What Do the First Three Chapters of Genesis Really Mean? — Part 5, the Creation of Adam
This follows on from part 3 and part 4, and makes best sense if you’ve read them. If you need the essential background to the whole series, please see part 1. As a reminder, I’ll be using the following abbreviations: NRSV, OF, OC, OE, R, B, and BEI. These refer to the following sources:
- a modern Bible in English — I’ll be using the New Revised Standard Version, which I personally find the most useful
- d’Olivet’s French rendering of the Hebrew — this will only be needed if it seems to differ from the translations
- d’Olivet’s commentary on the original text — this will obviously be according to Redfield’s translation
- Redfield’s literal English translation of d’Olivet
- Redfield’s personal rendering, what she calls the ‘Correct Translation’. She says that in her literal translation she has “retained his selection of words some of which are now obsolete”, but that in her version she has “set aside some of the quaint words making choice of more modern ones”
- Shabaz Britten Best’s translation
- his Esoteric Interpretation of the text.
The previous articles have reached chapter 1, verse 10. My main focus in this article will be the creation of Adam, which begins at verse 26. Before moving on to that, however, I’ll make some observations about the intervening passage, thus verses 11–25.
Verse 10 appears to say that the Earth (dryness), thus the material level, emerges from a more fluid level (perhaps what in modern times we call the quantum realm). The text of NRSV continues as if this were so, describing the emergence of vegetation, the two great lights in the dome of the sky (thus the sun and the moon), and swarms of living creatures and birds.
The texts of both B and R seem to agree in general terms, except that at verses 16, 21 and 25 they are still referring merely to the potential existence of the various things discussed. Thus B has: “And AELOHIM made the potential existence of those twin central lights… And AELOHIM created the potential existence of marine monsters and living creatures animated with the soul of life… And AELOHIM made the potential existence of animals of the earth…”
Why do they say that? To pick out one example, NRSV v16–18 has: “God made the two great lights — the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night — and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness”. In modern times it is hard not to interpret this as referring to the sun and the moon. However, in support of the idea that we are still referring to potential existence, all three translators agree that these two lights do not exist at the material level, rather they symbolically represent day and night.
It’s even doubtful whether the sun and the moon are what is being referred to, for OE at verse 15 has “sensible lights (sparkling foci) in the ethereal expanse of heavens, for causing brightness to shine (intellectual light) upon the earth”. It seems therefore that it is not the light of the sun being referred to, rather a manifestation of the light of verse 3, which illuminates the material level from the spiritual realm.
It’s therefore possible that, even at verse 25, the material level of the universe does not yet exist, but is being planned and prepared at other higher levels. I won’t discuss that any further at this point, because I want to focus on what follows, but merely ask readers who have been following the series to hold on to that idea, and see where it takes us. (I haven’t prepared the series in advance, am merely going through the texts verse by verse, so don’t know where all this is going to lead.)
Moving on now to the main focus of this article, at verse 26 NRSV continues: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”.
This is obviously confusing. Not only do we read both ‘our image’ (when a supposedly singular God speaks), and ‘his image’ (when the narrator takes over) in relation to God; we also learn that a supposedly male God created a female in his image. Even the use of the word ‘image’ is strange. Do we really think that humans look like God in some sense? What are we to make of all this?
In order to resolve this confusion, we might have to assume that down the years something has been lost in translation, or has been changed or misunderstood by an editor. That is precisely what my three interpreters believe, and there are some clues even in NRSV.
If we consult the footnotes there, we find two important pieces of information, highly relevant for a proper interpretation. Firstly, the Hebrew word translated as ‘humankind’ was actually ‘Adam’. That this refers to humankind is therefore merely an assumption and, as I’ve pointed out in the past, one that is possibly misleading. Secondly, according to the Hebrew version being translated, the last phrase in that quote should read “male and female he created him” i.e. Adam (!!). Again, although the translators/editors are honest enough to reveal what they have done, they admit that they are mistranslating the original, based upon their assumptions. Thus Adam, whatever that means, and not humankind was created male and female. (This is clearly confirmed in chapter 2 where, as we know, it is said that Eve emerges from the body of Adam, thus the male and female elements separate. More of that in future articles.) The second mistranslation is presumably a consequence of the first; once you have decided that ‘Adam’ means ‘humankind’, it is logical but incorrect to say that God created them male and female.
All this information is therefore conveyed in the modern English edition of the NRSV, even before we move on to consider the original Hebrew.
R interprets OF’s verse 27 thus: “ And Aelohim created (the potential existence of) Adam (universal man) in his reflected Shadow (image), in the shadow of Aelohim created He him: male and female (collective power, universal existence) created He them”. B is almost identical, with two interesting differences: “So AELOHIM created the potential existence of Adam — the human kingdom, in His reflected shadow and image, in the nature of AELOHIM HE created them: male and female HE created the universal soul of them”.
We see therefore that the “male and female he created them” of NRSV refers not to humankind, rather to the androgynous nature of Adam, the universal soul of humanity. Since this is said to be a reflection of the nature of AELOHIM, we can presumably assume that this Ultimate Principle is also both male and female (or contains both male and female elements).
BEI comments: “V. 26 refers to the prospective creation of Adam, which implies mankind, for the plural is indicated by the phrase that follows… It is necessary to emphasise this fact, because many literalists have wrongly assumed that at first Adam was the one and only person living on this planet… Really this corresponds to the ADAM-KADMON referred to in the Kabbalah, as the ‘original archetypal male-female heavenly man’, that was thus spiritually and universally conceived and created. Only later in Genesis does the word Adam imply the earthly human kingdom…”
In an earlier article in the series, I noted that according to the mystical Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, there are four levels of Adam, none of which should be equated with the first humans. The first is Adam Kadmon, which “contains in principle the whole of the manifest Reality”, thus not a material figure. It is therefore very interesting that Best refers specifically to this figure of Adam Kadmon from the Kabbalistic tradition as being the true meaning of Genesis 1 v26.
In the light of the above, “let (humankind) have dominion over” all the creatures of the Earth as in NRSV, or “rule over” as the three translators put it, cannot mean how it has been variously interpreted by the Christian tradition. Whether one believes that the material level already exists, or whether it exists merely in potential, the text suggests that Adam is a supernatural entity, the universal soul who will presumably have responsibility for, oversee the evolution of life on Earth, not humanity who will rule over its creatures.
Such an interpretation would seem to resolve the confusions in the NRSV translation mentioned above.
In conclusion, David Knott, a Christian with whom I have regular exchanges, who obviously disagrees with the translation and interpretation that I am discussing in this series, has informed me that: “According to ancient cosmology, there are seven levels: the sky, the clouds, the sky above the clouds, the firmament, the waters above the firmament, the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, where God dwells”.
Despite the obvious problems that would follow on, this is an attempt to persuade me that Genesis 1 is referring to the creation of the material level including planet Earth. His quote is very interesting, although perhaps misguided, because according to ancient cosmology there are indeed seven levels, but this has nothing to do with the material universe (except that it is the lowest level of seven in a hierarchical universe). Words like sky, clouds, waters have to be interpreted symbolically, not literally.
A passage by Jonathan Black in his book The Secret History of the World that I quoted in a previous article may be relevant, where he says that the mysterious transition from no-matter to matter has been explained as “a series of thoughts emanating from the cosmic mind”. “Pure mind to begin with, these thought-emanations later became a sort of proto-matter, energy that became increasingly dense, then became matter so ethereal that it was finer than gas, without particles of any kind. Eventually the emanations became gas, then liquid and finally…”, “at the lowest level of the hierarchy… these emanations… interweave so tightly that they create the appearance of solid matter”.
If we apply this thinking to the quote above, the ‘sky’ could or should be interpreted as the heavenly (spiritual) realm (the pure mind/proto-matter level), the ‘clouds’ as the gaseous realm, and the waters as the liquid realm. Then finally solid matter appears.
Knott also writes: “I look forward to reading how your translators interpret: birds, fish, sun etc that, according to Genesis, inhabit these levels”. I assume that they interpret them in the same way that he does, except of course that they believe that Genesis 1 is referring merely to the potential existence of these creations.
If the material universe including planet Earth exists merely in potential, then the birds and fish mentioned in NRSV cannot possibly refer to what Knott understands by these words. Again we have to interpret them in the language of symbolism. An alternative way of interpreting this material (mine, not that of the three translators) would then be that birds, because they fly in the skies/heavens, are symbols of the inhabitants of the spiritual realm (or the waters above the dome/firmament of Genesis). In the same way, fish are an obvious symbol of the inhabitants of the ‘waters’, i.e. the lower waters of Genesis, thus the contents of the intermediate realm between the heavens and the material realm, what we normally call the psyche. In any event, since we may well be talking about the potential existence of the material level, there is no reason to believe that birds and fish refer to creatures on planet Earth.
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In the next article I discuss the meaning of the word Elohim, the term used for God in Genesis 1.
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