Bully’s Blog

Daniel Harrell tries to marry chalk and cheese by positing that Adam and Eve were real people, just not the first real people. They were the first people with whom God entered into a Covenant relationship.[1] The Rev. Harrell is sitting on the fence, an extremely pointy fence.

For many Christians, the biblical characters Adam and Eve can present a significant challenge to accepting evolutionary theory—that is, when they are cast as historical figures who are also the biological progenitors of the human race. …the Rev. Daniel Harrell discusses how there may be some “middle ground” in the way that Christians understand Adam and Eve. Harrell points out that the historicity of Adam and Eve does not necessarily conflict with science.  Rather, the claim that conflicts with science is the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humans, who were the only original biological ancestors of all humans today.

Instead, another way to view them is as the first two people with whom God chose to enter into a covenant relationship, like He did with Abraham, for example. In this view, Adam and Eve become representative of the kind of relationship that God intends to have with all people. This may be a point of possible convergence, says Harrell, “for those who are worried about a historical Adam and Eve to breathe easier, and those who are concerned about integrity with DNA and evolutionary science to also breathe easier.”

Besides the obvious fact that Harrell’s version of the first couple would have witnessed death many times, making any death due to disobedience to the Covenant redundant, is this what the text says? And beyond this, how does he deal with the creation (literally “construction”) of Eve. He doesn’t. He can’t.

In the comments, Norm expanded on this view, stating that this Covenant made with Adam was the beginning of the Jews.

It seems obvious that Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a remote ancestor of about 150,000 years. However why does that infer this ancestor was the Adam of Genesis? The Adam of Genesis was the first man that God breathed the “Breath of Life” into. You do realize that is what all faithful have breathed into them who come to the Lord and put on God’s immortal Spirit?  We see it every day when one is converted as there is nothing physical about it as it’s in the spiritual realm. The “Breath of Life” is Covenant life and Adam was considered by the Jews to have been the first of their progeny and is their beginning and likewise ours as well.  Dick may disagree with me on some details but essentially he is presenting the view of the Jews origins and not humanity at large. That was God’s Covenant establishment out of pagan humanity at large.

The Hebrew theology when taken to its pure understanding and stripped of modern philosophical humanism does not teach what contemporary Christianity has imposed upon it.  It’s actually much simpler than what we want to ascribe to it and is as straightforward as Christ breathing upon the Apostles.

John 20:22 he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

To his credit, Norm gets the typological relationship between God’s breathing into Adam and similar later occurrences. But trying to make this first Covenant the beginning of the priestly people as distinct from the pagans shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bible.

There were no Hebrews/Jews until God tore humanity in two (socially) by circumcision after Babel. The beginning and end of this bipolarity (circumcision) in human history is chiastic. [2]

Sabbath - Adam to Noah
Passover - Abraham (circumcision begins)
Firstfruits - Ascension of first central High Priest (Aaron)
Pentecost - Christ: harvest begins
Trumpets - Jew-Gentile church summoned. Ascension of the Old Covenant church
Atonement - Herodian High Priest dethroned (AD70, man of sin [2]). Circumcision ended. Church age begins
Booths - End of history. Final judgment

If Adam was not the head of the entire race, this later “division” is meaningless. The Hebrew priesthood was not begun in Adam. It was born with the Division of Abraham and exalted under Moses and Aaron. Messing with the beginnings recorded in the Bible is like playing Jenga with the text. These guys are happy to pull pieces out because their false evolutionary fantasy paradigm makes them blind to the consequences. They think it all holds together, bits of Bible stitched onto their perverted revision of history.

Norm then mentioned that he thought the non-Covenant “pagans”—those “contemporaries” of Adam not mentioned at all in the text—were the people with whom the Adamic “sons of God” sinfully intermarried. He assumes that Adam’s pre-existing race was united until this “Creation” Covenant was made, and that it was this Adamic Covenant which created a bipolarity. That is not what the Bible describes:

The Division of the race occurred at the exodus of Cain. Abel’s murder occurred around 130 years after Adam’s exile. For Cain to build a city he would have left with a lot of people. We see this occur again in the book of Kings: a divided kingdom and false worship. [3]

What is recorded in Genesis 6 is a syncretisation of these two kingdoms (Sethites and Cainites), not an intermarriage of Adamic and non-Adamic races. God wiped out all humanity with the flood because all were under this original Covenant as descendants of Adam. The genealogies are clear on this.

Nice try Darrell and Norm. But it’s a FAIL.

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[1] Besides the first five days, the Creation has never existed without Man. There has never been an autonomous Creation. It is always in a Covenant relationship, and this was established in the pattern of the first week, a historical seven days. See Hugh Ross and a Shotgun. Also see Spot the Fake for more on Covenant Creationism.
[2] See The Man of Sin.for the biblical theological support for the Herods as this perverse “man.” And for its seeds in Genesis, the origin of Cain as the first “man of sin”, see Ish and Isha.
[3] See Leaving Las Vegas.