The Life of Adam

I have said that the Genesis story is mythological in nature, no person such as Adam ever lived, at least not at the time he is said to have lived. But still the story is very important to me. I have enjoyed learning this story and I have enjoyed reading it.

I have taken many hours of enjoyment from imagining what the life of Adam might have been like. I like to place myself in his shoes and ask the question, "What should I do?" What discoveries would I need to discover in order to have a comfortable life, free from all the modern convieniences that we have today? I have imagined that the invention of String or Thread would be high up on my list of basic neccessities. And the knowledge required to make bricks would certainly be handy to have. Aside from the ability to produce fire, it would be a very good thing to recognize the value of charcoal and how to make it. I wonder how long it would take me to figure out that chipping two stones together might form a decent cutting edge. But cutting stone and masonry is an art that I believe would be beyond my patience to develope.

And aside from the need to find food and shelter, you would constantly be burdened with young children. Its hard to imagine enjoying a moment of peace under such circumstances. If I could somehow invent one single luxury, it would simply have to be hot water. Yes I think that access to a hot bath or shower is essential to human comfort.

But if I could be removed from the world bodily and transported away to a pristine world, uninhabited by any kind of intelligent life. If I had such a choice available to me, would I take it?
Of course I must have a wife with me to help populate such a world, I do not enjoy such a relationship at the moment, perhaps one can be made for me :D Of course one must enjoy a long and youthful life in order to begin a whole world like this. I will need all the advantages of a Tree of Life in my world. If I knew that my world would be a recreation of this Earth, if I knew that my own children would suffer all the things that the people of the Earth have suffered. Would I want to be the cause of recreating human history all over again? Should I even try to imagine that I might be able to do something differently, to improve the course of such a history? Perhaps I would be able to impart some lasting wisdom with my children if I made a special effort, that would allow them to avoid some of the more serious problems. Well for all that I have tried, I can't imagine things turning out much differently than they have here on Earth.

The development of agriculture is neccessary and inevitable. The developement of industrialization seems pretty inevitable as well. But of course I should want all my descendents to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, as comfortable as they can possibly make it. I would not want to see large numbers of my children suffering discomfort or dissadvantages. Even while I can imagine some mystical tree of life to keep me alive, I find it very hard to imagine immortality. Nothing in this Universe it seems is made to last forever, and the human body is certainly not created to last for very long. So my children will all have to suffer mortality and I as well eventually.

It is fun and romantic to think that this is exactly how worlds are created, even this Earth. Some person or two people who were the first human beings, were brought here from some other planet perhaps? But I do not believe that this is true. All the different kinds of life that we see here in this world is perfectly native to this world I believe. It all was formed here from a single germ, a single simple organism. And I believe there is plenty of room within a story of evolution for intelligent design to occur.

Now try to imagine that our Adam could be returned to this world. How do you think he would feel about the way things are?

Genesis

The Genesis story is mythological in nature and the story was not told to Moses by God.
According to the Genesis story Adam was formed from the clay and then brought to life, and he was the first human being to live on this Earth. The Genesis story offers us a genealogical record which tells us how long Adam lived and when he had a son. And we are told how long that son lived before having a son of his own. We can add up the number of years to the time of Noah, and we are told of certain events that happened after Noah. If we are reasonably sure that we know the date of one of these events it becomes possible to calculate how much time has passed since Adam was created. And the Jewish calender year is based on just such a calculation as carefully considered by rabbinical experts. According to the Jewish calender this is the year 5767 since the time of Adam. So according to the Genesis story Adam lived less than 6000 years ago, and if this is true then it is not possible that he was the first human being. There is sufficient archaeological evidence to prove for a fair certainty that the history of the human species here on planet Earth is at least 100,000 years long.

Consider for a moment Noah's flood. In the history of the world there have certainly been many great and devastating floods. In order for there to have been a flood that covered over all the land of the Earth, a very large amount of water would have to be brought to the Earth. And after the flood that amount of water must be made to disapear from the Earth. There simply is not enough water on the Earth today to account for Noah's flood. But perhaps it is still within the capacity of Heaven to produce that amount of water miraculously, even so this could not possibly have happened. This event happened after Adam's life, so it was less than 6000 years ago. Now we observe so much diversity within the human species at this time, we say that the people have many racial differences. And it is not possible for so much diversity to exist here if every single person on the planet were descended from one single family that lived only 6000 years ago.

The history of the Native American people on the North American continent is considered to be at least 10,000 years old. If Noah's flood had occurred less than 6000 years ago then the Native American people would have been completely wiped out. And of course the history of the Native American people precedes the creation of Adam as well.

Now perhaps we should consider that the Earth was created with all of this evidence for us to find. The full history of the Earth was fabricated and the world that we see is a deception. Therefor if the Genesis story is literal truth then the created Earth is a deception. Or else the evidence that we have found in the world is true and the Genesis story is a lie. If God were the source of the Genesis story then this God of Moses is a deceiver. And I personally do not choose to believe that the one true and most high God has any cause to deceive us or create a lie. The God that I believe in is a God of truth.

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that God is in fact a story teller. God is willing to fabricate a fable suitable for children because they will not be able to comprehend the truth. And by telling a fable the storyteller may incorporate some valuable moral lessons for the children to learn from.

But I believe that the most likely explanation for the source of the Genesis story is that it existed as an oral history among the Israeli people. And since we know that Moses was a well educated man by the Egyptian priesthood, we may comfortably assume that parts of the Genesis story were learned by Moses from documented Egyptian records. Moses brought the whole story together from several different sources most likely and wrote it all down in his Book of Genesis.