Was Adam really the first man, according to the Bible?

Post Reply New Topic

Christianity (so-called) was really messianic Judaism in its original formulation. What Saul/Paul did was to gentilize the movement. His attack on works, in the faith/works dichotomy was to turn Christianity into an anti-Torah movement. Paul's strategy was a complete success.

ruveyn

Looks like I need to read through the whole thread to see how on earth people have come to the conclusion that Adam was not (necessarily) the first man according to the Bible.

If you believe in the bible, God created humans with reproductive organs for a reason, what need would there be to create another man in the way he did with Adam?

I don't consider your position that powerful though. 1 Cor 15:45 already seems to outright deny it. Even further, most of what you say is just a case from lack of data, but that does not mean that Adam as first man isn't implicit, nor does it mean that the Bible couldn't hold this as true. The only case I really see against it is an effort towards coherency, but I see no reason for the text to be overly coherent with peripheral data. Adam as first man though is what seems to be explicitly and implicitly taught by Paul though.

Interestingly, once you start going that direction though, then we do start having issues because there is reason to think Genesis is false. For instance, a literal genesis does not match the scientific data that well, as the order of creation does not match. If we interpret it to be days in creation(which arguably the early Jews did) Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

And this contradicts our scientific data to a degree that the only way to realistically make sense of this is to hold to something like "apparent age" which is an apparent deception, as there is no reason why God would want something apparently old, when something new would be better. As well, just generically blaming mankind's sins does not leave us with much reason to perceive outright patterns suggesting certain facts about reality.

It really seems to me that the notion of God starts to break down if you push too hard on it intellectually.

Well, couldn't the "days" described there be a figurative number as many numbers are in the bible?

Sin is a property or quality of an action. How can a new born human child, totally helpless and uncoordinated commit sin?

ruveyn

That's why I cited Exodus 20:11, because Exodus 20:11 relates back the days of Genesis to the Jewish week, equating the 7th day where God rested with the weekly Sabbath.

This suggests that "days" are to be interpreted in a stricter manner, and that they are days.

But that would make Genesis 2:4 contradictory to everything in the first chapter. The author wouldn't be that careless I don't think.

The hebrew word translated to ''day'' in the english translation is ''jõm'', which can also mean ''period of time'' or ''era''. The Bible also says that to God tusand years is like a day. When the Bible uses the word ''day'', it doesn't always mean a literal 24 hour day.

Well, our faith does rest on the words selected by King James' translators.

OTOH, would you really want to wait fourteen billion years for your first day off??

^^^ So it would seem, but the KJV was written based on the scholarly understanding of the time. The OT translation I'm used to comes from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 5th edition. But, of course, what you have to understand is that there are other traditions, such as the Masoretic Text, which many OTs are essentially translated from. The BHS is essentially the Leningrad Codex. There is also evidence that suggests the LXX (Septuagint) is actually older than the MT. A translator might look at the MT and find something that seems difficult and compare it with the LXX to determine what the best translation might be. The KJV used the MT, the LXX, and the Vulgate in translation.

While the MT is a good source text, the question is whether the MT really was THE Bible or if there was the possibility of copying errors. A lot of textual criticism has centered around that, and it wasn't until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls that there was even really an alternative to the MT to check for scribal error. The "errors" are more like confusing letters that are very similar to others, have become confused as another letter, and got copied that way. The same thing applies to recording numbers in the Bible, another source of manuscript disagreement. Other errors are miniscule grammar and punctuation kinds of things. Considering how big the OT is, how long it's been around, and the number of times it's been copied, it's a wonder that it doesn't have more copying errors than it does, and we're talking about errors that account for maybe less than 5% of the text. The next best historical book in terms of copying accuracy is the Iliad, and it doesn't even come close to the accuracy of the OT.

And where the MT might be suspected of error, in the modern day and age we DO have the resources of the Qumran discoveries as a means of comparing manuscripts and making a decision as to the best possible translation. Biblical scholars of the King Jimmy years didn't really even have that.

I personally enjoy the Holman CSB and keep a small copy of it with me for when I might have time to read it, preferring to keep my study Bible (also a HCSB) at home for when I have long stretches of time to spend reading. I admire the fact that the Holman guys weren't merely content with the same sources as the KJV (although the KJV sources, we now know, weren't bad) and were willing to update their translation to take a wider variety of sources into account (particularly Qumran) and not being afraid to investigate anything that didn't agree with them. I like the use of contemporary language as opposed to the King Jimmy, which has really motivated me to spend more time reading the Bible. I'm not saying that it's more/less qualified than other versions like NIV, ESV, NASV, NKJV (which is really not the same as the Jimmy as the name implies) and so on, but that's just what I happen to know about it.

So, I'm not sure that our faith rests on the King Jimmy scholars in any contemporary meaning since there are a variety of options available. I mean, if it really bothers you, you could always learn Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek and spend time yourself examining the source texts. But it beats deconstructing contemporary translations in comparison with the King Jimmy.

I'm a bit old to be learning new languages. One's ability to pick up new languages shuts down pretty early in life.

My favourite translation is actually the Good News Bible. It is written in clear, easy-to-understand simple modern English, and the stick figure illustrations are rather cute.

If you find the word "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 consign it to the flames.

ruveyn

This. The time from Adam's sin until now has been a relatively small period of time of over 6,000 years (1975 marked the 6,000 years from Adam's expulsion from Eden). The biblical time line for Adam's passing did not begin until after Adam sinned and was banished from paradise. Adam could have lived thousand or even millions of years prior to receiving his wife and sinning. With regards the six creative days the earth could have been created over a period of millions of years, as scientific evidence seems to indicate. As Kiran and ethicsSym3k point out "days" are figurative numbers. The bible says a "day" began and ended when a desired goal of creation was accomplished. Think of these creative days as epochs. Also worth noting the Bible doesn't say only the earth was created in six "days", but "God created the heavens and the earth." The first two days were spent creating light, darkness, heavens and waters. Note the creative days:

Genesis 1:3-5 First Epoch "Day": The creation of light and darkness, and God called the light "day" and the darkness "night".
Genesis 1:6-8 Second Epoch "Day": The creation of expanse and waters. God called the expanse "heaven".
Genesis 1:9-13 Third Epoch "Day": The waters coalesce. The creation of land. God called the land "earth", the coalesced waters he called "seas". The creation of a wide variety of plants.
Genesis 1:14-19 Fourth Epoch "Day": The creation of the sun ("greater luminary for dominating the day"), and stars and planets ("the lesser luminary for dominating the night").
Genesis 1:20-23 Fifth Epoch "Day": The creation of fish and flying creatures.
Genesis 1:24-31 Sixth Epoch "Day": The creation of land animals. The creation of man.
Genesis 2:1-3 Seventh Epoch "Day": God rests.

You'll notice in Genesis the six epochs have a beginning and end, but the seventh only has a beginning. This is because we are living in God's rest period.