I find the existence of Adam and Eve unlikely, and I’ve been wondering why did God wait so long to reveal Himself to humanity?
Modern humans have existed for around 50,000 years, and civilizations started forming about 10,000 years ago, but the first clear evidence of divine revelation only shows up around 1200 BCE, when the first portions of the Bible was made.
It feels like that revelation came very late
What about other cultures? did God ignore ancient far East or even the Americas?
Perhaps God had to “wait” until we had the cognition to understand rather than blind worship of what we did not understand.
Richard
Maybe God waited for the perfect time, when religions were emerging in the Near East, and the biblical texts were written as a form of correction to these religions. I.e the creation narrative of Genesis
The point being that there is spirituality and insight in Hinduism that denies human invention, unlike the pantheons of Rome, Greece or Norway. It is interesting that Hinduism is striving for monotheism despite its scriptures.
There is a human arogance within the Abrahamic faiths that does God little credit annd implies favouritism. We do not like to share our God with others who saw Him differently or whose cultures are as alien to us as any vistor from outer space.
Richard
Gandalf: “A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.”
I think scripture is as good as we are going to get on this:
Galatians 4:4: But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."
Romans 5:3-6 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.V6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
2 Peter 3:8-9: 8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Psalm 90:1-4: Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. 3 You turn people back to dust saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” 4 A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
God’s timetable doesn’t have to line up with our timetable. God revealed Himself when and how He deemed fit. I suppose we also only know about whatever revelations God wants us to.
He did reveal himself but mankind didn’t comprehend it. This was way before verse 14:
I’ve occasionally thought that maybe He kept trying but it took until Abraham came along to find someone who would pay attention.
So maybe it was kind of pointless until writing was on the horizon at least? Interesting thought!
Really? I’ve heard it described as having a trend towards “unitheism”, that there are many gods but they are really just one, rather than monotheism.
That grows from the polenmic nature of ANE religion in general, where gods used their peoples to fight their battles, and the ones whose people won were obviously stronger. This is opposed to the Greek conception that all the gods are really the same regardless of what names are given or which people they dealt with, so the Roman gods were regarded as being the same as the Greek gods and the same was the attitude towards all the pantheons around the Mediterranean.
In one of my Latin readings classes (Augustine?) we came across a discussion of this verse and it took over the class for more than a week (so long as we had sources in Latin, of course). It’s also popped up in a course on Paul’s short letters, where the professor cut us off much more quickly, but out of class we continued to speculate over what exactly that meant.
The one point of agreement between the two class groups was that it all had to do with establishing a people to set the stage for Messiah to come – which led some to ask just how rigged history was.
Or, when we don’t even have a timetable, to make sense to us.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson loves to quote, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to us. I will add, neither is its Creator.
(BTW, this was one of the prompts that got some of the atheists and agnostics in our informal intelligent design club moving towards seeing a Designer: why should anything make sense to us . . . unless we were intended/designed to be here?)
From what I understand, it is one God and demi Gods or the equivellance of Angels. but I am no Huindu expert.
Richard
One possible way to look at it is that it took a long time (in human terms) for humans to evolve to the point where they were ready to receive a divine soul, and thus be created in the image of God.
Why?
Their existence certainly changes the timing in your question since they would be 6000 to 10,000 years ago at the beginning of human civilization.
And the difference would be between spoken communication from God and someone being able to write it down as well as seeing the value of doing so. We are pretty confident that people had oral traditions long before they used writing. And the latter took not only a written language but also the technology for writing things down. Which is logically another period of development.
Even 100,000 to 200,000 years. But all that time we have been improving our mastery of language which seems to be a rather important prerequisite for revelation.
During most of that time very little changed. And then 6000-10,000 years ago so much changed. Seems to me the choice is between God’s revelation (to A&E or somebody) brought about these changes… or… that is when we were ready to hear what God had to tell us.
I’m not sure why you think the account of Adam & Eve “unlikely.” Perhaps you’re reading into it Augustine’s famous and widespread mistakes. They were not the first humans but the first to receive redemption from God. The rest of the scriptures record subsequent redemptive encounters with God.
As to your Q about why God waited: we don’t know that, any more than why God wanted the sky to appear blue. There are many questions we can sensibly ask but to which there are no answers. Rom 5:13 does say that God didn’t hold anyone prior to Adam responsible for having false gods or for moral wrongdoing, since they were before he gave his law (to Adam).
In Hinduism the divine reality is called Brahman-Atman. It is not a being, not a person, not a god. It is being-itself, and is what everything in the world is made of. Many branches of Hinduism are devoted to individual gods/goddesses which are lesser personifications or instances of Brahman-Atman. But the theology of the high Brahmin priests says that all such ideas are actually false.
The Hebrew Genesis account is our revelation as Jews/Christians. It’s a little arrogant to think it’s the only self-revelation of God that has ever occurred on Planet Earth in the history of humanity. Who are we to say that earlier people and cultures did not have their own ways of relating to God that were lost or never known to people of our specific cultural heritage and history.
Today. We are speculating about how people thousands of years before recorded history related to God. We are never going to know.
Listening to and sharing our revelation does not equate to thinking “its the only self-revelation of God.” Why shouldn’t we leave sharing other revelations to the people who have them? And just because other people have their own revelation of God, and we do not thinking ours is the only one, doesn’t mean we have to believe them when they tell us about theirs.
We are believers in our own scriptures. And why should we believe contrary to our scriptures only from speculation without evidence?
Because Scripture is still a human construct.
Logically, pragmatically, and in reality, it is stupid to claim that any other path or belief except yours is valid.
So why should Scripture be any different?
Besides, Hebrew/Christian Scripture is written for, um, err, Hebrews and Christians (Muslims in part). It was not written for, or expeceted to be read by, anyone outside that faith.
What do you think the purpose of Scripture is? i will give a clue: John 20
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Richard
Totally agree. I was responding to the OP, which seems to assume that God did not interact with humanity prior to the Hebrews and their covenant. Plus I was talking about people and cultures who disappeared from the face of the earth long before ancient Israel.
“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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