Adam and Estrangement from God

 

The Risen Lord Jesus raises Adam and Eve from the grave.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The Bible presents Adam in at least three ways: mythical, historical, and analogical. Genesis 1 does not speak specifically of Adam. It speaks of how humans were a special creation, made in the image of the Creator on the last day of creation (Day 6).

We first encounter a figure called “Adam” in Genesis chapters 2 and 3. The word Adam is derived from the root אדם (A.D.M), which is a verb meaning "to be red or ruddy" (Strong’s #119). The text says that Adam was formed from the adamah, meaning ground, soil, or humus. This is the etymology of the term “human”.

This Adam is associated with the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life, and the Serpent who tempted Eve. He and Eve are blamed for humanity’s “Fall” from the state of grace enjoyed in the Garden. We could take this as an historical account. That is how Fundamentalists read the text. However, humans had already dispersed globally before the historical Adam lived (c.4500 BC). Perhaps we should consider the biblical data that speaks of Adam as a father of Cain and Seth, whose descendants intermarried.

According to this view, Adam is a founding parent of the early Hebrew who descend from Cain (Gen. 4) and Seth (Gen. 5). The historical Adam is the eponymous founder of the mound building Horite and Sethite clans which constituted a caste of priests.

Genesis 5:1 describes Seth as being in the likeness of his father Adam. This may mean that Seth was a red man and could explain why ancient images of Seth show him as a red hippopotamus.

This idea that the first parents caused estrangement from God is a common theme in African stories. The first parents of the Mbiti Pygmy are called Tole and Ngolobanzo.

The first father of the Maasai is known as Maasinta. He had a special relationship with the Sky God who gave the Maasai their first cattle.

Gikuyu and Mumbi are said to be the first ancestors of the Gikuyu of East Africa. Here is a portion of their story:

Now you know that at the beginning of things there was only one man (Gikuyu) and one woman (Mumbi). It was under this Mukuyu that He first put them. And immediately the sun rose and the dark night melted away. The sun shone with a warmth that gave life and activity to all things. The wind and the lightning and thunder stopped. The animals stopped moaning and moved, giving homage to the Creator and to Gikuyu and Mumbi. And the Creator, who is also called Murungu, took Gikuyu and Mumbi from his holy mountain to the country of the ridges near Siriana and there stood them on a big ridge. He took them to Mukuruwe wa Gathanga about which you have heard so much. But He had shown them all the land - yes, children, God showed Gikuyu and Mumbi all the land and told them: "This land I hand over to you, O Man and Woman. It is yours to rule and to till in serenity, sacrificing only to me, your God, under my sacred tree.

While studying tribal peoples in Nigeria, the anthropologist Charles Kraft asked a clan chief, "What did your people believe about God before the missionaries came?" In response, an old chief told this story:

“Once God and his son lived close to us. They walked, talked, ate, and slept among us. All was well then. There was no thievery or fighting or running off with another man's wife like there is now. But one day God's son ate in the home of a careless woman. She had not cleaned her dishes properly. God's son ate from a dirty dish, got sick, and died. This, of course, made God very angry. He left in a huff and hasn't been heard from since." (Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture, Orbis Books, 1990, p. 153)

Another African story tells how "in the beginning death had not yet entered the world. There was plenty to eat, but a woman became greedy and tried to pound more grain than she was allotted. This required using a longer pestle. When she raised it to pound the grain, it struck the sky and God became angry and withdrew far into the heavens. Since then, people must toil the earth, death and disease trouble the people and it is no longer easy to reach God." (Richard Bush, ed. The Religious World, MacMillan Publishers,1982, p. 38).

In the last two stories the female ancestor is responsible for the estrangement. However, in the Book of Romans, Paul holds Adam responsible for the Fall in his analogical explanation. He contrasts Adam, by whom sin and death entered, and Jesus Christ, the New Adam, by whom sin and death are overcome and justification granted to all who believe (Romans 5:6-10).

“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people” (Rom. 5:12).

“Death reigned from the time of Adam . . . even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam” (Rom. 5:14).

“Many died by the trespass of the one man” (Rom. 5:15).

“By the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man” (Rom. 5:17).

“Through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:19).

 

In drawing this analogy, Paul clearly believed Adam to be historical. He argues that both Adam and Jesus Christ acted in ways that had lasting consequences in human history. However, he also admits that his presentation of Adam involves typology. Paul writes that Adam “was a type of the one who was to come.” (Rom. 5:14)

It is clear from the Genesis narrative that both Adam and Eve are culpable. This binary balance between male and female ancestors is characteristic of African stories and the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve serve as examples of estrangement from God. The estrangement results from disobedience and listening to appealing lies. This applies universally, and a similar idea is found in the myths of many cultures.

Related reading: Three Portraits of Adam; Adam Was a Red Man; The Sethites and the Red Hippo; The Father of Adam and Eve; Male and Female are Primary in Hebrew Scriptures

Three Portraits of Adam

Alice C. Linsley

The Bible presents Adam in at least three ways.

1) Adam and Eve are the historical first parents from whom the Horite and Sethite Hebrew clans descend. The historicity of Adam is proven by analysis of the kinship data found in Genesis 4 and 5 king lists. The historical Adam was the father of Cain and Seth who married their cousins, the daughters of a ruler named Enoch. Cain is described as an early city builder and Seth is the founder of the Sethite Hebrew who are mentioned in texts from 2400 BC. This means that the historical Adam probably lived between c.4600-4000 BC.

The historical Adam is the eponymous founder of the mound building Horite and Sethite Hebrew clans. His homeland is the vast well-water region called Eden; the part of the world where the some of the oldest human fossils have been found. In Genesis, people groups and their regions are identified with a founder or early eponymous ancestor. (An eponym is a person after whom a clan or place is named.) There are many such clans, but the earliest in Genesis are the clans of Adam and Enoch. A deep structural analysis reveals that their descendants intermarried (endogamy). 

Cain and Seth married the daughters of a ruler named Enos/Enoch/Enosh, and their brides named their first-born sons after their father. (See diagram below.) Enoch/Enosh is a royal title referring to succession. Enoch is derived from the Ancient Egyptian anochi which is the royal first-person pronoun.

Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace” and among the Ashante the word ano kyi means "Ano Junior." In these cases, we find the idea of succession, suggesting royal lineages. A Nigerian philologist friend reports that Anochie also means "direct heir to a throne." Therefore, the biblical name "Enoch" is associated with royal ascendancy. That may explain why the words Enoch and adam are paralleled in Psalm 8:4. 

“What is man [enosh] that you are mindful of him, 

the son of man [ben adam] that you care for him?”

Adam's name refers to blood (dam) and the color red. His descendants are remembered as red people. One of those descendants is Abraham who ruled in the territory of Edom. The Greeks called Edom "Idumea," which means "land of red people." The rulers, priests, and prophets of Edomite blood are described as red: Esau and David are examples. Some of the red peoples are listed in Genesis 10. They are identified by the DD biradical, which refers to the color red. In ancient Egyptian didi refers to red fruit. In Yoruba, red is diden, a variant of the biblical word Dedan (Gen. 10).

2) Adam and Eve are archetypes whose actions present us with moral and theological lessons. The story in Genesis 2 has the marks of myth, and myths speak truths in a manner different than history. Adam's time is long in the past. His place is a mythical garden where he communes with the Creator. Perhaps Adam and Eve enjoyed close communion with God for thousands of years before Eve succumbed to the serpent. Perhaps they matured experientially, but not physically. In this view, they are above time and ageless.

The archetypal layer came after the historical. Indeed, without the historical there would be no basis for the archetypal. Archetypes spring from collective memory. As N. Kershaw Chadwick and Mircea Eliade explain, "Myth is the last - not the first - stage in the development of a hero." (Eliade, Cosmos and History, p. 43.)

3) The Adam of which Paul speaks is analogical, not historical. Paul's analogy involves a typical Hebrew parallelism between Adam by whom sin and death entered and the New Adam, Jesus Christ, by whom sin and death are overcome. Clearly this analogy is not intended to be taken as history, unless we are to believe that people before 6000 years ago did not sin and did not die.

That said, it is clear that in drawing this analogy, Paul believed Adam to be historical because both Adam and Jesus Christ acted in ways that had lasting consequences in human history. However, Paul also admits that his presentation of Adam involves typology. He writes that Adam “was a type of the one who was to come.” (Rom. 5:14)

Paul's analogy identifies Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. This is depicted in the icon of the resurrection above. Adam is representative of the first humans created by God and unique among all creatures in that he is created in the image of the Creator.

This view poses Adam is the father of all humanity in order to make the analogy work. By the first Adam sin and death enter and by Christ the second Adam the curse of sin and death is reversed.

Conclusion

To speak of the biblical Adam requires making distinctions between the portraits drawn by the biblical writers. We must not confuse or conflate the historical Adam (an eponymous ancestor of the early Hebrew rulers) with the mythical/meta-historical Adam, or the analogical Adam.

Related reading: Adam Was a Red Man; The Genesis 10 Ethnography; The Royal Descendants of Adam and Enoch; The Hebrew Were a Caste; Adam and Estrangement from God

Adam Named the Animals

Alice C. Linsley

Genesis 2:18-23 is a delightful folk narrative about God bringing animals to Adam to name. The story does not receive much attention from Bible scholars because they are at a loss to explain the origin of this narrative.

Genesis 2 is recognized as the older of the creation stories. The context of Genesis 1 is Babylonian and much later. The context of Genesis 2 is African, and it is in African tales that we discover the purpose of this account of Adam naming the animals. African animal tales highlight social relationships and hierarchies. By giving Adam the ruler's role in naming the creatures over which he is to have dominion, God establishes a hierarchy in the order of creation.

The Man and the animals are created from the same substance. They are formed from the earth and are earth creatures. As the story continues Adam discovers that he is unique. There is no other creature like him. He is alone until God fashions a companion for him, the woman.

The woman is also unique. She is made from the man, not the soil. In a sense, the woman is the crown of creation and as such she is vulnerable. The spirit of rebellion against God's order in creation makes her his first victim. By obeying the serpent instead of God, Eve became subjected to a creature of low estate. She exchanged her crown for an abased state. The first trespass was against God's order of creation.

St. John Chrysostom wrote, "Do you see how the devil led her captive, handicapped her reasoning, and caused her to set her thoughts on goals beyond her real capabilities, in order that she might be puffed up with empty hopes and lose her hold on the advantages already accorded her?" (From here.)

The social relationships are changed. The animals under Adam's rule are part of a fallen realm. Now the whole of the creation yearns for the day of redemption. In the grand scheme of God's providence, it would be a woman's obedience that would begin the restoration of paradise. Her name is Mary and she is the Mother of Christ our God.

Related reading: Animals in Ancient Near Eastern Art; The Animals on Noah's Ark; Recovering the African Background of Genesis; An African Reflects on Biblical Names

Image of God Means Imaging God

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26)

What follows is the abstract for IMAGING GOD: A theological Answer to the Anthropological Question? by Alistair McFadyen (University of Leeds). The full text may be read here.

Traditionally the central trope in Christian theological anthropology, ‘the image of God’ tends to function more as a noun than a verb. Whilst that has grounded significant interplay between specific Christian formulations and the concepts of non-theological disciplines and cultural constructs, it facilitates the withdrawal of the image and of theological anthropology more broadly from the context of active relation with God. Rather than a static rendering of the image a more interactionist, dynamic and relational view of ‘imag ing God’ is commended as a key anthropological term. Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question (what is humanity?) is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God? This locates theological anthropology securely within the interactive context of being related to by God and suggests that theological anthropology might be a matter of performance, rather than definition: actively imaging God.

McFadyen's article makes sense of the theological context of this Biblical figure of speech - "the image of God" and he rightly asserts that the theological and the anthropological meanings are inextricably entwined. He uses the term "anthropological" in a theological sense, i.e., as related the biblical view of human nature, and this helps his argument. On the other hand, he fails to explore the trope as an anthropologist would and that weakens his case. 

The weakness comes from failure to see that the structure of Psalm 8:4 is parallel to the structure of Genesis 4-5. Adam and Enoch are paralleled, as are their descendants whose lines intermarried. In this diagram of Cain's line (Genesis 4) and Seth's line (Genesis 5) are shown parallel. They represent two ruling houses that intermarried. Naamah, the daughter of Lamech the Elder, married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah. She named her first-born son Lamech, after her father. This is one of many examples of the cousin bride's naming prerogative found in the Bible.

Analysis of the diagram enables us to see that Enoch and Adam are rulers whose descendants practiced endogamy, that is, their royal lines intermarried. Endogamy is a universal trait of castes. Their descendants represent the oldest known ruler-priest lines, and it is from them that the Son of God came in the person of Jesus Messiah.

On a fundamental level "imaging" God is what the deified ruler is to do. To miss this is to lose sight of the connection between dominion and the divine image. There is a Messianic dimension as the One who has ultimate dominion is the Son of God. Jesus Messiah is the icon of God the Father and this icon is not a static picture, but a living image.

McFadyen writes:

"Because God’s relating – and therefore God – are already oriented towards the human; indeed, oriented and seeking the human in its fullest realization. Psalm 8 has a shorthand code whereby it rolls up the whole history and future directedness of God’s relating in its orientation towards human well-being, flourishing and consummation: God’s mindfulness (v.4). And it is in the context of wondering acknowledgment of the status that affords human beings that it articulates the anthropological question in a specifically and definite theological register."

Adam was made in the image of God and this expresses a God-Man relationship, but beyond that we must consider the claim of Abraham's ancestors that they are the royal descendants of Adam. In other words, they claim a historical link to the divine image through their Horite Hebrew ancestors and this constitutes their work as ruler-priests who are to image God.

Psalm 8:4 is reveals an important theological and anthropological understanding of the God-Man relationship. Adam parallels Enoch/Nok, the father-in-law of Cain and Seth . In this sense, Genesis poses two founding fathers: Adam and Enoch/Nok/Anochie. They are founders of the ruler-priest lines described in the Genesis 4, 5, 11, 25 and 36. These are not genealogies. They are King Lists.

Note that Enoch and Adam are paralleled in Psalm 8:4:

What is man (Enoch/ha-noch) that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man (ben adam) that you care for him?

Psalm 8:4 connects the Adam and Enoch and highlights their historicity and meta-historical significance. The historical ruler Enoch parallels the "son of man", Jesus' favorite description of Himself. There is a sacred mystery here concerning Christ that places Him at the nexus of the meta-historical and the historical. Both Adam and Enoch point to the fully human Son of God, the very "image of God" shown to us perfectly and fully in the person of Jesus Messiah. 

The Psalmist parallels two deified rulers: Adam and Enoch. He regards both as "fathers" of the Hebrew people whose roots are in Eden. Perhaps this is why Jesus' ruler-priest identity was recognized in Tyre in Mark’s Gospel, not on a mountain, as in Matthew's account of the Transfiguration. For Mark, the Messiah’s appearing means the beginning of the restoration of Paradise. Mark likely had in mind this passage from Ezekiel 28: 

"Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created."

Likewise Amos 1:5 speaks of “him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden."

Genesis connects "image of God" with dominion over all the earth. Consider this from Genesis 1:26:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

In the beginning, Adam did not have to work for his dominion. God bestowed to him a territory to rule over. The suggestion that Man is to enjoy status as a deified or righteous ruler who "images" the Ruler of the universe is quite evident. This is a bestowed ontology.

The Fall did not remove the image and likeness of God, nor did it remove the responsibility to "image" God. Adam's descendants spread abroad and they ruled over territories from Africa to India and beyond. As they dispersed, they took their expectation that a Son who would be born of their ruler-priest lines. He is called the "Seed" of God in Genesis 3:15. Of this Seed, Paul writes in Galatians 3:

"Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy Seed, which is Christ… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

Jesus referred to Himself as the promised "Seed" when He foretold his death in Jerusalem. He told his disciples "Unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it cannot give life." (John 12:24)

The phrase "image and likeness" suggests a royal seal which holds the image or likeness of the king. There is a sense of divine appointment. Adam, Enoch, Cain, Seth and all appointed rulers after him are to "image" on earth the righteous rule of God. Yet all failed, save Jesus Christ beneath whose feet God will subject all things. 

McFayden writes, "Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question (what is humanity?) is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God?

Psalm 8:4 does indeed speak of who God is. However, it does so using parallelism of historical persons and it places the Son of God as the culminating figure of the biblical narrative and the Messianic Faith.

 Related reading: The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Cain as Ruler; Enoch: Angelic Being or Deified Ruler?; Horite Hebrew Deified Sons; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ: The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Adam Was a Red Man; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection

Finding Cain's Homeland

Was this skull found in Cain's original homeland?

Alice C. Linsley

In 2000 a major archaeological discovery made by a team led by paleontologist Paul Sereno opened a window onto the Green Sahara of 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. Sereno and his team discovered a large cemetery on the edge of a paleolake in Niger. Read more about the discovery here.

This raises questions about Adam as the first human. As Cain's father, Adam would have lived later the Gobero population. Cain was building a city and his descendants within ten generations were working metal. This indicates the Neolithic period. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that Adam was not the first human, but the first of the clans of humans that come to be known as Hebrew priests.

When the Apostle Paul speaks of Adam as a type of Christ, he is using an analogy: Death came by Adam, the disobedient first priest, and life comes by Jesus Christ the obedient High Priest.

The word "adam" is "adamah" in Hebrew and it means red human, likely a reference to the red earth from which Adam was formed. If this is correct, Adam is the first of the red people, that is, Abraham's Hebrew ancestors. He is the founder of the priest caste that was known for s distinctive red tone. Esau and David were among them. The word Edom also refers to red. Genesis 36:31 speaks to the antiquity of the Edomite rulers: "These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the children of Israel.”

Abraham's territory ws in Edom, between Hebron in the north (where Sarah resided) and Beersheba to the south (where Keturah resided). The Greeks called Edom "Idumea" which means "land of red people. 

Edom was in the heart of biblical Eden. Havilah is in the land of Kush, at the source of the Nile in the Ethiopian highlands. The Nile is fed by two sources: the White and Blue Nile. Likely these are the Gihon and Pishon mentioned in Genesis. The Hebrew word Giħôn (גיחון) means spring, as in a water source that bursts forth, or gushes. It appears that the four streams of Eden are the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the rivers known today as the Blue and White Nile.

In the garden of Eden narratives we find clues as to the cultural contexts of the narrators. The term Eden derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which refers to a fertile plain. The Hebrew word gan is related to the Kushite term egàn, which refers to a virgin forest. The Akkadian edinu describes the fertile plain of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The Kushite word egàn describes the forests of the Nile Valley before the desertification of the Sahara. The early chapters of Genesis are layered like an onion.

Which of these layers is the older context? Here is a clue: when banished from his homeland, Cain moved to the "east of Eden," which is to say that he moved east of the virgin forests of the wet Sahara. If the Biblical writer intends Eden to be the land of Israel, east would place Cain in Mesopotamia, the territory of the Kushite kingdom builder, Nimrod. Abraham was a descendant of Nimrod, the son of Kush (Genesis 10). If the Biblical writer assumed that Eden was in Mesopotamia, east of that would place Cain in Pakistan. That is not likely.

I believe that Cain was a Proto-Saharan ruler whose territory was west of the Nile, probably in the region where Paul Sereno found the Gobero graveyard. The Gobero site is the earliest known cemetery in the Sahara and the skeletons found there indicate that some of the people were over six feet tall. Here is a photo of one of the Gobero skeletons (G3B8). It measures six feet six inches. 

Photo credit: Mike Hettwer

The phrase "east of Eden" in the Hebrew text is quimat-Eden and appears to be a Nilotic reference. Originally, the word was probably qma, which is an ancient Egyptian word that refers to bulrushes. So it is possible that Cain left the Lake Chad region and went east to the land of bulrushes, the Nile Valley.

Related reading: The Gobero Story; Boats and Cows in the Green Sahara

The Historical Adam

The conversation that follows continues the discussion of The Fall, Mortality, and the Age of the Earth. To read interesting comments about this article, visit the international Facebook group The Bible and Anthropology.


A recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy asks:

It seems reasonable for Adam to have been the first man with the breath of life in him that makes one fully human and having the image of God. That would mean all before Adam did not have this. But then why have them exist at all?

Adam is presented in two different ways in the Bible. He is the founding father of the Horite Hebrew royal clans whose rulers are listed in Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 25 and 36. In this sense he is historical, but clearly not the first human created on earth.

Were Adam the first created human, he would have lived about 4 million years ago. Clearly, this is not the meaning intended by the writer of Genesis because Adam's royal descendants tilled the ground, created musical instruments, herded sheep and cattle, offered animal sacrifice, and built cities (Genesis 4). These are the activities of people in the Neolithic Period (10,000 - 2000 BC).

Further, in the story of Lamech and his two wives, we already find a well-established marriage and ascendancy pattern for rulers. It was the practice of the Horite Hebrew rulers to have two wives. These wives lived in separate settlements on a north-south axis. Lamech's wives were Adah and Zillah. Abraham's wives were Sarah (his half-sister) and Keturah (a patrilineal cousin). Jacob's wives were Rachel and Leah. Moses's wives were a Kushite bride (his half-sister) and Zipporah (a patrilineal cousin). Elkanah's wives were Penninah and Hannah, the mother of Samuel.

As the ancestor of these historical persons, Adam must be said to be historical also. He is placed as the founding father of the clans that were known in the ancient world as Hapiru or Habiru (Hebrew). They ruled in Edom, the land of red people, before any king ruled over Israel (Gen. 36:31).

The Apostle Paul speaks of Adam analogically. He contrasts Adam to Jesus Messiah, the New Adam. This is an analogy, not an assertion of historicity, though it is likely that Paul considered Adam to be historical. However, to make his point, Paul poses Adam as a meta-historical figure, like an archetype. Here we understand Adam to represent all humanity from the beginning of human existence. As a metaphysical concept, Adam's historicity cannot be proven.


Adam, the historical royal "father"

As a historical founding father of the rulers listed in Genesis, there is substantial evidence for Adam's existence. He is the historical ancestor of Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus Messiah, but not the literal first human created.

In the original Nilotic and Proto-Saharan context of Abraham’s ancestors “the blood” simply meant Human or Man. This is why the term 'Adam is often translated "the man" in different versions of the Bible. Examples include Genesis 1:27 and 3:20. In Genesis 1:27, Man ('Adam) is made in the image of the Universal Ruler, as in ancient Egypt where the king was said to rule  as the "image" of God on earth.

The name Adam is derived from the root אדם (A.D.M), which is a verb meaning "to be red or ruddy" (Strong’s #119). The name 'Adam is a variant of Ha'dam, meaning "the blood" (dam). The Biblical writers recognized that the people with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. Some of these people were rulers in Edom. These are listed in Genesis 36. Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger were among them. Esau is specifically described as being red in Genesis 26.

The Hebrew word for red is edom and it is a cognate to the Hausa word odum, meaning red-brown. Both are related to the word Hebrew dam, meaning blood. Adam was formed from the red clay that washed down to the Upper Nile Valley from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color. In other words, 'Adam's name supplies a clue to the point of origin of Abraham's ancestors and explains why they are associated with the color red.

Jeff A. Benner, an expert on ancient Hebrew, explains:

We are all familiar with the name "Adam" as found in the book of Genesis, but what does it really mean? Let us begin by looking at its roots. This word/name is a child root derived from the parent דם meaning, "blood". By placing the letter א in front of the parent root, the child root אדם is formed and is related in meaning to דם (blood).

By examing a few other words derived from the child root אדם we can see a common meaning in them all. The Hebrew word אדמה (adamah) is the feminine form of אדם meaning "ground" (see Genesis 2:7). The word/name אדום (Edom) means "red". Each of these words have the common meaning of "red". Dam is the "red" blood, adamah is the "red" ground, edom is the color "red" and adam is the "red" man. There is one other connection between "adam" and "adamah" as seen in Genesis 2:7 which states that "the adam" was formed out of the "adamah".

In the ancient Hebrew world, a person’s name was not simply an identifier but descriptive of one's character. As Adam was formed out of the ground, his name identifies his origins. (From here.)

The implication of this is that Adam had a red skin tone, like his descendants Esau and David. The chart below shows the Horite rulers of Edom. This is the clan of Seir the Horite. They are listed in Genesis 36. These are Abraham's people. Edom was called "Idumea" by the Greeks. Idumea means "land of red people." The Horite Hebrew were devotees of the Creator and his son Horus. Horite is Horim in Hebrew. Jews call their ancestors Horim.

The red descendants of Adam appear to be the Proto-Saharan and Nilotic peoples in Haplogroup R1. This map shows the dispersion of the R1 peoples. The dark red spot in Central Africa is Noah's homeland. He ruled in the region of Lake Chad which was prone to flooding. The locals call this region Bor-no, meaning "Land of Noah". This is the only place on earth that claims to be Noah's homeland.

Some of Abraham's Horite Habiru ancestors can be traced back to the shrine city of Nekhen. One of the more intriguing discoveries at Nekhen was the recovery of an almost complete beard in association with the redheaded man in Burial no. 79. The facial hair of the man in Burial no. 79 had been trimmed with a sharp blade.

The map shows that the red peoples extended into southwestern China. The Tarum mummies of China had red hair and beards. The oldest Tarum Mummies found in China date from 1900 B.C. The so-called "Ur-David" mummy (shown below) was tall and had red hair. This mummy, also called Cherchen Man or Chärchän Man, dates to about 1000 B.C.

Note the solar mark on the cheek of this archaic ruler.

'Adam and Enosh as Contemporaries

Another word that designates a royal founding father is Enosh/Enoch. In Psalm 8:4 the terms 'Adam and Enosh are paralleled.

“What is man [enosh] that you are mindful of him, the son of man [ben adam] that you care for him?”

Both 'Adam and Enoch/Enosh are royal titles. The parallelism of Psalm 8 makes it clear that Enosh/Enoch is considered a royal progenitor along with 'Adam. These are among the archaic rulers. They are called the "mighty men of old" in Genesis and they are described as heroes and men of renown. They are the rulers of the archaic world and they married within their royal houses, as royal persons tend to do even today.

The diagram below shows analysis of the marriage pattern of Abraham's royal ancestors listed in Genesis 4 and 5. Cain and Seth married the daughters of a great ruler named Enoch/Enosh. The cousin brides (represented by the circles) named their first born sons Enoch/Enosh, after their father. This is an example of the cousin bride's naming prerogative.

I recognize no theological problems with interpreting the creative process of Genesis in different ways. In many respects, viewing it as a summary of perhaps billions of years makes more sense. God knew that we would need things like oil and natural gas and other resources that take eons to form someday, so he allowed time for them to develop.

Human artifacts dating from millions of years ago to 10,000 years ago indicate that the Creator has been guiding the religious thought of humans to recognition of the incarnation of the Son of God and his death and resurrection. The oldest artifacts show cross designs in stone and shell. Then there is the universal practice of burying elders, chiefs, and rulers in red ochre dust, a symbol of blood. Life in in the blood!

The universal symbolism of the sun as the Creator's symbol or emblem is another example. By 4000 BC there already existed a caste of ruler-priests (Ha'biru or Hebrew) who believed that the Creator has a son. This son - Horus - was to be conceived virginally by the overshadowing of the sun. This was the sign of divine appointment as a ruler on earth.  Some would say that this has nothing to do with Jesus Messiah; that the Angel Gabriel's words to Mary are coincidental. Not so! When Mary asked how she would conceive, seeing that she "knew" no man, Gabriel explained that she would be overshadowed and the one she conceived would be the Son of God (Luke 1).

Related reading: Adam Was a Red Man; Archaic Rulers, Ascendancy, and the Foreshadowing of Jesus Messiah; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; The Edomites and the Color Red; The Virgin Mary's Ancestry; On the Fall, Mortality, and the Age of the Earth; Sun Cities of the Ancient World; The Historicity of Noah's Flood

On the Fall, Mortality, and the Age of the Earth



The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator (Saint Catherine's Monastery)
The two different facial expressions emphasize Christ's two natures as fully God and fully human.

What follows is a recent communication with a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy.

I'm wondering if I might get your thoughts on something that causes me uncertainty. From what I've seen on your blog, perhaps you might have some advice/reflections to share on the subject? I see no biblical basis to oppose the idea that the Earth and Universe are billions of years old, and that there was animal death before the Fall. My uncertainty touches on the idea that humans were first created millions of years ago, but the historical time frame of the Bible beginning around 4000 BC or so? I can't wrap my mind around that. Millions of years just seems like an unnecessary amount of time from the creation of man and the Fall, to the eventual coming of Christ, doesn't it? Could there be any reason for this? I'm at a loss on how to look at the origin of mankind. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

You are asking good questions! In response, let's consider 3 points:

1. The Bible isn't about human origins. It makes theological assertions (propositions) about humans that can't be verified by science. The most important assertion is that humans were created from the beginning in the image of the Immortal God. Most of the Church Fathers and theologians find in this assertion the idea that humans were created to enjoy eternal life; that is, we have the potential to be immortal. As to how this was affected by the Fall, the Latin and Greek Fathers take different positions. The Eastern Church never speaks of sin being passed from Adam to his descendants. Instead, each person bears the guilt and shame of his or her own sin. What then does humanity inherit from Adam? In the Eastern view, it is a condition, or a disease. This disease results in corruption and death, which St. Paul also points to in I Corinthians 15:21. Cyril of Alexandria teaches that humanity became “diseased… through the sin of one." If we attend to the Biblical text closely, that is the sin of Eve, the crown of creation. Her action of submitting to the will of a base creature represents an inversion of the hierarchical order in creation, so that all of the creation is subjected to decay. The nature of all things became corrupted in the Fall, but the divine image in humanity was not erased, and the state of Paradise will be restored.


2. That brings us to the second point. The entire trajectory of the Bible is about how God makes man immortal. In other words, the message is less about human origins than it is about the origin of Messianic hope. Through Messiah, the Son of God, we die to death and rise to immortality. Through his work, we receive forgiveness of sins, justification, and deliverance from the second death.

The Bible speaks of two distinct deaths. The Apostle Paul explains that those who die in Christ will rise in Him on the Last Day. These will not die the "second death" of which John speaks in Revelation 2:11 - "Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death."

The Risen Messiah is to lead his followers to immortality. Among the Horite Hebrew, the welfare of the people depended on the righteousness of their ruler. The test of absolute righteousness was the ruler's bodily resurrection. The grave would not be able to hold the Righteous Ruler, and upon his bodily resurrection, he would lead his people to eternity. This royal procession language is found in Ps. 68:18; Ps. 7:7, and Eph. 4:8. Jesus is the only Horite Hebrew ruler-priest to fulfill the Messianic hope.


3. That brings us to the third point. The Young-Earth interpretation is based on Bishop Ussher's dating of the so-called "begats" in Genesis. But Bishop Ussher goofed! He did not recognize that the lists of Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 25 and 36 are king lists, not lists of the first people on earth. These lists can't be used to calculate the age of the earth by adding the years the rulers lived. This is to abuse this material. In this sense, Young-Earth Creationism is not biblical. The rulers listed are the ancestors of the Horite Hebrew ruler-priest lines. Among them are Abraham, Esau, Jacob, Amram, Moses, Elkanah, Samuel, David, and Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos.

This chart shows the Horite Hebrew rulers of Edom who are listed in Genesis 36. This is the clan of Seir the Horite. These are Abraham's people. Edom was called "Idumea" by the Greeks. Idumea means "land of red people" and at least two rulers of Edomite blood are noted for their red skin tone: Esau and David. Horite Hebrew were devotees of the Creator and his son Horus. Horite is "Horim" in Hebrew. Jews call their ancestors their Horim.

We will continue this conversation in a discussion of The Historical Adam. Your questions about Adam and the age of the earth are important! Thanks for asking, and "Welcome home!"

Alice C. Linsley

Related reading: Archaic Rulers, Ascendancy, and the Foreshadowing of Messiah; The Genesis King Lists; Adam was a Red Man; Samuel's Horite Family; Moses's Wives and Brothers; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; The Edomites and the Color Red

Adam According to Mesopotamian Tradition

An interesting presentation by Dick Fischer at the annual American Scientific Affiliation conference held in Tulsa, Oklahoma in July 2015. He makes an argument for Adam as an historical figure living in Mesopotamia.

I agree that historical Adam is the progenitor of biblical peoples who dispersed widely in the ancient world. I doubt that Adam lived in Mesopotamia, however. He was the progenitor of Abraham's Proto-Saharan cattle-herding ancestors who dispersed into Mesopotamia. Abraham is a descendant of the rulers Ham and Shem whose lines intermarried (endogamy). Abraham's father, Terah, was a priest with two wives: one in Haran and one in Ur.

A genealogical relationship exists between the Nilotic, Dravidian, Elamite and Sumerian languages. African languages were used by Henry Rawlinson to decipher the cuneiform script. Dravidian, Elamite, and Sumerian share features retained during a process of divergence from a common linguistic ancestor. The wedge or cuneiform script was used by the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Elamites, the Assyrians, and the Horites, Hatti, and Hittites of Anatolia.

Scientific analysis of the Genesis king lists reveals a specific marriage and ascendancy pattern. This information is essential to recovery of the original cultural context of the material in Genesis.

Related reading: Adam Was A Red Man; The Genesis King Lists; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; Decoding the Genesis King Lists; Adam and Eve: The Blood and the Birther; Abraham's Ancestors Came Out of Africa; Ignoring Anthropologically Significant Data; Eden: A Well-Watered Region; Noah's Flood: Where and When?; Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA); Was Noah Mesopotamian or Proto-Saharan?; Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About Adam and Eve; Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About Noah's Flood

Adam Was a Red Man

Alice C. Linsley

The Biblical writers recognized that the people among them with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. Some of these people were rulers in Edom. These are listed in Genesis 36. Esau the Elder and Esau the Younger were among them. Esau is specifically described as being red in Genesis 26.

The name Adam is derived from the root אדם (A.D.M), which is a verb meaning "to be red or ruddy" (Strong’s #119).

The Hebrew word for red is edom and it is a cognate to the Hausa word odum, meaning red-brown. Both are related to the word dam, meaning blood, and to the name of the first man Adam, who was formed from the red clay which washed down to the Upper Nile Valley from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color. It is evident then that the Upper Nile is the urheimat of the Adam and Eve story.

Jeff A. Benner, an expert on ancient Hebrew, explains:

We are all familiar with the name "Adam" as found in the book of Genesis, but what does it really mean? Let us begin by looking at its roots. This word/name is a child root derived from the parent דם meaning, "blood". By placing the letter א in front of the parent root, the child rootאדם is formed and is related in meaning to דם (blood).

By examing a few other words derived from the child root אדם we can see a common meaning in them all. The Hebrew word אדמה (adamah) is the feminine form of אדם meaning "ground" (see Genesis 2:7). The word/name אדום (Edom) means "red". Each of these words have the common meaning of "red". Dam is the "red" blood, adamah is the "red" ground, edom is the color "red" and adam is the "red" man. There is one other connection between "adam" and "adamah" as seen in Genesis 2:7 which states that "the adam" was formed out of the "adamah".

In the ancient Hebrew world, a person’s name was not simply an identifier but descriptive of one's character. As Adam was formed out of the ground, his name identifies his origins. (From here.)

Though the story of red Adam comes originally from the Upper Nile, the account was preserved by his Edomite descendants, one of whom was Abraham. Abraham's territory was between Hebron and Beersheba. As can be seen from the map below, his territory was entirely in the region of Edom. The people who lived there had a reddish skin tone. That is why the Greeks called this region Idumea, meaning "land of red people."

Isaac was Abraham's proper heir, and as such, he inherited Abraham's territory. Edom was under the control of Horites, what the Jews call their "Horim." Both Hebron (where Sarah lived) and Beersheba (where Keturah lived) are in Edom. Abraham's territory extended between the settlements of his two wives, and included mountains, lowlands wells, and the water system at Engedi.

David is related to the Horite rulers of Edom and he is described in the Bible as red/ruddy. Samuel, the son of a Horite priest from Ramah, anointed him ruler.

And Samuel said to Jesse, "Are these all the children?" And he said, "There remains yet the youngest, and behold, he is tending the sheep." Then Samuel said to Jesse, "Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here." So he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And the LORD said, "Arise, anoint him; for this is he." Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David from that day forward. And Samuel arose and went to Ramah. (1 Samuel 16:11- 13)


Here are images of people whose skin tone ranges from brown-red to red-brown

Beja of Sudan

Egyptian man in red

Grieving Egyptian
Note the reddish-brown skin tone

A red people is mentioned in African creation stories. It is said that God created the first human by mixing soil with his blood. This is circulated among the Igbo, for example, whose ancestors originated in the Upper Nile Valley. The Igbo belong to MtDNA haplogroup L1, believed to have first appeared approximately 150,000 to 170,000 years ago in East Africa.

The red descendants of the Proto-Saharans appear mainly to be in Haplogroup R1b, the point of origin of which was the wetlands extending from the Nile to Lake Chad. Lake Chad was Noah's homeland. It is shown above in the dark red area in Central Africa.

Some of Abraham's Horite Habiru ancestors can be traced back to the shrine city of Nekhen. One of the more intriguing discoveries at Nekhen was the recovery of an almost complete beard in association with the redheaded man in Burial no. 79. The facial hair of the man in Burial no. 79 had been trimmed with a sharp blade. The presence of long wavy natural red hair and a full beard suggests that this individual may have been Ainu (Annu). The Ainu were among Abraham's ancestors, and although they were widely dispersed before Abraham's time, the Nile Valley appears to be their point of origin. The Annu built the original shrine of Heliopolis which is called "Onn" in Genesis 41. Joseph married the daughter of the high priest on Onn.

The map shows that the red peoples extended into southwestern China. The Tarum mummies of China had red hair and beards. The oldest Tarum Mummies found in China date from 1900 B.C. The so-called "Ur-David" mummy (shown below) was tall and had red hair. This mummy, also called Cherchen Man or Chärchän Man, dates to about 1000 B.C.

Note the solar mark on the face of this archaic ruler.

Related reading: Genesis in Anthropological Perspective; Archaic Rulers, Ascendancy, and the Foreshadowing of Christ; The Kushite-Kushan Connection;  Solving the Ainu Mystery; The Nilotic Origins of the Ainu; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; Samuel's Horite Family; What Color Was Abraham?; Millions of Years Between Genesis 4:1 and 4:17; Theories of Primal Substance; Ethical Concerns of Archaic Communities

Millions of Years Between Gen 4:1 and Gen. 4:17

Alice C. Linsley

Queen Nefertiti
Note her red skin tone.

There are numerous gap theories but none has been so specific as my theory that, if Adam represents the first created human, there must be millions of years between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17. This is the only possible conclusion since humans have been on the surface of the Earth for over 3 million years.

If Eve is the first created female, there are millions of years between Genesis 4:1 and Genesis 4:17. However, this is not likely what is intended by the Genesis text.

If we look carefully at how Genesis only presents human origins, we come to the conclusion that the word Adam is used different ways. In Genesis 1 it simply refers to humans. In Genesis 3 Adam refers to to the founding father of the people who today we would identified with the Nilotic Ainu/Anu and with Haplogroup R1b. They are known for their distinctive red skin tone.

Support for this view, is found with the narrative of Eve giving birth to the first ruler. Eve is represented as the first mother of the Yahweh followers. In Genesis 4:1 (in Proto-Hebrew), Cain's mother declares, "Ka-niti (Qaniti); I have gotten a man, as has YHWH."

This is a Messianic reference. Kaniti is a reference to king (as Kandake is a reference to queen). This is the second time in the Bible that a woman of Abraham's bloodline is connected to the Messiah. The first is Genesis 3:15, which refers to the "Woman" and not Eve, as Eve is not named until Genesis 3:20.

Qanyty or Qanitti comes from Nilo-Saharan languages like Luo, Oromo and ancient Egyptian. These languages share many phonemes with ancient Akkadian, the language of Nimrod's kingdom. Nimrod was the son of Kush, according to Genesis 10. The Akkadian itti, as in itti šarrim, means "with the king" or "for the king." It is attached to the names of royalty. Even today the Oromo and the Luo attach itti to names: Onditi, Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name of the great Egyptian queen Nefertitti.

Kain has many linguistic equivalents: Qayan, Cain, and Kahn, as in Genghis Kahn, and the female variant is Candace or Kandake. All these words refer to a king/queen or ruler. The first kings named in the Genesis King Lists are Kain and his brother Seth. They were Middle Bronze Age rulers as is evidenced by the technologies mentioned in Genesis 4-6. They were not the first people on earth. The oldest human (fully human) fossils are about 3 .6 million years. Even if the dating is wrong by 50%, these humans still would have lived long before Kain and Seth.

Clearly there is a gap of millions of years between the creation of the first humans and the rulers listed in Genesis 4 and 5. The Bible tells us very little about that span of time. However, it does trace Messianic expectation beginning with the red people of the Upper Nile. Abraham of Edom was related to those red people as were his Horite kinsmen of Edom whose royal lines are named in Genesis 36 (diagram below.)

Obodas, the first ruler of Petra in Edom, took his title from the Edo (Benin) name for ruler which is Oba. The prophet Obadiah was from Edom, according to the Talmud, and said to have been a friend of the Horite ruler Job of Uz. Genesis 36 lists the Horite ruling family of Edom. Among them were two Horite rulers named Esau, as shown in the diagram.

Adam is the first man in Biblical parlance, and he was a red man. The Biblical writers recognized that the people among them with red skin were of an ancestral line of extreme antiquity. Kain is the archetype of the worldly ruler. Jude's epistle (c. 68 AD) warns those who might abandon Christ because of their suffering and false teachers that God punishes those who rebel against Him. He uses three men as examples: Cain the ruler, Balaam the prophet, and Korah the priest. These were the three most sacred offices among Abraham’s people.

Note that the Holy Name YHWH appears in the text. The point of origin of YHWH has been traced to the Upper Nile, the area from which Abraham's Kushite ancestors came (Gen. 10). The Kushite dispersion out of Africa has been confirmed by DNA studies and linguistic studies.

Related reading:  Solving the Ainu Mystery; Genesis: On Gaps and Overlaps; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; Cain as Ruler; Kushite Kingdom Building; The Nubian Context of YHWH; The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Is Scientific Dating Reliable?; Gap Theory or Gap Fact?; Nimrod was a Kushite Ruler; Languages of Africa

A Reader Asks About Polygenesis

A reader recently emailed me with a question. She wrote:

When the bible says he created them male and female and called them Adam it occurred to me that we assumed only Adam and Eve but what if more than one of each was created and all were given the name Adam but of the lineage of Christ we specifically get the story of the first Adam and Eve and they are the first but not the only. Hopefully that makes sense.


Here is my response:

Macrina,

It is great to hear from you and your question is very thoughtful.

That view is called "polygenesis" - that God created multiple original couples. This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.The Roman Catholic Church rejects polygenism. Genesis does not eliminate that possibility, but it does indicate that God created human beings fully human from the beginning, and suggests that the Adam and Eve must be placed in Africa, which is where Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors originated.

Some people hold the polygenesis view. They use it to explain different races and languages. Many African oral traditions feature polygenesis in their creation stories. In Bambuti mythology the Creator made three different races out of three kinds of clay: one black, one white, and one red. We find this idea in Genesis 2:7 where we are told that the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the earth. Abraham's ancestors lived where red soil washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red color.

From the beginning these skin tones were known to be indigenous to Africa. 

Red and Black Nubians
Detail from a Ippolito Rosellini painting
from the Franco-Italian Expedition to Egypt, 1828

Ha-dam (Adam) was of "the blood" suggesting a red skin tone, as with Abraham's Ainu ancestors. Adam is claimed as the ancestor of the people who gave us the Genesis creation stories.

The evidence today goes against polygenism. Genetics and linguistics have demonstrated a point of origin in Africa for modern humans and modern languages.

You might find these articles interesting:

Phoneme Study Pinpoints Origins of Modern Languages
Migrations Out of Africa
Genetic Evidence of Long-Standing African Presence in Britain
Adam and Eve: The "Blood" and the "Birther"


Best wishes,
Alice C. Linsley

Message from The Flying Rodent

The Flying Rodent wrote here:

Ms. Linsley: Congratulations--you have just destroyed the Gospel. At the core of the Gospel lies the biblical teaching that Adam is the fount of (a) the entire human race, and (b) human sin. Before being saved by Christ, sinners are "in Adam"--i.e., descended from him and under the cloud of original sin. Conversely, "in Christ" we are redeemed and restored to our Creator. Take away a literal Adam who is literally our forebear and one of the original two sinners--and you nullify the Gospel that is built on that foundation.

You want to put yourself in a position of "defending" the Bible's authenticity, and while that's a laudable desire, you have simply failed to fulfill that goal. You have read ideas into the Genesis text that simply aren't there, and have put yourself in opposition to Biblical teaching as a whole.

Dear Flying Rodent,

You give me too much credit.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is indestructible.

Related reading: Original Sin or Inheritance of Death?; Adam and Eve as Archetypal First Parents; Are Adam and Eve Real?; Answers to Students' Questions About Adam and Eve; Dating Adam: Paul H. Sheely Proposes a Solution

Dating Adam: Paul H. Sheely Proposes a Solution

Paul H. Sheely is a member of the American Scientific Affiliation and lives in Portland, Oregon.  I agree with him on many points, especially his perceptive and sound arguments against Young-Earth Creationism.  He has written, "the way creation science squares the biblical account with the historical/scientific facts is by rejecting the overwhelming consensus of the best-trained scientists in the relevant sciences and substituting in its place private interpretations of the scientific data. In addition it finds evidence in Scripture for items which Old Testament scholars do not find there, like multiple volcanoes exploding at the time of the flood." (From here.)

Adam and Anthropology: A Proposed Solution

PAUL H. SEELY

From: Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 22 (September 1970): 88-90

The perspectives of 20th century anthropology are incompatible with the acceptance of the literal historicity of Genesis 2 and 3. Anthropology's first man must be dated before Neolithic times; the literal man of Genesis 2 and 3 must be dated in Neolithic times. The legitimate use of anthropology resolves the conflict by leading to the recognition that Adam is a figurative person, who harmonizes with both anthropology and biblical theology.

Introduction

The Bible says (Luke 3:38; Romans 5:12,14'; I Corinthians 15:21, 22, 45, 57) that Adam was the first man. Literally interpreted, his culture was Neolithic: he lived no earlier than 10,000 B.C. Anthropology says the first man's culture was Paleolithic: he lived far earlier than 10,000 B.C.¹

The Christian anthropologist, James 0. Buswell III, writes:

Few authors of conservative evangelical stripe even so much as acknowledge the problem. One either has a recent Adam contemporary with the Neolithic-type culture found in Genesis 4, or else one is labeled as sliding toward liheralism.²

We propose a solution to the problem that is not liberal: Adam is not every mats; Genesis 3 is not a myth. We propose a solution that does not muzzle or frown on anthropology. We propose a solution that arises naturally when we relate anthropology to the Bible via the principles of standard hermeneutics. But first let us look more closely at the problem.

A Literal Adam Must Be Neolithic

The technique of dating Adam by dating the facets of culture that the Bible associates with him is basic in standard dating procedure. Ezra and Nehemiah are dated in the middle of the fifth century B.C. because the Bible associates them with the aehaemeoids, which archaeologists date in the middle of the fifth century B.C. Rehohuam is dated e. 925 B.C. because the Bible associates him with Sheshooq I, whom archaeologists date c. 925 B.C. The patriarchs are dated in the second millenium B.C. because the Bible associates them with a culture that archaeologists date in the second millenium B.C. Consistency demands that Adam also he dated by the culture that the Bible associates with him.

The Bible, literally interpreted, associates Adam with a Neolithic culture. So, one who wishes to use standard dating procedure is hound to date Adam in Neolithic times.

In attempting to avoid this Neolithic dating, T. C. Mitchell argued that the culture of Genesis 4 could have been Paleolithic rather than Neolithic. But finally he was forced to admit,

While must of the features might belong to a period from Upper Paleolithic to the Iron Age, two features, agriculture and animal husbandry, would seem to point to a period after the Neolithic Revolution" in Western Asia.³

Mitchell finally suggested that we wait in hope that a Neolithic-type culture might turn up in Paleolithic times. We agree with James Buswell's assessment of this possibility:

Of course archaeological discoveries have surprised us before, but from the present outlook it seems very unlikely that the Neolithic culture pattern will turn up on any horizon whose antiquity is radically different.⁴

Buswell's suggested solution is that Cain and Abel might only appear to be domesticators of plants and animals. But Moses could write of hunting (Genesis 25:27; 27:3, 30) and gathering (Exodus 16:16, 17, 21; Numbers 15:32). Couldn't he have described the hunting and gathering economy of Paleolithic times? If Genesis 2-4 is literal history, why should Moses make a Paleolithic culture look so very Neolithic?

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Christian anthropologists are in agreement that men, who were truly human, existed in Paleolithic times before a Neolithic Adam.

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Of course Cain and Abel only date Adam as Neolithic if Genesis 4 is immediately historically continuous with Genesis 2 and 3. We will show, however, that Genesis 4 is not immediately historically continuous. Nevertheless, if Genesis 2 and 3 are taken literally (Genesis 2:8, 9, 15, 19, 20; 3:2, 23) Adam is still a domesticatur of plants and animals: he still must he dated in Neolithic times.

True Men Existed Before Neolithic Times Christian anthropologists are in agreement that men, who were truly human, existed in Paleolithic times before a Neolithic Adam.5  It is quite difficult to refer to a ceature as just an animal when he buries his dead on laboriously collected mounds of flowers.⁶ In addition to the existence of fully human men in Upper Paleolithic times, there are true men in today's world who descended from Paleolithic ancestors. Their physical and cultural descent has not been interrupted. There is no place in their historical descent to insert a Neolithic Adam as their Father.

Men were in America, for example, 10,000 years before the times of a Neolithic Adam. There is no marked hiatus or discontinuity in racial type or cultural sequences in the Americas such as would exist if the Americas had been repopulated between 20,000 B.C. and the present.

Similarly, there is in the Shanidar Valley "an almost continuous sequence of human history dating from the times of the Neanderthals."⁷ Thus, Buswell writes:

I believe that Adam has to antedate the Neander thals. This seems warranted by the continuity at Shanidar as well as she American entrance date.⁸

Jan Lever adds that the Australian natives go hack to Neanderthal or even Pithecanthropus in features, and tribes like the African Bushmen and the Eskimos have probably lived very much longer in their present isolated biotype than 10,000 years.⁹


All over the world anthropologists find living men who have descended directly from Paleolithic ancestors, not from a Neolithic Adam. These men are true men. They have a culture; they have a language; they can be won to Christ. And when we look at their Paleolithic ancestors via fossils and associated artifacts, we find reason to believe that they were true men also.¹⁰ So, uninterrupted descent of various lines of true men from Paleolithic times to the present prevents us from saying that all true men descended from a Neolithic Adam.¹¹

The Solution

We propose that this Adam-anthropology dilemma may be resolved if we recognize that:

1) Genesis 2 and 3 are not literal history; the Neolithic culture there is figurative and cannot date Adam.
2) Genesis 4 is not historically immediately continuous after Genesis 3; its Neolithic culture is irrelevant for dating Adam.
3) Adam is a symbol for the actual first man.

We see Genesis 2 and 3 as purely symbolic and figurative. In the words of Albertus Pieters,

The purely symbolical view ... looks upon the story as a whole, and accepts she underlying teaching as historical, but does not accept the form of portrayal as setting forth precisely what occurred. Most of the details are then considered to be pictorial and imaginary. It is then believed that there were, in all probabilty, no actual serpent, aprons, fruit, conversation, etc. as here recorded, but that something supremely important did really happen, which is here set forth in symbolical form.¹²

We see Genesis 2 and 3 as figurative because standard hermeneutics interprets any passage as figurative that (1) is not a literal account of a miracle, but (2) is contrary to scientific evidence. (Cf. Jeremiah 48:11, 12; Ezekial 1:4-14; Daniel 7:7, 8; Zechanab 6:1; et al.) That is, a passage must he taken

---

Proposed resolution of the Adam-anthropology dilemma: 

(1) Genesis 2 and 3 not literal history, (2) Genesis 4 not historically immediately continuous after Genesis 3, (3) Adam a symbol for the actual first man.
figuratively if there is no legitimate way to take it literally.

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First, Genesis 2 and 3 are not a literal account of a miracle. At the points where supernaturalism enters the narrative (2:7, 5, 15, 19, 21, 22; 3:8, 21, 24), the language is anthropomorphic. Literal interpretation would reduce the Creator to a creature with hands, lungs, and legs. As for the talking serpent, there is no more reason to accept this literally than to accept the talking fish and animals of Revelation 5:13 literally.

Second, if Genesis 2 and 3 are taken literally, the first man must have lived in Neolithic times. This is contrary to the scientific evidence of anthropology. We must conclude that since there is no legitimate way to take Genesis 2 and 3 literally; it must be interpreted figuratively.¹³ We also see Genesis 2 and 3 as figurative because other passages that look at first like literal history are found to he figurative upon further investigation. The prima facie impression of literal history is given up when investigation shows that the true genre of the passage is figurative. (Cf. Genesis 1; Ezekial 4; Zechanab 2:1-5; Matthew 4:8; Luke 16:19-31; Revelation 21:10-27)

Investigation shows that the true genre of Genesis 2 and 3 is figurative. Its beautiful garden, magical trees, and river are found again in the figurative account of Revelation 22:1-3. Its creation of man from a clay figure and of woman from a rib cry out for figurative interpretation. Its name for the first man, "Mr. Man", also suggests a figurative account. Its cherubim, lion-eagle-man creatures, must be taken figuratively. 14 As for its literally historical rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, they' no more prove that Genesis 2 and 3 are literal history than the literally historical Arahab and Dead Sea of Ezekial 47:8 prove that the narrative in Ezekial 47 should be interpreted literally.

Standard hermeneutics forces us to give up the naive literal interpretation of Genesis 2 and 3. Genesis 2 and 3 are purely symbolic. The underlying history really happened; but the form in which that history is portrayed is purely imaginary. Genesis 2 and 3 tell us that God made the first man and this man sinned.15 The Adam of these chapters (and 5:2) is symbolic for the first man whoever, whenever, and wherever he was. The Bible gives us theological revelation. It is up to anthropology to supply the literal historical details.¹⁶

The Relation of Genesis 4 to Genesis 2 and 3

The "parabolic" or purely symbolic genre of Genesis 2 and 3 is in contrast to the rather straight-forward historical genre of Genesis 4. This contrast gives us reason to separate the narrative in Genesis 2 and 3 from Genesis 4. But the narrative in Genesis 4 seems immediately to follow the Adam and Eve of Genesis 2 and 3. 

If Genesis 4 is Neolithic, isn't the Adam of Genesis 3 Neolithic?

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The interpretation of Genesis 2-4 as consecutive literal history is a prejudice of our times.

Isn't the Adam of Genesis 3 found in Genesis 4 as the father of the Neolithic Cain, Abel, and Seth? Our proposed solution gives a "yes and no" answer to this question. We propose that the "Adam" of Genesis 4 and 5:3 is the Adam of Genesis 3 and 5:2 in name only. The Adam of Genesis 3 and 5:2 is the forefather of the Neolithic "Adam" who actually fathered Cain, Abel, and Seth. The Neolithic "Adam" of Genesis 4 and 5:3 is so unimportant in comparison to his forefather, the first man, that he is called by the name of his illustrious forefather.

This sort of slighting of the actual father is not unusual in Hebrew historiography. "Sons of Asaph" live about 500 years after the death of the famous Asaph (Ezra 3:10). Shem is "the father of all the children of Eber" (Genesis 10:21). Moab is "the father of the Moahites unto this day" (Genesis 19:7), Josiah (c. 600 B.C.) walked in all the ways of David his father (c. 1000 B.C.) (II Kings 22:2). Illustrious forefathers are often credited with the paternity of lesser descendants who are the actual fathers.

There is of course some difference between the cases just cited and the parts of Genesis 4 which speak of Adam knowing his wife and Eve naming her son Seth. But such language is only consistent; it is just the giving of a few details. Even this detailed historiography is not unique in the Bible. In Exodus 6:20 (Cf. Numbers 26:59) where "Amram took Jochebed his father's sister to wife and she bare him Aaron and Moses", there is good reason to believe that Amram and Jochebed are really Moses' distant ancestors. 17 This is a very close historiographical parallel to the knowing and naming of Genesis 4.¹⁸

Judging by Hebrew historiography Genesis 4 can be separated in time from Genesis 3. The difference in genre between the two chapters suggests that they should be separated. And, there is another reason to separate them: Genesis 4:14, 15, and 25 indicate that a number of people lived outside of Cain and Abel's immediate family. It seems very natural to take these people as descendants of a Paleolithic Adam, but not of the Neolithic "Adam". From these people (to answer an old question) Cain got his wife. (Genesis 4:17)

Finally, it is not impossible for a symbolic account (Genesis 3) to blend into a more literal, historical account (Genesis 4). At the end of the Bible, where John is shown "the things which must shortly come to pass" (literal history), the things shown are symbolic (Revelation 1:1; 4: 1ff). Biblical history both begins and ends with a symbolic garden (Genesis 2:8-17; Revelation 22:1-5).

Conclusion

It seems that the interpretation of Genesis 2-4 as consecutive literal history is a prejudice of our times,
a reading of our ideal historiography into the Hebraic historiography of the Bible. We have to give up our prejudice and accept the Bible as it is. We cannot insist that revelation from the true God would surely use the historiography of our times and culture! As for Adam, the first man, let us accept the narrative for what it is: a purely symbolic history bearing theological truth. In this way we appropriate the message of Genesis 2 and 3 without negating the truth found in anthropology.

REFERENCES

¹See "The Age of Man", Journal ASA, March, 1966; and the letter of Dr. Custanee, Journal ASA, September, 1968.
²James 0. Buswell III, "Adam and Neolithic Mao", Eternity, February, 1967, p.29
³T. C. Mitchell, "Archaeology and Genesis I-XI", Faith and Thought, Summer, 1959, p. 42
⁴Buswell, op. cit., p. 48
⁵James Murk, "Evidence for a Late Pleistocene Creation of Mao", Journal ASA, June, 1965; Smalley and Fetzer, "A Christian View of Anthropology", Modern Science and Christian Faith, rev, ad., 1950
⁶"Neandcrthal Burial", Collier's Year Book, 1969, p.'08
⁷Ralph S. Solecki, "Prehistory in Shanidar Valley, Northern Iraq", Science, January 18, 1963, p. 179
⁸Buswell, op. cit., p.50
⁹Jan Lever, Creation and Evolution (Amsterdam: Free University), p.171
¹⁰Murk, op. cit.; Smalley and Fetzer, op. cit.
¹¹Both our problem and solution are dependent upon the essential correctness of modern anthropology-which some would write off in order to protect a theological tradition. But, anthropology, like any other science, has a Biblical basis. It is commissioned by God (Genesis 1:28). It is undertaken in a world of essential uniformity (Genesis 1:14,28). It is not a delusion of sinful minds, but a product of men in God's image functioning by common grace (Genesis 9:6; Matthew 16:3). There is no reason to write off modern anthropology in order to protect orthodoxy: the loss of a traditionally literal Adam and Eve is theologically of no importance whatsoever, so long as the fall of man is retained.
¹²Albertus Pieters, Notes on Genesis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), p.95
¹³1t once was traditional to interpret the parts of the Bible literally that said the earth did not move, but the sun did. The trained scientist, however, said the earth moved around a stationary sun. The theologian looked and looked but could not see the earth move; he could see the sun move. So, he clung for awhile to traditional interpretation. When the scientific facts became widely known, the theologian took those same parts of the Bible figuratively. Today it is traditional in Evangelical circles to take Genesis 2 and 3 literally. But the trained anthropologist says a Neolithic first man is impossible. The theologian looks and looks, but all he sees in anthropology is a "box of bones". When the scientific facts of anthropology become common knowledge, however, Evangelicals will, no doubt, take Genesis 2 and 3 figuratively.
¹⁴c. f. Bernard Ramm, "Science vs Theology-the Battle Isn't Over Yet", Eternity, October, 1965; Pieters, op cit.
¹⁵Fnr a fuller discussion of the theological content of Genesis 2 and 3 see Helmut Thielieke, How the World Began (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961)
¹⁶Exeept for the fact that Adam was the first sinner, the New Testament writers never depend upon the literal historicity of Genesis 2 and 3. As with Jesus' parables, the moral points made are valid regardless of the literal historicity of the story.
¹⁷Keil and Delitzseh, Biblical Commentary an the Old Testa ment, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), p.420
¹⁸Similarly in Genesis 46:18 we see that the great grandsons of Zilpab are included among "these she bare unto Jacob." Also in Isaiah 51:2 we read that Israel should look back over 1200 years to "Abraham your father and to Sarah who bare you."

Related reading:  Answers to Students' Questions About Adam and Eve; Are Adam and Eve Real or Meta-Historical?; Rolland D. McCune's Reaction and Rebuttal of Sheely; Someone Explain What Paul Sheely is Talking About