Were Neanderthals Humans?

Actually, there’s no definite article in Genesis 1:26.
This was not referring to the “making” of Jesus in His pre-incarnate state. I’ll try to watch your video later to see whether this what you’re advocating, but I doubt it is. The angel of the LORD shows up on many occasions throughout the Old Testament; look up the story of His conversation with Sampson’s parents, for example. See James Borland’s work on this subject. There’s a review here: http://philgons.com/resources/bible/book-reviews/christ-in-the-old-testament-by-james-a-borland/ , and the Amazon link is here: https://www.amazon.com/Christ-Old-Testament-appearances-Human/dp/1845506278
Pay close attention to Borland’s thesis: “All Old Testament theophanies that involved the manifestation of God in human form were appearances of the second person of the Trinity, and as such their purpose was not only to provide immediate revelation but also to prepare mankind for the incarnation of Christ” (pp. 3, 4; ibid.).
Hope that moves us closer together. Cheers!

The definite article is in 1:27. Ha-adam. 1:26 is about taking humanity from where it starts to Christ and the Church. I will look at your link, thanks.

@anon46279830 , With regards to your comment that “The second person of the Trinity did not hop in and out of human form [sic] for all of these OT appearances. It happened only once -in the beginning” see otherwise on His theophanic persistence here, as well: http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/rogers/malak_yahweh1.html .
The pre-incarnate Jesus is all over the pages of the OT, not sitting idly by for all that time.
The NT witness to that fact is from the mouth of Jesus Himself!
See John 8 – 49 "Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me.50 But I do not seek My glory; there is One who seeks and judges.51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death.”The Jews said to Him, “Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also; and You say, ‘If anyone keeps My word, he will never taste of death.’Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?”Jesus answered, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’;55 and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word.56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?”Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.”Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. - John 8:49-59
Hope that helps!

I will look at your link, but I fail to see how your scripture supports your position. It could just as easily be used to support my view of the text. Could you perhaps elaborate?

@Guy_Coe

OK I read your link. It is fantastic work and I book-marked it. I agreed with every point. I would only add to it that the honorific Malak Yahweh has further connotations of God as the carrier of His Own Word. That is, I would connect it to the view of the gospel of John, the Word was with God and the Word Was God. Maybe that is a long Greek way of saying Malak Yahweh.

When I suggest to our host that a more complete theological framework should be constructed around genealogical Adam this is the kind of stuff I am talking about. Thorough and scripture-intensive.

What I don’t see from all of this is where you think this is some kind of evidence against my view of the text where Genesis 1:27 has the second person of the Trinity becoming the Heavenly Man, who is the same as Yahweh-Elohim and Malak Yahweh, and the man Adam is an echo of that whose purpose is to bring the race Adam to become Christ and the Church. That the “Angel of the Lord” is the second person of the Trinity strengthens my case (and is a view I already held) because there are just that many more anthropogenic appearances to account for. So is the second person of the Trinity hopping in an out of human form on all of these occasions or did He assume it in the land above in Genesis 1:27?..after which of course the tetragrammaton appears.

Please understand I am not saying He was in corruptible form back then.He was not born of a woman. He did not have a nature like ours (nor will we in heaven). Nor is He in corruptible form now, but He is in human form, appearing to the disciples and sitting at the right hand of God. I am just saying that after the incarnation He went back to being where He was before the incarnation- with the Father but in incorruptible human form (until the end of it all but that is too much to think of now).

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So, @anon46279830 and @Guy_Coe, would you be interested in previewing and commenting on the paper I am giving at the Dabar Conference? http://henrycenter.tiu.edu/dabar-conference/ This paper will start to flesh out some of my thoughts on the theology here.

Regarding Malak Yahweh, this figures strongly into my view of the Garden. It reads to me as a Theophany of Yawheh that creates Adam in the Garden. This Theophany, I do see as Christ, in an Incarnation-anyway view, where Jesus’ entry into the world is not contingent on the fall. If Adam hadn’t fallen, Jesus would be in our world as this Theophany.

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Would enjoy doing so, and comparing and contrasting any differences or nuances in all our views. However, if acting as commenter, I’d go to my inner editor first, and try to help you say what you intend to say more plainly, and then offer alternatives… so, don’t ask unless you want a “thorough” answer, from which you are free to pick and choose for what you actually find helpful. : ) As a student of Rhetoric, my first and foremost goal is to help you find what is genuinely persuasive! Cheers!

@anon46279830 , It’s not so much that I’m against your view of Genesis 1:27, as that I find it only tangential to the narrative in the text, which is referring to the fulfillment of God’s conversation with Himself in 1:26, viz. the decision to now endow “adamah” fully with His image, and thus eventually paving the way for the other things you’ve mentioned. More plainly, 1:27 is about the change wrought in early humanity… and yes, of course, its longer term goal is to bring mankind fully into fellowship with the Tri-Unity. But that’s only implied here, and sadly, events turn quickly south of this goal by the time we get to the events surrounding the fall in chapter rwo. But that’s a second, and much later, story.
At the crucial moment in history, when Jesus knows humanity needs to change from nomadic hunter-gathering (His mandate in 1:28ff) to relatively sedentary living as irrigation agriculturalists and animal domesticators, God “places the man in the garden to tend it and keep it” (a new mandate), and comes to raise him Himself as the Malak YHWH, as his friend and discipler. Which makes Adam’s betrayal of a single, simple commandment even that much more reprehensible. The crucible of man’s moral learning has just been fired up to white hot; but God does not abandon him in the furnace. The mystery of a future Deliverer is offered instead.
Cheers!

Joshua

There is a respectable history for this view (quite apart from the common opinion that OT theophanies were of Christ). Irenaeus, back in the 2nd century, regards Adam as having fellowship with the Logos in the garden - my take here. Of course, he was not considering Adam to be anything other than the first-created man.

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Also @anon46279830, you should take a look at the work that @jongarvey has done here: The Genealogical Adam as Israel.

Keep in mind that I am a scientist, and I am working to give an accurate account of the science, to open up the field for theologians to make better accounts. I might put things out there, but my goal is not to convert everyone over to my point of view. Rather, it is the task of theologians to take this further into a fully coherent account.

So, by all means, take what I have put out their and work on it to bring it to coherence. You do not have to agree with me on the particulars. I’m not resisting theological development, but working overtime to make it possible.

Though I am not a professional theologian, that is indeed where I think I can help, if anywhere. I will look at your paper tonight and ponder.

@Guy_Coe

I am very supportive of Pre-Adamite interpretations of Genesis… or at least of one part of Genesis. It immediately solves the “City of Cain” problem… which so notoriously hounds Old Testament fans, and it has for some 2000 years!

I might quibble on the nature of “sin” - - when a male lion takes over a pride, and instinctively kills any cubs around (to speed up when the females will be willing to mate again) … is that Sin without Stain? Is it even sin? I think the one point we can take away from the Expulsion from Eden story is that there is no sin in being naked … until you attain moral awareness.

But for the moment, I’m completely on board with your scenario!

There may be an even closer connection to Neanderthals in Homo Sapiens Sapiens history than previously thought. Haven’t been able to vet the information in this article yet, but if cogent, the genetic signature is pretty largely present, and scattered throughout the genome, if I’m reading this well: http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-science/research-confirms-neanderthal-dna-makes-20-modern-human-genome-009817 Any comments, @swamidass ?

The site tends towards the sensationalist rather than being scholarly and that article is not well-written IMHO. I have seen this stuff discussed at other sites like Eurogenes and as I remember it this was really nothing new. It is not saying that Neanderthal genes are 20% of any living human genome. It is saying that if you add up all the bits and pieces of Neanderthal genes in humans then it would add up to about 20% of a total Neanderthal genome.

Of course we now know that many of those alleles were the ancestral alleles humans had to begin with which were lost through drift and re-introduced from neanderthals rather than representing the introduction of novel alleles. Others have been lost over time so presumably at some point humanity carried more than 20% of a total Neanderthal genome.

I have a vague recollection that someone crunched these numbers in an attempt to calculate how many human-neanderthal successful couplings (producing FERTILE offspring) would have had to occur to get these numbers and it was a really small number. Maybe as low as a dozen. The idea is that if our Neanderthal contribution came from hundreds of couplings then you could patch together all the Neanderthal DNA in various humans and come up with a figure much HIGHER than 20%. Maybe even a whole genome minus the highly deleterious regions which nature immediately got rid of (versus many more which are only mildly so and nature has been reducing slowly over time).

If Joshua had the motivation and funding, I figure he could make his own calculations and confirm or deny what I remember the other scientists saying about this.

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Patrick’s Objections

@anon46279830

Naturally, @swamidass would be delighted with as much funding as someone might offer.

But what exactly do you accomplish by trying to precisely calculate (better than others have already calculated) how many Neanderthals interbred with sapiens? It doesn’t really have a theological impact on what he is discussing - - and in fact, I think it’s an unnecessary distraction. I see no metaphysical “breakthrough” coming from such work.

https://www.nature.com/news/early-european-may-have-had-neanderthal-great-great-grandparent-1.17534

Here is a 40,000 years old European who has long sections of Neanderthal DNA in his genome. It looks like one of great great grandparents was a Sapien/Neanderthal couple. Was this an example as per Fuz Raza an example of bestiality of a human mating with an animal? How would you describe the child of such an unholy mating? Is the child half human/half animal? If we use the word human to describe behavior not genomics, how was Neanderthal parent different in behavior to the Sapiens parent? Something right must have happened as remnants of the Neanderthal parent’s genome lasted to have a great great grandchild. Was this person only 92% human? And are/were all present day and ancient Eurasians only 92 to 98% human? And are all sub Suharian Africans the only 100% human people alive today? I think we should be very careful of labeling any species of the genus homo to be not human. What we call human behavior evolved gradually over a million years over many species of the genus homo. Maybe agriculture and animal husbandry of the past 12,000 years put humanness into hyper mode. But to say that any species of homo was more or less human than any other species of homo in the time period from 1.8 MYA to 40,000 years old when homo sapiens were the only surviving species of the genus homo remaining would not be based on any historical archaeological or genomic facts.

If it is, it is nothing like bestiality we see today, which never produces offspring.

There are more categories than “human” vs. “animal”. And frankly, do you not think humans are animals too! Even though most scientists nowadays say that Neandertals were “fully human too”, this is far from established, and even if they were “fully human” they were also a different type of human than Sapiens.

24 posts were split to a new topic: When was Genesis 1 and 2?

Would love to be a fly on the wall at this one: http://www.biologists.com/workshops/june2018/