Bible Does NOT Say Man is Made From Dust

Blog 9

Bible Does NOT Say Man Is Literally Created From the Dust of the Ground

To many people a misunderstanding of the Bible leads them to believe man was created from dust (Genesis 2:7), the name of the first man was Adam, and Eve was created from a rib of Adam. The metaphors of the parable of the Garden of Eden story need to be clarified.

Let us return to Genesis 1:27 and there the Bible tells us “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.”

Our book “Why Human Beings Do Not Need Blind Faith to Believe in Creationism” explains that man (homo sapiens) was created by God approximately 200,000 years ago.

The Hebrew word for ‘created’ is transliterated as BOR-AH and Genesis 1:27 tells us that the entity called ‘man’ is an original creation by God for the first (and only ) time and the term ‘in His image’ means ‘in the mold God prepared for man’ and not as God looks because we have no clue as to what the appearance of God is like. Let us emphasize that Genesis 1:27 also clearly states that women were created also at that time. We all learned in school that man started out as a cave man that existed as a gatherer and slowly evolved (within its own species). Man is now evolved enough, as determined by God, to be able to recognize Him and pray directly to Him and all this took place 5768 years ago (as per the present calendar year of 2008) and that evolved or developed man is now having his psyche story of progress reviewed in the parable of the Garden of Eden story.

We call the living man in the story Adam and his wife Eve and as the stars of the show they stand in and represent the mankind that evolved up to that period. God wants to explain to the Israelites through the story of the Garden of Eden starring Adam and Eve what man does wrong and what is the right road to travel to find spirituality to God.

Thus in Genesis 2:7 when we read “and the Lord formed man of dust and from the earth; and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life; and man became a living thing” a detailed explanation is required because ‘living thing’ here is reference to spirituality.

The key word for the understanding of Genesis 2:7 is the word ‘formed.’ The Hebrew word for ‘formed’ is not a synonym for the word ‘created.’ Man and woman were already created in Genesis 1:27.

The Hebrew word for ‘formed’ here refers to character and values which etymologically means ‘shaped.’ There is a justified confusion here because the modern use of that Hebrew word refers to ‘produce’ or ‘create’ but again, as used in the scrolls of Moses over 2000 years ago at the time of the Exodus the word refers to ‘shaping’ and in this story, the shaping up of the mindset of mankind.



In the scrolls of Moses we find the Hebrew spelling of the word for ‘formed’ different for the forming of animals from the forming of man. A Hebrew letter called a ‘yud’ is found in the word only once for the forming of animals that God speaks of after they have been created in Genesis 1, but there are two yuds for the forming of man that God is only analyzing and detailing in Genesis 2. One great Sage named Rashi believed the difference in the number of yuds refers to the topic of resurrection of life after death.

The word ‘dust’ in Hebrew is synonymous with the word for clay and the Hebrew religion describes God as the potter who shapes and reshapes his work until satisfied.

This parable delivery of the story of Adam being developed from clay is needed to comply with the mindset of the Israelites of that period who had been imbued with stories from their ancient Semitic culture of people who had been developed from clay-type soil that had been shaped into human form and then animated.

For those fundamentalists who want to argue that God literally created Adam at that time, let us remember we are in Day (Period) 7 and all God’s creation work had been completed in Period 6 and the Lord was now resting.

For more details of this story and what is meant by God removing a rib of Adam to metaphorically create a woman, move now to order the book.

Good reading!