Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/157

ADAM  of admitting to, or making, solemn vows, and had used all the ceremonies prescribed for solemn profession."

Women were not included in this law. They, unless where special indults were granted, as in Austria (Bizzarri, 158), and Bavaria (Bizzarri, 463), followed the Tridentine regulation until Leo XIII (3 May, 1902, Decretum "Perpensis", S.C. Epp. et Regul.) enjoined on them the same profession of simple vows for three years prior to the solemn profession, under penalty of nullity.

2em

Adam (Heb., , Sept., ), The first man and the father of the human race.

—There is not a little divergence of opinion among Semitic scholars when they attempt to explain the etymological signification of the Hebrew word adam (which in all probability was originally used as a common rather than a proper name), and so far no theory appears to be fully satisfactory. One cause of uncertainty in the matter is the fact that the root adam as signifying "man" or "mankind" is not common to all the Semitic tongues, though of course the name is adopted by them in translations of the Old Testament. As an indigenous term with the above signification, it occurs only in Phœnician and Sabean, and probably also in Assyrian. In Gen., ii, 7, the name seems to be connected with the word ha-adamah "the ground", in which case the value of the term would be to represent man (ratione materiæ) as earth-born, much the same as in Latin, where the word homo is supposed to be kindred with humus. It is a generally recognized fact that the etymologies proposed in the narratives which make up the Book of Genesis are often divergent and not always philologically correct, and though the theory (founded on Gen., ii, 7) that connects adam with adamah has been defended by some scholars, it is at present generally abandoned. Others explain the term as signifying "to be red", a sense which the root bears in various passages of the Old Testament (e.g. Gen., xxv, 50), as also in Arabic and Ethiopic. In this hypothesis the name would seem to have been originally applied to a distinctively red or ruddy race. In this connection Gesenius (Thesaurus, s.v., p. 25) remarks that on the ancient monuments of Egypt the human figures representing Egyptians are constantly depicted in red, while those standing for other races are black or of some other colour. Something analogous to this explanation is revealed in the Assyrian expression çalmât qaqqadi, i.e. "the black-headed", which is often used to denote men in general. (Cf. Delitsch, Assyr. Handwörterbuch, Leipzig, 1896, p. 25.) Some writers combine this explanation with the preceding one, and assign to the word adam the twofold signification of "red earth", thus adding to the notion of man's material origin a connotation of the color of the ground from which he was formed. A third theory, which seems to be the prevailing one at present (cf. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, 1903, pp. 78, 793), explains the root adam as signifying "to make", "to produce", connecting it with the Assyrian adamu, the meaning of which is probably "to build", "to construct", whence adam would signify "man" either in the passive sense, as made, produced, created, or in the active sense, as a producer.

In the Old Testament the word is used both as a common and a proper noun, and in the former acceptation it has different meanings. Thus in Genesis ii, 5, it is employed to signify a human being, man or woman; rarely, as in Gen., ii, 22, it signifies man as opposed to woman, and, finally, it sometimes stands for mankind collectively, as in Gen., i, 26. The use of the term, as a proper as well as a common noun, is common to both the sources designated in critical circles as P and J. Thus in the first narrative of the Creation (P) the word is used with reference to the production of mankind in both sexes, but in Gen., v, 14, which belongs to the same source, it is also taken as a proper name. In like manner the second account of the creation (J) speaks of "the man" (ha-adam), but later on (Gen., iv, 25) the same document employs the word as a proper name without the article.

—Practically all the Old Testament information concerning Adam and the beginnings of the human race is contained in the opening chapters of Genesis. To what extent these chapters should be considered as strictly historical is a much disputed question, the discussion of which does not come within the scope of the present article. Attention, however, must be called to the fact that the story of the Creation is told twice, viz. in the first chapter and in the second, and that while there is a substantial agreement between the two accounts there is, nevertheless, a considerable divergence as regards the setting of the narrative and the details. It has been the custom of writers who were loath to recognize the presence of independent sources or documents in the Pentateuch to explain the fact of this twofold narrative by saying that the sacred writer, having set forth systematically in the first chapter the successive phases of the Creation, returns to the same topic in the second chapter in order to add some further special details with regard to the origin of man. It must be granted, however, that very few scholars of the present day, even among Catholics, are satisfied with this explanation, and that among critics of every school there is a strong preponderance of opinion to the effect that we are here in presence of a phenomenon common enough in Oriental historical compositions, viz. the combination or juxtaposition of two or more independent documents more or less closely welded together by the historiographer, who among the Semites is essentially a compiler. (See Guidi, "L'historiographie chez les Sémites" in the "Revue biblique", October, 1906.) The reasons on which this view is based, as well as the arguments of those who oppose it, may be found in Dr. Gigot's "Special Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament", Pt. I. Suffice it to mention here that a similar repetition of the principal events narrated is plainly discernible throughout all the historic portions of the Pentateuch, and even of the later books, such as Samuel and Kings, and that the inference drawn from this constant phenomenon is confirmed not only by the difference of style and viewpoint characteristic of the duplicate narratives, but also by the divergences and antinomies which they generally exhibit. Be that as it may, it will be pertinent to the purpose of the present article to examine the main features of the twofold Creation narrative with special reference to the origin of man.

In the first account (Ch. i, ii, 4a) Elohim is represented as creating different categories of beings on successive days. Thus the vegetable kingdom is produced on the third day, and, having set the sun and moon in the firmament of heaven on the fourth, God on the fifth day creates the living things of the water and the fowls of the air which receive a special blessing, with the command to increase and multiply. On the sixth day Elohim creates, first, all the living creatures and beasts of the earth; then, in the words