What if Adam was just a character in an Ancient Creation Story?

[Patrick]

@Mark

There has to have been a point where homo sapien sapiens were all in the same location, right?

Yes, Africa, possibly the entire continent.

[jongarvey]

@Ashwin_s

I can’t see the image of God in human beings including Adam as anything other than a work in progress… of what can be… rather than what actually is.

Yup - though it’s important to keep in mind the wide scope of what has been see as “the image” - if it reflects (as Brian brock says) primarily God’s vocation, then it just “is”, and man’s increasing conformity to Christ, or not, would be seen better using some other concept than “image.”

Nevertheless “image” is a gradated or differentiated matter in some way. Man was, creationally, in the image of Christ. And yet the Christian calling is to change from bearing “the image of the earthly man” to being conformed to the “image of the heavenly man.” (1 Cor 15:19 for the curious)

[Ashwin_s]

@jongarvey

Nevertheless “image” is a gradated or differentiated matter in some way. Man was, creationally, in the image of Christ. And yet the Christian calling is to change from bearing “the image of the earthly man” to being conformed to the “image of the heavenly man.” (1 Cor 15:19 for the curious)

Exactly…
Perhaps if Adam had passed his test, that’s exactly the journey he would have started on.

@jongarvey

if it reflects (as Brian brock says) primarily God’s vocation, then it just “is”, and man’s increasing conformity to Christ, or not, would be seen better using some other concept than “image.”

Don’t Angels also have a vocation from God?
Do you see anything unique about Adams vocation.

The image of God would not just seperarate human beings from animals… but also from angels…Why would a measly human be considered worthy to judge Angels ?

[Patrick]

@Ashwin_s

Don’t Angels also have a vocation from God?

Angels? vocations? Are their Angel Engineers?

[jongarvey]

We may need to consult Denis Venema here. As I understand it, the human population displays “incomplete lineage sorting” vis a vis ape ancestors.

What that means is that the human population was never in one place long enough to agree on one complete set of genes from our ancestors: some populations have more orang utan or chimp genes than another. As far as I can see that suggests a picture of small populations scattering, occasionally cross-breeding, hybridising with different variant populations (or Neanderthals) etc.

Now imagine human speciation occurring in that kind of scenario, and there need never have been a “core population” all together at one place or time. So that’s why it’s a bit tricky even to define our “humanity” in biological terms - theology probably gives us a better handle on it.

[jongarvey]

@Ashwin_s

The image of God would not just seperarate human beings from animals… but also from angels…Why would a measly human be considered worthy to judge Angels ?

I think that was exactly Satan’s reasoning in the garden!

[Ashwin_s]

@Patrick

Angels? vocations? Are their Angel Engineers?

Yup… you got it…
And they are coming for your job!..

Better build a wall fast…

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@jongarvey

That difference wouldn’t seem worth writing about in ANE terms, because nobody confused people with beasts.

I don’t know about that.

I remember, at perhaps 5 years of age, wondering “Are we just animals?” So I think it may be natural question. And one of the ways that we differ from other animals, is that we have so much knowledge – which the Adam and Eve story explains (or pseud-explains).

[Patrick]

@Ashwin_s

Yup… you got it…
And they are coming for your job!..

Better build a wall fast…

I am so glad I am retired.

[jongarvey]

@Patrick

Are their Angel Engineers?

Yup - the ones that build bridges are call arch angels.

[Patrick]

@jongarvey

Yup - the ones that build bridges are call arch angels.

That’s a good one. LOL.

[jongarvey]

@nwrickert

I remember, at perhaps 5 years of age, wondering “Are we just animals?” So I think it may be natural question. And one of the ways that we differ from other animals, is that we have so much knowledge – which the Adam and Eve story explains (or pseud-explains).

Well certainly, if you believe current theories about Gobekli Tepe, it corresponded to a change from humans seeing themselves as part of nature, to seeing themselves as above it. That corresponds to what Owen Barfield proposed in Saving the Appearances.

I just don’t think Genesis teaches that, though it may well be symptomatic of the change, if Barfield is right.

[Mark]

That’s very confusing. So how do you still hold to some sort of “form” of the human being? I’m asking because I don’t want to give up this idea either. How does someone like Denton deal with this? He makes a good case for a saltational change regarding language, but did that happen in one individual or several independently of each other? I guess I really don’t understand this. I don’t see how human beings COULDN’t have all started in one locale. I “get” the human population size part but not the “we were never in one locale” part. How is that possible?

@swamidass, can you help?

[jongarvey]

@Mark

That’s very confusing. So how do you still hold to some sort of “form” of the human being?

Swamidass may well clarify the “single locus” question, but I don’t think he does substantial forms! If we hold to formal causation, then it’s the same question wherever we look in evolution. The trouble is that there aren’t many Aristotelian evolutionary biologists out there to explore the possibilities!

I’m just in conversation with physicist Ian Thompson over at The Hump, who’s playing around with the idea of formal and final causation in the protein folding problem. Since evolution involves protein folds as well as populations, it seems relevant.

[Guy_Coe]

Let’s remember that the Hebrew phrase “then God created man in His image; male and female created He them” doesn’t contain the slightest hint of information on either 1) how long it took to get to that “punctilinear” description, nor 2) what means God availed Himself of to accomplish it; IT ONLY ASSERTS 3) that, as a result of God’s action, something completely new and novel had been brought into existence.

[Greg]

@Mark

.S. Lewis has a wonderful quote. I would go further and say that the authors of the Song of Songs may have had fairly carnal, lustful purposes behind what they say. But it’s not “about” human marriage. It IS about Christ and the Church. That’s why it’s there. Why couldn’t God do the same thing with the story of Adam and Eve

Im curious how one would interpret the Song of Songs as about Christ and the church? The Bible reveals that God sanctifies both body and Spirit. We were created male and female where God’s handiwork starts in the womb. And He made us sexual beings where sexuality is to be celebrated and enjoyed in marriage. I see no reason to take Solomons poem here about the beauty of sexual relations and the sanctity of the human body and spiritualize it to mean something more than that. Can u provide a case that would sway me away from this view?

[Patrick]

oh yes, the beauty and sanctity of sexual relations of Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines.

[Djordje]

@Patrick

oh yes, the beauty and sanctity of sexual relations of Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Where did he get the time to actually rule?

[Patrick]

@Djordje

Where did he get the time to actually rule?

well he did die at 59 years old (with a smile on his face).

[AllenWitmerMiller (Retired Professor & Minister.)]

@nwrickert

I remember, at perhaps 5 years of age, wondering “Are we just animals?”

I remember asking the same question at age 18 when I was living in a freshman-sophomore dorm at a state university.