A Question about the story of Adam and Eve

[Cizza]

Last year (I was in grade 9) my Religion teacher told us that the story of Adam and Eve wasn’t true, that it is only a story of morality…he wasn’t saying that creation was false or anything, just that the story of Adam and Eve didn’t for sure happen…he could have said that differently but I can’t remember. Does anyone know if this is true?

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I just joined

 

[1ke]

Cizza:

Last year (I was in grade 9) my Religion teacher told us that the story of Adam and Eve wasn’t true, that it is only a story of morality…he wasn’t saying that creation was false or anything, just that the story of Adam and Eve didn’t for sure happen…he could have said that differently but I can’t remember. Does anyone know if this is true?

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I just joined

Welcome!

Well, your teacher is right & wrong. What they unfortunately attempted to do is address a complex issue in a simplified way and without sufficient time to go deep enough into it.

You have to really start studying your bible with good solid Catholic teaching & the Catechism too.

The Church has always taught that scripture has several “senses” including the literal. The first 10 chapters of Genesis can be interpreted as a “story” as your teacher called it only in the sense of the days of creation not necessarily being literal 24 hours, and that the creation story does tell us about our origins, sin, and man’s relationship to God. There are elements of the story that go beyond the literal, but you cannot toss out the literal.

Are we free to interpret that Adam and Eve did not exist? NO. While it is a “story” i’ts MORE than “just” as story. Does that make sense at all?

Maybe studying the bible in more detail would help. Specifically getting some books on how to study the bible (from a solid Catholic source like Ignatius Press).

Visit www.salvationhistory.com for some good bible study tools.

 

[Cizza]

1ke:

Welcome!

Well, your teacher is right & wrong. What they unfortunately attempted to do is address a complex issue in a simplified way and without sufficient time to go deep enough into it.

You have to really start studying your bible with good solid Catholic teaching & the Catechism too.

The Church has always taught that scripture has several “senses” including the literal. The first 10 chapters of Genesis can be interpreted as a “story” as your teacher called it only in the sense of the days of creation not necessarily being literal 24 hours, and that the creation story does tell us about our origins, sin, and man’s relationship to God. There are elements of the story that go beyond the literal, but you cannot toss out the literal.

Are we free to interpret that Adam and Eve did not exist? NO. While it is a “story” i’ts MORE than “just” as story. Does that make sense at all?

Maybe studying the bible in more detail would help. Specifically getting some books on how to study the bible (from a solid Catholic source like Ignatius Press).

Visit www.salvationhistory.com for some good bible study tools.

Oohh, ok, thank you!

Since “Adam” means man, does that mean that God could have created many men at once, and many women at once? Or For sure it was Adam and Eve, by themselves at first?

 

[1ke]

Adam and Eve are both symbolic and real. Yes, Adam represents all of humanity. But, as Catholics we believe in a real set of original parents (who committed a real sin-- Original Sin). We reject the idea of ‘polygenism’ which is the idea of many “first men”.

Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical on this. You can find it at the EWTN document library:

ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P12HUMAN.HTM

 

[the-3rd-parent]

Ok, the story contains truth and there is nothing false in it, but I wouldn’t say its what we’d called historical truth. I’d say that its a very simbolic tale to speak of things that occured while focusing completely on the spiritual meaning of the events. In the creation story of Adam and Eve (the second creation story in genesis), it is not there to attempt to be a camera to fill us with “Well there was this guy named Adam and this Woman named Eve.”

If you actually look at the text, Adam and Eve are not named so until after they sin. Rather it says man and woman. It gets to the main points to focus us on our spiritual condition. The actual events would probably be too complex that we would completely overlook these truths and never come to any understanding of them.

At the same time though, I would say that there are parts of Genesis that I believe grow to be more and more close with historical fact.

Some non-believing bible scholars have noticed that the text in the book changes style and genre many times and they try to attribute this to multipul authors. Scott Hahn believes that these aren’t multipul authors but things we need to be aware of in order to interprit each segment correctly.

Still, as a Catholic, it is not wrong for you to take the story of Adam and Eve as historical fact. It is an issue of debate.

 

[the-3rd-parent]

–Or For sure it was Adam and Eve, by themselves at first?–

We do believe that humanity originates from one mother and father. To not believe we would get into problems of certain descendants in the human race not having inherited original sin. Granted you could argue that with all the intermarrying, it makes us all related because no one doesn’t have a trace of Adam’s blood. I just thought of this argument as of now. But really I don’t think that the scripture was to inform us of any of this and there are just some things that really don’t matter like whether or not they had belly buttons. These things don’t change the human condition or the Truth God is trying to communicate to us through His Divine Revelation

 

[Viki59]

Scientists have now traced all human DNA to one original woman, they call her Eva, if I recall correctly. Others will have more information on this.
It makes sense that the human race began with one couple, unless you want to believe in multiple creations. I’m in over my head already, but I see no problem with believing in Adam and Eve.