In fact I am making a guesstimate on the basis of what the New Testament tells us: According to Luke 3:36-38 there are 8 generations from Adam to Noah.
The ages of the antediluvian patriarchs can be considered rather fictional, and in this respect a fitting reason is provided by Gordon Wenham, p.186: The precision of the characters conveys the notion that these patriarchs were real people, while their age scale represents their remoteness from the author of Genesis.
Also chimps, elephants, vampire bats manage very well to live in a large group with in-group behavioral rules. Nonetheless they neither have sense of law, nor free-will, nor do we consider them capable of sinning against God’s commandments. The hints of morality or proto-morality that we do find in non-human species clearly suggest that there is a natural process by which God brought about the cognitive capacities necessary for developing the sense of law and moral responsibility.
I suppose you are referring to the village found in Triquet Island (British Columbia). As you very well suggest, the humans living there had certainly rules of conduct or sort of proto-morality. But this does not mean they were aware of responsibility to God’s law and capable of sinning. Apparently they had developed sophisticated tools, but to my knowledge signs of worship have not been found so far, not even signs of proto-religious awareness.
Additionally, the date of 14,000 BCE is largely before writing appears in Mesopotamia. The importance of writing for ascertaining the time when the first human persons were created by God is also supported by the fact that monogamous marriage was a primeval God’s commandment, as Jesus Christ himself teaches us (Matthew 19: 3-9 and Mark 10:1-12). And some form of writing is needed to register who is married to whom.
Cain had undoubtedly sense of law, and was aware of his responsibility to God’s law and his capability of sinning. According to my theory Cain and his descendants can be considered part of the population living in Sumer, the region which later became submerged by the Flood.
The story with the mark is highly relevant: The people living in Mesopotamia who saw Cain, had also sense of law and knew the consequence of killing him. Nonetheless astonishingly God does not proclaim here the principle of Genesis 9: 5-6: “And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being…for in the image of God has God made mankind.” Why?
According to my theory the reason is that such a universal principle could fittingly be proclaimed only after the 14,000,000 humans living outside Mesopotamia spread all over the world were endowed with free-will by God and thereby became persons capable of sinning and in the stage of need of Salvation. Genesis 9: 3-6 is telling us that this happened at the end of the Flood.
OK so you are throwing out Genesis as a historical document correct? And the NT references to the OT as history?
But humans do have free will which is where the requirement for some set of agreed to behaviors comes in when you are talking about large numbers of people living together.
So now morality is a natural process. I guess God just poofed this into existence for the humans outside the scope of the non-historical local flood? Not to say that He couldn’t do it of course.
First, animals that mate for life don’t need any form of writing so why should humans?
Second, dna studies have show humans have been largely monogamous for a very, very long time. So I guess writing is not required for humans.
And yet according to Genesis 9:6 Cain should have been put to death. So Cain had the sense of a law that didn’t exist yet?
Or perhapes the writer was telling a story that contains a message and the fact that there were people outside the scope of the flood didn’t matter.
The Roman Catholic Church, @AntoineSuarez’s mother communion long ago adopted a more nuanced interpretation of the Scriptures in the face of the obvious facts presented to human witness - - the Earth being quite old and the reality of Speciation unavoidable.
So, there has been a massive pivot within Christianity, where the Vatican has become a bulwark in the defense of scientific wisdom, while the vast sections of Protestants who have had a long-standing animus against the Catholic Church have inherited the mantle of the desire to suppress some categories of human investigation and wisdom.
Thanks Bill_II for your comments. To begin with I answer the following one, which is particularly interesting:
If I understand well you argue along this line:
Since humans have free-will,
a large number of humans living together
requires some set of agreed behaviors.
By contrast, vampire bats don’t have free-will,
so a large numbers of bats living together
doesn’t require some set of agreed behaviors.
(Please correct the preceding statements if I have misinterpreted you).
Now my question is:
How can you establish that humans do have free-will
and
vampire bats don’t have free-will?
My main concern is precisely to define which evidence allows us to establish that humans do have free will, whereas non-human animals don’t have it, and thereby found a clear distinction between humanity and other animals living forms.
If one says: “humans have free will because large numbers of people live together according to some set of agreed behaviors”, one would beg the question.
So my reasoning is: Laws and trials prove that humanity is called to live and develop according to moral rules and a set of agreed behaviors.
There is no evidence that animals have laws and trials.
From this I conclude that humans have free-will, whereas non-humans don’t have it.
Since the beginning of humanity cannot be established by biological means whatsoever, I further conclude that God created humans endowed with free-will at the time when vestiges revealing sense of law are dated, that is, about 3,500 BC (the beginning of writing in Sumer). And on the basis of Genesis 9: 3-6, I finally conclude that at the end of the Flood all humans became endowed with free will and sense of law.
I dare to insist: What is at stake is to have a clear basis for distinguishing humans from animals. This is a serious issue and if we don’t achieve to reach agreement on this, we can give up our common effort of defending our Christian faith against atheism.
So please, if you don’t agree to my reasoning above tell us which evidence you advance for claiming that “humans do have free will”.
So are you saying before Adam humans didn’t have free will? Could you please define what you mean by “free will”? And what would you expect to see in human behavior if they didn’t have free will? BTW, I identify free will with the truly selfish behavior that only humans seem to exhibit.
As to the beginning of humanity, I believe it can be dated to roughly 50K years ago when there was the sudden appearance of modern human behavior in Africa which then spread out over the rest of the earth. Some of this behavior could be considered enhanced behaviors that are seen in other animals. However the one thing the strikes me as different from other animals is in a sense of an afterlife. I believe this is the indication that humans were now created in the image of God. This belief in an afterlife would impact the development of a moral sense (or sense of law) and also the awareness of what would come to be known as God. As of yet there is no indication of how this happened in a biological sense but even if science does finally come up with the cause I still believe it was due to God.
That basis would be only humans can response to the Holy Spirit when he reveals God’s truth to each of us.
By human free will I mean the capability of accepting or rejecting the law of God, which is the same as the capability of accepting or rejecting the foundation of human law, that is: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow” (see Galatians 5:14 and 1 Peter 2:13-14).
As I have argued in my Essay, the beginning of humanity cannot be established by biological means: “There was never a first Homo sapiens”. This means that the category of ‘Homo sapiens’ itself is arbitrary and not well-defined from a biological point of view. So the beginning of humanity cannot be defined other than by the moment when God endows some living creatures with free will. If one defines Adam as “the first Homo sapiens endowed with free will”, then by definition Adam is the first human person (that is the first living being on earth sharing free will) and consequently before Adam there were no human persons.[quote=“Bill_II, post:144, topic:35366”]
And what would you expect to see in human behavior if they didn’t have free will?
[/quote]
As said, if “they didn’t have free will” they were no human persons. They could develop smart tools and techniques for farming and fishing, make cave paintings, and exhibit a certain degree of social behavior. However they could not enact laws and be guilty of sin.
I apologize for insisting: this holds for hominins before Adam. After Adam any human person has to acknowledge that any other member of humanity shares personal rights, first of all the right to life.
Notwithstanding, at the time of Adam there were several millions of Homo sapiens spread all over the earth and one can assume (as I do) that God may have had reasons for not endowing these hominins with free will and sense of law all at once. As I have already stressed in other postings, such an assumption must obviously be based on Scripture, and this basis is Genesis 9:3-6: In this pericope God clearly proclaims that since this moment there is a radical distinction between humanity and the animal kingdom [Wenham, G.J. p. 263-264] and all humans on earth are accountable to God for killing other humans.
In my opinion “selfish behavior” is the core of Darwinian evolution and is mainly characteristic for nonhuman animals. By contrast humanity is capable of overcoming Darwinian principles and acknowledging moral rules and law: only humans exhibit awareness of responsibility to law, although proto-morality or in-group morality can be found in chimps and other animals.
If by “sense of an afterlife” you mean something that tombs and burials may reveal, then you should also discuss the following possible objections:
Such signs appear already 300,000 years ago (see Timeline), and not only among “Homo sapiens populations”.
Burials can also be done for keeping the memory of the dead alive, as famadihana ceremonies show (“the departed—and their corpses—remain a part of the family”).
What is more: Materialist and atheist regimes entomb their leaders in pompous mausoleums; the burials of Lenin and Stalin were probably among the most pompous funeral ceremonies in History. The reason for this is not “sense of an eternal life” but simply a way to reinforce the political power of the regime after the leaders passed away.
So I think the suitable view is that burials reveal at most a proto-religious stage previous to “the development of a moral sense (or sense of law) and also the awareness of what would come to be known as God”, as you very well state.[quote=“Bill_II, post:144, topic:35366”]
[From AntoineSuarez:
What is at stake is to have a clear basis for distinguishing humans from animals.]
That basis would be only humans can response to the Holy Spirit when he reveals God’s truth to each of us.
[/quote]
I agree. However the action of the Holy Spirit is invisible. If you don’t give some additional basis that anyone can observe, then you get into troubles: How would you refute someone who says that “the Holy Spirit also reveals God’s truth to non-human animals”?
So we need unambiguous visible signs allowing us to ascertain when “the Holy Spirit reveals God’s truth”, and this means determine when the first human persons with free will and capable of sinning appeared on earth. Since the Big-Bang to our days such signs seem to go along with the appearance of writing and law.
Once again, I am ready to accept other signs if convincing arguments are given. However the discussion is this blog confirms more and more that for the time being such “other signs” are lacking.
I agree, my claim is a bit provoking. And yet: Will we be able of giving a sound account for God’s Incarnation and Redemption by Jesus Christ, if we don’t have a clear basis to differentiate humans from animals? Atheists like Jerry A. Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer detect this lack of coherence on the part of Christian believers and take advantage of it to question our faith.
So based on a story which is not meant to be taken literally since it ignores the millions of people outside the regional flood you are taking what God said personally to Noah to mean it applied to the millions of not mentioned people? Do you have any other basis for this belief?
Sorry but you are trying to come up with some proof that anyone could believe. That is where your trouble lies. The only proof we can offer is our testimony as to what Jesus has done for each one of us. You refute that “someone” by simply saying that God says in the Bible that the Holy Spirit only enters humans who have believed on Jesus. Animals can not believe.
Not a problem. Even you said our morality was evolved.
Animals may exhibit instinctive behavior that humans might call rituals, but until we learn to speak elephant we will never really know what they are thinking. On the other hand, humans that bury a child with their mother or include personal items, tools, or food in the grave are clearly thinking of something beyond here.
Even materialists and atheists are religious, just not in the same way as us. And how does having proof that the former leader is dead and buried help to “reinforce the political power”? Forcing the people to build such a mausoleum is what reinforces the political power.
So why would a proto-religious stage not indicate an awareness of God? What is religion but the worship of a god.
You interpret me right: In my thinking the person “Adam” appears at the moment when a hominin is endowed by God with free-will and awareness of responsibility to law, and therefore is capable of being guilty of sin. This is the moment referred to in Genesis 2:16-17:
"And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Actually before this moment it is not appropriate to use “Adam” as personal name.
If “God is indivisible from the growth of Creation”, this seems to imply that:
On the one hand there cannot be any personal sin on the part of humans, and God is responsible for all the amount of evil that infects the whole world.
On the other hand there is no spiritual difference between human persons and animals: both are equally personal or non-personal beings.
In such a case there is no need of a particular intervention of God to endow hominins with free-will and sense of law. However I would be thankful to know your opinion about the two challenging implications above.
By contrast if one accepts (as I do) that such an intervention on the part of God was necessary to transform Homo sapiens creatures into human persons with free-will, and additionally one assumes (by contrast to Intelligent Design) that such an intervention does not imply any biologically detectable change, then one must logically conclude that before God’s creative intervention the Homo sapiens creatures were not persons.
If you believe that the beginning of humanity can be dated 50 Kyears ago, you accept that God endowed the modern humans living at this time with free will and sense of law. This means that God created in His image a population of likely 100,000 individuals, or even more if you include Neanderthals, Denisovans and Flores ‘Hobbits’. Thus you are assuming the existence of hundreds of thousands of people, created in the image of God, who are not mentioned in Genesis 1-3. For discussion it would be useful to know whether you think God did this at once or in a sequence at different times.
My theory amounts to state that God did the same as in your account, although He did it later, from 3,500 BC till the end of the Flood at 3,000 BC. That the involved “population” in my account was larger than in yours does not change substantially the argument.
So I would like to propose that you develop more in detail your theory so we can decide whether it fits or not to the available data and Scripture, in particular to the narrative of the Flood as interpreted in the New Testament.
In any case my theory fits well to Scripture and to all the available scientific and anthropological evidence. And I dare to note that so far it has not been falsified by any of the data advanced in this ongoing debate.
If you succeed with your theory of “Beginning of humanity at 50 Kyears ago” I will be very glad. And for the time being we can both be glad with my theory.
My argument is based in what Jesus Christ himself (Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–27) and the Peter’s Epistles (2 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 3:20) tell us about Noah and the Flood. As already said, the millions of creatures outside the flooded region were not endowed with free will and sense of law, and hence were not “people” capable of being guilty of sin and are outside the perspective of Salvation of the New Testamentary pericopes.
You seem to object:
If at the end of the Flood millions of creatures were endowed by God with free will and sense of law, and became humans created in God’s image, why are these people “not mentioned” in Genesis?
As noted above, your theory of the beginning of humanity at about 50 Kyears ago, implies hundreds of thousands of people who are not mentioned in Genesis either.
Furthermore, as I have already argued in other postings, Genesis 9:3-6 implicitly refers to these people. That God speaks to Noah personally “is not meant to be taken literally” (as you yourself claim): Genesis 9:3-6 makes it clear that God proclaims a covenant with the whole human kind.
And last but not least, I have other basis in Scripture for my explanation, as for instance the pericope regarding the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2-4; see my posting:
Even in a population of 100,000 hominids, there is still the First Person who is deemed ahead of his peers by God. . . or one made to be such by God.
And even this “First Moral Human/Image of God” still has to experience his first moral event sometime between infancy and an “age of reason” or rational moral thinking.
There is already a seemingly significant number of people that we must conclude exists … even though they are not explicitly mentioned: the population that Cain joins and fathers a different branch of humanity, right?
First I would only include homo sapiens.
Second you also include the existence of people not mentioned in Genesis in your idea.
It was a gradual process with no fixed date. Think of a child. At what exact age does a child become morally responsible? It varies correct? Just like the development of the modern human.
So it is OK for you to limit what Jesus and Peter said about the flood as those passages clearly indicate they believe in a global flood?
No I object to taking Genesis 1-11 as historical when it is not. The age of the earth requires you to not consider it a literal history. Jesus and Peter spoke of it as history because that is what the people at that time thought it was. How well do you think it would have gone over if Jesus had said, “Well you know Genesis isn’t really history and here is what it was trying to say”?
You appear to be trying to save as much of Genesis as you can to be history when in reality you shouldn’t even try.
What I find interesting is Genesis 1-11 covers a period of time before recorded history. That means when the Holy Spirit inspired the writer/editor of Genesis all He had to work with was the person’s memory of the oral traditions that had been passed down over many, many years. I believe this is why so much of Genesis matches the stories told in other ANE cultures. The author was not just a scribe taking down dictation. If those traditions don’t match reality so be it. The paleo-Hebrew alphabet was developed around the time of Abraham which explains why the history becomes much more complete, but still not perfect, at this point in time.
Question for you. Given the age of the earth is 4.543 billion years, plus or minus a few, what does this say about the way you should treat Genesis 1-11? I know Ken Ham would say this is a slippery slope and he is right, but it is the only slope we have. So how do you keep from sliding down to the bottom?
Bill, I highly appreciate that you don’t simply object to my theory but try to develop a consistent alternative. This is very useful to evaluate pros and cons and decide which description fits the scientific data and Scripture. In this spirit of collaboration I would like to submit to your further consideration the following arguments:
Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Are Modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans different species or varieties of the same species? The controversy will never end, and illustrates well how arbitrary the concept of species is for describing archaic times.
If you claim that only Homo sapiens was created in God’s image you can as well claim that certain races today are not in God’s image.
This is clearly a worse consequence of dating the beginning of Humanity at about 50,000 years ago.
If you wish to avoid it, you should postpone the beginning of humanity to after disappearance of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
By contrast, if one assumes that humans endowed with free will and in God’s image were created at 3,500 BC, then one has no troubles with the aftermath of racism.
Whether we date the beginning of humanity at 50,000 BC or at 3,500 BC we cannot help assuming that the Creation of the first human persons with free will and sense of law did happen amidst a large Homo sapiens population, and therefore all these creatures had to be transformed into persons endowed with free will and made in God’s image at some point.
In this line of thinking I claim that the pericope of “the sons of God” in Genesis 6:2-4 clearly supports the idea that this transformation was still happening in the age around the Flood.
In my view, the comparison with “a child” is not fitting. We acknowledge that a child deserves the moral status of a person and is capable of becoming morally responsible on the basis of the following two reasons:
We can unambiguously establish that the child belongs to humanity.
We acknowledge humanity as a living form that ought to be ruled by moral rules and law and not by Darwinian principles.
As long as we have not established the beginning of humanity as such a living form, we are not allowed to claim that a creature shares free will and is capable of becoming morally responsible “because it belongs to humanity”.
As we know, this beginning cannot be established by biological means alone because the beginning of Homo sapiens is biologically arbitrary. So we need some non-biological criteria:
You propose burials and date the beginning at 50,000 BC, with the problem of excluding then Neanderthals and Denisovans.
I propose writing and vestiges revealing sense of law, and date the beginning at 3,500 BC.
Having said this I fully acknowledge that the transformation of Homo sapiens into a species endowed with free will and sense of law (Homo sapiens personalis) was a gradual process:
The process started with the creation of “Adam and Eve” (or a little population of humans endowed with free will).
It continued after the first sin with the creation of the “sons of God” (Genesis 6:2-4). Notice that this also explains:
The gradual process was concluded at the end of the Flood.
Notice that the Genesis episode of the “sons of God” clearly highlights that there was no interbreed between humans endowed with free will and creatures without free-will at any moment. Before the latter joined the former God took care to endow them with free will, and they became morally responsible persons and capable of sinning: These were the “sons of God”.
Finally: If the appearance of humanity with awareness of moral responsibility and sense of law is a gradual process, there must be in Scripture a pericope which allow us to establish the moment when this process finishes. I think this pericope is Genesis 9:3-6, which also backs the claim that from the perspective of Salvation and eternal life:
there is a radical difference between human beings and non-human animals, and
all humans on earth deserve personal rights, are capable of being guilty of sin and are in need of Redemption.
Differing species does not require an inability to interbred. Think horses and donkeys.
No I claim that in the past a point was reached where homo sapiens could be considered as created in God’s image. Before then nobody, after then everybody. I place the general time frame to be the great leap forward. No problem with trying to apply it to certain races today.
I also don’t have that problem, but my date is 50,000 BCE.
But it is very fitting.
We can unambiguously establish that the homo sapiens born after the GLF belong to humanity.
We acknowledge homo sapiens as a living form that are ruled by moral rules and law and not by Darwinian principles.
And we have it in the evidence left after the GLF. Burial of the dead, primitive forms of worship, etc, etc.
You have never answered my question about the evidence left of religious activity way before 3,500 BCE.
I think it is interesting that it seems likely that a comet or some other terrestrial object hit the North America ice sheets around 10800 BC and likely resulted in a global catastrophe that resulted in the younger dryas ice age and dramatic change of life for mankind. This extraterrestrial event likely led to to mass extinction of large fauna in North America and wiping out the Clovis culture. This event would have substantially changed the environment and may have forced humans to change from a hunter gatherer to domestic life style. Also of particular interest is that there were likely massive floods and ocean level rise associated with the end of the younger dryas around 9600 bc that could perhaps be related to the floods of the Bible. Around the same time of the floods a relatively advanced culture is found in gobekli tekli in turkey that had an advanced stone working culture but still hunter gather lifestyle however shortly after this humans changed to a domesticated life style where wheat was likely first domesticated nearby in Karaca dag. This seems to me to be the Great Leap Forward for mankind that was set off by the comet and resulting floods that altered the planet.
If you aren’t looking for a global flood … Any regional flood would have been sufficient to inspire the the Biblical flood story … especially since there are older flood stories than the Biblical version…
10800 BC is kind of late for the GLF. Much of the evidence for changes in behavior date to 50000 BC. In fact there is another model of the development of modern human behavior that stretches back every further than that. Like 250,000 BC.
I think that the human race had developed the genetic hardware for behavioral advancement but that even with ice ages and warming periods it was not forced into behavioral adaptations that we associate with the Neolithic age until this comet catastrophe occurred around 12800 bp that forced some populations to adapt to a domestic lifestyle. This changed everything. The adaptive behavior since the last ice age is significantly greater than that the humans achieved in the prior 250,000 years. Humans had gone through multiple glacial and interglacials with only limited behavioral adaptations. I think it was this comet event that led to the our biggest adaptation defining our species.
If we have favorite forms of planetary destruction, my favorite is still the Dinosaur-Killer asteroid. Without it, we would be running into our gardens to stop the small rodents, and then running back out of our gardens to avoid the Terror Birds (who probably noticed that if they follow the rodents, they find people)!
The problem I am referring to is not interbreeding between differing species: Hybridization is pervasive in evolution.
The problem is that according to your assumption there was interbreeding between humans created in God’s image (Homo sapiens) and humans NOT created in God’s image (Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisova). This is quite different from interbreeding between “horses and donkeys”: Neither horses nor donkeys are supposed to be in God’s image, are they?
Whichever way you look at it such an assumption bears problems:
If you consider sapiens, neanderthals and denisova different species, your assumption means that when God says: “Be fruitful and multiply” He is also promoting and blessing marriage between species as for instance between humans and chimps.
If you consider sapiens, neanderthals and denisova to be varieties of the same species (this controversy is still going on), then your assumption suggests that certain races today may NOT be in God’s image.
I fully agree to your claim that “in the past a point was reached where homo sapiens could be considered in God’s image. Before then nobody”. Whether the point is 50,000 BCE or it is 3,500 BCE, we both advocate that creation in God’s image happens at a clear-cut moment and, although just before this moment the Homo sapiens individuals were biologically not distinguishable from us, they were not in God’s image.
You further claim: “after then everybody”.
If I understand well you claim that all the hundreds of thousands Homo sapiens living at 50,000 BCE became in God’s image at once.
However, the pericope of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2-4 clearly suggests that in the days before the Flood there were still Homo sapiens creatures becoming in God’s image.
On the basis of this pericope I assume that:
One couple or a little population of Homo sapiens became in God’s image at about 3,500 BCE.
Hundreds of thousands became in God’s image before the Flood: This was part of the population living together with Noah in Sumer (other human persons living with Noah were obviously descended from Adam and Eve through biological reproduction, and were in God’s image as well).
All the rest (several millions) living outside Mesopotamia far away from Noah became in God’s image at the End of the Flood.
During this gradual process there was no interbreeding between people in God’s image and creatures NOT in God’s image.
In summary, as far as I can see the only really relevant difference between our accounts is that my account fits better to Scripture and avoids having marriage between humans in God’s image and creatures NOT in God’s image.
I apologize. The question you address has been raised by George in the thread about “Original sin’s transmission”. This was my answer:
For posting a reply to this answer I would like to suggest you use the thread about “Original sin’s transmission” where the question is already being discussed to some extent.
