"adam" the common noun

See also The human race (lit. children of adam)

A common noun, meaning humankind

The Hebrew word adam is a common noun meaning man or person, including in the sense of humankind (see more detail of usage at The human race). In Numbers 31:35 it clearly refers to women, not men. It is used to mean person or humankind in this way about 500 times in the Hebrew Bible. Examples:

• I made the earth,
  

and created humankind upon it;

it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,

and I commanded all their host. — Isaiah 45:12 (NRSV)

• . . . ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth... —Deuteronomy 4:32 (NRSV)

• and thirty-two thousand persons [וְנֶ֣פֶשׁ אָדָ֔ם literally, and souls of adam(s)] in all, women who had not known a man by sleeping with him. — Numbers 31:35 (NRSV)

A personal name

The word "Adam" is also used, less frequently, as Adam's personal name — he is the man called "Man". It is used in this sense only in Genesis and 1 Chronicles, also perhaps, though ambiguously, in Deuteronomy 32:8 and Job 31:33.

The first time in Genesis where adam definitely refers to "Adam" the individual man is in Genesis 5:1-5. (See notes, especially re the Masoretic Text, at Genesis 3:17. In Genesis 4:1 it is translated "the man" by REB, NRSV and JPS Tanakh.)

This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind [Heb. adam], he made them [Heb. him] in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” [Heb. adam] when they were created.

— Genesis 5:1-5 (NRSV, including NRSV notes in square brackets.)

See Robert Alter's translation of this passage and his notes on the meaning of 'adam at Genesis 5:1-5.

Adam and Eve as archetypal Man and Woman

The understanding that Adam is the archetypal adam, the man called "Man" who represents all humankind, is reinforced by the fact that Eve can best be understood as the archetypal woman and mother: not only by the reference to her as "Mother of All Living" (which cannot be interpreted literally) but also by the reference to her in 1 Timothy 2:13. (The archetypal role that Adam and Eve have does not, of course, preclude the possibility that they also existed as real individuals.)

See also Adam's Deep Sleep.

For on-going creation, see Genesis 2:3.

For on-going creation of people see Psalm 102:18.

— BP

Adam in the New Testament

The New Testament writers were of course aware of this ambiguity.

• according to theologian James Dunn

“When Paul speaks of or alludes to Adam he speaks of humankind as a whole”

“Whether Paul also thought of Adam as a historical individual and of a historical act of disobedience is less clear.”

— James Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle

• See F. F. Bruce writing about "a man of dust".

• See also Ephesians 2:14-15 — the "one new man" made in Christ was "one new humanity" (NRSV and others), not a new individual man.

• explicitly figurative Rom 5:14 - "who is the figure of him that was to come" (KJV) "who is a type of the one who was to come" (NRSV)

• the "one" of Acts 17:26, from whom or which all nations have been made — usually translated simply as "one" but also "one blood", "one stock", "one ancestor" or "one man". (See detailed list and discussion at Acts 17:24-28#variant_translations.)