Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/140

136 and intellect. He is THE MAN. We become men only so far as we are created, or reborn, into his image and likeness.

And here it will be well to remark, that in the older tongues—the Hebrew, Greek and Latin, there is a peculiarity unknown to those of modern times. They possess, each of them, two words, of different form, which we are obliged to translate by the one word man. The Hebrew term ish means man as distinguished from woman—a masculine being. But the Hebrew term Adam means man in the broad sense including male and female, just as we would say, "Man is mortal," meaning that every human being, without distinction of sex, is mortal. Where the term man, is used in the first chapter of Genesis, it is Adam—man in the abstract—man as of either sex. This relieves the text of the idea, sometimes foolishly advanced, that the Bible is man's book, not woman's, because it speaks so much of man. The trouble lies in the poverty of the English language in reference to that one expression. We possess no separate word by which to translate Adam. Man, therefore, thus used, includes both sexes.

The declaration of God, then, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," does not refer to one male being, but to mankind at large. Nor does it mean, in its spiritual, symbolic sense, the first