Re: mtDNA Eve and the determination of humanity

Interesting view. I guess I would ask a couple of questions before going to the airport. First, you say that the Bible allows small gaps in the genealogies but not large ones.  Where does it say this in the Bible? How do you know the size of a gap, which is missing individuals in the genealogies. It seems to me that if you have a gap, it is ipso facto a gap of unknown length.

Secondly, by changing Seth to the other line, and having Adam far back in time, you have a gap between Adam, the first man and whoever you say is the next guy in the line and thus, like many of us, you have ad hoc gaps.  Secondly, would you comment on the average generational age that I posted a couple of days ago. It seems to me that noting that the genealogies leads one to the wierd view that 61 to 120 year old men got all the girls is a weird world.  And explaining this by assuming missing people is anything but ad hoc.  It is the evidence for the missing generatins.. Thirdly, it seems to me that by changing Seth's line, you are re-writing the Bible for the benefit of your theory. 

While the events of Cain's line are verifiable, the fact that they were done in one family line is certainly contradicted by the evidence, since many cultures were involved in the inventions of these items.

Comments?



On Tue Feb 28 23:32 , Philtill@aol.com sent:

In a message dated 2/28/2006 10:49:43 AM Eastern Standard Time, glennmorton@entouch.net writes:

I suspect it is the only workable approach. Then the question becomes how old is Adam. Genetics says he can’t be recent if he is the progenitor of all humanity. One either ditches progenitorship, or move Adam way back. There is no other option that will fit the data. In this regard, the true answer either does lie with Dick or with me. In my opinion, all other views are hopelessly contraobservational.

Ahh, now i have to say something.  I'm new on this list and was really trying to keep from to myself, but (arghh) I can't hold back since the statement above is a perfect lead-in to my view!  I believe the Bible demands a third view, and one which keeps progenitorship, moves Adam into the disant past, and avoids unmerited gaps.  How can that be?  Read on.

 

What we need are:

 

a.  an historical Adam far enough back to be genetically the anscestor of us all (i.e., much earlier than Sumer to say the least);

 

b.  a flood recent enough that ark-building is commensurate with anthrologists' views on the species' capabilities (i.e., not homo erectus to say the least); 

 

c.  no ad hoc geneological gaps where the sense of the text militates against them;

 

Three clues:

 

1.  The Bible reads qualitatively different for the Garden of Eden and Abel/Cain stories compared to its subsequent parts.  Genesis 1-4 is more heavily theological and anthropological through the use of intentional symbolism than the parts immediately following. 

 

2.  The text allows small gaps in the geneologies here and there, but there are few if any places that allow large gaps.  However, it does imply one large gap between Adam and his "grandson" Seth.  According to Genesis 5 (if taken at face value), Adam would still be living when Seth was born.  Indeed that is reasonable for a grandfather, especially in an age prior to birth control for men to have grandsons at an early age.  However, when Seth was born the author writes that only then did men begin to call on the name of the Lord.  How could this be true and important enough to report if Adam and Eve were still living?  Let's not try to explain away the anthropological message that the author was clearly communicating to us.  There must have been period of time, significant enough to be worth reporting, the end of which was a turning point in human history, during which men were **not** calling on the name of the Lord.  Clearly then, Adam was long gone when Seth was born, and we only need to find out why.

 

3.  The parallelism between the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Seth can't be overlooked as merely historical reporting.  Either the documentary hypothesis is correct (which I don't believe), or the author intended the communicate something in the pattern of parallelism that we see.  Both lines are composed of versions of the exact same set of names (modified only slightly), and both lines end with a Lamech who had a triple seven (Cain's Lamech cursed 70 times 7, and Seth's Lamech living to age 777).  The obvious idea is that one line ended in the culmination of failure for humanity (Lamech's curse) whereas the other ended in blessings and a Messiah-figure (Lamech's son Noah who gave them "rest"="Noah").  There is a literary parallelism here that communicates to us theologically, and this goes beyond historical reporting.

 

Here is how I synthesize these three clues and hopefully win over both Glenn and Dick. 

 

1.  the Bible often equivocates between the description of key people as historical individuals on the one hand and their roles as theological symbols on the other hand.  Isaiah, for example, describes God's Servant alternatively as Jacob (the Jews), Cyrus the Persian, and the Messiah who would be born of the Jews.  Edom, Jacob, Moab -- all these are examples of individuals who become nations, which in turn are later personified as the individuals.  Likewise, I see Adam as both an historical individual **and** as a theological symbol for mankind, all within the same text.  As an historical individual, I see the story as true (by faith since I believe the Scriptures are literally true) and yet it was given to us according to the norms of oral mythological story telling.  It came from an early day when the expectations laid on the story were different than the expectations we erroneously bring to it today.

 

2.  The theological role of Adam and Eve are obvious, but likewise Abel and Cain are presented to explain something.  They explain why mankind ("Cain") was a primitive wanderer instead of a glorious representative of God.  Cain killed the herdsman Abel and was cursed from farming, hence early mankind will not live on the earth as herdsman or farmers.  They will be cursed and wander the earth as hunter/gatherers.  They will be afraid of others killing them, as Cain is afraid of being killed, not because an individual named Cain killed his brother Abel, but because wanderers do not have city walls or the protections of civilization to keep them safe.  (Check the text and you'll see that this reading is correct.)  Hence they need primitive religious marks (tatoos) on their skin to pronounce a protection on themselves and a curse on their enemies, and other such elements of early pagan religions that do communicate parts of God's truth.  (These elements of pagan religion were replaced as unnecessary and then scorned at later times and hence were included as an important part of the inspired story telling that became the inspired text; this treats the mark of Cain as an important anthropological element and not just a random fact.)  Hence, Cain represents all mankind from the time of our creation until the time of civilization.  When "Cain" builds a city, it means that mankind has finally stopped being wanderers (primitive hunter/gatherers) and has finally begun civilization.  Obviously the Abel and Cain story communicates that early mankind was primitive and successfully explains that fact according to the norms of the literary genre of that day.

 

3.  The events recorded in the line of Cain are anthropologically verifiable events:  the beginnings of metallurgy, the beginnings of pastoral nomadism, and the beginnings of oral literary history (those who play the lyre and pipe...performers who pass down the stories of mankind) -- very significant events, not just incidental minutia during homo erectus times nor any other time other than what anthropologist actually report.

 

4.  Seth was not Adam's direct son, despite what Eve is reported to say about his birth.  Adam and Eve symbolically represent humanity in general at that point in the account.  That sort of treatment for key individuals is the norm in early oral storytelling, and in the Bible especially in these early chapters.  Rather than being Adam's grandson, Seth was actually descended from the long line of "Cain" (primitive man) just as all the others before him were.  However, he is reported in the account as being born directly from Adam and Eve because that symbolizes what a significant break has been made from the former way of things.  This event is when men finally begin calling on the name of the Lord.   This has been a long, long time, depending on whether you count mankind as starting with homo sapiens or homo erectus or whatever.  (This treatment of Seth's birth explains how there could be a gap between Adam and Seth without doing damage to the text.  Indeed, the text implies and even demands it since the anthropological message about man calling on the Lord makes no sense and becomes insignificant without that gap.)

 

5.  The Biblical story continues with complete realism right after Seth because this is when real Hebrew oral history commenced, using historical realism to describe events that are in mesopotamia and historically verifiable.  The flood is therefore a local flood in that region, as sumerian literature like the gilgamesh epic really require us to believe. 

 

Hopefully this will satisfy Glenn's theological desire to keep Adam as the real progenitor of the entire human race and to keep Adam far enough back to explain the geneological data, and yet also satisfy Dick's desire to keep everything reported factually in the Bible in line with real anthropology and archeology.  (Did I thread the needle and satisfy the key element in each case?)  The key issue here is to treat the Bible in the way it invites us to treat it.  If we do so, then the problem solves itself. 

 

I think this is compelling in part because the only part of the Biblical account that can't be historically or scientifically verified is the part prior to Cain becoming a wanderer.  But this corresponds exactly to the point in the text where the literary sense changes from an overwhelmingly symbolic/theological style to an overwhelmingly historical/realistic style.

 

We can't force literalism on the text where the author and his chosen literary style repudiate such literalism.  While I do hold to the belief that Adam was a real person who underwent the reported interactions with God in the ancient past, I also see that he is presented to us according to the norms of the only literary genre known to mankind prior to the invention of writing: "oral myth".  That term has negative baggage that I would like to avoid since I don't believe the story is "myth" in the sense of being untrue.  But we should recognize that the story has its own expectations and we should respect them.  For example, it does not expect us to believe his name was really the Hebrew word "Adam" ("Man"), or that the things he is reported to say are literal translations of his actual words.  There may be other freedoms implied by that literary style. He might not have really lived in Mesopotamia, if according to the norms of that literary style the setting is intended only to facilitate the story's telling.  I just don't know -- maybe someone can shed some light on this idea.  But it is an inspired story that communicates real historical facts, and it does not come to us via the methods of historical reporting that we expect from true stories in this modern era.  There was no historical source to convey the information to the Hebrews about their ancient anscestor, and instead the account was inspired directly.  That inspiration was heavily theologically- and anthropologically-oriented to explain things that are important, not random facts that don't mean anything about people we never directly knew.

 

God's blessings to you!

 

Phil Metzger