Testing the Genealogical Adam Hypothesis

I don’t know. Ask people who believe in supernatural/metaphysical things?

Like I said… 'nuff said.

@Greg

And when i read “mother of all the living” i get the image of a woman being the mother of all… includinf the giraffes!

The title “mother of all the living” seems to be an honorific!.. not an accurate description of genealogy!

An underdetermined text, from our point of view. But let us consider that in naming Eve (the first job God gave him was was naming stuff, after all) we’re intended to read a truthful, or prophetic, description. That seems to me far more likely, in context, than the preservation of a badly-chosen name in the narrative.

Firstly, Adam knew that death was the primary outcome of their sin. So on that basis, Eve ought to be the mother of all the dead. So why is she not?

God’s judgement on her had also included a note of hope, ie that from her seed would come the nemesis of the serpent, and in fact an ongoing struggle would ensue between her seed and the serpent’s, with bruised heels and crushed heads all round.

So is there, in Adam’s naming, a note of faith that life would, in fact, overcome death through her? Eve acquires a redemptive role even in her fallenness. That surely has to be the allusion Paul makes in Gal 4:4, and I would suggest it’s probably also what he means in the contentious passage 1 Tim 2:15.

Jesus, and John the Baptist, and a few OT passages, actually take that “two seeds” theme to be two types of human - the enemies of God are “a brood of vipers”, ie “seed of serpents.” Historically, at least, the lines of Cain and Seth have been understood in terms of that dichotomy, though it seems to be a less favoured interpretation now.

In other words, it is highly probable that “mother of all living” has far more spiritual significance than merely “everyone in the world descends from Eve.”

Can I ask what basis there is for this in scripture? I took a quick Google but didn’t see anything obvious.

This is so misogynist. Terrible. Shouldn’t be taught to little girls. In today’s society the equality of women and men is considered part of all human rights. To believe the rubbish above as true about women is immoral, unethical, intolerant, and unjust.

John, I was pointing out in the post that “mother of all living” means much more than that.

However, taking the various Scriptures that suggest all men descend from Adam, they would also be decended from Eve - that would be so on genealogical grounds even if the myths of another woman called Lilith in the garden were true.

You find something mysogynist is the claim that it is through women that evil has been defeated? I think your knee jerks are too finely tuned to give your imagination time to work.

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Sure, I didn’t mean to suggest that’s all you meant. I’m just curious about that point.

That’s what I’m asking really. Do you have any examples?

EDIT: I missed that Gen 3:20 was mentioned. Still curious about anything else though.

OK, Adam texts rather than Eve - bear in mind that nobody would be suggesting an allegorical Adam if there weren’t “get outs” for all the texts.

In Genesis, the table of the nations (Gen 10) lists nations descended from Adam. I believe that’s not intended as an exhaustive list (work in progress), but it’s extensive enough, assuming it’s true genealogy, to guarantee universal common descent.

Likewise, I Chronicles 1.1 (at the head of a list that puts off all but the most Pharisaic of us!) places Adam at the head of the tree of Israel, hich would genealogically guarantee he is a UCA.

The genealogy of Luke 3 goes from Jesus to Adam (and he is the son of God, which kind of terminates things!). Given that’s Luke’s theology is about Christ as representing us all because he is true man, that indirectly traces that brotherhood back to Adam.

Paul in Romans 5 contrasts humanity’s being “in Adam” with a new kind of sonship “in Christ”, as he does in 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Tim 2 makes a case based on the archetypal role of Adam and Eve for all people.

Those are the most direct in Scripture - although one should also mention that allusions to Eden abound through the whole narrative, Old and New Testaments, in effect saying “this story matters to all of you readers.”

The Jewish Apocrypha, 2nd Temple literature, Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus etc have a number of passages overtly assuming that Adam and Eve are the first parents of all - because they’re not considered authoritative, folks are happy to ignore them.

That’s about all I can think of for now.

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Thanks a lot! That’ll give me something to chew on for a while.

@jongarvey If so, that implies a far more thorough understanding of God’s means of redemption than is usually accorded. That’s why I phrased my criticism as needing to hold those ideas in tension, and note their irony, to truly mine their meaning. Agreed that Adam was in no position to claim her as the mother of all “imago Dei” human beings. There’s no indication, at this point, that he even knew of those outside the garden.

I’m on a different train of thought here. Would an actually existing, non-allegorical Adam have to be the ancestor of every living human?

John - there are, indeed, theological models in which that is quite possible. Excuse the technicality, but the Reformed idea of how Adam represents mankind is “federal headship.” Essentially that means he stands for all mankind - imagine a negotiator bargaining on behalf of a nation, a king entering into single combat to decide a war, or some similar analogy of your choosing.

So Adam receives blessing on behalf of mankind, and if he sins, his fall effects all mankind. Usually that works on the basis that he is the progenitor of mankind (so if he is sentenced to death, there ain’t no mankind to receive the blessing, and the tendency to sin becomes part of hujan makeup). But some folk, such as my co-writer at the Hump, James Penman, speculate that he’s federal head merely by God’s choice.

The problem with that is finding some plausible reason why the rest of the race should stand or fall with “just some bloke”, unless they’d chosen him in an election or something. In any case, because the main passages, Romans 5 and 1 Cor 15, compare Adam and Jesus in terms of birth (“into Adam”) and new birth (“into Christ”) it seems Paul definitely taught that, since everyone is called to move from the one to the other, he saw Adam as the progenitor of all of us.

Although some (eg Scott McKnight) have tried to argue that Paul was wrong about that, but it doesn’t matter if Adam is allegorical, most conservative New Testament scholars don’t think it washes. I agree with them for a bunch of reasons, but the problem has, all my life at least, that science didn’t seem to allow for any kind of first man. We had to hold the theology in tension with the science and await developments…

…Genealogical Adam is just such a development.

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