But to be fair… if you found a copy of this historical document included in a particular account of Robin Hood, it does suggest that person who put these together believes and/or want readers to believe that this is an historical account of the documented historical person.
But, considering when this must have been compiled, it certainly does not mean that the whole thing is up to modern standards of historical accounts.
But there is a difference between communicating “this person existed” and “this story about this real person is 100% factual.” I just don’t see why establishing a person’s existence in history by using them in a genealogy establishes the historical factuality of a different account of that person, especially when the account has a bunch of textual clues that it is not meant to be taken literally. “This is history” is an assumption about the intent of a text, not something entailed by what name is used in it. You can prove Abraham Lincoln existed as a real person, but that doesn’t then automatically entail every narrative about the man is true and historical. I think to get from A to B with Adam, you are pulling in lots of assumptions about the Bible and the intent of Genesis 2-3 as givens that aren’t givens for a lot of people.
Yep that was the point of my “modern standards” comment. In the past there wasn’t such a sharp divide between the different activities like history and entertainment. It was enough that they had such a story to tell and so why not pass the story on without worrying about such things as historical accuracy.
But the apparent intent of the author of the text is likely to connect with ones attitude about the text, like thinking this is a message from God. And there lies the divide between objective and subjective apprehensions of knowledge and understanding. To be sure, objectively that genealogy doesn’t establish any such thing. But I can well understand why ProDeo would think it does establish this, as subjective as that conclusion may be.
Which is why I make a distinction between something being literal and something being historical. I see no reason why the attempts at history from so long ago, before there were such specializations of human activities, should expect to be taken literally. Therefore, we can acknowledge that there is some historical intent by those who composed the text without expecting this to be a completely literal account of events. And as for textual clues, representing one who is generally known to be Lucifer as a talking snake is a pretty big one!
But again we are not talking about every narrative but about the narrative which has that historical document as a part of it. Of course you can complain that modern scholars think this was put together from a number of different sources, but I am not sure that is going to mean all that much to someone who attributes the final product to the work of God.
I don’t believe Eve was capable giving birth to a cavia, humans only and thus she is the mother of all living humans and thus the people who Cain feared were the offspring of Eve.
A new species can only survive by incest and laws against incest were given only at the time of Leviticus.
And I don’t believe in talking snakes, magical fruit, or golems of dust and bone, any more than you believe in Eve giving birth to plants and animals. But your beliefs cannot change the text which says in Hebrew that she was named “Eve” because she was the mother of all living things. So we hold onto our beliefs in reasonable things by understanding that the text is not to be taken literally. You don’t take it literally either when it contradicts your beliefs, so I don’t take it literally when it contradicts mine. So the fact is, I see that the Bible showing us that the snake is really this being known as Lucifer. So do you take that part any more literally than you do the “mother of all living things”? I see the Bible talking about tree of life in many passages in the Bible as representing all sorts of things like wisdom rather than a species of fruit bearing tree. And I see in the words, “formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” God making the body of man from the matter of this physical universe and then by speaking to him giving Adam the ideas which brought the human mind to life. And so the text isn’t a fairy tale comic book Walt Disney movie after all, but about real life!
Incorrect. Such extreme inbreeding greatly reduces the chances of survival. Besides, the human genetic data shows that the population of our genetic ancestors was never below 10,000 for hundreds of thousands of years at least. And further calculations are likely to extend this time even longer until the ancestors are no longer recognizable as human. More importantly the further back into the past you place Adam and Eve before the advent of human civilization (around 10,000 BC), the less significant you make Adam and Eve and their relationship to God.
Agree on the literal part, lots of symbolism (talking snakes representing the devil, symbolic trees, the Lord God walking in the cool of the evening) but surely there was a fall due to disobedience resulting that A&E were kicked out Paradise, away from the presence of the Lord and living in different world, the same world we live in. I may assume we are in agreement that part is historic?
I did not say anything about extreme inbreeding. Adam lived 930 years and he with Eve had more offspring other than Cain, Abel and Seth. Even with a small average number of 5 children then after 4 generations the genetic pool is 5x5x5x5=625 and incest is no longer an issue.
What you have described is the meaning of extreme inbreeding – no new input into the gene pool for 4+ generations, with the smallest possible gene pool to start with.
The point is that you choose to edit the Bible to add sisters to the story in order to make people survive by incest and extreme inbreeding, ignoring the parts of the Bible which contradict this, just in order to make the Bible conflict with the findings of science. According to the Bible, the world was so full of people, Cain feared for his life wherever he might go. And then the Bible explains that the sons of Adam (children of God) took wives from the daughters of men and not from sisters at all. Science agrees with the Bible and not with your fairy tale revision of it.
New species diverge from populations as a population, and the lines between individual members of the ancestor species and individual members of the new species are fuzzy if you look for them at specific a moment in time. All offspring are the same species as their parents. No new species are the result of a single couple who are a “new species” compared to their parents and whose offspring interbreed, at least not with a common descent framework.
This is my major issue with people who claim that Adam and Eve descended from a population but were the first humans in some biological, evolutionary sense. Either you have to use human to mean something other than their species (some spiritual sense) or you have to have them specially created to look exactly like a product of common descent on the genetic level, which seems like a version of the omphalos hypothesis to me.
Leviticus 18:25-25 talks about the Canaanites being removed from the land because of the sins enumerated earlier in the chapter, including incest. That suggests to me that incest was a sin prior to the giving of the Law of Moses.
New species occur at the population level, not individual level. No incest would need to occur for a new species made via evolution.
No animal species. Plants do something like that, but plants are . . . different.
Worf voice
We do not speak of it with outsiders.
/Worf voice
This misconception is so widespread. As @Christy has said, species form as populations over time. It’s as misguided to say that new languages form when two people start speaking something different.
That’s not “sharp” so much as tainted by a problematic bias, assuming that it’s a response to the science and history of biological evolution. This bias is clearly indicated by the presence of the word “advanced.” In the context of evolution, humans are not “advanced” apes. We belong to the taxonomic family of primates known as Hominidae—that is, apes. Whether one taxonomic family is more “advanced” than another is not a scientific question. Granted, we are so very different from other species and in more ways than I could list, but to say that this marks us as “advanced” betrays a peculiar conceit that I don’t think is relevant or useful.
This strikes me as a deistic watchmaker point of view. God wasn’t waiting, he was quite busy the entire time.
Correct. Only a specific ape was made in the image of God, namely, humans.
Welcome to the discourse here at BioLogos, Zachary. A pleasure to meet you.
I am likewise working through the “bumps” between Adam and Jesus in a world where evolution happens. I look forward to ironing these things out alongside you and others. As for your Old Man scenario, I take a slightly different and clearly Augustinian view of things. I would say that the old humanity “in Adam” is not an animal state but a fallen state in covenant relationship with God (whereas no covenant relationship exists between animals and God). On my view—such as it is for now—humans existed in that sort of animal state prior to Adam, and that dramatically changed when God established a covenant relationship with mankind through Adam, our representative and federal head (singling out humans now as imago Dei). Thus marked the dawn of redemptive history, a divine light that spilled into the world after 14 billion years of natural history. Such an animal state was no longer relevant to humans.
In the context of redemptive history, those who are “in Adam” belong to the old humanity that experiences condemnation and death, while those “in Christ” belong to the new humanity that experiences salvation and life. If there was a pre-Adamic animal nature (and I believe there was), we won’t learn about it in Scripture, which constrains itself to the narrative threads of redemptive history. That which is not connected to redemptive history and the people of God is not included. (Ever notice how Scripture doesn’t mention Gentile nations apart from their connection with the people of God? For example, not a single word about Japanese people exists anywhere in Scripture. They also have no interaction with the people of God throughout canonical revelation.)
As far as I can tell, it would seem to follow from the biblical witness that there is no such thing as “sin” apart from a covenant relationship with God. Humans alone are capable and culpable of sin. Chimpanzees, earth worms, ravens, whales, these and all other creatures are neither capable nor culpable of sin, despite the fact that many creatures demonstrate characteristics of moral agency. Arguably, this state describes mankind prior to a covenant relationship with God (before Adam), capable of wrongdoing despite the fact that sin at this point is a meaningless term, just as it is for chimpanzees. But once that covenant relationship was established, sin became a potential—but it was not an actuality until Adam disobeyed God (thus Adam’s state of posse non peccare et posse peccare is maintained).
Psalm 139 might be instructive here:
Is a Christian forced to reject the field of embryonic development where humans develop in the womb through genetic mechanisms? Is our discovery of a natural explanation for how babies develop a problem for accepting the Bible?
I am also reminded of a well written essay here at BioLogos:
https://biologos.org/articles/atheistic-meteorology-or-divine-rain
Ard A. Louis underscored that same point in a Scholarly Essay, “How Does the Biologos Model Need to Address Concerns Christians Have About the Implications of Its Science?” (n.d.; emphasis mine):
Our modern concept of “Nature” as an entity independent of God cannot be found in the Bible. Instead, the creation passages emphasize a God who “sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:3). That is why, for example in Psalm 104, the point of view fluidly changes back and forth from direct action by God—“He makes springs pour water into ravines”—to water acting on its own—“the water flows down the mountains.” Such dual descriptions are two different perspectives of the same thing. Within a robust biblical theism, if God were to stop sustaining all things, the world would not slowly grind to a halt or descend into chaos; it would simply stop existing.
Thank you Christy and BTW, I am definitely not YEC (any longer) 
Do you always receive newbies who are wrestling with human evolution this way? Not exactly an invitation to continue talking.
Okay, I apologize for using word “advanced” but if I replace it with the word “descended from apes” the meaning remains the same.
I willing to believe that but I am not convinced (yet).
I am not interested in hearing more talk about evolution being against scripture and incompatible with the Bible. That is just nonsense. A change to talk about " wrestling with human evolution" sounds good to me. After all, the former is usually a preface to saying scientists, like me, are agents of the devil, when the truth is that they are best examples of faith in modern times, listening with open ears and seeing with open eyes all the data that God is sending us from the earth and sky to honestly seek the truth in all its complexity. To be sure, there are atheists like Dawkins and Hawkings who are not helping, when they leave the evidence and the science to spout their theological opinions. Those are not examples of good faith or good science – not when they do that! Which is not to say that they have not done any good science. They certainly have.
Going back to the “wrestling with human evolution,” since we have dealt with the Bible part of this, is there anything else? There certainly is for me! My biggest problem is the identification of humanity with a biological species. To me it is abundantly clear that human beings are not primarily driven by biological needs and instincts. So it looks very much to me that there is another sort of life altogether in human beings. And then there is the typical explanation of evolution in many tv and book presentations as being a product of purely random mutation only, which simply isn’t true. It is not that the mechanism of evolution cannot work by purely random mutation. It is demonstrable that it can. But it doesn’t! Not for most of the history of evolution it has not.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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