The Genealogical Adam and Eve
Page 30
3. “The image of God is human rights in all their relationships in life.” J. Moltmann, On Human Dignity—Political Theology and Ethics (London: SCM Press, 1984), 23.
4. “There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God.” Martin Luther King Jr., “The American Dream,” sermon delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on July 4, 1965, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/american-dream-sermon-delivered-ebenezer-baptist-church.
5. John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015); J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005).
6. See, for example, online appendix 3.
7. “The human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God’: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012), http://ccc.usccb.org/flipbooks/catechism/files/assets/basic-html/page-I.html. It should be noted that the catechism stresses our essential unity, continuing, “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity.”
8. “The imago Dei was essential to the Civil Rights participants, even if the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement didn’t have it very well articulated. Their actions proved they believed it. But yes, it was absolutely essential. The Civil Rights Movement never could have succeeded without imago Dei.” Carl Ellis Jr., quoted in Tony Reinke, “In the Image of God We Trust,” Desiring God, November 5, 2016, www.desiringgod.org/articles/in-the-image-of-god-we-trust. See also Richard W. Wills, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Image of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
9. For example, Gen 1:26-27 gives dominion over the creatures of the earth, but not over other humans. This implies that even those not created in the image of God are created free. Kimberly Flint-Hamilton, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Culture of Oppression,” Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2010, www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/110976.pdf.
10. Mark M. Moore, Early Genesis: The Revealed Cosmology, 4th ed. (n.p.: Ridge Enterprise Group, 2017).
11. Without spoiling the story, this is much like the Adam and Eve story embedded in Battlestar Galactica. It also might describe the hypertime fall (see online appendix 2). Hud Hudson, The Fall and Hypertime (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
12. Noreen Herzfeld. In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2000).
13. In particular, I am indebted to many long conversations with Charles P. Arand, Daniel Deen, Joel Okamoto, Timothy Saleska, and Jeff Malinson. S. Joshua Swamidass, “A Lutheran Voice in Science,” Concordia Journal 43 (2017): 82-87.
14. The scenario I propose in the part of this book leans into this paradox, and the responses from the two camps may be instructive.
15. Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2011): 217-36, https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201185213.
16. Pius XII, “Humani Generis,” Acta Apostolica Sedis 42 (1950).
17. C. J. Andrew Alexander, “Human Origins and Genetics,” Clergy Review 49 (1964): 344-53.
18. Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2011): 217-36, https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201185213.
19. Jerry A. Coyne, “Adam and Eve: The Ultimate Standoff Between Science and Faith (and a Contest!),” Why Evolution Is True (blog), June 2, 2011, https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/adam-and-eve-the-ultimate-standoff-between-science-and-faith-and-a-contest/.
20. Edward Feser, “Monkey in Your Soul?,” Edward Feser (blog), September 12, 2011, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/monkey-in-your-soul.html.
21. Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160-74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2016.1156328.
22. Antoine Suarez, “‘Transmission at Generation’: Could Original Sin Have Happened at the Time When Homo Sapiens Already Had a Large Population Size?,” Scientia et Fides 4 (2016): 253, https://doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2016.014.
23. Many of these blog posts are being collated into a book on the genealogical Adam and Eve that will be published in early 2020.
24. Gregg Davidson, “Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (2015): 24-34.
25. Fazale Rana and Hugh N. Ross, Who Was Adam? (Covina, CA: RTP Press, 2015).
26. Regarding Nephilim interbreeding with Adam’s line, one published article writes, “Regardless, I reiterate that Answers in Genesis officially doesn’t take a particular stand on this issue as a ministry but seeks to encourage readers to carefully study the Scriptures and always maintain the Word of God as the ultimate authority on all things.” Bodie Hodge, “Who Were the Nephilim?: Genesis 6 and Numbers 13—A Fresh Look,” Answers in Depth 3 (2008): 53-63.
27. Ken Ham (@aigkenham), “Exquisite design by @ArkEncounter artists for new Diorama depicting wicked population in the pre-Flood world to be installed,” Twitter, February 16, 2017, https://twitter.com/aigkenham/status/832200426225356802.
Chapter 10: The Error of Polygenesis
1. S. Joshua Swamidass, “A Genealogical Adam and Eve in Evolution,” Sapientia, Carl F. H. Henry Center, June 26, 2017, https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/06/a-genealogical-adam-and-eve-in-evolution/.
2. Dennis Venema, “Response to the Symposium (Part 1),” Sapientia, Carl F. H. Henry Center, July 10, 2017, http://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/07/response-to-the-symposium-part-1/.
3. Davis A. Young, “The Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race Revisited,” Christian Scholar’s Review 24 (1995): 380-96.
4. Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2011): 217-36, https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201185213.
5. David N. Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
6. G. Blair Nelson, “‘Men Before Adam!’: American Debates over the Unity and Antiquity of Humanity,” in When Science and Christianity Meet, ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
7. Ethan Seigel, “Who Discovered the Earth Is Round?,” Medium, February 10, 2014, https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/who-discovered-the-earth-is-round-67dfc013402a.
8. Augustine, City of God XVI.
9. Johannes Kepler, Astronomia Nova, 1609. The term “philosophically” is changed to “scientifically,” to match the current meaning of the term.
10. Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676): His Life, Work, and Influence (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 44.
11. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère, 46.
12. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère, 47.
13. Pius XII, “Humani Generis,” Acta Apostolica Sedis 42 (1950).
14. Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
15. Bob Jones Sr., “Is Segregation Scriptural?,” April 17, 1960, reproduced in “‘Is Segregation Scriptural?’ Bob Jones Sr., 1960,” by Camille Lewis, A Time To Laugh (blog), March 15, 2013 www.drslewis.org/camille/2013/03/15/is-segregation-scriptural-by-bob-jones-sr-1960/.
16. Ken Ham, “Interracial Marriage,” Answers Magazine, January 1, 2007, https://answersingenesis.org/family/marriage/interracial-marriage/.
17. Ken Ham, One Blood for Kids: What the Bible Says About Race (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2018); Ken Ham and A. Charles Ware, One Race, One Blood: A Biblical Answer to Racism (Green Forest, AR: Mast
er Books, 2010); Ken Ham, Carl Wieland, and Don Batten, One Blood: The Biblical Answer to Racism (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1999).
18. This was emphasized by Darwin, and it was one of the reasons he rejected polygenesis.
19. Alan R. Templeton, “Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective,” American Anthropologist 100 (1998): 632-50, https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.632; Templeton, “Biological Races in Humans,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013): 262-71, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.04.010. Furthermore, the new field of ancient genomes is reshaping our understanding of the past. New technology is making it possible to take ancient human remains, going back as far as four hundred thousand years ago, and obtain DNA sequences from these remains. David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (New York: Vintage, 2018).
20. To understand this more, this book remains very helpful: Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (Boston: Mariner Books, 2002).
21. Some biologists would dispute this characterization, claiming, for example, that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are the same species.
22. H. S. Terrace and others, “Can an Ape Create a Sentence?,” Science 23 (1979), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.504995.
23. C. Yang, “Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Language,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1216803110.
24. S. Joshua Swamidass, “More than Just Apes,” Peaceful Science, May 23, 2016, http://peacefulscience.org/more-than-apes. Varki believes these abilities first arose in our lineage about 200,000 years ago.
25. Nathan Lents, Not So Different (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).
26. Denis O. Lamoureux, “Beyond Original Sin: Is a Theological Paradigm Shift Inevitable?,” PSCF 67, no. 1 (2015).
27. Jacob Shavit, “The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Review),” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (2006): 177-80, https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2006.0031.
28. Shavit, “Curse of Ham.”
29. Halford H. Fairchild, “Scientific Racism: The Cloak of Objectivity,” Journal of Social Issues 47 (1991): 101-15, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1991.tb01825.x.
30. Jones, “Is Segregation Scriptural?”
31. Jones, “Is Segregation Scriptural?”
32. Young, “Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race.”
Chapter 11: Humans of the Text
1. I discourage the terms non-Adamites, pre-Adamites, or co-Adamites because these terms are too easily misunderstood as a link to polygenesis. Similarly, humans outside the Garden is too loaded. These biological humans are, however, people outside the Garden.
2. Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160-74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2016.1156328; Gregg Davidson, “Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (2015): 24-34.
3. John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015).
4. This argument has been reviewed by exegetes, but the nuances of Greek and Hebrew are well outside my expertise. I defer to others to clarify, correct, and expand what is valuable here. If, perhaps, I missed an important detail, the overall argument derives from several independent lines of reasoning, so the final point should still stand.
5. A fictional Adam and Eve may be a faithful interpretation of Scripture, however, as specifically denied in the Chicago Statements on Inerrancy and Hermeneutics.
6. Jon Garvey argues in his concurrently published book that Genesis 11 also excludes peoples of which the Genesis author would certainly know of, such as the Indus Valley civilization.
7. See online appendix 5.
8. Technically, Gen 1 refers to Gen 1:1–2:3 and Gen 2 refers to Gen 2:4-25. Some might further distinguish Gen 1:1 and Gen 2:4 as two additional and distinct accounts. Stretching into other sources, Jn 1:1-3 is another account of creation. There are many accounts of creation.
9. It is debatable, nonetheless, if the six days are describing the creation of all things, or the creation of this specific area of the world. Such debates do not extend to Gen 2, which is unequivocally situated in a localized Garden.
10. The Septuagint is an ancient Greek translation of Genesis.
11. The Septuagint, however, switches to Adam halfway through Gen 2, not at the beginning.
12. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve; Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009); John H. Sailhamer, The Meaning of the Pentateuch: Revelation, Composition, and Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009).
13. Compatible with this view, some understand Adam to have been originally created as a hermaphrodite (Gen 1:27), with two heads, four arms, four legs, and both male and female parts. In a reading that matches Plato’s myth of creation, Eve is created (Gen 2) by cutting Adam in half, into a male and female body. Patrick Cheney, “Jonson’s ‘The New Inn’; and Plato’s Myth of the Hermaphrodite,” Renaissance Drama: Relations and Influences 14 (1983): 173-94; Plato, Symposium.
14. This is John Walton and La Peyrère’s reading of Gen 1 and 2. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve; Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676): His Life, Work, and Influence (Leiden: Brill, 1987).
15. This responds to C. John Collins’s objection against a sequential reading (see online appendix 3) by showing it is not required. I acknowledge Richard Averbeck, Andrew Loke, Ken Turner, and Jon Garvey for thoughtful conversation on this matter.
16. This does not, of course, resolve how we should understand the image of God. Vocationalists might emphasize the dominion call of Gen 1:26-27. Structuralists might, while acknowledging the dominion call, understand this as a reference to biological humans.
17. William Lane Craig objects that Babylonian myths were always about the creation of all humanity, and the purpose of Genesis was to counter these accounts (see online appendix 4). However, none of these other accounts is of a single couple, a feature unique to the Genesis 2 account.
18. I am thankful to John Hilber providing expertise on ancient literature, and helping me clarify this case.
19. I am thankful to John Hilber providing expertise on ancient literature, and helping me clarify this case.
20. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve.
21. The question of the Nephilim is a common point of discussion among young-earth creationists, and this list is by no means exhaustive. See, for example, Bodie Hodge, “Who Were the Nephilim? Genesis 6 and Numbers 13—a Fresh Look,” Answers in Depth 3 (2008): 53-63.
22. Joseph Lumpkin, The Books of Enoch: The Angels, the Watchers and the Nephilim (Blountsville, AL: Fifth Estate, 2009).
23. With Num 13:33 and Gen 6:4 in mind, these Nephilim might even exist after the flood.
24. Davidson also suggested the possibility that the Nephilim could be a reference to children of illicit unions with people outside the Garden. Gregg Davidson, “Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (2015): 24-34.
25. Cain is banished to the erets of Nod, away from the adamah where his family lives (Gen 4:14). This may hint that there were people living in erets, a larger area than the adamah of the Garden.
26. I owe this reference to David Opderbeck, who writes in 2010, also making a distinction between genealogical and genetic ancestry. “A ‘Historical’ Adam?,” BioLogos, April 15, 2010, https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/a-historical-adam.
27. William Lane Craig raises this objection (see online appendix 4).
Chapter 12: The Splintering of Traditions
1. Thomas H. McCall, “Science, Theology, & Charitable Discussion: A Symposium R
ecap,” July 17, 2017, http://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/07/science-theology-charitable-discussion-a-symposium-recap/.
2. Clinton Ohlers, as quoted in S. Joshua Swamidass, “Three Stories on Adam,” Peaceful Science, August 5, 2018, http://peacefulscience.org/three-stories-on-adam/.
3. Davis A. Young, “The Contemporary Relevance of Augustine’s View of Creation,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 40 (1988): 42-45