Well, how to begin. It is common belief that the first 5 books of the Old Testament (or Torah) were written by Moses. Nowadays we know that is not true. These books were written down many hundreds of years after the time of Moses. It is possible that these stories or teachings were first told by Moses and then handed down thru the generations told as various stories by the Hebrew faithful, until they were one day written down to finally be shared with common content. Who knows how the stories changed from the originals after being passed down only verbally, with each retelling containing a bit of the current author's own embellishment.
At any rate, the timeline set up in the book of Genesis regarding the creation, and Adam and Eve, just doesn't stand up to modern day anthropology, which poses a very interesting question...Did mankind start with Adam and Eve?
In my opinion, it most certainly did not, at least not as depicted in the book of Genesis. Mitochondrial Eve is now thought to have lived over 150,000 years ago, and even she was not the first female human, or even the only female of the day to have living decendants. What makes her Mitochondrial Eve is the fact that she is the most recent female to have an unbroken line of mitochondrial DNA that exists today.
By contrast, Y-chromosome Adam lived about 60,000 years ago. Please note that Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam will likely not be in 1000 years, who they are today, because as male and female lines die out, chains are broken and the most recent becomes, well, more recent.
Okay, none of this procludes the possibility of a Single Adam and Eve that at some point in the history of world, started the first line of homo sapiens. But there is more than one theory on this. There is the multi-regional theory which suggests that homo sapiens arose in different regions of the world simultaneously from lower homonid forms. Then there is the out of africa theory that supposes they rose up from a single line homonid and migrated throughout Europe and Asia. Then of course there is the theory of creationism which tells the history of mankind through tales handed down from generation to generation, whose origin we really don't know for sure.
I tend to lean in the direction of the multi-regional theory.
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5 comments:
The theology of one man (Adam) transmitting his sin to all his descendants is invalidated by theories of speciation in which the line of mankind never "bottlenecks" into only two parents.
In Darwinism the predecessor species of mankind blended softly casual into homo sapiens, such that (in retrospect) there were never fewer than 2000 individuals of our species. In other words, evolution never flipped a switch having a single ape mother suddenly give birth to a single human baby.
If we are saved from the penalty of sin (which is death), this implies that death is a punishment rather than something which naturally evolved in order to make resources available for new generations.
Evolution is a process whereby species compete for limited resources, so it results in constant improvement.
"Salvation" offers to instantly reverse our decline from a previously perfect state. If evolution is true, then we are working out our own "salvation" across many generations.
What is the Linux angle? Evolution, by all accounts, is the Linux "killer app" which completely replaces Microsoft Outlook. I'm forced to use Outlook at work, but when I get home, I don't even want to look at it, or a clone, even if its a freeware implementation. Evolution combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions.
"If evolution is true, then we are working out our own "salvation" across many generations."
When you say "we" are you referring to our species or is there a hint of reincarnation in your school of thought?
I refer to our species working towards perfection, reversing the effects of the fall. The implication of a "fall" is that human beings are getting progressively worse. In the bible lifespans fall from nearly a thousand years to our present threescore and ten. In human evolution, the opposite is true.
One could argue that in the beginning, the world was pristine, devoid of the influences that target one's longevity. That it was through mankind's sinful and glutenous ways that these contaminants and diseases were introduced, thus leading to the decreased lifespan.
Bishop Rick: One could argue that in the beginning, the world was pristine, devoid of the influences that target one's longevity.
Such a world would be utterly alien to the world we see around us now. Leaves would never turn yellow and red and fall. Ancient trees would grow more and more rings, and taller and taller, choking off the light for any new trees. Animals (or people) who fell into a pit would be condemned to live forever in darkness and thirst, because they could not die. Kings would gather more and more wealth and power to themselves, and never leave the historical stage for new minds and ideas to replace them. I don't know who it was that first painted death as an enemy, but he was not a child of the Earth. He was not at home here.
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