How are we to take the Fig Leaves?

[Dondi]

In Genesis 3:7 it states that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves to hide their nakedness. Then lates in Genesis 2:21, it states that God clothed them in animal skins.

If we are to believe in TE, how do we reconcile this with the fact that early man first started as hunters an clothed themselves in animals skins. Then they later formed agricultural communities and settled in one place, tending to gardens. Seems kinda backwards to me. Any explanations?

 

[gluadys]

In Genesis 3:7 it states that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves to hide their nakedness. Then lates in Genesis 2:21, it states that God clothed them in animal skins.

If we are to believe in TE, how do we reconcile this with the fact that early man first started as hunters an clothed themselves in animals skins. Then they later formed agricultural communities and settled in one place, tending to gardens. Seems kinda backwards to me. Any explanations?

Simple. Don't confuse stories with anthropology.

Seriously many hunter-gatherer societies depended on hunting for less than 1/4 of their diet and often used plant materials for their clothing as well as skins. Banana leaves make excellent capes and raincoats, I've read. Almost anything fibrous, from coconut husks to grass, can be woven or braided into useful articles. One doesn't need to be a cultivator to use plant materials.

 

[shernren]

I think that this reflects a very general theme in Scripture, of how man's actions are often barely sufficient where God's actions are superabundant. In this case, Adam and Eve can only come up with fig leaves (which would have eventually withered and become useless); God gives them hardy animal skins. In the same vein, Israel is compared to people digging their own cisterns where God provides living water, and lighting their own torches where God could provide light. Extensions of the same theme that when man sins his attempts to recoup the damage are laughably next-to-useless, when compared to God's great schemes.

 

[SaintAugustine]

In Genesis 3:7 it states that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves to hide their nakedness. Then lates in Genesis 2:21, it states that God clothed them in animal skins.

If we are to believe in TE, how do we reconcile this with the fact that early man first started as hunters an clothed themselves in animals skins. Then they later formed agricultural communities and settled in one place, tending to gardens. Seems kinda backwards to me. Any explanations?

an even more pertinant question..who killed the animals that they used to clothes themselves...did they?

It poses several paths of thought...did Adam every see animals kill each other before? etc. etc....

No, we must conclude that at some point in the ape-man development, God breathed into that vessel..the soul...that would be your first.."Adam".

 

[Dondi]

an even more pertinant question..who killed the animals that they used to clothes themselves...did they?

It poses several paths of thought...did Adam every see animals kill each other before? etc. etc....

No, we must conclude that at some point in the ape-man development, God breathed into that vessel..the soul...that would be your first.."Adam".

It says here that God made them clothes of animal skins:

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them." - Genesis 3:21

So you are saying that after some time perfecting humans through a series of hominoid designs, God finalized the finshed product which became Adam? Are we like MS Humans version 5.3.6 or something?

 

[shernren]

Hmm? I don't see how you can get that meaning from that passage.

 

[Dondi]

Hmm? I don't see how you can get that meaning from that passage.

What meaning? that God provided animal skins for clothing to Adam and Eve?

 

[shernren]

No, this:

So you are saying that after some time perfecting humans through a series of hominoid designs, God finalized the finshed product which became Adam? Are we like MS Humans version 5.3.6 or something?

 

[relspace]

In Genesis 3:7 it states that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves to hide their nakedness. Then lates in Genesis 2:21, it states that God clothed them in animal skins.

If we are to believe in TE, how do we reconcile this with the fact that early man first started as hunters an clothed themselves in animals skins. Then they later formed agricultural communities and settled in one place, tending to gardens. Seems kinda backwards to me. Any explanations?

Just because one believes in TE doesn't mean we have to see any correspondence between the stories in the Bible and the results of anthropology. These are two complete different and unrelated things.

Athropology is a bunch of half baked theories that have to justify themselves based on archeological evidence and is subject to radical revision as new evidence to comes to light. The story of Adam and Eve is tradition accepted on faith and is more like a racial memory of specific events, for which there are not likely ever to be any archeological evidence, to verify the occurence of these events or not. Memory is often inaccurate or uncertain in some details but it is always accepted on faith because it is apart of who we are.

I believe that Adam and Eve were adoped by God, who loved them and spoke them from birth, as a parent to them. And by the things which He taught them gave birth to their minds, and the purely human obsession which abstract ideas (the breath of life = the word of God), thus creating the first human beings on the planet. Adam and Eve and their sons (and possibly unmentioned daughters) probably adopted other members of their biological species and taught them to think as they did (who knows?). Sounds just like a religion doesn't it. Well that should be no surprise. The more we change, the more we stay the same. Whether these events were 6000, 8000, 10000, 12000, or more years ago is another thing we are never like to know for sure.

 

[Dondi]

No, this:

Oh, that was a response to SaintAugustine's comment:

No, we must conclude that at some point in the ape-man development, God breathed into that vessel..the soul...that would be your first.."Adam".

 

[shernren]

Oh ok.

 

[SaintAugustine]

well, let pursue that for a moment....are we saying that TE is right. That at some point, ape became man and that God breathed the soul into him.. a kind of progressive theology.

Yet, strangely I have no problem with such a timeline.

I remember reading, somehwere a professor at a religious school, being fired for referring to the ancestors of Adam, being "apes."

Thoughts, comments?

 

[Dondi]

well, let pursue that for a moment....are we saying that TE is right. That at some point, ape became man and that God breathed the soul into him.. a kind of progressive theology.

Yet, strangely I have no problem with such a timeline.

I remember reading, somehwere a professor at a religious school, being fired for referring to the ancestors of Adam, being "apes."

Thoughts, comments?

I probably wouldn't have a problem with it either if I knew where the dividing line was. Was Adam cro-Magnum, Neanderthal, Homo-Erectus, Homo-Sapien, or what?

 

[gluadys]

I probably wouldn't have a problem with it either if I knew where the dividing line was. Was Adam cro-Magnum, Neanderthal, Homo-Erectus, Homo-Sapien, or what?

Why would you need to know? What is important about knowing where a dividing line was among species that, except for H. sapiens, are extinct?

I can see that it might have some importance if H. neanderthalensis or H. erectus were still living species, but since they are not, isn't it just to satisfy curiosity to know whether they were also ensouled beings? What makes it a problem?

btw Cro-Magnons are H. sapiens. Cro-Magnon is an old culture, not a species.

 

[relspace]

I probably wouldn't have a problem with it either if I knew where the dividing line was. Was Adam cro-Magnum, Neanderthal, Homo-Erectus, Homo-Sapien, or what?

Cro-Magnum most likely. That most closely fits the Biblical time scale and why doubt scripture when there is no real reason to. Furthermore, I would tend to think that the sole survival of Cro Magnum man is supportive evidence for this. The Neanderthals are supposed to have buried their dead, for whatever that may count. But it is the Cro Magnum which started painting pictures on the walls of caves, which I think is more significant.

No, the biggest difficulties are questions about the accuracy of scripture and about what are he distinguishing characteristics. For example, there are cities like Jericho which are older than the 6000 year history recorded in scripture. Therefore it seems we must choose between: the Bible is inaccurate, archeology is wrong, or the ability or tendency to build cities is not among the characteristics of our species which come from God through Adam and Eve.

The last of these sounds pretty good to me. What do you think?

Maybe it is not our intellegence, our language or even our use of tools which distinguishes us after all, maybe it is just our propensity to believe in things we cannot see like love, and spirit and God.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I probably wouldn't have a problem with it either if I knew where the dividing line was. Was Adam cro-Magnum, Neanderthal, Homo-Erectus, Homo-Sapien, or what?

when God threw Adam out of the Garden He cursed him with, by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread.

well, bread is the major element of the Neolithic revolution. The growing of grains, couple this with the mention of cities in a few verses hence and you get Adam as a thoroughly modern homo Sapiens sapiens at about 12K years ago, max. He is not a "primitive" hunter gatherer, but firmly at the time of the discovery of agriculture and the domestication of wheat.