OEC and redemptive history

[RickD]

I've been doing some searching on this subject, and have come upon some things that are making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

[August]

I've been doing some searching on this subject, and have come upon some things that are making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. Tell us.

[RickD]

I've been doing some searching on this subject, and have come upon some things that are making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. Tell us.

In a nutshell: There was a preexisting race before Adam. Adam and eve were the first Jews or God's special people. A & E just happened to be white. The preexisting people were black and yellow. You can guess where this is going. Whites are the true People of God, and every other color of people are not. After killing Abel, Cain was thrown out into the preexisting race's world. There Cain "intermingled" with the "unGodly" races, and the "mixed"races were begun. The "sons of God" were Seth's sons ie white(Seth was Abel's replacement). And daughters of men were Cain's mixed children. The most uncomfortable part about this to me, is that there are many articles from different sources that believe this. A preexisting race doesn't seem so farfetched to me. But, where I see people that believe in a preadamic race, the common theme seems to be what I described above, or something similar.

[Maytan]

Would you mind sharing some sources on the matter? I mean no offense here or anything, but that honestly sounds like something I'd expect to come from some sort of White Supremest group...

[RickD]

Would you mind sharing some sources on the matter? I mean no offense here or anything, but that honestly sounds like something I'd expect to come from some sort of White Supremest group...

Yes, that's my point. It seems to be a subtle(or in some cases, a not so subtle) way to justify racism. I don't have any sources. I just typed in "pre adamic race" in google. I've gone through a lot of articles. Here's one. pay close attention to the last paragraph were the author identifies his "true Israelites";http://www.ensignmessage.com/archives/biblewritten.html

[Maytan]

I have to admit, that article raises some points that intrigue me; and others that range from rather weak to simply wrong.

I reserve my judgment, though. I'm not very well-versed in such a subject.

[Gman]

I've been doing some searching on this subject, and have come upon some things that are making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. Tell us.

In a nutshell: There was a preexisting race before Adam. Adam and eve were the first Jews or God's special people. A & E just happened to be white. The preexisting people were black and yellow. You can guess where this is going. Whites are the true People of God, and every other color of people are not. After killing Abel, Cain was thrown out into the preexisting race's world. There Cain "intermingled" with the "unGodly" races, and the "mixed"races were begun. The "sons of God" were Seth's sons ie white(Seth was Abel's replacement). And daughters of men were Cain's mixed children. The most uncomfortable part about this to me, is that there are many articles from different sources that believe this. A preexisting race doesn't seem so farfetched to me. But, where I see people that believe in a preadamic race, the common theme seems to be what I described above, or something similar.

I don't believe that... Jews are middle eastern people. Black hair, brown eyes, olive or darker skin.. Now some of the European Jews are lighter skinned, but that is not as common. Take a look as some of the orthodox Jews today.

Actually if Adam was a mixture of white and dark features, it would be easier for mankind to blend into the cultures we see today...

[Gman]

Actually Mormons and the KKK believe that Adam and Christ were white.. Pagan beliefs..

In FACT, Jews have more connections with Africa than they do with any European nation...

I already wrote on that here.. http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... =6&t=33937

[August]

I've been doing some searching on this subject, and have come upon some things that are making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. Tell us.

In a nutshell: There was a preexisting race before Adam. Adam and eve were the first Jews or God's special people. A & E just happened to be white. The preexisting people were black and yellow. You can guess where this is going. Whites are the true People of God, and every other color of people are not. After killing Abel, Cain was thrown out into the preexisting race's world. There Cain "intermingled" with the "unGodly" races, and the "mixed"races were begun. The "sons of God" were Seth's sons ie white(Seth was Abel's replacement). And daughters of men were Cain's mixed children. The most uncomfortable part about this to me, is that there are many articles from different sources that believe this. A preexisting race doesn't seem so farfetched to me. But, where I see people that believe in a preadamic race, the common theme seems to be what I described above, or something similar.

Ok, so first things first. Adam and Eve were not Jewish. I've seen that assertion made a few times over the last few days on the board, and I would urge everyone to study the origins of the Jews. In the OT they were the descendants of the tribe of Judah, and their history starts in Gen 29. In the NT the word Jew is derived from those that inhabited the part of the land known as Judeah. Let's not confuse the issue with that. Adam and Eve were the first of humanity that God created.

There are a couple of options here. One is that there were pre-existing races, based on the argument that I laid out. This creates the issue at hand...were those pre-Adamic races described in the Bible? The Nephilim? Who did Cain marry? There are some questions about it for sure. That is why I named the thread "redemptive history" since that is what the Bible describes...the history of creation, fall, redemption and salvation. Should we then believe that there is some history of humanity outside of what the Bible describes? Of course we know that there is history not in the Bible, it was not intended to be a complete human history, just the history of how God saved us, the ground theme.

The other option is to do like RTB does, and pull back the creation of Adam to the beginning of human origins, around 50k years ago. While I have not studied all of their evidence for making that assumption, they do say that it is a reasonable, but unproven, assumption. They use (Gen 10:25) To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. to argue that was the time that the Bering land bridge broke, and how the different races came about, those that some argue were pre-Adamic. RTB then works back from there to arrive at about 50k years for Adam, which also correlates with the dating of yDNA to around that time. (This doesn't solve the problem of dating of mDNA (female DNA) to much earlier than that.)

The argument that Adam was white comes from two sources, as I can recall. (I've seen these types of arguments before). One is that the word "Adam" is translated form a root that means "to show blood in the face", i.e. blushing, something that these folks argue races other than white cannot do. The second argument is that when the 12 tribes were banished, they actually moved into Europe over the Caucasus mountains, giving rise to the term Caucasians, i.e. whites. Both of those arguments are strained, to say the least.

[August]

I've been doing some searching on this subject, and have come upon some things that are making me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. Tell us.

In a nutshell: There was a preexisting race before Adam. Adam and eve were the first Jews or God's special people. A & E just happened to be white. The preexisting people were black and yellow. You can guess where this is going. Whites are the true People of God, and every other color of people are not. After killing Abel, Cain was thrown out into the preexisting race's world. There Cain "intermingled" with the "unGodly" races, and the "mixed"races were begun. The "sons of God" were Seth's sons ie white(Seth was Abel's replacement). And daughters of men were Cain's mixed children. The most uncomfortable part about this to me, is that there are many articles from different sources that believe this. A preexisting race doesn't seem so farfetched to me. But, where I see people that believe in a preadamic race, the common theme seems to be what I described above, or something similar.

I don't believe that... Jews are middle eastern people. Black hair, brown eyes, olive or darker skin.. Now some of the European Jews are lighter skinned, but that is not as common. Take a look as some of the orthodox Jews today.

Actually if Adam was a mixture of white and dark features, it would be easier for mankind to blend into the cultures we see today...

GMan, not to disagree with you too much, but there is more to this. As I said above, do a word search for Jew in the OT and look at the root, and then do the same for the NT. The 12 tribes, when they went into banishment, intermingled with the locals, and the features we see on the Jews of today are mainly that of the Khazars, which were the main group to return to the Israel area. (Read the craniology study on that). Some genetic evidence now seem to show exactly that, that the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and some Levites, which returned to the area around modern Israel, share a lot of genetic similarities with the Palestines. The Hasmonean conversions also added some bloodlines from outside into the equation. There simply is no "clean" genetic line for the modern-day Jews. I think, based on that, that we simply don't know what Adam or Abraham looked like, based on what we see today, and the genetic history.

[RickD]

Ok, so first things first. Adam and Eve were not Jewish.

Agreed. But isn't the story of Adam and Eve the beginning of the history of God's chosen people, the Jews?

Adam and Eve were the first of humanity that God created.

That's the million dollar question in his thread. were Adam and Eve the "first" of humanity, or were there preexisting people?

One thing that really doesn't make sense to me is the YEC model in this regard. AIG, a leading YEC website claims the genesis flood happened about 4400 years ago. From their website:

the global Flood, which occurred about 2350 BC.1

If Noah and his family were the only living people 4400 years ago, can we really believe that we can get the differences we see in the peoples of today? Let's assume Noah was a man with light brown skin.(right in the middle of the spectrum between the darkest africans of today, and the lightest fair skinned person of today) Is 4000 years really enough time to have such a diversity as we see today? It just doesn't make sense to me.

But, If there were preexisting peoples, let's say for example, native australians, that lived at the time of the genesis flood. If we believe the local flood theory, then those Australians wouldn't have been affected by the flood in a completely different part of the world. That then brings up the problem of the flood not wiping out all of humanity. Is there another plausible interpretation of "all humanity", that doesn't actually mean every person on the planet?

[August]

Ok, so first things first. Adam and Eve were not Jewish.

Agreed. But isn't the story of Adam and Eve the beginning of the history of God's chosen people, the Jews?

Strictly speaking Israel was the chosen nation, not the Jews (Ex 2:24-25, Deut 7:6, 14:2, Is 41:8-11)). As I explained before, there is a lot of confusion about the word Jew, as it meant different things in the OT and NT. Somehow, in our popular vernacular, Jew became synonymous with Israel, which is Biblically and historically inaccurate.

That's the million dollar question in his thread. were Adam and Eve the "first" of humanity, or were there preexisting people?

Yep. While there is strong evidence for a single pair of human ancestors, which supports a creation model, the existence of other humans prior to Adam does create some questions.

One thing that really doesn't make sense to me is the YEC model in this regard. AIG, a leading YEC website claims the genesis flood happened about 4400 years ago. From their website:

the global Flood, which occurred about 2350 BC.1

If Noah and his family were the only living people 4400 years ago, can we really believe that we can get the differences we see in the peoples of today? Let's assume Noah was a man with light brown skin.(right in the middle of the spectrum between the darkest africans of today, and the lightest fair skinned person of today) Is 4000 years really enough time to have such a diversity as we see today? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I guess the answer would be that it was supernaturally done. But the problem is real, the gene pool on the ark was pretty limited, and it would require a genetic anomaly to get all the races from that is such a short time. The other problem they have is this...if flood geology created the continents, as they propose, how did all the races get there from the few survivors in the middle east, at the times we know they were present there? But the Bible is clear that it means all people came from Noah and his sons and their wives, I can't find anything that says different than that.

But, If there were preexisting peoples, let's say for example, native australians, that lived at the time of the genesis flood. If we believe the local flood theory, then those Australians wouldn't have been affected by the flood in a completely different part of the world. That then brings up the problem of the flood not wiping out all of humanity. Is there another plausible interpretation of "all humanity", that doesn't actually mean every person on the planet?

Did the ancient writers know there were other people on the planet, or was their frame of reference their known world? They knew only the borders of the ANE, and as such assumed that that was the whole world, and therefore that all humanity was in the ANE. One thing that may be disputed is the actual age of aboriginal civilization in Australia, was it really that old? RTB seems to think that it wasn't.

[MarcusOfLycia]

I guess the answer would be that it was supernaturally done. But the problem is real, the gene pool on the ark was pretty limited, and it would require a genetic anomaly to get all the races from that is such a short time. The other problem they have is this...if flood geology created the continents, as they propose, how did all the races get there from the few survivors in the middle east, at the times we know they were present there? But the Bible is clear that it means all people came from Noah and his sons and their wives, I can't find anything that says different than that.

Isn't it possible that the Tower of Babel had a significant impact on this?

[Katabole]

This is an interesting topic, right up my alley. There are two different Hebrew words used in Genesis 1 & 2 both translated as the English word 'man'. The first is in Gen 1:26 and it is (ha'adam) meaning humankind, mankind. The second is in Gen 2:7 and it is ('eth ha'adam) meaning "the man Adam". The words cannot be interchanged and the confusion and division comes from not believing that there were two seperate creations of man. God created all the races on the sixth day, and as God says it was good. According to the Masoratic footnotes (which should be applied when it comes to the more difficult questions within scripture), God continued his creation past the seventh day into the eighth day and on the eighth day created Adam. God specifically created that bloodline, so that Christ would eventually be born through that bloodline as documented in Christ's geneology in Luke 3.

I have noticed that gaps have been mentioned. Well, there are quite a number of them in scripture.

Gen. 1, between verses 1 and 2.
Ps. 22, between verses 21 and 22.
Ps. 118, in the middle of verse 22.
Isa. 9:6, after the first clause.
Isa. 53, in the middle of verse 10.
Isa. 61, in the middle of verse 2.
Lam. 4, between verses 21 and 22.
Dan. 9, between verses 26 and 27.
Dan. 11, between verses 20 and 21.
Hos. 2, between verses 13 and 14.
Hos. 3, between verses 4 and 5.
Amos 9, between verses 10 and 11.
Micah 5, between verses 2 and 3.
Hab. 2, between verses 13 and 14.
Zeph. 3, between verses 7 and 8.
Matt. 10, in the middle of verse 23.
Matt. 12, in the middle of verse 20.
Luke 1, between verses 31 and 32.
Luke 21, in the middle of verse 24.
John 1, between verses 5 and 6.
1Pet. 1, in the middle of verse 11.
Rev. 12, between verses 5 and 6.

One thing I noticed years ago after reading Genesis is God's command to the diferent races in Gen 1:28, whre He tells them to go and 'replenish' the Earth. He didn't tell them to 'plenish' the Earth. It's the same word used in Gen 9:1 when God tells Noah and his sons to 'replenish' the earth. In Gen 9, there had just been a local flood, much of the area had been devastated, thus why God tells Noah to replenish. In Gen 1:28, God tell the races to replenish, because the cosmos had been destroyed previous to their creation.

Many believe in 2Peter ch 3, that it is speaking about Noah's flood. It isn't. Second Peter is describing the three ages or eons of time.

2Pet 3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

The word utilized there in the Greek for world is "kosmos". First heaven and earth age, destroyed by a cosmic flood, not Noah's flood.

2Pet 3:7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

Second heaven and earth age, our present age began in Gen 1:3.

2 Peter 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

This is the third heaven and earth age, which is yet to come.

So, first age in verse 6, second age in verse 7, third age in verse 13.

Paul exemplifies Peter's discourse in Hebrews 11:

Heb 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

The word Paul uses for 'world' here is not cosmos but 'eon'.

165
aiwn
aion
ahee-ohn'
from the same as aei - aei 104; properly, an age; by extension, perpetuity (also past); by implication, the world; specially (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future):--age, course, eternal, (for) ever(-more), (n-)ever, (beginning of the , while the) world (began, without end). Compare cronoV - chronos 5550.

Paul is not saying that worlds, or planets were framed by the word of God, but that the 'eons' of time, which happen to be three, were framed by the word.

That first age was destroyed by God. It doesn't say how long it was but the fossilized remains all over our planet clearly show it was a long time. I believe it's destruction is described here:

Jer 4:23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.

Jer 4:24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.

Jer 4:25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.

Jer 4:26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger.

God destroyed everything, due to Satan's rebellion as described in Rev 12. I beleive God destroyed the earth, with a cosmic flood. This happened between Gen 1 & 2, the first age. The second age, our present age, doesn't begin until Gen 1:3. I don't look at the gaps as a theory but as truth because otherwise it leads to conjecture and the Massorah was created so that there would not be any conjecture.

The Massorah

http://www.levendwater.org/companion/append30.html

The Alleged Corruption of the Hebrew Text

http://www.levendwater.org/companion/append93.html

As August pointed out, there is a differece between the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The house of Israel are ten different tribes and the house of Judah are two. They are still seperated and will be joined together in the future during the 1000 year reign of Christ on earth. Only the good and bad fig were planted in the land of Israel in 1948, not all tribes. (See Jer 24). I happen to believe in Europen Israelism and I base that on similarties on petroglyph's found in ancient Mesopotamia and those found in Ireland, Spain and Holland. The ten northern tribes went into exile by the Assyrians 200 hundred years before the Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom of Judah. After the Assyrian empire fell, those tribes migrated across the Caucusus mountains into Europe and became the caucasian peoples we know today, many of whom have moved to the United States, Canada, Austrailia, South Africa etc . People may say they're lost. God didn't lose them, they lost themselves due to idolotry as described in 2Kings 17. Josephus does mention that only a trickle moved back to the land of Judah from those tribes during Cyrus the Persian's reign, thus explaining Anna of the tribe of Aser (Asher) in Luk 2:36.

[Gman]

God created all the races on the sixth day, and as God says it was good. According to the Masoratic footnotes (which should be applied when it comes to the more difficult questions within scripture), God continued his creation past the seventh day into the eighth day and on the eighth day created Adam. God specifically created that bloodline, so that Christ would eventually be born through that bloodline as documented in Christ's geneology in Luke 3.
.

Yes, but no one is counting "day" as a literal day here.. It could be over a spread of thousands of years... Therefore mankind created in Genesis 1:27, then some thousands of years later Adam. And yes, we could even say it was gentile Adam later to become the Jewish race Adam lineage as recorded in the Gospels..