I’ve been talking recently with S. Joshua Swamidass about his recent book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve. Josh is a believer. His thesis depends on co-Adamism. He argues, on the basis of science (genetics) that all humanity as we now know it could certainly have genealogically descended from a single couple. His worked resulted in Biologos changing their position and removing some older material from their website. Josh’s book has been reviewed by antagonistic atheist scientists who affirm the science is on target even thought they don’t like “the religion” that goes with it. So I feel secure that the science is sound. The question for me is whether the biblical text can sustain it. I’ll be participating in a 2020 AAR session reviewing his book. Josh has a chapter on defining what a human is that I’m still thinking about – this is the key for me, as it relates to the imaging idea. I have pretty simplistic notions of science and how geneticists would define homo sapiens and “human” – to this point it has been the idea that interbreeding requires calling XYZ hominid a human. But his work has awakened me to the fact that the terminology is more complicated than that. That’s about all I can say now. I have to make sure with Josh that I understand the science before I can answer my own question. But for now, I feel positively predisposed to co-Adamism with the imaging caveat. If I can see a biblical defensible path for co-Adamism that doesn’t result in “human sub-humans,” then that’s workable, since I already know how to defend co-Adamism from the text.
I hope M. Heiser doesn’t get too fixated on the inter-breeding issues. One of the reasons I don’t like to go back further than 12,000 BCE in my interpretation of Genesis 2 is so I don’t have to field a barrage of silly objections about Neandertals and all the other strange hominids/hominems we have been discovering lately.
Are those homonyms?
It’s a transcript. I think he meant hominid and hominim.
I do recall someone in an Amazon thread once accusing me of making an “ad homonym” argument. I didn’t quite know how to respond to that one.
Hominin, perhaps?
This will be interesting. I have read unseen realms by Micheal Heiser and found it interesting.
The key point for him seems to be as below :
If I can see a biblical defensible path for co-Adamism that doesn’t result in “human sub-humans,” then that’s workable, since I already know how to defend co-Adamism from the text.