The Genalogical Adam and Eve– Part Nine

The Genalogical Adam and Eve– Part Nine November 6, 2021

Q. One of the ideas which is flagged as problematic throughout your book is ‘polygenesis’. Now I understand the problems with a certain view of that, which led to racist speculations about Ham, Shem etc. as the origins of different races, but I don’t see any problem with the notion of polygenesis if by that we mean that human beings were created in his image by God in various places on earth both inside and outside Eden. Why is this notion inherently problematic if it is? I raise this question because on a close reading of Genesis 1-11 there are indeed human beings outside Eden with whom the children of Eve mate etc. as you yourself have pointed out and certainly Genesis 1 affirms that all created human beings are in God’s image.

A. It all depends on what we mean by the term “polygenesis,” the “image of God”, and “human.” Let me define two terms. Pre-Adamites are people created before Adam and Eve. Co-Adamites are people in the present day that do not descend from Adam and Eve. The problem is any version of polygenesis that includes co-Adamites.

In contrast, the text of Scripture itself gives very strong hints of people outside the Garden in the distant past. From Cain’s wife to Nephilim, readers have been wondering for thousands of years about the possibility of pre-Adamites. This is part of the Genesis tradition. But the existence of co-Adamites was soundly rejected by several branches of the Church. The history of interpretation helps sort this out a great deal.

For most traditions in the Church, pre-Adamites are not an acceptable explanation for co-Adamites. These supposed Co-Adamites are rejected as a heretical myth.  Historically, polygenesis was a theory proposed to explain co-Adamites. The challenge wasn’t evolution. It was, rather, the discovery of the Americas. The early Church fathers had no difficulty with the Earth being a globe, but they unanimously rejected the possibility of people living on the other side of the globe. Then Columbus discovered that antipodeans were real. What were we to make of them?

La Peyrere proposed that the First Peoples in the Americas did not descend from Adam and Eve. They were co-Adamites. Where did they come from? God created pre-Adamites, people before Adam and Eve, and this is where co-Adamites come from. His case is distinctly exegetical, relying on sequential reading of Genesis 1 and 2, along with a remarkably straightforward reading of Romans 5:12-14. Ironically relying on Romans 5:12-14 too, The Church rejected La Peyrere’s polygenesis by rejecting the first premise. The Church insisted that the first peoples were, in fact, descendants of Adam and Eve. This historical context makes clear that the monogenesis doctrine intends to reject co-Adamites in the present day. Questions about the distant past are wide open.

So what does science tell us?  The way I see it, my book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve shows how the Church’s rejection of co-Adamites  as still extant is totally and completely vindicated. In the present day, we all do descend from Adam and Eve.


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