Larkin's Take on Adam

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Hello - I am new to this forum.

I have written a short book, Genesis and Evolution, which I will be presenting (poster session) at next month’s ASA conference. I feel it provides an argument that it is more consistent with the rest of scripture that Genesis 1 and 2 are sequential, rather than a retelling of the creation narrative with greater detail.

Genesis is the Book of Generations. The genealogy or genealogies that do not lead to the Messiah are always given first throughout the book of Genesis and even continue in this manner in the books of Chronicles. One of the purposes of Chapter 1 of Genesis is to establish the line not leading to the Messiah (men and women created in Gen 1:27) prior to the creation of Adam in Chapter 2.

This eliminates the conflicts that exist with the sequences of creation being very different in the first and second creation narratives.

This maintains an historical Adam, (Romans 5:17) "For if by one man’s offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ”, if Adam was not an actual man, that would mean to me that Jesus would not need to be an actual man.

  • We are all descended from Adam through Noah, as detailed in Gen 6:
    Gen 6:2 - That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
    The sons of God are the descendants of Adam, and the daughters of man are the descendants of men and women from Gen 1

Gen 6:9 - “Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations”
Why would Noah need to be perfect in his generations other than to maintain the line leading to the Messiah from Adam?

I would be happy to send my short manuscript to anyone who is interested.

Respectfully submitted,

Tom Larkin

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I have the same interpretive view, and would love to read your paper.
Can you private message me a link? Godspeed! If you’re using your phone, just push your avatar picture, then select the envelope. There you can designate me as a recipient, and attach any pdf file, or post a weblink. Glad to have you here; I need more company on this thesis!

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Welcome to the forum @TGLarkin.

“Descendents of Man” is literally “descendents of adam”

I would love to see it. Please send to me. Are you going to make it to the ASA workshop on the science of Adam?

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So, had a chance to skim it. Help me make sure I have this straight.

  1. You seem to associate Adam with Y-Chromosome Adam.
  2. You seem to associate Eve with Mitochondrial Eve.
  3. You seem to associate “Human” with Homo sapiens.
  4. You do not seem to make a distinction between genetic and genealogical ancestry.

There are some questions that arise…

  1. Do you think Adam’s offspring interbred with others?
  2. What do you think about the evidence of Sapiens breeding with Neanderthals?
  3. Do you think Adam and Eve are specially created?
  4. How precisely is this different than the RTB model (see Engaging the Zoo of RTB Models).?

Did I get the basics right? It seems like you are taking a view very similar to the RTB position, or at least a variant of their model. What am I missing here?

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@TGLarkin,

From the list posted by @swamidass, I have trimmed all away except for the 3 most important items:

Michondrial Eve (and her buddy Y-Adam) have been the fad for many years now… and with not much satisfaction.

The impact of “genealogical tracing” (instead of genetic tracing) shows that one mated pair (or a dozen of them) have the ability to co-opt a continental-sized population surprisingly quickly - - and all without leaving any genetic traces specific to the specific mated pairs!

Make sure you check that out with Joshua the next time you two get a chance to talk !

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Would still enjoy reading your paper! Send a link, or post it here. Godspeed!

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Once whole genome sequencing took off mt-Eve and Y-chromosome Adam became the most uninteresting people in our genealogy. With all the interesting work sequencing millions of peoples whole genomes and thousands of ancient genomes sequenced, there really isn’t too interesting in knowing our mt-Eve and our Y-chromosome Adam anymore. Big “so what”. Doesn’t tell us much about “Who We Are” and “Where did we come from”

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First, thank you very much for taking the time to review my manuscript, I will try to find a location to post the manuscript so other on this site will not need to purchase the book.

My primary argument is Biblical which is - the two creation narrative in Genesis are sequential, and not a retelling of the same account in additional detail. I feel I have shown how this approach is clearly more consistent with the Bible and eliminates several clear contradictions (e.g. was man or plants created first?). Therefore, Adam and Eve were not the first humans or even the first Homo sapiens. I feel the creation narrative of Genesis 1 is aligned not inconsistent with science.

The creation of Adam and the Garden is a specific to a set location, which I feel is fairly obvious from the text. Adam and Eve were directly created by God, as is stated in the Bible.

I believe we (all current humans) are descended from Adam and Eve through Noah, as is stated in Gen 6 - Noah was perfect in his generation, i.e. descended from Adam. There was interbreeding between the descendants of Adam and the descendants of “men and women” described in Gen 1, which is also describe in Gen 6.

Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve are our Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA) according to a journal article in Nature. I do not think you can determine that the MRCAs are actually Adam, Eve or even Noah, just that there is a common ancestor to all humans, which is the reason I included the reference. The MRCA may be much more recent than Adam, Eve and Noah. The only clue we have to the period when Adam was created is in the reason for Adam’s creation - “there was not a man to till the ground”.

No I do not, I am looking forward to your workshop and I will read your paper prior to the session.

I do not think you can distinguish the species of the “men and women” of the Gen1 creation narrative beyond the genus Homo, in contrast to the genus Pan, only to say that is does include Homo sapiens.

Yes, this is described in Gen 6, which is why for us to be descended from Adam, Noah had to be “perfect in his generations”.

This does not either support or refute my premise. Genetic material will soon become more plentiful through methods of extraction of DNA from soil rather than requiring a fossil, so I think we will learn a great deal more about this in the near future, including interbreeding among other “species” of Homo.

Yes, biblically this would be required as “through one man all have sinned”. It is important that Adam be an historic figure specifically created by God. If not, Jesus, as the antithesis of Adam, would not have needed to take human form.

Support for these positions is included in the manuscript, which I will try to post for this team. I would like to contrast these position against the RTB model in a separate post

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Models such as RTB are the reason I wrote my book. Many people feel they can arrive at and publish scientific conclusions without using the scientific method, presenting statistically significant data, or publishing information in peer review scientific journals just because they feel they are backed by the Bible. I feel this has caused many in the field of science to reject the Bible as myth, and many Bible believers to reject science. In Francis Collins book, The Language of God, he states that 45% of Americans think the Earth is 5,000 years old and many clearly reject scientific data which presents a challenge to those publishing data on items such as that related to climate change.

I feel that the Bible should be the Bible, which I feel is the Word of God and science should be science. I have described my rules for studying and understanding the Bible in my book, and all scientific conclusions should use the scientific method and be published in peer review journal. I do not feel the Bible should be taught as science.

This is a very strong opinion of mine, it does not preclude me from discussing this matter with anyone through “gracious dialogue”.

This being said, in contrast with the RTB model, I do not believe Adam and Eve were the first humans, the first humans were created in the first creation narrative described in Genesis 1. I feel this is more consistent withe the rest of the Bible in general and Genesis in particular as a primary purpose of the book of Genesis is to establish the genealogy leading to the Messiah. The line or lines not leading to the Messiah are always given first, followed by the line leading to the Messiah. This is done every time in the Book of Genesis, and also in the Books of Chronicles, with one clear exception if you feel Adam was the first human. The first creation narrative concludes with the statement" These are the generation of the heavens and the earth…" (Gen 2:4) using the same Hebrew word for generations (תולדות) as in the other genealogies.

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@TGLarkin,

As long as we acknowledge the ascendancy of Adam/Eve’s moral quality (having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge), and/or the implied dominant quality (as opposed to genetic recessiveness) of Adam’s parentage/lineage, then the Genealogical Adam scenario tells us that given enough time (and/or enough direction from God) - - Adam/Eve becomes the dominant ancestor pair (even though not the sole ancestral pair) of all humanity alive on Earth.

If you support a global flood, this can happen by the survival of just Noah and his family; if not, this can happen by means of Noah’s offspring (the new surviving proxies of the Adam/Eve headship), usually in less than 2000 years.

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Thanks, @TGLarkin , we see things very similarly. You might enjoy Mark’s video on “modified tablet theory” going into the antiquity of the material in Genesis and its literary form more in-depth. You can find it in this thread, The Genealogical Adam as Israel
Looking forward to reading more of your work!

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That is very interesting, and I would agree with this approach. I am proposing an even more specific purpose for Genesis as not only defining Israel, but more specifically the Messiah, given the specific and continued patterns in the genealogies of the line not leading to the Messiah always given first, followed by the line leading to the Messiah.

I would be interested to hear how others had arrived at the conclusion that the creation narratives are sequential.

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For me, it came in kind of a flash of insight, as a “what if --then what if” series, and I could discern the controversies falling away. Later on, doing research, I found the sordid history of some other 19th century theologians who took this tack to justify racism.
It occurred to me, that if the Genesis 1:26-27 ff. narrative established all of humanity as “created in the image of God” then there would be absolutely no basis for racism, or even utilitarianism, regarding our fellow human beings.
Not everyone interprets the “imago Dei” gift from God the same way, but it certainly, whatever it means, is what distinguished us from having a merely physical continuity with all other living creatures; we’ve been given something “extra.”
You’ll enjoy reading a wide variety of perspectives here, including those of fellow contributors who respectfully disagree with the gist of this narrative, as well.
Welcome to a diverse community probing a variety of issues together!

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If you give me permission, I will convert the document you gave me to a PDF, and upload it to my blog.

That means you think there were people outside the garden, and Genesis 1 and 2 are sequential. A lot of people (like @Guy_Coe and @anon46279830 and @jongarvey) all agree with you here! @RevealedCosmology even wrote a book on this…

So did John Walton:

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Adam-Eve-Genesis/dp/0830824618/

So your point is well taken, and you are another voice making that point.

Okay, but did you you know you’ve missed some of the science? RTB largely uses your method too, and also missed similar things. Here is where you go wrong…

That is not what MRCA means. @gbrooks9 is right:

Our first universal ancestors arise as recently as 3,000 years ago, no 150,000 years ago. This has nothing to do with MRCA, which is about DNA, not parental ancestry. A fairly important paper for you to read is this:

If you care about getting the science right, this has to be thought through carefully. A lot of the people here can help you get this straight. Until you do, your going to be missing some important things.

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Yes, please do. I would welcome the opinion and feedback of this team

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You can find your word document in PDF form right here: http://peacefulscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/larkin-genesis-evolution.pdf