"adam" the common noun
From Reconciling understandings of Scripture and Science
The Hebrew word adam is a common noun meaning man, including in the sense of humankind. It is used in this way about 500 times in the Hebrew Bible.
The word is also 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 5:1-5. (In 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.)
- 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.
The New Testament writers were of course aware of this ambiguity.
- “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
