Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

David,
 
you wrote,
 
Why are so many OEC folks willing to take the seemingly universal references to the geographic scope of the flood in a more limited sense, but not to do so with the related references to its anthropological scope?
 
There is a good argument that Moses did not believe it was universal (in the anthropological sense). Moses designated the three sons of Cain's Lamech as "the father of all who travel with tents and cattle" (pastoral nomadism), "the father of those who work with copper" (metallurgy), etc. It doesn't say they "were the father of those who did such things prior to the flood, but who were entirely wiped out during the flood." Rather, he puts it in the present tense: those people, who the Isrealites were observing right then and there at the time of the Exodus practicing pastoral nomadism or working with metal, had obtained those cultural innovations from the people who lived **prior** to the Flood.
 
I think the church has never really allowed the significance of that statement to sink in! It is truly breathtaking. If Moses had thought that all of Cain's descendants had been wiped out in the Flood, then he would never have ascribed the origin of those significant cultural features to them. It would make little sense to say that Ham or Japeth had taken a vacation from their dad Noah long enough to practice some pastoral nomadism, just so they could return to Noah and survive the flood and then re-initiate the nomadic life again after the flood, such that it was really pre-flood people who had initiated it. That's silly! Moses's statement clearly assumes that the neolithic cultural innovators who lived **before** the flood were the direct explanation for the existence of those practices **after** the flood.
 
In a nutshell, Moses assumed cultural continuity across the flood. Thus, he surely must have assumed that the Flood was non-universal.
 
I think this is entirely reasonable, much more so that to think Moses believed the Flood was universal. Moses actually did have a way to KNOW that the flood was non-universal. If he knew his Egyptian history as it was recorded in his day, then he knew that it went way back earlier than Noah's geneology and that it contained no flood. We can verify that today by reading it. But the accounts that Moses' anscestors had brought with them from Mesopotamia did include a massive flood. So it was natural for Moses to realize that he was dealing with an historical event that had occurred in Mesopotamia but not beyond. The universal-sounding terminology that Moses used to describe the flood was identical to the terminology he used to describe Joseph's famine, which also he surely knew was non-universal.
 
Phil
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: dopderbeck@gmail.com
To: gmurphy@raex.com
Cc: CCarriga@olivet.edu; asa@calvin.edu; dickfischer@verizon.net
Sent: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

So yes, he is "the father of many nations" biologically.
 
But not exclusively. Abraham is not the only person who was alive at the time of Abraham to whom every person in these nations could trace their ancestry. It would seem to me absurd in the extreme to claim that no contemporary of Abraham contributed any genetic material to any of those nations. IOW, there is no "monogenism" implied with respect to Abraham being the father of many nations. Moreover, undoubtedly a few generations away from Abraham there would have been people who were part of those nations who were not in any direct line of descent from Abraham. Abraham would have been more like a distant cousin. (I'm still not convinced that even this is necessary. The phrase could be idiomatic, as in "Henry Ford is the father of a great industry" -- not meaning Ford was the only person in his time trying to make automobiles).

There is no serious scientific problem, it seems to me, with Eve being the "mother of all the living" in this same way, assuming she lived at or around or shortly after mitochondrial Eve's migration out of Africa. The problem arises if Eve has to be the only person from whom everyone later descended, because then the diversity in some human gene lines (notably the MHC) seems impossible to explain.

This is why I continue to think a more fruitful approach, other than a literary one, must be to think of a phrase like "mother of all the living" as an ordinary geneological reference, or maybe also an idiomatic phrase (interesting to note that Adam said this about Eve, not that it is said of her directly by God), and not a genetic reference.
 
What still bothers me more is that if the findings of population genetics are solid -- something I'm not sure is necessarily so given the relative dearth of data and the newness of the field -- whatever the flood was, it can't have been anthropologically universal. That's why I started a related thread a week or so ago on how to take the Bible's implication that the flood destroyed all human life.
 
Why are so many OEC folks willing to take the seemingly universal references to the geographic scope of the flood in a more limited sense, but not to do so with the related references to its anthropological scope? It would seem to me that even a modest application of the principle of accomodation could suggest that the Biblical narrative describes a real event in universal terms that were familiar to the original audience, in part from Babylonian literary sources, but that those references simply don't actually address people living far from where that event happened. Why is anthropological universality a sacred cow when geographic universality isn't?

 other point I made is really more devastating to Dick's claim: The biblical ascribes the descent of many other people besides Israel to Adam.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Opderbeck
> To: Charles Carrigan
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu ; dickfischer@verizon.net
> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 2:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?
>
>
> Why does Eve being the "mother of all the living" have to mean something biological? If Abraham was the "father of many nations" (Gen. 17:4), can everyone in all of those nations trace their biological ancestry directly back exclusively to Abraham?
>
>
> On 3/21/07, Charles Carrigan <CCarriga@olivet.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > So "Mother of All the Living" really only meant "Mother of All of Us Israelites and a Few Offshoots Way Back When" ???
> >
> >
> >
> > >>> "Dick Fischer" <dickfischer@verizon.net> 3/21/2007 11:18 AM >>>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Eve was the mother, as Adam was the father of the Israelites for whom Genesis was written and to whom it was directed. We Christians are free to read their mail so to speak, but it was not written initially for us. It is this tendency we have to read ourselves into Jewish history that continues to get us into hermeneutical holes. As far back as I can go is one great grandfather named Pfizer (changed to "Fisher" at Ellis Island) who was a captain in the Prussian Army, or so I've been told. Who his wife was I have no idea. But the Israelites had the benefit of genealogical records that reached all the way back to their earliest ancestor – Adam.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Dick Fischer
> >
> > Dick Fischer , Genesis Proclaimed Association
> >
> > Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
> >
> > www.genesisproclaimed.org
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of George Murphy
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 10:15 PM
> > To: Bill Hamilton; asa@calvin.edu
> > Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > How was Adam's wife "the mother of all living" ( Gen.3:20) if Adam wasn't the father of all living?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Shalom
> > George
> > http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >
> >
> > From: Bill Hamilton
> >
> >
> > To: Gregory Arago ; asa@calvin.edu
> >
> >
> > Cc: Glenn Morton
> >
> >
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 6:22 PM
> >
> >
> > Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The ASA statement of faith references the historic Christian creeds, which don't, as far as I know, explicitly require a belief in Adam and Eve. So strictly speaking, I suppose you could be an ASA member without believing in Adam and Eve. Having said that, I will state that _I_ believe that there were specific persons Adam and Eve. In spite of the objections raised by Glenn, I like Dick Fischer's view that Adam lived in Mesopotamia about 7000 years ago. For reference, the objections raised by Glenn include
> >
> > 1. Under Dick's scenario we are not all descended from Adam. Glenn sees that view as an excuse for racism. I don't, because of the many laws, commandments etc. given throughout Scripture detailing how we are to treat our fellow human beings
> >
> > 2. Under Dick's scenario it's difficult to understand how a flood approaching the description of Genesis could have occurred (in southern Mesopotamia). I admit this is a difficulty, but that doesn't justify throwing out Dick's scenario
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Bill Hamilton
> > William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
> > 248.652.4148 (home) 248.821.8156 (mobile)
> > "...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Gregory Arago < gregoryarago@yahoo.ca>
> > To: asa@calvin.edu
> > Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 7:49:07 AM
> > Subject: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?
> >
> >
> > It is well known that ASA once issued an unambiguous statement: 'We believe in creation!' Would ASA be willing to follow that important, courageous clarification up with a further statement: 'We believe in Adam and Eve!' ? This is one of my main questions for all theistic evolutionists (TE's).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > G. Arago
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________

> >
> > Don't be flakey. Get Yahoo! Mail for Mobile and
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Received on Thu Mar 22 11:20:44 2007