[_ Old Earth _] Adam and Eve, the first two humans?

[Imagican]

I believe that it is obvious through the anthropologic evidence and the Bible itself that Adam and Eve were not the first two humans on this planet. For the lack of understand or any contrary evidence, the Genesis story of creation as written by Moses was not completely understood by him. For this reason the teachings of Moses have passed through the generations to the present and many are not even willing to even consider the possibility that there were many others created before Adam.

It plainly states in the first chapter of Genesis that when God created men and women that they were instructed to 'be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth'. I don't ever remember reading that this command was given to Adam or Eve.

In the first chapter of Genesis it says that that mankind was given 'every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.' If you will note: it specifically states that EVERY TREE and UPON THE FACE OF ALL THE EARTH. Now, honestly don't you already see what it says? It says NOTHING about not being able to eat from a specific tree in a specific place and offers the fruit on the trees on the face of all the earth. Now why would God offer the fruit on trees all over the planet to two people? And wouldn't it be a complete contradiction to tell me that I can partake of the fruit of EVERY TREE and then say, "Oh, and by the way, there are a couple of trees that you can't eat from"?

Then, Chapter two states that, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and ALL the hosts of them." Note: it states that ALL THE HOSTS OF THEM, (heaven and earth). So the indication is that after EVERYTHING on and in the planet were created that God at this point created Adam.

As further proof, it states that, 'before there was a man to till the field'. Isn't it obvious that God is refereing to a particular man? A farmer? It doesn't say before there were men on this planet, it simply states that before there were plants of the field and man to till them.

We know that man was a nomadic gatherer long before he became a farmer with the knowledge of cultivation.

Also, in the second chapter it makes a distinction between simple creation of man and creating in man 'a living soul'.

 

[Jimbob]

Unfortunately, I have heard this very justification used by racists to say that Aryans (or whoever) were descended from Adam and Eve and thus were superior to those descended from other people.

Note that I didn't mean that as an ad hominem or anything, just an observation.

 

[Imagican]

Trust me JimBob, this has absolutely nothing to do with my reasoning. As a matter of fact, If what I offer is true, then Adam and Eve would have been anything but Arians. They would have been God's original 'chosen people', eventually becoming Hebrews. For if you start with them and then move on to Abraham, Noah and then Moses, you see that this could possibly explain the difference between Jew and Gentile.

 

[Jimbob]

I never said it did have anything to do with your reasoning.

 

[Imagican]

Jimbob,

I did visit the website that you offered the link to in your first post on this thread. Interesting.

I don't deny creation though. What I offer is the link that brings both creation and evolution together.

I am a firm believer in Creation. I just don't believe that creation was accomplished in the exact way that most Christians have been led to believe.

The first thread that I offered was only the beginning of understanding. There is much MUCH more to back up what I have offered. I have only touched on the evidence so far. It gets much deeper and much more obvious as the words of the Bible further give evidence that what I have offered is true.

 

[maranatha_man]

Nah. I've never been able to take the idea that the entire human race came from just one original breeding couple.

The "Adam & Eve" characters, referred to in Genesis, were clay figurines, known as "golem", which were "formed from the duct of the ground" etc... ;-)

 

[cubedbee]

Trust me JimBob, this has absolutely nothing to do with my reasoning. As a matter of fact, If what I offer is true, then Adam and Eve would have been anything but Arians. They would have been God's original 'chosen people', eventually becoming Hebrews. For if you start with them and then move on to Abraham, Noah and then Moses, you see that this could possibly explain the difference between Jew and Gentile.

Do you also believe that God spared other people than Noah's family in the Flood? Because if you accept that the Biblical account is true and they were the only survivors, then that means all Jews and Gentiles can trace their ancestry back to Noah, and therefore back to Adam. Hence, your hypothetical pre-Adamite people could not account for differences between Jews and Gentiles.

 

[maranatha_man]

Nah. I've never been able to take the idea that the entire human race came from just one original breeding couple.

The "Adam & Eve" characters, referred to in Genesis, were clay figurines, known as "golem", which were "formed from the dust of the ground" etc... ;-)

 

[Jimbob]

If there really was just one man and woman, then there wouldn't be enough genetic diversity to create the entire human race, inbreeding would kill off the species.

Not to mention that every disease and parasite that are specific to humans would have needed human hosts to survive, so Adam and Eve must have been the sickest people alive if they were host to all those diseases at once.

Those are just a few problems with the idea that the entire human race is descended from two people.

 

[Vanaka]

eh?this is quite simple to awnser really,
:roll:

anyway,wow....it says Man and Woman,not Men and Women,if you know grammer it translaites as SINGULAR NOUNS,not PLURAL NOUNS,

and now for bible lessons... :roll:

before flood:

• poepled lived to a thousand or so then died
  
  they lived in luxury due to better inviroment

after flood

• poeple not living so long
  
  not so good an inviroment

oh and about the gene pool thing,who ever said the gene pool then was as small as it is now..hmmmmm?

 

[Jimbob]

Um.....

If there are only two people, then that's the extent of the gene pool.

 

[cubedbee]

I don't know that you understand the concept of a gene pool correctly.

I don't know how much you know about genetics, so excuse me if I say things you know.

Genes are located on chromosomes, and human has two copies of every chromosome. For any particular gene, there are multiple varieties that exist in a population, called alleles. For each gene you can either have the same allelle on each chromosome, homozygous, or you can have two different alleles, heterozygous. The gene pool refers to the total number of alleles in a population.

So, given all of this, you can see that even for a tiny population of 2, the gene pool can be fairly large When considering a single gene, the 2 people can contain anywhere from 1 allelle to 4 allelles. So, in the best case scenario (which God would be capabable of causing) Adam and Eve could have 4 alleles for every gene.

Is this as big as the current human gene pool? I'm not sure, so maybe one of our biologists can comment. I know that there are many genes that only have two alleles, and I know of at least one gene, the one for blood type, that has three alleles. I don't how many, if any, have more than 4 alleles.

 

[Quath]

From HolySmoke:

HLA-DRB1 - one gene in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex - which has 59 alleles (Ayala, et al., 1993, 78). If all humans descended from Adam and Eve, and no new alleles ever arose though mutation, the current human population would have at most only 4 alleles at this locus (two from Adam, two from Eve).

Quath

 

[Jimbob]

Beat me to it

 

[cubedbee]

From HolySmoke:

HLA-DRB1 - one gene in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex - which has 59 alleles (Ayala, et al., 1993, 78). If all humans descended from Adam and Eve, and no new alleles ever arose though mutation, the current human population would have at most only 4 alleles at this locus (two from Adam, two from Eve).

Quath

Interesting. I googled this, and one of the first pages I found was this.

The human DRB1 alleles can be divided into groups (allelic lineages); most of these lineages have diverged from each other before the separation of Homo and Pan. Alleles within such a lineage, however, appear to be, on average, 250,000 years old, implying that the vast majority (greater than 90%) of the more than 135 contemporary human DRB1 alleles have been generated after the separation of Homo and Pan. The coalescence time of alleles within allelic lineages indicates that the effective population size (Ne) for early hominids (over the last 1 Myr) was approximately 104 individuals, similar to estimates based on other nuclear loci and mitochondrial DMA.

So, given that the gene with the most alleles in the human genome only required a population of 100 people, and given that a population of 100 could easily be produced from a single couple with abudant resources in 4 generations, it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that God could guide these first 4 generations at the genetic level, not allowing deletrious alleles to spread and causing mutations to create the needed alleles for those genes with more than four.

 

[Imagican]

Trust me JimBob, this has absolutely nothing to do with my reasoning. As a matter of fact, If what I offer is true, then Adam and Eve would have been anything but Arians. They would have been God's original 'chosen people', eventually becoming Hebrews. For if you start with them and then move on to Abraham, Noah and then Moses, you see that this could possibly explain the difference between Jew and Gentile.

Do you also believe that God spared other people than Noah's family in the Flood? Because if you accept that the Biblical account is true and they were the only survivors, then that means all Jews and Gentiles can trace their ancestry back to Noah, and therefore back to Adam. Hence, your hypothetical pre-Adamite people could not account for differences between Jews and Gentiles.

Absolutely not. I hadn't planned to jump that far ahead yet, but since you bring it up.......... The Bible states that at the time of Noah that man's heart had become evil continually. All except one man, Noah, who was a just man, and PERFECT in his GENERATIONS. I don't believe I even need to explain this to anyone that can read, but I will anyway. Obviously it means that Noah could trace his lineage back to Adam and Eve without any other bloodlines getting in the way. Jus as God had threatened to destroy the Hebrews and start over with just one pure-blooded Hebrew, (Moses), He did the same thing with Noah and his family.

I also do not believe that the flood was world-wide. There was no need for a 'world-wide flood. The only regions that need be destroyed were those within the bounds of the distribution of the descendants of Adam and Eve. It is doubtful that they had spread out more than a few thousand square miles at the time of the flood, probably much less.

And I believe that my pre-Adamite theory, (as you have so appropriately named it), is exactly what is needed to account for Jew and Gentile. The descendants of Adam and Eve were to become God's chosen while the first creation would be what would later be called Gentiles.

In addition to what I've already stated, let's return to the time of Noah. It says that the Son's of God, (descendants of Adam and Eve), saw the daughters of men, (first creation), and began to intermingle their blood-lines. This is when their hearts became evil continually and God limited their life-spans to 120 years.

When you take into consideration all the Bible states concerning keeping Israel separate in their blood-lines, this would be a perfect example of WHY this should be done. When the Jews went outside their blood-lines, they became subseptable to the beliefs and customs of others. Since the first creation probably had no actual relationship with God Himself, they, by necessity, were to create their own Gods. By intermingling, the second creation would undoubtably eventual begin to accept their Gods and customs, thereby angering God through their spiritual adultery, to the point of their destruction.

 

[Imagican]

A little more food for thought..................

Adam and Eve had two children in the beginning, Cain first, then Abel. Once again we have the same situation: man was a nomadic gather in the beginning, (plenty of food and water=no need for cultivation). Cain was a farmer and his brother a sheppard. These are two discoveries that took mellinia in man's history to evolve. Yet here we have it, sheppard and farmer.

Cain rose up and killed his brother. At this time it states that God placed a mark on Cain so that everyone that saw him would know what Cain had done. Cain lamented to the Lord that this was more than he could bear, for everyone that would see him would kill him for his misconduct. I ask this: WHO? Who were these people that didn't already know what he had done? Who, other than Adam and Eve were there that would NOT know what Cain had done?

Cain then went to the land of Nod where he and his wife had a child and then BUILT A CITY. Now, for what could three people possibly need a city for? And, there is absolutely NO indication that Adam and Eve had ANY other children at this point. I know that many will insist that Cain left his mother and father and took with him a sister as his wife. Nonsense. There is absolutely NO indication of this. And, even if this were a reasonable speculation, would you allow your murderous son to take your daughter with him into exile? Come on folks. Cain's wife came from somewhere between Eden and the land of Nod, but most likely from the land of Nod itself. And city? Come on. This obvioulsy wasn't the first city or it wouldn't have even been called that. My belief is that there were already major civilizations with community groups, (cities). Just by giving other places other names is an indication that there were already people there. How else would they have gotten their names? Who named the town or city that you live in? Exactly, SOMEONE that lived there.

Also, if Adam and Eve were the first and only two people created in the beginning and they actually KNEW God, how could you possibly begin to explain all the other religions that don't even know of this SAME GOD? Do you honestly believe that the knowledge of God could have been lost to the descendants of Adam and Eve? No way. The answer is that here were already Gods created by those of the first creation.

Certain things are totally necessary to the survival of man. Food, shelter, etc....... I believe that spirituality is one of these things. Regardless of how you choose to fulfill this need, it is there no matter what. Even though the first creation didn't actually KNOW God, they were inherently compelled to fill their spiritual needs and therefore did this by creating their own Gods. Sun, rain, thunder, lightning, etc.............. The things that had the most impact upon their lives were the things that they first began to worship. This is probably the main reason that God created Adam to start with. To have someone acknoweledge his divine nature. Adam KNEW God personally. Instead of worshipping that which God had created, at this point, a man, Adam, would worship God AS Creator instead of His creations.

 

[Lewis]

Moses wrote only the very important parts of that story, Adam and Eve had more children, and inbreeding was the norm, after man's fall' slowly inbreeding became not the norm because of mans gradual downward spiral, behind the fall. Adam lived 930 years enough time to make many children. And also the Bible does not say what age Cain and Abel were when that murder took place.

 

[Jimbob]

If God limited the human lifespan to 120 years, then how do you explain this woman: http://www.wowzone.com/calment.htm ?

 

[Lewis]

If God limited the human lifespan to 120 years, then how do you explain this woman:

It was a gradual slide down, God wanted His earth populated. Genesis 1: 28 God said be fruitful and multiply. And Genesis 9:1 Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. God wanted His earth populated, and that is another one of the reasons that humans lived longer then. By the time it had got up to the time of Moses, our life span was going down, and it continued until we are where we are at today. The decay kept getting greater as a result of the fall. And in today's time we have leveled off. And you must remember that from the time of Cain and Able, to the time of Moses who lived to be 120 is a great amount of time, like 2000 years or more.

And as for that women, that happens from time to time, but they never live to far over 120 and I mean none of them.