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Part II of a Review of John H. Walton's The Lost World of Adam and Eve

In Part I I discussed some important theological, biblical, and ethical reasons for holding that man was physically, specially created, male and female, by God, as held by traditional interpretations of Genesis 1-2. There I defined what I called the "ensoulment view" of human evolution and the origin of the image of God in man. In this section I will relate John H. Walton's views in The Lost World of Adam and Eve to the considerations already given. Then I will lay out some more biblical evidence for the traditional view of the historical Adam and Eve. In Part III I will show how Walton responds to most of this biblical evidence (he does not actually respond to Jesus' words about marriage), and I will evaluate his arguments that the Bible does not teach the de novo creation of Adam and Eve.

Walton treats the ensoulment view as completely theologically orthodox and faithful to Scripture

John H. Walton's view on pure ensoulment (as I defined the term in Part I) has apparently changed between The Lost World of Genesis One (TLWOG1) and The Lost World of Adam and Eve (TLWOA&E). In the former, he said,

Whatever evolutionary processes led to the development of animal life, primates, and even prehuman hominids, my theological convictions lead me to posit substantive discontinuity between that process and the creation of the historical Adam and Eve. Rather than cause-and-effect continuity, there is material and spiritual discontinuity, though it remains difficult to articulate how God accomplished this. p. 139 (emphasis added)

This is the only endorsement that I have found anywhere in the two books of God's bringing about material discontinuity anywhere (after an initial moment of creation ex nihilo) in the creation of the world or the creatures, and I was much surprised to see it. Given that TLWOA&E was being touted already far and wide as removing all possibility of conflict between the "consensus of science" concerning human evolution and biblical theology, I wondered if Walton would continue to maintain a theological commitment to this material discontinuity in the second book. In fact, he does not.

Chapter 21 in TLWOA&E is entitled, "Humans could be viewed as distinct creatures and a special creation of God even if there was material continuity." So much for a theological requirement of material discontinuity. In TLWOA&E Walton states repeatedly that the imago dei is immaterial rather than material. Here (besides the title of Chapter 21) are multiple citations:

[T]he image of God is a gift of God, not neurologically or materially defined. (p. 42)
It is evident in all of these that the image of God is also an element of function (not material) that pertains to all people... (p. 89).
"Human distinctiveness is spiritual" section header, (p. 192)
The image of God provides yet another piece of evidence from the biblical text concerning the spiritual discontinuity that is characteristic of humans in contradistinction to other creatures. The four categories for understanding the image of God presented above [function, identity, substitution, relationship] are not mutually exclusive... (p. 196 emphasis added)
I believe that the image of God is something that is a direct, spiritually defined gift of God to humans. For those who believe that humans are biologically a product of change over time through common descent, the image of God would be given by God to humans at a particular time in that history. It would not be detectable in the fossil record or in the genome. (p. 194 emphasis added)
In his interview on TLWOA&E he says that the image of God is "not something that you inherit" (around minute 1:52)

These quotations constitute a fairly clear endorsement of the position that an ensoulment view would be compatible with a full affirmation of the image of God in man, since the image of God in man is strictly immaterial and indetectable by scientific means.

Walton does not say whether he personally believes in biological evolution of man, though he does say that the scientific evidence for biological continuity of man with non-human ancestors is "compelling and would be readily accepted" were it not for some people's beliefs about the teaching of the Bible (p. 182). As mentioned in the previous post, if the scientific evidence is "compelling," and if there is no theological reason to hold out for special material creation of man, it's difficult to see why he would not adopt a theistic evolution (cum ensoulment) view himself, but he is not fully clear on this.

It should be noted that when Walton says things like "[T]he analysis of the relationship of Genesis 1 and 2 has raised the possibility that the Adam and Eve account in Genesis 2 could have come after an en masse creation of humanity in Genesis 1 (chap. 7), though Adam and Eve should be considered as having been included in that group" (p. 183), the phrase "en masse creation of humanity" does not appear to mean material special creation. "Creation" (of man) is apparently compatible in Walton's view with the creation only of an immaterial imago dei. This would fit extremely well with what I have discussed and demonstrated at length--namely, that the creation week in Genesis 1 is not thought by Walton to be a description, even a vague description, of God's material creation or material shaping and altering of the world. Rather, it refers strictly to "functional creation"--invisible decrees that take place after the world is already materially in place and working. If the image of God is entirely spiritual and not scientifically detectable, and if the week of Genesis 1 is all supposed to be about God's doing invisible things, then the conferring of the image of God in Genesis 1 on day six of the week should be regarded as immaterial as well, even when referred to as "creation."

Walton does not address any of the metaphysical or ethical problems that arise from a sharp division between man's material nature, which could have evolved in its entirety, and a purely spiritual imago dei.

Walton holds that man was mortal before the fall

At first when I read Walton's interview with Christianity Today on Adam and Eve, I was very baffled. (The interview at CT is now behind a paywall but was not behind a paywall when I first accessed it. If someone wants an exact quote to support what I say when I refer to it, feel free to ask.) What did he mean by saying in that interview both that man was mortal before the fall and also that the tree of life was a remedy or antidote to death? He also says that the tree of life was an antidote to death for man, who was naturally mortal, in the interview on TLWOA&E (1:33).

He describes this theory that the tree of life was an antidote to human death in the earlier book as follows (TLWOG1, p. 100).

All of this indicates clearly that death did exist in the pre-Fall world--even though humans were not subject to it. But there is more. Human resistance to death was not the result of immortal bodies. The text indicates that we are formed from the dust of the earth, a statement of our mortality....No, the reason we were not subject to death was because an antidote had been provided to our natural mortality through the mechanism of the tree of life in the garden. When God specified the punishment for disobedience, he said that when they ate, they would be doomed to death...That punishment was carried out by banishing them from the garden and blocking access to the tree of life...Without access to the tree of life, humans were doomed to the natural mortality of their bodies and were therefore doomed to die. And so it was that death came through sin. (TLWOG1 pp. 100-101)

What does "humans were not subject to it" (death) mean there?

A conundrum arises from the contingency of this "antidote." Walton takes the Garden of Eden to have been a literal place here on earth. Both in the interview on TLWOA&E (minute 57 and 1:01) and in TLWOA&E itself (p. 126) Walton speculates on where, precisely, the Garden might have been physically located.

The theory that man was naturally mortal but was in some sense not subject to death prior to the fall because of the tree of life as an antidote is thus apparently intended to have some sort of literal, physical content, though we learn in TLWA&E that Walton is entirely open to the idea that it wasn't actually a tree. (pp. 124-125) Anyway, on the view Walton is advocating, this "something" of life was apparently actually located in the Garden of Eden and was an antidote to man's natural mortality. Man was denied access to it as a result of the fall, dooming all men to die. So anyone who couldn't get access to it, presumably, would die--of illness, accident, or age--since man was naturally mortal. This raises the question of whether there was anyone who lacked that necessary access.

I was even more baffled when, in TLWOA&E, I discovered that Walton states explicitly that man was subject to animal predation prior to the fall (pp. 53, 159-160)! Now, even if the time period after man existed in the image of God and before the fall is fairly short, if man is subject to animal predation, how could the existence of a "remedy" located in a specific garden guarantee that no human death would take place before the fall, so that man would be "not subject to" death prior to the fall? This is all the more confusing given that Walton states in multiple places that there could have been other humans besides Adam before the fall (see the above reference to en masse creation)--so many that there would be no conflict with the statements of some scientists about a minimal "bottleneck" of thousands in human evolutionary history. (TLWA&E pp. 64, 183, 181-189). In the interview on TLWOA&E (1:04 and following) Walton disclaims as entirely beyond his competence the question of whether man might have evolved in Africa and later migrated to the Middle East, where the garden was located and where the fall took place. In other words, he at least treats this as a possibility and compatible with his theories.

With all those people running around, being mortal and subject to animal predation (even aside from illness, accident, etc.), how could we be at all sure that there was no actual human death before the fall? If a man is completely devoured by a saber-toothed tiger, the question of his access to the tree of life in the Garden of Eden becomes a moot point! And if man perhaps originally came into existence in the image of God in Africa, naturally mortal, and the remedy for death was located in the Middle East...well, obviously there would have been some human death before reaching the "remedy." If one tries to maintain that there were many men before the fall, that man was naturally mortal, that man needed the tree of life as an antidote to death, but that in fact no human death took place before the fall, this seems empirically implausible and dependent on many contingent factors. (No one was actually killed by wild animals, no one was too far away to get to the tree of life in time, and so forth.) So was this actually Walton's view? I was puzzled.

I believe that I have found the explanation of this conundrum: I now have concluded that Walton is not saying that no human death took place before the fall. He is saying only that not all humans were doomed to die before the fall. In particular, Adam and Eve were not individually doomed to die before the fall, because they were assigned as "priests" in the Garden of Eden (TLWOA&E, chapter 12) and hence would have had full access to the "tree" (or whatever it was) that granted life and was located in the Garden. The clearest statement of this is on p. 159:

If we consider the model in which there were humans either preceding Adam and Eve or contemporary with Adam and Eve, we need to contemplate their vulnerability to suffering and death. If death and suffering can be feasibly inherent in a non-ordered world and be retained in a partially ordered world, then any pre-fall human population would be subject to them...In this scenario we would expect to find predation, animal death, human death, and violent behavior....In response to people who inquire as to why God would create such a world where there is predation, suffering and death, and how that could be called "good," I would say we have to understand how all the pieces fit together. "Good" pertained to the order that was being formed in the midst of non-order. The non-order, then, was not good, though not evil either, but the plan for continued ordering involved a process by which all non-order would eventually be resolved. (pp. 159-160) (bold is my emphasis)

Here Walton says explicitly that in the situation he describes prior to the fall we would expect actually to find human death.

Another confirming statement is on p. 74: "Paul is saying only that all of us are subject to death because of sin: sin cost us the solution to mortality, and so we are trapped in our mortality." (emphasis mine)

In the interview with CT, Walton affirms, in response to a question, that the only humans who had access to the tree of life were Adam and Eve.

On p. 154 he implies that the earliest human beings, before the fall, were killing each other:

After all, anthropological evidence for violence in the earliest populations deemed human would indicate that there never was a time when sinful (= at least personal evil) behavior was not present.

This leads into Walton's strained notion that these earliest populations were not "held accountable" for acts that would otherwise be regarded as sins, which I will explore more in the discussion of sex. In any event, the picture here seems to be one in which at least some people in the image of God actually were dying and being killed before the fall.

We can therefore fit all the pieces together by concluding that Walton does not think that there had to be zero human death before the fall but only that there was to some degree a remedy for death available before the fall. This may have been available only to Adam and Eve. Walton's assertions can be made consistent if we take it that, on the view he is promoting as orthodox, there would have been some human death before the fall. In fact, I cannot see any other way to make his statements consistent.

I have already given arguments against this in Part I. It is an extremely strained interpretation of Paul's theology of the connection between human death and sin to say that only some humans were spared from death prior to the fall and that Paul means only that after the fall all humans were doomed to die. It is also incompatible with the natural sense of the horror and wrongness of human death. It is also incompatible with the idea that God's original plan for man was that man be embodied (death being the contrary-to-design separation of the body from the spirit).

The Scriptural evidence that Adam and Eve were literally the first humans, which I will explore more below and in Part III, is relevant here as well. If they were the first and only humans before the fall and did not die before the fall, then de facto there was no human death before the fall. The view that human death is part of the original creation as made and intended by God is impossible to support on textual evidence, and in fact the biblical text argues strongly against it.

Walton's views do not support a robust notion of God's natural design plan for human sex

It is surprising that Walton has relatively little to say in the two books I have reviewed or in the interviews on them about marriage and God's original intent for it. When I got my copy of TLWOA&E I looked immediately for his discussion of Jesus' words, quoted in Part I, concerning God's setting up marriage with one man and one woman "in the beginning." At first I could find nothing. The index of Scripture passages does not show any reference to these verses. Then, as I was carefully reading any footnotes that seemed like they might be useful, I found what appears to be the only reference to Jesus' words in either book.

In the main text leading up to this footnote, Walton says,

We can now see that Genesis 2:24 makes more of a statement than we had envisioned. Becoming one flesh is not just a reference to the sexual act. The sexual act may be the one that rejoins them, but it is the rejoining that is the focus. When Man and Woman become one flesh, they are returning to their original state. (p. 81)

The footnote that follows this is rather surprising, considering the text it follows:

This also makes much better sense of Matthew 19:5-6//Mark 10:7-8....Ontology is more central to this discussion than sex is. Genesis 2:24 may therefore have less to say about the institution of marriage and the nature of marriage than has been commonly thought. (p. 220 note 16 My emphasis.)

Having just lyrically declared that man and woman's becoming one flesh "returns them to their original state," Walton proceeds to insinuate that Genesis 2:24 ("For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh") has "less to say about the institution of marriage and the nature of marriage than has been commonly thought." This is quite astonishing, especially since he alludes in the footnote to the verses in which Jesus explicitly applies this very verse in Genesis to the question of divorce and the nature of marriage!

Walton holds that the "forming" account of Adam in Genesis 2 is an "archetypal" account of Adam's forming which is compatible with Adam's being born from a woman (p. 76). He further holds that the forming account of Eve refers to a dream-vision that Adam had in which God made a revelation about Eve to Adam. It does not actually tell us that God materially made the male first and then the woman physically from the male (pp. 79-80). I will have more to say about Walton's views and arguments about these forming accounts in Part III. On Walton's view, Eve could have evolved physically; the text makes "no claim about material origins" (p. 80).

It is therefore quite difficult to say what Walton means by "returning to their original state" in marriage, since he does not believe that woman physically came from man. Is this "original state" supposed to mean Adam and Eve's well-suitedness in the garden as partners, or what? Nor can the "original state" mean the original male-female pairing, since Walton holds that Adam and Eve might have been part of an "en masse creation" which would have included other male-female pairings.

One might think that some clue to this would come from what Walton thinks God revealed to Adam about Eve in the vision, but that is little help. When asked directly in the interview what God revealed to Adam about Eve in the vision, Walton replies that God revealed that she was his ally in "keeping sacred space." (Around minute 38) He also says (p. 109-110) "God then shows Adam in a vision that woman [in contrast to animals] is his ontological equal, and when he awakes she is brought to him and he recognizes that fact." Around minute 41 in the interview Walton also emphasizes the notion of male-female equality as an important message of Adam's vision. (This from the author who makes so much of the vital importance of entering into the "ancient near eastern mindset" is really a bit much!)

But of course Eve could be Adam's ally and ontological equal without being female. When asked about this very point in the interview, Walton says (around minute 39) that of course Adam "wouldn't view another man" as "the other half of himself." This is a charmingly naive bit of "heterosexism," but Walton must surely know that there are men nowadays who do claim to view another man as the "other half of themselves"! Walton states that "gender identity is under discussion" in Genesis 2 and that mankind is "ontologically gendered" (pp. 80-81), which is good as far as it goes, but in fact his rejection of any physical meaning for the forming accounts in Genesis 2 and his emphasis upon gender equality makes it difficult to see how, on his view, gender complementarity is being taught in Genesis 2. Certainly he never addresses the question of why man's existence as heterosexual should be regarded as any more God's special intention than man's sickness if both came about through God's invisible work in the processes of evolution. And he never addresses the arguments that I outlined in Part I from Jesus' words about marriage and the beginning. In fact, at around minute 40 in the interview he says that Genesis 2 is not establishing marriage as a "sociological institution"!

But there is more: Walton holds that human beings prior to the fall and prior to Adam's installation as a "priest" in the "sacred space" of the Garden of Eden (that is his interpretation of Adam's being placed in the Garden to keep it) were in a childlike state of non-accountability. In that state, he believes, they likely did commit acts that would now count as sins but were not held accountable for them. He says this in the quotation about violence from p. 154, given above, and also on p. 155:

When a law is identified or when the desires or nature of God are made known, those who receive such information become accountable. By accountable, I mean that they can now be considered guilty of violation and are therefore subject to punishment....This reasoning suggests that even though any human population possibly preceding or coexisting with Adam and Eve may well have been engaged in activity that would be considered sin, they were not being held accountable for it: where there was no law or revelation, there was no sin....In this scenario, the sin of Adam and Eve would be understood as bringing sin to the entire human race by bringing accountability.

The implications of this theory about accountability for the matter of sex are rather disturbing. If we apply Walton's analysis of human violence and his ideas about accountability to human sex (and nothing he says prevents such an application), this would mean that man prior to the fall could have been and plausibly was engaging in promiscuous sexual relations, at a minimum, if not perversions, but that these didn't count as sins for which man was accountable because man was in a state of non-accountable innocence. This would mean, further, that human sex does not have the intrinsic, natural, and embodied significance asserted by natural law reasoning.

If, on Walton's view, God revealed to Adam that he desires monogamy rather than promiscuity or polygamy and that he intends the human male-female bond to be permanent, Walton does not say this. In fact, as we have seen, he says that Genesis 2 has less to do with marriage than previously thought! But even if he has such a revelation tacitly in mind, it would still mean that heterosexual monogamy was not inherently part of the natural and truly original state of man prior to such a revelation. We could rather picture a sort of pre-revelation world in which childlike humans, possibly including Adam and Eve themselves, prior to their being singled out to have priestly functions and given more revelation from God, are having sex with whomever they please but in which this does not really have deep significance, because no law has been given. Walton even refers to Adam and Eve as the "first significant humans," (p. 114, his emphasis) though he affirms that others would have been in the image of God.

To say that any such view of human sexuality would be less than robust, less than biblical, and incompatible with a clear notion of the physically embodied nature of God's design plan for mankind is putting it mildly. Yet it appears to be impossible to rule out given Walton's arguments about pre-fall man. Contrast this picture of early, non-accountable man both with Jesus' words about God's intention for human marriage "in the beginning" and also with the Apostle Paul's statements in Romans 1 that all men do have the natural law of God "written on the heart."

Some more of the biblical evidence that Adam and Eve were the first human beings

There is a plethora of biblical evidence for the traditional view that not only did Adam and Eve exist, they were the first and only progenitors of the human race. I have already discussed Jesus' words concerning marriage and the beginning, which Walton does not attempt to respond to as an argument for the traditional view. In Part III I will discuss Walton's arguments, including his attempts to respond to most of these scriptural arguments for the traditional view of Adam and Eve. In one case (where a long discussion is not required) I will deal in this post with Walton's response to the Bible verse.

Genesis 1:26-27 says that God made man, male and female, in the image of God. Genesis 5 begins "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and beget a son in his own likeness..." Genesis 5 is here repeating Genesis 1:27 in direct connection with the individual, Adam, whom it seems to be treating as the first human being.

Walton himself acknowledges that "Adam" here in verse 1 and verse 3 refers to one historical individual, Adam (p. 61). However, he takes Genesis 1:27, repeated here in Genesis 5:2, to refer to what could have been a much larger group of individuals, probably including Adam (p. 183). Adam, on Walton's view, might very well not be the first man from whom all others are descended, and he is very concerned to argue that not taking Adam to be the first man from whom, with Eve, all other humans are descended is compatible with a faithful interpretation of the Bible. But this would require a very strained interpretation of Genesis 5:1-3, requiring the text to switch back and forth between clearly talking about one man to talking about a group (not just Adam and Eve) to talking about one man again in the genealogy. Needless to say, the "them" in verse two refers quite evidently to "male and female." Two people is sufficient for the plural; a group of thousands is not remotely implied or required! And the genealogy then moves on to describe Adam's descendants (from Seth onward) as if Adam and his wife are the only first progenitors. There is no hint in the text here of any other initial progenitors of the human race other than Adam and Eve.

I Chronicles 1 begins its genealogy with Adam. Again, there is no hint of any large group of progenitors of the human race.

More tellingly still, Luke 3:38, completing the "backwards" genealogy of Jesus (probably through Mary, with Joseph being the son-in-law of Heli in vs. 23), finishes, "Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God." This explicit statement that Adam was the son of God seems like a direct affirmation that Adam a) did not come into being by some elaborate physical process and even more b) was the first man.

I Timothy 2:13, already quoted in Part I, expressly and unequivocally states that the man was formed first. If Adam and Eve were both the products of a long process of human evolution, and if there were other humans alive at the time, there is no reason to believe that Adam was formed first. Eve could have been naturally conceived, for example, before Adam was. Paul is clearly taking it that Adam was the first man and that Eve was the first woman, and he is clearly getting this from a reading of Genesis 2 that takes it to refer to the physical, de novo creation of Adam and Eve. He is also using this point to support theological conclusions about the role of women in the church.

In Genesis 3:20, we are told, "Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." The prima facie meaning of this is that Eve is the first woman and original mother of all human beings thereafter. Walton (pp. 187-188) attempts to interpret this in a purely metaphorical sense, instancing Genesis 4:21, which says that Jubal was the "father of all" who use the harp and organ. But for a metaphoric interpretation to make sense, there must be a something indicated by the context or by common sense that it can be a metaphor for. The statement about Jubal is quite easily understood as a metaphor for Jubal's being a kind of ur-musician, an intellectual and artistic forebear. There is no similarly obvious metaphoric meaning which the reference to Eve as the "mother of all living" could have. Walton's elaborate notion that Adam and Eve were the first ones given priestly functions, that they were given access to the "sacred space" of the garden, and all the rest of it, is entirely his own construct, not stated in the text. And it would in any event make a very unlikely meaning for the phrase "the mother of all living." Eve on Walton's view may very well not have been the first woman but was one of the first two people to be accountable for sin, and she blew it, thereby bringing exclusion from the tree of life! After that, assuming a much larger original group of humans, she and Adam just went and lived with all the other human beings, their children interbred with them, and that was that. It seems implausible that anyone would refer to her (completely failed) role as the first "significant" woman by calling her "the mother of all living." So what could the "mother of all living" be a metaphor for? Walton's attempt to deflect the effect of "mother of all living" to a generically metaphoric meaning is a strained and unclear interpretation.

These are not the only positive biblical arguments, but space forces me to stop for now. The forming accounts in Genesis 2 will be dealt with in Part III when I discuss some of Walton's positive arguments for his positions.

Disclaimer: A review copy of The Lost World of Adam and Eve was provided by Intervarsity Academic. A positive review was not required.

Comments (29)

The view that human death is part of the original creation as made and intended by God is impossible to support on textual evidence, and in fact the biblical text argues strongly against it.

I keep seeing this asserted but I don't see any part of Genesis where God states that Adam was immortal. Just because he proclaims death as a punishment for eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge (technically they should have died that very day) it doesn't mean this was the only way for Adam and Eve to die. The punishment actually inflicted places its emphasis on the toil and sweat that Adam will now have to spend to survive until he returns to the ground. How does Genesis 3:22 make sense if man was already immortal?

Walton's elaborate notion that Adam and Eve were the first ones given priestly functions, that they were given access to the "sacred space" of the garden, and all the rest of it, is entirely his own construct, not stated in the text.

On a similar debate at Feser's blog somebody brought up the notion that Adam/Man was an in-tribe reference, the first of his tribe but not the first of his kind. There are references to agriculture in Genesis and all evidence puts towards agriculture being a much later development than the biological evolution of our species.

1) I answered that question about death in the previous post. You can go back and read my argument there. That there was no _actual_ human death prior to the fall of man is a conclusion based on multiple sources in Scripture. My reference to "the text" did not mean just one text. Paul's discussion in Romans 5 is crucial.

2) Moreover, *even if* one believes (which I think is a bit stretched) that the tree of life was somehow relevant to Adam and Eve's immortality prior to the fall, this does not mean that there *was* human death prior to the fall unless one has many other things in place: For example, many people, living outside the garden, no "safe haven" from animal predation (which the garden might have been), people living far away and not having access, etc. It doesn't create too much of a problem for the traditional view to make the tree of life necessary if you have only two people living in a sort of "charmed space" for a temporary period, not sinning (hence not killing each other), and not in fact dying until after the fall. When you want to accommodate thousands of people living any-old-where, attacking each other violently, getting attacked by animals, and so forth, then one tree isn't going to help very much.

3) To say that man _after_ the fall would have lived forever had he eaten of the tree of life is not ipso facto to say that man _before_ the fall required the tree of life to avoid death.

the notion that Adam/Man was an in-tribe reference, the first of his tribe but not the first of his kind.

Good luck supporting that. The weight of the scriptural evidence doesn't support it.

There are references to agriculture in Genesis and all evidence puts towards agriculture being a much later development than the biological evolution of our species.

Because all the conjectures of human paleontologists are set in stone, and *of course* they can rule out early human agriculture. Just how much agriculture? How widespread? Etc. If Adam and his offspring were tilling some fields, I don't think we'd find them.

(technically they should have died that very day)

They did. They suffered the end of their spiritual life, their life of participation in God's life by His grace. That death was immediate. The later (physical) death was the definitive, inevitable sign of the earlier death.

On _this_ point about "dying that very day" I am for once inclined to agree with Walton, who points out (I don't need to go find the page number this time, right? because I'm actually agreeing with him?) that the same expression is used for "doomed to die" or "sentenced to die."

Lydia,
Let me just ask directly, what is the approximate time period you think Adam and Eve lived? If you include the other activities Adam’s descendants were described doing in the Bible only a few generations later such as building a city, raising livestock, making flutes and lyres, and forging bronze and iron, the picture is much clearer and harder to dismiss. Constructing simple musical instruments like flutes has some evidence at 42,000 years ago, building wooden settlements and raising livestock are unknown before 15,000 years ago and the oldest known copper mine only dates to 9000 years ago. These dates are very far from the 163,000-200,000 years ago time frame for our modern species ancestors and exponentially distant from the 2.8 million years ago origin of the genus Homo which theists often appeal to as Adam.

Tony,
They did. They suffered the end of their spiritual life, their life of participation in God's life by His grace.

If you want to claim their rational souls died you will be contradicting Lydia's argument against ensoulment. Otherwise "spiritual death" is a misnomer.

The later (physical) death was the definitive, inevitable sign of the earlier death.

How much opposition do you think there would be to the death penalty if the punishment was the "spiritual death" of not being allowed to live in an idyllic paradise and dying of old age?

If you want to claim their rational souls died you will be contradicting Lydia's argument against ensoulment. Otherwise "spiritual death" is a misnomer.

Come now, Step2, you are better than that. You know perfectly well I am not referring to the death of the rational soul. You know perfectly well that both Lydia and I hold that the rational soul is immortal in a way that the human being is NOT immortal: the rational soul cannot "decompose" into parts whereas the human being can die by the separation of the (rational) soul from the body. And that this separation does not cause the rational soul to cease to exist, so that the ordinary "death" experienced by humans is not the "death of the rational soul," it is the death of the human being.

You also know that Christians refer to a special presence of God to their souls as under a particular sense of the term "life". I clarified my "spiritual life" with "their participation in the life of God by grace" which is not to be identified with the rational soul simply speaking. First, as to that presence:

But the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.

And second, as to it's being "life":

We know that Christ, now he has risen from the dead, cannot die any more; death has no more power over him; 10 the death he died was a death, once for all, to sin; the life he now lives is a life that looks towards God.[4] 11 And you, too, must think of yourselves as dead to sin, and alive with a life that looks towards God, through Christ Jesus our Lord...make yourselves over to God, as men who have been dead and come to life again
you, by baptism, have been united with his burial, united, too, with his resurrection, through your faith in that exercise of power by which God raised him from the dead. 13 And in giving life to him, he gave life to you too,

And third, as to calling it "spiritual":

So also it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living soul." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.
Not that, left to ourselves, we are able to frame any thought as coming from ourselves; all our ability comes from God, since it is he who has enabled us to promulgate his new law to men. It is a spiritual, not a written law; the written law inflicts death, whereas the spiritual law brings life.

I don't know how long ago Adam lived, Step2, but I definitely do not accept the idea that the genealogies must be presumed to be gap-less. Hence, the activities in question need not by any means be "only a few generations" after Adam.

In any event, I _seriously_ doubt the ability of conjectural reconstruction to tell us that man *was not* constructing wooden (wooden?) settlements and raising livestock any longer ago than x. Your faith in present-day reconstructions of the very distant past history of man, including statements concerning man's use of biodegradable materials, is not something I share, at all. Arguments from silence always need to be subjected to stringent questioning. This is true even regarding when such-and-such activity occurred using non-perishable materials. We scarcely have anything like a videotape of ancient human activities. More like scattered snapshots.

Moreover, even if the flood of Noah was very large-scale and regional rather than strictly worldwide, if the most technologically developed human beings were the ones wiped out, along with their endeavors (e.g., making things out of bronze), this would make it harder still to reconstruct the most ancient activities of mankind. The post-flood humans would have to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps literally.

Step2:

"Lydia, Let me just ask directly…"

While we're at it, it would be instructive for Step2 to lay his own cards on the table. Are you an atheist? Secular Jew? Liberal Catholic? Lapsed Catholic?

What's your frame of reference? What's the tacit plausibility structure that you're bringing to your criticisms of Lydia's reviews?

"(technically they should have died that very day)"

i) That's a stereotypical village atheist objection. One problem with that objection is the critic's conceit that the narrator was too dense to realize that he made God contradict himself, as if God forgot his threat.

Even if you deny the inspiration of Scripture, a prudent exegete doesn't simply presume that a storyteller is blatantly inconsistent. Rather, a prudent exegete considers what it must have meant to the storyteller.

ii) "In/on the day that" is an idiom for "when." That's why more literal versions reproduce the phrase as is in Gen 2:4 while more dynamic versions render it idiomatically in 2:4.

By itself, the adverb ("when") doesn't specify the time at which something will happen. Rather, that's the earliest starting point at which it can happen. It can happen anytime after that terminus ad quo, but not before that.

"On a similar debate at Feser's blog somebody brought up the notion that Adam/Man was an in-tribe reference, the first of his tribe but not the first of his kind."

What's the exegetical argument for that claim?

"There are references to agriculture in Genesis and all evidence puts towards agriculture being a much later development than the biological evolution of our species."

i) To begin with, I believe that Lydia rejects "the biological evolution of our species." Therefore, your objection is predicated on an operating assumption that she doesn't grant.

You suffer from a persistent inability to engage people on their own grounds. You need to cultivate critical detachment and critical sympathy. That's an intellectual virtue.

"If you include the other activities Adam’s descendants were described doing in the Bible only a few generations later such as building a city, raising livestock, making flutes and lyres, and forging bronze and iron, the picture is much clearer and harder to dismiss. Constructing simple musical instruments like flutes has some evidence at 42,000 years ago, building wooden settlements and raising livestock are unknown before 15,000 years ago and the oldest known copper mine only dates to 9000 years ago."

i) Know-how can be independently discovered. For instance, it's not as if learning how to make fire was a onetime event.

ii) Likewise, newfound knowledge can be lost. Know-how can be forgotten. War, famine, natural disaster, epidemics, &c., can not only wipe out settlements, but wipe out the knowledge required to pick up where things left off.

If you were to ask a 19C AD Egyptian how the pyramids were built, he wouldn't have a clue. Consider scholarly debates about the logistics of the Easter Island statues, or the construction and function of Stonehenge.

Step2 seems to be operating with a "stately progress of science" model, but technological innovation can be, and often is (esp. in the past), sporadic, geographically isolated, and subject to interruption or reversal.

"Otherwise 'spiritual death' is a misnomer."

i) I'm curious as to where Step2 comes up with these very confident proclamations. What commentaries have you read? What exegetical monographs have you read? Or are you just winging it based on what seems obvious to you, from your own cultural standpoint–millennia later?

ii) In the Pentateuch, to be alienated from God is to be alienated from the source of life and wellbeing. Take how the Pentateuch characterizes the moral and spiritual degradation of pagan nations.

Step2:

"…all evidence puts towards agriculture being a much later development than the biological evolution of our species."

One of the problems with that claim is the way it posits the development of "agriculture" long after the emergence of the human species.

Aside from the ambiguity of what constitutes "agriculture," it also turns on what type of evidence would signal the moment when the human species came on the scene. What kind of evidence demarcates humans from nonhuman hominids? What kind of evidence early in the paleoarcheological record do you think uniquely identifies a human presence–in contrast to nonhuman homids? Morphology? Artifacts? If the latter, what kind of artifacts?

I don't know how long ago Adam lived, Step2, but I definitely do not accept the idea that the genealogies must be presumed to be gap-less. Hence, the activities in question need not by any means be "only a few generations" after Adam.

Lydia, please point me to the parts of the OT where the authors, who seemed to be obsessed with genealogies, admitted to leaving incomprehensibly large gaps in those genealogies. Thanks.

Your faith in present-day reconstructions of the very distant past history of man, including statements concerning man's use of biodegradable materials, is not something I share, at all.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR DOMESTICATION

When breeding of plants and animals is taken up deliberately, the species themselves undergo a physiological change. After generations of breeding, the 'domesticated' plant or animal is very different from its wild ancestor. In the mounds of prehistoric villages, archaeologists find animal bones which they can identify as belonging to a particular animal, wild or domesticated. For example, domesticated sheep differ from wild sheep in the shape of the skull, or the size of the teeth and horns. Seeds could survive in the debris of a prehistoric mound if they were burned and became carbonized. The impressions of seeds can be left in the mud used by prehistoric people for pottery or house plaster, and these impressions can be carefully studied. So it is possible for an archaeologist to tell whether the plant or animal remains of a prehistoric village were domesticated or wild. Also, the archaeologist looks for household equipment which would be useful for animal herders or farmers. A hunter can break off a portion of an animal and roast it on fire to eat it. But grain must first be ground on a mortar or quern, and cannot be prepared into dough for bread or cooked as porridge unless there are suitable containers. In many parts of the world, therefore, though not everywhere, pottery had developed when agriculture had begun.

The post-flood humans would have to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps literally.

Only if building an ark causes amnesia about how to make wheels. I wouldn’t bet on that notion.

What's your frame of reference?

Since Lydia declined to put her cards on the table, it's none of your beeswax.

Only if building an ark causes amnesia about how to make wheels. I wouldn’t bet on that notion.

You misunderstand me, in part. First, amnesia is not required given that one family of eight isn't going to know how to do everything. Even in the ancient world there would be some degree of specialization. More to the point, I was describing physical traces of domestication, etc., which even a widespread regional flood would wipe out. And a small group starting over in that same region would not leave a large archeological footprint. Remember, too, that saying that such-and-such was being done does not mean it was being done by everyone.

Step2:

"Since Lydia declined to put her cards on the table, it's none of your beeswax."

Your mixed metaphors aside, Lydia has always been entirely forthcoming about her ideological commitments. The fact that you're so defensive and evasive on the subject is revealing in a different respect.

Let me just ask directly, what is the approximate time period you think Adam and Eve lived?...Since Lydia declined to put her cards on the table, it's none of your beeswax.
While we're at it, it would be instructive for Step2 to lay his own cards on the table. Are you an atheist? Secular Jew? Liberal Catholic? Lapsed Catholic?....The fact that you're so defensive and evasive on the subject is revealing in a different respect.

I am going to blow the whistle on this and call a stop.

Steve, your last comment has a tinge of badgering and bullying. Speaking of one who has here in these pages put up with rather forceful bullying, I can tell you right out that Step2's refusal to answer is not necessarily "revealing" of the things you hint (allude, suspect, whatever) at. Maybe, but maybe not. One of the classic motivations for not "just telling you" is precisely because the bully is being a bully about it. Resisting bullies is often good - and if it gets them mad, all the better.

Step2, taking an indeterminate answer to be no answer is almost as bad. Lydia did answer, indeterminately, because she has not formed a determinate conclusion - as she said. Maybe you think this is a cop-out, but it isn't ALWAYS a cop-out: not drawing a definite conclusion until you have sufficient evidence for determination is, actually, one of the intellectual virtues. Something good scientists cultivate about their work, but sometimes others forget. You may think there is "sufficient evidence," in which case MAKE THAT ARGUMENT, (because she clearly doesn't), and don't hide behind throwing rocks at people.

In any case, while a good blog is like a good conversation between friends, it is an imperfect replication of same: for example, we can't see each other's facial expressions, and we don't know circumstances and motivations behind comments OTHER than what is expressed here in words. Normally, that means that you are obliged to take comments pretty much at face value. Ascribing behind-the-facade thoughts and motives can easily run astray, and you are obliged - and hereby instructed - to be very reticent to do that here. As in: stop already.

If you think the argument itself is wrong, address that. You don't need to decide whether the person making the argument is doing so in good faith and pure motives.

Here's an example:

When breeding of plants and animals is taken up deliberately, the species themselves undergo a physiological change. After generations of breeding, the 'domesticated' plant or animal is very different from its wild ancestor.

This is a claim about what science has shown. It isn't, yet, an established fact here present, because it is just the claim. Maybe biology has proven it, but the proof has not been offered.

One of the problems with drawing a conclusion from the claim is: it doesn't DIRECTLY say anything at all about whether, sometimes, such "physiological changes" also occur in nature. The rate of change overall may indeed be slow on average, but even averages allow for outrider instances. What is the proof, for example, that the noted set of changes they think they have identified are NOT one of those outrider instances? (One way of substantiating that it wasn't would be records that said things like "and we took the best-resulting variant and cultivated that...", but of course the time frame we are looking at is pre-history, no written records.)

Another problem with the claim is its amazing simplicity of scope: it just states a blanket claim without qualifier: "when breeding of plants and animals is taken up deliberately, the species themselves undergo a physiological change." Does the author, by "breeding...taken up deliberately," intend "when people undertake to breed for specific traits, or does it refer to "when people undertake intentional actions simply to get offspring from their animals, such as allowing stallions breeding access to mares"? The latter might take place because a herder wants more little horses coming along, and has NO CLUE about trying to get specific traits. He only knows that if the stallions never comes near mares, there ain't no colts coming along. What would be the evidence that a herder intentionally was about changing the breeding access of WHICH horses in order to select for certain traits?" Without records? Surely such evidence can be suggestive without being definitive.

Step2's archeological objections are confused at multiple levels:

i) He doesn't bother to cite the passages he alludes to. What does he mean by "agriculture"? Is he alluding to the "garden" of Eden? To Gen 3:18-19? To Noah's "vineyard"?

At the risk of stating the obvious, there's such a thing as wild wheat and wild grapevines. That doesn't require selective breeding. Sowing seed doesn't require artificial selection. You can get drunk on fermented grape juice.

ii) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the descriptions in Gen 4:17-22 are anachronistic. That doesn't ipso facto mean the account is unhistorical. For instance, take the historical plays of Shakespeare–like Julius Caesar. This about people who really existed. About a real event (the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar). It is set in a real place (Rome).

However, the characters speak English rather than Latin. And in the original performance, the actors wore Elizabethan garb rather than period Roman attire.

So even if (ex hypothesi) Gen 4:17-22 is phrased in anachronistic terms, that doesn't make it unhistorical. Rather, that would be a case of the narrator using imagery or terminology from his own time, familiar to his own audience, to describe the past. By comparison, Bible prophecy describes the future using imagery and terminology contemporaneous with the prophet and his immediate audience.

i) Step2 seems to be dependent on a particular English translation. However:

ii) The Hebrew text doesn't use the technical jargon of forging or smelting metal. Just consult standard commentaries (e.g. Hamilton, Matthews).

iii) Hebrew uses the same word for copper and bronze. Although bronze is an alloy, copper is a native metal.

In addition, there are surface copper deposits. It doesn't require copper "mines" to access. Depends on the quantity required.

Likewise, meteoric iron is a native metal. Ancient people used meteoric iron before they developed metallurgy.

iv) In addition, metal artifacts can be melted down to reuse the metal to make a newer artifact. So some earlier artifacts are destroyed in the process. There goes the "evidence."

v) To piggyback on Lydia's observation, Genesis situates Eden somewhere in Mesopotamia. Likewise, the ark bottoms out on the Armenian plateau. That's the setting for "early man" in Genesis.

Hence, even if the deluge was local, Noah's flood devastated the original human population centers (where Genesis places man). You can disagree, but my immediate point concerns the inner consistency of the narrative.

Keep in mind, too, that since this is both a flood plain and river basin, debris would wash downstream into the sea. It would literally wash the archeological evidence down the drain. That's what it is: a drainage basin.

vi) Gen 4:17 doesn't specify what the structures were made of. Suppose they were wooden structures. Would that survive millennia of erosion (and periodic flooding)?

Suppose it was a tent city (cf. 4:20), like Plains Indian communities.

What if these were adobe buildings? Mud huts made of sun-dried mud-brick (with thatched roofs). Those are perishable structures. Consider how little has survived in the Nile Delta from Pharaonic times.

vii) It's not uncommon for stone buildings to be dismantled to reuse the blocks to build something else.

viii) Having livestock (4:20) does not imply selective breeding. These can be tame wild animals.

ix) It isn't necessarily easy to distinguish wild animals from domesticated animals. Consider debates about whether Dingoes are wild canines or feral dogs.

x) In addition, feral livestock may interbreed with compatible wild species. They "revert." So that complicates the analysis. Consider feral pigs which interbreed with wild pigs. That produces hybrids.

xi) The text says nothing about pottery. And "pottery" is equivocal. Does that refer to earthenware that's fired in a kiln (e.g. ceramic, porcelain)? Or sun-dried clay pots (e.g. terracotta)? The latter are quite perishable.

Tony:

"Steve, your last comment has a tinge of badgering and bullying."

Tony, constructive dialogue presumes an adequate degree of common ground. Unless one is using an interlocutor as a foil, it can be a monumental waste of time to debate someone whose plausibility structure is so different from yours that the two of you can't see eye-to-eye on anything concerning the issue at hand. You pour ever more arguments down a bottomless drain.

Every intellectual discussion must take certain things for granted. Absent sufficient common ground, the conversation quickly becomes sidetracked into endless preliminary issues.

There's nothing wrong with asking-or even demanding–that a critic tell us where he's coming from. If he is committed to an outlook that's antithetical to the outlook of the writer, then further discussion is typically futile–unless it's simply convenient to use him as a foil to rebut stereotypical objections.

Tony,
First, Lydia and I are both easily capable of defending ourselves against overly aggressive rhetorical tactics. She’s proven herself at least a dozen times on that score and I expect she would have no problem warning me, or if needed banning me if she believed I was doing that. Obviously she is under no obligation to respond to my questions, and if she does she can respond however she wants.

Second, I don't believe it is misrepresenting her to say that she is setting an impossible standard. Lydia implied it would take something like a complete and exhaustive account (a videotape) of prehistorical activity to convince her the Genesis account didn't happen as written, give or take a few metaphors and gaps. Which is fine, but I don't have any reason to think that is possible or realistic. This shouldn’t be characterized as throwing rocks or anything of the sort; I'm not accusing her of hidden motives, it is simply holding Lydia to the same evidential standard of the viewpoint she is disputing. Furthermore, as an argument strategy I don’t even pretend to understand it. When archaeology and zooarcheology and paleoethnobotany are all providing objective evidence to support their conclusions you dispute nearly every aspect of it as if it was woefully inadequate, but when asked to provide evidence for your alternative historical view there doesn't need to be any?

Just because some details in isolation "can" be disputed by outliers the overall and cumulative weight of the evidence is still decisively in its favor. But since you asked nicely, human domestication efforts can also produce unintended but predictable results:
http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobio/images/zederetal_2006_docdom_tig.pdf

Several scholars identified a range of distinct morphological changes in seed crops that could be expected to result not from deliberate intentional selection for desirable traits by humans, but as the result of unconscious selection: selection resulting from human activities not involving deliberate attempt to change the organism. These unintentional changes would result from a particular new set of human activities involving target species of plants – specifically, the sustained harvesting and planting of stored seed stock. When humans began to harvest, store and plant seeds over a sustained period, they inadvertently created a new and distinctive selective environment to which the target plant populations under management adapted through genetic and morphological change.

You pour ever more arguments down a bottomless drain.

Writes the guy whose most recent phrase-by-phrase deconstruction has 13 different subcategories.

Obviously she is under no obligation to respond to my questions, and if she does she can respond however she wants.

In all honesty, Step2, when I say that I don't know when Adam lived, I really mean that I don't know. I don't mean that I refuse to say. I'm not selling a particular theory. If I'm going to dodge a question, I dodge much more openly than that. I'll say, "I refuse to answer" or "I don't want to get into that." In this case, I actually do not know.

Lydia implied it would take something like a complete and exhaustive account (a videotape) of prehistorical activity to convince her the Genesis account didn't happen as written, give or take a few metaphors and gaps.

Well, no, that wasn't precisely what I meant. What I meant is that scientists _imply_ that that is what they _have_, or something pretty darned near, when they are far, far from that.

I think it's good to have a very healthy skepticism about arguments from silence in archeology from even thousands of years ago, much less hundreds of thousands. And I think some of the things Steve Hays has brought up are relevant to that. In the absence of reasons to think we *would find* x, then our not finding x does not actually constitute a situation in which

archaeology and zooarcheology and paleoethnobotany are all providing [strong] objective evidence to support their conclusions
.

If their conclusion is, "Such-and-such many years ago, there _definitely weren't any men_ who had domesticated animals or raised crops or worked copper or built wooden houses," then they should have enough due humility to admit that showing a negative that sweeping is beyond their competence. Unfortunately, due humility is not a hallmark of these sciences. Which is a shame, because that is unscientific.

Step2, my point wasn't that the scientific evidence isn't strong, or even very strong, my point is that it was at many points constructed of probable arguments, i.e. not definitive, not proven, capable of being revised, modified. And your own article shows me that my surmise was on the mark. Here is just one example:

Beja-Pereira et al. [149], for example, found that Northern European cattle breeds showed significantly more alleles than expected at several milk protein loci. This was in contrast to the pattern in southern Europe and the Near East – prompting a suggestion that local selection pressures might have left a detectable footprint...

The authors themselves often characterize their results as probable. Meaning, they recognize in their own work that there is room for a divergence of conclusions.

And sometimes they come to mistakes that they have to backtrack from:

Defining the temporal framework of domestication is an obvious area of mutual interest, and also an occasional source of disagreement, between archaeologists and geneticists. An initial estimate for the origin of domestic dogs based on molecular data, for example, placed their divergence from wolves at ~ 135 000 years ago [107], > 100 000 years earlier than the first morphological evidence for dog domestication based on fossil bones from Europe and Asia, which were dated to ~ 13 000 – 17 000 years ago [108]. Although Wayne and colleagues have recently qualified this early estimate, they defended the molecular evidence for an early wolf–dog divergence by arguing that genetic change, morphological change and speciation in animals undergoing domestication will occur at different points in the domestication process [109]. This is an important point, particularly in animals where domestication is likely to operate first on behavioral attributes rather than on morphology. However, it is difficult to reconcile the substantial gap that exists between the molecular clock estimate of wolf–dog divergence and the first appearance of morphological change in the form of tooth crowding in early dogs, which is felt to be directly linked to selection for less aggressive behavior in initial domesticates.

Molecular clocks are better scaled for species divergences that occurred millions or tens of millions of years ago, not for populations (e.g. domesticates) that diverged
!10 000 years ago.

Or this:

Given the genetic similarity between modern African and New World land races of domesticated bottle gourd and the absence, until recently, of any well-documented wild bottle gourd populations that could be employed to establish the wild versus domesticated status of archaeologically recovered rind and seed specimens, the prevalent default consensus has been that L. siceraria was carried by ocean currents as a wild plant from Africa to South America.

A recent study combining genetic and archaeological lines of evidence, however, has overturned this wild from Africa consensus.

And again, their conclusion about 2 of the earliest domesticated species:

This, in turn, suggests there was a substantial amount of divergence in ancient Eurasian domestic dog lineages before this migration. The earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated dogs in the Old World, dating to 13 000–17 000 years Bp comes from several widely dispersed sites extending from the Near East across eastern Europe, and raises questions as to exactly when and in what location(s) the gray wolf was first domesticated. Although the earliest domesticated bottle gourd in the Old World dates to 8000–9000 years Bp in China and Japan, it is reasonable to estimate that it was initially domesticated in the same timeframe as the dog (~13 000 years Bp or earlier), given its arrival in central Mexico by 10 000 years Bp.

Interestingly, both the dog and the bottle gourd, which stand out as the earliest species to have been brought under domestication, are similar in that they are both utilitarian in nature, valued mostly for uses other than as a source of food.

If scientists think that man got about the process of domestication somewhere around 17,000 to 13,000 years ago, and if this is taken as evidence of when man was man in the Biblical sense, we would then have scientific reason to surmise that any Biblical Adam and Eve were alive at least 13,000 years ago.

Two things I would say about this: First, that's a vastly different picture of "science disagreeing with the Bible" than a picture claiming man was man in the Biblical sense 130,000 years ago, or 2 million years ago. For one thing, the already encountered scientific disagreement between domesticated dogs 135,000 and 13,000 years ago is of a much larger magnitude than a disagreement about whether Adam lived 6,000 years ago or 13,000 years ago. Just as science didn't say "one science disproves the other science - chuck them both as wrong" but rather patiently said "let's re-examine our data, our assumptions, and find more evidence", so too we can do so with science and the Bible. I am OK with being patient and seeing where the evidence leads.

Secondly, with Lydia I don't feel strongly that the Bible, by itself, tells us something very clear and definite about when Adam lived, like the 6,000 years ago stated by literal counting of years. I accept that the form of the narrative allows for other possibilities.

In all honesty, Step2, when I say that I don't know when Adam lived, I really mean that I don't know.

I understand, and being in a position where you "really" don't know does not place you in a position to say that you know the scientific view is wrong. If I were to take the position that the Mormon view of God is essentially correct and my theory is based upon some powerful alien technology that only existed in Atlantis, but Atlantis was swept under the sea and destroyed without a trace, do you think I've helped my argument by saying there is no evidence that can prove my theory correct? That anyone who disputes my alternate view of Genesis must first find what isn't there?

In the absence of reasons to think we *would find* x...

The assumption should be that we have reasons to find x. This is what I meant by keeping your cards off the table by not knowing, I can't even get a handle on where to start because it is like trying to grasp air. Am I supposed to apply your gaps theory of genealogy or not? Was Adam the first of the genus or the first of the species or something in-between or more recent? There are all sorts of different factors in play and dealing with a pure enigma can't be any sort of basis for trying to discover the truth.

Tony,
The most recent genetic evidence for dogs is much more in line with the archaeological evidence.

Two things I would say about this: First, that's a vastly different picture of "science disagreeing with the Bible" than a picture claiming man was man in the Biblical sense 130,000 years ago, or 2 million years ago.

I agree, but my understanding of Lydia's view is that it is directly tied to genetics, or perhaps biology in a slightly broader sense, but has no cultural or technological basis.

Lydia,
I am inclined to agree with Step2 that there is no hint that the authors of Genesis had any gaps in mind while supplying their genealogies.

I understand, and being in a position where you "really" don't know does not place you in a position to say that you know the scientific view is wrong.

Actually, Step2, that is not true unless I take some view such as that man first came into existence in, oh, 100 B.C., which of course you realize is not anything like what I am saying.

You should, moreover, stop talking about "the scientific view" unqualified, as though _I_ am acknowledging that human evolution from ape-like ancestors _is_ the scientific view, when of course my whole point repeatedly has been that science does not actually "hand" us any such view. Even the idea of a minimal bottleneck is based on shaky, speculative "science," _which I have argued at length_ and have linked to multiple times.

The assumption should be that we have reasons to find x.

Actually, no. That is precisely the kind of wrong view about all the stuff archaeology "would find" that I think is incorrect. We can always look, but when we are talking about relatively small populations of people, _mostly_ working with biodegradable materials, living in a region later devastated by natural disaster, that should _not_ be "the assumption."

Bedarz, you no doubt know that there has been a literature on whether the authors of Genesis would have had or allowed gaps in the geneologies, right?

The locus classicus for gaps in the genealogies was published by William Henry Green in the 19C. That's readily available on the internet. For instance:

http://www.reasons.org/articles/are-there-gaps-in-the-biblical-genealogies

Lydia,
I'm going to hold my response until after Easter, because I'm nice like that.

You should, moreover, stop talking about "the scientific view" unqualified, as though _I_ am acknowledging that human evolution from ape-like ancestors _is_ the scientific view, when of course my whole point repeatedly has been that science does not actually "hand" us any such view.

In a sense it doesn't matter if you dispute the science, there is a scientific community that has reached an overwhelming consensus on evolution in general and human evolution in particular. Of course this doesn't mean you have to believe it or that you shouldn't argue against it, but that is the scientific view - no qualification is needed. I know you aren't a YEC, but if you were I wouldn't know how to qualify the scientific view to make it seem like there's a way to reconcile the competing claims, as far as I can tell it cannot be done. A separate but related point is that there are plenty of areas that are controversial within the archaeological community, this doesn't affect the overall framework they are trying to resolve these disputes under.

As far as having gaps in the genealogies, it helps some but I don't think it helps you as much as you need it to. Except for Cain as the builder of the first city, all the rest of the activities described were attributed to the family of Lamech. I don't see how you can put chronological gaps into a genealogy that is referencing siblings.

We can always look, but when we are talking about relatively small populations of people, _mostly_ working with biodegradable materials, living in a region later devastated by natural disaster, that should _not_ be "the assumption."

You seem convinced looking for evidence is a gigantic waste of time, which is not what I expect from a self-proclaimed evidentialist.

Lydia, It might be nice if there was a book one could rely on to tell us all about the history of humanity with no anthropological or archaeological effort needed. If only we could merely add up the ages of certain figures in the Bible to determine when humans first arose on earth, making the question a matter of simply addition. You admit there are gaps. But do such gaps take us back as far as Homo Erectus, just shy of 2 million years ago, which is where Luskin of the Discovery Institute apparently places the first humans? That's a lot of wide gaps indeed.

Also, if you are going to claim the Bible must be taken literally in the area of human history, why not also take it literally when it says the earth does not move, but the sun returns to its place to rise again, and God had to command the sun not the earth to stop moving, and God directs the movements of the constellations each season as they move through the sky? Or take the Bible literally when it says God directs the clouds, the weather, directs lightning bolts, and forms embryos in the womb in a hands on fashion? Or take literally all the cases of divination and magic mentioned in the Bible, for example: http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2015/02/in-bible-there-is-divination-witchcraft.html

Reading the Bible alone one could also easily conclude that the earth was the literal foundation of all creation, with the sun, moon, and stars merely created after the earth and to provide light for it; and that the earth was surrounded by vast primeval waters above and below and round about, and God had to promise to directly hold back such waters which apparently were still in heavy reserve after the Flood, to keep them from reducing the earth once again to its original watery state.

Also, the creation tales and primeval history tales in Genesis 1-11 owe much to the context of ancient Near Eastern tales about creation and primeval history. Evidence concerning that context has continued to mount ever since the ancient cuneiform and Egyptian languages were deciphered in the mid-1800s. But after the fundamentalist-modernist debates of the 1920s it has been like pulling teeth to get Evangelicals to read Genesis 1-11 in the light of its ancient context, though John Walton and Michael Heiser, among Evangelicals, along with the Evangelical scholars supporting BIOLOGOS are exceptions.

Gotta love the way you write without reading, Babinski. I mean, it's not like we've just been discussing the question of the earth's movement or anything in this very thread or anything. As for whether John Walton is in fact reading Genesis 1-2 (in case you haven't noticed, he doesn't deal with later chapters of Genesis) "in their ancient context," it's not like I've just written four long posts disputing his work or anything, including his work precisely on the point of "ancient context," word meanings, concepts of the supernatural, etc.

You're not only a troll; you're also a lazy troll with no interest in an actual dialogue and interesting discussion. This will come as no surprise to those who have interacted with you in the past. I'm therefore not going to bother with you.

Ah, apologies, the discussion of geocentrism was in the thread discussion of Part III.

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