In my sermon on Sunday, I made reference to the possibility that in Genesis 2, where Adam (prior to Eve's arrival) is called the man in English translations, it's perhaps not a great translation and that "he" may not be male until woman arrives. I invited people to ask me about it afterwards and people who have seen me have done so but here's some thoughts on it (and I hope the Hebrew script shows up okay):

A lot of recent biblical scholarship suggests that "the man" is not the best way to translate האדם (ha-adam) in Genesis. There's another Hebrew word איש (eesh) which is the usual way of indicating a masculine "man" (as opposed to a woman - אשה (ishah)). In verse 23, when we are told "she shall be called 'woman' for she was taken out of man, the distinction is made and she is אשה and he is איש. The two words share the same root in Hebrew.

The most helpful suggestions of how to describe האדם in Genesis are either "the human" or "the groundling" - I prefer the former as it makes it easier to see that Adam is the archetype for the whole of humanity.

It's also worth noting of course that some of the scholars who take this line are less kind to poor Adam, one even translating it as "the clod" (of earth presumably) - they tend to be working from a feminist perspective with which I have no inherent problem but which - sadly - sometimes lose some academic rigour in their hermeneutics.

Update: I think the Hebrew script now works - it certainly does for me in Firefox on openSUSE 11.0.