Adam

Adam is the name given in the Biblical Book of Genesis to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, adam is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as “a human” and in a collective sense as “mankind”. Genesis tells of God’s creation of the world and its creatures, including adam, meaning humankind. “Adam”, this time meaning the single male human, is then formed out of “the dust of the ground” and placed him in the Garden of Eden. God forms this first woman, Eve, as his helpmate, and in Genesis 3 Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge so God condemns Adam to labor on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death.

In Genesis 1:27 “adam” is used in the collective sense, and the interplay between the individual “Adam” and the collective “humankind” is a main literary component to the events that occur in the Garden of Eden, the ambiguous meanings embedded throughout the moral, sexual, and spiritual terms of the narrative reflecting the complexity of the human condition. Genesis 2:7 is the first verse where “Adam” takes on the sense of an individual man (the first man), and the context of sex is absent; the gender distinction of “adam” is then reiterated in Genesis 5:1–2 by defining “male and female”.

The Genesis creation myth was adopted by both Christianity and Islam, and the name of Adam accordingly appears in the Christian scriptures and in the Quran. He also features in subsequent folkloric and mystical elaborations in later Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism.

A recurring literary motif is the bond between Adam and the earth (adamah): God creates Adam by molding him out of clay in the final stages of the creation narrative. After the loss of innocence, God curses Adam and the earth as punishment for his disobedience. Adam and humanity are cursed to die and return to the earth (or ground) from which he was formed. This “earthly” aspect is a component of Adam’s identity, and Adam’s curse of estrangement from the earth seems to describe humankind’s divided nature of being earthly yet separated from nature.