Very glad to have read your post. It is very close along to the way I read the scripture. The bible does not teach that we got our sin nature by inheritance from Adam. Also Adam was not the first man, he was the first Divine appointed stand-in for man. Sin always had the potential to exist, it was latent in the environment, but with no law it could not come to life, just as it describes in Romans 7.
@Mark_Moore, you would do well to borrow even more compatible material from the @Swamidass scenario.
Swamidass, which of your postings does the best to introduce your scenario? Iām thinking a specific post, rather than an entire threadā¦
I have actually registered on his Peaceful Science forum because my initial take is that our ideas are so compatible. One thing I think is different- my model does not require Adam to be our genealogical ancestor, even though by now it is doubtful there is any human group of any size which does not at least have a trace of his blood.
Iām pretty sure thatās not his claim. That would imply everyone is a biological descendant, whereas Josh is focusing on genealogical ancestry, not genetic ancestry.
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Well, letās ask the good Doctor. It is my impression that what he means by āgenealogical ancestryā is that Adamās genes are in all of mankind now even though most of our genes may be from elsewhere. IOW, Adam is somewhere in our family tree, even though he is not at the root of it for everyone. So genealogical descent is still genetic ancestry after a fashion, it is just that Adamās genes may be only a small portion of the total.
Am I close Doc?
You are exactly where the common error is made. Do not feel bad about it though, because even a lot of scientists were thinking about it just as you are stating right there.
It turns out that most genealogical ancestors are NOT genetic ancestors. Most our ancestors are genetic ghosts, that leave us no genetic material. It is an equivocation, a scientific error, to think that if we all descend from Adam, then we therefore also have some of his DNA. Instead, we just do not have DNA from the vast majority of our ancestors.
This has nothing to do with what is ārequiredā or not. It is about what we expect scientifically. Perhaps genealogical descent from Adam is not required by your theology, or important. Fine. That does not some how make him NOT your genealogical ancestor. If genealogical descent is not important to your theology, you should look at all the work done on representational Adam. This recent article may give you a helpful primer:
https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/where-are-adam-and-eve-in-the-story-of-evolution-four-possibilities
You already have a ācampā of people that agree with you, including at BioLogos. Most who affirm historical Adam here hold, it seems, to representational theology of Adam. My work is just showing that this is not the only way forward. Genealogical ancestry can be important theologically too, without contradicting the scientific account. If you do not need that, the representational viewpoint will probably just work great for you.
@Christy I thank you for calling that to my attention.
I am position 3 on that list. If I had to pick a candidate genetic signature for Adam it would be the group known as āBasal Eurasiansā al la Lazardius. They are in the right time and place, and are associated with the move from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to civilization building and domestication.
She gave me the heads up that I did not quite understand your position.
I havenāt scanned the entire thread to see if @Swamidass has answered your question using a different starting point.
But it is a very simple set of definitions:
Charles the Great, the founder of both French and German nations, is genealogically the grand patriarch of millions of Europeans (and Americans too). But because there are way more generations of his descendants than there are individual chromosomes, even with some freak ācross-overā events in each generation, the odds are extremely low that anyone has a drop of Charlemagneās blood at all.
That is the difference between Genealogy and Genetics. Genealogy and Patrimony are very easy to trace (assuming vital records are being accurately maintained and nobody is lying about romantic entanglements). In contrast, Genetic contribution to each subsequent generation is very challenging to trace. But it is easy to simulate: make 23 paper shapes x 2. Make one of them a āYā while the other is an āXā.
As you divide these paper tokens in half for each generation, thereās only so far you can go by dividing the groups in half. And even with accidental cross-overs, the geometric progression of new generations is much faster than any accidents can mimic!
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Your example is more like the scenario I am positing. Charles and his queen and consorts were not the only humans on earth. He may be the grand patriarch of millions, but millions of others also contributed to the genes of his progeny. If not, then they would all still be solely the descendants of Charles and his ladies. The papers would just be torn up and put back together, but his genes and those of the ladies would be all that is on the papers.
I am not as concerned about his specific genes, though it seems to me that some of his descendants should still have a few of them. The point is that Adam is not the first human- a group of humans was made first and Adamās job was not to found the human race but to produce the line of Messiah which would redeem that race. We are therefore relieved of the burden of establishing that all humans came from a single pair, or that they came recently enough to make sense of the genealogies and the rest of the text.
The @Swamidass scenarios can embrace this approachā¦ or nearly embrace it.
But at the very least, you will need to be comfortable with āGenealogicalā vs. āGeneticā. āGeneticā has a very limited scope, and has frequently led to the confusion that Adam and/or Eve had to be associated with Primordial Adam (via his Y chromosome) and Primordial Eve (via her Mitochondrial DNA). Using Genealogical definitions instead, the problem with the āYā and Mitochondrial genetic connection gets set aside completely!
The surprise twist in the @Swamidass scenarios is that within 2000 years or so, it becomes increasingly and mathematically certain that a group of mated pairs simultaneously become the ancestors of all humans alive today, while another group of mated pairs from the same time period become ādead endsā - - having no surviving descendants into the modern period.
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There was a time, 2 hours long or so, where I was ready to ādo battleā over the scenarios you are working on. @BradKramer somehow saw what it was that was getting in my way. And in 2 or 3 sentences (if more, not much more), totally re-aligned my thinking about what your scenario(s) had the power to do.
So I take your thanks and extend it back to Brad! Thanks, Brad!
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What did he say? Can you link it here?
Nicely said Casper!
With your permission, Iād like to paste that paragraph into a Powerpoint for a Bible Study on Genesis I am starting next week.
With proper attribution of course. Iāll send you a link to my website once I have that section up.
Ray 
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Iāve been reading and skimming your posts for months, and somehow I JUST got this. Iām sure itās clearly laid out in a number of places, including your ASA papers, but somehow Iām just catching up.
Thanks for explaining so clearly! Very helpful.
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