Adam and the Genome– Part Three

Adam and the Genome– Part Three April 19, 2017

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The heart of the genomics and genetic case against an historical Adam and Eve seems to be that human beings today descend from an original group of about 10,000 hominids. But this is hardly a problem for those who realize that the Bible is not the story of the whole human race, it is the story of God’s chosen people who began somewhere in the Middle East, apparently in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Bible only mentions other races of people insofar as they come in contact with God’s chosen people, for instance, already near the outset of Genesis, when we hear about Cain and Abel having wives, and Cain having to go off to the land of Nod, but with a protective sign so other humans don’t kill him.

Furthermore, most Evangelical Bible interpreters also do not think that Gen. 6-9 is recounting a worldwide flood that wiped out everyone. It was a massive regional flood that wiped out many of Noah’s contemporaries in the ANE, as also recorded in Babylonian Genesis and elsewhere. In other words, modern genetic theory and genomes need have no bearing at all on what the Bible says about Adam and Eve unless one falsely assumes that the story is about the first two human beings from whom all the rest descended. But this is not what the story claims. Nor is it what for example Paul is talking about in Rom. 5.12-21. He is saying that the first and the last Adam’s were heads of a whole group of people, such that their actions affected all those who were under the influence of Adam, and all those who were ‘in Christ’. Adam was the representative head of all hominids and his actions affected them all. Similarly, Christ is the representative head of all those who are in Christ.


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