To avoid misunderstandings I repeat the post with my usual username. I apologize for the mistake.
Thanks Randy for your comment.
It would be helpful if you could “recall the location” to discuss the issue on the basis of facts.
Burials may simply reveal mourning for the dead or the inclination to remember them (as elephants also seem to do). In any case, mausoleums like those of Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc. hardly mean “belief in the afterlife” but rather the desire of representatives of totalitarian regimes to preserve the power.
By contrast:
Drawings like those we find in the ancient Egyptian funerary text Book of the Dead (about 1275 BC) clearly reveal awareness of accountability toward God.
Accountancy and contracts were main motivations for writing: Writing clearly demonstrates “accountability relationship”.
Interestingly, Mesopotamians seem to have shared Monotheism, as a belief in one God Marduk, who had different names. One of them, Nabu, was “Marduk of accounting”.
Anyway, it would be nice if you could provide some reference.
Antoine, the short answer is No, I do not agree. You seem to rely so heavily on the principle that Homo sapiens could only be considered human if they obeyed the precept that: “Humans are NOT allowed to kill other humans.” But you do not address the difficult exceptions most of us take to that rule.
My own experience is an example. In 1943 I took Basic Training in the army Infantry where I was taught the most effective ways of killing Nazi soldiers (or Japs, if I was sent in that direction) Labelling the enemy thusly made it easy to forget that they were human just as much as I was, and, on the whole, just as moral. (In the intervening years, some of my most beloved friends are German and Japanese.) What I was asked to do was to help put an end to the evil, immoral society that the enemy soldiers represented. That is why I make such a distinction between an Individual’s Conscience and their Societal Conscience.
In the matter of interpreting the circumstance of an individual’s burial as evidence for the belief in an afterlife and a Supreme Being, one can make a logical distinction between a Neanderthal burial at 35,000 BP from a Cro-Magnon burial at the same period. The Neanderthal’s reasons most likely were ‘cosmetic’–they did not want a decaying body ‘polluting’ a valuable living space. On the other hand, a Cro Magnon burial with ‘grave goods’ that represented hundreds of hours of careful labor, and surely indicated that they believed the deceased would appreciate these in some afterlife. The tombs of Lenin and Stalin show none of this.
So, you and I seem to differ somewhat on the details of when and how humankind appeared on earth, but we do seem to agree that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, that was promised before time began.
blessings,
Al Leo
Thanks for your message. I am going to have to look that up! Thanks. I was a bit surprised at reading it myself, so my rash posting will lead to better research, with your kind inquiry. Thanks
This is part of the issue. The Holy Spirit guides us in reading and understanding what God says. We cannot use human understanding and teachings, even if the evidence points otherwise.
That is why I do no agree. Having said that, I am not tossing out human knowledge as long as it backs up Scripture instead of changing it. Nor am I saying my points are even the only view. There is a thread on this site that talks about the genetic bottleneck. And science seems to concede there was at least one if not a few.
My point is that humans did not evolve into the image of God, because that goes against Genesis nor can we find in Genesis any hint of that. We can find evolutionary acceptance of God waiting for the “right” time to insert the image of God into an evolved sapien in non-biblical sources, even before Moses put down the record directly from God. The Enuma Elish has been translated to convey that thought that was around thousands of years before today’s accepted scientific view.
This assumption amounts to state that the genetic makeup of the 3 wives of the three Noah’s children was equivalent to the makeup of millions of wives in a large modern human population at about 3000BC.
But then, one can as well assume that after the Flood God made all these millions of modern humans in His Image by endowing them with awareness of accountability toward His commandment.
This corresponds perfectly to Genesis 9:3-6, where God explicitly establishes the universal prohibition of homicide because humankind is made in God’s Image , that is, God establishes a clear difference between the dignity of humans and that of non-human animals.
Tim, I have been ‘snubbed’ by a few evangelical Christians because I carefully read (and often quote) the works of many atheists who criticize any religious Faith–e.g. Dawkins who shames such folks for “flying in the face of (scientific) evidence”. (I hold that many scientists, who have some worthwhile wisdom to impart, can still be badly mistaken other areas outside their expertise.) In the first part of your quotation above that I’ve highlighted, is a hint that you might fit Dawkins’ condemnation. But then you immediately proceed to suggest that it is eminently reasonable that humankind appeared on this planet, NOT de novo from the dust of the earth, but rather only when primate evolution had produced consciousness and the capability of making a covenant with its Creator.
IMO, this is the sensible way of extracting spiritual knowledge from Genesis while respecting the material knowledge from science–a practice recommended by the founders of BioLogos and also by the agnostic, Stephen Gould in describing NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria).
On the other hand, the task of ‘reconciling’ the Flood Story recounted in Genesis, with either geology or genetics, presents irresolvable difficulties. IMHO, the attempts to do so, while made with the best of intentions, gives atheists/agnostics effective ammunition to discourage our youth from following a path to a Faith compatible with reason–offering instead a Faith in a Creator so inept that He must destroy all but a handful of His most remarkable works–creatures that have the potential use free will to become His Image Bearers.
Blessings,
Al Leo
And this means: at latest by the time of the appearance ofwriting at 3200 BC God created humankind in the image of God and endowed humans with the sense of accountability toward God and humanity.
Indeed the presence of humans who are accountable towards God for killing other humans can only be ascertained by vestiges demonstrating “accountable relationship” and legal responsibility. Such vestiges are concomitant with the appearance of writing at 3200BC.
Let us now consider the precept of Genesis 9:3-6:
“Humans are NOT allowed to kill other humans, but are allowed to kill non-human animals for food”.
My assumption is that this commandment was given by God to humans not earlier than 12000BC.
You advance two good objections to this assumption, which are worthy to be discussed:
Your 1st objection:
The “difficult exceptions” you refer to, confirm that humans should in principle behave according to the precept of Genesis 9:3-6.
So the question arises: At which time did God proclaim this precept?
This precept of Genesis 9:3-6 requires that the distinction between humans and non-human animals is as sharp as it is today. Evolutionary science tells us that this is the case only after 12000BC.
If you go further back, you meet more and more intermediate varieties which interbreed with each other, and it becomes quite difficult to distinguish humans from non-human animals.
I answer your 2nd objection regarding burials in a coming post.
Here my answer to your 2nd objection referring to burials:
The claim that Cro Magnon “believed the deceased would appreciate these [‘grave goods’] in some afterlife” rather supports the idea that the ‘afterlife’ they believed in, was sort of continuation of the ‘present life’. In any case such ‘grave goods’ do not “surely indicate” Cro Magnon believed the deceased were accountable toward God.
Regarding “accountability relationship” we don’t have evidence supporting that about 30,000 years ago Cro Magnon were different from Neanderthal.
We do not even know what the image of God is. God sent himself into human form, but that does not mean it was the form that is the image of God. 1 + 1 only equals 2 if you know what 1 is. The image of God only equals mankind if you know what the image of God is. You cannot just say the image we have is the image of God based on the image itself. If that were the case then Adam never died nor lost the image of God. Furthermore it states that God did create an image, not that something created evolved into such an image. Evolution is real only in the fact that it is the result of biological life. It is not the means of such life including this alleged image of God.
That 3 or 4 at the most females still being in the image of God at the time of Noah, does not even gaurantee that image remained after the Flood. It seems to me that the Image of God was not related to biological reproduction at all. Biological reproduction was seperate from the ability to observe the physical aspect of the Image of God. This Image was spiritual in nature and there is no such thing as spiritual biological reproduction.
I think we miss the mark trying to make physical, a spiritual aspect that was lost to us. To say there was a seperate genetic race of humans carrying this Image of God is not the point. My point is that genetically these created beings were without any mutation at all if and when God allowed them to multiply on the earth. To say they carried every mutation within themselves is not relevant. They were the beginning of the process not the progenitors in the sense that they produced a particular result. I do not accept common decent, because we were only told that Eve was the single mother. Which can only be true in reference to the fact she was the only known single mother. And the fact that all genetic males came from her, via other genetic male offspring. No one in the Bible proclaimed that Noah’s wife was the mother of all living, and I doubt it was solely because Eve has already been given that title. That does not rule out that new genetic ancestors would interfere in genetic results, other than humans would still have a male link back to Eve. The only common source can be God, not nature. We cannot claim that Adam and Eve were a bottleneck nor was Noah and his 3 sons, because we do not have all the facts. Especially if there is an indication that other females may have contributed different resulting sets of dna besides Eve. They would not bring an end to Eve and her male line of descendants, but add to it in multiple ways.
The point that the Image Of God has been lost to us and that it had little to do with genetics and who we are today goes hand in hand that for several thousands of years after the Flood that Image may have been allowed to live among us, but it was only left to us in hints and pieces of observed history. What ever happened has been removed from our ability to recognize what is was. Then we get historically the rise of religions and only human attempts at explaining what happened in the past, but this was only human perspective.
“the capability of making a covenant with its Creator” involves awareness of being accountable toward God for His precept, as formulated in Genesis 9:3-6.
I dare to insist that this precept requires that the difference between humans and animals is as sharp as it is today. According to evolutionary science this is the case only after 12,000 BC.
For 30,000BC, the time you propose, the population may have been hundreds of thousands.
In any case the crucial question we have to answer is:
How did the members of this large population of modern humans become capable of making a covenant with its Creator and aware of being accountable toward God?
The main possible answers seem to be:
God made this covenant with the whole population at once.
God made this covenant at different times:
First with a little part (possibly in South Mesopotamia), who became aware of being accountable toward God.
Then, subsequently, with the rest (as Genesis 6-9 suggests), till the whole humankind became aware of being accountable toward God (at the time referred to in Genesis 9:3-6).
I would be thankful to know which of these two answers would you (and other interested readers) advocate.
15The Son [our Lord Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church;
Jesus Christ can be said to be “the image of the invisible God” because of his body, otherwise the term ‘image’ (referring to a visible feature) would not make sense.
Accordingly, humanity and each human being is made at the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-3, 9:3-6) because of the human body, which is a body like Jesus Christ’s body .
We are human primarily because we share a body like Jesus Christ’s body, and not because we are descended from Adam and Eve.
In my view it confirms that Evolution worked to bring about the strong difference between humanity and other extant forms of life we observe today. Thereby Evolution laid the groundwork for the covenant and God’s precept in Genesis 9:3-6 (see this Essay).
So we come again to the convenience of assuming that the covenant happened at a time when the gap between human and apes was as sharp as it is today. And this means in any case, not earlier than 12,000 BC.
Nonetheless, if you think “domestication” would support an earlier time limit for the covenant and the precept of Genesis 9:3-6, I would be thankful to know your argument in this respect.
Paul only saw the resurrected body. The one not marred by sin and Adam’s fall. The one that died on the cross, is Adam’s image after the fall. The resurrected one is the image that existed before creation. The one that Adam and those on the 6th day were imaged after. The disciples saw this image on the mount of transfiguration.
We are human because we biologically descended from our parents who were human.
Jesus being the image of God is because God became flesh, not technically because God needed a physical image to represent God. In time standards, the birth of Jesus was the beginning. After that God had a physical image to create mankind into.
The Bible says that Adam claimed, “Eve was the mother of all living”. Genesis seems to indicate biological reproduction was the result of the fall. Evolution of humans did not start on day six, nor billions of years from other biological forms. There is no formal indication of that nor any text that evens speculate that evolution was involved. The genealogy formula was there from the first humans. Thus humans were created as humans, if not biological at first. Would you say that God wanted to be the product of evolution?
We are in the current state because Adam disobeyed God, not because we evolved into it, nor because God created us in our current form.
Humans are supposed to behave according to the precept: Humans are accountable for killing other humans, but are allowed to use non-human animals for food.
This precept cannot obviously be the product of evolution but requires an explicit intervention of God, as it is referred to in Genesis 9:3-6.
Accordingly, this intervention marks the moment when “humans were created as humans” and defines the beginning of humanity (as it is stated in Genesis 5: 1-2). So it cannot be said that “humans were created as humans” by evolution: It requires some intervention coming from outside biology.
Nonetheless in order humans can live according to this precept it is necessary that humans can unambiguously distinguish which creatures are humans and which creatures are not humans. Otherwise the precept would have been nonsensical.
This distinction is possible today because there is a sharp gap between humans and our nearest “relatives” (chimps and bonobos).
God prepared this gap by means of evolution, by provoking the disappearance of a huge number of intermediate varieties between humans and chimps/bonobos.
The difference between humans and non-human animals became as sharp as it is today at about 12,000BC. Thus God’s “creation and definition of humans as humans” happened only after this time.
Consequently, it holds both:
Humans are created as humans at the moment God declares to make humans in God’s image and gives the precept referred to in Genesis 9:3-6.
But in order humans can coherently behave according to this precept, God used evolution to create a clear difference between humans and non-human animals.
In other words: Genesis helps us to understand why evolution worked the way it worked, and evolution helps us to a better understanding of Genesis.
In view of this, I dare to ask:
Why do you remain reluctant to accept evolution?
The distinction is made in chapter 2 when God gives humankind the authority to name all the animals on the earth. Now some say this was a seperate creation.
We see historically that since the fall, God has called out from the rest of humanity 1 or a few humans to carry out a plan that the other humans can either accept or reject of their own free human will. I do not see the separation of Adam from the rest of humanity, even before the fall as being any different. The main responsibility of Adam was to keep sin out of this reality.
It is sin that separates the physical from the spiritual. Thus in a fallen condition mankind finds more similutude with the rest of creation than with God, being the creator of all things. God is the distinction between reasoning humanity and the rest of creation. Not that humans themselves happened to evolve into such a distinction. If we had access to the spiritual image of God we would comprehend this fully. Being cut off from this image, we can only trust and obey God. That is by faith and the grace of God. There is no evolution of the Spirit. I accept that biological life lives with the fact of evolution every time they reproduce, and for the most instances, of similar biological dna. Not the result of billions of iterations, but an ongoing process nontheless.