Breath of Life

See Nephesh, Neshamah and Ruach

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According to Old Earth Creationist or Theistic Evolutionary interpretations of Genesis, human beings, or something very like them, must have existed for millenia before the time of Adam and Eve's transgression, and apparently human populations must already have existed at that time. But from the Genesis account it would seem that Adam, the first man, had no parents, but was made through a special act by God.

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

— Genesis 2:7 (AV)

How does one interpret the statement that God breathed life into Adam's nostrils?

If it refers to one man among many, whether a special creation or not, did the others have the breath of life too?

Related questions:

• What is the "breath of life"? Is it different from "spirit"?

The NET Bible's footnote to Genesis 2:7 says

The Hebrew word נְשָׁמָה (nÿshamah, “breath”) is used for God and for the life imparted to humans, not animals (see T. C. Mitchell, “The Old Testament Usage of Nÿshama,” VT 11 [1961]: 177-87). Its usage in the Bible conveys more than a breathing living organism (נֶפֶשׁ חַיַּה, nefesh khayyah). Whatever is given this breath of life becomes animated with the life from God, has spiritual understanding (Job 32:8), and has a functioning conscience (Proverbs 20:27).

This does seem rather a lot to read into these three passages!

• Are there any other verses that help us interpret the verse? Any echoes? Allusions?
• Is there any background cultural information that we need to understand it?

Does the language in context appear to be a literal description of historical events; does it appear to be purely symbolic; or is it a mixture: historical events with symbolic significance? Do the style and tone of the language suggest that either of these is more likely?

Suggested Answers

Here are some answers that have been suggested:

• Everyone else evolved from an ancestor which was not an ape yet, but which apes and humans have in common. God chose to "insert" first Adam and then Eve into this situation through special intervention. Where the others who existed long before Adam, evolved, Adam and Eve were created with a special mission at a time deemed appropriate by God: to go through a test of obedience and to teach others the way of God. [from a post in the ManyCounsellors.org forum]
• God took a living specimen of 'super-ape', the recently evolved Homo sapiens, and imparted to him a spark of the divine ... he was transformed into a unique spiritually-minded specimen of Homo sapiens [Paraphrase of a TE interpretation by Alan Hayward in Creation and Evolution ... p.195 This is not his belief.]
• "... Adam was in every sense the first member of the human race ... we have no idea where to fit him into the succession of fossils unearthed by the anthropologists ... any ape-like creatures existing before Adam cannot have been human, and must have belonged to some advanced species of animal. ... The words of Genesis do not necessarily mean that God (or his angel) built a man-shaped heap of dust, and then bent down and gave it a kind of 'kiss of life'. It seems more likely that the words are meant to inform us that God miraculously produced a human body from non-living material in some unspecified way, and then animated it by his creative power." Hayward, A, Creation and Evolution ... pp. 197, 223]

How would we understand it literally?

• God (an angel, presumably) had a human effigy made of soil.

Alternatively, the soil may already have miraculously turned into a lifeless male human body.

• Either way, God put his mouth on to the nose and blew, or perhaps blew from a distance.
• At this point, or earlier, the soil turned into bones, flesh, sinews, nerves, muscle, blood, etc.
• When God stopped blowing, the body breathed out, and then continued to breathe unaided - a living man.

Assuming that we accept that God does miracles, there is nothing up to this point to tell us that it cannot be literal.

• By now the man was physically adult but had the mentality and experience of a newborn babe. According to some beliefs his body was not subject to the normal processes of decay and death. God miraculously modified him to give him adequate maturity to face the coming moral challenge.

This may call the literal understanding in question.

Is a non-literal interpretation better?

Questions to consider are:

• Are there other non-literal uses of breath, breathing, nostrils, spirit, etc?
• Are there other cases of the literal event occurring? If so do they have symbolic significance?
• Are there descriptions of a similar event occurring elsewhere, in clearly non-literal contexts?

Ezekiel 37 figuratively describes a whole army of people being restored from skeletons to people. (Discuss at Ezekiel 37:7-10.)

The creation of Woman

See Adam's Deep Sleep and Tardemah - תרדמה