Do not render "adam" with “man”

    In this post, I discuss an example in which the rendering of אדם with “man” – against e.g. NIV (2011) and NABRE (2011) – is open to question.

Gen 2:7

וַיִּיצֶר יהוה אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאָדָם

עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה

וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים

וַיְהִי הָאָדָם לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה 

NABRE (2011):    

then the LORD God formed the man
out of the dust of the ground
and blew into his nostrils the breath of life,
and the man became a living being.

NIV (2011) is almost identical:

Then the LORD God formed a man
from the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and the man became a living being.

Contemporary Torah [CT] (2006):

God יהוה formed the Human
from the soil’s humus,
blowing into his nostrils the breath of life:
the Human became a living being.

CEB (2011):

the LORD God formed the human
from the topsoil of the fertile land
and blew life’s breath into his nostrils.
The human came to life.

Comment

    There is something to be said for CT’s preservation of the etymological pun of the Hebrew in translation. Moreover, the gender of הָאָדָם is not clarified for good until later in the narrative. CT's and CEB's “the human” is a translation that succeeds in capturing the flavor of the Hebrew noun, something like “Mensch” in German. At the same time, the natural assumption is that הָאָדָם is a man as opposed to a woman, a detail which “his” in CT and CEB indicates.

    NIV alone renders the definite article in the first הָאָדָם fluently, with an indefinite article. הָאָדָם picks up on the preceding אָדָם, but that pattern, indefinite followed by definite, happens not to work in English over this macro-construction; the definiteness of the noun is best delayed to the third occurrence thereof.  

    My attempt at a translation of Gen 2:[4b-]7:

[The day יהוה God made earth and heaven,
when no shrub had yet …
with no human to work the land …]

יהוה God formed a human
of the humus of the land,
and blew life’s breath into his nostrils.
The human came alive.

    Is אָדָם always best rendered with “human”? Not at all. As Geoffrey Williams reminds us, words do not have meanings – meanings have words. That’s why a statement like the following, “Hebrew adam is a generic term meaning ‘human being,’” is apt to mislead. A statement like that will always be in need of qualification.

A single translation is often not enough to get the meaning of a text across. For the above text, I would offer a further translation, though this translation is partial, and requires knowing what adam and adamah mean.

[The day יהוה God made earth and heaven,
when no shrub had yet …
with no adam to work the adamah …]

יהוה God formed an adam
of adamah particulate,
and blew life’s breath into his nostrils.
The adam came alive.

Comments

[Random Arrow]

John,

For you @

http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2011/07/like-a-prayer-the-cautionary-tale-of-franz-boas-.html#comments

Jim

[Lue-Yee Tsang]

YHWH God formed a human of humus particulate?

[JohnFH]

Hi Lue-Yee,

What I am trying to do, as did the Contemporary Torah, is to translate the Hebrew עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה
"particulate [often translated "dust" but that is too specific] from the ground [adamah]" such that the implied semantic connection between adam "human" and adamah "ground" is evident in translation.

Does that help?