Adam in the Old Testament in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE

(Evolutionary Interpretation): (NOTE: It ought to be superfluous to say that the unfolding or development of the human personality here identified with evolution is something far higher, deeper, and other than anything that can be fathered upon Darwin or Herbert Spencer. Evolution (unfolding) is the great process or movement; natural selection and survival of the fittest name only guesses at some of its methods.) 'adham, "man," Gen 1:26, or "a man," Gen 2:5; ha-'adham, "the man"; mostly with the article as a generic term, and not used as the proper name of a patriarch until 5:3, after which the name first given to both man and woman (5:2) is used of the man alone): The being in whom is embodied the Scripture idea of the first created man and ancestor of mankind. The account, which belongs mostly to the oldest stratum of the Genesis story (Jahwist) merits careful attention, because evolutionary science, history, and new theology have all quarreled with or rejected it on various grounds, without providing the smallest approach to a satisfactory substitute. I. What the Writer Meant to Describe. It is important first of all, if we can, to get at what the author meant to describe, and how it is related, if at all, to literal and factual statement. 1. Derivation and Use of the Name: Scholars have exercised themselves much, but with little arrival at certainty, over the derivation of the name; a matter which, as it is concerned with one of the commonest words of the language, is of no great moment as compared with the writer's own understanding of it. The most plausible conjecture, perhaps, is that which connects it with the Assyrian adamu, "to make," or "produce," hence, "the produced one," "the creature." The author of Gen 2:7 seems to associate it, rather by word-play than derivation, with ha-'adhamah, "the ground" or "soil," as the source from which man's body was taken (compare 3:19,23) The name 'adhamah itself seems to be closely connected with the name Edom ('edhom, Gen 25:30), meaning "red"; but whether from the redness of the soil, or the ruddiness of the man, or merely the incident recorded in Gen 25:30, is uncertain. Without doubt the writer of Gen 2; 3 had in mind man's earthly origin, and understood the name accordingly...