Adam and Eve: Real or just representation of events

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Like the title says. What say all of you to this.

Were Adam and Eve actually people?

Or were they just names given to no real people and merely meant to symbolize the history of the world and falling from grace that man did?
 
So God created the immaterial to represent the material in a material universe? I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. Humanity had to start someplace and the scriptural account states the obvious: we are all corrupt and it was, and is, a choice made by humans; real people.
 
Edwardjohn said:
So God created the immaterial to represent the material in a material universe? I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. Humanity had to start someplace and the scriptural account states the obvious: we are all corrupt and it was, and is, a choice made by humans; real people.
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At this point I am simply asking what others believe in this. I have made no comments, as of yet, to how I believe. It’s not something that is easy to wrap your head around, I agree.
 
They were two real people whom all humanity is decended.

This is the teaching of the Church and has been defined, so deviating from this would be heresy. Read CCC 375 and 390.
 
The whole scriptural description of the creation is hard to accept. At least for me. But I also see the total **** way that I treat others and the way others treat others. So I ask myself,“Where did this all start?” and, Adam and Eve’s botched decision, when compared to the state of humanity and to where we’ve regressed, seems to me a good starting point.
So, I believe they were real people making real choices.
 
There was definately two “first” humans. Science has shown us that there is a “mitochondrial Eve.” That is, a women that every human being alive today is descended from. She lived about (I believe off of the top of my head) around 100,000 years ago. We know about her through molecular genetic evidence and we know of her time frame of existence due to the molecular clock calculated from internal evidences of the mitochondria.

Likewise, there is also a “Y-Chromosome Adam” that was the first male of our species. So yes, there were two “first” parents. Were these two formed from dirt approx. 6,000 years ago? For heavens sakes, NO. But, the exact date of their existence is not as important as the fact that they did exist.

Did the biblical authors believe they were really two peoples from around 4,000 b.c.? YES. But again, I would suggest that-that is irrelevant as they did not have the genetic evidence we have today. The length of time does nothing to change the fact that (whenever we came about) we fell into a state of sin and that God came to this world in the person of Jesus and brought about salvation for all who desire it.

Just my 2 cents though.

David
 
OchsFam said:
They were two real people whom all humanity is decended.

This is the teaching of the Church and has been defined, so deviating from this would be heresy. Read CCC 375 and 390.
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Um…it doesn’t say that they were real man. It does say:

375 The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”.250 This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.251

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.264 Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.265

Just pointing that out is all, not saying you aren’t correct that they were real people, just saying nowhere in that text does it say they were real people. It does however, seem to point towards the symbolism of them.
 
dnu said:
There was definately two “first” humans. Science has shown us that there is a “mitochondrial Eve.” That is, a women that every human being alive today is descended from. She lived about (I believe off of the top of my head) around 100,000 years ago. We know about her through molecular genetic evidence and we know of her time frame of existence due to the molecular clock calculated from internal evidences of the mitochondria.

Likewise, there is also a “Y-Chromosome Adam” that was the first male of our species. So yes, there were two “first” parents. Were these two formed from dirt approx. 6,000 years ago? For heavens sakes, NO. But, the exact date of their existence is not as important as the fact that they did exist.

Did the biblical authors believe they were really two peoples from around 4,000 b.c.? YES. But again, I would suggest that-that is irrelevant as they did not have the genetic evidence we have today. The length of time does nothing to change the fact that (whenever we came about) we fell into a state of sin and that God came to this world in the person of Jesus and brought about salvation for all who desire it.

Just my 2 cents though.

David
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I gravitate more towards this line of thinking myself. There were first parents. Were they called Adam and Eve? Eh…maybe not. Just some names that were put in there. The Church does not teach that they were named Adam and Eve, and as I understand it, holds fast that is one of the many symbols in the Bible used to teach about our first parents.

I could be wrong, if so we will find out. I don’t want to go against anything the church teaches, but I am pretty sure it is wide open as to how the first parents actually came to be, when and where. Let me clarify, the Church does not, at least to my knowledge, claim that BAM! there was a man and a woman. It is open as to how God created them, how long it took and what not.
 
The Genesis account is a mythic representation of religious truth. It is not history…it is “sacred story.”
 
You might be interested in the FAITH movement and the book Catholicism: A New Synthesis by Father Edward Holloway. Fr Holloway argues that the creation of the human person necessitated a special intervention by God to infuse an immortal soul into the hominid body of our first parents. Scott Hahn’s First Comes Love also contains some striking reflections on the events underpinning the mythological account in Genesis. There was clearly some real event (an ‘aboriginal calamity’ as Ven. John Henry Newman puts it). We may never know exactly what happened, but Genesis tells us the significance of what happened for our daily and eternal lives.
 
Tybourne said:
You might be interested in the FAITH movement and the book Catholicism: A New Synthesis by Father Edward Holloway. Fr Holloway argues that the creation of the human person necessitated a special intervention by God to infuse an immortal soul into the hominid body of our first parents. Scott Hahn’s First Comes Love also contains some striking reflections on the events underpinning the mythological account in Genesis. There was clearly some real event (an ‘aboriginal calamity’ as Ven. John Henry Newman puts it). We may never know exactly what happened, but Genesis tells us the significance of what happened for our daily and eternal lives.
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Ooo will look that one up. Thanks.
 
So far, I see things pretty much the same as you guys then. My wife wasn’t that overjoyed when a priest friend of ours, and myself, broke the news to her that Adam and Eve were not really known as Adam and Eve back then. That they were pretty much just the first man and woman that was self aware, gotten God’s grace bestowed, gotten a soul, etc.
 
OchsFam said:
They were two real people whom all humanity is decended.

This is the teaching of the Church and has been defined, so deviating from this would be heresy. Read CCC 375 and 390.
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I reread what you posted, and you are not wrong of course. You didn’t say there were actually known as Adam and Eve. Sorry for jumping to conclusions earlier. 🙂
 
dnu said:
Were these two formed from dirt approx. 6,000 years ago? For heavens sakes, NO.
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Why not? God can do anything. Which is easier to believe? That God shaped Adam and Eve from dirt, or that they came from monkeys which came from birds which came from reptiles which came from fish which came from single-celled organisms?

personally, I’ll take dirt over amoebas…but I’m a poetic sort. I LOVE the idea of God making this cool mud-pie creature and then breathing life into it and shazam! it’s Adam! The CCC says that God creates each of our souls, right? Why couldn’t he create Adam and Eve’s whole persons?

just sayin’
 
The way I understood it is that after Thor battled Jörmungandr the Midgard Serpent the destruction was so great that there were only 2 people left in the world to repopulate the world which then became Adam and Eve. Old religion out, new religion in.
 
j1akey said:
The way I understood it is that after Thor battled Jörmungandr the Midgard Serpent the destruction was so great that there were only 2 people left in the world to repopulate the world which then became Adam and Eve. Old religion out, new religion in.
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Was Loki on the sidelines in that one?
 
Real people and a real event.

God could have supernaturally created them with the preternatural gifts and inserted them into the timeline wherever He wished regardless of what may or may not have been happening in the universe at the time.
 
buffalo said:
Real people and a real event.

God could have supernaturally created them with the preternatural gifts and inserted them into the timeline wherever He wished regardless of what may or may not have been happening in the universe at the time.
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Why would He do that?
 
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