Why I Think Armstrongism is Wrong about Adam
And My Theory of Human Origins
By Scout
Humankind has always had some very novel myths about where humans came from. The ancient Celts and Japanese believed that humans descended from the gods. Some ancient Greeks believed that humans grew out of the soil like plants. Mud seems to be popular. The Phoenicians were among those who believed that all life sprang from mud. The Abrahamic religions assert that humankind was created from the soil into which God breathed life. I agree with the Abrahamic religions as to origin principle but see a different scenario.
Let me tell you briefly what I do believe. First of all, I believe there was an Adam. And an Eve. But I do not believe they were the progenitors of all of humankind. I do not believe the Biblical language requires them to be the biological progenitors of humankind. And I believe Adam and Eve were created from existing humans but with updated spiritual components at the time of the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. They were a new and marvelous creation with updated spirits and similarities to God, even though their bodies included some physical parts whose design had already been around for a while. Some theologians use the term Homo divinus to refer to this new humankind. I will start with my theory and then turn to Armstrongism.
Adam, The New Assembly
If I took an existing SUV and put a new and faster, more efficient computer in it, I would have created a new SUV. Technically speaking, the car was not made from simple raw materials at that moment of creation but it is totally new concept that involved the reuse of some existing technologies. This is what I think happened with Adam and other humans that were his contemporaries. The account in Genesis 1 could support either a creation from elemental raw materials or a creation from both new and existing components. I believe it was the latter.
The Rise to Civilization and the Development of Agriculture
The first modern humans, people who looked like us, appeared on earth 300,000 years ago. But civilization began to flourish about 12,000 years ago concomitant with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic. So, for about 288,000 years, people who looked like us chased around the planet wearing skins and brandishing spears with stone tips. They were hunter-gatherers. They had no agriculture. They ate fruits and vegetables opportunistically in the wild. They did not significantly progress for 300 millennia and then something radical happened. Then, seemingly suddenly on this great scale of time, civilization gained traction just a few millennia ago.
The Genesis account of Adam emphasizes agriculture. In Genesis 1, this is found in verses 11-13, 29-30. In Genesis 2, verses 5-9, 15-17. Agriculture was the new frontier. It would create a more controllable, predictable economy on which a complex stable civilization could be established. Though there were different rates of advancement, I believe all of humankind was updated at the same time worldwide with a more complex intellection―a mind that could understand not only art and science but also spiritual concepts.
Göbekli Tepe is an archaeological site dating from around this time in northern Mesopotamia that fits this scenario. At its discovery, scientists were perplexed that the people who built the ancient city were hunter-gatherers yet they built many advanced religious monuments. Such monuments are associated with advanced agricultural societies not hunter-gatherers. This was just prior to the development of agriculture but they could understand spiritual concepts with symbolism, ceremony and astronomy. This kind of paradox is what one would expect if there were a revolution in intellection in a yet hunter-gatherer society.
And Adam and Eve were the two people that God chose to interact with out of the worldwide population that had undergone the revolution in intellection. The rest of humankind would have to make what they could of their new abilities.
The Genetic Account
I believe that Adam lived around 12,000 YA. Archbishop James Ussher computed from scripture that Adam lived around 6,030 years ago. Even if we take my earlier figure, there is not enough time for the Y chromosome haplogroup of a single man to give rise to the many haplogroups that now exist on the planet. These mutations take a long time. Over a mere 6,000 years, Adam’s y chromosome haplogroup passed to subsequent generations would be virtually unchanged. So, if Adam were the progenitor of all of humankind, all the males in the world at this time would have whatever Adam’s Y chromosome haplogroup was (it was J but that is another subject). Yet there is a highly diverse Y chromosome haplogroup structure in the world now. This diversity did not come from a single patrilineal line in a few millennia.
A case in point. The Y chromosome haplogroup of most Europeans, both East and West, is Y chromosome haplogroup R. The earliest excavated remains showing haplogroup R were found on the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia. The remains date to 24,000 YA. Yet, if we are to believe that Adam is the progenitor of all humankind, the people bearing haplogroup R should not have existed before Adam. Yet they did. Not only does this demonstrate that Adam is not the progenitor of the European people (because they pre-existed him), it indicates that the Flood was not global (because they continued to exist after the putative global Flood). Had the Flood been global, haplogroup R would have been entirely erased and Europeans would not exist today.
And further, the human genome is a record of mutations. And it reflects the original progenitors of humankind. These are people who in the phylogentic tree structure of human genetics had a Y chromosome haplogroup that has been designated A00. A00 diverged from other Homo sapiens about 240,000 years ago. The people who possess this haplogroup are sub-Saharan Blacks. The first biological Adam was a Black man living in southern Africa (See Wikipedia article titled “Y-chromosomal Adam”). This is who the entirety of present humankind is descended from. The biological Adam is not the same as the Biblical Adam. Biblical Adam lived just yesterday on the geological timescale and was a Middle Easterner.
Herman Hoeh did not have the advantage of the science of genetics, otherwise he would never have written his flagship article on the races of man. I think Hoeh would probably have never believed in British-Israelism.
Responses to Some Armstrongist Viewpoints
Admittedly, Armstrongism held many viewpoints that were also generally held by conservative Christian denominations. Here I am working from memory going back to my years as an Armstrongist. Modern Armstrongist denominations may no longer hold these views. Readers should let me know.
Genesis 10 contains a genealogy which some believe describes all the races of humankind. And some Bibles have a gloss above Genesis 10 that says something like “The Table of Nations.” Herman Hoeh uses this gloss in his article “The Truth about the Race Question.” This gloss is not a part of scripture but an added editorial comment. It was popularized by German publishers in the 18th Century and was originally called the Voelkertafel. The scripture, however, states that the genealogy just represents the clans of the sons of Noah and that these people spread abroad. It does not say that the genealogy reflects the origin of all of humanity.
Paul speaks of Adam as the “first man.” I believe Adam was the spiritual forerunner of all humankind. And scripture seems to be saying that he was created first before the rest of humankind was transformed. But he was not the biological progenitor of all of humankind. I am not sure if Paul believed that Adam was the progenitor of all humankind. The New Testament does not say that explicitly. Moreover, the state of scientific knowledge does not alter spiritual principles. Paul very likely also believed in the Three-Tiered Cosmos of Genesis 1. This view has been overtaken by events. We no longer believe that the sky consists of something solid, a firmament, holding back an ocean of blue water. The precise configuration of the heavens does not alter the spiritual insight which Genesis intends to convey that God created all things.
In Genesis 3:20, it states that Eve is the “mother of all living.” I believe she is. She had a major role in the drama of the Garden of Eden. But I believe this refers to her symbolic and spiritual role of motherhood rather than her biological role. If one wants to dismiss the allegorical view and regard this passage as biological, then we must look at the genetics. The earliest mtDNA haplogroup is L0 and originated in East Africa. All the other mtDNA haplogroups are derived from L0 through mutation. Biological Eve was a Black woman (See the Wikipedia article titled “Mitochondrial Eve”).
Another theory is that the children of Adam and Eve could intermarry and that this was not damaging physically, that incest could happen until it was later forbidden by the Torah. The idea is that Cain married his sister. This is fantasy. The way genetic damage occurs through incest does not permit this notion. The damage from incest is caused by the pairing of recessive genes in siblings that permits the emergence of pathological conditions. The principle would be just as true for Adam’s immediate progeny as it would be for people today. Cain married someone from a neighboring tribe who was not descended from Adam and Eve.
Conclusion
First, there are many ways of interpreting the synergy between the Book of God’s Words (the Bible) and the Book of God’s Works (science). I have chosen to apply the science of genetics, for instance, to Adam’s circumstance much more than others would. Those people who regard Genesis as an ahistorical allegory, would think me to be naïve in doing this. For them, what I have done with genetics on this topic would be akin to solemnly psycho-analyzing the comic book character Superman. In response I would say that I am not trying to be doctrinal but probing. I believe my viewpoint has substance. And who knows where to draw the line between allegory and history?
The world is not brought into pleasant balance by discarding science. Science is simply the study of God’s Creation. Believers in God should avail themselves of the findings of science. A theory of Adam that draws upon both the Bible and science is quite plausible. God is not only the Author of spiritual principle; he is also Creator and Sustainer of the physical Cosmos. Adam is written up in both the Book of God’s Words and the Book of God’s Works.
Note: When I looked for depictions of Adam on the internet, I found almost exclusively images of Western Europeans. You would think that they all had read Armstrong and Hoeh and believed that God was White, Adam was White and Shem was White down to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I believe the most credible depiction of Adam would portray him as looking like a Mizrahi Jew. The Levantine Mizrahi decidedly do not look like Western Europeans. Armstrongists, influenced by Ashkenormativity, probably would not consider Adam to be White if they saw him in person. I selected this picture of Adam and Eve in the interests of accuracy.
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