Re: The wrong horse in evolution education

Hi Phil,
here is the second half of our discussion.

philtill@aol.com wrote (6 Apr 2006 00:43:30 EDT):
> =====================
> Peter wrote:
>
> I don't have to rely on any more silences than you do with your
> interpretation.
> You have to assume that Gen.1:27 really talks about Adam, and 2:7 about
> creating
> the first humans. The text doesn't say either of these. Gen.2:7 uses
> formulations which in other OT contexts are used for people having
> parents. You
> have to assume that "adam" always means the person with the name "Adam", and
> that in the NT, each mention of the "first man" indicates "Adam",
> although the
> text doesn't always force us to do so.
> =======================
> from Phil:
> No, the ordinary descent viewpoint is not based on silence. Genesis
> 5:1-3 purposely combines all the phrases from Gen.1 and Gen.2 and
> clearly says that it is talking about Adam as an individual.
>
> Gen 5:1-3
> 1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God
> created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
> 2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them
> Man in the day when they were created.
> 3 When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father
> of {a son} in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
> (NAS)

Gen. 5:1a is another one of the colophons belonging to what went before, not to
what follows. "In the day when God created man..." is the beginning of the
following tablet, the one of Noah (ending in 6:9a). 5:1b ff. does not contain
the genealogy _of_ Adam but the genealogy _from_ Adam, just as with the other
tablets. The noun /toledoth/ (generations) derives from the verb /holid/ (to
beget) and is a "technical term" for lines of descent and family trees. The
/toledoth/ of Adam tells us about the origin of Adam, not his descendents. In an
exactly analogous way, Matthew writes (1:1) "The book of the genealogy of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." The "genealogy", /genesis/, of
Jesus tells us of his origin, not his (non-existing) descendents. The only
difference from an OT /toledoth/ is that in the NT, we don't have trailer
colophons, but header titles.

I grant that Gen. 5:1b-2 refers back to 1:27f., but /'adam/ refers to both "man"
(in the collective sense of "human" or "humanity") and the person Adam. I find
it significant that 5:2 does not say, "When God created Adam and Eve", although,
in a secondary sense, every individual human being is created (in the image of
God), cf. Is. 43:7.

There is another characteristic of clay tablets which might apply to 5:2: they
often link together the current tablet with the next one belonging to the same
series or story, i.e. the continuation. This was done by repeating some keywords
or expression on both tablets.

Such keyword links between the tablets are found at (in parentheses: tablet number
and b for beginning or e for end):
(1b) 1:1 "God created the heavens and the earth" - (2b) 2:4c "God Yahweh
made the earth and the heavens";
(2b) 2:4b "when they were created" - (3b) 5:2b "at the time they were
created";
(4b) 6:10 "Shem, Ham, and Japheth" - (5b) 10:1b "Shem, Ham, and
Japheth";
(5b) 10:1c "after the flood" - (6b) 11:10b "after the flood";
(6e) 11:26 "Abram, Nahor, and Haran" - (7b) 11:27b "Abram, Nahor, and
Haran";
(7e) 25:12 "son of Abraham" - (8e) 25:19 "son of Abraham";
(9e) 36:1 "Edom" - (10e) 36:9 "Edom"
(10e) 36:9 "father of Edom" - (11e) 36:43 "father of Edom".
In places other than at the beginning of a tablet or near the colophon
at the end, such repetitions are hardly ever found.

> Anyone who reads this is going to see Adam as the first man created in
> Gen.1. Well, of course it doesn't come out and SAAAYYYY that, but for
> pete's sake, what more could we want??? Perhaps something like the
> following?
>
> 1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God
> created man, <<who was the same man as he had created the other day that
> he had created man, because both days were the same day>> He made him in
> the likeness of God.
> 2 He created them male and female, <<just like the other time he created
> them male and female, because they were really the same day and it was
> just one time of creating them male and female>> and He blessed them
> <<just like the first time I said it, when I was talking about the same
> person that I'm talking about now>> and named them Man in the day when
> they were created.
>
> The point is that the author **couldn't** make it any more clear without
> getting downright silly.

Of course he wouldn't get that silly. And he didn't have any motivation to plant
such a story, because he did *not* want to equate Adam with the first man. ;-)

If you believe that there is a /toledoth/ structure in Genesis - and I think the
evidence for that is very strong -, you can't read 5:1-3 as you have done,
because 5:1b-3 is not on the same tablet as 5:1a.

Otherwise, *if* all this remarkable, conspicuous structure of Genesis were a
phantom, and *if* the author really wanted to have Adam as the first man, I
would expect him to simplify his text by writing in Gen. 5:1-3: "These are the
descendents of Adam: God had created Adam and Eve in his likeness and blessed
them. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son..." That would be clear.

But seriously, we have to be careful not to suppose the ancients would formulate
things as we would. And it is very dangerous to assume traditional
interpretations to be correct. It seems that until about 300 years ago, everyone
thought Noah's flood was global, but now, we don't find it weird to talk about a
local flood. At the very least, this shows that a seemingly straightforward
biblical text might allow for more than one interpretation.

> True, the author was therefore "silent" if you wish to put it like
> that. So it's just pawwwwwsible to take advantage of this "silence" and
> claim separability of Genesis 1 and 2. But for crying out loud, that's
> just not a credible position unless you are really committed to that
> interpretation already.

For over 200 years, Pentateuch source criticism has insisted on separating Gen.
2:4b ff. from Gen. 1:1-2:4a, and anything else was far off the mark. I am not
going to defend JEPD myths, of course. But a separability of these two stories
at 2:4 is certainly plausible if we just look at the very different styles. Why
then should it be so strange that I want to separate them for a different reason?

> Likewise, when Paul spoke of the "first man," knowing that his readers
> also can read Genesis 5:1-3, then he would know all his readers will
> assume the first man was Adam. Yes, he was silent.

1 Cor. 15:45-47 is the only place where he spoke of the "first man": "Thus it is
written, 'The first man Adam became a living being'; the last Adam became a
life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural,
and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the
second man is from heaven." This seems to support your claim. But this "first
man Adam" is set into contrast with the "last (man) Adam" and the "second man" -
both of which designate Christ. But Christ evidently was neither the second nor
the last man, in a temporal sense. This shows that "first man" cannot be taken
in a temporal sense, either. Also, when Paul is quoting Gen. 2:7 for the "first
man", it may just be meant in a literary way, as the first man whose name and
personal story is given in the Bible. But what Paul is aiming at here, in the
context of the resurrection, is the contrast between the natural body and the
spiritual body, "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If
there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body" (v.44).

> Also, the NT silence isn't symmetric between your and my views. When
> Paul is laying out why we are sinners, he was trying to actually explain
> something to us. I would assume that he did his job. Well, in the
> pre-adamite view, if our connection to Adam was something unusual thing
> that we don't know about, then Paul's attempt to explain how we became
> sinners has a gaping hole in it. He failed to say what he had set out
> to say. So the pre-adamite view has to take advantage of a silence that
> it can't reasonably expect. On the other hand, the view that Adam was
> our ancestor would totally expect that silence, because it would be
> absolutely bizarre to try to fill it in with obvious statements that
> everyone already assumes (based on Gen.5:1-3, not to mention the other
> reasons). Paul needn't mention any unusual connections to Adam because
> we already understand the ordinary connection to him, the same one where
> we inherited everything else that we have other than salvation. Thus,
> in the supposed "silence" Paul doesn't fail to say what he was
> clearly trying to say. The ordinary-descent view expects that silence.

I don't think in Rom.5 Paul wanted to explain why we are sinners. If he did he
failed, because this would immediately lead to the question of the origin of
evil, a philosophical question which is notoriously hard to clearly answer from
the Bible. No, his aim in Rom.5 is to explain how to find peace in Christ. He
couldn't care less about genealogies in this context.

> I didn't post this to try to prove a point, but to try to be helpful.
> It seems there are quite a few ASA'ers who are adopting this pre-Adamite
> view, but as an outsider (recent joiner) who hasn't been in this
> movement, I wanted to provide some friendly feedback. My feedback is
> that I just can't see this view ever prevailing in the church because of
> these problems with the text. It just doesn't seem like it has a
> reasonable chance of solving the conflicts or producing long-term
> benefit in the church. Take it or leave it, that's just an attempt to
> be helpful.

Thank you Phil. Please accept my comments, which partly contradict what you say,
as similarly friendly feedback!

> =======================
> Peter wrote:
>
> Are you sure Moses wrote this? I'm not suggesting any later author, of
> course,
> but some earlier one. Moses had to have his sources for Genesis, and the
> assumption that these were oral ones only is unfounded. By his time,
> people had
> kept written records for perhaps two millenia in Mesopotamia (and Egypt and
> perhaps India), even for quite everyday matters, and it seems quite unlikely
> that the patriarchs didn't do so for their all-important experiences
> with God
> and God's words to them, in Sumer and later. In fact, the argument from the
> Mesopotamian colophon structures in the Genesis text seems to be quite
> convincing.
> ================
> from Phil:
>
> I totally agree. I believe Abraham probably brought clay tablets with
> him to Canaan. I think it's a good hypothesis that Gen.2 was the
> creation story brought by Abraham, whereas Moses was directly inspired
> to add Gen.1 (the part without a leading "colophon") as a hymn of
> introduction to the overall text. Moses may have also converted it from
> cuneiform to Hebrew script or performed some redaction under God's
> inspiration.

Hmm. Do you - or anyone else here - know of any _leading_ colophons found on
clay tablets? Above, I gave some reasons for believing in concluding colophons
in Genesis as on Sumerian tablets.

> ================
> Peter wrote:
>
> I don't know how much Moses would have known about early history, apart
> from the
> texts he obtained from the fathers. I don't know either how far back we
> must go
> to get to patriarchs who still clearly knew that there were other humans
> living,
> apart from those descending from Adam. Of course, the question of
> pre-Adamites
> is important for us on the scientific side, but neither for the ancients
> nor for
> us is it important on the theological side (and most certainly not
> "amazingly
> important"). And this clearly answers your above questions.
>
> As far as historical completeness is concerned, I think you agree with
> me that
> there is no such thing in the Bible. So we agree that we shouldn't
> expect it to
> be different with the earliest Genesis narratives.
>
> =======================
> From Phil:
>
> yes, we don't expect historical completeness, but the pre-Adamite view
> also assumes outrageous theological incompleteness. In the traditional
> view, this whole passage (Gen.2) serves to explain how sin entered into
> the world. This is why Paul refers back to it several times. From a
> science view, it's hard to reconcile, but as you mention the ancients
> didn't know science and we can't re-invent how they would have read this
> passage now that science has been invented, because the ancients were
> here first.
>
> If most humans are not connected to Adam and not under his curse, not
> kicked out of the garden due to Adam's sin and not knowing good and evil
> because of Adam, then the Bible really hasn't told us much about why sin
> and evil is in the world -- in fact, it didn't tell us almost anything
> about sin or death at all apart from the supposed Adamites. When we
> find the world of Noah is so evil that God is sorry that he made man, we
> have no explanation for how it got to be that way. Did the Adamites
> make them turn evil? The Bible offers no explanation, and hence is
> sorely lacking as a theological text. When Pharoah hardens his heart,
> it comes without comment why humans are like that. The pre-Adamite view
> reduces the theological content of Genesis down to almost nothing. This
> is why I call the view "amazing". I would expect at least some little
> comment from the writer if such an amazing view were actually true.

Pre-adamites are the only way I can see how all modern humanity (and all their
most recent common ancestors) can be on the same level with Adam as their
typical representative. I don't see in what way that would detract from the
theological content of Genesis - on the contrary, it seems to be the only way of
avoiding mythologizing chapters 1-11.

> ==================
> From Peter:
>
> But extending Adam's line by moving him backward until
> archeology is satisfied just won't work. You would have to insert at
> least 1000
> to 2000 unmentioned generations, not just a few dozen. But the Genesis text
> clearly indicates a time and place for Adam, as Dick Fischer and Carol
> Ann Hill
> showed: the Neolithic (and that's after about 8,000 BC) and Sumer.
> ======================
> I agree it's problematic. But I don't want to use one problem to excuse
> another, so that's why I'm trying to be honest about the problem in the
> pre-adamite view.

I hope to have shown you at least some alleviations of this problem.

> To create a view with Adam at the origin, I would insert almost all the
> compression in the first two generations (in the the "person" of Cain,
> with Seth being born 100,000 years later than Adam) so that Adam and
> Cain were not actually known individuals even to the persons in Sumer
> who first wrote the story. They were written to tell what happened back
> in the mists of time, to explain how we all got to be sinners and why
> early man wasn't agricultural and why he was a wanderer (like Cain).
> It's not about inserting some integer number of generations -- rather
> it's about not feeling to need to insert any generations because Adam
> simply fills the spot where we don't know what is back there. I'm not
> saying he is mythological or allegorical; I'm just hypothesizing that he
> is not presented as a person for whom the author had direct historical
> knowledge.

I get the impression that this introduces much more serious problems into a
"direct", "natural" reading of the story than the problem you find with the
pre-adamites. It also tears apart the text of Gen. 5:1-3 which you insisted must
be kept together in the same person Adam, the father of Seth.

> I know there are weaknesses in this view. Naming the four rivers in
> Eden is one weakness, and naming how old Adam was when he had Seth (and
> when he died) is another weakness, because these sound like elements of
> history, not theological gap-filling. But I have some ideas that might
> explain these weaknesses (still working on them...). Or maybe there is
> a better explanation. I'd rather hold it in tension than commit myself
> to a view that is deeply flawed.

What you call "deeply flawed" seems to be concentrated - if I interpret
correctly - in the question of inheritance of an "original sin". I know that
with my rejection of this view I am in conflict with the dogmatics of various
churches and denominations. But for me, as far as I understand the biblical
texts, that dogma is deeply flawed. And I prefer to stay with the "Sola
Scriptura" principle, rather than commit myself to any church dogma as such.

> =======================
> Peter wrote:
>
> If you want to keep Cain an agriculturalist, you cannot date him earlier
> than
> 8,000 BC (while Adam would have lived perhaps 80,000 years ago - give or
> take
> 40,000?). Now, who is looking for "indicators discovered a posteriori in
> order
> to justify a conclusion that was already necessary to support the
> paradigm"? I
> don't see, in the text, any reason for such an enormous discrepancy. To
> me, it
> seems a much more natural interpretation to have Cain build a city for the
> (pre-Adamitic) Sumerians he met in the land of Nod.
> ====================
> From Phil:
> no, you missed my point. The point is that Cain being cursed by God is
> the explanation for why early humans were NOT agriculturalists. Cain
> was a wanderer (hunter/gatherer), not an agriculturalist. We only find
> him growing crops before he killed Abel. The purpose of this vignette
> is to explain some important anthropology, not just to be a cute story.
> The anthropology is that early man was uncivilized and murderous and
> scared and hunter/gathers. Everyone **after** Cain lives in Sumer in
> cities (so they don't fear exposure to attack as wanderers like Cain),
> so everyone after Cain is neolithic or later. Only Cain and Adam are
> pre-neolithic, because the writer needed to say something about the
> origins, and not having direct history from 100,000 years earlier he
> relied on God directly inspiring him. God gave him only two little
> vignettes for all pre-history: the Fall (resulting in a curse and
> leaving the garden to farm, which is the first step down from paradise)
> and the murder of Abel (resulting in another curse and leaving the farm
> to wander, which is the second step down from paradise).
>
> It's like this:
>
> Farming in paradise --> Farming outside paradise --> Hunter/gatherer
>
> At the end of Cain we see this:
>
> Hunter/gatherer --> Farming in sumer (the building of Uruk)
>
> So man tries to go back to paradise by his own efforts, but Sumer does
> not become paradise to say the least. But I'm not intellectually
> committed to this view. I want to stay open to evaluating all the views
> because I'm not confident we have it all figured out in any corner.

An interesting model. The only point I missed before is that you claim that a
distant descendent of Cain, rather than he himself (as the text says), built the
city of Enoch (or Uruk).

For me, the model is too far away from the narrative of Gen.4-5.

> =====================
>
> Peter wrote:
>
> This model of having Adam postdated several ten thousand years creates more
> conflicts with the Bible and with science than it solves.
> ==================
> From Phil:
> it depends on how historical we are expected to take the Fall and the
> Murder of Abel. I'm just hypothesizing that maybe these two vignettes
> are not of the same historical genre as everything later, beginning with
> Enoch (Uruk) and Seth.

Well, there may be some genre difference between Gen.4 and what follows later.
However, if we have to insert 100,000 years somewhere (and I agree, we do!), I
find it much more congenial to the text to do it at 2:4, rather than at 4:17 and
5:3 (apart from the fact that then 4:25 becomes very awkward and
incomprehensible: "And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called
his name Seth, for she said, 'God has appointed for me another offspring instead
of Abel, for Cain killed him.'"

> ==================
> Peter wrote:
> And insisting that Adam was the first human is just grist to the mill of the
> defenders of the warfare model of science versus the Bible.
> ====================
> From Phil:
> same reply as above. If it is primarily a theological lesson until
> after Cain, then there is little that could conflict with science.
> =====================
> Peter wrote:
>
> This is the reason I
> started this thread. If we don't find reasonable models of harmonizing the
> biblical text, as it stands, with modern science, we'll lose most of the
> evangelical Christians to YEC or some other antievolution warfare model. And
> we'll lose most scientists to contempt of the Bible due to the opposite
> warfare
> model. In the accommodationist model of Genesis 1-11 being "broken
> myths", I see
> something that is not far from an unnecessary surrender to the second
> warfare
> model, which at most gives a Gould-like condescending nod to religion as a
> "non-overlapping magisterium", if it keeps out of reality claims.
>
> =====================
> From Phil:
>
> Good points!
>
> Someone might say that what I've hypothesized for Adam and Cain is a
> broken myth model, but I don't think so.
> ===========================
> Peter wrote:
>
> The text doesn't provide any direct evidence either way. What kind of
> "honest-to-goodness evidence" do you expect might be possible to show up
> in the
> text?
> ==========================
> From Phil:
> How about something like, "God made a special man, who was different
> that all the others he had already made, and God put him in a
> garden..." There are many ways that the author could have indicated the
> existence of pre-adamites.

With this, we would again be back to "the Bible teaching science", which I have
rejected repeatedly.

> Thanks for the helpful discussion. I'd like to think this isn't an
> argument and that we're on the same side trying to work it out, although
> clearly you have your strong opinions that I don't share.
>
> God bless,
> Phil

I hope we both increase in our understanding...

Shalom to you,
Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)