Hi Joshua and Jon,
Thank you for your posts. I’d like to respond to some of your comments.
@swamidass:
Reading Scripture for the last 2,000 years of traditional theology, it has usually been thought that God made Adam and we all descend from Him. That is what the text seems to suggest. (Bolding mine - VJT.)
I’m glad we agree on this point.
@jongarvey:
Just as a reminder, Genesis does not only teach “There was a first man called Adam” - he has a genealogy traced down to Christ himself, children engaged in agriculture and pastoral activity, one of whom builds a city, near-descendants engaged in metallurgy and music, and within relatively few generations participation in a flood event that is also recorded in literary parallels from Mesopotamia. And just a few generations after that, with nations in the region being linked to named descendants, the run up to the call of Abraham, well into historic times, is in the city of Babylon.
I would certainly agree that Scripture portrays Adam as an individual who lived just before the dawn of agriculture and metallurgy. Whether it actually teaches those facts is doubtful, however. The Lukan genealogy of Jesus has 77 generations - an obviously symbolic number. And the fact that Cain and Abel engaged in agriculture and pastoral activity is only mentioned in Genesis 4 - although there’s a strong suggestion that Adam did as well, in the curse of Genesis 3:17-19. Nevertheless, I will concede that the most straightforward reading of Scripture favors a recent Adam.
@swamidass:
From the evidence in the world, it really appears that, if he was recent, that Adam was not the first of his biological kind, though he could have been the first of his theological kind. Moreover, there is an ancient history to earth. Theologically and textually, there are several things that seem to accommodate, and even suggest, this notion of Adam not being the first of biological kind, but being the first of his theological kind. From that view point, science is merely filling in the details of those outside the Garden, and the traditional reading remains entirely intact. I am certain there are good starting points to fully resolve all the theological questions this raises.
That is, to say the least, surprising. It is certainly counter-intuitive. Maybe it is wrong. It certainly merits further consideration. Maybe the effort being made here will click even more of this into place.
Your suggestion certainly merits very serious consideration, Josh. I have to say I find it infinitely preferable to Kemp’s proposal. I’ve been reading and re-reading your responses, and I think, upon reflection, that you’ve answered the philosophical and theological objections to your proposal for a recent genealogical Adam. The only remaining question is whether it accords with (a) a sensible reading of Scripture and (b) Catholic tradition.
Regarding (a): for me, the text where your theory appears to founder is Genesis 3, which traces woman’s pain in childbirth back to the sin of Eve, and death back to the sin of Adam. On your proposal, men were dying and women were suffering pain in childbirth long before Adam and Eve. To be sure, you could argue that Adam and Eve’s sin ensured that their descendants would suffer these penalties, but that Scripture says nothing whatsoever about the plight of other human beings living outside the Garden at the time. But that seems to require positing two Falls: first, a Fall which occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago, leading to death and suffering for the human race, about which Scripture is silent; and second, a Fall (mentioned in Scripture) which occurred a few thousand years ago, involving two special, priestly individuals named Adam and Eve, which led to death and pain in childbirth for them and their descendants. Personally, I think that’s rather messy, but that’s my own view.
Re (b): if your proposal is correct, then there’s a lot of stuff written by the Doctors of the Church which needs to corrected - not just scientifically, but also theologically. In particular, your claim that Adam and Eve were not the first rational beings, or the first beings made in the image and likeness of God, would require a drastic rewrite of Trent and other conciliar documents, not to mention papal ones. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church doesn’t do “rewrites,” so I can’t really see it happening. But I’m willing to grant that you’ve finally managed to remove the theological obstacles to your theory, Joshua. And I certainly agree that it merits very serious consideration. Cheers.