Re: Dating Adam

Hi Ed, you wrote:

>Do you believe the Bible when it tells you that
> Adam was the first man and Eve was the mother of all
> living?

I believe the Bible when it dates Adam to the Neolithic period by
mentioning farming, livestock, tents, musical instruments, and articles of
bronze and iron before the flood. Do you believe there was a stone age?
Well, Adam wasn't created until long after that. Do you believe that the
garden of Eden was where the writer of Genesis told us it was - the Tigirs
and Euphrates? Well, there is no trace of civilization there until they
were able to irrigate the land. It took the invention of irrigation to
bring the region into its fertitilty. Eridu, the likely home of Adam, is
dated to no earlier than 4800 BC. That is the oldest city in the land of
the Tigris and Euphrates.

What Christians have commonly understood to be human history is in reality
Adamite - Semite - Isrealite - Jewish history. Don't blame me for everyone
else's mistake.

As for Eve, I said this in my book:

"Adam named his wife Eve "because she was the mother of all living" (Gen.
3:20). Does this verse signify that all present-day human populations are
derived from Adam? It would if the word "living" was synonymous with Homo
sapiens. But "living" is an adjective, unless it stands in for a noun,
such as "life." Was Eve the mother of all life? The word "life" surely
carves out more territory than the verse intends."

If "living" is an adjective in this verse, it modifies a missing noun. We
could pencil in "men" for the missing word, but why not mammals or
vertebrates?

In this verse, the Hebrew word chay, translated as "living," can be either
an adjective or a noun. Used as a noun, it can simply mean "relatives."
In this sense, all of Eve's relatives (Adamites) emanate from her. By
inference, Non-Adamites can look elsewhere. The significance of Genesis
3:20 is that it establishes an acceptable standard for marriage. By this
verse, Adam had no other wives or concubines.

There is another possible relationship. In the Sumerian poem ”Enki and
Ninhursag,” one of Enki’s sick organs was the rib. A goddess was created
for healing. She was called “Nin-ti”, the “lady of the rib.” But the
Sumerian ti also means “make live,” such that the “lady of the rib, ”
through a play on words, came to be identified as the “lady who makes
live.” And Eve, who was taken from Adam’s rib, was also the mother of life
to the Hebrews, reflecting the Accadian-Sumerian roots of biblical
tradition.

> Then what do you call those creatures with
> their "elaborate burials and art" that existed for
> some 33,000 years before "Adam and Eve" arose?

Pre-Adamites.

Dick Fischer - Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Thu May 5 19:05:28 2005