Messenger

Adam and Eve are Us

Posted on 6/20/2006 at 9:11:29 AM

Adam is Man

Although the name Adam doesn’t appear in the King James Version of the Bible until over half way through the second chapter of Genesis, in the original Hebrew language Adam appears in the first sentence regarding the creation of man and woman, when it tells us “God created man in His own image … male and female created He them.”¹ The English translation of the word Adam is “man,” and is used to speak of both man and woman in this case. This concept is repeated again a few chapters later where it tells us “Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam”² So whenever the word Adam appears it could be speaking of the first man on earth specifically, an individual man, a man and woman, or all of mankind.³

From the Dust

The arrival of man, the height of God’s creation, upon the earth is a brief affair, lasting one verse, in which “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.”⁴ The Hebrew word for breath is also translated spirit,⁵ as in God’s Spirit or the spirit within man. Our spirit, – which comes from God, its Father – gives life to our body.⁶ But how are we to understand Moses’ account that Adam was made of dust? Is he speaking literally? Did Adam start his existence as a clump of dirt? One of the problems with this view is that the scriptures tell us that Adam was not alone in being made of the dust of this earth, Ecclesiastes reminds us that “all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”⁷ The Bible speaks figuratively about our creation in other ways too, Isaiah tells us we were hewn from a rock and dug from a pit,⁸ wheras the book of Job talks of us “dwell[ing] in houses of clay!”⁹ Each of these statements has symbolic truth, but are not literal. Our bodies are made up of elements, and those are made up of atoms, which consist of infinitesimal matter.¹⁰ To the ancient Israelites “dust” was undoubtedly the nearest word they had to express this idea. From being spoken of as “dust” we learn several important lessons: that “All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.”¹¹, and that in our “own carnal state,” we are “even less than the dust of the earth.”¹², but when “the dust return”s to the earth as it was … the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”¹³ Mortal life comes into the world through only one way: “the fruit tree yields” fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself.”¹⁴ That is like comes from like, and life comes from life. As Paul elaborates “that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but grain, it may be of wheat, or some other; but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.”¹⁵ This is why Jesus is able to state that “every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.”¹⁶ In other words: only procreation produces life. Yet this natural law was not limited to vegetables, but to every “living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind.”¹⁷ But how does this apply to Adam and Eve?

Image and Likeness

A key to understanding the creation of mankind can be found in the words “God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness:”¹⁸ Some Christian commentators conclude that this must be referring to man’s mind or soul having some Godlike attributes, for their vision of God is of an infinite being without a body.¹⁹ But Moses who wrote this passage, knew his heavenly Father “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”²⁰ As did his companions, Aaron, Nabab, Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel who also “saw God.”²¹ In what way then are we in the likeness and image of God? Genesis tells us “Adam … begat a son in his own likeness, after his image;”²² The wording here is exactly the same as when speaking of the creation of mankind. Seth was in the likeness and image of his father Adam,²³ as many children are the image and likeness of their parents. It is in this same way that we are in the image and likeness of our heavenly parents who said “let us make man in our image.” As Paul taught the believers of an unknown deity, God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth … For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; … For we are also his offspring.”²⁴ God, who is “the father of our spirits”²⁵ is the father of our bodies also. For as Malachi asks “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?”²⁶ This is why we pray to “our father who art in heaven.”²⁷

The Latter-day Saint Perspective

This idea – though a simple one – was largely lost from the world “until the times of restitution of all things”²⁸ in which we live. At first hinted at by the Prophet Joseph Smith who asked “When did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? … everything comes in this way.”²⁹ And taken to its natural conclusion by his successor, Brigham Young, who taught that God “created man, as we create our children; for there is no other process of creation in heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in all the eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be.”³⁰ “He is the framer of our bodies, and set the machine in successful operation to bring forth these tabernacles…. This is the doctrine taught by the ancients, taught by the prophets, taught by Jesus, taught by his Apostles, taught by Joseph Smith, thought by those who believe the same doctrine that Joseph believed in – the revelations that God has given in modern times, who believe in that being after whose image and in whose likeness man was formed, framed and made, precisely like Him that made him.”³¹ “We are his children, literally, spiritually, naturally, and in every respect.”³² But what are we to make of the story of Eve being created from Adam’s “rib”?³³ Up until the early 20^th century those going through the temple endowment were taught in the “Lecture at the Veil” that “It is said by Moses the historian that the Lord caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam, and took from his side a rib and formed the woman that Adam called Eve. This should be interpreted that the man Adam like all other men had the seed within him to propagate his species, but not the woman; She conceives the seed, but she does not produce it; consequently she was taken from the side or bowels of her father.”³⁴ As the scriptures tell us “the Lord God said,” It is not good that the man should be alone; … Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”³⁵ Thus reaffirming that man and woman are incomplete without eachother: “neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord”³⁶ as the story of the rib emphasizes. These are only some of the ways in which the story of Adam and Eve is about us.

Footnotes

1 Genesis 1:27.

2 Genesis 5:2.

3 Smith’s Bible Dictionary – “Man , generically, for the name Adam was not confined to the father of the human race, but like homo was applicable to woman as well as to man.”

4 Genesis 2:7.

5 Eastons Bible Dictionary – “Spirit: Heb. ruah … properly wind or breath.”

6 John 6:63 – “It is the spirit that quickeneth; …”
Job 33:4 – “… the breath [Hebrew: Spirit] of the Almighty hath given [us] life”

7 Ecclesiastes 3:20.

8 Isaiah 51:1.

9 Job 4:19.

10 D&C 131:7-8 – “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.”

11 Job 34:15.

12 Mosiah 4:2.

13 Ecclesiastes 12:7.

14 Genesis 1:11.
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 198 – “it is a decree of the Lord that every tree, plant, and herb bearing seed, yielding fruit, whose seed bring forth of its kind, and cannot come forth after any law or principle.”

15 JST 1 Corinthians 15:37-38.

16 Luke 6:44.

17 Genesis 1:24.

18 Genesis 1:26.

19 Clarke’s Bible commentary for Genesis 1:26

20 Exodus 33:11, also Deuteronomy 5:4 & 34:10.

21 Exodus 24:9-17.

22 Genesis 5:3.

23 D&C 107:43 – “Because he (Seth) was a perfect man, and his likeness was the express likeness of his father, insomuch that he seemed to be like unto his father in all things, and could be distinguished from him only by his age.”

24 Acts 17:26 & 28.

25 Hebrews 12:9.

26 Malachi 2:10.

27 Matthew 6:9.

28 Acts 3:21.

29 Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 373.

30 Journal of Discourses 11:122, 18 Jun 1865.

31 Journal of Discourses 13:250, 25 September 1870.

32 Journal of Discourses 14:135-136, 21 May 1871.

33 Genesis 2:21-23 – “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

34 Diary of L. John Nuttall (secretary to the First Presidency), 7 February 1877.

35 Genesis 2:18 & 24.

36 1 Corinthians 11:11.