Adam and Eve were not the first Human Beings

[TheWarriorMonk]

Where there is no contradiction, the Church still has authority, in wisdom, but not infallibly so (ie, take Her word seriously, but if it is proven to be false, that’s okay). This is because the Church is guided by the Spirit of Truth.

And this is why that Church does not make authoritative statements about scientific matters (unlike several in the thread). A literal translation of Genesis (a position that the Church does not take) means a legion of contradictions.

I have scientific training and I believe that faith and science work together. When discussing such matters, I start with research from the bottom up, not the top down, just as I would build a house with the foundation first, not the roof.

 

[10gr8kids]

The senses of Scripture
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two *senses *of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83
117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.84
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.85
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.86
   118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:
   The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
   The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.87 119 "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God."88
   But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.89

Thank you, I have read and know about the different senses in reading the Bible. I know the Church does not teach that everything in the Bible is literal. What I’m not understanding is how FrDavid can say that a literal belief in the reading of Genesis is superstitious. As Catholics we are not to put faith in superstition, at least that’s what I’ve been taught. I’ve also been taught that we can believe in a literal 6 day creation or not. So if it is superstition to believe in a literal reading of Genisis the Church would not stay silent on the issue. Is my reasoning flawed?

 

[grannymh]

Christ gave the Church authority over matters of faith and morals. If He gave authority over science also, please cite the source.

Genesis 1: 1

 

[adrift]

Are you sure he is, I’m not so sure and if sooo, I disagree with him at times. God Bless, Memaw

The forum does not allow posters to post that they are a priest unless they are. You’re comments are to a priest.

 

[Memaw]

If you are to believe the timeline in Genesis literally, then you need to explain the existence of Homo Sapiens that predated that timeline. However, this is just physical evidence that the Book of Genesis in not discussed in a scientific matter.

FWIW, back in the day, I had taken Judaic study courses and we had read sections of the Bible in Hebrew. Some of what you read in the Old Testament is not correctly translated.

But what the Church teaches is correctly translated!! God Bless, Memaw

 

[grannymh]

Thank you, I have read and know about the different senses in reading the Bible. I know the Church does not teach that everything in the Bible is literal. What I’m not understanding is how FrDavid can say that a literal belief in the reading of Genesis is superstitious. As Catholics we are not to put faith in superstition, at least that’s what I’ve been taught. I’ve also been taught that we can believe in a literal 6 day creation or not. So if it is superstition to believe in a literal reading of Genisis the Church would not stay silent on the issue. Is my reasoning flawed?

May I gently suggest that a possible flaw is starting with the idea of a literal reading of Genesis which has 50 chapters and thousands of verses. It would be much easier to start with a Catholic doctrine about human origin and original sin and find a Scripture reference in the first three chapters of Genesis or in the rest of Scripture. St. Paul teaches the truth of Jesus Christ by referring back to Adam.

By starting with an actual Catholic doctrine, one sees that the Church is loud and clear that there cannot be any hint of superstition in its Scripture reference.

 

[10gr8kids]

I’m going to rephrase my question for FrDavid, it doesn’t seem like I made it very clear what I’m looking for.

Can the Church teach it is ok to believe in a literal Adam and Eve and 6 days creation if it is superstitious to believe so? I wouldn’t think so.

 

[Gorgias]

Granny,

Based on your more recent post, I went back to “post 55” to re-read what you had written. Some really good stuff there…

Now one would think that the human author, who is definitely not a Ph.D. scientist , would emphasize the glory of the population in which he lives.

Actually, what the inspired writer was doing, it seems, is distinguishing the teaching of God’s creation from the myths surrounding him – at the very least, he distinguishes God from the gods of Sumeria. In those myths, humanity is created from evil and filth, and all of creation is a ‘mistake’ of sorts; their creation myth says “there is no love and no hope.” In his inspired tale, the writer of Genesis instead identifies not that there is “glory” in his population, but rather, value and worth in the eyes of God, their creator.

Now comes the tricky statement – The person biblically known as Adam was not a real person.

If you and I are real humans, our first natural ancestor had to be a real human with a spiritual soul.

I think that, in general, this argument (which is continually discussed here) happens not because we’re in different places, per se, but because we attribute to the ‘other side’ assertions that they’re not making. In the debate between ‘literalists’ and ‘allegorists’ – a distinction which, itself, may be cause for tension and debate (and so, perhaps I’d be better served IDing the sides as ‘big-endians’ and ‘little-endians’) – at least, in the debate between Catholics who are discussing the issue, the following dynamics seem to take place:

Little-endians hear big-endians say “it’s an allegory, not history or science,” and presume that the big-endians mean that there was never an original pair of humans (that is, that polygenism is true). That is not the case. In saying “it’s allegory,” big-endians are not saying “there was no first human pair” nor “original sin is untrue”, but rather, “in the Genesis accounts of creation, God uses a particular mode of expression in order to reveal to us that there was a first pair of humans and that they sinned and that we all inherit the effects of that first sin.”

Big-endians hear little-endians say “there was a literal Adam,” and presume that little-endians mean that, a priori, science is always wrong. That doesn’t seem to be a fair assessment, either. Certainly, there’s an element of “if science and God’s word are in conflict, then God’s word always trumps and wins.” However, that’s a big ‘if’. I think – I hope – that both sides would agree that theology and science are attempting to answer different classes of questions, and where folks conflate the two, they do damage to both, I think.

Are there some big-endians who believe that polygenism is true? Yes. Are there some little-endians who believe that a fundamentalist, hyper-literalist belief in Scripture is necessary? Yes. Both of these, unfortunately, are distorting and mis-representing the Church’s position.

 

[MrSnaith]

I think, as regards the question of the “days of creation,” the following CA link is appropriate reading: catholic.com/tracts/creation-and-genesis

I particularly appreciate Augustine’s treatment of the question.

As regards the question of Cain’s wife, we know that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters (Genesis 5:4).

An interesting question is the timing of it all. In Genesis 5:3, we see that Adam was 130 when he begot Seth. And, we know that Cain and Abel were begotten before that age, since Genesis 4 presents the begetting of Seth as a occurring after the history of Cain and Abel.

However, in Genesis 4:25, Eve says with regards to her conception of Seth “God hath given me another seed, for Abel whom Cain slew.” How do we understand this? Does it mean that Eve had stopped having kids, and so Seth’s conception came as a surprise? Does it mean that Cain and Abel were the only two kids she had prior to Seth?

I think, perhaps, that it means that Seth was the third son that she had, through whom the Covenant might pass.

It might be worthwhile to note that in these geneologies, the concern is the male lineage, which is why so few women are ever mentioned. The passing of the Covenant was normally through the firstborn son. In the case of Adam and Eve, the firstborn was Cain. But a precedent was set with this story: that the status of firstborn didn’t always confer this particular blessing, that God’s favor was the overriding principle. Cain was the firstborn, but the Covenant wasn’t passed through his line. Rather, it would have been passed through Abel, had Cain not murdered him. It was through the line of Seth that the Covenant was passed and protected. Tracking lineages was all about tracking the Covenant. So it was important to show Noah as the descendant of Seth, who became the “other seed, for Abel,” the favored son.

Therefore, while daughters before Seth were not mentioned, it’s not beyond reason to expect that they probably had some. After all, Seth was born when Adam was 130. Only two kids in all that time? Doubtful.

Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that the order that things are presented in these chapters (4 and 5, particularly) isn’t chronological. The whole lineage of Cain down to Lamech and his two sons (seven generations) is presented before the birth of Seth. It’s unlikely that these generations occurred before Adam was 130, especially when we consider that the generations of Seth are all around 100 years each before the next generation is begotten (ie, Seth was 105 when he begot Enos, who was 90 when he begot Cainan, who was 70 when he begot Malaleel, etc).

The question one might ask, when reading these geneologies is this: when it says “And the days of [father], after he begot [son], were [several] hundred years: and he begot sons and daughters,” does the modifier “afer” refer only to how many years he lived, or does it refer also to his begetting of other sons and daughters? It’s an important question, because if the modifier doesn’t refer to “and he begot sons and daughters,” then his begetting of other sons and daughters may technically refer to both before and after the recorded son’s begetting.

What’s really interesting to me, though, is the similarity in geneologies of Cain and Seth, from whom are descended:

Cain: Henoch, Irad, Maviael, Mathusael, Lamech, and Jubal and Tubalcain
Seth: Enos, Cainan, Malaleel, Jared, Henoch, Mathusala, Lamech, Noah, and Sem, Cham and Japheth

 

[edwest2]

Is the title of the post a fact? No. Let’s have a look.

1. Our ancestors were ape-like. Their thinking capacity was different, and as time passed, various changes occurred that gradually changed their bone structure and thinking capabilities to gradually resemble humans’ but they were not yet homo-sapiens-sapiens. This was a gradual, purely mechanistic process. Our minds are the result of a purely bio-mechanistic process - SCIENCE.
2. There is no evidence whatsoever of the intervention of gods/Gods or other supernatural forces. SCIENCE. For example, science CANNOT study these things.
3. Hominids are a fact. SCIENCE.
4. Recently, a lemur-like creature fossil was found and hailed as the beginning of human beings. That was overturned. SCIENCE.
5. What does Adam and Eve have to do with any of this? According to numerous posts here - Nothing. If someone wants to connect Science to Divine Revelation here, as is so often the case, buy pure invention, i.e. The soul led to the first two True Human Beings, then there is no science to back that up. It is fiction.
6. Does Science need a Pope or any Pope to say, “I think you have something here?” No, of course not.
7. The end result is that the fiction that a long biological process + a soul led to to the first True Human Beings will continue to be brought up here, ad nauseum
8. The creation of Adam and Eve? A fictional story that must be repeated only for its religious value. Science has the real story. That part of the Bible is a bit like “storks bring babies home.”

Please don’t put chocolate in my peanut butter

Peace,
Ed

 

[buffalo]

Thank you, I have read and know about the different senses in reading the Bible. I know the Church does not teach that everything in the Bible is literal. What I’m not understanding is how FrDavid can say that a literal belief in the reading of Genesis is superstitious. As Catholics we are not to put faith in superstition, at least that’s what I’ve been taught. I’ve also been taught that we can believe in a literal 6 day creation or not. So if it is superstition to believe in a literal reading of Genisis the Church would not stay silent on the issue. Is my reasoning flawed?

Adam and Eve have been dogma for a very long time. Dogmas do not get reversed. They come from Revelation, which cannot be by definition superstitious. Popes have made pronouncements supporting this for a very long time.

I would like to hear more from Fr David.

 

[MrSnaith]

I’m going to rephrase my question for FrDavid, it doesn’t seem like I made it very clear what I’m looking for.

Can the Church teach it is ok to believe in a literal Adam and Eve and 6 days creation if it is superstitious to believe so? I wouldn’t think so.

Perhaps it might be useful to consider that it is possible to have a belief in a literal Adam and Eve, and perhaps even a belief in six twenty-four hour periods for creation without having a literal reading of Genesis.

It might be useful to note that there are two creation narratives. Genesis 1-2:3 completes the days of creation narrative, from which we see the seven days of creation, wherein man is created on the sixth (Adam and Eve are not mentioned specifically here). Then, from Genesis 2:4-9:29, a new creation narrative begins, which differs in chronology from the first.

It begins, “[4] These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth: [5] And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew: for the Lord God had not rained upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the earth.”

A couple things to note about this passage. First, in the first creation narrative, man is created on the sixth day, but the plants of the field and the herbs of the ground were created on the third day. However, in this narrative, the setting is “before every plant of the field sprung up, and every herb of the ground grew.” This passage is immediately followed by the creation of the Adam from the slime of the earth, and then he is placed in a paradise that was there from the beginning. It is only after man’s fall that he has to “till the earth” suggesting that the garden of paradise didn’t constitute the plants and herbs mentioned in the opening passage. Moreover, this creation narrative runs up to the end of the flood, at which point we see the first rain, as evidenced by the first rainbow. This brings us back to Genesis 5, where it indicates that God had not rained upon the earth. We know that things grow in the Cain and Abel story, when Cain offers the produce of the earth. But we’re given to understand that the reason this is possible is firstly, because Cain was tilling the soil, but also secondly that there was a “spring [that] rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth” (Genesis 2:6). Ostensibly, until the “fountains of the great deep were broken up” this was how the earth was watered, after which the “flood gates of heaven were opened,” and from thence the earth was watered by rain.

But you can see the chronology is different between the two narratives. Plants arrive on the scene three days before man in the first narrative. In the second, they are the product of man’s tilling of the earth. Also, all of the animals were created on the fourth day in the first narrative, after the plants, but before man. But in the second narrative, Adam names all of the animals, meaning they arrived either before man was created, or after he was placed in Eden, but before he began to till the earth, and bring forth plants and herbs.

An absolute literal reading of Genesis, then, implies a contradiction. This is the superstition, whereby we ignore clear logical problems and just believe what we like about it regardless.

However, that doesn’t make it impossible to take certain elements of the stories literally. Was there a literal Adam and Eve who were mankind’s first parents? Yes. That might not have been their names, who knows. The point is, you can take their existence as literal, without taking the circumstances of their lives in a literal way. For example, was the fall really the mere eating of a fruit on a tree? Was it really a talking snake (a more appropriate translation would be dragon) that deceived Eve? Was there really an angel with a flaming sword that barred their entrance back into Eden? Were there really giants on the earth immediately prior to the flood?

A careful reading of Genesis 2:4 reveals something interesting, though. With the understanding that it is the start of a new narrative that extends all the way to Genesis 9:29, covering several hundred years (much more than a thousand years I believe), this period is referred to as the “generations of the heaven and the earth.” The interesting thing to note is that this period is “in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth.” This careful reading shows that the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth extended over a thousand years. Just something to think about.

 

[Aloysium]

It’s non-sensical to try to force scientific explanations into the book of Genesis (or to look at Genesis to find science).

That’s not Christianity, it’s superstition.

It makes as much sense as looking in a dictionary for a recipe for chocolate cake.

Your question simply makes no sense because what you are trying to do is to force the book of Genesis to be scientific. That’s plain nonsense. It is not a science book. It was never intended to be a science book. It never will be a science book.

There are no human beings born without Original Sin (except Our Lord and His Blessed Mother).

Do you understand that different kinds of books contain different kinds of information? Do you understand that a dictionary is not a cookbook?

Science tries to describe matter: how it does, has and will behave.
In explaining the creation of man, Genesis goes beyond the scientific. It tells us who we are essentially, how we came to be as we are, where we are going and why.
It is truth speaking to what is, was and will be Real.
Science is a method of understanding the world; as the judicial system is not interested in morality, science is not concerned about reality, outside its very limited scope.
Genesis, like the rest of scripture and the teachings of the Church, is so much more than a science book.
Unfortunately, many people are looking for truth in science; in that respect it is all magic and illusion.

 

[TheWarriorMonk]

Science tries to describe matter: how it does, has and will behave.
In explaining the creation of man, Genesis goes beyond the scientific. It tells us who we are essentially, how we came to be as we are, where we are going and why.
It is truth speaking to what is, was and will be Real.
Science is a method of understanding the world; as the judicial system is not interested in morality, science is not concerned about reality, outside its very limited scope.
Genesis, like the rest of scripture and the teachings of the Church, is so much more than a science book.
Unfortunately, many people are looking for truth in science; in that respect it is all magic and illusion.

Science is our way of understanding reality. If someone attempts to limit it’s scope, that’s an issue with the person, not science.

 

[Aloysium]

Science is our way of understanding reality. If someone attempts to limit it’s scope, that’s an issue with the person, not science.

It seems to me that it is the other way around.
Science limits its scope to only that which can be studied empirically.
It tells us of the mysteries, the beauty, the wonder of creation that reflects the power, the greatness and the love of God.
It allows us a means by which we can help one another.
When it strays from this, what would be knowledge becomes illusion and what should be acts of love, are reduced to simply magic.
Now these questions will lead to complex, long answers that I am not expecting an answer to, but:

• What does science say is reality? What does it say we are? What is life? What is love?
• Why is it/we here? Why is all this the way it is?
• What is suffering? What makes it hurt? Who does it hurt? How does that work?
• What is consciousness? What is being? What is the cause of our being?
• I could go on, but I am assume I am making the point that science does not play a role in getting to the most important truths of our existence.
  Science can reveal God through His creation, but this is not done empirically; i.e. by using its methods of arriving at the truth.
  This is where I would be in agreement with you, that it can to lead us to God and to help each other, and if we do not use it this way, we are limiting its scope and understanding of reality.

 

[grannymh]

Science is our way of understanding reality. If someone attempts to limit it’s scope, that’s an issue with the person, not science.

The Catholic Church teaches that human nature is an unique unification of two realities. (CCC, 355-356; CCC, 362-366; CCC, 1730)

May I respectfully ask which reality or realities are you referring to?

 

[10gr8kids]

Perhaps it might be useful to consider that it is possible to have a belief in a literal Adam and Eve, and perhaps even a belief in six twenty-four hour periods for creation without having a literal reading of Genesis.

Thank you, perhaps this is what FrDavid meant. I thought he was saying that believing in a literal Adam and Eve was superstitious. I could not reconcile that with Church teaching.

Thank you again for the explanation.

 

[Memaw]

May I gently suggest that a possible flaw is starting with the idea of a literal reading of Genesis which has 50 chapters and thousands of verses. It would be much easier to start with a Catholic doctrine about human origin and original sin and find a Scripture reference in the first three chapters of Genesis or in the rest of Scripture. St. Paul teaches the truth of Jesus Christ by referring back to Adam.

By starting with an actual Catholic doctrine, one sees that the Church is loud and clear that there cannot be any hint of superstition in its Scripture reference.

AMEN and God Bless, Memaw

 

[grannymh]

Science is our way of understanding reality. If someone attempts to limit it’s scope, that’s an issue with the person, not science.

The Catholic Church teaches that human nature is an unique unification of two realities.
(CCC, 355-356; CCC, 362-366; CCC, 1730)

May I respectfully ask which reality or realities are you referring to?

 

[TheWarriorMonk]

The Catholic Church teaches that human nature is an unique unification of two realities.
(CCC, 355-356; CCC, 362-366; CCC, 1730)

May I respectfully ask which reality or realities are you referring to?

First, the word “reality” is used in only one of your references.

Second, the one reference to “reality” is actually qualified with by “this reality,” indicating a specific circumstance, or more properly a subset of reality.

There is only one “Reality.” That fact that others may talk about subsets of “Reality,” or have a different definition of it, doesn’t change that.