MAN

The highest form of earthly life and a product of the Creator, Jehovah God. Jehovah formed the man out of dust from the ground, blew into his nostrils the breath of life, “and the man came to be a living soul.” (Ge 2:7; 1Co 15:45) After Adam was created and after he named the animals, Jehovah caused a deep sleep to fall upon him; and while he slept, God took one of Adam’s ribs and used it to make the woman. Therefore, when she was presented to the man, Adam could say: “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He called her Woman, ʼish·shahʹ, “because from man this one was taken.” (Ge 2:21-23) Adam later gave her the name Eve (meaning “Living One”).​—Ge 3:20.

Testifying to man’s creation by Jehovah God, the apostle Paul told the Athenians: “He made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth.” (Ac 17:26) Hence, all nations and races have a common origin.

Adam and Eve were created toward the end of the sixth creative “day.” (Ge 1:24-31) There are no actual records of ancient man, his writing, agriculture, and other pursuits, extending into the past before 4026 B.C.E., the date of Adam’s creation. Since the Scriptures outline man’s history from the very creation of the first human pair, there can be no such thing as “prehistoric man.” Fossil records in the earth provide no link between man and the animals. Then, too, there is a total absence of reference to any subhumans in man’s earliest records, whether these be written documents, cave drawings, sculptures, or the like. The Scriptures make clear the opposite, that man was originally a son of God and that he has degenerated. (1Ki 8:46; Ec 7:20; 1Jo 1:8-10) Archaeologist O. D. Miller observed: “The tradition of the ‘golden age,’ then, was not a myth. The old doctrine of a subsequent decadence, of a sad degeneracy of the human race, from an original state of happiness and purity, undoubtedly embodied a great, but lamentable truth. Our modern philosophies of history, which begin with the primeval man as a savage, evidently need a new introduction. . . . No; the primeval man was not a savage.”​—Har-Moad, 1892, p. 417.

The Bible reveals that man’s original home was “a garden in Eden.” (Ge 2:8; see EDEN No. 1.) Its indicated location is relatively near the place of mankind’s early post-Flood civilization. The view generally accepted by scholars is expressed by P. J. Wiseman as follows: “All the real evidence we have, that of Genesis, archaeology, and the traditions of men, points to the Mesopotamian plain as the oldest home of man. Far Eastern civilization, whether Chinese or Indian, cannot compete with this land in the antiquity of its peoples, for it can easily sustain its claim to be the cradle of civilization.”​—New Discoveries in Babylonia About Genesis, 1949, p. 28.

In what sense is man made “in God’s image”?

In disclosing to his “master worker” the divine purpose to create mankind, God said: “Let us make man [ʼa·dhamʹ] in our image, according to our likeness.” (Ge 1:26, 27; Pr 8:30, 31; compare Joh 1:1-3; Col 1:15-17.) Note that the Scriptures do not say that God created man in the image of a wild beast or of a domestic animal or of a fish. Man was made “in God’s image”; he was a “son of God.” (Lu 3:38) As to the form or shape of God’s body, “at no time has anyone beheld God.” (1Jo 4:12) No one on earth knows what God’s glorious, heavenly, spiritual body looks like, so we cannot liken man’s body to God’s body. “God is a Spirit.”​—Joh 4:24.

Man and woman are “in God’s image” in that they were created with moral qualities like those of God, namely, love and justice. (Compare Col 3:10.) He also has powers and wisdom above those of animals, so that he can appreciate the things that God enjoys and appreciates, such as beauty and the arts, speaking, reasoning, and similar processes of the mind and heart of which the animals are not capable. Moreover, man is capable of spirituality, of knowing and having communication with God. (1Co 2:11-16; Heb 12:9) For such reasons man was qualified to be God’s representative and to have in subjection the forms of creature life in the skies, on the earth, and in the sea.

Being a creation of God, man was originally perfect. (De 32:4) Accordingly, Adam could have bequeathed to his posterity human perfection and opportunity for eternal life on earth. (Isa 45:18) He and Eve were commanded: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it.” As their family increased, they would have cultivated and beautified the earth according to the design of their Creator.​—Ge 1:28.