Amaleq13

I'll assume that we will ignore the fact that eight people, let alone two, is not a sufficient population to ensure the species will survive.

The Flood becomes a genetic "choke point" so I would think that the most recent common female ancestor would be expected to be a hell of a lot closer in time to the most recent common male ancestor than c.90,000 years. I don't recall any information about the origins of the four women but there doesn't appear to be any reason to assume they weren't local girls or, at least, not from distant lands. The more local they were, the sooner we should expect a common female ancestor. Even if, for no other reason than to strain to preserve the story, we assumed they came from very far away, it doesn't seem likely that their common female ancestor would not be more recent than 90,000 years earlier.

Eternally Curious

I have a serious question on the topic. And forgive me if this has already been brought up for I haven't had time to read the whole thread (I'm at work, what can I say?! )

My understading of the older version of the story of Adam and Eve is that God created Adam, seemily the only rule he was given was not to eat the "Forbidden Fruit", he roamed the Earth naming the animals and trees and such and was getting very lonely. God saw this and decided to make Adam a mate. So he took a rib from Adam and made Eve. So him and Eve were in Eden checking things out when Eve decided that the "Forbidden Fruit" looked so irresistable that she just couldn't help herself (it had to be the woman didn't it) and not only did she take a bite of the fruit, but talked Adam into it too (that Eve is very convincing isn't she the little vixen). Hence God getting angry and chuncking them out of Eden forever and making them mortal. If my details are inaccurate, please don't hesitate to tell me.

Ok, so after thinking about all of that, If God is all-knowing and he knows everything that's going to happen before it happens, first, why not create Adam a mate in the beginning? Shouldn't he have known Adam would need a mate? Also, why tell them not to eat the "Forbidden Fruit" if he knew they were going to anyway? Knowing all of this, why put them in Eden in the first place? It doesn't make any sense for him to go through all that trouble if he knew they were going to fail anyway. It almost seems like he was setting them up for failure. Am I missing something?

Toto

If YHWH were omniscient and omnipotent . . . well, it would be boring, and there wouldn't be any drama, would there? And then how would the priests and the Biblical exegetes stay in business?

Eternally Curious

True. No Christain I talk to has an explanation for this and you would think, given the fact that their existence is based on this story, they would've already worked the kinks out. :huh:

Agemegos

I'm not saying that it is a bad story, I'm saying that it is untrue.

Agemegos

The fact that the Bible never says that Adam and Eve were the first humans is only one brick in the wall. The argument is further developed by the observation that Gen 1:26-27 gives an account of God creating Man (male, female, plural, and at teh same time) that is prior to and distinctly different from God's creation of Adam in Gen 2:7 and separate creation of Eve in Gen 2:22.

1. The Bible does not say that Adam was the first man or Eve the first woman.

2. The Bible says that man and woman were created on the Sixth Day, in a manner, order, and number that is such that this cannot be the creation of Adam and Eve.

3. There is no space in the creation story to insert the story of Adam and Eve before the Sixth Day.

The Creation of Adam and Eve cannot be before the creation of men and women at Gen 1:26-27. It plainly is not the creation of men and women at Gen 1:26-27. So plainly it occurred either after the creation of humanity or in an alternative universe.

Either you have two alternative creation stories, or else Adam and Eve were a second, separate creation of a man and a woman after the six days of creation, when there was already a human population outside the region of Eden.

The tradition tht Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, and that thehuman race is descended from the incestuous liaisons of their children is extra-Biblical, and every fundamentalist ought to reject it. (But fundamentalists would be consistent in sticking with the supposition that we are descended from the incestuous liaisons of Noah's grandchildren.)

Anat

From a biblical criticism perspective, yes, there were two independent creation stories, composed by different authors with different religious views. Just compare the portrayal of the creator deity - can you imagine the deity that commands the universe into order and determines it to be good creating man from clay or walking around in his garden? Even a traditional commentator like Cassuto recognized this. (He explains the first creation account as a story told by the priesthood or the scribes, while the second was supposed to be a more popular version that was known to the general population.)

From a more (Jewish) biblical literalist POV - it is claimed that on the 6th day God planted his garden (in addition to the plants that were already elsewhere since day 3) and all the other events of Genesis 2 took place in the late afternoon of the 6th day. I don't remember the traditional timing of the events of Genesis 3.

If there were other humans created directly by God, what would be the meaning of "And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living." (Genesis 3:20)?

One attempt to reconcile the 2 creation accounts of humans was that originally God created a being that consisted of hermaphrodite conjoined twins and the 'rib surgery' in Genesis 2 was where he separates it into two beings. This explains Genesis 5:1-2:
"This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

Notsri

Just to clarify, Cassuto did posit, as you say, the existence of two cosmogonies among the early Israelites. One that "passed apparently through the circles of the 'wise men'...the philosophical groups who delved into the the mystery of the world's existence," another molded to a "form more suited to [the masses] in its colorful and vivid portrayals." But this is not to say that Cassuto saw the Genesis narrative itself as containing two, discrete creation accounts. On the contrary, he spent considerable ink, so to speak, in his unfinished commentary on Genesis, arguing for the unity of the narrative. The Torah, he suggested, "took material for its construction from the creation saga as well as from the traditional story about the garden of Eden...It selected from the traditional material what accorded with its spirit and purpose, it rejected and nullified, by silence or some critical remark, whatever appeared objectionable, and it gave the entire account a new complexion patterned to fit its outlook and the educational aim that it had set itself."

As a sidelight to the above, I would just mention one small point that Cassuto calls attention to with regard to the unity of the story. In 2:19 we're told that God formed every "beast of the field" and every "bird of the sky" for Adam to name. Yet, in v. 20, Adam names not only the beast of the field and the birds of the sky, but the cattle as well. The question then arises, where did these cattle come from? One might think that "beast of the field" in v. 19 refers inclusively to the cattle also, but Cassuto points out that "the expression 'beast of the field' is actually an antonym of 'cattle' [in biblical Hebrew]." He suggests, rather, that if "we approach the text without preconceived ideas concerning the cosmogonic accounts," then the answer as to the origin of these cattle is simple: "the cattle were already to be found with man in the garden of Eden." God had, after all, created the land animals, including the cattle, prior to man, as per Gen. 1:24-5. Cassuto suggests that the creation of the beasts and birds of 2:19, was yet another or further creation of animals (taking place specifically in the garden of Eden). And in fact this is a very ancient interpretation of the text: the LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch render v. 19, "Now the Lord God had formed further out of the ground, etc."

Regards,
Notsri

exile

The world's population took 1,800 years to grow from 200 million at 1 BCE to 800 million in 1800 CE. At that rate (doubling every 900 years) it would have taken 22,000 years for the 8 people stepping off the ark to become 200 million. In fact, if the flood occurred in 3000 BC there would have been SEVENTY EIGHT people at the time of Christ and only 382 today.

Magdlyn

Then how did we go from 800 million to 4 billion in 200 yrs?