Male headship before the fall: God’s message, or human perversion of Scripture? Part 2
4. …God named the human race “Man,” not “Woman.”… (Gen. 5:1-2):
In the Hebrew text, the word … ’ådåm… is by no means a gender-neutral term… (Genesis 2:5,7, 8, 15, 16, 18, 19 (twice), 20 (twice, 22, 23, 25; 3:8, 9, 12, 17, 20, 21; 4:1, 25; 5:1)…
It does give a hint of male leadership, which God suggested in choosing this name….
Reading the same text with pink glasses
(To understand this argument, we have to know that people give meanings to words, things they understand when they hear it. An aggressive atheist, when hearing the word ‘God’, may hear: “That fictional character who is blamed for a lot of Old Testament deaths and the Crusades.” Another person, from a religious home, may think: “The One who is angry with all my sin and wants to punish me.” The problem is not the word “God”, but how people understand it.)
God named the human race “Man.” Then, the male sinfully appropriated the name for himself, calling the woman by other names. By the time Genesis was written, this sinful way of thinking about the term ’ådåm was established to such a degree that, writing in Hebrew, God used the word ’ådåm in two ways: The way God intended (for the whole race) and the meaning that sinful men gave the word: As a word for males.
On the other hand, the female was named “life causer”. (The meaning of Eve.) This gives a hint of female leadership: We die in Adam, but get life in Eve.
Stripping away the biases (more…)