Was Adam really the first man, according to the Bible?

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Yeah.... this gets into a lot of issues. For one, I think the current scholarly position is that Genesis is actually two authors smashed together, rather than one author. Effort is made to "make it fit" but it doesn't.

But you don't KNOW that. There is no reliable way to know that and no evidence, Biblical or otherwise to support that.

You have to understand I consider myself a Bible literalist. When I say I'm a Bible literalist, I mean that in the sense that I take what's in the Bible for what it literally is along with what it says. You can't, for example, gain a full and accurate understanding of cosmology from interpreting a Psalm, which uses figurative poetic devices to describe the relationships of the earth and the heavens from the perspective of a land-based observer!

That said, the "classic" age-of-earth hypotheses are based on the supposed reliability of Biblical chronologies. The chronologies of the Bible ARE reliable, i.e. they describe the major players throughout Biblical history and help establish a sense of identity for the Jewish people. But ancient genealogies are also known to have gaps. There's nothing wrong with having gaps because these gaps by no means threaten Biblical inerrancy. The genealogies make their point in a very succinct way to accomplish their purpose. But they are by no means intended to be read as having anything more than that purpose.

If we were, for example, meant to have a COMPLETE genealogy of this period, for all we really know that list alone would be as long as the entire Bible in its current form.

And because an age-of-earth hypothesis is not a point anywhere in the Bible, the Biblical genealogies are ineffective in dating the earth. It's more accurate to say "by our best information in the Bible, the youngest the earth could possibly be is 6,000 years. It's very likely the Earth is AT LEAST a few thousand years older. Gap theory, along with more flexible ways of reading Genesis 1, allows for a much, MUCH older earth. And yes, you CAN arrive at these conclusions from a literalist perspective. It is not heresy to do so.

A valid point, but let scripture interpret scripture. If you believe the biblical account of creation then you also believe the biblical account found in Genesis 2:18-20. Before creating Eve, God began bringing to Adam all the creatures He had formed, and “the man was calling the names of all the domestic animals and of the flying creatures of the heavens and of every wild beast of the field, but for man there was found no helper as a complement of him.” It takes but a few words to describe this; but how long did this naming of all the animals take in actuality?

The brevity of the Genesis account surely does not require our thinking that God simply gathered all the animals and birds into a big group and then had them file past Adam while he quickly called off names for them, one by one, like an assembly line. True, he may have had to deal only with basic family kinds rather than all the varieties of creatures that have developed out of those family kinds. But even so, we cannot rule out the possibility that God’s “bringing” these creatures to Adam may have involved their moving in sufficiently close to allow Adam to study them for a time, observing their distinctive habits and makeup, and then selecting a name that would be especially fitting for each. This could mean the passing of a considerable amount of time.

Let scripture interpret scripture. When Adam finally did see his newly created wife, his first words were: “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Gen. 2:23) This too could indicate that he had waited for some time to receive his delightful human counterpart.

What, then, does all of this mean? Simply this: These factors, and the possibilities for which they allow, prevent me from saying with any positiveness how much time elapsed between Adam’s creation and when he sinned. I do not know whether it was a brief time such as a month or a few months, a year or a lengthy time like a few thousand or even a million years. But whatever time elapsed would have to be added to the time that has passed since Adam’s creation in order for us to know how far along we are within God’s seventh “day,” his grand day of rest.

As far as a time line goes:

“In the beginning . . .”
4026 B.C.E. ...... Adam’s creation
3096 ...... Death of Adam
2370 ...... Floodwaters fall
2018 ...... Abraham born
1943 ...... Abrahamic covenant
1750 ...... Joseph sold as a slave
before 1613 ...... Job’s trial
1513 ...... Exodus from Egypt
1473 ...... Israel enters Canaan under Joshua
1467 ...... Major conquest of Canaan completed
1117 ...... Saul anointed as king
1070 ...... God makes Kingdom promise to David
1037 ...... Solomon becomes king
1027 ...... Temple in Jerusalem completed
circa 1020 ...... Song of Solomon completed
997 ...... Israel is divided into two kingdoms
circa 717 ...... Compiling of Proverbs completed
607 ...... Jerusalem destroyed; exile in Babylon begins
539 ...... Babylon falls to the conqueror Cyrus
537 ...... Jewish exiles return to Jerusalem
455 B.C.E. ...... Jerusalem’s walls rebuilt; 69 weeks of years begin
455 B.C.E. ...... 69 weeks of years begin
After 443 B.C.E. ...... Malachi completes his prophetic book
circa 2 B.C.E. ...... Birth of Jesus

1 B.C.E. (note: No zero year)
1 C.E.
29 C.E. ...... Jesus is baptized
29 C.E. ...... Jesus begins to preach about God’s Kingdom
31 ...... Jesus chooses his 12 apostles; delivers Sermon on the Mount
32 ...... Jesus resurrects Lazarus
Nisan 1, 33 C.E. ...... (Nisan corresponds to part of March and part of April)
Nisan 14 ...... Jesus is impaled
Nisan 16 ...... Jesus is resurrected
Nisan 30, 33 C.E.
Sivan 6, 33 ...... Pentecost; outpouring of holy spirit (Sivan corresponds to part of May and part of June)
36 ...... Cornelius becomes a Christian
circa 47-48 ...... Paul’s first preaching tour
circa 49-52 ...... Paul’s second preaching tour
circa 52-56 ...... Paul’s third preaching tour
60 C.E. ...... Paul writes letters while imprisoned in Rome
Before 62 C.E. ...... Jesus’ half brother James writes his letter
66 ...... Jews revolt against Rome
70 ...... Jerusalem and its temple destroyed by the Romans
circa 96 ...... John writes Revelation
circa 100 C.E. ...... Death of John, the last of the apostles

100 C.E. to 2011 = 2,111 years.

Do the math...

Last edited by kxmode on 19 Jan 2011, 2:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

There are between 5 and 30 million species. At one naming a second between 5 and 30 million seconds

That comes out to between 5.7 days and 34 plus days figuring 86,400 seconds to a day.

ruveyn

Read the second paragraph...

No. He appeared in Genesis 2. The first man appeared in Genesis 1, on the 6th day.

You are confusing the story with the character. There are two genesis myths stitched together in the Book of Genesis.

According to Rabbinic Tradition there was another woman, Lilith, made before Eve (Havah). Lilith was fashioned from earth, just like Adam. Eve was cloned from a part of Adam which is why she is subordinate to Adam. Rabbinic legend has it that Lilith refused to get on the bottom so she left Adam. The first heroine to woman's liberation.

Please see: http://www.art.net/~schong/lilithmyth.html

ruveyn

The timeline of the kingdom period is fairly reliable considering what we know about absolute vs. relative time. That's not too terribly difficult. The above is my objection.

Job, no doubt, predated Moses, although we can reasonably attribute the writing of the book to Moses.

But we have no indication of any specificity of the 1750, 1943, 2018, or 2370 dates. There is a prophecy regarding how long the Israelites would be in Egypt, but we have no real details of the journey into Egypt nor the circumstances immediately preceding the Exodus--only the acts of God leading up to their expulsion.

There is no indication of when the floodwaters fell. There is no indication of how much time passed from the death of Adam to the flood. And we have NO idea when Adam was created. The best we can say is that 4026 is the LATEST Adam could possibly have been created, but very likely the reality is a much earlier date. We know how many years Adam lived, but that's about it.

For me this is the most difficult part of the Bible. It gives the impression that a person was born and the very next day he got married. We're so used to reading chronologically that trying to understand time in the Bible is dizzying. One thing I was taught by mistake was that it took Jacob 14 years to marry Rachel. But if you read it carefully, that's not what it says. It was only seven years. Jacob only had to wait until his honeymoon with Leah was over before marrying Rachel--but it DID commit him to another 7 years of labor after that. It's an easy detail to miss, and much of what is said about the passage of time, intervals between a person's birth, their marriage, and the birth of their children, along with the genealogies, misses very subtle details that indicate something much different from the immediate impression. But this is partly the reason I enjoy reading the Bible so much, not to mention the more obvious spiritual benefit of acquiring and growing knowledge.

One thing I'm just not going to make my mind up about is the so-called "gap theory." Your standing with God doesn't hinge on whether or not you believe gap theories about Genesis 1, but it is nonetheless interesting and explains all the so-called fossil record "evidence" of evolution. Your timeline is more concerned with the timeline of the world from Adam. If someone was concerned with age-of-earth theories and the Bible, the Bible leaves that information just as mysterious as naturalist methods.

What is the word, again? Almah? I forget...

The problem is that the word "virgin" isn't entirely inappropriate, either. The Hebrew word means "young woman of marriage age" or some such. If such a woman is yet unmarried, it's reasonable to assume that she's a virgin. At least according to the law she has to be. The use of the word virgin may have been due to Christology in translation, but it's not necessarily unwarranted, either.

Another example is the psalm reference "like lions they pierced my hands and feet," when the original reads "mauled" instead of "pierced." There is no real need for an objection because lions' teeth do pierce skin in an attack, and piercing flesh in attack is, in part, mauling. It's not a stretch to translate the scripture that way. Even if you leave the original wording strictly as-is, it doesn't really change anything for the Christian understanding of how prophecy was fulfilled.

I suspect that you would also give the same advice for burning the Bible if it contains the New Testament.

Yes it is. There is a perfectly good Hebrew word for virgin female. It is transliterated as b'tulah. And both words are used in TNKH. Virgins do not conceive without the help of a male (a mortal male).

ruveyn

But why is it unreasonable for an unmarried almah to also be a b'tulah?

If Isaiah had intended to say that Jesus' mother was going to be a "virgin", then he would certainly have used the correct Hebrew word.

I have no doubt that Isaiah DID use the right word, though. If an almah has not carnally known a man, she is also a betulah. Now, not all almahs are betulahs, and not all betulahs are almahs (assuming almah refers to a young woman in her teens/early 20s, however "young woman" is defined). BUT a betulah who is young IS also an almah, and any almah who has not known a man is also a betulah. It is not necessarily incorrect to use these words as synonyms.

Nor is it necessary that a betulah really is a virgin. My understanding is that Genesis 24:16 uses the word betulah. The HSCB translates it thus: "Now the girl was very beautiful, a young woman who had not known a man intimately." That might imply that there were betulahs who HAD known a man intimately, hence the need in the verse for clarification.

But if you go further in the chapter, to vs. 43, the HSCB renders it "I am standing here at a spring. Let the virgin who comes out to draw water, and I say to her..." The word here is almah. Thus Rebekah is a betulah who has NOT known a man AND she is an almah--both a young woman and a virgin. Surely almah and betulah here are synonyms.

What about a barren 90 year old women with 100 year old husband?
Can they concieve without God opening the womb?
If God did open said womb, then why is it any harder to except God could open a Virgins womb?
If God cannot open a 90 year old Barren womens womb, the who on earth are the Jews?
What gives them any claim to Palestine?

Ah yes. The Abe and Sarah story. It is biblical fiction.

ruveyn

In which case I would be most interested in your opinion on the origins of the Jewish race and your opinion of Jews "God given right" to steal Palestine from its original inhabitants, if there is no God to give them that right.