Science and the Primeval Human History of Genesis

Human Origins

According to scientific theories widely accepted today, the human species evolved from pre-human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, through a process of evolution involving much pain and death. This contradicts what many Christians believe to be the teaching of the book of Genesis: that God directly created an original human pair mere thousands of years ago, from whom the entire human race originates, and that pain and death are the result of the sin of this original human pair.

However, as I have argued in this previous theology post, current scientific theories about human origins and the teachings of the book of Genesis are not necessarily in conflict. There are actually a number of possible ways of reconciling Genesis with current scientific theories about human origins, such as:

1) The representative theory: Adam and Eve are not historical individuals. Rather, they are figures representing the earliest humans as a whole. The story of the “Fall” of Adam and Eve symbolizes how these earliest, very ancient humans turned away from God. 

2) The “pre-Adamite theory”: God directly created the historical individuals Adam and Eve at some point after the human species had already evolved.  Then, their descendants intermarried with the preexisting human race, until, eventually, it became true that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of all human beings, even though they were not the original pair of humans.  

3) The archetypal theory: interpreting this passage in its ancient Near Eastern context, we should interpret God’s creation of Adam from the dust of the earth and God’s creation of Eve from Adam’s side as archetypal claims, not as literal accounts of material origins (All human beings are dust (Psalm 103:14), and all men and women are two halves of one whole).  So, materially speaking, the historical individuals Adam and Eve could have had normal origins by birth.  The text presents Adam and Eve as priestly representatives of the human race, not necessarily as the only human beings who existed at the time.  Adam and Eve’s sinful rebellion against God brought negative consequences on all of humanity, but this does not require that they were the direct biological ancestors of every human being.  

If one of these theories or a similar theory is correct, then many of the alleged difficulties with the primeval history of Genesis disappear. For example, where did Cain get his wife? Did he incestuously marry his sister? And how could he build a city if he was a fugitive? If there were more human beings in existence at the time than just Adam and Eve’s family, then these questions have easy answers. 

Evolutionary theory describes death as something natural to plants, animals, and human beings, which may seem to contradict the biblical story of the Fall, in which Adam and Eve were cursed with death because of their sin. But the text of Genesis does not actually teach that Adam and Eve were originally immortal. Rather, it teaches that they became doomed to die because they lost access to the Tree of Life, which potentially could have granted them eternal life, as punishment for their sin (Gen 3:22) (This Tree of Life is probably meant to be metaphorical, although, for all we know, God could have created a literal tree with the miraculous power to grant people eternal life). 

The Bible never teaches that animal pain and death are the result of human sin; these things are natural, and are not necessarily evil. The Bible does seem to indicate that the evils of human suffering and death are the result of human sin. But this should be understood as the loss of supernatural grace protecting human beings from suffering and death, rather than as a teaching that the potential for pain and death was not natural to human beings prior to the Fall.

The story of the Fall of Adam and Eve contains the figure of a talking serpent who tempted Eve, which is sometimes criticized as superstitious and unscientific. The traditional Christian interpretation is that this serpent is Satan in disguise. Although the Bible never explicitly makes this identification, this is a perfectly plausible explanation for how there could apparently be a talking serpent. It is also possible to interpret the serpent as a symbol for human desires that had the potential to draw people away from God, rather than as a literal snake.

Primeval History

Young earth creationists add up the years given in the genealogies of Genesis and conclude that the human race is only six thousand years old or so; this contradicts the modern scientific consensus that the human race is hundreds of thousands of years old. However, there is no good reason to think this young earth creationist interpretation is correct. The fundamental flaw in this interpretation is that it assumes that the biblical genealogies are exhaustive. But Hebrew genealogies were not necessarily exhaustive; they could skip generations. Rather than the genealogies of Genesis being an attempt to give us an exhaustive genealogy of the human race, it seems more likely that they are often a literary device used to indicate that a long time had passed. We cannot make any confident conclusions from them about exactly when Adam and Eve lived. Besides, if the “pre-Adamite theory” is correct, then the human species could have been around a long time before Adam and Eve showed up. In any case, there is no contradiction between the genealogies of Genesis and current scientific theories about the age of the human race.

Another issue with the genealogies of Genesis is that they speak of ancient human beings living extremely long lives, over 900 years in some cases, which seems implausible. Various explanations for this have been proposed, such as that these numbers are somehow symbolic or that they were calculated using some unusual numeric method. These explanations have not been met with widespread acceptance. However, for all we know, God could have given a special, supernatural grace to these individuals so that they could live extraordinarily long lives. 

Another alleged difficulty with the genealogies of Genesis is that they do not explain the origin of different races and nations outside of the Middle East. However, this is a difficulty only if one assumes that Genesis is attempting to give an exhaustive account of the history of the human race. The purpose of Genesis is not to give us a history of the human race; rather, as part of the Torah given to Israel by Moses, its purpose is to develop some theological themes that are important for Israel’s understanding of their covenant relationship with God by means of reference to some past events that had theological significance. This is why the table of nations in Genesis (chapter 10) only speaks of peoples and nations in geographical proximity to Israel, since that was what was relevant to the ancient Israelites. 

Similar things could be said about the story of the origin of different languages at the Tower of Babel (chapter 11), which has been criticized as counter to how modern linguists believe the human languages of the world developed. If this story is only about part of humanity, rather than the entire human race, then it does not need to be read as a story about the origin of all the languages in the world, only some of them. 

The part of the primeval human history of Genesis most often criticized as contrary to the findings of modern science is the story of Noah’s flood (chapters 6-8). It seems quite difficult to square the findings of modern geology with the idea of a relatively recent, global flood. There are numerous other scientific difficulties with this idea as well, such as how animals from different continents could all migrate to the Middle East to get on Noah’s ark, and then migrate back again. 

The best explanation for this difficulty is that the author of Genesis was describing a more local flood and used hyperbole for the sake of the theological point he was making. Old Testament history writers clearly use hyperbole in some other instances, and it is perfectly plausible to think that it may be used here as well. If Noah’s flood was a relatively local flood, rather than a global flood, then the scientific difficulties with it disappear. 

It is often argued that the Genesis flood story is composed of two different flood stories  that were later spliced together, and that both these Hebrew flood stories were based on the flood stories in the Mesopotamian Atrahasis myth and the Epic of Gilgamesh. However, even if the Genesis flood story was composed by putting together two earlier flood stories, this does nothing to discredit it; there is no reason that Divine inspiration of a text cannot utilize pre-existing texts. There are some similarities between the Genesis flood story and other ancient Near Eastern flood stories. However, the Genesis flood story is very, very different from these other flood stories in many ways. It is possible that the author of Genesis was aware of these other ancient Near Eastern flood stories, and crafted an alternative flood story that provided a counter-narrative to these pagan stories. But this would not in any way discredit the theological truth of what the Genesis flood story teaches.