I tend to think of the 50-40 kya mark as the timing for the fulfillment of Genesis 1:27, as the various groups admixed and became “one human family, under God” (sic). It was both the culmination of a long, slow process, and a uniting under a unifying reality. Physical and social and moral and spiritual change. A new era had begun. They recognized their shared humanity, despite physical differences. They recognized each other as “created in the image of God.” Variety coexists with unity.
The world at the 50-40 kya mark was not much different than it was at the 1.5 MYA mark. A lot of naked people throwing stone spears at animals and using fire to cook the meat. If a group of humans from this time period stumbled into the garden of Eden, I am certain that they would have eaten all the fruit from the tree of knowledge and they would have killed and eaten the snake as well. 
2 Likes
The garden of Eden was more like 15 -13 kya… so your party was delayed. : )
1 Like
I am responding to a post of yours, @Guy_Coe, back from December 2017. Have there been any posts since then pointing out the likelihood that humanity’s abnormally large human neocortex would be part of God making hominids into humans in his image?
This would be a trait shared by the adams and the de novo Adam & Eve.
I see no reason not to put Eden and de novo Adam & Eve at 6000 years ago… just like the biblical genealogies indicate.
[ Edit: inserted the missing word not ]
This input from other hominid lineages could be just what was needed to prepare humanity for the arrival of the de novo Adam and Eve 6000 years ago!
Do you mean, “no reason not to?”
'Cause there are plenty, not the least of which are the texts of the genealogies themselves.
I am editing in the correction. If you “highlight” even a word, and click on the floating “Quote” link, the system automatically inserts arrows that can take me to exactly what you are talking about. It makes things super easy…
The mainstream interpretations of these genealogies dictate, in the preponderance, a time around 6000 years ago. Once you drift past that date, you are increasingly just making things up to suit you.
Okay, then; whatever you do, do NOT study what Walter Kaiser and Bruce Waltke have to say about the texts of the genealogies. They’re two of the three-person team who compiled the standard reference classic, “The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament,” along with Gleason Archer. All three of them warn against the very approach that you’re taking. Wouldn’t want to confuse you with sound scholarship, now would we!
I’ll get in line when the YECs get in line to study them.
Remember, I’m a Unitarian Universalist. And I think the Global Flood is the fakest of all Bible stories. So thinking that genealogies shouldn’t be taken literally is easy for me. But I’m surrounded by people who think they are the closest thing to reality.
I’m not going to reject their consensus just because their consensus might be flawed; of course it is flawed. But it is more consensus than anything Kaiser or Waltke can come up with.
Truth is not determined by ignorant consensus.
Even 6000 years is too far back for any one ancestor to have an influence on the entire living population today. Genghis Khan is in the genealogy of over a billion living people today but his influence on the genomes of those people is essentially zero. The problem for the genealogy model is that you have to place Adam at a single place at a specific time such that his genealogy with every living person. That’s very difficult to do considering what we know of human history and how populations were replaced by waves of new populations.
You couldn’t handle the real truth.
You have yet to “internalize” the point of genealogical influence vs. genetic influence. The intention of de novo Adam and Eve is not to genetically influence the whole human race, but to genealogically influence the whole human race.
This can be demonstrated with your example of Genghis Khan: only a small fraction of all his descendants have some portion of his genome. But all of them can still be called “the children of Genghis Khan”.
The closest parallel to an existing Biblical principle is probably the conjecture that Original Sin (if it existed) is passed on to successive generations via “Federal Headship”.
@gbrooks9 Of the many ways I could attempt to move you past willful ignorance, why don’t you at least engage with the argument against reading the Genesis geneaologies as strict chronometers; see references like this (there are many others): http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/genesis_genealogies.html
@Patrick @gbrooks9
One analogy is sitting on the throne of England at the moment. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 2nd has inherited the crown of England from ancestors going back a thousand years or more - perhaps 50 generations.
Yet by my calculations (happy to be corrected - it’s simple maths but I’m lazy) it only takes around 20 generations to have 1 million ancestors. The queen has, like the rest of us, only 20,000 protein coding genes, so it’s pretty unlikely she has any of the genes even of Elizabeth I, let alone William the Conqueror. Interesting to think that I may, conceivably, have more of his genes than her.
But that (as you say, George) is the point of the genealogical viewpoint - we all participate in our common ancestor, and genetics is a distraction, as Joshua’s articles have all been very clear in pointing out.
And while I think of it, apart from federal headship another biblical example is that Jesus was a legitimate heir of David, even though living a millennium later.
1 Like
I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion on the flaws in the genealogies, and the implications for them.
But I think you misunderstand my lack of general interest in moving the time frame of de novo Adam & Eve. You don’t think it is because I am convinced that it happened 6000 years ago, do you? I remind you, again,
that I’m a Unitarian Universalist. I am not convinced of a great many things.
But the one thing I’m convinced about is that the “sheer dead weight” of the disputation regarding the genealogies would be sufficient to sink the @swamidass scenarios.
Once you “dump” the literal interpretation of the genealogies, then you have hundreds of competing contentious scenarios… not to even mention all the competing scenarios on the Evolutionary side - - even on something as non-Evolutionary as Eden and the de novo Adam & Eve.
I will always be promoting the “central mass” of ideas that will make Joshua’s scenarios as easily assimilated as possible by Evangelical audiences (or their offpsring!) .
Your zeal to introduce novelty in the interpretation of the genealogies may be gratifying to you, but it is a giant time bomb that will take the wheels right off of Joshua’s work. Naturally, if Joshua “really really really” wants to break new ground with the genealogies, it is his privilege to do so. And it is my privilege to counsel against such novelty.
@Guy_Coe, what exactly is your hope for Joshua’s work?
I am an evangelical. Josh knows that. His concern is for truth, not acceptance. And so we work to both fine-tune ideas, while building bridges of understanding. From where would you get the idea that Josh is more concerned with being popular than with being accurate? Bottom line: you’re not helping, if you think that way. Excuse me if I’m wrong. Good science ALWAYS proceeds in the face of multiple competing hypotheses, so the “proliferation” we’re opening up here is a good thing, not a bad one. It is my privilege to counsel against such fatuity. Josh knows all about my hopes and support for his work already.
BTW, are you aware that the claim that Adam and Eve were “de novo” created is also a matter of some dispute, since the Hebrew verb ‘bara’ is nowhere used in regards to either of them?
1 Like