Robert Miller wrote:
>I have followed with interest and anticipation the discussion of Kline's
> article
>on Genesis. The discussion has been to esoteric for me to make much of a
>contribution but I do have some questions.
>
>If the first couple of chapters of Genesis are myth or story or legend or
>framework how does this affect the doctrine of original sin? It appears
> that the
>apostle Paul fairly tightly ties the death of Christ for sin, in Roman's 5,
> to
>the first sinner who initiated the whole process which led to the necessity
> of
>Christ's death.
>
This, in my mind, is one of the most compelling arguments for the necessicity
of a historical early Genesis.
Robert wrote:
>If the first couple are in fact historical, and are the progenitors of the
> human
>race that found themselves in need of a savior, how are they related to the
>hominids mentioned by Glenn Morton?
>
I think you have to define what you mean by Human. Hugh Ross wants to extend
humanity only to those who are morphologically identical to us and have the
creation of Adam and Eve be no earlier than 60,000 years ago. There are
several problems with that view. Morphologically modern human fossils are
found from over 120,000 years ago at Klaisies River in South Africa (see~James
R. Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma, (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1995),
p. 216-217). They engage in similar behaviors to the other hominids
(Neanderthals) who are also alive at the time. But Neanderthal behavior while
slightly different was not wholly foreign to that of modern man. He made
fire, he made stone tools with which to make other tools (only man makes tools
with which to make other tools). Neanderthal did engage in some very simple
artwork. But simple or no art work can not be used to rule people out of
humanity. The Solutreans from 19,000 years ago engaged in very little art.
(see Bruce Dickinson, _The Dawn of Belief, Univ. Ariz. Press, 1990, p. 76) A
modern example might be the Amish.
Evidence of human activity has been found in the fossil record for the past
1.8 million years at least. Only man makes spears and the first spear is
found from 400,000 years ago! The first evidence of woodworking is from 1.5
million years ago or so. I just ran across an interesting example of
controlled fire from 1.4 Myr ago. Clive Gamble writes:
"An interesting development in this interpretation comes from recent
excavations by Brain and Sillen at Swartkrans. In a deposit dated to between
1
and 1.5 Myr they recovered from among almost 60,000 fossil animal bones a
sample of 270 which showed unmistakable signs of burning. Color and surface
changes indicate a range of temperatures with the majority heated to >500o C.
Antelope bones were the most frequently burnt, but at least one bone from a
robust Apith had also fallen in a fire. Their frequencey and position point
to
repeated burning in the cave. The same deposits also contain Oldowan stone
tools and bones with cut marks. The only fossil in this part of the site is
A.
robustus, represented by nine individuals. Stone tools, H. habilis and robust
Apiths are found in older deposits at the site, but without evidence for fire.
"In East Africa John Gowlett has excavated an open site at Chesowanja
dated to 1.4 Myr. In among animal bones and stone tools made on pieces of
lava
were some forty pieces of burnt clay. The magnetic anomaly of these lumps is
consistent with their interpretation as the result of buringin the immediate
ground surface by a small controlled fire. It is interesting that the hominid
material of the same age from Chesowanja area is also A.robustus."~Clive
Gamble, Timewalkers, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993), p.70
The interesting thing is that charred bones can not be due to grass fires.
They are not intense enough and leave the interior bones uncooked. I saw an
interview with Sillen and he said that only the intentional placement of meat
in a fire is able to char the bones. Thus someone has been making fire for a
long time. Is he human? I would have to say yes. This means that Adam, if
historical, MUST have been before this time.
>Is it possible that some questions are unanswerable?
Sure, but people are too quick to use this as a cop out to avoid having to
answer difficult questions.
I like the questions you are asking. They are normal questions that can be
asked of a real historical event. And anything that is real should be able to
have some answer for this type of question.
glenn