Adam and Eve: A story, parable, or historical fact?


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Diana_P is offline Diana_P Post #1  May 21,2011, 2:00pm
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Do you believe there actually were an Adam and Eve? Is the Biblical account a story or parable or is it historical fact?

The lesson I take from it is that we sin not because of desire per se. Adam and Eve were happy and wanted for nothing. We sin because we are tricked into doing so. And because of this reasoning I don’t believe that we (mankind) are “broken” or flawed. Yes, being separated from God is a curse, but God didn’t curse us directly. I believe eating the fruit actually changed Adam and Eve somehow and took their immortality by introducing disease and that is why God didn’t want them to eat it.

I know none of that is actually written and I may be interjecting some of my own interpretation of the events. However, if God is perfect how can He create anything that isn’t perfect free will or no? It wasn’t free will that condemned us it was falling under the serpent’s deception that sealed our fate. I attribute that to lack of understanding. Adam and Eve didn’t need to be prognosticators, they just needed to understand that “no” means no! They were in paradise and had their senses continuously inundated with pleasure so I don’t imagine “off limits” meant anything to them. I’m sure it does now.

I don’t think Adam and Eve possessed much of anything in the way of understanding, wisdom, or knowledge, since they were the only two humans and things like interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, and respecting boundaries hadn’t been invented yet. There simply wasn’t any need for those things since they were perfectly matched by God. Adam may have named all the animals in paradise, but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a necessity for many more words than that. I’m guessing Satan, talking snakes, and deception wasn’t in his vocabulary either.

All of this is to say that I believe there is a relationship between sin and our lack of understanding that all started a very long time ago and that’s the message I take from it all.
 
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ANDR3W is offline ANDR3W Post #2  May 21,2011, 4:42pm
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There was never an Adam and Eve, this is just a made up story invented by the primitive inhabitants of bronze-age Palestine. What i find remarkable is that thousands of years later people still believe in this ancient myth. Humans are part of the animal kingdom, we evolved from the same process of natural selection that created all of the other life forms on earth.
 
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mitchell175 is online now mitchell175 Post #3  May 21,2011, 5:05pm
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From a scientific standpoint, the idea of Adam and Eve doesn't work. There is not enough genetic diversity to allow for adequate distribution of the species. Think about it. If Adam and Eve mated and produced offspring (which, according to the Bible, they did), the only option for future generations would be for Eve to mate with her sons (one of whom was slain). I do not recall Eve giving birth to any daughters? Perhaps someone more well versed in Bible study can chime in on that one.

In an isolated society, there is a finite, minimum number of non-directly related mating pairs required to ensure adequate genetic diversity to sustain a new species. I don't know exactly what that number is, but it is certainly more than what you find in the Biblical account of Adam and Eve.

(BTW - the story of King Arthur and Camelot is also an amalgam of several different medieval myths).
 
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PreachersSon is online now PreachersSon Post #4  May 21,2011, 6:20pm
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I have to disagree. I believe there was a literal Adam and Eve, and it is not scientifically impossible. First, Adam lived for 930 years according to the Bible, and "had sons and daughters." This is after Cain, Abel, and Seth (The third son.) Yes, the first brothers and sisters would have had to marry each other, but after that, it reduces to cousins at worst, and the family relationship gets less and less with each succeeding generation from there. There isn't any real reason why there could not have been a sustainable number of breeding pairs from that first generation, and after that, the problem disapears.

As far as scientifically, I believe it is pretty well established that civilization began in the Middle East before it did anywhere else, and that all of the language families can be traced back to their origins in that region as well--coincidentally right where the Bible places them. As far as genetics, I know there was research a few years back that traced all living humans by the y chromosome back to one man, and by the x chromosome back to one woman. So, genetically, we can all be traced back to one man and one woman--just as recorded in the account of Adam and Eve.

As for saying that things in the Bible are "myths", short of a preexisting anti-supernatural bias, there really isn't any reason for such statements. It's also historically been a risky business, since a great many things that skeptics have called "myth" in the Bible, or claimed were "historical inaccuracies" have actually turned out to be historically factual, and it was the "skeptics" who proved their ignorance.

Reading some of the old "higher critics" (Supposed "intellectual giants" who tried to prove that the Bible was inaccurate, made up, and full of myths) makes for knee slapping reading nowadays. So, I wouldn't be so quick to allow your bias, or that of people who should know better, keep you away from investigating things with an open mind.
 
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llw11 is offline llw11 Post #5  May 21,2011, 7:16pm
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if adam and eve (and subsequently the flood) were real, then how did we end up with multiple races?
 
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Diana_P is offline Diana_P Post #6  May 21,2011, 8:46pm
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llw11 wrote :
if adam and eve (and subsequently the flood) were real, then how did we end up with multiple races?
I watch the Discovery channel a lot and there was this show that gave a pretty good explanation. I’ll try not to botch it up too much, LOL!

Anyway, if you remove all the water from the surface of the planet it becomes clear that all the land masses are connected. If you flooded the earth enough only the highest land mass would be above the water. So you have this single land mass with certain properties that human beings adapt to then as the water level subsides other land masses appear. The human beings migrate and develop new attributes. All human attributes: curly hair, straight hair, dark skin, light skin, wide nose, flat nose and the most obvious, male and female are in every human beings DNA - - we only see the prominent traits on the surface.

As time progresses it will become more clear that there is only one race, human. The U.S. is getting a lot better about race, but in other countries there are people with white skin, blonde hair and green or brown eyes who have dark skinned parents or people with dark skin who have white parents. Race is kind of a myth. Genetically you can isolate certain traits by selective breeding but there really isn’t anything natural about it and it is actually bad for us as a species because it limits the diversity of the gene pool. Discovery channel and the History channel and a bunch of sleepless nights, LOL!
 
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ANDR3W is offline ANDR3W Post #7  May 21,2011, 9:12pm
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If you want to understand where humans come from, and why there are different races, then you have to understand something about genetics. Click on the picture or the link to watch the video.
YouTube - ‪Journey Of Man A Genetic Odyssey PBS‬‏
 
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Diana_P is offline Diana_P Post #8  May 22,2011, 1:03pm
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ANDR3W wrote :

If you want to understand where humans come from, and why there are different races, then you have to understand something about genetics. Click on the picture or the link to watch the video.
YouTube - ‪Journey Of Man A Genetic Odyssey PBS‬‏

This was great. Thanks.
 
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mitchell175 is online now mitchell175 Post #9  May 22,2011, 5:13pm
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PreachersSon wrote :
As far as scientifically, I believe it is pretty well established that civilization began in the Middle East before it did anywhere else
The current prevailing theory of Man's origin is the "out of Africa" theory - not specifically the Middle East.


wrote :
As far as genetics, I know there was research a few years back that traced all living humans by the y chromosome back to one man, and by the x chromosome back to one woman. So, genetically, we can all be traced back to one man and one woman--just as recorded in the account of Adam and Eve.
Science has traced DNA back to what they call "Mitochondrial Eve". This has nothing to do with the genes found on the X or Y chromosome. The makeup of sperm (carrying the Y chromosome) is such that it is nothing much more than just a packet of DNA, with very little extra-nuclear cellular components. In fertilizing the egg, everything else other than the DNA packet (i.e. the cell nucleus) is sacrificed. In a fertilized egg, the only surviving mitochondria are those which originated in the extra-nuclear cellular components of the egg. No mitochondria can be traced back to the male/sperm, so all mitochondria contained in each of our human cells are 100% female/egg derived. That's your "Mitochondrial Eve".

In fact, the Y chromosome only contains some 15 genes, compared to hundreds of genes on the much larger X chromosome. Over the millennia, genes have been "jumping" from the Y chromosome to other chromosomes, further depleting the gene supply on the Y. Eventually, scientists believe that the genetic definition of a male will no longer be "XY", but merely "X0", as the Y chromosome simply disappears.
 
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PreachersSon is online now PreachersSon Post #10  May 22,2011, 6:03pm
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mitchell175 wrote :
The current prevailing theory of Man's origin is the "out of Africa" theory - not specifically the Middle East.



Science has traced DNA back to what they call "Mitochondrial Eve". This has nothing to do with the genes found on the X or Y chromosome. The makeup of sperm (carrying the Y chromosome) is such that it is nothing much more than just a packet of DNA, with very little extra-nuclear cellular components. In fertilizing the egg, everything else other than the DNA packet (i.e. the cell nucleus) is sacrificed. In a fertilized egg, the only surviving mitochondria are those which originated in the extra-nuclear cellular components of the egg. No mitochondria can be traced back to the male/sperm, so all mitochondria contained in each of our human cells are 100% female/egg derived. That's your "Mitochondrial Eve".

In fact, the Y chromosome only contains some 15 genes, compared to hundreds of genes on the much larger X chromosome. Over the millennia, genes have been "jumping" from the Y chromosome to other chromosomes, further depleting the gene supply on the Y. Eventually, scientists believe that the genetic definition of a male will no longer be "XY", but merely "X0", as the Y chromosome simply disappears.
As far as the "Out of Africa"theory, yes that is the theory of human migration. I said that civilization started in the Middle East, and it did. The first civilizations in history were in Mesopotamia and Egypt. That's a historical fact. The other stuff is guesswork, because those other precivilization groups didn't leave any records, so all we have is speculation. But civilization started in the Middle East.

As far as "Mitochandrial Eve", thanks for clarifying the genetics there. The point is that humans can all be traced to one woman. Also, despite your claim about the y chromosome and such, it is also true that we can be traced genetically to one man. So, one man and one woman. Regardless of the details (I'm a layman, not a geneticist), that fact stands. So, both of my contentions were valid.
 
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