>I have a lot of respect for Dick and his views. And he has many
excellent
>points to make about his thesis.=A0 I find it very worrisome that part
of
>us could be Adamic and others aren't.
First of all, I would like to say that I accept all praise graciously
:>).
Maybe it is because I have lived with this method of apology for nearly
fifteen years that I am comfortable with it. Postulating Adam at
the
dawn of humanity tens of thousands, or even millions of years ago, does
work for some. But this requires many hundreds if not thousands of
missing relatives between Adam and Noah, and/or between Noah and Abraham
who lived about 4,000 years ago.
I know there is a line of reasoning that will permit missing generations,
but the genealogies make the best sense when taken literally as
father-son relationships. For example, there can be no question
that Seth is Adam's
son. Genesis 4:25 is specific about that. Now look at Genesis
4:26: "And
to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh:
then began men to call upon the name of the Lord."
Two questions. 1. Can there be any doubt that Enosh was Adam's
grandson?
2. If this was the start of the genus Homo, can we believe that Homo
erectus called upon the name of the Lord?
So we have a strictly father-son relationship for the first three
generations. Check out Genesis 5:28,29: "And Lamech lived an
hundred
eighty and two years, and begat a son: And he called his name Noah
..."
Was Noah not named by Lamech? Was Lamech not Noah's father?
So, Adam > Seth > Enosh, and Lamech > Noah have to be father and
son
relationships. Read Genesis 5. Outside of age differences,
there is
not a variant word between any of the patriarchs from Adam to Noah,=20
and we know in at least four instances they have to be father and son
in direct sequence. Granted, Christ was called "son of
David," but
that responds to the prophecy that the Messiah would come from the line
of David. There is no good exegetical reason to believe that the
genealogies in Genesis, Matthew and Luke can be expanded at will
other
than to fit a popular conception that Adam was the first human.
Oh, there is some extra-biblical information that parallels Enoch who
"walked with God" (Gen. 5:24). Enoch may correspond with
Enmenduranna
who also is in seventh place on the Sumerian king list, who in
turn is
deemed identical with Enmeduranki, sage and king of Sippar.
According
to Sumerian legend, he was "taken by the gods and taught divine
mysteries."
Also, Abel practiced animal sacrifice (Gen. 4:4). No evidence of
animal
sacrifice has been found anywhere before 5000 BC. None was found at
Catal Huyuk, for example. This city was settled as far back as
possibly
8300 BC, but by about 5600 BC it was abandoned. Yet the Sumerians,
dating to about 4000 BC, wrote out receipts for "unblemished cattle
for
sacrifice." Apparently the Sumerians picked up the sacrificial
system
from the Accadians who were Adam's descendants.
If there are no missing generations from Adam to Noah how about a
few
thousand MIA's from Noah to Abraham? Let's see. No question
about who fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth is there (Gen. 9:18)? Can
there be any
doubt that Ham was the immediate father of Canaan (Gen. 9:22;
10:6)?
The Canaanites descend from Canaan. Did Canaanites live millions of
years ago? Did they live at the time of Homo erectus?
Misraim is Ham's son (Gen. 10:6), and Noah's grandson, who begat
Casluhim
"from which came the Philistines" (Gen. 10:14). Did David
only three
thousand years ago slay a member of a tribe that had roamed the
Palestinian hills for five million years?
Now look at Genesis 11:10: "These are the generations of Shem: Shem
was
an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the
flood..."
No room for anybody here. Noah survived the flood, and his son was
born
two years afterward. Skip to the end of the line and Terah fathers
Abram (Gen. 11:26). No DNA tests necessary, Genesis 11:27-32
confirms
a father-son relationship for Terah and Abram. (Oh, the middle
patriarch,
Peleg, "plg" means "canal" in Accadian.)
So at both ends of the line of 10 patriarchs we have strictly father-son
relationships. Should the eight in between be any different?
If we can agree that Ham was Noah's son, and Canaan was Ham's son,
and
Ham and Cush were brothers (Gen. 10:1-6), then Cush was Noah's
grandson.
Now we read in Genesis 10:8: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be
a
mighty one in the earth." The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom
was Babel,
Erech, Accad, and Calneh "in the land of Shinar" ( Gen.
10:10). Babel
is Babylon, Erech is the Sumerian Uruk dated to 4200 BC, and Accad is
the home of the Accadians that can be traced back no further than 4000
BC.
And all these cities are in Southern Mesopotamia. Calah is just
south of Ninevah on a map of Assyria, both cities are named in Genesis
10:12.
Now by my reckoning, if Noah's flood was 5 million years ago, as has
been suggested, and Nimrod can be dated no earlier than 6,000 years ago,
and disallowing intermediate generations between Noah and Cush, then
the
only place for all those supposedly missing patriarchs is between Cush
and Nimrod. If we put the average age of each father at the birth
of
his son at a generous one hundred years, then we have roughly 49,938
missing generations!
I wonder what their names were. Okay, let's put the flood at
100,000
years ago. I don't know where it could have been, but even that
would
give us 939 missing patriarchs. Can we agree that it stretches the
credibility of Scripture to suppose that missing generations outnumber
listed generations by about a hundred to one? What would have been
the criteria for omission?
Glenn, my dear Christian brother, the totality of historical evidence
falls on this one solution. Adam entered a populated world about
7,000
years ago. If the question is: Where did biological man come from?
-
that is a science question. If the question is: Where did covenant
man
come from? - that is found in Genesis.