Adam
First named at Gen 2 19
- Passages
- 18
- Named in
- Old Testament (4 books), New Testament (5 books)
The name
- Ἀδὰμ Adam — Adam
- אָדָ֥ם 'a.Dam — Adam lexicon
More than one form is recorded — a renaming, or the Greek and Hebrew of the same person. They are listed under one entry rather than as separate people.
Family
What the traditions disagree about
Was Adam a single historical individual?
Genuine disagreement
Common ground. All traditions confess that humanity is created by God, that human beings are made in God's image, that sin is universal, and that Christ is the remedy. None holds that the answer to this question changes who Christ is.
The question is modern, raised by evolutionary biology rather than by any of the old confessional disputes, and it divides traditions along lines that cut across the Reformation ones. It bears on original sin, since Paul argues from one man's act to one man's remedy.
- Roman Catholic
- Evolution of the human body may be investigated freely, while the soul is directly created; teaching has been cautious about accounts that abandon a real origin of sin in a first human act. Humani Generis, 1950
- Anglican
- No required position; the range of views found in the other traditions is found here too.
- Reformed / Presbyterian
- The confessions speak of our first parents and of a covenant made with Adam; opinion within the tradition now ranges from a strictly historical Adam to a representative reading. Westminster Confession IV.2, VII.2
- Baptist
- Generally a historical Adam, held as the ground of Paul's argument in Romans 5. Rom 5:12-19
- Adventist
- A literal Adam created on the sixth day of a recent creation week; the historicity is confessional. Gen 1-2
Traditions not listed have no position recorded here. That is a gap in what we have written down, not a statement that they are silent.
Read as a pattern
-
Read as prefiguring Jesus of Nazareth
Paul calls Adam "a type of the one who was to come", setting one man whose act brought death against one whose act brings life. This is the New Testament making the comparison itself, not a later reading imposed on it.
Rom 5:14; 1Co 15:22,45
Named in
- Genesis 2:20
- Genesis 3:17
- Genesis 3:21
- Genesis 4:25
- Genesis 5:1
- Genesis 5:3
- Genesis 5:4
- Genesis 5:5
- 1 Chronicles 1:1
- Job 31:33
- Hosea 6:7
- Luke 3:38
- Romans 5:14
- 1 Corinthians 15:22
- 1 Corinthians 15:45
- 1 Timothy 2:13
- 1 Timothy 2:14
- Jude 1:14
This entry is generated from the tagged text: the name, its language and the passages it appears in. Nobody has yet written up who this person is or what the traditions make of them, and rather than guess, the page says so. Identification follows STEPBible's tagging, which distinguishes people who share a name.