Adam Made of the Dust of the Earth

Joseph F. Smith

(Desert Evening News, Dec. 27, 1913, Sec III, p. 7;

Deseret News: Church Section, Sept. 18, 1936, pp, 2, 8). 

I know that my Redeemer liveth; . . . I know that God is being with body, parts, and passions and that His Son is in His own likeness, and that man is created in the image of God. The Son, Jesus Christ, grew and developed into manhood the same as you or I, as likewise did God, His Father grow and develop to the Supreme Being that He now is. Man was born of woman; Christ the Savior, was born of woman and God, the Father was born of woman. Adam, our earthly parent, was also born of woman into this world, the same as Jesus and you and I."

Brigham Young

 (Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 3:, p.319)

 “Though we have it in history that our father Adam was made of the dust of this earth, and that he knew nothing about his God previous to being made here, yet it is not so; and when we learn the truth we shall see and understand that he helped to make this world, and was the chief manager in that operation. “He was the person who brought the animals and the seeds from other planets to this world, and brought a wife with him and stayed here. You may read and believe what you please as to what is found written in the Bible. Adam was made from the dust of an earth, but not from the dust of this earth. He was made as you and I are made, and no person was ever made upon any other principle”.

Pearl of Great Price Institute Student Manual 

Moses 3:7. Man Was Formed “from the Dust of the Ground”?

Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote: “Those natural elements that make up the physical earth are sometimes referred to in the scriptures as dust.‍ Thus Adam was created from the dust of the ground meaning that the physical body which he received was created from the elements of the earth. (Gen. 2:7; Moses 3:7; Abra. 5:7; D&C 77:12.) Similarly all men are created from the dust of the earth; that is, the elements organized into a mortal body are assembled together through the birth process (Moses 6:69)” (Mormon Doctrine,‍ 209).

In the physical creation, man became a “living soul” (see Moses 2:26–27; see also D&C 88:15). This means his spirit body gained a physical body of flesh and bones. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained that the bodies of Adam and Eve were at first “quickened [made alive] by spirit and not by blood. … After the fall, which came by a transgression of the law under which Adam was living, the forbidden fruit had the power to create blood and change his nature and mortality took the place of immortality, and all things, partaking of the change, became mortal” (Doctrines of Salvation,‍ 1:77). Thus, in the Fall, Adam and Eve became the first beings upon the earth who were mortal flesh, or subject to death.