(Ver 1.1) In my last lesson on Genesis I talked about the prophesied coming of a perfect or more literally a mature man, but today I want to shift gears and change our focus on something new.  Back in verse 27 we saw the creation of man in the image of God.  I want to stop right there and point out something that I found very interesting while I was studying this verse.  The Hebrew word translated as “man” is H120 in the Strong’s.  Now that is all well and good until I noticed that the name “Adam” was from the Hebrew H121.  So what is the problem?  If you don’t speak Hebrew you would never know that these two words are the exact same word.  Strong decided to give the one word two different reference numbers even though it is the same word.  That is a major problem for translators and readers.  How do you know when you should translate the one word as “Adam” or as “man”.  The determination of the meaning becames a highly subjective decision process that can be very easily mistranslated based upon someone’s opinion of what they think it means.  I hope you understand the problem.  You see I for one believe after searching the Bible for the occurrences of these words that sometimes they did it right and a few times I believe they did wrong.  Uh oh!

Gen 1:27  So God created Adam (man) in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

 Look at verse 27 and see what changes if I change the one word.  “So God created Adam in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”.  Thre was nothing that super dramatic that changed.  Was it completely different, not really.  The original said “man” my modified version said “Adam”.  But since they are the same word in the Hebrew which one is right?  Verse 27 actually contains a major contradiction, riddle or puzzle.  Did you notice it?  It said at first God created him, and then it says God created them.  We really haven’t gotten to the creation of the woman even though she is clearly mentioned for the first time in this verse.  As we get into chapter 2 of Genesis we will begin to see that chapter 2 is really just a more in depth look at some specifics that occurred in chapter 1.  Chapter 2 is simply a more detailed account of the creation event using new information given to us and a more in depth look at some very new huge subjects such as God’s definition of family and marriage.

Getting back to the puzzle of verse 27 what is the solution to the contradiction?  This is why I believe the word should be “Adam”.  When God created the male and the female God called both of their name “Adam”.  It use to be common practice in our world for women to take the name of their husbands so that they were both called by the same name.  When we get to chapter 2 of Genesis we will see why more clearly.  So why did God call both of them Adam?  Maybe we should stop and ask, did God call them both Adam?  There is actually a confirming scripture that says this later in Genesis.  Look at this verse in Genesis 5:2:

Genesis 5:2 Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name “Adam” in the day that they were created.

It is truly amazing what the Bible says when you can see it and put the pieces together.  This verse is speaking directly about the cretion account we just read about in Genesis 1:27 but this time it is worded correctly and stated accurately.  The translotors had no choice but to make it this word based upon context.  If they would only understood this more clearly I believe that they would corrected what they had already done in chapter one.  What caused them to make this verse Adam and the other one man?   In this verse there is the direct association of this word being both of their “names”.  These are the kind of little quirky things that you just need to become aware of when you read and study the Bible.  The translators were men and they sometimes made mistakes.  Every Bible translation has some problems, but there are none that can’t be solved by you studying.  God Bless!