Wherever your opinion on the matter lies, it makes a difference that the first man and woman did not have "American" first names like Adam and Eve. The idea that stories like the garden are meant as history is a relatively new idea, as well as a purely western one. 1:1-3), when he gave us the Old Testament Scriptures through the patriarchs and prophets, as he was of using parables after he humbled himself to become man. My argument is that Jesus was as fond of using parables as the pre-existent Word (Jn. This does not mean that such stories are not "true," it means that they are allegories or parables. When we are discussing whether the story of the garden was a historical event, it would be good to know it was about a man named "Man," a woman named "Life," two trees that impart immortality or god-like knowledge respectively, and a talking snake. While I would regard the transliteration of adam as one of the more minor issues we will discuss on this page, it is not without value. To the Hebrews, there was no difference between the word adam used as the name of the first man and adam used a few hundred times to mean mankind in general. Though adam is used as the name of the first man in Hebrew, we do not carry the Hebrew meaning to English speakers by leaving his name as Adam. For example, adam is used as the name of the first man in Sirach 36:10. I am certain that adam is used many more times in the deuterocanonical books. I don't have search capabilities that will count occurrences in the Deuterocanon, the additional books considered Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox churches. It can be tragic, however, if language changes so much that we can't understand Holy Scripture! AdamĪdam is the Hebrew word for "man." It is used 502 times in the Old Testament.Īctually, adam is used 502 times in the Protestant Old Testament. It can be sad that the effect of this change over time is that it is difficult to understand Shakespeare. What happens with less concrete words is that they become a part of the new language and take on a meaning of their own with time. "Hotel" and "restaurant" have kept their meaning in all those language because they are tied to a physical object. (Ever wonder why we have words with accents on them?) I don't know which of those languages were the source for such words, but we can be confident that they are the same in so many languages because there was one source, and the other languages assumed the word without translation. Words like hotel, restaurant, and café are the same or very close to the same in English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, etc. A German taxi driver once told me that the German word for "rush hour" is "rush hour," laughing as he told me. "Le weekend" is now a French word as well. Oddly enough "know how" has come to replace savoir faire in the French language. Other terms we have imported include "blitzkrieg," German for lightning war and savoir faire, French for "know how," though we apply it to knowing how to behave in a "suave" manner in public settings. One example is "vamoose," as in "Let's vamoose." "Vamoose" comes from the Spanish vamos, which means "let's go." Sometime in our Southwestern cowboy past, we borrowed the term from the Mexicans and refined it a bit for our use. Many such words have made it into the English language. Don't delete it as that just makes the filter hate you.My books, and those I have published for others, consistently maintain 4-star and better ratings despite the occasional 1- and 2-star ratings from people angry about my kicking over sacred cows.Įach of the section titles below is an English, Hebrew, or Greek word from the Bible that has been left untranslated.
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