There is a growing discussion on the findings of science and theological interpretations of Adam and Eve.

A New Direction?

Recently, the venerable magazine Christianity Today had a remarkable article called The Search For the Historical Adam. Written by Richard Ostling, it reflects a growing discussion in the Christian community on the findings of science and its impact on theological interpretations of Adam and Eve.

Ostling notes that this simmering issue has come to a head with the popularity of Francis Collins’ The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006), a book in which the author voices a firm belief in the God of the Bible and an ancient evolutionary history of the earth at the same time. Ostling writes:

Instead of the traditional belief in the specially created man and woman of Eden who were biologically different from all other creatures, Collins mused, might Genesis be presenting "a poetic and powerful allegory" about God endowing humanity with a spiritual and moral nature? "Both options are intellectually tenable," he concluded.

Extra-Biblical Evidence
Since the 1970s when the first DNA hybridization tests were conducted by geneticists, it has struck researchers as peculiar that the genetic similarities between humans and their nearest neighbors, the chimpanzees were so great. It has only been recently with the sequencing of both the modern human and chimpanzee genomes that such similarities now stand in sharp relief. These have touched off a firestorm of debate between members of both scientific and theological communities, with heated exchanges between folks such as Dennis Venema of BioLogos and Fazale Rana of Reasons to Believe.

Equally problematic, however, is the evidence housed within the modern human genome, itself. Research has demonstrated that the modern human population likely was never less than several thousand people at any time in its past (Venema, 2010). This is a conclusion theorized previously by other writers using mathematical models (Harpending, Sherry, Rogers, & Stoneking, 1993). Compounding this is the fact that research into the Neandertal genome by Richard Green and colleagues strongly suggest that there was genetic mixing between early modern humans and late surviving Neandertals (Green et al., 2010), blurring the species line between the two forms (if indeed they are separate species at all) and potentially increasing the size of the original effective population.

The fossil record for the origins of modern humans also gives no comfort for those wishing to see an original pair of humans. The earliest evidence of modern humans is between 160 and 170 thousand years ago at the site of Herto, in North Africa, at the Levantine site of Mount Carmel at 110,000 years ago, and several South African sites at around 100,000. Furthermore, these are not isolated finds. In all, there are several hundred complete crania and remains of several thousand individuals all dating well before 15,000 years ago. Clearly, there were many modern humans on the landscape during the time in which the Garden of Eden story is said to have taken place. One is left wondering about Paul Marston’s (2007) question that, when Cain built his city, who was he building it for?

Given that there is virtually no scientific support for a single pair of humans at the beginning of time (the recent-earth creation model), one is left with two options: the first one is to incorporate the Edenic pair into a context involving a world outside the Middle East.   Such a context might involve the late Neolithic period in which God singled out a pair of humans to fulfill His covenantal plan (e.g. Hurd, 2003; Young, 1995). The problem, here, as Young points out, is that the soul status of the non-Adamites is left in question, since they are not part of the covenant. Would God really create modern humans without souls, leaving them little better than animals?

The other option is to interpret the Genesis account of Adam and Eve in a figurative way, in which they become symbols of depicting our fall from the will of God and sinful nature (e.g. Enns, n.d.; Lamoureux, 2008; Seely, 1970), an idea that, while satisfying the epistemic arguments, separates the nature of sin from the act of original sin, itself, calling into question the necessity of salvation in the form of Jesus Christ.

Clearly this is a question that is going to require much prayer and investigation in the coming years as Christians grapple with the burgeoning genetic and palaeontological evidence of modern human origins and how it can be incorporated into the Biblical teaching of Adam and Eve. That a magazine such as Christianity Today has raised it suggests that it will crosscut many different denominations and be a fruitful topic for some time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, F. S. (2006). The language of God: A scientist presents evidence for belief: Free Press.

Enns, P. (n.d.). When was Genesis Written and Why Does it Matter?: A brief historical study. Retrieved June 30, 2011, from http://biologos.org/uploads/resources/enns_scholarly_essay3.pdf

Green, R. E., Krause, J., Briggs, A. W., Maricic, T., Stenzel, U., Kircher, M., et al. (2010). A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome. Science, 328(5979), 710-722.

Harpending, H. C., Sherry, S. T., Rogers, A. R., & Stoneking, M. (1993). The Genetic Structure of Ancient Human Populations. Current Anthropology, 34(4), 483-496.

Hurd, J. P. (2003). Hominids in the Garden? In K. Miller (Ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (pp. 208-233). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Lamoureux, D. O. (2008). Evolutionary creation: A Christian approach to evolution. Retrieved June 30, 2011, from http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Lamoureux_Scholarly_Essay.pdf

Marston, P. (2007). Understanding the Biblical Creation Passages. Leyland, England: Lifesway.

Seely, P. H. (1970). Adam and Anthropology: A Proposed Solution. Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, 22, 88-90.

Venema, D. R. (2010). Genesis and the genome: genomics evidence for humanñape common ancestry and ancestral hominid population sizes. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 62(3), 166-178.

Young, D. A. (1995). The antiquity and the unity of the human race revisited. Christian Scholar's Review, 24, 380-396.