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Adam and Eve
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freezerman2000
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I believe that they were the first to have a sense of the existence of God..A superior being.
Others came before them.
Others came before them.
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I agree that what the Bible is talking about with "Adam and Eve" are the first humans who were capable of having a relationship with God. Just as some non-believers think that something (such as an alien intervention) triggered a huge advancement in primitive humans 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, I tend to think that the "creation" of "Adam and Eve" refers to an act of God during roughly that period by which existing creatures that we would regard as sub-human or only marginally human were transformed into humans stamped with the image of God (not physical image, but intellectual/emotional capacity to have a genuine relationship with God).
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AmericanChristian91
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That doesn't make much sense, because homosapiens are humans.
I think a possibility exists that if there was a Adam and Eve, that they were the first creatures that had a soul/relationship with God,. Though if this was during pre-homosapien times, or during the early days of homosapiens, i don't know.
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Several good answers so far. Allow me to add more detail to a common Theistic Evolution postion on Adam.
Adam was a member of a community, and was the first person in the ape to human gradual change. After all, there had to be a first, if there weren't humans 5 million years ago, and there are humans today – he was the first to whom God divinely gave a soul.
Understanding how populations interbreed makes it obvious that all humans today are descended from him. Original sin did enter the human race though him, because he was the first to be divinely given a soul by God, and perhaps to be developed to the point of being able to conceptualize God, and hence to be able to rebel against God. The idea of Adam as a real, single, historical person, who brought about original sin, and who is the literal ancestor of all humans alive today, is fully compatible with modern science, and an important part, for some, of theistic evolution.
Remember that mutations are in individuals before they spread to the rest of the tribe. So as the whole community gradually evolves from ape to human, whatever arbitrary characteristic is used to define "being human", one individual will be the first to cross that line – including a line of “God divinely creating a soul” in one. Of course, all humans will be descended from him, just as they are all descended from others as well. Think of that mayflower club, which only allows members who are descended from the few people who came over from Europe on the mayflower. That club today has thousands of members, and in a few thousand years or so, literally everyone on earth will be descended from those on the mayflower. The same holds true for an individual, so long as they have a few kids. Thus, if you have a few kids, it is very likely that in a few thousand years, literally everyone on earth will be descended from you as well. It's all a mix. So, coupling that with the thing above about the literal Adam, it all works well. Since Adam had descendents, he must have had a mate, Eve. They probably had other names, but who knows?
-Papias
Adam was a member of a community, and was the first person in the ape to human gradual change. After all, there had to be a first, if there weren't humans 5 million years ago, and there are humans today – he was the first to whom God divinely gave a soul.
Understanding how populations interbreed makes it obvious that all humans today are descended from him. Original sin did enter the human race though him, because he was the first to be divinely given a soul by God, and perhaps to be developed to the point of being able to conceptualize God, and hence to be able to rebel against God. The idea of Adam as a real, single, historical person, who brought about original sin, and who is the literal ancestor of all humans alive today, is fully compatible with modern science, and an important part, for some, of theistic evolution.
Remember that mutations are in individuals before they spread to the rest of the tribe. So as the whole community gradually evolves from ape to human, whatever arbitrary characteristic is used to define "being human", one individual will be the first to cross that line – including a line of “God divinely creating a soul” in one. Of course, all humans will be descended from him, just as they are all descended from others as well. Think of that mayflower club, which only allows members who are descended from the few people who came over from Europe on the mayflower. That club today has thousands of members, and in a few thousand years or so, literally everyone on earth will be descended from those on the mayflower. The same holds true for an individual, so long as they have a few kids. Thus, if you have a few kids, it is very likely that in a few thousand years, literally everyone on earth will be descended from you as well. It's all a mix. So, coupling that with the thing above about the literal Adam, it all works well. Since Adam had descendents, he must have had a mate, Eve. They probably had other names, but who knows?
-Papias
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There are a variety of thoughts among Theistic Evolutionists on Adam and Eve and it is important to remember at the outset that no one of them is THE TE position.
I am going to present a few of the ideas and caveats from Peter Enns, whose book The Evolution of Adam I have just finished.
One thing he does is distinguish the Old Testament presentation of Adam from that presented by Paul in the New Testament. The first need not be historical, nor need Adam be the first human. But Paul's Adam is clearly the first human and historical. However, is that decisive for modern Christians? We need to understand why Paul presents Adam as he does and determine whether his view of Adam is necessary to his argument about sin, death and redemption through Christ.
I am not really sure what that means. Domesticated by whom?
Biologically, there is no significant difference between a wild wolf and a tamed wolf. And both are social creatures.
Is it meant to reflect the same idea as below?
This is an argument I personally have some liking for. If you ask me who committed the first sin, I would answer: the first person who knew his action was wrong and could consciously identify it as sin.
As far as I know, this would not differentiate this person from others biologically. It would be an insight possible to all with the same level of physical (brain) development. It might or might not involve a special act of God to enhance the level of spiritual awareness.
Enns argues against it however, on the ground that in the Old Testament, the phrase "image of God" does not refer to an interior capacity of any human being. Typically in the literature of the time (both Hebrew and non-Hebrew) "image" is used of a representative. In Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and similar cultures, the king is worshipped as the image of the divine god and it is because the king is the god's living image that he has the right to rule over the people of the nation. The king himself would have images of himself set up in places far from the capital city to make himself "present" there as the legitimate ruler. Likewise in temples, the presence of the god or goddess was invested in its image.
It is interesting that in Genesis the phrase "image of God" is connected only with the collective 'ha-adam' whose creation is described in Gen. 1:26 and not with the singular 'ha-adam' of the garden whose creation is described in Gen. 2:7. And it is linked with a human role of having dominion (ruling) over creation. In this sense to be made as "the image of God" is not to have this or that quality of mental or spiritual consciousness, but to have the responsibility of being God's representative to the rest of the animal world.
And. along this line, there has been a lot of work done which indicates that the creation story in Genesis 1 depicts creation as a temple. This again would refer to humanity as God's representative image to the rest of creation.
Enns agrees that others came before Adam and Eve. He argues that the Old Testament presentation of Adam is not that of the first human, but that of the first Israelite.
But he also notes that Paul takes a different course and presents Adam as the first human universally, not simply as the proto-Israelite.
Papias presents a view that is common and has much to commend it. It has the backing of the Catholic church. Enns, however, finds it problematical on three grounds:
First, theologically "it does little to ease the tensions with the Bible, for this hybrid of modern and ancient accounts of human origins is hardly what the Bible depicts: two humans created specially by God. This hybrid view does not adhere to the Bible, but rewrites it,"
I would say here that Enns is expressing a common difference between Catholics and Protestants on the relative authority of church and scripture.
Secondly, from a scientific view it is not possible to identify any one individual as "the first human". Any assignment of an individual to "human" or "proto-human" is entirely arbitrary on both a physical and spiritual basis. Physically, one could not pick out from his (her?) contemporaries, the first Homo sapiens. There would not be enough physical distinctiveness to isolate that one individual from the general population. (That is why new species are always found as already established populations.)
And if to be human means having a conscious awareness of self and God, or being endowed with a specially created soul which confers that capacity, we cannot know that the first H. sapiens is the first human. The oldest H. sapiens fossil we know of is about 200,000 years old. But it is equally possible that the first human, spiritually speaking did not appear until 50,000 years ago, or conversely that the first human spiritually speaking appeared among H. erectus 500,000 years ago. So, if we define "human" in a way that cannot be demonstrated physically, we cannot even be sure which species the first human was part of. Nor that the first human can be identified with the first instance of that species.
And in any case, as Enns reiterates this is "a scenario [proposed] that the Bible does not recognize." He agrees it is possible but it is "an alternate and wholly ad hoc account of the first humans, not the biblical one. One cannot pose such a scenario and say 'Here is your Adam and Eve; the Bible and science are thus reconciled.' Whatever those creatures were, they were not what the biblical authors presumed to be true."
That last phrase is important. Enns strongly emphasizes reading the Bible in the sense intended by the author, as the author's generation would have received it. So he opposes grafting modern science onto the biblical text.
And that is his third reason for resisting this view.
"Searching for ways to align modern-scientific and ancient-biblical models of creation--no matter how minimally, runs the risk of obscuring the theology of the biblical texts in question."
You would have to read the whole book to get the full force of this, but Enns presents the creation stories in their original setting not as an answer to "Where do people come from? (scientific issue) but as an answer to survivors of the Babylonian exile to "Where do we come from?" (national identity issue.
Finally, we should keep in mind that most of us "know" an interpretation of scripture that was unknown to its writers; interpretations developed by the church Fathers and amplified by later theologians. So, if we really want to understand the bible in its original setting, we need to be able to identify these complementary concepts and "forget" them, at least provisionally, in order to pick up the actual message of the original authors and not obscure their theological concerns.
For example, the concept of the fall most of us learned was a fall away from a perfect and immortal life. But there is scarce scriptural support for that. In the Eastern church, the fall has been seen more as a failing to become the mature and whole persons God intended us to be. What was lost in the garden was not perfection, but innocence; and it was lost by Adam and Eve trying to grasp knowledge (specifically knowledge of good and evil) by their own actions rather than through obedience to God. (Does not the biblical term for 'sin' refer to 'falling short'?) Enns points to much in the biblical Wisdom literature that supports this interpretation rather than the later Western European interpretation.
Similarly, there is no hint of the concept of orginal sin in the Old Testament and precious little in the New. That concept comes to us largely through Augustine and was further elaborated by Calvin.
Augustine associated being born with the taint of original sin with sexual reproduction. He believed that sin was inherited just as physical and mental traits are. If he had access to modern scientific concepts, he might have contended that sin is in our genes. But whatever validity there is in this concept, Augustine has to be wrong about that. Sin does not come to us via the sexual intimacy of our parents. It is not a matter of genes or chromosomes. In fact, if it were, we could have hope of a mutation wiping away the biological factor that produces original sin in us.
This doesn't mean, of course, that we are not sinners in need of God's redemptive grace. Obviously we are. It does mean Augustine was wrong about why. And since it can't be a matter of sexuality and biological inheritance, it follows that a literal historical individual or couple is not needed to explain the origin of sinfulness in humanity.
I am going to present a few of the ideas and caveats from Peter Enns, whose book The Evolution of Adam I have just finished.
One thing he does is distinguish the Old Testament presentation of Adam from that presented by Paul in the New Testament. The first need not be historical, nor need Adam be the first human. But Paul's Adam is clearly the first human and historical. However, is that decisive for modern Christians? We need to understand why Paul presents Adam as he does and determine whether his view of Adam is necessary to his argument about sin, death and redemption through Christ.
I am not really sure what that means. Domesticated by whom?
Biologically, there is no significant difference between a wild wolf and a tamed wolf. And both are social creatures.
Is it meant to reflect the same idea as below?
This is an argument I personally have some liking for. If you ask me who committed the first sin, I would answer: the first person who knew his action was wrong and could consciously identify it as sin.
As far as I know, this would not differentiate this person from others biologically. It would be an insight possible to all with the same level of physical (brain) development. It might or might not involve a special act of God to enhance the level of spiritual awareness.
Enns argues against it however, on the ground that in the Old Testament, the phrase "image of God" does not refer to an interior capacity of any human being. Typically in the literature of the time (both Hebrew and non-Hebrew) "image" is used of a representative. In Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and similar cultures, the king is worshipped as the image of the divine god and it is because the king is the god's living image that he has the right to rule over the people of the nation. The king himself would have images of himself set up in places far from the capital city to make himself "present" there as the legitimate ruler. Likewise in temples, the presence of the god or goddess was invested in its image.
It is interesting that in Genesis the phrase "image of God" is connected only with the collective 'ha-adam' whose creation is described in Gen. 1:26 and not with the singular 'ha-adam' of the garden whose creation is described in Gen. 2:7. And it is linked with a human role of having dominion (ruling) over creation. In this sense to be made as "the image of God" is not to have this or that quality of mental or spiritual consciousness, but to have the responsibility of being God's representative to the rest of the animal world.
And. along this line, there has been a lot of work done which indicates that the creation story in Genesis 1 depicts creation as a temple. This again would refer to humanity as God's representative image to the rest of creation.
Enns agrees that others came before Adam and Eve. He argues that the Old Testament presentation of Adam is not that of the first human, but that of the first Israelite.
But he also notes that Paul takes a different course and presents Adam as the first human universally, not simply as the proto-Israelite.
Papias presents a view that is common and has much to commend it. It has the backing of the Catholic church. Enns, however, finds it problematical on three grounds:
First, theologically "it does little to ease the tensions with the Bible, for this hybrid of modern and ancient accounts of human origins is hardly what the Bible depicts: two humans created specially by God. This hybrid view does not adhere to the Bible, but rewrites it,"
I would say here that Enns is expressing a common difference between Catholics and Protestants on the relative authority of church and scripture.
Secondly, from a scientific view it is not possible to identify any one individual as "the first human". Any assignment of an individual to "human" or "proto-human" is entirely arbitrary on both a physical and spiritual basis. Physically, one could not pick out from his (her?) contemporaries, the first Homo sapiens. There would not be enough physical distinctiveness to isolate that one individual from the general population. (That is why new species are always found as already established populations.)
And if to be human means having a conscious awareness of self and God, or being endowed with a specially created soul which confers that capacity, we cannot know that the first H. sapiens is the first human. The oldest H. sapiens fossil we know of is about 200,000 years old. But it is equally possible that the first human, spiritually speaking did not appear until 50,000 years ago, or conversely that the first human spiritually speaking appeared among H. erectus 500,000 years ago. So, if we define "human" in a way that cannot be demonstrated physically, we cannot even be sure which species the first human was part of. Nor that the first human can be identified with the first instance of that species.
And in any case, as Enns reiterates this is "a scenario [proposed] that the Bible does not recognize." He agrees it is possible but it is "an alternate and wholly ad hoc account of the first humans, not the biblical one. One cannot pose such a scenario and say 'Here is your Adam and Eve; the Bible and science are thus reconciled.' Whatever those creatures were, they were not what the biblical authors presumed to be true."
That last phrase is important. Enns strongly emphasizes reading the Bible in the sense intended by the author, as the author's generation would have received it. So he opposes grafting modern science onto the biblical text.
And that is his third reason for resisting this view.
"Searching for ways to align modern-scientific and ancient-biblical models of creation--no matter how minimally, runs the risk of obscuring the theology of the biblical texts in question."
You would have to read the whole book to get the full force of this, but Enns presents the creation stories in their original setting not as an answer to "Where do people come from? (scientific issue) but as an answer to survivors of the Babylonian exile to "Where do we come from?" (national identity issue.
Finally, we should keep in mind that most of us "know" an interpretation of scripture that was unknown to its writers; interpretations developed by the church Fathers and amplified by later theologians. So, if we really want to understand the bible in its original setting, we need to be able to identify these complementary concepts and "forget" them, at least provisionally, in order to pick up the actual message of the original authors and not obscure their theological concerns.
For example, the concept of the fall most of us learned was a fall away from a perfect and immortal life. But there is scarce scriptural support for that. In the Eastern church, the fall has been seen more as a failing to become the mature and whole persons God intended us to be. What was lost in the garden was not perfection, but innocence; and it was lost by Adam and Eve trying to grasp knowledge (specifically knowledge of good and evil) by their own actions rather than through obedience to God. (Does not the biblical term for 'sin' refer to 'falling short'?) Enns points to much in the biblical Wisdom literature that supports this interpretation rather than the later Western European interpretation.
Similarly, there is no hint of the concept of orginal sin in the Old Testament and precious little in the New. That concept comes to us largely through Augustine and was further elaborated by Calvin.
Augustine associated being born with the taint of original sin with sexual reproduction. He believed that sin was inherited just as physical and mental traits are. If he had access to modern scientific concepts, he might have contended that sin is in our genes. But whatever validity there is in this concept, Augustine has to be wrong about that. Sin does not come to us via the sexual intimacy of our parents. It is not a matter of genes or chromosomes. In fact, if it were, we could have hope of a mutation wiping away the biological factor that produces original sin in us.
This doesn't mean, of course, that we are not sinners in need of God's redemptive grace. Obviously we are. It does mean Augustine was wrong about why. And since it can't be a matter of sexuality and biological inheritance, it follows that a literal historical individual or couple is not needed to explain the origin of sinfulness in humanity.
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if humans did not evolution than are the human alike remains a new creature or related?
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Saya, this is the Theistic Evolution subforum, so people posting here mostly think that humans did evolve from earlier apes, and so most here say that the remains are those of our ancestors, just as scientists say.
Papias
Papias
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Do you believe God made monkeys in his image? Can monkeys commit sin and thus be held responsible for their deeds?
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They are related because humans evolved from the same common ancestor as they did. They are evidence of human evolution.
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