>>What I often have difficult understanding is that if the story of Adam and
>>Eve are allegorical and that they did not literally exist (I believe the
>>word Adam can loosely be translated as "man" or "human" in today's
>>politically correct language) who can one say was the first biblical person
>>had a real existence?
I don't know who wrote:
> Probably the most important evidence that Adam is intended as an individual
> comes from Paul's epistles, rather than Genesis. Jesus' role as a second
> Adam (Rom. 5, etc.) makes more sense if Adam is an individual (though is
> not totally incompatable with a more figurative view). This agrees with
> the molecular evidence for a very small population as the common ancestor
> of all modern humans.
> I don't know of any archaeological confirmation of a specific individual's
> name until the monarchy, though the cultures mentioned earlier certainly
> existed.
William Frix wrote:
>There is a greater issue than science in the question of whether Adam
>was real or not. That is the question of sin. I am joining this
>discussion late, and perhaps someone has already mentioned this, but
>if Adam was not an individual, from where did sin come? If evolution
>was the producer of humanity, there is no direct source of the
>concept of sin, hence no need of a savior, hence Jesus cannot be the
>Savior of the World, as He claimed to be. Hence, Jesus was not
>factual or accurate, hence He could not be God.
In life as in sin there are choices. If you prefer a biological Adam from
whom we all descended, such a person would have lived some 100,000 years
ago or more. (Hugh Ross pushes it up a bit, but certainly tens of thousands
of years ago.) Since we carry DNA markers linking us to other higher
primates, this man would have EVOLVED and must have had natural parents.
If this makes you comfortable, and you can waltz around the Genesis
passages which lean toward an event of special creation for Adam, then
perhaps, you can be happy with that
If you like an historical Adam, such as the one spoken about in Genesis and
elsewhere in the Bible, the best candidate is one who lived roughly 7,000
years ago in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates basin in Southern
Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). There are legends such as the Legend of
Adapa that parallel the biblical Adam. The Sumerian king list records
"Alulim" as the first king of Eridu, and Eridu is the oldest city beginning
around 4800 BC, close to the time of Adam if the Genesis chronologies are
correct. And there are myths paralleling Noah in the same region written
in Sumerian, Accadian, Assyrian and Babylonian. Indeed, the only
"historical" Adam we could hope to validate would come from that region
and that time frame, too late in human history to have been the ultimate
progenitor.
Having amassed a credible amount of evidence for such an historical person,
I would lean in that direction. This would make Adam the Federal head of
the human race not the first of our species. In this scenario, Adam,
created in
the image of God, was a representative, an ambassador dedicated to bringing
the indigenous populations into a relationship with their Creator. Adam,
according to this methodology, entered a populated world.
The consternation in the theological community concerning Genesis stems from
the propensity to align the first biblical man with the first biological
man. It has never worked.
Dick Fischer
THE ORIGINS SOLUTION
http://www.orisol.com