Parshat Bereshit5 min read

Adam Was Made From the Ground Beneath God's Altar

Adam was shaped from the sacred earth of the Temple Mount, where atonement would one day be sought. Philo adds that he was made with the eyes of the soul.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Soil That Was Already Waiting
  2. What the Choice of Soil Meant
  3. Philo and the Eyes of the Soul
  4. The Eyes He Was Asking About

The Soil That Was Already Waiting

Before God breathed life into the first human body, the earth that would become that body was already consecrated. The rabbis of Bereshit Rabbah would not accept that Adam was made from random soil. The word for earth in the creation verse is adama -- the same word God uses in Exodus when commanding the first altar: "You shall make for Me an altar of earth," an altar of adama. The verbal echo was too precise to be accidental. Adam was made from the same substance as the altar. The altar is where Israel would one day bring what they had broken and ask for repair. Adam was shaped from the earth already destined for that purpose.

Rabbi Berekhya and Rabbi Helbo, speaking in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahman, taught in Bereshit Rabbah -- the fifth-century CE Palestinian midrash on Genesis -- that Adam was created from the place of his future atonement. The logic is not merely wordplay. The teaching reaches for something about the character of creation: God looked ahead through all the generations that this body would produce, saw what those generations would require, and chose the raw material accordingly. The first human was made from ground that already held the shape of forgiveness.

What the Choice of Soil Meant

The teaching does not say Adam was created already forgiven. It says something more searching. God said, according to the midrash: I will create him from the place of his atonement, and perhaps there is hope that he will endure. The word "perhaps" is everything. God built the repair into the body before the body had done anything requiring repair. Not as a guarantee but as a possibility, a structural openness toward restoration built into the flesh itself.

This is a version of the rabbinic conviction that God created repentance before He created the world. The altar was not an afterthought to human failure. It was part of the original design. The same earth that received the offerings also gave shape to the hands that would bring them.

Philo and the Eyes of the Soul

Philo of Alexandria, the first-century CE Jewish philosopher who read Genesis through the lens of Greek philosophical categories, approached the question of Adam's creation from a completely different direction. He was not asking what soil had shaped the body. He was asking whether the body could see.

In the work preserved as The Midrash of Philo, he argues that Adam must have been created already possessing the faculty of sight. His reasoning is characteristic: everything else in creation was brought into existence in its perfected form. Animals arrived complete. Plants arrived complete. The pinnacle of creation could not arrive incomplete. Therefore Adam's eyes were open from the first moment.

Then Philo presses the argument further. Adam named all the animals. The text of Genesis says so directly. How could he name them without having seen them? Naming requires prior perception. The act of naming is the act of a creature who has already looked and registered what was there.

The Eyes He Was Asking About

But Philo's real interest was not in physical eyes. He throws a philosophical move at the end of his argument: could Moses have been writing about the soul's faculty of sight rather than the body's? The "eyes" with which Adam saw the animals and gave them their names might be the eyes of the mind, the capacity for intellectual apprehension that distinguishes human beings from the creatures Adam was naming. Adam was the creature who could look at a lion and arrive at the concept "lion" -- who could strip an animal of its particularity and understand its type. That capacity is what the naming story demonstrates. The physical eyes simply make the analogy available.

Bereshit Rabbah and Philo are asking different questions about Adam's creation and arriving at complementary answers. The rabbinic tradition asks about the earth: what ground held enough consecration to become the first human body? The Alexandrian tradition asks about the mind: what faculty was operative in the first human act that made it human? Together they build a portrait of Adam as a creature whose body came from the holiest ground on earth and whose mind arrived already capable of the highest human act -- understanding what he was looking at and giving it a name.

AdamCreationTempleSoulAtonement
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Bereshit Rabbah 14:8Bereshit Rabbah

The verse It’s that word "ground" – adama in Hebrew – that sparks our story.

Rabbi Berekhya and Rabbi Ḥelbo, quoting Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman, offer a beautiful interpretation. They suggest that Adam was created from the very place that would later become his place of atonement. The adama, the ground, from which Adam was formed, is connected to the place where he could find forgiveness.

They draw a parallel to (Exodus 20:21), where God says, “You shall make for Me an altar of earth [adama].” Just as the altar serves as a place of atonement, so too did the adama play a role in Adam's creation.

Why this connection? Well, according to this midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) tradition, the Holy One, blessed be He, said, "I will create him from the place of his atonement; then there is hope that perhaps he will endure.” It’s as if God, even at the moment of creation, was thinking ahead, anticipating the need for repentance and offering a built-in mechanism for it. Knowing Adam would stumble, God created him from a place inherently linked to forgiveness, a poignant reminder of the potential for return and renewal.

But there's more to it than just the source of the dust. The text goes on to discuss the "breath of life" – that divine spark that turned a lifeless form into a living being. Bereshit Rabbah describes how God stood up Adam’s lifeless mass from the earth all the way up to the heavens and then injected a soul into it. Now, that's a powerful image!

And here's where it gets really interesting. The text contrasts the way the spirit is "injected" in this world with how it will be in the future. In our current reality, the spirit is given through blowing – as in, God "breathed" into Adam’s nostrils. And according to this interpretation, that's why we eventually die. But in the future, in the messianic era, the spirit will be placed directly within us, resulting in immortality!

The verse cited to support this idea is (Ezekiel 37:14): “I will place My spirit in you and you will live.” This vision of the future offers a powerful hope for a time when death will be overcome and our connection to the divine will be even more direct and lasting.

So, what does this all mean? This passage from Bereshit Rabbah offers a multi-layered understanding of creation. It suggests that Adam's very being was intertwined with the possibility of atonement, offering a glimmer of hope even in the face of potential failure. And it paints a picture of a future where our connection to the divine is so profound that it transcends the limitations of our mortal existence. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, about the potential for redemption that's baked into our very being, and the promise of a future where life truly triumphs over death.

Full source
The Midrash of Philo 7:2The Midrash of Philo

Philo, the 1st-century Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, grappled with this very question in his own way. In what we call "The Midrash of Philo," he argues that Adam must have been created with the ability to see. Why? Because everything else in creation, animals and plants alike, were brought into existence in their perfected forms. So, shouldn't Adam, the pinnacle of creation, also possess his most excellent parts, including, of course, his eyes?

Philo goes on to emphasize the verse where Adam names all the animals. It's a foundational story. And Philo asks a very logical question: How could Adam name them if he couldn't see them? It seems perfectly plain, doesn't it? He had to have beheld them first.

Then, Philo, ever the philosopher, throws us a curveball. Could Moses, in writing about "eyes," have been speaking metaphorically? Was he referring to the vision of the soul? You know, that inner sight that allows us to perceive good and evil, beauty and ugliness, and all the complexities of the world?

It’s a fascinating thought. Perhaps the physical eyes were secondary to the spiritual vision.

Philo doesn't stop there. He further dissects the idea of the "eye" by suggesting that it can represent counsel, the "warning of the understanding." In other words, the ability to reason and discern. But, he cautions, there's also another kind of "eye," one "devoid of sound reason," which he calls opinion. The ability to see and perceive is a gift, but it can also be clouded by our own preconceived notions and biases. It seems Philo is suggesting we need to be careful about what – and how – we see.

So, what did Adam see? Perhaps the answer lies not just in the physical act of seeing, but in the deeper questions of perception, understanding, and the constant battle between reason and opinion. Maybe the true miracle wasn't just that Adam had eyes, but that he had the potential to truly see the world around him, and within him.

Full source
Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 20:12Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

"The man", by the merit of Abraham, as it is written, "the great man among the giants" (Joshua 14:15), this is Abraham. And why does it call him "a great man"? Because he should have been created before Adam; but the Holy One, blessed be He, said, "Perhaps he will spoil things, and there will be no one to come and set right after him." A man who has a beam that overhangs, where does he place it? Is it not in the middle of the hall, so that it can bear the beams before it and after it? So too he was created in the middle of the generations, so that he might bear the generations before him and after him. They bring the well-ordered into the house of the disordered, but they do not bring the disordered into the house of the well-ordered. "Dust", a fawn of the world; just as a fawn (of the world) is at its fullness, so too Eve was created at her fullness. Adam and Eve were created like persons of twenty years. "Dust", male; "from the ground", female; the Fashioner brings dust, which is male, and ground, which is female, so that His vessels may be sound. "From the ground", from the place of his atonement he was created, as you say (Exodus 20:21), "An altar of earth you shall make for Me." The Holy One, blessed be He, said, "Behold, I am making him from the place of his atonement; would that he may endure."

Full source