Category Archives: Adam

Does it follow?

Posted on 11/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

Does Genesis 2 follow from Genesis 1, that is? One of the objections made to the Genealogical Adam hypothesis is that the idea that the story of the Garden follows sequentially from the Genesis 1 Creation account is wrong, and that they are actually different accounts of the same events.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Sons of God

Posted on 05/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

Some things in the Bible are probably unknowable from our current state of knowledge – and conceivably, our future state, too. This may seem hard to accept since the Scriptures are God’s revelation to us, but then nature is also God’s revelation, and the limits of our comprehension themselves remind us to be humble before God. We see through a glass, darkly, but tend to forget that in our pride.

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This world is not my home…

Posted on 29/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

Basil of Caesarea is not only one of the Fathers I cite in God’s Good Earth as a supporter of the teaching of an unfallen creation, but he wrote a complete series of homilies on the days of creation, expounding Scripture in conjunction with the science of his time. In other words, he was both deeply interested in, and a great admirer of, the creation. So I was struck by reading an apparent anomaly in his other writings yesterday:

Posted in Adam, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 4 Comments

Now you see them – now you don’t

Posted on 08/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

One of my current research aims is to demonstrate that the Bible itself has an awareness of other people existing in the world at the time of Adam, despite being overtly silent about them. I approached this from the point of view of the “compositional strategy” of the Torah and Tanach here, and from the point of view of hints about people other than Adam in the text here.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 9 Comments

Religion before Adam

Posted on 01/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On the Genealogical Adam model – and indeed on any model dealing with an historical Adam – one has to account for the fact that humanity appears to have had some kind of religious or spiritual life almost as far back as artifacts can be found.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 39 Comments

Is Genesis real impossibility?

Posted on 12/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

Joshua Swamidass has become involved in what appears, at first sight, a minor disagreement on a BioLogos thread puffing a new essay by several authors entitled Is Genesis Real History? His objection was especially to one sentence (bearing the marks of John Walton’s hand, I suspect), which reads: Or consider Genesis 2:7, when God forms Adam from dust and breathes into his nostrils. This could not have happened exactly as described, because we know from other passages in the Bible that God is Spirit with neither hands nor lungs.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 7 Comments

Do not touch my anointed

Posted on 21/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

Once more I’ve posted a few comments on BioLogos and got into trouble. Well, that’s been the pattern since 2011, so it’s no surprise. The thread was the old and currently 827-comment-long Buggs/Venema/Swamidass conversation on the population genetics of human origins, a lull in which made me think it was timely to add the kind of cautionary note on the validation of models I’ve sounded here and here.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science | 22 Comments

Genealogical Adam – isolated tribes

Posted on 19/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

One of the objections to the Genealogical Adam hypothesis is the case of isolated tribes who, perhaps, have never interbred with descendants of Adam in any plausible historical time-frame.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, History, Science | 8 Comments

Genealogical Adam – another observation (from Equus)

Posted on 09/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

Here’s another small piece of corroborative evidence for the plausibility of the Genealogical Adam Hypothesis (that Adam is not the sole genetic ancestor of modern humanity, but is nevertheless our common genealogical ancestor, with all that entails for our spiritual solidarity with him as federal head).

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 10 Comments

Genealogical Adam – an observation from Eridu.

Posted on 02/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

As I’ve been studying the overall “shape” of biblical theology, in the light of recent work by Evangelicals like John Sailhamer, Seth Postell and a bunch of others including N T Wright, one of the common themes is that the ancient prophets had a much fuller grasp of the universal scope of salvation – we may even say, in a qualified way, of the gospel – than has been recognised either by older scholarship or “the man in the pew.”

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 14 Comments