Here's a summary of my current thoughts that I put together for Rick a while ago...RickD wrote:I'm not sure I'm too confident in the Sethite theory about this. I think DBowling may be onto something with his Adamite theory. I believe he's discussed it before.
DBowling, maybe you could explain it further, or perhaps link us to where you discussed it before. I think it's at least as good as any other theory out there.
Rick… I would say that my creation belief is a work in progress and this board has given me the opportunity to share my journey with brothers and sisters in Christ to see how my views stack up Scripturally and scientifically.
Per John Walton (The Lost World of Adam and Eve) and Mike Heiser (http://michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible ... -research/).
I am now convinced that Genesis 1 and 2 are sequential narratives, which separates the creation of mankind in Genesis 1:26-27 from the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3. This is an enabler for an ‘Old Earth Young Adam’ principle. This removes the apparent contradiction between Scripture and science regarding the timing of the first appearance of humans and the location of the first appearance of humans.
- Science places the appearance of the first modern humans at around 200,000 years ago in Africa.
- Scripture places the appearance of Adam and Eve in Mesopotamia at around 5,000-6,000 BC.
If Genesis 1 and 2 are sequential then Genesis 1:26-27 could be referring to the creation of mankind in Africa 200,000 years ago while the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3 occurs around 5,000-6,000 BC in Mesopotamia.
Another topic of research for me has been extrascriptural corroboration for the historical Adam and Noah. Two primary sources for me on that topic have been “Historical Genesis from Adam to Abraham” by James Fischer and “Legend the Genesis of Civilisation” by David Rohl. David Rohl is a secular historian and James Fischer is a Theistic Evolutionist (James Fischer’s Historical Genesis website can be found here http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/). But despite their different perspectives Rohl and Fischer examine similar historical data and reach similar conclusions regarding the historicity of Adam and Noah. They differ in some specific details, but they do agree on a couple of key points.
1. A historical Adam lived in Mesopotamia sometime around 5,000-6,000 BC.
2. There was a historical Noah who survived a historical flood in Mesopotamia sometime around 3,000 BC.
I am a big fan of Hugh Ross, and even though I was raised YEC, Hugh Ross’s “Creation and Time”, “A Matter of Days”, and “The Genesis Question” were foundational to my embracing the Old Earth position. For quite a while I also embraced Hugh Ross’s position of a local flood that affected all of humanity somewhere around 50,000 years ago.
Then I watched an excellent miniseries “The Incredible Human Journey” by Alice Roberts which describes the first appearance of humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago, the migration of humans out of Africa around 50,000-60,000 years ago, and humanity’s eventual population of the globe by around 15,000 years ago. After watching this miniseries I came to the conclusion that there was no possible point in time when a local flood as described in Scripture could have affected all of mankind. So even though I agree with Hugh Ross on a number of origins issues, I could not accept his views on Noah’s flood, and this dilemma led to my research project of the last couple of years.
During my research, James Fischer’s book made my difficulty with Ross’s flood position even worse when he pointed out that the human activities described in Genesis 4 are post-Neolithic activities. According to Genesis 4, mankind was engaged in the following activities before the flood: building cities, domesticating animals, playing the lyre and pipe, and forging bronze and iron. These activities describe a post-Neolithic human culture which didn’t exist until well after 10,000 BC, so the Genesis 4 narrative of life before the flood excludes Hugh Ross’s flood of 50,000 year ago as a possibility.
This brought me to my next conclusion.
If Noah’s flood (according to Genesis 4) took place sometime after 10,000 BC (most likely sometime around 3,000 BC)
And if mankind had populated the globe prior to 10,000 BC
Then it is impossible for Noah’s flood to have affected all of humanity.
One of the issues that I struggled with when I came to the conclusion that neither Adam or Noah were the genetic progenitors of all humanity was the following question:
“What then is the significance of the story of Adam in Genesis 2-3?”
N.T. Wright contributed a chapter regarding Paul’s use of Adam in John Walton’s “The Lost World of Adam and Eve”. I’ll quote some of Wright’s comments that enabled me to look at the narrative of Adam in Genesis through a slightly different lens.
So building on Wright’s thoughts, the final goal for God’s creation has always been for heaven and earth to come together with God dwelling together with his image bearers forever as we see in Revelation 21. In Genesis 2 God chose Adam and Eve as the first of God’s people (the first ‘sons of God’) and they were placed in the Garden of Eden (a localized preview of sorts of the Revelation 21 new heaven/new earth). When Adam and Eve sinned, God’s plan for creation was put on hold so that God could redeem his image bearers and get his creation project back on track.“Creation itself”, declares Paul, “will be freed from its slavery to decay, to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified” (Romans 8:21)
Here is the problem to which Romans is the answer: not simply that we are sinful and need saving but that our sinfulness has meant that God’s project for the whole creation (that it should be run by obedient humans) was aborted, put on hold. And when we are saved, as Paul spells out, that is in order that the whole-creation project can at last get back on track. When humans are redeemed, creation gives a sigh of relief and says, “Thank goodness! About time you humans got sorted out! Now we can be put to rights at last.”
And it leads me to my proposal: that just as God chose Israel from the rest of humankind for a special, strange, demanding vocation, so perhaps what Genesis is telling us is that God chose one pair from the rest of early hominids for a special, strange, demanding vocation. This pair (call them Adam and Eve if you like) were to be the representatives of the whole human race, the ones in whom God’s purposes to make the world a place of delight and joy and order, eventually colonizing the whole creation.
A few months ago I was doing a study on the Luke 3 genealogy of Jesus. In the Luke 3 narrative Luke places Jesus genealogy immediately after his account of the Baptism of Jesus that concludes with the voice from heaven making the following pronouncement, “You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased.”
Luke then starts his genealogy with Jesus and traces Jesus family line through David, through Abraham, and all the way back to Adam. But when Luke gets to Adam he refers to him as “Adam, the son of God”. Luke is obviously drawing a correlation between Jesus, the Son of God and Adam, the son of God, but what does that correlation mean?
I think Luke is tracking redemptive history beginning with Adam, the first ‘son of God’ and proceeding through generations of God’s people to the climax of God’s redemptive plan, Jesus the Son of God, who would resolve the problems of sin and death and provide redemption for mankind.
Which brings us to Genesis 6. I think some aspects of Genesis 6:1-8 become a little clearer if we adopt the following principles:
- The creation of mankind in Genesis 1:26-27 predated the appearance of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 by some indeterminate period of time, which means that Adam and Eve were not the genetic progenitors of all mankind.
- Luke 3 identifies Adam as the first “son of God” and Adam and Eve mark the beginning of “God’s people” whose story is tracked through Scripture and finds it’s ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Based on these two principles we can discover the identity of the “son’s of God” and “daughters of men” whose wickedness resulted in the judgment of Noah’s Flood.
- The ‘son’s of God’ are God’s covenant people at the time. They were the descendants of Adam, the first son of God, and as God’s people they were tasked with presenting the truth of God to mankind.
- The ‘daughters of men/mankind’ were the indigenous in inhabitants of “the land” of Mesopotamia who were not members of Adam’s family line.
Genesis 6:3 provides some additional support for this theory when it states that the lifespan of the offspring of the ‘sons of God’ and ‘daughters of men’ was 120 years. Genesis 5 indicates that for whatever reason (possibly the tree of life?) Adam’s family line had extraordinarily long lifespans. It would make sense that offspring of Adam’s long lived family line and normal humanity would not retain the lifespans typical of Adam’s family line.
As God’s people, the family line of Adam should have presented the inhabitants of “the land” (of Mesopotamia) where they dwelt with the truth of God they had been given. But instead, God’s people (the sons of God) intermarried with and were themselves corrupted by the inhabitants of “the land”.
The wickedness of God’s people and the inhabitants of “the land” led God to pass judgment upon all the people of “the land” (of Mesopotamia) and destroy everyone in “the land” in a flood with the exception of the righteous remnant of Noah and his family. God saved this righteous remnant from destruction to continue the line of God’s people (the sons of God) through people like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and eventually find its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Ok… I think that pretty much summarizes most of the significant points regarding my current views.
In Christ
