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

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According to Genesis 1, on the Sixth Day, after creating livestock and other wild animals:

Subsequently, in Genesis 2, God creates a man (Adam) out of some soil in the ground, and places him in the Garden of Eden to guard it and cultivate it. Now, who would he be guarding the Garden from? The people created in Genesis 1?

Then, in an effort to make a "suitable companion" (a pet) for Adam, God creates animals and birds out of dirt, and lets Adam name them all, but none meet all of the criteria of a "suitable companion". So, he creates a woman out of one of Adam's ribs. The rest is history.

Shortly after being evicted from the Garden, Adam and Eve have 2 sons: Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel, and Cain's punishment is that he is to become a homeless wanderer who is unable to grow crops.

Genesis 4:


At this point, the only people on the Earth, in principle, are Adam, Eve, and Cain. So, why worry about anyone finding him and killing him?

Genesis 4 continues:


Where did Cain's wife come from? Was that his sister? The Bible doesn't say that Adam and Eve had a daughter. Or, did she come from the people created in Genesis 1? Were these people Neanderthals (subsequently exterminated in the Flood), and Adam the first Cro-Magnon?

Genesis 4 continues:


There was quite a lot of copulating going on in those days.

My theory is that Adam wasn't really the first man--only the first Cro-Magnon. His sons interbred with the Neanderthals who had been created previously.

The Hebrew root SHMR (pronounced shamar, infinitive lishmur) means both to guard and to keep. Again you are running into a sh*tty English translation of the Hebrew. The TNKH can only be read properly in Hebrew and Aramaic which are the languages in which it was written.

Do not take any English translation of the Hebrew scriptures seriously.

ruveyn

I wouldn't recommend trying to harmonize Genesis 1 and 2...they're two separate accounts of Creation, with different writers and purposes; not one narrative at all. As to the rest - that would be the trouble with taking Genesis (up until Abraham, roughly) literally and not as prehistory.

you guys are a hoot, you know it?

Do you know what happens to the gene pool after repeated inbreeding? Think Alabama.

I've thought this for a long time. I don't know about Cro-Magnon vs. Neanderthals, and perhaps Adam even predated those guys. I mean, I don't KNOW. But you are absolutely right. Genesis 1 says God created man and THEN Genesis 2 says God created Adam.

The traditional view is that Genesis 1 is an overview of the whole of creation and that Genesis 2 gets down to specifics. My objection is precisely the one you brought up--where did all these guys come from that would kill Cain? Where did Adam's sons' wives come from? Cain built a city and, I believe, named that city after his son Enosh. Well, single individuals don't build cities. Only great leaders build cities, and Cain couldn't have been a military or political leader if he didn't have people following him.

There is nothing at all wrong, in my view, that man existed before Adam. The fall of man is still valid because Adam was a special creation and therefore #1, a spokesman of sorts representing all mankind and thus responsible for upholding God's commands. Eve is referred to as the mother of all the "living," indicating that through Eve man would be redeemed from his sinful nature inherited through Adam.

You also have to consider that Noah traced his lineage back to Adam and that all other human beings living at that time were destroyed in the flood. So Adam is still the "first man" because all mankind living today is a descendent of Noah and, consequently Adam. This makes sense when you consider references in the NT to Adam as the first man, which might otherwise seem contradictory.

You have any idea how offensive this is? Regardless of the content of the previous posts, your contempt nullifies any self assessment equating your thoughts with rationality.

No trouble here with considering Genesis as...mrm..less than factually accurate. Theologically accurate, yes. God created the world and man; man sinned; etc. There probably was a flood, too many cultures have the story, but it probably didn't cover the whole earth. It's not until Abraham that we enter the actual historical record.

Some things you havnt read correctly, you say " Then, in an effort to make a "suitable companion" (a pet) for Adam, God creates animals and birds out of dirt, and lets Adam name them ", it dosnt say that, it says God "HAD", as in he had allready created them on an earlier day:- 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them;

You say the Bible doesnt say Adam and Eve had a daughter, well Iam afraid it does, Genesis 5 :- 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 5 Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.

A lot of copulating probably was done, just because the Bible doesnt list every offspring, its more concerned about the lineage to the seed of the "Woman", being Jesus, doesnt mean they didnt exist.
The people Cain was worrying about could easily have been his relatives and thier offspring.

As for inbreeding and the notion that Cain couldnt have married his sister, modern genetics actually back what the Bible says in that DNA proves we all come from the same "African" mother, if you belive in evolution you would have to belive two or more seperate ape evolutions all lead to the same result that where able to breed with each other.
When Man was originally made, he was made perfect, there where no genetic disabilities that would have been exagerated by inbreeding, that only came later as man independant from God deteriated.

Ruveyn brings up a good point. The English Bible is not the best way to understand the meaning of scripture. One has to look to the Hebrew and Aramaic meanings of the Greek-Latin-English words.
The question of Adam is one of the great inconsistencies of the Bible. Is Adam the first man? Is he the first perfect man? Is the story just an allegory? Who did Cain have his children with? Did they all commit incest to fill the Earth?
It s never clarified that Cain and Abel were Adam's only children at the time of the "first murder". Did Adam and Eve have daughters who mated with Cain? Did he mate with imperfect humans like Neanderthals?

Granted, Genesis 2 does use the words "had created" in most English translations that I came across. However, from the paragraph, it isn't clear that "had created" meant prior to having created Adam. It occurs in the same sentence with "and brought them to the man to see what he would call them." It could just mean that God created them prior to bringing them to Adam. In the beginning of the paragraph, God decides to make a helper for Adam, and it looks like the purpose of creating the animals and letting Adam name them is to find one that will be Adam's helper.



Okay, you are right. However, no daughters are born until after Seth was born, which was after Cain's un-named wife bore him a son, Enoch.



"Easily" may be a stretch. "Possibly", but it seemeth doubtful.



The Bible doesn't state that man was "perfect", else why would he have heeded the voice of his wife?

This thread is one of the joys of this site. I have heard two year olds speculating as to where babies came from but this is much funnier.

wha. Build a bridge.

If cathoilics believe in adam and eve and the garden of eden and "don't eat an apple!" then you're inbreds, the lot of you. Talking snakes...pfft!

Genesis 1 states that Man was created on the sixth day, after the separation of water and land and the creation of plants and animals and whatnot. Genesis 2 states that Adam was created before plants and animals, and possibly before the water and land were separate. Either Adam was not a man, or there's an inconsistency there - and for those of you who want to think the Bible is some kind of modern-style accurate history (a concept not even in use in the real world until the Enlightenment), it's far from the only one.

Really, can't you absorb morality tales from something without having to believe it's literally true? To quote Ford Prefect, isn't it enough to see the garden is beautiful, without having to believe fairies live at the bottom of it?

If a distinction is made between the act of creation and physical existence then then it can be jimmied.

EDIT: Which is to say Adam is a man but man is not created with Adam

The Bible is literal nonsense. It is literature but it should not be taken literally.

ruveyn

The problem with this argument is that it assumes the text in the Old Testament is to be treated as if its grammatical and structural syntax is the same as that of the modern English language.

It's more complicated than you may think. It's a messy book with redundant verses and verses that sound like out of chronological order.