The Genealogical Adam and Eve

I must say that this book has stuck with me, for better or for worse.

I find myself constantly using it as a caveat for both attacks against, and defenses for the inerrancy of scripture.

However, in all honesty, it's probably little more than one possibility in a sea of speculation.

The Hook

Obviously, as someone who deals with 1's and 0's all day, it's hard to wrap my head around the various dichotomies and parallel meanings that the Bible as a piece of literature has for us. And it sometimes feels like coming up with rationalized explanations that honor both our experiential existence as well as the facts that we have been given about God in His Word is more like picking the best explanation in the moment; like a lawyer taking a side on a case.

Finding an explanation that walks the line inclusively for any of the "big" questions is rare, and usually decried as heretical by one side or the other.

However, Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass has put forward a way to understand the genealogy of Genesis in both a modern scientific, as well as theologically accurate manner.

The Crux

The crux of his argument is seemingly that rediscovering the nuances that English versions of the Bible have lost along with modern analysis of genealogy allows us to postulate that:

1. Universal Genealogy Happens Fast
   1. Running simulations of how quickly a common ancestor could spread throughout an entire set of people-groups returns a surprising result - it's much quicker than you might think.
2. People Outside The Garden
   1. Having an understanding that there were humans outside of the garden who interbred with the descendants of Adam and Eve can allow for a genetic makeup arising from a population, but a universal common ancestor, if only those descendants survive and reproduce.
3. The Bible is claiming Ancestry, not Genetics
   1. The concentration on lineage that the Bible harps on over and over again shows that it's not that the genetic makeup of the human species is solely from Adam and Eve that is important here, it's the family lines that are the claim to being "made in God's image".

In broad terms, the argument then follows that Adam and Eve's offspring were able to interbreed with people outside of the garden, and throughout the ages, those offspring were able to interbreed with people-groups in a manner that was so demographically pervasive that Adam and Eve became genealogical ancestors of all humans living today.

Hold-Ups

There are a couple hold-ups that would cause us to question the conclusion:

1. Argument from Silence (Theological)
   1. While it's been a long-known issue, usually cropping up in the "Who did Cain marry" debate, but the fact that there were people outside of the garden after creation is never even alluded to in the scriptures.
2. There's Too Much Assumption on Population Mixing (Scientific)
   1. Especially since the ancient Hebrews kept to themselves for the most part, despite the fact that rapid genealogical ancestry has been known for decades (e.g. Genghis Khan) it's making a lot of assumption that are, at this point, unfalsifiable.

I'll leave the refutation of the above as an exercise to the reader.

Additional Little Thought Germs

Noah

The first gut reaction that could be had was "well, wasn't there a flood that wiped out all of humanity and reset the genealogical history with Noah?" And the answer is again - are you defining human genetically or genealogically?

If we define human genetically, then we have to say every ancestor's line must have been wiped out if we are to believe the Noah story.

However, if we are to say that all descendants of Adam and Eve, except for those on the ark were wiped out, and scripture defines humans (i.e. those "made in God's image") in genealogical terms, then it very well may have been the case that all of Adam and Eve's descendants were wiped out, yet there were other populations not descended from Adam and Eve that Noah's line could interbreed with, and therefore, it's both true that it's important that there exist other populations outside of that lineage, as well as the genealogy tracing back to Adam is important.

Conclusion

Really the end-all be-all is this - the argument is that given what we know about genetics, genealogy, and the Bible, this understand is permitted, but not required.

There will be many who take issue with this on one side or the other. However, along with a couple of other truisms that I adhere to (which are outside the scope of comments on this book) the reclaiming of the importance on genealogy that modern expectations have obfuscated has personally swayed me into believing that this interpretation is worth considering, and perhaps completely embracing, if it stands the test of time and scrutiny.