Biblical anthropology: the old testament teaching of human creation from the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7). Origins, meaning, and theological reflection in the Christian and Jewish traditions

The article is dedicated to the biblical teaching of human creation from the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7). The author’s attention is focused on three different aspects, namely 1) the origin of the mentioned story; 2) its ideological content and 3) theological reflection in Christian and Jewish exegesis. So the purpose of this research is to make a complex yet quite compact exegetical commentary on the analyzed plot as part of one of the most intensively discussed texts in the history of mankind - the biblical Hexameron (Gen 1-2). To solve the posed problem the author applies the following methods of study: historical and philological, comparative, theological, exegetical. The work done shows that the teaching under research is archetypical in its character. Its genetic roots are to be found not in the separate cultures of the civilizations that surrounded the Ancient Israel but go back to the remote pre-semitic Afroasiatic past and probably form some kind of initial religious anthropogonic paradigm. Moreover, the given idea has some important theological correlations in several passages of the Old Testament. It has fundamentally different interpretations in Christian and Jewish tradition. That, in its turn, shapes two radically different perspectives on human and his nature.