The molecular clock is a 'sloppy' clock theory that predicts the rate of molecular evolution will be influenced by mutation rate, patterns of selection and population size. Stochastic fluctuations in substitution rate over time in lineages make molecular date estimates imprecise, and variation in rate between lineages can cause substantial bias in molecular date estimates. Attempts to use molecular clocks to date evolutionary divergences must account for these sources of imprecision and bias2.
Each cell in our bodies contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, 3 billion DNA base pairs which in turn contain 20,000 to 25,000 protein coding genes. The chromosomes that determine our sexes are the X and Y-chromosomes, a combination of an XX produce a female foetus and XY a male foetus. Therefore the Y chromosome is passed through the paternal line and genetic analysis has shown that in human genetics, “Y-chromosomal Adam” the patrilinear human is the most recent common ancestor, from whom all Y-chromosomes in living humans are descended. Y-chromosomal Adam is thus the male counterpart of Mitochondrial Eve.
The Y-chromosomal Adam for living humans probably lived between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago, judging from molecular clock and genetic marker studies. While their descendants certainly became close intimates, Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve are separated by at least 30,000 years by rough estimates. The times determined are from the accumulation of genetic mutations over time. They generalized this observation to assert that the rate of evolutionary change of any specified protein was approximately constant over time and over different lineages.
I am not trying to show that the times of the common ancestor fit the time of Adam accepted in Judaism, however, the dates given by genetics are based on many assumptions and contain errors that need to be accounted for, as described above. What is important to show from these studies is that genetic analysis has shown everyone on the earth has originated from one man and one woman and is incredible evidence for the principle of Adam and Eve the progenitors of Mankind from Genesis.
It is also interesting at this point to note that this analysis has also been applied to the Y chromosomes of the Kohanim. “Y-chromosomal Aaron” is the name given to the ancestor of the Kohanim; the a patrilineal priestly caste in Judaism. This hypothesis was first tested by Prof. Karl Skorecki and collaborators from Haifa, Israel. In their 1997 study, they discovered that many Kohanim share certain Y-chromosome markers, which argues in favour of the hypothesis. Other studies have corroborated the findings, and have dated the origin of the shared DNA at about 3,000 years ago3, extremely close to the time of the exodus.
The common ancestor of all living humans is defined as an individual who is a genealogical ancestor of all present-day people. Computer modelling4 of population migration has shown that the most recent common ancestor for a randomly-mating population would have lived in the very recent past. The most recent common ancestor of all present-day humans lived just a few thousand years ago in the models performed by Rohde et al. The research has also shown that each present-day human has exactly the same set of genealogical ancestors.
The model used by Rohde consisted of 5% of individuals migrating out of their home town, 0.05% migrating out of their home country, and 95% of port users born in the country from which the port emanates. The simulations produce a mean of every present-day human ancestor date to 5,353 b.c.e., and produce a mean most recent common ancestor date of 1,415 b.c.e. For comparison in the hebrew calendar Adam was created in 3,761 b.c.e. and Noah’s flood occurred at 2205 b.c.e.
“And let us make man in our image after our likeness. So Hashem created man in his image, in the image of Hashem he created him, male and female he created them”
Ramban explains that the term “let us make” means that “I together with the aforementioned earth will make man”. The earth should bring forth man’s body from its elements as it did for the animals and beasts, while Hashem would supply the spirit “from the mouth of the Supreme One”.
Ramban further illustrates that when Hashem created the fish and the fowl he told the water to bring them forth. When he created the animals he told the earth to bring them forth. Now in creating man, he told the earth to bring man forth in conjunction with Hashem himself.
The term “in our image our likeness”. Ramban explains this to mean that man would resemble both Hashem and the earth. First he made the bodies of the animals, the beasts and afterwards made the body of man and he placed within him his animal soul. After that he blew a supernal soul into him.
It is very interesting to note that during the growth of a human embryo the initial stages of development appear to represent a mini evolution. From a single-celled organism the cell develops into a simple multicellular organism, then forms a basic vertebrate body plan shared by fish. There is even gill development in this stage of growth. The embryo then appears to separate from similarities with fish to a mammalian body plan with the disappearance of the gills. Eventually the embryo then begins to take on the form of a human foetus, see Fig. 6.2.
Only after Adam received this higher soul, Ramban explains, did he have power and dominion over animals, plant life, sea life and the earth, to “fill the earth and subdue it”.
“Now all the trees of the field were not yet on the earth and all the herbs of the field had not yet sprouted for Hashem had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to work the soil. And Hashem formed man of dust from the ground and blew into his nostrils the soul of life and man became a living soul.”
Ramban states that scripture says, “Blew into his nostrils the soul of life” to inform us that this soul did not come to man from the physical elements, as it alluded to concerning the “soul of mobility”. Rather it is the spirit of the Great One from whose mouth comes knowledge and understanding. For when someone blows into someone else’s nostrils he gives him his own breath.
Ramban summarises the above; Hashem formed man, referring to his “soul of mobility”. For “forming” he refers to implanting life and sentience, similar to “out of the ground every beast of the field”. Then after he formed him from the ground, he blew into his nostrils the “soul of life”, the rational soul or from the opinion of Onkelos the “spirit of speech”.
A story by the Talmudic sages illustrates the idea that a man without this extra soul is a golem. In Sanhedrin 65b, Rabbah created a man and sent it before Rabbi Zeira who spoke to it but it did not speak in return. Rabbi Zeira said, “You are a creation of the colleagues, return to the dust from which you came”. This golem had the form of a man possessing a soul of mobility but not the rational or “spirit of speech”.
Language
The view of Onkelos maintains that what Hashem blew into Adam was the “soul of speech”. Adam was apparently already a living mobile being though not quite human, before Hashem provided him with his soul of rationality. These ideas by Ramban and the Talmudic commentators suggest that Adam may have been living for a period of time with only the “soul of mobility” just like the other animals before Hashem blew into him the higher soul.
However some highly intelligent animals also appear to have a grasp of language, for example parrots, orang-utans and chimpanzees have all shown that they can either be taught rudimentary language and sign language or have their own complex form of communication such as dolphins. There is an ongoing debate among scientists and philosophers whether the difference between a human mind and an animal mind is one of kind or quantity. If you gave a dog enough grey matter and the correct vocal equipment, could it begin to speak? The answer is that although animals can communicate to a degree and can be taught to do so, this is immensely different to human language.
“Language is a uniquely human trait likely to have been a prerequisite for the development of human culture. The ability to develop articulate speech relies on capabilities, such as fine control of the larynx and mouth, that are absent in chimpanzees and other great apes.”5
Another view is put forward by Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler stating6 that when the verse says “…an
d he breathed into his nostrils the neshama of life”. Whose nostrils? Mans. Rabbi Dessler highlights that he was already called “man” before his neshama was breathed into him. Man was created with nefesh which gave him an ‘ego’ like all living creatures. His nefesh was greater than the other creatures. Rabbi Dessler then states that this was an intellectual nefesh, possessing the powers of concept-formation, speech and rationalisation. Afterwards Hashem placed in him the holy neshama.
The human brain appears to be wired completely differently to the apes in the area associated with language. “We found evidence that the brain is organized differently in humans in this area of the brain, even though the outside looks the same,” said Dr. Buxhoeveden. “This provides an anatomical substrate, a hint that the brain is wired differently in humans in the language area than in the chimpanzee or the monkey.”7
It is of interest to note that there are some theories of language that speculate that all languages originated from just one language. The term Proto-World language refers to this hypothetical, common ancestor of all the world's languages. Many historical linguists state that an ancient proto-language gave rise to all modern languages and all language families known from the past 6,000 years of recorded history. The originator of modern complex language as we know it in principle mirrors well with Adam who was capable of such mental faculties 5766 years ago.
Also the biblical account of the Tower of Babel reveals the breakdown of one language to multiple different languages very soon after Noah’s flood.
Civilisation
Ramban explains that on the third day the land brought forth plants and fruit trees in their full height and form. But now scripture relates there was no one to plant or sow, until man who could work it by sowing, planting and tending it. This is the explanation of “the trees of the field” for it does not say “the trees of the ground”. Only a place of cultivation is called a field, therefore these statements specifically refer to cultivation, which only began when a highly intelligent, rational being, such as Adam first appeared on the earth.
This now brings us to the final age, the Holocene or Anthropogene (Age of Man), which covers 10,000 years ago until the present. This is a time of crop cultivation and eventually the development of abstract written language.
The concept of pre-Adam humans was well accepted by early sages. Also in support of the notion of early humans and sub-civilizations, we read in Psalms (105:8) the words: “He remembered His covenant forever…the Word he commanded for a thousand generations”. The Talmud reveals that this verse indicates that the Torah was given to Moses and all the Hebrews at Mount Sinai after the elapse of 1,000 human generations. Since Moses was of the 26th generation following the first progenitor of the human race, this indicates some 974 generations before Adam.
Bereshis discusses that Adam is needed to tend to the trees and herbs of the field. This is an indication of the birth of agriculture and this led to the beginnings of civilisation. Civilisation required the following qualities from modern humans: intensive agricultural techniques, such as the use of human power, crop rotation, and irrigation. This has enabled farmers to produce a surplus of food that is not necessary for their own subsistence.
This led to a significant portion of the population that does not devote most of its time to producing food permitting a division of labour. Those who do not occupy their time in producing food may instead focus their efforts in other fields, such as industry, war, science or religion. Eventually the gathering of some of these non-food producers into permanent settlements would have originated in the first cities.
The first cities would also allow the development of complex forms of economic exchange. This included the expansion of trade, which led to the creation of money and markets. This further allowed the development of new technologies by people who were not busy producing food. In many early civilizations, metallurgy was an important advancement. Finally leading to the advanced development of the arts, especially writing. Adam with a spirit of speech and required to immerse in agriculture is the perfect archetype for the origin of civilisation described above.
Religion
Studies into the evolution of religion by Wilhelm Schmidt, who published a wellknown work titled “Origin and Growth of Religion” (English Ed. 1931), found that, throughout the world, primitive cultures have a notion of a supreme god. The origins of all known religions in the world uniformly have a concept of a single all-powerful God. He lives in, or above, the sky. Anthropologists refer to him as the "Sky-God", although the name the peoples have for him is more commonly one meaning "Father" or "Creator". He is like a father, however his form cannot be physically represented, and so there are almost never idols of him. He is the creator of everything and he is eternal (i.e. He existed before anything else, and He will never cease to be). He is all knowing and all good ultimately comes from him. He is the giver of moral law and all-powerful. He judges people after their death and early religions suggest that we are alienated from him due to some misdemeanour in the past.
Schmidt found that as these early religions developed, “more accessible” Gods or idols replaced the “Sky-God”. Behind all world religions there still can be found a distant memory of this "Sky-God" whom they have lost most contact with. There is little archaeological evidence for the “Sky-God” since no physical representations could be made of Him, these ideas have only recently come to light. Therefore from this original monotheistic religion, other forms of religion developed, most involving some form of idol worship. These ideas are very closely akin to the idea of Adam, the first man who recognised and had dialogue with Hashem. Torah scholars state that the original generations of man knew and worshipped Hashem himself. Over the generations it is said that people worshipped Hashem’s emissaries of nature, such as the sun, wind, stars etc. Eventually these generations forgot Hashem but carried on worshipping nature, forming the beginnings of idolatry.
Written Language
The development of written language needed a whole new way of thinking, as the idea of relating an object to a symbol involves extremely abstract thought processes which no animal can master. The invention of the first writing systems was roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium b.c.e. The first writing system is generally believed to have been invented in pre-historic Sumer and developed by the late 3rd millennium into cuneiform. Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the undeciphered Proto-Elamite script and Indus Valley script also date to this era.
The original Sumerian writing system was derived from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium b.c.e., this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced about 2700-2000 b.c.e. by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at first only for logograms, but developed to include phonetic elements by the 29th century b.c.e. About 2600 b.c.e. cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian language. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general-purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers in Mesopotamia, neighbouring countries, and Mediterranean countries.
Archeological evidence indicates that the original Hebrew script is related to the Phoenician script that was in wide use in the Middle East region at the end of the 2nd millennium b.c.e.. (Eventually, in Europe, this alphabet evolved into the Greek and Roman alphabets). Phoenician script deviated from the Hebrew script during the 12th or 11th century b.c.e.. This script was widely used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah until they fell in the 8th and 6th century’s b.c.e., respectively.
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1Jones S In our time: Human evolution. BBC Radio 4. First broadcast 16 February 2006
2The Modern Molecular Clock by Lindell Bromham & David Penn
y.
3Thomas MG et al, 1998
4Rohde D.L. etal. Nature 2004
5W. Enard et al., “Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language”
6Strive for Truth, part one, page 210.
7Science/Medical news from the Medical College of Georgia, 4th September 2001.
Lurianic Kabbalah and cosmology
As mentioned previously, Kabbalah is represented as the fourth and deepest level of understanding of the Torah, Sod (secret). Kabbalah is a subject which is very difficult to grasp, it is advised traditionally in Judaism that only a learned married man in Talmud over 40 years old should attempt to learn from its wisdom. However, Kabbalah is slowly becoming more accessible to the general public through prolific works by scholars such as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsberg, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov etc. It is worth further reading from these great authors especially ‘Inner Space’ by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. Nevertheless I hope the readers will allow me to compare a more simple understanding of Lurianic kabbalah (derived from Rav Luria) with modern cosmology as they discuss very similar principles of the creation of the universe. I will only touch the surface of the subject as it has much inner depth and can be misunderstood easily. This whole section is also for the advanced reader only as the science and mysticism can be very difficult to understand. I advise further reading of Alan Guth’s book “The Inflationary Universe” and also perseverance if one were to tackle this chapter.
The major work I will discuss is by Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–July 25, 1572), who was a Jewish scholar and mystic. He was the founder of one of the most important branches of Kabbalah, often referred to as Lurianic Kabbalah.
The First Six Days Page 5