Adam and Eve or Adams and Eves

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dominikus28

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In the bible it talks about Adam and Eve being the first parents and the first sinners. Does this litterally refer to 2 people?
If so, to multiply, humans would have to have commited incest.
If not, can someone please explain to me how?
 
dominikus28 said:
In the bible it talks about Adam and Eve being the first parents and the first sinners. Does this litterally refer to 2 people?
If so, to multiply, humans would have to have commited incest.
If not, can someone please explain to me how?
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I don’t know where I stand on this theologically, but I will give it a go. Adam and Eve were the first human beings. They were the first to be created in the image and likeness of God, hence they have a soul.

Genesis does not say, nor do I think the Church says (someone correct me if I am wrong) whether they were the first homo sapiens. If I remember Genesis correctly, Cain even complains to God that “other people will kill me.” My question was, what other people? There was only his mom and dad - that we knew of.

My personal opinion is that Genesis conveyed that Adam and Eve were the first homo-sapiens with a soul. I will even go further to speculate that the reason that God didn’t just pick out another homo-sapiens to be Eve was because he wanted someone to be “flesh of his flesh” etc., or for him to be equally yoked. Afterall, how could God expect a man to have a wife who literally had no soul.

I am not even saying that there was no Garden of Eden. I just think that part of Adam’s (and mankind’s) punishment was that in order to survive, the Children of Eden had to mingle - and thus mate - with the other homo sapiens in order to survive. Adam also needed to know how to work - he could have picked up a thing or two from other homo sapiens.

Keep in mind that I am not a theologian and do not speak for the Catholic Church, so don’t say that this post proves that the Catholic church does not believe in Genesis…yada yada yada. And if the Church outright condemned what I said, please know I am a heretic out of ignorance 🙂
 
It would not have been a “sin” of incest since God had not forbidden it. For the purpose of populating the earth He allowed it.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
. I just think that part of Adam’s (and mankind’s) punishment was that in order to survive, the Children of Eden had to mingle - and thus mate - with the other homo sapiens in order to survive.
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This is polygenism, and it is contrary to Church teaching.
 
Dogmas and teachings on Creation and the Fall (1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission on Genesis):
  • God was moved by His Goodness to create the world. (De Fide)
  • The world was created for the Glorification of God. (De Fide)
  • The Three Divine Persons are one single, common Principle of the Creation. (De Fide)
  • God created the world free from exterior compulsion and inner necessity. (De Fide)
  • God has created a good world. (De Fide)
  • The world had a beginning in time. (De Fide)
  • God alone created the world. (De Fide)
  • God keeps all created things in existence. (De Fide)
  • God, through His Providence, protects and guides all that He has created. (De Fide)
  • The first man was created by God. (De Fide)
  • Man consists of two essential parts – a material body and a spiritual soul. (De Fide)
  • Every human being possesses an individual soul. (De Fide)
  • Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace. (De Fide)
  • The * donum immortalitatis*, i.e. the divine gift of bodily immortality of our first parents. (De Fide)
  • Our first parents in paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment. (De Fide)
  • Through the original sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God. (De Fide)
  • Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil. (De Fide)
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dominikus28 said:
In the bible it talks about Adam and Eve being the first parents and the first sinners. Does this litterally refer to 2 people?
If so, to multiply, humans would have to have commited incest.
If not, can someone please explain to me how?
Click to expand...
It refers to two individuals - one man and one woman.

Incest was not the problem then that it is now, since the errors in the gene pool that prevent us from marrying brothers or sisters today had not yet occurred.

Adam and Eve’s children certainly married one another, since there was no one else for them to marry. All human beings (homo sapiens) are descended from Adam and Eve as their first parents. If any of the children of Adam and Eve were to marry non-descendants of Adam and Eve (ie: non-human beings), their offspring would not be human beings.
 
The first man was created by God. (De Fide)
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Is a man defined as what? There is what science calls a man and what faith calls a man. From my experience, the church refers to man as one who is both body and soul. A homo sapiens with a soul who happens to be male would be “man”.

For example, neanderthal man is under debate as to whether he was a homo sapiens or not. Some have referred him as *homo neanderthalansis - *a separate species. Both existed at the same time according to the fossil record. Would this species be considered human?

Or are we to believe that everything is just an illusion and God purposely created the world to appear like it’s millions of years old.
 
I just looked up Polygenism at wikipedia and I was not proposing that. Polygenism essentially states that all races are not descended from Adam and Eve. Scientifically and Spiritually, this is not the case.

The fact that we are all descendants of Adam would have to also say that we were all descendants of Noah, too right? Poly genism totally throws away Genesis. I just try to see where the spiritual truth of Genesis could align itself to scientific theory. i could be way off, though.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
I just looked up Polygenism at wikipedia and I was not proposing that. Polygenism essentially states that all races are not descended from Adam and Eve. Scientifically and Spiritually, this is not the case.
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I have understood polygenism to mean that “Adam and Eve” refers to an entire community rather than to one man and one woman. As Catholics, we believe that Adam and Eve were one man and one woman; not a whole community. In any case, it does contain the idea that mankind is descended from several “first humans” rather than just one pair.

Science (DNA studies) seems to support the Catholic belief that we are descended from one original couple.
The fact that we are all descendants of Adam would have to also say that we were all descendants of Noah, too right?
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Yes, that’s right.
Poly genism totally throws away Genesis. I just try to see where the spiritual truth of Genesis could align itself to scientific theory. i could be way off, though.
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Ultimately, science and reason are not opposed to faith and Divine revelation. Both are about finding the truth.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
I just looked up Polygenism at wikipedia and I was not proposing that. Polygenism essentially states that all races are not descended from Adam and Eve. Scientifically and Spiritually, this is not the case.

The fact that we are all descendants of Adam would have to also say that we were all descendants of Noah, too right? Poly genism totally throws away Genesis. I just try to see where the spiritual truth of Genesis could align itself to scientific theory. i could be way off, though.
Click to expand...
I just reread my post and I am correcting myself. Polygenism states that some races may not be descended from Adam and Eve. That is, of course, shorthand.

Also, I said I try to see where the truth of Genesis could align itself to scientific theory. It should be the other way around. A theory should align itself to the truth, not the other way around.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
I just reread my post and I am correcting myself. Polygenism states that some races may not be descended from Adam and Eve. That is, of course, shorthand.
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I see now why it is considered heretical.
Also, I said I try to see where the truth of Genesis could align itself to scientific theory. It should be the other way around. A theory should align itself to the truth, not the other way around.
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That’s an excellent point! 👍
 
pprimeau1976 said:
Is a man defined as what? There is what science calls a man and what faith calls a man. From my experience, the church refers to man as one who is both body and soul. A homo sapiens with a soul who happens to be male would be “man”.

For example, neanderthal man is under debate as to whether he was a homo sapiens or not. Some have referred him as *homo neanderthalansis - *a separate species. Both existed at the same time according to the fossil record. Would this species be considered human?

Or are we to believe that everything is just an illusion and God purposely created the world to appear like it’s millions of years old.
Click to expand...
The Catholic Church does not deny that the earth is millions of years old. Our Church knows that the Bible is not to be taken literally. Whether the being that we refer to as ‘Neanderthal man’ was actually an animal or human we do not know. The first man, meaning body and soul, was created by God. That is what we are called to believe and understand. Nowhere within Catholic doctrine is it stated that Adam would have been 6 ft. tall and looked like a man of today. If the ‘Neanderthal man’ had a soul, then within this theory, the first of his kind was the first man. Bottom line, the first being with a human soul whether created 65 million years ago, 10 million years ago, or 6,000 years ago was who we refer to as Adam.
 
While our faith requires that we believe that all people descended from one man and one woman, I don’t think it is required that we take all the stories from Genesis literally. For example, Cain & Abel, and that everyone on earth outside of Noah’s ark were killed.
 
I wonder if the names given the Genesis people were names that God gave the first human, the name that God gave the first murderer and the first victim of murder.

I remember is is said that God will call us by name that is not our worldly name, like Paul, but one that only he knows you by. I wonder if those were names that God “leaked” to the writers of Scripture…Their names could have been a series of grunts, but God could have known him as Adam.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
I wonder if the names given the Genesis people were names that God gave the first human, the name that God gave the first murderer and the first victim of murder.

I remember is is said that God will call us by name that is not our worldly name, like Paul, but one that only he knows you by. I wonder if those were names that God “leaked” to the writers of Scripture…Their names could have been a series of grunts, but God could have known him as Adam.
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We know that Adam and Eve had language, because the first task that God gave to Adam was to name all of the animals.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
The fact that we are all descendants of Adam would have to also say that we were all descendants of Noah, too right? Poly genism totally throws away Genesis. I just try to see where the spiritual truth of Genesis could align itself to scientific theory. i could be way off, though.
Click to expand...
I don’t think polygenism is a current scientific theory, as another poster spoke of “African Eve”.
 
pprimeau1976 said:
I wonder if the names given the Genesis people were names that God gave the first human, the name that God gave the first murderer and the first victim of murder.

I remember is is said that God will call us by name that is not our worldly name, like Paul, but one that only he knows you by. I wonder if those were names that God “leaked” to the writers of Scripture…Their names could have been a series of grunts, but God could have known him as Adam.
Click to expand...
Not actually getting at the heart of your post, but linguistic research shows that full languages will form in the time span of a full generation.
 
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