History of Adam
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Adam is the first man in the creation narratives of the Book of Genesis and, through them, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. With Eve he is the ancestor of all humankind in these traditions. Whether he was a historical individual is a question of faith and interpretation, not of historical evidence.
In Genesis
- Creation. Genesis 1:26–27 describes humankind created "in the image of God", male and female. The second account has God form the man from the dust of the ground and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7).
- Eden. God places him in the Garden of Eden to work and keep it, and forbids him to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:15–17). Adam names the animals (2:19–20), and God makes the woman from one of his ribs (2:21–23).
- The fall. Eve, persuaded by the serpent, eats the fruit and gives some to Adam, who is with her (3:6). Both are expelled from the garden, and cherubim with a flaming sword guard the way to the tree of life (3:24).
- Descendants. His sons with Eve are Cain and Abel (Cain and Abel, Genesis 4) and Seth, born when Adam was 130 (5:3). Genesis 5:5 gives his age at death as 930 years.
The Hebrew ʾādām also means "human" or "humankind", and plays on ʾădāmâ, "ground", the material he is formed from.
In later traditions
- Judaism. The Mishnah reads the creation of a single first human as a lesson in equality: no one may say to another "my father was greater than yours" (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).
- Christianity. Paul contrasts Adam, through whom sin and death entered the world, with Christ, "the last Adam" (Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45). Western Christianity, following Augustine, built on this the doctrine of original sin; the Eastern Orthodox churches speak instead of ancestral sin.
- Islam. Adam (Ādam) is the first human and the first prophet. The Quran tells how God made him a successor (khalīfa) on earth, taught him the names of all things and ordered the angels to bow to him, which Iblis refused (2:30–34). Adam and his wife eat from the forbidden tree, repent and are forgiven (2:35–37, 7:19–25), so Islam has no doctrine of inherited sin.
In culture
Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (about 1508–1512), Albrecht Dürer's engraving Adam and Eve (1504) and John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) are among the best-known retellings. In genetics, "Y-chromosomal Adam" names the most recent common ancestor of all living men in the direct male line: a statistical construct, not the figure of Genesis, who need not have lived at the same time as "Mitochondrial Eve".
Sources
- Genesis 1–5: https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1
- Quran 2:30–39: https://quran.com/2/30-39 and 7:11–25: https://quran.com/7/11-25
See also
Filed under Society and history.
{ "type": "person", "kind": "religious_figure", "name": "Adam", "name_hebrew": "אָדָם", "name_arabic": "آدم", "meaning": "human, humankind; a play on adamah, ground", "traditions": [ "judaism", "christianity", "islam" ], "sources": [ "Genesis 1–5", "Quran 2:30–39", "Quran 7:11–25" ], "spouse": "Eve", "children": [ "Cain", "Abel", "Seth" ], "age_at_death_years": 930 }