it is in vain to inquire; the subject lies beyond the range of human investigation: but, from the evident exigency, it must have been instantaneous, or nearly so. It is not necessary to suppose that a copious language was thus bestowed upon the human creatures in the first stage of their existence. We need to suppose only so much as would be requisite for the notation of the ideas of natural wants and the most important mental conceptions; and from these, as germs, the powers of the mind and the faculty of vocal designation would educe new words and combinations as occasion demanded.

That the language thus formed continued to be the universal speech of mankind till after the deluge, and till the great cause of diversity took place, is in itself the most probable supposition [[[Tongues, Confusion Of]]] If there were any families of men which were not involved in the crime of the Babel-builders, they would almost certainly retain the primeval language. The longevity of the men of that period would be a powerful conservative of that language against the slow changes of time. That there were such exceptions seems to be almost an indubitable inference from the fact that Noah long survived the unholy attempt. His faithful piety would not have suffered him to fall into the snare; and it is difficult to suppose that none of his children and descendants would listen to his admonitions, and hold fast their integrity by adhering to him: on the contrary, it is reasonable to suppose that the habit and character of piety were established in many of them.

The confusion of tongues, therefore, whatever was the nature of that judicial visitation, would not fall upon that portion of men which was the most orderly, thoughtful, and pious, among whom the second father of mankind dwelt as their acknowledged and revered head.

If this supposition be admitted, we can have no difficulty in regarding as the mother of languages, not indeed the Hebrew, absolutely speaking, but that which was the stock whence branched the Hebrew, and its sister tongues, usually called the Shemitic, but more properly, by Dr. Prichard, the Syro-Arabian. It may then be maintained that the actually spoken names of Adam and all the others mentioned in the antediluvian history were those which we have in the Hebrew Bible, very slightly and not at all essentially varied.

It is among the clearest deductions of reason, that men and all dependent beings have been created, that is, produced or brought into their first existence by an intelligent and adequately powerful being. A question, however, arises of great interest and importance. Did the Almighty Creator produce only one man and one woman, from whom all other human beings have descended?—or did he create several parental pairs, from whom distinct stocks of men have been derived? The affirmative of the latter position has been maintained by some, and, it must be confessed, not without apparent reason. The manifest and great differences in complexion and figure, which distinguish several races of mankind, are supposed to be such as entirely to forbid the conclusion that they have all descended from one father and one mother. The question is usually regarded as equivalent to this: whether there is only one species of men, or there are several. But we cannot, in strict fairness, admit that the questions are identical. It is hypothetically conceivable that the Adorable God might give existence to any number of creatures, which should all possess the properties that characterize identity of species, even without such differences as constitute varieties, or with any degree of those differences.

But the admission of the possibility is not a concession of the reality. So great is the evidence in favor of the derivation of the entire mass of human beings from one pair of ancestors, that it has obtained the suffrage of the men most competent to judge upon a question of comparative anatomy and physiology.

The animals which render eminent services to man, and peculiarly depend upon his protection, are widely diffused—the horse, the dog, the hog, and the domestic fowl. Now of these, the varieties in each species are numerous and different, to a degree so great, that an observer ignorant of physiological history would scarcely believe them to be of the same species. But man is the most widely diffused of any animal. In the progress of ages and generations, he has naturalized himself to every climate, and to modes of life which would prove fatal to an individual man suddenly transferred from a remote point of the field. The alterations produced affect every part of the body, internal and external, without extinguishing the marks of the specific identity. A further and striking evidence is, that when persons of different varieties are conjugally united, the offspring, especially in two or three generations, becomes more prolific, and acquires a higher perfection in physical and mental qualities than was found in either of the parental races. From the deepest African black to the finest Caucasian white, the change runs through imperceptible gradations; and, if a middle hue be assumed, suppose some tint of brown, all the varieties of complexion may be explained upon the principle of divergence influenced by outward circumstances. The conclusion may be fairly drawn, in the words of the able translators and illustrators of Baron Cuvier's great work—'We are fully warranted in concluding, both from the comparison of man with inferior animals, so far as the inferiority will allow of such comparison, and, beyond that, by comparing him with himself, that the great family of mankind loudly proclaim a descent, at some period or other, from one common origin.'

Thus, by an investigation totally independent of historical authority, we are brought to the conclusion of the inspired writings, that the Creator hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth' ( Acts 17:26).

We shall now follow the course of those sacred documents in tracing the history of the first man, persuaded that their right interpretation is a sure basis of truth. At the same time we shall not reject illustrations from natural history and the reason of particular facts.

It is evident upon a little reflection, and the closest investigation confirms the conclusion, that the first human pair must have been created in a state equivalent to that which all subsequent human beings have had to reach by slow degrees, in growth, experience, observation, imitation, and the instruction of others: that is, a state of prime maturity, and with an infusion, concreation, or whatever we may call it, of knowledge and habits, both physical and intellectual, suitable to the place which man had to occupy in the system of creation, and adequate to his necessities in that place. Had it been otherwise, the new beings could not have preserved their animal existence, nor have held rational converse with each other, nor have paid to their Creator the homage of knowledge and love, adoration, and obedience; and reason clearly tells us that the last was the noblest end of existence. Those whom unhappy prejudices lead to reject revelation must either admit this, or must resort to suppositions of palpable absurdity and impossibility. If they will not admit a direct action of Divine power in creation and adaptation to the designed mode of existence, they must admit something far beyond the miraculous, an infinite succession of finite beings, or a spontaneous production of order, organization, and systematic action, from some unintelligent origin. The Bible coincides with this dictate of honest reason, expressing these facts in simple and artless language, suited to the circumstances of the men to whom revelation was first granted. That this production in a mature state was the fact with regard to the vegetable part of the creation, is declared in  Genesis 2:4-5 : 'In the day of Jehovah God's making the earth and the heavens, and every shrub of the field before it should be in the earth, and every herb of the field before it should bud.' The two terms, shrubs and herbage, are put to designate the whole vegetable kingdom. The reason of the case comprehends the other division of organized nature; and this is applied to man and all other animals, in the words, 'Out of the ground—dust out of the ground—Jehovah God formed them.'

It is to be observed that there are two narratives at the beginning of the Mosaic records, different in style and manner, distinct and independent; at first sight somewhat discrepant, but when strictly examined, perfectly compatible, and each one illustrating and completing the other. The first is contained in  Genesis 1:1 to  Genesis 2:3; and the other,  Genesis 2:4 to  Genesis 4:26. As is the case with the Scripture history generally, they consist of a few principal facts, detached anecdotes, leaving much of necessary implication which the good sense of the reader is called upon to supply; and passing over large spaces of the history of life, upon which all conjecture would be fruitless.

In the second of these narratives we read, 'And Jehovah God formed the man [Heb. the Adam], dust from the ground [ Ha-Adamah ], and blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living animal' ( Genesis 2:7). Here are two objects of attention, the organic mechanism of the human body, and the vitality with which it was endowed.

The mechanical material, formed (molded, or arranged, as an artificer models clay or wax) into the human and all other animal bodies, is called 'dust from the ground.' This would be a natural and easy expression to men in the early ages, before chemistry was known or minute philosophical distinctions were thought of, to convey, in a general form, the idea of earthy matter, the constituent substance of the ground on which we tread. To say, that of this the human and every other animal body was formed, is a position which would be at once the most easily apprehensible to an uncultivated mind, and which yet is the most exactly true upon the highest philosophical grounds. We now know, from chemical analysis, that the animal body is composed, in the inscrutable manner called organization, of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, lime, iron, sulfur, and phosphorus. Now all these are mineral substances, which in their various combinations form a very large part of the solid ground.

The expression which we have rendered 'living animal' sets before us the organic life of the animal frame, that mysterious something which man cannot create nor restore, which baffles the most acute philosophers to search out its nature, and which reason combines with Scripture to refer to the immediate agency of the Almighty—'in him we live, and move, and have our being.'

The other narrative is contained in these words, 'God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them' ( Genesis 1:27). The image (resemblance, such as a shadow bears to the object which casts it) of God is an expression which breathes at once archaic simplicity and the most recondite wisdom; for what term could the most cultivated and copious language bring forth more suitable to the purpose? It presents to us man as made in a resemblance to the author of his being, a true resemblance, but faint and shadowy; an outline, faithful according to its capacity, yet infinitely remote from the reality: a distant form of the intelligence, wisdom, power, rectitude, goodness, and dominion of the Adorable Supreme. To the inferior sentient beings with which he is connected man stands in the place of God. We have every reason to think that none of them are capable of conceiving a being higher than man. All, in their different ways, look up to him as their superior; the ferocious generally flee before him, afraid to encounter his power, and the gentle court his protection and show their highest joy to consist in serving and pleasing him. Even in our degenerate state it is manifest that if we treat the domesticated animals with wisdom and kindness, their attachment is most ardent and faithful.

Thus had man the shadow of the divine dominion and authority over the inferior creation. The attribute of power was also given to him, in his being made able to convert the inanimate objects and those possessing only the vegetable life, into the instruments and the materials for supplying his wants, and continually enlarging his sphere of command.

In such a state of things knowledge and wisdom are implied: the one quality, an acquaintance with those substances and their changeful actions which were necessary for a creature like man to understand, in order to his safety and comfort; the other, such sagacity as would direct him in selecting the best objects of desire and pursuit, and the right means for attaining them.

Above all, moral excellence must have been comprised in this 'image of God;' and not only forming a part of it, but being its crown of beauty and glory. The Christian inspiration, than which no more perfect disclosure of God is to take place on this side eternity, casts its light upon this subject: for this apostle Paul, in urging the obligations of Christians to perfect holiness, evidently alludes to the endowments of the first man in two parallel and mutually illustrative epistles; '—the new man, renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him; the new man which, after [according to] God, is created in righteousness and true holiness' ( Colossians 3:10;  Ephesians 4:24).

In this perfection of faculties, and with these high prerogatives of moral existence, did human nature, in its first subject, rise up from the creating hand. The whole Scripture-narrative implies that this state of existence was one of correspondent activity and enjoyment. It plainly represents the Deity himself as condescending to assume a human form and to employ human speech, in order to instruct and exercise the happy creatures whom (to borrow the just and beautiful language of the Apocryphal 'Wisdom') 'God created for incorruptibility, and made him an image of his own nature' (Wisdom of Solomon 2:23).

The noble and sublime idea that man thus had his Maker for his teacher and guide, precludes a thousand difficulties. It shows us the simple, direct, and effectual method by which the newly formed creature would have communicated to him all the intellectual knowledge, and all the practical arts and manipulations, which were needful and beneficial for him.

Religious knowledge and its appropriate habits also required an immediate infusion: and these are pre-eminently comprehended in the 'image of God.' On the one hand, it is not to be supposed that the newly created man and his female companion were inspired with a very ample share of the doctrinal knowledge which was communicated to their posterity by the successive and accumulating revolutions of more than four thousand years: and, on the other, we cannot imagine that they were left in gross ignorance upon the existence and excellencies of the Being who had made them, their obligations to him, and the way in which they might continue to receive the greatest blessings from him. It is self-evident that, to have attained such a kind and degree of knowledge, by spontaneous effort, under even the favorable circumstances of a state of negative innocence, would have been a long and arduous work. But the sacred narrative leaves no room for doubt upon this head. In the primitive style it tells of God as speaking to them, commanding, instructing, assigning their work, pointing out their danger, and showing how to avoid it. All this, reduced to the dry simplicity of detail, is equivalent to saying that the Creator, infinitely kind and condescending, by the use of forms and modes adapted to their capacity, fed their minds with truth, gave them a ready understanding of it and that delight in it which constituted holiness, taught them to hold intercourse with himself by direct addresses in both praise and prayer, and gave some disclosures of a future state of blessedness when they should have fulfilled the condition of their probation.

An especial instance of this instruction and infusion of practical habits is given to us in the narrative: 'Out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man, to see what he would call them' ( Genesis 2:19). This, taken out of the style of condescending, anthropomorphism, amounts to such a statement as the following: the Creator had not only formed man with organs of speech, but he taught him the use of them, by an immediate communication of the practical faculty and its accompanying intelligence; and he guided the man, as yet the solitary one of his species, to this among the first applications of speech, the designating of the animals with which he was connected, by appellative words which would both be the help of his memory and assist his mental operations, and thus would be introductory and facilitating to more enlarged applications of thought and language. We are further warranted, by the recognized fact of the anecdotal and fragmentary structure of the Scripture history, to regard this as the selected instance for exhibiting a whole kind or class of operations or processes; implying that, in the same or similar manner, the first man was led to understand something of the qualities and relations of vegetables, earthy matters, the visible heavens, and the other external objects to which he had a relation.

The next important article in this primeval history is the creation of the human female. The narrative is given in the more summary manner in the former of the two documents:—'Male and female created he them' ( Genesis 1:27). It stands a little more at length in a third document, which begins the fifth chapter, and has the characteristic heading or title by which the Hebrews designated a separate work. 'This, the book of the generations of Adam. In the day God created Adam; he made him in the likeness of God, male and female he created them; and he blessed them, and he called their name Adam, in the day of their being created' ( Genesis 5:1-2).

The second of the narratives is more circumstantial: 'And Jehovah God said, it is not good the man's being alone: I will make for him a help suitable for him,'  Genesis 2:18. Then follows the passage concerning the review and the naming of the inferior animals; and it continues—'but for Adam he found not a help suitable for him. And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man [the Adam], and he slept: and he took one out of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place: and Jehovah God built up the rib which he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man,'  Genesis 2:20-22.

The next particular into which the sacred history leads us, is one which we cannot approach without a painful sense of its difficulty and delicacy. It stands thus in the Authorized Version: 'And they were both naked, the man and his wife; and were not ashamed' ( Genesis 2:25). The common interpretation is, that, in this respect, the two human beings, the first and only existing ones, were precisely in the condition of the youngest infants, incapable of perceiving any incongruity in the total destitution of artificial clothing. But a little reflection will tell us, and the more carefully that reflection is pursued the more it will appear just, that this supposition is inconsistent with what we have established on solid grounds, the supernatural infusion into the minds of our first parents and into their nervous and muscular faculties, of the knowledge and practical habits which their descendants have had to acquire by the long process of instruction and example. We have seen the necessity that there must have been communicated to them, directly by the Creator, no inconsiderable measure of natural knowledge and the methods of applying it, or their lives could not have been secured; and of moral and spiritual 'knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness,' such a measure as would belong to the sinless state, and would enable them to render an intelligent and perfect worship to the Glorious Deity. It seems impossible for that state of mind and habits to exist without a correct sensibility to proprieties and decencies which infant children cannot understand or feel; and the capacities and duties of their conjugal state are implied in the narrative. Further, it cannot be overlooked that, though we are entitled to ascribe to the locality of Eden the most bland atmosphere and delightful soil, yet the action of the sun's rays upon the naked skin, the range of temperature through the day and the night, the alternations of dryness and moisture, the various labor among trees and bushes, and exposure to insects, would render some protective clothing quite indispensable.

From these considerations we feel ourselves obliged to understand the word arom in that which is its most usual signification in the Hebrew language, as importing not an absolute, but a partial or comparative nudity, a stripping off of the upper garment, or of some other usual article of dress, when all the habiliments were not laid aside; and this is a more frequent signification than that of entire destitution. If it be asked, Whence did Adam and Eve derive this clothing? we reply, that, as a part of the divine instruction which we have established, they were taught to take off the inner bark of some trees, which would answer extremely well for this purpose. If an objection be drawn from  Genesis 3:7;  Genesis 3:10-11, we reply, that, in consequence of the transgression, the clothing was disgracefully injured.

Another inquiry presents itself. How long did the state of paradisiac innocence and happiness continue? Some have regarded the period as very brief, not more even than a single day; but this manifestly falls very short of the time which a reasonable probability requires. The first man was brought into existence in the region called Eden; then he was introduced into a particular part of it, the garden, replenished with the richest productions of the Creator's bounty for the delight of the eye and the other senses; the most agreeable labor was required 'to dress and to keep it,' implying some arts of culture, preservation from injury, training flowers and fruits, and knowing the various uses and enjoyments of the produce; making observation upon the works of God, of which an investigation and designating of animals is expressly specified; nor can we suppose that there was no contemplation of the magnificent sky and the heavenly bodies: above all, the wondrous communion with the condescending Deity, and probably with created spirits of superior orders, by which the mind would be excited, its capacity enlarged, and its holy felicity continually increased. It is also to be remarked, that the narrative ( Genesis 2:19-20) conveys the implication that some time was allowed to elapse, that Adam might discover and feel his want of a companion of his own species, 'a help correspondent to him.'

These considerations impress us with a sense of probability, amounting to a conviction, that a period not very short was requisite for the exercise of man's faculties, the disclosures of his happiness, and the service of adoration which he could pay to his Creator. But all these considerations are strengthened by the recollection that they attach to man's solitary state; and that they all require new and enlarged application when the addition of conjugal life is brought into the account. The conclusion appears irresistible that a duration of many days, or rather weeks or months, would be requisite for so many and important purposes.

Thus divinely honored and happy were the progenitors of mankind in the state of their creation.

The next scene which the sacred history brings before us is a dark reverse. Another agent comes into the field and successfully employs his arts for seducing Eve, and by her means Adam, from their original state of rectitude, dignity, and happiness.

Among the provisions of divine wisdom and goodness were two vegetable productions of wondrous qualities and mysterious significancy; 'the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil' ( Genesis 2:9). It would add to the precision of the terms, and perhaps aid our understanding of them, if we were to adhere strictly to the Hebrew by retaining the definite prefix: and then we have 'the tree of the life' and 'the tree of the knowledge.' Thus would be indicated the particular life of which the one was a symbol and instrument, and the fatal knowledge springing from the abuse of the other. At the same time, we do not maintain that these appellations were given to them at the beginning. We rather suppose that they were applied afterwards, suggested by the events and connection, and so became the historical names.

We see no sufficient reason to understand, as some do, 'the tree of life,' collectively, as implying a species, and that there were many trees of that species. The figurative use of the expression in  Revelation 22:2, where a plurality is plainly intended, involves no evidence of such a design in this literal narrative. The phraseology of the text best agrees with the idea of a single tree, designed for a special purpose, and not intended to perpetuate its kind. Though in the state of innocence, Adam and Eve might be liable to some corporal suffering from the changes of the season and the weather, or accidental circumstances; in any case of which occurring, this tree had been endowed by the bountiful Creator with a medicinal and restorative property, probably in the way of instantaneous miracle. We think also that it was designed for a sacramental or symbolical purpose, a representation and pledge of 'the life,' emphatically so called, heavenly immortality when the term of probation should be happily completed. Yet we by no means suppose that this 'tree of the life' possessed any intrinsic property of communicating immortality. In the latter view, it was a sign and seal of the divine promise. But, with regard to the former intention, we see nothing to forbid the idea that it had most efficacious medicinal properties in its fruit, leaves, and other parts. Such were called trees of life by the Hebrews ( Proverbs 3:18;  Proverbs 11:30;  Proverbs 13:12;  Proverbs 15:4).

The 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' might be any tree whatever; it might be of any species even yet remaining, though, if it were so, we could not determine its species, for the plain reason, that no name, description, or information whatever is given that could possibly lead to the ascertainment. Yet we cannot but think the more reasonable probability to be, that it was a tree having poisonous properties, stimulating, and intoxicating, such as are found in some existing species, especially in hot climates. On this ground, the prohibition to eat or even touch the tree was a beneficent provision against the danger of pain and death. But the revealed object of this 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' was that which would require no particular properties beyond some degree of external beauty and fruit of an immediately pleasant taste. That object was to be a test of obedience. For such a purpose, it is evident that to select an indifferent act, to be the object prohibited, was necessary; as the obligation to refrain should be only that which arises simply, so far as the subject of the law can know, from the sacred will of the law-giver. This does not, however, nullify what we have said upon the possibility, or even probability, that the tree in question had noxious qualities: for upon either the affirmative or the negative of the supposition, the subjects of this positive law, having upon all antecedent grounds the fullest conviction of the perfect rectitude and benevolence of their Creator, would see in it the simple character of a test, a means of proof, whether they would or would not implicitly confide in him. For so doing they had every possible reason; and against any thought or mental feeling tending to the violation of the precept, they were in possession of the most powerful motives. There was no difficulty in the observance. They were surrounded with a paradise of delights, and they had no reason to imagine that any good whatever would accrue to them from their seizing upon anything prohibited. If perplexity or doubt arose, they had ready access to their divine benefactor for obtaining information and direction. But they allowed the thought of disobedience to form itself into a disposition, and then a purpose.

Thus was the seal broken, the integrity of the heart was gone, the sin was generated, and the outward act was the consummation of the dire process. Eve, less informed, less cautious, less endowed with strength of mind, became the more ready victim. 'The woman, being deceived, was in the transgression;' but 'Adam was not deceived' ( 1 Timothy 2:14). He rushed knowingly and deliberately to ruin. The offence had grievous aggravations. It was the preference of a trifling gratification to the approbation of the Supreme Lord of the universe; it implied a denial of the wisdom, holiness, goodness, veracity, and power of God; it was marked with extreme ingratitude; and it involved a contemptuous disregard of consequences, awfully impious as it referred to their immediate connection with the moral government of God and cruelly selfish as it respected their posterity

The instrument of the temptation was a serpent; whether any one of the existing kinds it is evidently impossible for us to know. Of that numerous order many species are of brilliant colors and playful in their attitudes and manners, so that one may well conceive of such an object attracting and fascinating the first woman. Whether it spoke in an articulate voice, like the human, or expressed the sentiments attributed to it by a succession of remarkable and significant actions, may be a subject of reasonable question. The latter is possible, and it seems the preferable hypothesis, as, without a miraculous intervention, the mouth and throat of no serpent could form a vocal utterance of words; and we cannot attribute to any wicked spirit the power of working miracles.

This part of the narrative begins with the words, 'And the serpent was crafty above every animal of the field' ( Genesis 3:1). It is to be observed that this is not said of the order of serpents, as if it were a general property of them, but of that particular serpent. Indeed, this 'cunning craftiness, lying in wait to deceive' ( Ephesians 4:14), is the very character of that malignant creature of whose wily stratagems the reptile was a mere instrument. The existence of spirits, superior to man, and of whom some have become depraved, and are laboring to spread wickedness and misery to the utmost of their power, has been found to be the belief of all nations, ancient and modern, of whom we possess information. It has also been the general doctrine of both Jews and Christians, that one of those fallen spirits was the real agent in this first and successful temptation; and this doctrine receives strong confirmation from the declarations of our Lord and his apostles. See  2 Corinthians 2:11;  2 Corinthians 11:3;  2 Corinthians 11:14;  Revelation 12:9;  Revelation 20:2;  John 8:44. The summary of these passages presents almost a history of the Fall—the tempter, his manifold arts, his serpentine disguises, his falsehood, his restless activity, his bloodthirsty cruelty, and his early success in that career of deception and destruction.

The condescending Deity, who had held gracious and instructive communion with the parents of mankind, assuming a human form and adapting all his proceedings to their capacity, visibly stood before them; by a searching interrogatory drew from them the confession of their guilt, which yet they aggravated by evasions and insinuations against God himself; and pronounced on them and their seducer the sentence due. On the woman he inflicted the pains of child-bearing, and a deeper and more humiliating dependence upon her husband. He doomed the man to hard and often fruitless toil, instead of easy and pleasant labor. On both, or rather on human nature universally, he pronounced the awful sentence of death. The denunciation of the serpent partakes more of a symbolical character, and so seems to carry a strong implication of the nature and the wickedness of the concealed agent. The human sufferings threatened are all, excepting the last, which will require a separate consideration, of a remedial and corrective kind.

Of a quite different character are the penal denunciations upon the serpent. If they be understood literally, and of course applied to the whole order of Ophidia, they will be found to be so flagrantly at variance with the most demonstrated facts in their physiology and economy, as to lead to inferences unfavorable to belief in revelation. Let us examine the particulars:—

'Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle,'  Genesis 3:14; literally, 'above every behemah.'But the serpent tribe cannot be classed with that of the behemoth. The word is of very frequent occurrence in the Old Testament; and though, in a few instances, it seems to be put for brevity so as to be inclusive of the flocks as well as the herds, and in poetical diction it sometimes stands metonymically for animals generally (as  Job 18:3;  Psalms 73:22;  Ecclesiastes 3:18-19;  Ecclesiastes 3:21); yet its proper and universal application is to the large animals (pachyderms and ruminants), such as the elephant, camel, deer, horse, ox, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, etc. [BEHEMOTH].

As little will the declaration, 'cursed—,' agree with natural truth. It may, indeed, be supposed to be verified in the shuddering which persons generally feel at the aspect of any one of the order of serpents; but this takes place also in many other cases. It springs from fear of the formidable weapons with which some species are armed, as few persons know beforehand which are venomous and which are harmless; and, after all, this is rather an advantage than a curse to the animal. It is an effectual defense without effort. Indeed, we may say that no tribe of animals is so secure from danger, or is so able to obtain its sustenance and all the enjoyments which its capacity and habits require, as the whole order of serpents. If, then, we decline to urge the objection from the word behemah, it is difficult to conceive that serpents have more causes of suffering than any other great division of animals, or even so much.

Further, 'going upon the belly' is to none of them a punishment. With some differences of mode, their progression is produced by the pushing of scales, shields, or rings against the ground, by muscular contractions and dilatations, by elastic springings, by vertical undulations, or by horizontal wrigglings; but, in every variety, the entire organization—skeleton, muscles, nerves, integuments—is adapted to the mode of progression belonging to each species. That mode, in every variety of it, is sufficiently easy and rapid (often very rapid) for all the purposes of the animal's life and the amplitude of its enjoyments. To imagine this mode of motion to be, in any sense, a change from a prior attitude and habit of the erect kind, or being furnished with wings, indicates a perfect ignorance of the anatomy of serpents. Yet it has been said by learned and eminent theological interpreters, that, before this crime was committed, the serpent probably did 'not go upon his belly, but moved upon the hinder part of his body, with his head, breast, and belly upright' (Clarke's Bible, p. 1690). This notion may have obtained credence from the fact that some of the numerous serpent species, when excited, raise the neck pretty high; but the posture is to strike, and they cannot maintain it in creeping except for a very short distance.

Neither do they 'eat dust.' All serpents are carnivorous; their food, according to the size and power of the species, is taken from the tribes of insects, worms, frogs, and toads, and newts, birds, mice, and other small quadrupeds, till the scale ascends to the pythons and boas, which can master and swallow very large animals. The excellent writer just cited, in his anxiety to do honor, as he deemed it, to the accuracy of Scripture allusions, has said of the serpent, 'Now that he creeps with his very mouth upon the earth, he must necessarily take his food out of the dust, and so lick in some of the dust with it.' But this is not the fact. Serpents habitually obtain their food among herbage or in water; they seize their prey with the mouth, often elevate the head, and are no more exposed to the necessity of swallowing adherent earth than are carnivorous birds or quadrupeds. At the same time, it may be understood figuratively. 'Eating the dust is but another term for groveling in the dust; and this is equivalent to being reduced to a condition of meanness, shame, and contempt—See  Micah 7:17.'

But these and other inconsistencies and difficulties (insuperable they do indeed appear to us) are swept away when we consider the fact before stated, that the Hebrew, literally rendered, is the serpent was, etc., and that it refers specifically and personally to a rational and accountable being, the spirit of lying and cruelty, the devil, the Satan, the old serpent. That God, the infinitely holy, good, and wise, should have permitted any one or more celestial spirits to apostatize from purity, and to be the successful seducers of mankind, is indeed an awful and overwhelming mystery. But it is not more so than the permitted existence of many among mankind, whose rare talents and extraordinary command of power and opportunity, combined with extreme depravity, have rendered them the plague and curse of the earth; and the whole merges into the awful and insolvable problem, Why has the All-perfect Deity permitted evil at all? We are firmly assured that He will bring forth, at last, the most triumphant evidence that 'He is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works,'  Psalms 145:17. In the mean time, our happiness lies in the implicit confidence which we cannot but feel to be due to the Being of Infinite Perfection.

The remaining part of the denunciation upon the false and cruel seducer sent a beam of light into the agonized hearts of our guilty first parents: 'And enmity will I put between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he will attack thee [on] the head, and thou wilt attack him [at] the heel,'  Genesis 3:15. Christian interpreters generally regard this as the first gospel-promise, and we think with good reason. It was a manifestation of mercy: it revealed a Deliverer, who 'should be a human being, in a peculiar sense the offspring of the female, who should also, in some way not yet made known, counteract and remedy the injury inflicted, and who, though partially suffering from the malignant power, should, in the end, completely conquer it, and convert its very success into its own punishment' (J. Pye Smith, Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, vol. 1, p. 226).

The awful threatening to man was, 'In the day that thou eatest of it, thou wilt die the death,'  Genesis 2:17. The infliction is Death in the most comprehensive sense, that which stands opposed to Life, the life of not only animal enjoyment, but holy happiness, the life which comported with the image of God. This was lost by the fall; and the sentence of physical death was pronounced, to be executed in due time. Divine mercy gave a long respite.

The same mercy was displayed in still more tempering the terrors of justice. The garden of delights was not to be the abode of rebellious creatures. But before they were turned out into a bleak and dreary wilderness, God was pleased to direct them to make clothing suitable to their new and degraded condition, of the skins of animals. That those animals had been offered in sacrifice is a conjecture supported by so much probable evidence, that we may regard it as a well-established truth. Any attempt to force back the way, to gain anew the tree of life, and take violent or fraudulent possession, would have been equally impious and nugatory. The sacrifice (which all approximative argument obliges us to admit), united with the promise of a deliverer, and the promise of substantial clothing, contained much hope of pardon and grace. The terrible debarring by lightning flashes and their consequent thunder, and by visible supernatural agency ( Genesis 3:22-24), from a return to the bowers of bliss, are expressed in the characteristic patriarchal style of anthropopathy; but the meaning evidently is, that the fallen creature is unable by any efforts of his own to reinstate himself in the favor of God, and that whatever hope of restoration he may be allowed to cherish must spring solely from free benevolence. Thus, in laying the first stone of the temple, which shall be an immortal habitation of the Divine glory, it was manifested that 'Salvation is of the Lord,' and that 'grace reigneth through righteousness unto eternal life.'

From this time we have little recorded of the lives of Adam and Eve. Their three sons are mentioned with important circumstances in connection with each of them. See the articles Cain Abel and Seth. Cain was probably born in the year after the fall; Abel, possibly some years later; Seth, certainly one hundred and thirty years from the creation of his parents. After that, Adam lived eight hundred years, and had sons and daughters, doubtless by Eve, and then he died, nine hundred and thirty years old. In that prodigious period many events, and those of great importance, must have occurred; but the wise providence of God has not seen fit to preserve to us any memorial of them, and scarcely any vestiges or hints are afforded of the occupations and mode of life of men through the antediluvian period [ANTEDILUVIANS].

Adam, 2

Adam, a city at some distance east from the Jordan, to which, or beyond which, the overflow of the waters of that river extended when the course of the stream to the Dead Sea was stayed to afford the Israelites a passage across its channel.

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

(Heb. Adam', אָדָם , Red (See Edom); hence אֲדָמָה , the Ground, from the Ruddiness of flesh and of clayey soil, see Gesenius, Thes. Heb. p. 24, 25; comp. Josephus, Ant. 2, 1; Jonathan's Targum on  Genesis 2:7; Leusden, Onomast, s.v.; Marek, Hist. Paradisi, 2, 5), the name of a man and a place.

1. The first man, whose creation, fall, and history are detailed by Moses in  Genesis 2:1-25;  Genesis 3:1-24;  Genesis 4:1-26;  Genesis 5:1-32, being in fact the same Hebrew word usually rendered "man" (including Woman also,  Genesis 5:1-2), but often used distinctively with the article ( הָאָדָם , Ha-Adam', "the man," Sept. and N.T. Ἀδάμ , Josephus ῎Αδαμος , Ant. 1, 1, 2), as a proper name (comp.  Tobit 8:1-21;  Tobit 6:1-17). It seems at first thought somewhat strange that the head of the human family should have received his distinctive name from the affinity which he had, in the lower part of his nature, to the dust of the earth — that he should have been called Adam, as being taken in his bodily part from adamah, the ground; the more especially as the name was not assumed by man himself, but imposed by God, and imposed in immediate connection with man's destination to bear the image of God: "And God said, Let us make man (Adam) in our image, after our likeness," etc. This apparent incongruity has led some, in particular Richers (Die Schopfungs-, Paradieses- und Sundfluthsgesch ichte, p. 163), to adopt another etymology of the term — to make Adam a derivative of damah ( דִּמִה , To be like, to resemble).

Delitzsch, however (System der Bibl. Psychologie, p. 49), has objected to this view, both on grammatical and other grounds; and though we do not see the force of his grammatical objection to the derivation in question, yet we think he puts the matter itself rightly, and thereby justifies the received opinion. Man's name is kindred with that of the earth, adamah, not because of its being his characteristic dignity that God made him after his image, but because of this, that God made after his image one who had been taken from the earth. The likeness to God man had in common with the angels, but that, as the possessor of this likeness, he should be Adam — this is what brought him into union with two worlds — the world of spirit and the world of matter — rendered him the center and the bond of all that had been made, the fitting topstone of the whole work of creation, and the motive principle of the world's history. It is precisely his having the image of God in an earthen vessel, that, while made somewhat lower than the angels, he occupies a higher position than they in respect to the affairs of this world ( Psalms 8:5;  Hebrews 2:5).

I. History. — In the first nine chapters of Genesis there appear to be three distinct histories relating more or less to the life of Adam. The first extends from  Genesis 1:1-31;  Genesis 2:1-3, the second from 2:4 to 4:26, the third from 5:1 to the end of 9. The word ( תּוֹלְרוֹת ) at the commencement of the latter two narratives, which is rendered there and elsewhere generations, may also be rendered history. The style of the second of these records differs very considerably from that of the first. In the first the Deity is designated by the word Elohim; in the second he is generally spoken of as Jehovah Elohim. The object of the first of these narratives is to record the creation; that of the second to give an account of paradise, the original sin of man, and the immediate posterity of Adam; the third contains mainly the history of Noah, referring, it would seem, to Adam and his descendants, principally in relation to that patriarch. The first account of the creation of man is in general terms, the two sexes being spoken of together (ch. 1:27) as a unit of species; whereas in the second, or resumptive account, the separate formation of the man and the woman is detailed. This simple consideration reconciles all apparent discrepancy between the two narratives. (See Genesis).

The representation there given is that Adam was absolutely the first man, and was created by the direct agency of God; that this act of creation, including the immediately subsequent creation of Eve, was the last in a series of creative acts which extended through a period of six literal days. (See Creation). This Scriptural account is, of course, entirely opposed to the atheistic hypothesis, which denies any definite beginning to the human race, but conceives the successive generations of men to have run on in a kind of infinite series, to which no beginning can be assigned. Such a theory, originally propounded by heathen philosophers, has also been asserted by the more extreme section of infidel writers in Christian times. But the voice of tradition, which, in all the more ancient nations, uniformly points to a comparatively recent period for the origin of the human family, has now received conclusive attestations from learned research and scientific inquiry. Not only have the remains of human art and civilization, the more they have been explored, yielded more convincing evidence of a period not very remote when the human family itself was in infancy, but the languages of the world also, when carefully investigated and compared, as they have of late been, point to a common and not exceedingly remote origin. This is the view of Sir William Jones, and, later, of Bunsen also. The same conclusion substantially is reached by Dr. Donaldson, who, after stating what has already been accomplished in this department of learning, expresses his conviction, on the ground alone of the affinities of language, that "investigation will fully confirm what the great apostle proclaimed in the Areopagus, that God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" (New Cratylus, p. 19).

The position is still further confirmed by the results that have been gained in the region of natural science. The most skillful and accomplished naturalists — such as Cuvier, Blumenbach, Pritchard — have established beyond any reasonable doubt the unity of the human family as a species (see particularly Pritchard's History of Man); and those who have prosecuted geological researches, while they have found remains in the different strata of rocks of numberless species of inferior animals, can point to no human petrifactions — none, at least, but what appear in some comparatively recent and local formations — a proof that man is of too late an origin for his remains to have mingled with those of the extinct animal tribes of preceding ages. Science generally can tell of no separate creations for animals of one and the same species; and while all geologic history is full of the beginnings and the ends of species, "it exhibits no genealogies of development" (Miller's Testimony of the Rocks, p. 201). That, when created, man must have been formed in full maturity, as Adam is related to have been, was a necessity arising from the very conditions of existence. It has been discovered, by searching into the remains of preceding ages and generations of living creatures, that there has been a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth — a progress in the direction of an increasing resemblance to the existing forms of being, and in particular to man. But the connection between the earlier and the later, the imperfect and the perfect, is not that of direct lineage or parental descent, as if it came in the way merely of natural growth and development. The connection, as Agassiz has said in his Principles of Zoology, "is of a higher and immaterial nature; it is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end toward which the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first palaeozoic fishes." (See Geology).

The Almighty formed Adam out of the dust of the earth, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and gave him dominion over all the lower creatures ( Genesis 1:26;  Genesis 2:7), B.C. 4172. He created him in his own image (See Perfection), and, having pronounced a blessing upon him, placed him in a delightful garden, that he might cultivate it and enjoy its fruits. (See Eden). At the same time, however, he gave him the following injunction: "Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The first recorded exercise of Adam's power and intelligence was his giving names to the beasts of the field and fowls of the air, which the Lord brought before him for this purpose. The examination thus afforded him having shown that it was not good for man to be alone, the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and while he remained in a semi-conscious state took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh; and of the rib thus taken from man he made a woman, whom he presented to him when he awoke. (See Eve).

Adam received her, saying, "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." (See Marriage).

This woman, being seduced by the tempter, persuaded her husband to eat of the forbidden fruit (comp. Theuer, De Adamo lapso, divortium c. Eva cogitante, Jen. 1759). When called to judgment for this transgression before God, Adam blamed his wife, and the woman blamed the serpent- tempter. God punished the tempter by degradation and dread (See Serpent); the woman by painful travail and a situation of submission; and the man by a life of labor and toil — of which punishment every day witnesses the fulfillment. (See Fall). As their natural passions now became irregular, and their exposure to accidents great, God made a covering of skin for Adam and for his wife. He also expelled them from his garden to the land around it, where Adam had been made, and where was to be their future dwelling; placing at the east of the garden a flame, which turned every way, to prevent access to the tree of life ( Genesis 3:1-24). (See Death).

It is not known how long Adam and his wife continued in Paradise: some think many years; others not many days; others not many hours. Shortly after their expulsion Eve brought forth Cain ( Genesis 4:1-2). Scripture notices but three sons of Adam, Cain, Abel, and Seth (q.v.), but contains an allusion ( Genesis 5:4) to "sons and daughters;" no doubt several. He died B.C. 3242, aged 930 (see Bruckner, Ob Adam Wirklich Ub. 900 J. Alt Geworden, Aurich, 1799). (See Longevity).

Such is the simple narrative of the Bible relative to the progenitor of the human race, to which it only remains to add that his faith doubtless recognised in the promise of "the woman's seed" that should "bruise the serpent's head" the atoning merits of the future Redeemer. (See Messiah). Whatever difficulties we may find in the Scriptural account, we accept it as a literal statement of facts, and shall therefore dismiss the rationalistic theories and speculations to which it has given rise. The results are of the utmost importance to mankind, and the light that the Bible thus sheds upon the origin of the race and the source of human depravity is of inestimable value even in a historical and philosophical point of view. (See Man).

See, generally, Eichhorn's Urgesch. ed. Gabler (Nurnb. 1790); Hug, Mos. Gesch. (Frankf. und Leipz. 1790). Buttman has collected the parallels of heathen mythology in the Neue Berl. Monatsschr. 1804, p. 261 sq.; also in his Mythologus, 1, 122 sq.; comp. Gesenius, in the Hall. Encykl. 1, 358. In the Hindoo sacred books the first human pair are called Meshia and Meshiam (Zend Avesta, 1, 23; 3:84). For the Talmudic fables respecting Adam, see Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. 1, 84-365, 830; 2, 417; Otho, Lex. Rabb. p. 9 sq. Those of the Koran are found in Sura 2, 30 sq.; 7, 11 sq.; see Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 21; comp. D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Or. s.v. Christian traditions may be seen in Epiphan. Haer. 46, 2 sq.; Augustine, Civ. Dei, 14, 17; Cedrenus, Hist. p. 6, 9; see especially Fabricii Codex Pseudepigraphus Vet. Test. 1, 1 sq. The Vulgate. in  Joshua 14:15, ranks Adam among the Anakim; see Gotze, Quanta Adamistatura fuerit (Lips. 1722); comp. Edzardi, Ad Cod. Avoda Sara, p. 530 sq. (See Antediluvians).

II. The question of the Unity Of The Human Race, or the descent of the race from a single pair, has given rise to much discussion of late, after it had been thought to be finally settled. It may be stated thus: "Did the Almighty Creator produce only one man and one woman, from whom all other human beings have descended? or did he create several parental pairs, from whom distinct stocks of men have been derived? The question is usually regarded as equivalent to this: whether or not there is more than one species of men? But we cannot, in strict fairness, admit that the questions are identical. It is hypothetically Conceivable that the adorable God might give existence to any number of creatures, which should all possess the properties that characterize identity of species, even without such differences as constitute varieties, or with any degree of those differences. But the admission of the possibility is not a concession of the reality. So great is the evidence in favor of the derivation of the entire mass of human beings from one pair of ancestors, that it has obtained the suffrage of the men most competent to judge upon a question of comparative anatomy and physiology.

" (1.) The animals which render eminent services to man, and peculiarly depend upon his protection, are widely diffused — the horse, the dog, the hog, the domestic fowl. Now of these, the varieties in each species are numerous and different, to a degree so great that an observer ignorant of physiological history would scarcely believe them to be of the same species. But man is the most widely diffused of any animal. In the progress of ages and generations, he has naturalized himself to every climate, and to modes of life which would prove fatal to an individual man suddenly transferred from a remote point of the field. The alterations produced affect every part of the body, internal and external, without extinguishing the marks of the specific identity.

" (2.) A further and striking evidence is, that when persons of different varieties are conjugally united, the offspring, especially in two or three generations, becomes more prolific, and acquires a higher perfection in physical and mental qualities than was found in either of the parental races. From the deepest African black to the finest Caucasian white, the change runs through imperceptible gradations; and, if a middle hue be assumed, suppose some tint of brown, all the varieties of complexion may be explained upon the principle of divergence influenced by outward circumstances. Mr. Poinsett saw in South America a fine healthy regiment of spotted men, quite peculiar enough to be held by Professor Agassiz a separate race. And why were they not? Simply because they were a known cross-breed between Spaniards and Indians. Changes as great are exhibited by the Magyars of Europe, and by the Ulster Irish, as quoted by Miller. Sir Charles Lyell was of opinion that a climatic change was already perceptible in the negro of our Southern states. Professor Cabell (Testimony of Modern Science, etc.) ably and clearly sustains the doctrine that propagability is conclusive proof of sameness of species. He denies, on good authority, that the mulatto is feebler or less prolific than either unmixed stock. He furnishes abundant proof of the barrenness of hybrids. The fact that the connection of different varieties of the human species produces a prolific progeny, is proof of oneness of species and family. This argument, sustained by facts; can hardly be considered less than demonstration.

" (3.) The objection drawn from the improbability that the one race springing from a single locality would migrate from a pleasanter to a worse region is very completely dispatched. Ample causes, proofs, facts, and authorities are furnished to show that, were mankind now reduced to a single family, only time would be wanting, even without civilization, to overspread the earth. European man and European- American man, as all history agrees, came from Asia. Whence came our aboriginal men? As Professor Cabell shows, they came by an antipodal route from the same Asia. Pursue the investigation, and the clue of history will lead our tremulous feet to about the Mosaic cradle of man.

" (4.) Ethnology, or rather Glottology, the gradually perfecting comparison of languages, is bringing. us to the same point. The unscientific attempt to trace the striking analogies of languages to the mere similarity of human organs, and the still more unscientific attempt of Professor Agassiz to attribute them to a transcendental mental unity in races sprung from different original localities, look like desperation. Meanwhile, comparison is educing wonderful yet rarely demonstrative laws, and laws are guiding threads converging to unity.

" (5.) Another argument is derived from the real mental unity of the universal human soul. Races differ, indeed, in mental power, as do individuals, widely, even in the same family. But there is the same program of mental philosophy for all. The same intellect, affections, instincts, conscience, sense of superior divine power, and susceptibility of religion. For the European, the Esquimaux, the Hottentot, there is the same power in the cross of Christ.

" (6.) Finally, Geology, with her wonderful demonstration of the recent origin of man, proves the same thing. The latest attempts to adduce specimens of fossil man have been failures. Not far back of the period that our best but somewhat hypothetical calculations from Mosaic chronology would assign, Geology fixes the birth of man.

"The conclusion may be fairly drawn, in the words of the able translators and illustrators of Baron Cuvier's great work: ‘ We are fully warranted in concluding, both from the comparison of man with inferior animals, so far as the inferiority will allow of such comparison, and, beyond that, by comparing him with himself, that the great family of mankind loudly proclaim a descent, at some period or other, from one common origin.'

"Thus, by an investigation totally independent of historical authority, we are brought to the conclusion of the inspired writings, that the Creator ‘ hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth' ( Acts 17:26)." The more recent authorities on this question are: Prichard, Researches Into The Physiological History Of Mankind (Lond. 4 vols. 8vo, 1836-44); also Natural History Of Man (London, 3d ed. 8vo, 1848); Bachman, Unity Of The Human Race

(Charleston, 1850, 8vo); Smyth, Unity of the Races (New York, 1850); Johnes, Philological Proofs of the Unity of the Human Race (London, 1846); Meih, Qu. Rev. July, 1851, p. 345; Jan. 1859, p. 162; Cabell, Testimony of Modern Science to the Unity of Mankind (New York, 1858, 12mo). See also Blumenbach, De gen. hum. Var. Nativa (Gott. 1776, 8vo); Quatrefages, in Rev. des Deux Mondes, 1861; and the article MAN (See Man) .

III. The Original Capacities And Condition of the first human pair have also formed the subject of much discussion. It will be found, however, that the Best conclusions of reason on this point harmonize fully with the brief Scriptural account of the facts as they were.

1. It is evident, upon a little reflection, and the closest investigation confirms the conclusion, that the first human pair must have been created in a state equivalent to that which all subsequent human beings have had to reach by slow degrees, in growth, experience, observation, imitation, and the instruction of others; that is, a state of prime maturity, and with an infusion, so to speak, of knowledge and habits, both physical and intellectual, suitable to the place which man had to occupy in the system of creation, and adequate to his necessities in that place. Had it been otherwise, the new beings could not have preserved their animal existence, nor have held rational converse with each other, nor have paid to their Creator the homage of knowledge and love, adoration and obedience; and reason clearly tells us that the last was the noblest end of existence. The Bible coincides with this dictate of honest reason, expressing these facts in simple and artless language: "And Jehovah God formed the man [Heb. the Adam], dust from the ground [ha-adamah], and blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living animal" ( Genesis 2:7). Here are two objects of attention, the organic mechanism of the human body, and the vitality with which it was endowed.

(a) The mechanical material, formed (molded, or arranged, as an artificer models clay or wax) into the human and all other animal bodies, called "dust from the ground." This expression conveys, in a general form; the idea of earthy matter, the constituent substance of the ground on which we tread. To say that of this the human and every other animal body was formed, is a position which would be at once the most easily apprehensible to an uncultivated mind, and which yet is the most exactly true upon the highest philosophical grounds. We now know, from chemical analysis, that the animal body is composed, in the inscrutable manner called organization, of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, lime, iron, sulphur, and phosphorus. Now all these are mineral substances, which in their various combinations form a very large part of the solid ground. (b) The expression which we have rendered "living animal" sets before us the Organic Life of the animal frame, that mysterious something which man cannot create nor restore, which baffles the most acute philosophers to search out its nature, and which reason combines with Scripture to refer to the immediate agency of the Almighty — "in him we live, and move, and have our being."

2. But the Scripture narrative also declares that " God Created Man In His Own Image: in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" ( Genesis 1:27). The Image (resemblance, such as a shadow bears to the object which casts it) Of God is an expression which breathes at once primitive simplicity and the most recondite wisdom; for what term could the most cultivated and copious language bring forth more suitable to the purpose? It presents to us man as made in a resemblance to the Author of his being, a true resemblance, but faint and shadowy; an outline, faithful according to its capacity, yet infinitely remote from the reality: a distant form of the intelligence, wisdom, power, rectitude, goodness, and dominion of the Adorable Supreme. As to the precise characteristics of excellence in which this image consists, theologians have been much divided. Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 2, 5, 6) placed it in the faculties of the soul, especially in the power of choice between good and evil. Among the fathers generally, and the schoolmen after them, there were many different theories, nor are the later theologians at all more unanimous. Many unnecessary disputes would have been avoided by the recognition of the simple fact that the phrase the image of God is a very comprehensive one, — and is used in the Bible in more than one sense. Accordingly, the best writers speak of the image of God as twofold, Natural and Moral.

(a) Natural — The notion that the original resemblance of man to God must be placed in some One quality is destitute of proof either from Scripture or reason; and we are, in fact, taught that it comprises also what is so far from being essential that it may be both lost and regained.

(1.) When God is called "the Father of Spirits," a likeness is suggested between man and God in the Spirituality of their nature. This is also implied in the striking argument of St. Paul with the Athenians: "Forasmuch, then, as we are the Offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device;" plainly referring to the idolatrous statues by which God was represented among heathens. If likeness to God in man consisted in bodily shape, this would not have been an argument against human representations of the Deity; but it imports, as Howe well expresses it, that "we are to understand that our resemblance to him, as we are his offspring, lies in some higher, more noble, and more excellent thing, of which there can be no figure; as who can tell how to give the figure or image of a thought, or of the mind or thinking power?" In spirituality, and, consequently, immateriality, this image of God in man, then, in the first instance, consists.

(2.) The sentiment expressed in Wisdom. 2, 23, is an evidence that, in the opinion of the ancient Jews, the image of God in man comprised Immortality also.

"For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity;" and though other creatures were made capable of immortality, and at least the material human frame, whatever we may think of the case of animals, would have escaped death had not sin entered the world; yet, without admitting the absurdity of the "natural immortality" of the human soul, that essence must have been constituted immortal in a high and peculiar sense, which has ever retained its prerogative of continued duration amid the universal death not only of animals but of the bodies of all human beings. There appears also a manifest allusion to man's immortality, as being included in the image of God, in the reason which is given in Genesis for the law which inflicts death on murderers: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

The essence of the crime of homicide is not confined here to the putting to death the mere animal part of man; and it must, therefore, lie in the peculiar value of life to an immortal being, accountable in another state for the actions done in this, and whose life ought to be specially guarded for this very reason, that death introduces him into changeless and eternal relations, which were not to be left to the mercy of human passions.

(3.) The Intellectual faculties of man form a third feature in his natural likeness to God. Some, indeed (e.g. Philo), have placed the Whole likeness in the Νούς , or rational soul.

(4.) The Will, or power of choice and volition, is the last of these features. They are all essential and ineffaceable. Man could not be man without them.

(b) Moral. —

(1.) There is an express allusion to the moral image of God, in which man was at first created, in  Colossians 3:10 : "And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him;" and in  Ephesians 4:24 : "Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." In these passages the apostle represents the change produced in true Christians by the Gospel, as a "renewal of the image of God in man; as a new or second creation in that image;" and he explicitly declares, that that image consists in "knowledge," in "righteousness," and in "true holiness."

(2.) This also may be finally argued from the satisfaction with which the historian of the creation represents the Creator as viewing the works of his hands as "Very Good," which was pronounced with reference to each of them individually, as well as to the whole: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good." But, as to man, this goodness must necessarily imply moral as well as physical qualities. A rational creature, as such, is capable of knowing, loving, serving, and living in communion with the Most Holy One. Adam, at first, did or did not exert this capacity; if he did not, he was not very good — not good at all.

3. On the Intellectual And Moral Endowments of the progenitor of the human race, extravagant views have been taken on both sides.

(a) In knowledge, some have thought him little inferior to the angels; others, as furnished with but the simple elements of science and of language. The truth seems to be that, as to Capacity, his intellect must have been vigorous beyond that of any of his fallen descendants; which itself gives us very high views of the strength of his understanding, although we should allow him to have been created "lower than the angels." As to his Actual Knowledge, that would depend upon the time and opportunity he had for observing the nature and laws of the objects around him; and the degree in which he was favored with revelations from God on moral and religious subjects. The "knowledge" in which the Apostle Paul, in the passage quoted above from  Colossians 3:10, places "the image of God" after which man was created, does not merely imply the faculty of understanding, which is a part of the Natural image of God, but that which might be lost, because it is that in which we may be " Renewed." It is, therefore, to be understood of the faculty of knowledge in right exercise; and of that willing reception, and firm retaining, and hearty approval of religious truth, in which knowledge, when spoken of morally, is always understood in the Scriptures. We may not be disposed to allow, with some, that Adam understood the deep philosophy of nature, and could comprehend and explain the sublime mysteries of religion. The circumstance of his giving names to the animals is certainly no sufficient proof of his having attained to a philosophical acquaintance with their qualities and distinguishing habits, although we should allow their names to be still retained in the Hebrew, and to be as expressive of their peculiarities as some expositors have stated. Sufficient time appears not to have been afforded him for the study of the properties of animals, as this event took place previous to the formation of Eve; and as for the notion of his acquiring knowledge by intuition, this is contradicted by the revealed fact that angels themselves acquire their knowledge by observation and study, though, no doubt, with great rapidity and certainty. The whole of this transaction was supernatural; the beasts were "brought" to Adam, and it is probable that he named them under a Divine suggestion. That his understanding was, as to its capacity, deep and large beyond any of his posterity, must follow from the perfection in which he was created; and his acquisitions of knowledge would, therefore, be rapid and easy. It was, however, in moral and religious truth, as being of the first concern to him, that we are to suppose the excellency of his knowledge to have consisted. "His reason would be clear, his judgment uncorrupted, and his conscience upright and sensible." The best knowledge would, in him, be placed first, and that of every other kind be made subservient to it, according to its relation to that. The apostle adds to knowledge "righteousness and true holiness;" terms which express, not merely freedom from sin, but positive and active virtue.

Sober as these views of man's primitive state are, it is not, perhaps, possible for us fully to conceive of so exalted a condition as even this. Below this standard it could not fall; and that it implied a glory, and dignity, and moral greatness of a very exalted kind, is made sufficiently apparent from the degree of guilt charged upon Adam when he fell; for the aggravating circumstances of his offense may well be deduced from the tremendous consequences which followed.

(b) As to Adam's Moral perfection, it has sometimes been fixed at an elevation which renders it exceedingly difficult to conceive how he could fall into sin at all. On the other hand, those who deny the doctrine of our hereditary depravity, delight to represent Adam as little superior in moral perfection and capability to his descendants. But if we attend to the passages of Holy Writ above quoted, we shall be able, on this subject, to ascertain, if not the exact degree of his moral endowments, yet that there is a certain standard below which they cannot be placed. Generally, he was made in the image of God, which, we have already proved, is to be understood morally as well as naturally. To whatever extent it went, it necessarily excluded all which did not resemble God; it was a likeness to God in "righteousness and true holiness," whatever the degree of each might be, and excluded all admixture of unrighteousness and unholiness. Man, therefore, in his original state, was sinless, both in act and in principle.

4. The rabbis and the Arabians relate many absurd traditions about Adam's personal beauty, endowments, etc., and such are still current among the Eastern nations. An account of many of them may be found in Bayle (s.v.).

5. That Adam was a type of Christ is plainly affirmed by Paul, who calls him "the figure of him who was to come." Hence our Lord is sometimes called, not inaptly, the second Adam. This typical relation stands sometimes in Similitude, sometimes in Contrast. Adam was formed immediately by God, as was the humanity of Christ. In each the nature was spotless, and richly endowed with knowledge and true holiness. Both are seen invested with dominion over the earth and all its creatures; and this may explain the eighth Psalm, where David seems to make the sovereignty of the first man over the whole earth, in its pristine glory, the prophetic symbol of the dominion of Christ over the world restored. Beyond these particulars fancy must not carry us; and the typical contrast must also be limited to that which is stated in Scripture or supported by its allusions. Adam and Christ were each a public person, a federal head to the whole race of mankind; but the one was the fountain of sin and death, the other of righteousness and life. By Adam's transgression "many were made sinners" ( Romans 5:14-19). Through him, "death passed upon all men, because all have sinned" in him. But he thus prefigured that one man, by whose righteousness the "free gift comes upon all men to justification of life." The first man communicated a living soul to all his posterity; the other is a quickening Spirit, to restore them to newness of life new, and to raise them up at the last day. By the imputation of the first Adam's sin, and the communication of his fallen, depraved nature, death reigned over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; and through the righteousness of the second Adam, and the communication of a divine nature by the Holy Spirit, favor and grace shall much more abound in Christ's true followers unto eternal life. Watson, Theol. Dict. s.v.; Hunter, Sac. Biog. p. 8; Williams, Characters of O.T. 1; Kurtz, Hist. of Old Cov. § 21, 22. (See Fall) and (See Redemption).

2. (Sept. Ἀδάμ , but most copies omit; Vulg. Adom.) A city at some distance from the Jordan, to which (according to the text, בְּאָדָם , In Adam), or beyond which (according to the margin, מֵאָדָם , "From Adam," as in our version), the overflow of the waters of that stream extended in its annual inundation, at the time when the Israelites passed over ( Joshua 3:16). The name of the city (red) may have been derived from the alluvial clay in the vicinity (comp.  1 Kings 7:46). It has been incorrectly inferred from the above text that the city Adam was located east of the river, whereas it is expressly stated to have been Beside. ( מַצִּד ) Zarethan (q.v.), which is known to have been on the west bank, not far from Bethshean ( 1 Kings 4:12). It hence appears that the "heap" or accumulation of waters above the Israelites' crossing-place, caused by the stoppage of the stream, reached back on the shore and many miles up the river, over the secondary banks of the Ghor, on which Zarethan stood, as far as the higher ground on which Adam was located (see Keil, Comment. in loc.); probably the ridge immediately north of Bethshean, which closes the plain of the Jordan in this direction.

The Nuttall Encyclopedia

E . man), the first father, according to the Bible, of the human race.