(originally posted at wycliffe.ca on 2015-11-19)
One translation team I've been working with has a lot on their plate. They've got a handful of books at various stages (this is normal), and they work on one or another book depending on factors like the availability of native speakers to test comprehension with and the availability of consultants to check their work.
As a consultant-in-training I checked their Genesis 1-11 last year, and then many months went by before I heard from them again. In the interim, I checked Genesis 1-5 for two other languages, and, shortly after that, I received responses to my comments on the first language's translation. It was interesting to compare how these three languages handled the issues in these chapters.
One issue is the question of Adam's name. In Genesis 2:7, God forms "the man" (Hebrew ha'adam) from the dust of the ground (ha'adamah). (Aside: notice the play on words in Hebrew; someone has expressed this in English as God forming a human from humus.) Pay attention to the "the" (Hebrew ha-) at the beginning of the word. Like English, Hebrew doesn't put "the" on the beginning of names.[1] That tells us that the Hebrew in 2:7 says "God formed the man", not "God formed Adam".
Two of the three translations I worked with stayed away from the name "Adam" at this point in the story. The other one translated "Yahweh God took dirt/soil in order to create the body of one person. Next he blew air into the small hole(s) in his nose. Then that person became a living person that has life. His name was called Adam." They added the last sentence, and then referred to the man as Adam in the rest of the story. (This team has obviously chosen to translate more on the meaning-based end of the spectrum, not on the literal end. I guess I should talk about that in another post sometime.) To be fair, a standard translation in the national language of the country where the target people group lives also adds the sentence "His name was called Adam" at this point in the story. As a consultant, I couldn't push back too hard when they've got a precedent like that to point to. And, in the end, since the man actually is Adam, it doesn't really matter whether they give his name or just a description, as long as their decisions leave them with a natural story in the target language.
The other two translations didn't call the man "Adam" at this point. The question then is, when should a translation start calling him "Adam"? And my recommendation is: whenever the Hebrew starts calling him "Adam". It turns out that that's not so easy to determine.
Take a look at your favourite English translations of Genesis 2-4 and see which ones use "Adam" where.
Whenever the word in Hebrew is ha'adam, it has to be read as "the man". Whenever there's no "the"--when the Hebrew is 'adam--it could mean "a man", or "humanity", or it could be the name "Adam". (The fact that the man's name means "humanity" is a clue as to how to think about these stories, in my opinion.)
The first time 'adam appears in Hebrew without "the" is 2:20 ("but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found" (NET)).
But 'adam in 2:20 doesn't unambiguously lack the word "the" (ha-). It might actually have a "the" on it. It's hard to tell.
One problem with Hebrew is that it was originally written almost[2] entirely without vowels. The phrase "for Adam" is a single word in Hebrew, with "for" being a prefix. The Hebrew for "for Adam" is lə'adam.[3] The consonants are l'dm: there are four of them, with the apostrophe representing the sound in the middle of "uh oh", which functions like a full consonant in Hebrew but not in English. The Hebrew for "for the man" would be la'adam. Notice the only difference is the first vowel: a to indicate "the", ə to indicate no "the". The consonants are exactly the same: l'dm. The original text, then, which didn't have the vowels, could have meant "for the man" just as well as it could have meant "for Adam".
Sometimes looking at other ancient witnesses to the original text can help us sort out issues like this. The Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek sometime in the last few centuries before Christ. This Greek translation, called the Septuagint (abbreviated "LXX"[4]), uses "Adam" in 2:20 (twice) and also in 2:19. The first two of these clearly have "the" prefixed in Hebrew: the Hebrew unambiguously says "the man", but the LXX translated "Adam". This makes the LXX no help in determining whether l'dm in 2:20 was understood as "for Adam" or "for the man".
Another ancient witness to the text is the Dead Sea Scrolls, but they're in Hebrew without vowels, so they can't help us with this particular issue.
For the rest of Genesis 2, the Hebrew says "the man". In Genesis 3, the Hebrew says "the man" everywhere except 3:17 and 3:21, both of which also have "to/for" prefixed on "(the) man" (same situation as 2:20: the original l'dm could be either "to/for Adam" or "to/for the man").
The first unambiguous place Hebrew says "Adam", i.e., 'adam without ha- ("the") or any other prefixes that muddy the waters, is 4:25: "And Adam had marital relations with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son." (NET) The story about "the man" in Genesis chapter 2 is meant to teach us all something about ourselves, something about God's design for marriage (notice the story's conclusion in 2:24, and also how Jesus quotes from it in defense of marriage in Matthew 19:3-6||Mark 10:2-9). But by chapter 4, Adam/the man is no longer "everyman", but solidly a unique individual with a wife, children, and a name.
The other two translations I consulted for both used "Adam" first in 3:20: when Eve got her name ("Eve" means "living"), they figured it would be natural to tell the story from that point on using Adam's name as well. Since 3:17 and 3:21 are places where the Hebrew could mean "to/for Adam", introducing the name Adam in 3:20 so it could be used naturally in 3:21 seems like a fine choice for them to make.
[1] There are exceptions to this rule in English. We can use "the" with a name to disambiguate who we're talking about, as in "the David who slew Goliath (as opposed to some other David)". It seems "David" in that sentence is a shorthand for "person named David", so this isn't really an exception, just a different use of the word "David". [back]
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