Was the Great Pyramid Built Before Noah's Flood?

Ragdoll

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“The Dead Sea Scrolls agree more often with the LXX than they do the MT.”

I presented evidence to the contrary and provided a link to the source. You aren’t providing a source.



“Josephus' work of antiquity is a very valuable document. He quotes from the Bible and like Jesus and Apostles, quote more often from the LXX than the MT.”

We don’t know which manuscript Jesus quoted. All we know is what manuscript was used by the later writers who gave us the Gospels.

While the works of Josephus have some value, to treat them as a manuscript of the OT, as Nathan Hoffman does, is absurd and dishonest.

Absolutely nobody is treating Josephus' work like the Bible. He is, however, and ancient witness.
 
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Dale

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And absolutely nothing you said here is true. The Dead Sea Scrolls agree more often with the LXX than they do the MT. Josephus' work of antiquity is a very valuable document. He quotes from the Bible and like Jesus and Apostles, quote more often from the LXX than the MT.

Everybody knows the MT is the Old Testament. Most of our English translations are translated from MT. So if you're wondering why the Biblical chronolgy doesn't make any sense, it because of the MT. And nobody is saying the LXX is perfect. It's not perfect. But it does do a better job reflecting on what the much older Hebrew manuscripts intended than the MT.

Wikipedia is not an authority of anything Bible. When you quote wikipedia to a Christian they might wonder about your intentions. All Christians reject wikipedia as a source of religious knowledge.

Here is something you probably haven’t considered. Many Biblical manuscripts, particularly of the OT, that once existed have not come down to us. Many were destroyed. When the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 70 AD, huge numbers of manuscripts copied by the scribes were burned or lost. For scholars, this is a tragedy.

Ragdoll, your beliefs are largely based on attempts to guess the contents of OT manuscripts that we do not have.

Here is another way to look at it. If God allowed many ancient scriptural manuscripts to be destroyed, it must be His will that we should follow the ones that we still have. I am not interested in trying to figure out what is in manuscripts that cannot be examined. There is no way we can know whether a hypothetical manuscript is more accurate than what we do have. On your hypothetical manuscripts, all I can say is that if God wanted us to base our beliefs on them, God would have protected them. They would have survived.
 
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Wilderness Cry

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It was word of mouth before people began writing letters. Then some other people began compiling the New Testament.

You can be told the gospel without the New Testament and you can be saved without the New Testament.

The Old Testament is more of a history of the nation of Israel.
You forget about two tablets of stone written by the finger of God. That was not exactly word of mouth, but spoken word from the written word.
 
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frank sears

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Without the Bible no one would know about Jesus. God called the land out from the water and it was one land mass. After the flood, God scattered the people all over the land mass and sometime later divided the land mass so to keep the nations separate, but in these last days God is letting them come together. None of this is opinion, got it all from the bible.
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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I have found absolutely no biblical reference for how much time elapsed from the time that YHWH created Adam until Adam disobeyed YHWH. Until I see a number in Scripture, any number greater than zero [and] up to infinity is a possibility.

To those for whom evidence matters, the creation of Adam could not have happened more recently than 5,000 years ago (never mind zero) nor any earlier than 15,000 years ago (never mind infinity). It cannot have happened more recently than 5,000 years ago because, starting around 3500 BCE, we have Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Sumerian historical records. If Adam was the first human, he cannot have been created AFTER humans already existed and were leaving historical records. And it cannot have happened any earlier than 15,000 years ago because the stories about Adam and his family involve things like domesticated animals, agriculture, metalwork, walled cities and more, things for which the earliest evidence dates from 15,000 years ago. For example, it wasn't until we had more favorable climatic conditions after the Younger Dryas (ca. 12,000 years ago) that small-scale animal and plant domestication began to develop.

At any rate, Adam could not have been the first human because, if he were, there would be unmistakable tell-tale evidence in the human genome—and it's not there. The only way humans could have this degree of genetic variability with Adam being the first human is if he lived more than half a million years ago, as calculated by Ann Gauger and Ola Hossjer (2019, PDF) in their eye-opening paper. (Gauger is an advocate of Intelligent Design and a senior fellow of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.) However, if Adam lived that long ago, it would be questionable that he was the first "human." Half a million years ago we had Homo erectus, H. heidelbergensis, Neanderthals and so on. Our species, H. sapiens, appeared around 200 or 300 thousand years ago. So, if Adam lived almost twice that long ago, he was something other than H. sapiens.

--

Hossjer O., and Ann Gauger (2019). A single-couple human origin is possible. BIO-Complexity 2019 (1): 1-20. doi:10.5048/BIO-C.2019.1.
 
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HARK!

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If Adam was the first human, he cannot have been created AFTER humans already existed and were leaving historical records. And it cannot have happened any earlier than 15,000 years ago because the stories about Adam and his family involve things like domesticated animals, agriculture, metalwork, walled cities and more, things for which the earliest evidence dates from 15,000 years ago. For example, it wasn't until we had more favorable climatic conditions after the Younger Dryas (ca. 12,000 years ago) that small-scale animal and plant domestication began to develop.

I see no evidence that Adam was domesticating animals, and creating walled cities, etc., in the garden.

At any rate, Adam could not have been the first human because, if he were, there would be unmistakable tell-tale evidence in the human genome—and it's not there.

What evidence would that be; and why would you expect to be able to find such evidence in the face of the mitochondrial bottleneck of ~5000 years ago?

You haven't provided any evidence of how long Adam lived in the garden.
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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I see no evidence that Adam was domesticating animals and creating walled cities, etc., in the garden.

Same here. As a reminder, I referred to the stories about Adam "and his family," which means outside the garden.

It seems you want to leave the date of creation open (i.e., not necessarily 6,000 years ago) because, although the genealogical record takes us back to Adam and Eve, we have no idea how long they lived in the garden of Eden before disobeying God. For all we know, four billion years could have elapsed between their creation and their disobedience. While that may be possible in a strictly logical sense, is the idea being deduced from the text or imposed on it? And is it something which those to whom God addressed this text would have gathered?


What evidence would that be?

As I said, the genetic variability in the human genome.


And why would you expect to be able to find such evidence in the face of the mitochondrial bottleneck of [roughly] 5,000 years ago?

What I would actually expect to find in the surviving population of a bottleneck is a severe reduction in genetic variability, such as found with the Tasmanian devil (Morris et al. 2013, PDF). Given the mechanisms by which new alleles appear, reduced genetic variability persists for thousands of generations—and 5,000 years ago is only a couple hundred generations.


You haven't provided any evidence of how long Adam lived in the garden.

No, it's an assumption. Although the narrative flow of the text leads me to suppose it was all the same day, the text does not provide an explicit timeframe.
 
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Job 33:6

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@James A

I would recommend the article below. Written by a former young earthers who went and got a degree in physics.

Path Across the Stars

I'll quote a piece:

ESO 137–001 is a barred spiral galaxy, not unlike our own, 2.1 quintillion kilometers away. It’s plunging into the center of the Norma Galaxy Cluster at 20,000 times the speed of sound. Inside tight clusters of galaxies, like Norma, the intergalactic medium contains concentrated hydrogen gas much thicker than average. The impact of ESO 137–001’s spiral arms into this gigantic gas cloud is tearing them away in pieces like a dandelion in a hurricane. Clouds of dust and hot gas trail behind in brilliant blue and brown streaks.

The question, for me, was obvious. How long had this been happening? This image, of course, is coming from 220 million light-years away and thus dates to the earliest dinosaurs…but even if we handwave the starlight problem and pretend the light is reaching us in real time, it is still a challenge. This is real motion and change taking place on an intergalactic scale. If the universe is only 6,000 years old, how far could this galaxy have traveled?

It turned out I still only had part of the story.

The first image I’d seen was merely visible light, captured by Hubble. Astronomers had also imaged the Norma Cluster using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, an enormous telescope launched into low Earth orbit in 1999.


1*zaI0Ypd4ZfncnW478diINw.jpeg


The image from Chandra, combined with the one from Hubble, shows a vast trail of superheated gas in the wake of the galaxy, stripped away by the shock of plunging into the core of the galaxy cluster. The trail stretches unbroken for a distance of 280,000 light-years.

This was the moment when everything broke down. To claim that light could somehow move infinitely fast to reach us was fantastic enough, but this was an example showing that it didn’t matter how fast light might move. I couldn’t conceive any way for an entire galaxy to traverse 280,000 light-years in just 6,000 years. The universe simply could not be young, and my whole edifice crumbled.

I forgot how good this post was. Brings back memories.
 
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HARK!

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Same here. As a reminder, I referred to the stories about Adam "and his family," which means outside the garden.

As a reminder, I referred to the time that Adam was in the garden, Your reference is non sequitur.


It seems you want to leave the date of creation open (i.e., not necessarily 6,000 years ago) because, although the genealogical record takes us back to Adam and Eve, we have no idea how long they lived in the garden of Eden before disobeying God. For all we know, four billion years could have elapsed between their creation and their disobedience. While that may be possible in a strictly logical sense, is the idea being deduced from the text or imposed on it? And is it something which those to whom God addressed this text would have gathered?

Like I implied. We don't know.

What I would actually expect to find in the surviving population of a bottleneck is a severe reduction in genetic variability, such as found with the Tasmanian devil (Morris et al. 2013, PDF). Given the mechanisms by which new alleles appear, reduced genetic variability persists for thousands of generations—and 5,000 years ago is only a couple hundred generations.

So the evidence would lend support to the flood, where the majority of the population was wiped out.

No, it's an assumption. Although the narrative flow of the text leads me to suppose it was all the same day, the text does not provide an explicit timeframe.

Again, as I initially implied, we don't know.
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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So the evidence would lend support to the flood, where the majority of the population was wiped out.

Other way around: The degree of genetic variability in the human genome clearly demonstrates that there has been no extreme genetic bottleneck within the last 500,000 years.
 
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Andrewn

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Other way around: The degree of genetic variability in the human genome clearly demonstrates that there has been no extreme genetic bottleneck within the last 500,000 years.
In the NT, Christ's salvation is viewed in contradiction to Adam's fall. Thus Adam and Eve are central in the history of salvation and cannot be disregarded without disregarding Christ himself.

To view Adam and Eve in a manner that is consistent with Theistic Evolution, one does not have to assume that they are the only progenitors of the entire human species.

Evolutionary studies show a change in human populations about 50,000 years ago with the development of language, technology, and widespread migration that evolutions consider to be the development of modern humans. It is plausible that this coincided with the creation of Adam and Eve.

Another theory that I recently became aware of is the following:

"S. Joshua Swamidass, a computational biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, wants to change the terms of this contentious debate. In his book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry, Swamidass affirms both evolution and the traditional reading of the Genesis creation account. Drawing on findings from his field of computational biology, he contends that the lineage of Adam and Eve should be traced using genealogy rather than genetics. Viewing the origins debate through a genealogical prism, Swamidass presents a scenario in which the special creation of Adam and Eve thousands of years ago happens on a parallel track with evolution."

In this second theory, not all human beings share in the genetic pool of Adam and Eve. But this sharing may not be as essential as is traditionally assumed. After all, no one shares in the genetic pool of Christ. We share in Christ's salvation without sharing in his genetics. Similarly, we share in Adam's fall without sharing in his genetics. After all, the NT says that all creation fell because of Adam and Eve, not only human beings.

What If We Don’t Have to Choose Between Evolution and Adam and Eve?
 
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Job 33:6

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Other way around: The degree of genetic variability in the human genome clearly demonstrates that there has been no extreme genetic bottleneck within the last 500,000 years.

Could it simply be that Adam and Eve would have been at or before that 500,000 year mark?
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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In the NT, Christ's salvation is viewed in [contrast] to Adam's fall. Thus, Adam and Eve are central in the history of salvation and cannot be disregarded without disregarding Christ himself.

To view Adam and Eve in a manner that is consistent with Theistic Evolution, one does not have to assume that they are the only progenitors of the entire human species.

I mostly agree with that. I'm one of those evolutionary creationists who accept a literal Adam and Eve. I also believe they lived around six thousand years ago. I do not believe they were the first humans (obviously), I don't think the Bible claims they were, and I don't think any essential Christian doctrine requires them to be.


Evolutionary studies show a change in human populations about 50,000 years ago with the development of language, technology, and widespread migration that evolutions consider to be the development of modern humans. It is plausible that this coincided with the creation of Adam and Eve.

Too long ago, as I understand it. Adam and Eve could not have lived more than 15,000 years ago, given certain elements in the stories of their family.


Another theory that I recently became aware of is [that of] S. Joshua Swamidass, ...

Although I have his book, I haven't read it yet. But I've had a few interactions with Swamidass and I'm familiar with his important work. I'm on the fence until I read it.

---

Could it simply be that Adam and Eve would have been at or before that 500,000 year mark?

I don't think so. Given certain elements in the stories of their family (e.g., domesticated animals, walled cities, etc.), it seems they could not have lived more than 15,000 years ago.
 
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Job 33:6

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I mostly agree with that. I'm one of those evolutionary creationists who accept a literal Adam and Eve. I also believe they lived around six thousand years ago. I do not believe they were the first humans (obviously), I don't think the Bible claims they were, and I don't think any essential Christian doctrine requires them to be.




Too long ago, as I understand it. Adam and Eve could not have lived more than 15,000 years ago, given certain elements in the stories of their family.




Although I have his book, I haven't read it yet. But I've had a few interactions with Swamidass and I'm familiar with his important work. I'm on the fence until I read it.

---



I don't think so. Given certain elements in the stories of their family (e.g., domesticated animals, walled cities, etc.), it seems they could not have lived more than 15,000 years ago.

Yea true.

It seems as though Genesis 2, much like Genesis 1, may just not be meant to be perceived as a scientific text. That's the impression I'm getting, what with Adam being made of clay and Eve of a rib bone and all. And maybe that would even extend to Adam and Eve being genetic ancestors to all people.
 
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Andrewn

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It seems as though Genesis 2, much like Genesis 1, may just not be meant to be perceived as a scientific text. That's the impression I'm getting, what with Adam being made of clay and Eve of a rib bone and all. And maybe that would even extend to Adam and Eve being genetic ancestors to all people.
There are certainly symbolic elements in the creation of Adam and Eve. But, for Christian doctrine to work, they must be real characters. The entire NT is based on this understanding.

Gen 1 and Gen 2 are 2 different stories from different sources. Scholars classify the source of Gen 1 as "priestly" and Gen 2 as "Yahwistic." Gen 1 is not essentially about the creation of Adam and Eve. Gen 2 is, and it is what we are talking about. It seems that God created them between 6,000 and 15,000 years ago.

Agriculture, animal domestication, and certain features of building started between 11,000 and 9,000 B.C. in northern Syria/Iraq. This, in my view, is a reasonable time frame for the story that is told symbolically in Gen 2.

If one considers Adam and Eve to be mythological characters, as perhaps some progressive Christians do, the whole NT is contradicted.
 
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Job 33:6

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There are certainly symbolic elements in the creation of Adam and Eve. But, for Christian doctrine to work, they must be real characters. The entire NT is based on this understanding.

Gen 1 and Gen 2 are 2 different stories from different sources. Scholars classify the source of Gen 1 as "priestly" and Gen 2 as "Yahwistic." Gen 1 is not essentially about the creation of Adam and Eve. Gen 2 is, and it is what we are talking about. It seems that God created them between 6,000 and 15,000 years ago.

Agriculture, animal domestication, and certain features of building started between 11,000 and 9,000 B.C. in northern Syria/Iraq. This, in my view, is a reasonable time frame for the story that is told symbolically in Gen 2.

If one considers Adam and Eve to be mythological characters, as perhaps some progressive Christians do, the whole NT is contradicted.

I'm just not really a fan of the whole, the doctrine depends on it, therefore we must try to force it to be scientific. If that's what you mean. I'd rather just say that it's something we are theologically working on and whether they were or were not literally real ancestor father and mother for all people, is to be determined or is under study and investigation.

Not that there's anything wrong with the top down approach, but I tend to favor bottom up approaches.
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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It seems as though Genesis 2, much like Genesis 1, may just not be meant to be perceived as a scientific text. That's the impression I'm getting, what with Adam being made of clay and Eve of a rib bone and all. And maybe that would even extend to Adam and Eve being genetic ancestors to all people.

If you're referring to that hermeneutical approach called concordism, the attempt to comprehend or articulate biblical facts in terms of modern science, then I would whole-heartedly agree that the Bible is "not meant to be perceived as a scientific text." There are a number of problems with concordist approaches to the Bible, [1] not least of which is the basic question, "Which modern science?" Today? A hundred years ago? As John Walton observed: [2]

We are well aware that science is dynamic rather than static. By its very nature, science is in a constant state of flux. ... What is accepted as true today may not be accepted as true tomorrow, because what science provides is the best explanation of the data at the time. ... Science moves forward as ideas are tested and new ones replace old ones. So, if God aligned revelation with one particular science, it would have been unintelligible to people who lived prior to the time of that science and it would be obsolete to those who live after that time. We gain nothing by bringing God's revelation into accordance with today's science.​

I have come to value and defend a distinction between "natural history" understood scientifically and "redemptive history" understood theologically. As a consequence of my theological tradition, I am of the view that what Scripture reveals is redemptive history (the historia salutis). Both natural history and redemptive history are true and fully consistent with one another—because they are not the same thing (and because they have the same one Author). Natural history is disclosed through general revelation (i.e., nature), the meaning and purpose of which is unveiled in redemptive history disclosed through special revelation (i.e. Scripture). Relevantly, what Genesis 1 (and following) communicates is the dawn of redemptive history, not natural history. The events of Genesis took place 6,000 years ago, more or less, in a world that was already billions of years old and populated by millions of people. As far as I can tell, the only problem with this view is Genesis 2:5—and it's not a terribly difficult problem, especially in light of all the problems it solves.

A lot of people point to God forming Adam from the dust of the earth as proof that he was the first human, as if God formed Adam but everyone else was born. What so many people fail to realize, including Christians, is that Genesis 2:7 does not reveal something unique about Adam but rather something true of all humans. Walton is helpful here, too: [3]

When the text reports Adam being formed from dust, it is not expressing something by which we can identify how Adam is different from all the rest of us. Rather, it conveys how we can identify that he is the same as all of us. Being formed from dust is a statement about our essence and identity, not our substance.​

If we are all made of dust, a statement of our creaturely mortality, then that particular fact about Adam doesn't prove he was the first human. It's true of all humans, including Adam who was human.

Speaking of which, "Adam" was almost certainly not his name. Like Jesus, he was an archetype (i.e., covenant representative and federal head) and he was assigned an archetypal name in Hebrew—a language that did not exist 6,000 years ago. In this origins story he had the name Human and his wife was named Life. These were archetypal names indicating their significance in redemptive history, but were probably not their historical names. As in Pilgrim's Progress where characters had names like Faithful and Hopeful, Adam and Eve "by virtue of their assigned names are larger than the historical characters to whom they refer. They represent something beyond themselves. ... More is going on than giving some biographical information about two people in history." [4]


I'm just not really a fan of the whole the-doctrine-depends-on-it-therefore-we-must-try-to-force-it-to-be-scientific.

I don't think there is any need to force it to be scientific. But if Adam was a real person in history, as I believe he was, then we do need to situate him historically—just not in any way that contradricts well-established scientific facts. Since God is the one Author of both Scripture and nature, they cannot be in contradiction. If they are, then we have interpreted something incorrectly. "We should not assume at the outset that the scientists are wrong," John Frame wrote. "It is also possible that our interpretation of Scripture is wrong—though it is not possible for Scripture itself to be wrong." [5]

---

[1] Denis R. Alexander, "The Various Meanings of Concordism," BioLogos, March 23, 2017. (Last accessed 2022-08-08.)

[2] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), p. 15.

[3] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 76.

[4] Ibid., 58-59.

[5] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002), 303.
 
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Andrewn

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Speaking of which, "Adam" was almost certainly not his name. Like Jesus, he was an archetype (i.e., covenant representative and federal head)

But if Adam was a real person in history, as I believe he was, then we do need to situate him historically—just not in any way that contradricts well-established scientific facts. Since God is the one Author of both Scripture and nature, they cannot be in contradiction.
We're in agreement. The question I have is why was Adam, as a historical person, an archetype of humanity and why did his fall affect all of humanity?
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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We're in agreement. The question I have is, "Why was Adam, as a historical person, an archetype of humanity?"

For whatever it's worth, I can tell you what I believe in hopes that it can be some food for thought.

As I see it, God's relationship with mankind is only ever through a covenant [1] and there are only two federal heads, either Adam or Christ. Those who are "in Adam" belong to the old humanity as covenant-breakers experiencing condemnation and death, while those "in Christ" belong to the new humanity as covenant-keepers experiencing salvation and life (Rom 5:12-21). I would say Adam represented all mankind as our federal head because he was chosen and made by God for that vocation.

I would also say that "in Adam" is the default or natural state of all mankind. We are born into that condition by default (Pelagius be damned). As a result, we exist in a state of spiritual death and only in Christ do we move to life; we exist in darkness and only in Christ do we move to light; we exist under God's wrath and only in Christ is that wrath removed; we exist in condemnation and only in Christ are we justified.

"And why did his fall affect all of humanity?"

Because he was constituted the representative head of the human race, such that he acted for all whom he represented (as did Christ for all whom he represented).

---

[1] As Robert Rollock said in the 16th century, "All of Scripture appertains to some covenant, for God speaks nothing to man without the covenant." Covenants function as the basic framework for all God's relationships with human beings.
 
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I would say Adam represented all mankind as our federal head because he was chosen and made by God for that vocation.

Because he was constituted the representative head of the human race, such that he acted for all whom he represented (as did Christ for all whom he represented).
Yes, in Luke's Gospel, Adam is referred to as son of God. In some sense God chose him to be represent humanity. Was he supposed to lead other human beings?

I'll buy Swamidass' book to see if he has further insight into this.
 
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