One approach that has been used to ‘calibrate the nodes’ is to align genetic bottlenecks with global catastrophes. For example a severe bottleneck evident in the Indonesian population has been associated with the super-eruption of Toba (Northern Sumatra) some 70,000 years ago.
Toba blasted over 800 cubic kilometres of volcanic ash and millions of tons of sulphur gas into the atmosphere. The volcanic ash settled quickly but the sulphur formed a long-lasting stratospheric haze as evidenced by dust signatures within the ice core record. Thus assigning this particular eruption to an adjacent genetic bottleneck gives anthropologists one calibration point. As more events and bottlenecks are paired off, the more certain the calibration becomes.
Similar to mtDRA, Y-chromosomes[1] are passed down the paternal linage without recombination. Using the best estimates of the ‘calibrated clock’ short tandem repeats in Y-chromosomes show that all modern populations in southern Australasia can trace their ancestry to a small founding population that originated from the Horn of northeast Africa around 60,000 years ago (coincides with a sea level drop of over 100 meters – another calibration point). The lower sea level opened sea bridges and allowed the land based biosphere to diversify into these otherwise isolated regions.
Analysis of gene sequences identified a second exodus from Africa by a small founding population that travelled overland via the shoreline of the Red Sea. This bottleneck occurred during a period of milder climate around 50,000 years ago that coincided with the appearance of advanced stone tools. According to the best estimates of anthropological data living humans can trace their ancestry to these colonizing Homo sapiens who in-turn originated in a small African group some 140,000 – 200,000 years ago.
In stark contrast Bishop Ussher used the Genesis genealogy to date Adam’s creation to 4004 BCE. Davis[2] lessens the discrepancy by pointing out that Ussher’s analysis was too simplistic - ’Hebrew genealogical tables are apt to differ in the principles of construction from modern registers of pedigree. Symmetry is often preferred to the exhibition of the unbroken descent from father to son. Hence links were freely omitted, and the enumeration was otherwise left incomplete. Ten in the genealogy from Adam to Noah, and ten from Shem to Abraham. Seventy sons of Noah's sons, and seventy souls of the house of Jacob (Gen. xlvi. 27 ...). 2. The genealogy may be tribal, rather than personal; and son may denote the inhabitants of a country (Gen. x. 2-4, 6, 7, 22), a people or tribe (4, 13, 16-18 ...), a town (15), rarely an individual (8-10). Similar phenomena are found elsewhere (Gen. xxv. 2-4; 1 Chron. ii. 50-55 ...). The words bear and beget and father are used with a corresponding breadth of meaning; as bear or beget a grandchild (Gen. xlvi. 12 with 15, 18, 25), or great-grandchild (12, and probably 21, 22), or grandchild's grandchild (Mat. i. 9), or country (Gen. xxv. 2, 3).’
While an unconnected genealogy offers some elasticity; using it to fill a twenty fold gap is not convincing - for it almost certainly transforms the obvious purpose of the Genesis genealogy into a mystical entity.
Another approach is to label the Genesis account as symbolic. But while there is some truth here we should not push this approach too far for Adam’s station in the Genesis genealogy almost certainly affirms that the authors of Genesis took him to be a historical figure - ‘this reading, that Adam and Eve are presented as a particular pair, the first parents of all humanity, is pretty widespread in the exegetical literature, both from writers who have some kind of traditionalist commitment to the bible’s truthfulness, and from those who do not[3]’.
We see this in Paul, who embraces archetypal Adam as a historical figure - ‘just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned…….for just as through the disobedience of the one many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous (Romans 5:12-17)’.
But the simplicity of Paul’s comparison should not be missed either; Jesus redeemed humanity, not animals; so conversely, the most we could claim is that Adam bought death to humanity - not animals. The appearance of animal death in the fossil record millions of years before Adam walked the earth is not in any way terminal to the God thesis.
But how do we address the problem that mortal Homo sapiens must have also died before God 'created' Neolithic Adam? For Moltman the answer lies in our definition of death. He argues that it is the awareness of death that creates a fear of life. In craving life we wish to become invulnerable; immortal. This is what H. E. Richter calls the 'God complex', for the knowledge of death not only opens our hope for immortality but also allows us to manipulate and kill each other.
'Sin then is the usurpation of life that springs from the awareness of death. Sin is the violence against life which springs from knowledge of mortality. Sin is therefore the wages of death. It originates in the covenant with death, and it disseminates death. According to the biblical traditions, human sin begins with the awareness of death (Genesis 3) and with Cain's fratricide (Genesis 4) [4]’.
According to this reading Adam's knowledge of death emanated from the knowledge of his own mortality which in turn emanated from his unique relationship with the immortal God who came and dwelt in the earthly temple. The general populous of Homo sapiens may have biologically died for many millennia before Adam; but because they did not know God they could not have shared in the fear of death that leads to sin.
Adam stood apart, for only his disobedience could result in the fear of losing something more; and so it was that this fear bought 'death' into the world - not biological death per se but the fear of losing something more through biological death.
It is this fear that Paul contrasts to resurrection hope. For ever since Daniel 12 the final resurrection of the dead had been the presupposition for the diachronic fulfilment of God's righteousness through final judgment. Martha affirmed this belief when she says that Lazarus would be resurrected on that last day (John 11:24) but interestingly Jesus counters Martha, claiming that 'He was the resurrection and the life (11:25)' in the here and the now.
Paul similarly focusses on the resurrection of Jesus and not on an ambiguous expectation of an eschatological judgment - if we have died with Christ (baptism) we will live with him (Romans 6:8). Paul's hope then was not founded on final resurrection (which requires no particular faith) but in Christ's resurrection.
That is why he describes Christ as the first fruits that has begun the process that in the end will see death swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:55). The final resurrection is the culmination of the process that began with the death and resurrection of Christ; a process that works to reverse the fear of death that has been in the world since Adam feared losing something more through biological death.
Read in this light Romans 5:12 describes how the fear of death was bought into the world and how Christ can liberate us from it. To flatten this exegesis into an exclusively biological comparison not only dissipates the true force behind the analogy but more problematically introduces an all too literal objection; namely how could Homo sapiens have biologically died before Adam sinned? Since this was not Paul's argument, it seems unwise to take a too biological stance on what amounts to a theological point; and in so doing set the narrative against the very many objective facts that do suggest Homo sapiens walked the earth long before 'God created Adam'.
But what do we do with the image that God created (Hebrew word bara) the first man and called him Adam (Genesis 1:27)? Well in 2:7 the account gives more details to this creation event and pivotally it describes the process not as a material creation event per se but rather God fashioned (Hebrew word yatsar) Adam. Dust then is likely an idiom vis a vis the essential ingredient that God used to ‘fashion’ or 'form' Adam; just as the rib was an idiom that describes woman's dependence upon man.
By this reading the pre-existence of essential idiomatic ‘dust’ (common materials) means it would be ‘difficult to forecast what aspect of being the image of God would actually show up in a scientific description of mankind; so it is not quite certain what it is we are looking for when we try to discover the first man largely in terms of incomplete skeletons’[5].
The skeletal similarity between ancient mortal Homo sapiens and a recent Adam helps us biologically, for it decouples Adam’s recent relational origin from the emergence of Homo sapiens some 140,000 years ago, but if all men after Adam possess souls we still must face up to the dating problem - for we cannot conceive of Adam's origin being after mortal Homo sapiens migrated around the world some 50,000 years ago (as this would mean some isolated populations today are soul-less).
It seems to me the only convincing way to move past the migration barrier is to face up to one of Christendom’s most enduring assumption - namely that all humans possess immortal souls. Let's assume for now that this claim is fallacious. Instead of possessing souls what if, like Genesis itself claims, we are souls?
From an evidence standpoint this adjustment from dualism to mortality resolves the anthropological dating problem because it decouples the ancient global migration of Homo sapiens from God’s Neolithic relational covenant with Adam (for indeed we are all mortal after-all).
From a theological standpoint there is a difference too - for dualism is ultimately an opinion while the resurrection of mortal Homo sapiens (whether direct descendants of Adam or not) is a hope. The first trusts in something integral to humanity that had to be there from the start while the later trusts in God's goodness in history. In accepting the dualistic conception we accept the inevitability of death but if we accept a resurrection of otherwise mortal Homo sapiens we anticipate our conquest of death through Jesus - for death will be swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54).
The dualistic immortal soul may welcome death as a friend, because through death the soul is released from this decaying body; but through the resurrection hope of the mortal man death is and always will be the last enemy, the culmination of the process that began at the cross (1 Corinthians 15:26)[6].
In my estimation then, a mortal anthropology not only restores a proper eschatological perspective but also explains the otherwise problematic transition from our ancient past to the relatively ‘modern’ story of Adam's communion with the God who chose to dwell in His cosmic temple.
For a more detailed discussion of this issue please click here.
For a more detailed discussion of this issue please click here.
[1]. African Origin of Modern Humans in East Asia: A Tale of 12,000Y Chromosomes. Ke, Yuehai, et al 2001 Science: 1151-1153.
[2] A Dictionary of the Bible Davis JD 1898 Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth edition, 1966
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