For John Starke

I saw the misunderstanding on complegalitarian and since this will contain a citation or two I am posting my contribution here. I know that is not what you meant to say, but it is a little confusing.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about whether some think that "man" refers to all humans, or to "man" the male. I do think that this was intended to refer to human beings,

“There is an intentionality expressed in these words indicating that man, more fully than any other part of creation, will reflect and represent what God is like. Although the heavens declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1), only man is made in God’s image” (132).

However, I can't help but think that the confusion could have been avoided, since English has a perfectly good way to express the meaning of people, male and female. We are called "humans." Its a good word. I recommend it.

But here is what Bruce Ware wrote on male and female in the image of God,

Second, in Gen. 5:2, God chooses to name both male and female with a name that functions as a masculine generic (i.e., the Hebrew term áa„d£a„m is a masculine term that can be used exclusively for a man, especially in Gen. 1-4, but here is used as a generic term in reference to male and female together).

In Gen. 5:2, we read that God created man in the likeness of God, as male and female, and "when they were created he called them ‘man'" (emphasis added). It appears that God intends the identity of both to contain an element of priority given to the male, since God chooses as their common name a name that is purposely masculine (i.e., a name that can be used also of the man alone, as distinct altogether from the woman, but never of the woman alone, as distinct altogether from the man).

As God has so chosen to create man as male and female, by God's design her identity as female is inextricably tied to and rooted in the prior identity of the male.[18]

My understanding of the word adam is that it can refer to a single human being whose proper name was Adam, or it can refer to a human being, male or female. It indicates that the item being referred to is human.

Adam can, in fact, be used of women alone, as we see in Numbers 31,

32 Now the plunder remaining of the spoil that the army took was 675,000 sheep, ³³72,000 cattle, ³⁴61,000 donkeys, ³⁵and 32,000 persons (nefesh adam) in all, women who had not known man (zakar) by lying with him.

I really don't think that it is best overall to translate adam with the English word "man." It contributes to a very sad and entirely unecessary misunderstanding between the complementarians and egalitarians. It is difficult enough with the very uneven way that the ESV has translated the different Greek and Hebrew words for human beings already.

I think it is important to note that the Hebrew is very distinct in saying that the females were adam "human beings" who had not slept with zakar "males." The Hebrew uses these words in clear and explicit ways. But the ESV calls the zakar "man" and then wants elsewhere to call adam "man" and so on. It is entirely too confusing.

*****

Back to how women are in the image of God. Ware appears to be saying that a single male is in the image of God. However, a woman who has not grounded her identity in man - the male - is not in the image of God.

This is problematic, since half of all women my age are single, and for many or us, our fathers have passed on. We don't feel that we need to ground our identity in another human being, any more than a man does. This doesn't appear to be a logical statement to us women.

Does this help explain why some of us older women are baffled, perturbed and irritated by Bruce Ware. I am so sorry that it makes us cranky. I looked at compegal, and I am sorry, John, but some of commenters are very cranky, actually.

Continued: Here is more of Bruce Ware,

God's naming male and female ‘man' indicates simultaneously, then, the distinctiveness of female from male, and the unity of the female's nature as it is identified with the prior nature of the first-created man, from which she now has come. Since this is so, we should resist the movement today in Bible translation that would customarily render instances of áa„d£a„m with the fully non-gender specific term ‘human being'.[19] This misses the God-intended implication conveyed by the masculine generic ‘man,' viz., that woman possesses her common human nature only through the prior nature of the man. Put differently, she is woman as God's image by sharing in the man who is himself previously God's image. A male priority is indicated, then, along with full male-female equality, when God names male and female ‘man.'

We can now see that Ware wants three Hebrew words to be translated as "man" adam, ish and zakar. Let's add geber and enosh. Ware seems to be saying that God intends males to have priority, so let's translate all these words by "man." But, doesn't God want us to be able to communicate. Didn't he give us language for that purpose?