<<Now there is a short collection of data that points toward Adam's
position in the stream of humanity at a point far downstream
from the Australopithicines, or H. habilis, or H. erectus, or
even the anatomically modern Cro Magnon. Where is there even a
shred of evidence that would put Adam back millions of years
just so he can start the human race?
The historical evidence is entirely one-sided. The question is:
Can we be comfortable with Adam as the first man to have a
covenant with God and to be accountable, but not at the apex of
humanity. In short, can we live with the realization that the
Old Testament, written entirely by the Jews, is the history of
their people, and not the history of mankind.
>>
Dick has it right, IMHO. The hypothesis that Adam was the head of the
biological human race poses such intractible problems that it needs to be
ruled out. Here's just one. If Adam is placed among the Australopithicines
as the head of humanity, how could he have named the animals that God
presented to him, as described in Gen. 2, given A.'s lack of sophisticated
language and the intellectual capacity required for the task? Any placement of
Adam in the human genealogy is purely arbitrary.
There is an answer to the biological head of the human race, that is given in
the first chapter of Genesis. Here God consults within the godhead to create
human
beings in his image-- "male and female created he them". This is the
beginning of the lineage that developed into the human race. This lineage is
what Glenn has argued was becoming human long before most Christians thought
they were. It was far down in this lineage, having become morally
deteriorated, that Adam was inserted as a real historical person, as the first
bearer of the covenant, the first to have a real relationship with God. Adam
was created into a peopled world, as Dick has emphasized. The covenant was
initiated in Adam, and realized via the Jewish nation and eventually in
Christ, the Second Adam. In Christ the human race became one, no Jew or
Greek, slave or free, male or female.
Bob