You Could Look It Up (Gen 5:1)
The Genealogy of Adam
New to the column? We’re doing a close reading of Genesis, which started in September 2022. Visit the Archive and plunge in, or look here to get oriented.
1 The Genealogy of Adam זֶ֣ה סֵ֔פֶר תּוֹלְדֹ֖ת אָדָ֑ם
The פ at the end of Genesis 4 — as we saw just before we began the episode I called “You Can’t Go Home Again” — is the signal the Masoretic text uses to mark the end of a large section. We now begin the fourth episode of the Bible, apparently a previously existing work that has been included in the text at this point.
I’ve said that the story of Cain also originated elsewhere. The character in that story is clearly not the first child ever born, as the connection with Genesis 3 makes him. What’s different about this new chapter is that it is incorporated here with its title. I’ll talk about my translation in a moment; first let’s look at some of the various other ways these four Hebrew words have been translated.
KJV: This is the book of the generations of Adam.
NJPS: This is the record of Adam’s line.
NRSV: This is the list of the descendants of Adam.
Fox: This is the record of the begettings of Adam/Humankind.
NETS: This is the book of the origin of human beings [βίβλος γενέσεως ἀνθρώπων].
Robert Alter: This is the book of the lineage of Adam
Richard Elliott Friedman: This is the Book of Records of the Human
The first word of the chapter, זה zeh ‘this’ is quite straightforward, and the phrase is a nominal sentence (just nouns, no verbs), so in English the translations add a form of the verb to be: “this is.” ספר séfer, however, which we’re seeing here for the first time in the Bible, is a little more difficult to translate.
In Modern Hebrew it’s the word for a book, and that’s how I understand it here, too — but not in the modern sense of a volume with pages and front and back covers. That technology was not in common use when this was written. Instead, I’m talking about a “book” in a different sense, one we also use today: a series of words written by a particular author, without reference to the format in which you might read those words.
Huckleberry Finn is a “book” by Mark Twain whether you read it between hard covers, soft covers, or on some electronic device, or even if you listen to a recording of it. ספר can certainly have that meaning in the Bible even if a physical séfer would normally be a “document” on a sheet of some writing material — rolled up, if long enough, into a scroll.
One more thing to remember is that Hebrew (still) does not have capital letters to clarify when something is a name rather than a simple word. As I understand it, the Hebrew words zeh séfer in this verse at the beginning of Genesis 5 are telling the reader that what follows is a title: “this is the book [called] … .” I’ve used our English capital letters and some italics to do exactly that same job — without the need for “this” or for a translation of ספר.
There are still two more Hebrew words in this phrase. I’m not going to spend much time talking about the second one, אדם, which in our Hebrew text is the same as the Adam — obviously a name — that we’ll meet in v. 3. Some people want to read this generically, as if it said ha-adam, “the earthling” or simply “humanity.” I take it literally because (as I said) I understand it to be the title of a text that has been incorporated into the Bible at this point.
As we’ll see, that text moves us in rapid succession through the first ten generations of humanity — but always with a very particular perspective, naming the firstborn son of each generation. Spoiler: the ultimate aim of this way of describing history is to get us to the particular family whose story is told in the Bible, the Israelites. Our chapter moves us from Adam to Noah, and later in the Primordial History (Genesis 1–11) we’ll move ten generations further, from Noah to Abraham.
But wait! (you cry) — the Israelites are a nation, not a family!
It’s true that the Israelites are a nation; it’s also true that, according to the Bible’s perspective, they are a family. That’s why people in the modern world who (from an outside perspective) “convert” to Judaism are, from an inside perspective, not “converting” but being adopted into a family, becoming another “son” or “daughter” of Abraham and Sarah. You have not merely changed your religion from some philosophical perspective; you have changed it because you have been grafted on to a family tree.
Since it will be a while before this column makes it to the book of Exodus at the rate we’re going, let me quote the first paragraph of that book for you (in the King James translation) to show you the magic trick that’s being worked there:
Exod 1:1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel [בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל], which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. 6 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. 7 And the children of Israel [וּבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל] were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.
NJPS and NRSV translate the meaning rather than the words, hiding the magic trick:
b’nei yisrael (v. 1) — “the sons of Israel,” the boys his wives gave birth to
b’nei yisrael (v. 7) — “the Israelites,” the nation that will be featured in the Bible
Do I really have to learn Hebrew to find all these goodies that the translations are hiding from me? Yes, you do. It’s not as hard as you think it will be.
Eager to start reading The Generations of Adam? I don’t blame you. But it doesn’t actually start until v. 3. Before we get there, we have one more word in The Genealogy of Adam to talk about, תּוֹלְדֹ֖ת tol’dot ‘generations’. We’ll turn to that next time.