By Kerry A. Shirts
1/13/2010
Hebrew has a fascinating play on words concerning “Adam,” “mankind,” “blood,” and “red,” or “reddish”. It’s not found in the Greek, Latin, German, or English nearly as strong, if at all. This playing on words is what makes reading Biblical Hebrew such a delight.
The first man was named “Adam.” His creation from the ground is a beautiful play on words.הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה The man הָאָדָם (ha-adam) is made from the dust of the ground, the הָאֲדָמָה (ha-adamah)(Genesis 2:7). He is simply called “the man” when he is first created. The definite article הָ means “the” is attached to the word for “man” - אָדָם and it is very interesting that Adam can mean “skin” as well. (˒adamat) skin, as smoothly covering & close-fitting;
The word is used for an individual, as well as for the collective for all of mankind, or groups of men as
1/13/2010
Hebrew has a fascinating play on words concerning “Adam,” “mankind,” “blood,” and “red,” or “reddish”. It’s not found in the Greek, Latin, German, or English nearly as strong, if at all. This playing on words is what makes reading Biblical Hebrew such a delight.
The first man was named “Adam.” His creation from the ground is a beautiful play on words.הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה The man הָאָדָם (ha-adam) is made from the dust of the ground, the הָאֲדָמָה (ha-adamah)(Genesis 2:7). He is simply called “the man” when he is first created. The definite article הָ means “the” is attached to the word for “man” - אָדָם and it is very interesting that Adam can mean “skin” as well. (˒adamat) skin, as smoothly covering & close-fitting;
The word is used for an individual, as well as for the collective for all of mankind, or groups of men as
we see in Jeremiah 47:2 -וְיֹשְׁבֵי בָהּ וְזָעֲקוּ הָאָדָם וְהֵילִל “…then the men shall cry…” Genesis 6 also uses הָאָדָם (ha-adam) to mean the collective of all the men in an area. All of mankind has become corrupt.
The word דם (pronounced dahm or better yet dawm) means “blood.” This noun has Akkadian cognates daÒmu (adammu and adamatu with the root Àdm). At Deuteronomy 32:14 it is the וְדַם־עֵנָב “The blood of the grape.” cf. Ugaritic dm ÁsÌm = wine, while the Akkadian daÒm erini is cedar resin, all having red associated with them, exactly as human blood in the Old Testament does, of course. The אֲדַמְדָּם, (adamdam) at Leviticus 13:42 is the word for “reddish.” It is also used for the red heifer sacrifice ritual.
What makes all this so interesting is that Josephus taught in his book The Antiquities of the Jews, “concerning the formation of man, says thus: That God took dust from the ground, and formed man, and inserted in him a spirit and a soul. This man was called Adam, which in the Hebrew tongue signifies one that is red, because he was formed out of red earth, compounded together; for of that kind is virgin and true earth.” And he taught this because of the word play upon the name of Adam, which is also involved with all mankind, the color red, blood, the ground, etc. So we virtually have the אֲדַמְדָּם הָאָדָם אָדָם adamdam ha-adam adam “The reddish man, Adam,” Who is, after all, from the dust of the ground, the הָאֲדָמָה (ha-adamah).
Joseph Fielding McConkie (“Gospel Symbolism,” p. 179) noted that
The Hebrew root for the name Adam is a generic term meaning "man" or "mankind" and so appears over five hundred times in the Old Testament. Its usage there as a proper name is unusual. Scholars are uncertain as to its etymology. The statement that God formed "man" from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and thus "man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7) represents a popular etymology in the form of a word play. Other suggestions have included "red soil," "to show blood," "be like," "likeness," and "to make or produce." Given what we know about Adam, any or all of these suggestions seem reasonable. He was, the scriptures tell us, the first man, the first of God's creatures to possess the corruptible element of blood, and he was of course created in the image and likeness of God. The book of Abraham suggests to us the possibility that his name means "first father," as in our corrected versions it refers to "Adam, or first father" (Abraham 1:3). The book of Moses suggests the interpretation "many" (Moses 1:34).
Hugh Nibley described the interesting way Adam went about in the world -
The correct and formal method of announcing one's intention of occupying a land was by the pitching of a red tent upon it, such a tent proclaiming the owner's "unique position as universal ruler—a superman and a cosmic being, according to the views of the ancients."… Adam in the beginning, according to an old and widespread tradition, took possession of the world as he journeyed through it by setting up his red leather tent wherever he went. (“The Ancient State,” p. 53)
Victor L. Ludlow expands the etymology further -
The term "Edom" … in addition to denoting the country located east of the Dead Sea, means "the world" and especially "the wicked world." This second definition can be supported by modern revelation ("D&C 1:30) and a linguistic evaluation of the term. The Hebrew word Edom also means "red" or "earth" and is the root for the words Adam and man. Therefore, it often connotes human or worldly qualities. As one scholar defines it, "Edom is always figurative of the natural state of man in his antagonism against God." (Vine, Isaiah, p. 84. Fond in “Isaiah, Prophet, Seer, and Poet,” Deseret Book, 1982, p. 308).
There is an interesting tie in with Egypt as well as for the Book of Mormon that we can note. I crib from Hugh Nibley’s notes in his book “Abraham in Egypt.“ (pp. 240-241). The themes are truly electrifying for our analysis!
The Jaredite story gives us the code name of the migrating bee-host in one direction; the Egyptian record gives us the same name for the operation in the other direction. It is the name Deseret. A. Yahuda saw in the word a definite tie between Egypt and Israel. He notes that "tesheret" in Egyptian means "the red one," i.e., the sterile barren land, and that in "Gen. 3:19 Adam is made from "red earth" while in "Gen. 3:23 "he was expelled from the 'garden' to till the 'red earth,' " i.e., his first migration was really from the red land to the "black earth" of the his first migration was really from the red land to the "black earth" of the land of Egypt, which was "like the garden of the Lord," recalling Eden. Deseret designates the land as the goal of migration—the promised land, quite literally, "the Holy Land."
What did the Egyptians mean by Deseret? We need only take the definitions in the order in which they occur in Grapow’s Woerterbuch. First speaking of countries and of bees) is anything red by nature. (Wb. V, 487f.) The feminine form Dsr.t designates "Isis as a black-red woman" (489), the prototype of the Black Virgins which still sit in bee-caves all over the Old World; it is also blood or wine and the red jars that contain them (489) [KAS says - Notice this is one of the cognates in Ugaritic for our Hebrew word!]; it is the red and angry Eye of Horus; it is the red color of the land, the uniquely red land of Egypt and its deserts (489); it is the red hair of certain divinities (489) and the red rage of the Lady who protects her son (590); it is a vengeful goddess (490); it is the sickness, the redness of the eye or of the sky, that afflicts mankind (490); and it is blood and the drinking of blood (491). The "nisbe" form, dsr.ty (cf. bi. ti) means "belonging to the Red One," and denotes the sungod (492); in a bloodthirsty sense it can apply both to the Sun and the Red Crown (492), and dsr.t can mean "the wrath of the Red Crown," while dsr denotes also defilement of the waters (492).
Dsr.t denotes red vessels of water or wine, the former for ritual cleansing, the latter for breaking and pouring out the wine of wrath of Hathor, who for the celebration goes by the name of Dsr.t, "Mistress of the Two Red Jars"—one of purification, the other of vengeance (493). All of which most forcefully suggests or recalls the coming of the Lady to Egypt, as we have described it above.
As early as the Pyramid Texts dsr.t is the name of the Lady who rests at the mouth of the canyon (291a: No. 470), and of the Red Crown, the bee-crown of Neith, here called "the crown on the head of Re," the name being also applied to the king who wore it (493). The crown itself is "personified as a Goddess (Buto) having the name of Dsr.t a name also borne by the priest both of the crown and the goddess (494). Finally, dsr.t is the Red Land, the desert country as well as the holy Red Land of Lower Egypt itself, or simply Egypt, which is a red-rock country from one end to the other (489, 493).
Nibley further shared a nifty little insight into the Egyptian nature of this red crown tie with Adam when he showed that (“The World of the Jaredites,” Improvement Era, 1952, Vol. Lv. January, 1952. No. 1. .) “The Lord of the Red Crown, especially Atum the Creator-god of Heliopolis (is identified by some Egyptologists with Adam).”
In demonstrating the interesting temple themes and parallels to the ancient Egyptians Nibley also wrote in “The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri,” (Deseret Book, 1976, p.133 -
When Re (the Egyptian Sn, personified as Re) comes down he is Atum, as we have seen, while Amon and Ptah together form the body of man and place breath in his body. Whose body? That can be complicated too, but the preferred candidate is Atum, by far the most human of the four: "I am Ptah, I have opened thy mouth. ... Thy body is the body of Atum eternally ..." (Lefebure, An. Serv., 20:230). "Thou arisest with thy father Atum," the dead king is told; "thou art raised up with thy father Atum ..." (Spiegel, An. Serv., 53:370). Atum as the rising and the setting sun, "Re on the horizon," "Re coming down, Atum in the evening" is necessarily the red sun as it passes between the upper and the lower worlds. Atum wears the red crown as "the King comes out of Buto, red (dshr) as the flame" (Zandee, ZA, 99:54, C.T. I, 386ff, P.T. 697 a.d.). This certainly suggests the well-known meaning of Adam as "red."
In the LDS Magazine the “Contributor” (Vol. 2, p. 259, 1881) in the article “The Divine Origin of the Book of Mormon,” we read this interesting bit of speculation about an ancient Southeastern American area and the Book of Mormon -
To my mind there is something remarkable in this name "Tlapalan" as signifying red country, for the "Hue hue Tlapalan," appears to be the original land from whence came the different colonies that inhabited and peopled America in the early ages, "Hue hue," meaning "old." Thus we would say, "Hue hue Tlapalan"—old, or original, red country. Now, we may reasonably suppose that the country, at least, in the vicinity of the Red Sea, is of a similar color, and, Josephus says: "This man was called Adam, which, in the Hebrew tongue, signifies one that is red; because he was formed out of the earth, compounded together; for of that kind is virgin true earth."—Chap. i, 2 Antiq. of the Jews. According to this authority, then, we learn that virgin true earth was originally red, hence, as I view the matter, we have a very natural foundation for the word "Tlapalan"—red country—as applied to that land in the vicinity of the Gulf of California, and for "Hue hue Tlapalan," as applied to the original land beyond the seas, from whence came the primitive inhabitants of America.
Our exploration of the Hebrew here has been most instructive, taking us from the earliest times in the Bible, on into the Book of Mormon, and ancient Egyptian myth and history, and perhaps even into the New World.
The word דם (pronounced dahm or better yet dawm) means “blood.” This noun has Akkadian cognates daÒmu (adammu and adamatu with the root Àdm). At Deuteronomy 32:14 it is the וְדַם־עֵנָב “The blood of the grape.” cf. Ugaritic dm ÁsÌm = wine, while the Akkadian daÒm erini is cedar resin, all having red associated with them, exactly as human blood in the Old Testament does, of course. The אֲדַמְדָּם, (adamdam) at Leviticus 13:42 is the word for “reddish.” It is also used for the red heifer sacrifice ritual.
What makes all this so interesting is that Josephus taught in his book The Antiquities of the Jews, “concerning the formation of man, says thus: That God took dust from the ground, and formed man, and inserted in him a spirit and a soul. This man was called Adam, which in the Hebrew tongue signifies one that is red, because he was formed out of red earth, compounded together; for of that kind is virgin and true earth.” And he taught this because of the word play upon the name of Adam, which is also involved with all mankind, the color red, blood, the ground, etc. So we virtually have the אֲדַמְדָּם הָאָדָם אָדָם adamdam ha-adam adam “The reddish man, Adam,” Who is, after all, from the dust of the ground, the הָאֲדָמָה (ha-adamah).
Joseph Fielding McConkie (“Gospel Symbolism,” p. 179) noted that
The Hebrew root for the name Adam is a generic term meaning "man" or "mankind" and so appears over five hundred times in the Old Testament. Its usage there as a proper name is unusual. Scholars are uncertain as to its etymology. The statement that God formed "man" from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and thus "man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7) represents a popular etymology in the form of a word play. Other suggestions have included "red soil," "to show blood," "be like," "likeness," and "to make or produce." Given what we know about Adam, any or all of these suggestions seem reasonable. He was, the scriptures tell us, the first man, the first of God's creatures to possess the corruptible element of blood, and he was of course created in the image and likeness of God. The book of Abraham suggests to us the possibility that his name means "first father," as in our corrected versions it refers to "Adam, or first father" (Abraham 1:3). The book of Moses suggests the interpretation "many" (Moses 1:34).
Hugh Nibley described the interesting way Adam went about in the world -
The correct and formal method of announcing one's intention of occupying a land was by the pitching of a red tent upon it, such a tent proclaiming the owner's "unique position as universal ruler—a superman and a cosmic being, according to the views of the ancients."… Adam in the beginning, according to an old and widespread tradition, took possession of the world as he journeyed through it by setting up his red leather tent wherever he went. (“The Ancient State,” p. 53)
Victor L. Ludlow expands the etymology further -
The term "Edom" … in addition to denoting the country located east of the Dead Sea, means "the world" and especially "the wicked world." This second definition can be supported by modern revelation ("D&C 1:30) and a linguistic evaluation of the term. The Hebrew word Edom also means "red" or "earth" and is the root for the words Adam and man. Therefore, it often connotes human or worldly qualities. As one scholar defines it, "Edom is always figurative of the natural state of man in his antagonism against God." (Vine, Isaiah, p. 84. Fond in “Isaiah, Prophet, Seer, and Poet,” Deseret Book, 1982, p. 308).
There is an interesting tie in with Egypt as well as for the Book of Mormon that we can note. I crib from Hugh Nibley’s notes in his book “Abraham in Egypt.“ (pp. 240-241). The themes are truly electrifying for our analysis!
The Jaredite story gives us the code name of the migrating bee-host in one direction; the Egyptian record gives us the same name for the operation in the other direction. It is the name Deseret. A. Yahuda saw in the word a definite tie between Egypt and Israel. He notes that "tesheret" in Egyptian means "the red one," i.e., the sterile barren land, and that in "Gen. 3:19 Adam is made from "red earth" while in "Gen. 3:23 "he was expelled from the 'garden' to till the 'red earth,' " i.e., his first migration was really from the red land to the "black earth" of the his first migration was really from the red land to the "black earth" of the land of Egypt, which was "like the garden of the Lord," recalling Eden. Deseret designates the land as the goal of migration—the promised land, quite literally, "the Holy Land."
What did the Egyptians mean by Deseret? We need only take the definitions in the order in which they occur in Grapow’s Woerterbuch. First speaking of countries and of bees) is anything red by nature. (Wb. V, 487f.) The feminine form Dsr.t designates "Isis as a black-red woman" (489), the prototype of the Black Virgins which still sit in bee-caves all over the Old World; it is also blood or wine and the red jars that contain them (489) [KAS says - Notice this is one of the cognates in Ugaritic for our Hebrew word!]; it is the red and angry Eye of Horus; it is the red color of the land, the uniquely red land of Egypt and its deserts (489); it is the red hair of certain divinities (489) and the red rage of the Lady who protects her son (590); it is a vengeful goddess (490); it is the sickness, the redness of the eye or of the sky, that afflicts mankind (490); and it is blood and the drinking of blood (491). The "nisbe" form, dsr.ty (cf. bi. ti) means "belonging to the Red One," and denotes the sungod (492); in a bloodthirsty sense it can apply both to the Sun and the Red Crown (492), and dsr.t can mean "the wrath of the Red Crown," while dsr denotes also defilement of the waters (492).
Dsr.t denotes red vessels of water or wine, the former for ritual cleansing, the latter for breaking and pouring out the wine of wrath of Hathor, who for the celebration goes by the name of Dsr.t, "Mistress of the Two Red Jars"—one of purification, the other of vengeance (493). All of which most forcefully suggests or recalls the coming of the Lady to Egypt, as we have described it above.
As early as the Pyramid Texts dsr.t is the name of the Lady who rests at the mouth of the canyon (291a: No. 470), and of the Red Crown, the bee-crown of Neith, here called "the crown on the head of Re," the name being also applied to the king who wore it (493). The crown itself is "personified as a Goddess (Buto) having the name of Dsr.t a name also borne by the priest both of the crown and the goddess (494). Finally, dsr.t is the Red Land, the desert country as well as the holy Red Land of Lower Egypt itself, or simply Egypt, which is a red-rock country from one end to the other (489, 493).
Nibley further shared a nifty little insight into the Egyptian nature of this red crown tie with Adam when he showed that (“The World of the Jaredites,” Improvement Era, 1952, Vol. Lv. January, 1952. No. 1. .) “The Lord of the Red Crown, especially Atum the Creator-god of Heliopolis (is identified by some Egyptologists with Adam).”
In demonstrating the interesting temple themes and parallels to the ancient Egyptians Nibley also wrote in “The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri,” (Deseret Book, 1976, p.133 -
When Re (the Egyptian Sn, personified as Re) comes down he is Atum, as we have seen, while Amon and Ptah together form the body of man and place breath in his body. Whose body? That can be complicated too, but the preferred candidate is Atum, by far the most human of the four: "I am Ptah, I have opened thy mouth. ... Thy body is the body of Atum eternally ..." (Lefebure, An. Serv., 20:230). "Thou arisest with thy father Atum," the dead king is told; "thou art raised up with thy father Atum ..." (Spiegel, An. Serv., 53:370). Atum as the rising and the setting sun, "Re on the horizon," "Re coming down, Atum in the evening" is necessarily the red sun as it passes between the upper and the lower worlds. Atum wears the red crown as "the King comes out of Buto, red (dshr) as the flame" (Zandee, ZA, 99:54, C.T. I, 386ff, P.T. 697 a.d.). This certainly suggests the well-known meaning of Adam as "red."
In the LDS Magazine the “Contributor” (Vol. 2, p. 259, 1881) in the article “The Divine Origin of the Book of Mormon,” we read this interesting bit of speculation about an ancient Southeastern American area and the Book of Mormon -
To my mind there is something remarkable in this name "Tlapalan" as signifying red country, for the "Hue hue Tlapalan," appears to be the original land from whence came the different colonies that inhabited and peopled America in the early ages, "Hue hue," meaning "old." Thus we would say, "Hue hue Tlapalan"—old, or original, red country. Now, we may reasonably suppose that the country, at least, in the vicinity of the Red Sea, is of a similar color, and, Josephus says: "This man was called Adam, which, in the Hebrew tongue, signifies one that is red; because he was formed out of the earth, compounded together; for of that kind is virgin true earth."—Chap. i, 2 Antiq. of the Jews. According to this authority, then, we learn that virgin true earth was originally red, hence, as I view the matter, we have a very natural foundation for the word "Tlapalan"—red country—as applied to that land in the vicinity of the Gulf of California, and for "Hue hue Tlapalan," as applied to the original land beyond the seas, from whence came the primitive inhabitants of America.
Our exploration of the Hebrew here has been most instructive, taking us from the earliest times in the Bible, on into the Book of Mormon, and ancient Egyptian myth and history, and perhaps even into the New World.
Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience,when it has no soul to damned,and no body to be kicked?Do you understand?
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Red, more pointedly, is the color of Mars and all "created" heroes associated with Mars in myth, legend, and religious history.
Don't you give any credence to the polar column of antiquity?
Great article, though.
As always.
Posted by: Kim | November 10, 2010 at 05:12 PM