An Historic Adam?

Towards a Theological Anthropology Supporting an Historic Adam

A Speculative Counterpoint to the Hoehist View

In many systematic theologies there is a section devoted to anthropology. This addresses the origin of mankind in which a discussion of Adam is generally prominent. This traditional theological anthropology has been historically in conflict with the science of anthropology. There is a need for an anthropology that resides harmoniously within both Biblical and scientific boundaries. There are now many such anthropologies and one particular version in contrast to the Hoehist view will be described here. Adam will be presented as a historical figure but not as the progenitor of all of mankind. The goal will be to provide a theory of human origins that is compatible with both the Biblical record and the recent findings of archaeology and genetics. 

The Hoehist View

Herman Hoeh, now deceased former history professor at Ambassador College in Pasadena, advocated a traditional view of the origins of mankind. This is the view commonly ascribed to the first chapters of Genesis by the Christian Movement. In this view, Adam was a historical figure and the progenitor of all mankind. Pre-Adamic humans or near humans are not always postulated. Hoeh added the following non-traditional points:

1. The earth was populated with hominids prior to Adam. These hominids were sentient to a degree but were not as advanced as Adam and Adam’s descendants. They were racially disconnected from Adam. Hoeh referred to these hominids as “Pre-Adamic” men and included such types as Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus. Other Worldwide Church of God ministers described these early hominids as not having the potential for salvation. (Source: From a lecture given by Herman Hoeh at Ambassador College, Big Sandy)

2. God was unable to create Adam by fiat. It was instead necessary for God to experiment with various hominid forms prior to creating Adam. The bones of these prototypes populate the fossil record. Hoeh compared this to how an engineer creates models in order to arrive at the final design. (It is apparent that this view makes a statement about the limitations on God’s capabilities and proposes a form of evolution not based on natural selection but on God’s progressive and iterative engineering activities. See Note.) (Source: From a presentation given by Herman Hoeh at a ministerial conference in Pasadena.)

A Speculative Counterpoint

A plausible alternative to the traditional view and its Hoehist modifications will be presented in this in this section. This will be a narrative that describes a theory without detailed support or references. At this time, this description is only intended to expose the concepts to interested readers.

In this proposal, Adam was a historical figure. He was a hominid living sometime in the Neolithic. He was created not in a single act occurring at a point in time but by a process involving hominid evolution. The act of creating Adam in Genesis might involve the bestowing of an advanced sentience, one that could deal with spiritual concepts, on a hominid of appropriate neurological development. It was more an act of component assembly rather than whole creation at a moment in time. This type of creation scenario is compatible with the fact that Adam and his descendants, by circumstantial evidence, were of a common Y chromosome haplogroup found in the Middle East. The Jews, Canaanites, and Arabs are all of that Y chromosome haplogroup. This haplogroup is in no way an outlier and fits logically into the scientifically established hierarchy of human haplogroups and, therefore, into the genetic history of mankind.

Moreover, if Adam were created sometime around the traditional date of 4,000 BCE, the earth was already populated at that time by other humans bearing other Y chromosome haplogroups. These same haplogroups comprise the human genome today. This diversity of haplogroups prior to Adam means that Adam was not the progenitor of all branches of mankind but gave rise to a single branch of mankind (the Clans of Noah, all contemporaneous and of the same genetic haplogroup widespread in the region) then resident in the Middle East. 

It is highly likely that Paul believed Adam was the progenitor of all mankind. He did not have the advantage of modern genetics to inform his writing. He wrote from the perspective of traditional belief. This in no way impeded Paul’s development of the spiritual meaning of Adam in salvation events. One may then regard the spiritual content of Paul’s writing as fixed and the biological part as varying with progressing scientific understanding and discovery.

“Adam” in Paul’s NT scenarios could be seen in many different ways, for instance, as a metaphor for mankind or as an actual historical figure. How Adam is understood influences how much “scientific” information we can extract of Paul’s accounts. In this theory, Adam should be seen in Paul’s NT scenarios as a historical figure who is the “father“ in spirit or in attitude of all mankind – with everyone down through the generations of man suffering from the same spiritual alienation from God as Adam did. Adam’s conjectured historicity is compatible with some of Paul’s language in the New Testament. He is then a genetic Middle Easterner who is the spiritual father or archetype of all mankind whose fatherhood was not biological.

This proposed model disagrees not only with the traditional model but also with the Hoehist modifications. Regarding point 1 in the previous section, while one might term men without the advanced sentience conferred on Adam as Pre-Adamic, they had the same genomic history as modern humans. They were not racially disconnected from Adam - they were our ancestors. Regarding point 2, the diversity of hominids contained in the fossil record are not an indication of God’s trial and error approach but represents Darwinian evolution, a tool used by God and likely guided by God.

 
Gobekli Tepe

This model envisions that at some threshold in past time, God enhanced the sentience of mankind and made mankind able to comprehend advanced spiritual and physical concepts. I am inclined to believe that this happened at the time of the events of the Garden of Eden in early Genesis. God dealt directly with Adam but this was accompanied by a miraculous, God generated watershed in intellectual development for all mankind.

There is an interesting support for this view. The archaeological site in Turkey known as Gobekli Tepe is a site with a circle of large upright t-shaped stone pillars decorated with skilled artistic renderings of animals. The mysterious feature of this site is that it was built at the end of the Epipaleolithic, just after the last ice age, in a period called the Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) at about 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. At this time people were in the hunter-gatherer stage of development and had been for millennia. This is comparable to a group of archaeologists rooting around in a 15thCentury AD midden somewhere in Western Europe and unearthing a 1957 Chevrolet.

There is no explanation for why a group of hunter-gatherers with limited technology would suddenly construct a massive megalithic site with impressive artistic renderings that required advanced planning, engineering, management, logistics, and artwork. So far no other place like it has been discovered in that time frame. The site is believed to be a temple which may indicate a sudden awareness of religion far beyond that seen among ancient hunter-gatherers. These nomadic people had not even yet developed pottery. My conjecture is that these people suddenly experienced a radical shift in their intellection and this created the anomaly of people undertaking a complex engineering project while having only the primitive culture of hunter-gatherers. This could place the creative assembly of Adam at about 12,000 years ago. Further work on this site will reveal more but at this point, it is a sign of the type of change in humanity that would fit this anthropological model. 

Conclusion

This model supports the following implications:

1. Adam was used by Paul in the New Testament for spiritual understanding and not for scientific inquiry.

2. Adam, as a historical figure, is a spiritual father archetype and not the physical progenitor of mankind.

3. Adam fits into the genetic hierarchy of haplogroups that defines the human genome.

4. Most people now living are not descended from Adam physically but are his children ideologically.

5. At some point in time in the past the intellection of humankind was miraculously elevated to make spiritual understanding, salvation, advanced cultural development, and advanced technical development possible. The archaeological site Gobekli Tepe may point to this change.

This model may ultimately prove to be somehow flawed. But for now, it does reconcile science with a plausible Biblical scenario for the rise of Adamic humans at a given point in time. The traditional model of anthropology held by many in the Christian and Armstrongist communities is in conflict with scientific fact. This cannot be dismissed by mere assertion of opinion and must be addressed. This proposal illustrates the type of work based in theology and anthropology that must be done to create the next generation of ideas that support a harmony between science and Christianity.

Note: I do not know how long Hoeh held this view of God as a kind of Demiurge. The Doctrine of God changed substantially in the Worldwide Church of God (later to become Grace Communion International) during the post-1995 period, though not in the splinter groups maintaining traditional Armstrongism. Since Herman Hoeh was affiliated with Grace Communion International, I would expect that his view of God changed over time from the demiurgic view of god expressed in point 2 above to the orthodox Christian view of God.

 

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