Although I'm not a scientist and have taken only one physical anthropology course, I feel compelled to share what I've learned about human origins. In the same way complementarians tie traditional gender roles to a faithful reading of Scripture, I've seen some evangelicals assert that a truly serious reading of Scripture requires a belief in a literal Adam and Eve.
I echo Peter Enns' recent criticism of Al Mohler's claim that the only way to respect the Bible and have a solid faith is to read Genesis literally:
I am writing [...] for the sake of those who are living with the consequences of what Mohler says they must believe–those who feel trapped in Mohler’s either/or rhetoric, that to question a literal interpretation of Scripture concerning creation puts one on the path to apostasy.
Driven by his precommitment to biblical literalism, Mohler leaves his audience with an impossible false choice between a Christian faith that must remain in intellectual isolation in order to survive and an intellectual life that has no place for Christian faith.
I consider myself a follower of Jesus and a serious reader of Scripture, so it's painful to be told I don't take my faith seriously because I do not believe Adam and Eve literally existed.
To me, the fossil record shows Adam and Eve could not literally exist. My brief summary touches on the gradual cultural and cognitive developments, because those may indicate where to place a literal Adam and Eve. Here is an excellent, more in-depth interactive website from the Smithsonian.
"Hominids" are species after the last common ancestor of humans and living apes. They walk upright, do not use their teeth as tools, and have bigger brains. A "genus" is one taxonomical level above "species," and Australopithecus is the first hominid genus we know included species that developed tools. First found in Kenya, they existed an estimated 4.2 to 1 million years ago, but show no evidence of culture. Australopithecus even coexisted with our genus, Homo.
Homo appeared roughly 2 million years ago. Homo habilis, discovered in Tanzania, were the first stone toolmakers. Homo erectus were the first travelers beyond Africa. Experts don't think they developed language, but evidence shows they cared for their elderly and weak.
Early archaic Homo sapiens appeared about 500,000 years ago. Their culture is more sophisticated, with structures, stone industries, and exploitation of natural resources.
Late archaic Homo sapiens, the last group before modern humans, includes European and West Asian Neandartals. There is evidence of flowers placed at burial sites. However, language development is doubtful. Interestingly, Neandartals lack descendants; they're an evolutionary dead end.
Modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, appeared about 120,000 years ago, and I'm sure we're well aware of our own capabilities.
The line from the first hominids to modern humans is not clear, though. The below "family tree" notes the transformation wasn't linear, but rather a multi-faceted, meandering process. Tracing a direct line even within our own genus isn't even possible yet.
Where do we place Adam and Eve? They could be Homo habilis, the first species to make stone tools. However, there's little evidence of advanced culture.
What if they were Homo erectus, with brain size comparable to modern humans? But, Homo erectus didn't develop language, and this disregards earlier hominids who were toolmakers. Or, Adam and Eve could have been Neandertals, but Neandertals were an evolutionary dead end. However, do their burial rituals mean they had an understanding of death?
If we designate Adam and Eve as Homo sapiens sapiens, our species, what about Neandertals and the early archaic Homo sapiens, the latter having structures and stone industries?
It's hard to pinpoint a literal Adam and Eve in the fossil record, as cultural and cognitive abilities emerged gradually. Culture does not suddenly appear; rather, as we have seen, it develops over time.
Did God suddenly infuse a species with His image? With gradual fossil evidence, some lines seem arbitrary. Or did the capacity to bear God's image develop gradually like culture? What about those on the continuum?
Another problem is that Genesis 4:1 says, “Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.” The first evidence of agriculture was around 8000 B.C.E., and genetic changes required to domesticate plants took 2,000 to 3,000 years.
If Cain were the first agriculturalist, this leaves too little time for all humans to be Adam and Eve's descendents. Also, based on the emergence of agriculture, Cain would have been alive 10,000 years ago, yet modern Homo sapiens appeared 120,000 years ago. What about those before Cain? And was his wife, also mentioned in Genesis 4, created ex nihilo?
A literal reading of Genesis 2:19 brings another impossibility. Donald Miller, in Searching for God Knows What, estimates Adam named up to 50 million species:
It would have taken nearly a year just to name the species of snakes alone. Moses said that Eve didn't give birth to their third child till Adam was well into his hundreds, which means they would have had Cain and Abel some thirty or so years before, which also means either it took Adam more than a hundred years to name the animals, or he and Eve didn't have sex for a good, long, boring century.
How do Christians handle problems in pinpointing a literal Adam and Eve, like fossil records, agricultural history, and naming millions of animals? What are the theological implications?
I don't have a clear answer, and honestly it's often unsettling. However, I do know that all truth is God's truth, even (especially) science. I trust God reveals Himself through nature. I cannot continue to insist Adam and Eve literally existed in the face of glaring logical inconsistencies and a continuum that raises disturbing moral issues. I wish literalists would be willing to engage with me and others in this camp, rather than summarily label us heretics.
Any thoughts? Anyone know why every depiction of Adam and Eve is a lily-white couple, even though evidence shows they probably had very dark skin? Interesting...
I've never been mistaken for an art historian, but one pattern that seems to hold up just about everywhere is that depictions of humans in art tend to resemble the artists. A lot of our depictions of Biblical figures date back to the Renaissance or somewhat before, mostly in Europe, where people were (and largely are) white as the driven snow. At this time, the areas where Biblical figures actually lived were dominated by Muslim and Arab civilizations, and while there was some cultural interchange, neither group was decisively influential on the art of the other. (You see echoes of this in how many people in the West today think Middle Eastern art is strange and exotic.)
As you probably know, non-"literal"* interpretations of Genesis are as old as the church itself. Here's a quote from Augustine of Hippo (apologies for the length):
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? source here (PDF).
Augustine (like many of the church fathers) believed in an allegorical interpretation of much of the OT (entailing a one-to-one correspondence between images and symbolic meanings), which is not exactly a popular view today. But the quote is an insightful explication of how sweeping you can make your interpretation of a text before you run headlong into the brick wall of reality.
* I use "literal" in scare quotes, because under what other circumstances would you say the literal interpretation of a work of mythology is purported history? How many Babylonians do you suppose actually came to blows over the details of Marduk's power struggles with Enlil?
Posted by: Leighton | October 21, 2011 at 04:05 PM
Love that Augustine quote - did you mean to post a link? I didn't see one show up.
This one-to-one correspondence between images and symbolic meanings reminds me of John Walton's literary framework view. He is an Old Testament professor at Wheaton and guest taught one of my human origins classes there, because we were all coming to terms with how to interpret Genesis, after looking at the fossil evidence.
Dr. Walton argues that Genesis 1 and 2 is not a literal origins account, but rather it's a narrative to teach us about ordering chaos and ascribing function to things. I would love to read his book, The Lost World of Genesis One.
Posted by: Natalie | October 21, 2011 at 09:33 PM
Sorry, I didn't notice that your comments have hyperlinks disabled. My fault for not previewing. It's not a pretty link:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=augustine%2Bliteral%2Binterpretation%2Bof%2Bgenesis&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcollege.holycross.edu%2Ffaculty%2Falaffey%2Fother_files%2FAugustine-Genesis1.pdf&ei=IzeiTrboKumYiQLlnoRi&usg=AFQjCNH3Mh69qFfvB_kEgvghh0vPM1Ad_A
I don't have any particular interest in Genesis anymore, but insisting that any text can only have one interpretation (never mind that the details of the interpretation vary from literalist to literalist) flies in the face of everything we know about language. It's quite puzzling why such a thing would persist.
Posted by: Leighton | October 21, 2011 at 11:22 PM
Ah sorry about that. I changed the settings to allow hyperlinks.
Maybe these nonsensical ideas about language persist because those who question them are painted as heretical doubters who are not true Christians?
Also, there's this little rhetorical move I've seen Mohler and others make. It's completely acceptable to put up blinders and ignore logic, science, and ideas about language, because "those are the ways of the world." To them, holding tight to an inerrantist, literal reading, even when it flies in the face of all we know in 2011, is actually admirable and evidence of being a solid Christian.
Posted by: Natalie | October 22, 2011 at 02:48 PM
No doubt you're right. Having been free from the church for ten years, I keep forgetting how isolationist it can be. And I saw the same kind of language and assumptions from Church of Christ people who argue that Mohler and other SBCers aren't saved because they're too liberal and in love with "the ways of the world." You would think that spending your whole life trying to control other people would be the most "worldly" thing you could possibly do, but it's apparently okay if you deny yourself a few basic human needs like sexual fulfillment and emotional intimacy within healthy boundaries.
Posted by: Leighton | October 23, 2011 at 11:45 AM