Some First Parents Are More First Than Others

[This is part of a series of posts I initiated with Book of Mormon Scholarship as an Elias for Evolution.]

The phrase 'first parents' occurs exclusively in the Book of Mormon, and is used ten times to refer to Adam and Eve. So according to the Book of Mormon, Adam and Eve were our first parents, end of story. Right? Well, maybe not quite. Interestingly, the phrase is also used three times to refer to other people. Here are the three passages.

Jacob 4:3

Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents.

Omni 1:22

It [the stone with engravings] also spake a few words concerning his [Coriantumr's] fathers. And his first parents came out from the tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people; and the severity of the Lord fell upon them according to his judgments, which are just; and their bones lay scattered in the land northward.

Helaman 5:6

Behold, my sons, I desire that ye should remember to keep the commandments of God; and I would that ye should declare unto the people these words. Behold, I have given unto you the names of our first parents who came out of the land of Jerusalem; and this I have done that when you remember your names ye may remember them; and when ye remember them ye may remember their works; and when ye remember their works ye may know how that it is said, and also written, that they were good.

In each of these cases the phrase 'first parents' means something similar to what we might call 'founding fathers.' In fact, in the third passage there is no female component at all because it is actually a reference to Lehi and Nephi.

None of this is to suggest that the Book of Mormon prophets didn't think Adam and Eve were literally our first parents. They probably did. The point is to show another example where words that would seem to have a definitive meaning are demonstrably more flexible. If other people existed alongside Adam and Eve, by the Book of Mormon's own standards Adam and Eve can still be called our first parents.

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Adam and Eve: Reading Between the Lines

[This is part of a series of posts I initiated with Book of Mormon Scholarship as an Elias for Evolution.]

We turn now to the narrative about Adam and Eve and their posterity, where we will look for clues for the potential existence of others. Below I simply describe or quote the relevant part of the story and ask questions about it.

Many of Adam and Eve's posterity rejected their teachings from the very beginning.

And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters. And Satan came among them, saying: I am also a son of God; and he commanded them, saying: Believe it not; and they believed it not, and they loved Satan more than God. And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish. (Moses 5:13.)

If Adam, Eve, and their children were the only people on earth, why did the children have such a hard time believing their parents? Who would tell them otherwise? Were they really having conversations with Satan? Is it possible that there were, in fact, other people influencing Adam and Eve's children? Could Satan's declaration, "I am also a son of God" actually be a reference to surrounding competing religions where, as Nibley noted, claimed ties between humans and gods were not uncommon.

Hugh Nibley also noted the following which, although specifically about a universal flood, has potentially broader application:

Speaking of Noah, God promised Enoch "that he [God] would call upon the children of Noah; and he sent forth an unalterable decree, that a remnant of his seed [Enoch's through Noah] should always be found among all nations, while the earth should stand; and the Lord said: Blessed is he through whose seed Messiah shall come." (Moses 7:51-53.) Methuselah boasted about his line as something special. (Moses 8:2-3.) Why special if it included the whole human race? These blessings have no meaning if all the people of the earth and all the nations are the seed of Noah and Enoch.

Enoch saw the city of Zion in vision, after which "Enoch also beheld the residue of the people which were the sons of Adam; and they were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain..." Why does the text specify that the rest of the people were the 'sons of Adam'? Shouldn't that be obvious?

During Enoch's preaching, "there came a man unto him, whose name was Mahijah, and said unto him: Tell us plainly who thou art, and from whence thou comest?" (Moses 6:40.) Is it possible that Mahijah is an outsider, just as Sherem in the Book of Mormon seems to be?

Enoch and Noah both encountered 'giants', about whom nothing is known. In the Genesis text the giants are only associated with Noah. However, the Book of Moses adds a reference to them in connection with Enoch. Ancient traditions envisioned these giants (Nephilim) as the hybrid children of humans and fallen angels. However, I am not aware of any LDS commentator who accepts that interpretation.

Following the murder of Abel, Cain feared for his life. If Cain was really the first murderer among the very first family on earth, why would he be so worried about being killed himself, particularly since he would be leaving his homeland? Furthermore, in Genesis Cain goes to live in the land of Nod where he builds a city. Where did all the people come from to populate the city? The Book of Moses suggests that the inhabitants of the city were extended family members that Cain took with him. Did Cain really have enough sympathetic family members to build and populate a city? Is it possible that Joseph Smith added this detail because he also was puzzled by this issue? (Remember that in Joseph Smith's lifetime there was little reason to question the Ussher chronology, at least as applied to humans.)

Most of these elements can be given mundane interpretations consistent with Adam and Eve as the only people on earth. The point is not to suggest that an alternate interpretation is more natural or obvious. Rather, now that we have abundant evidence from archaeology and genetics, does the text contain possibilities that have been previously unappreciated?

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Before Adam

[This is part of a series of posts I initiated with Book of Mormon Scholarship as an Elias for Evolution.]


The groundwork for the argument that Genesis is an ethnocentric account was laid by Hugh Nibley in his "Before Adam," which was published in Old Testament and Related Studies, the first volume of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, and was based on a speech given in 1980. If you are not familiar with this article you should take some time to read it. However, you'll need to take his comments on science with a grain of salt. As FAIR puts it, "The science has advanced substantially since Nibley's article, and so its scientific claims should no longer be considered current. However, his theologic and historic perspective is still useful."

Nibley stressed the importance of keeping in mind the limited perspective of the people involved in the scriptural accounts. As we read we must keep asking ourselves what exactly was seen and understood. I would add that we should also pay attention to how words are used and their potential alternative meanings. For example, the Hebrew word for 'earth' can refer to the whole planet, or a limited area (i.e. 'land'). The Book of Mormon repeatedly uses the phrase 'the whole earth' in a context that clearly does not mean the whole earth (see 3 Nephi 8 for several examples), and at one point the Book of Moses explicitly notes that Moses "beheld many lands; and each land was called earth," (Moses 1:29).

Nibley also explored questions raised by the narrative. We'll look at some of those later. For now let's look at his conclusion.

Do not begrudge existence to creatures that looked like men long, long ago, nor deny them a place in God's affection or even a right to exaltation—for our scriptures allow them such. Nor am I overly concerned as to just when they might have lived, for their world is not our world. They have all gone away long before our people ever appeared. God assigned them their proper times and functions, as he has given me mine—a full-time job that admonishes me to remember his words to the overly eager Moses: "For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me." (Moses 1:31.) It is Adam as my own parent who concerns me. When he walks onto the stage, then and only then the play begins. He opens a book and starts calling out names. They are the sons of Adam, who also qualify as sons of God, Adam himself being a son of God. This is the book of remembrance from which many have been blotted out. They have fallen away, refused to choose God as their father, and by so doing were registered in Satan's camp. "Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom." (Moses 7:37.)

In reading Nibley again, I was struck by this next part. Again, we run into the ANE context of Genesis.

Can we call them sons of Adam, bene-Adam, human beings proper? The representative Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, to name only the classic civilizations of old, each fancied themselves to be beings of a higher nature, nearer to gods than others who inhabited the land with them (and before them), or who dwelt in other lands. And yet they did not deny humanity to them.

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Book of Mormon Scholarship as an Elias for Evolution

By the early twentieth century it was becoming clear that the ancient Americas were largely inhabited by people with no apparent connection to Lehi or the Middle East. This clashed with the common view of the Book of Mormon as a history of the entire Western Hemisphere. However, some argued that the text of the Book of Mormon supported, or even demanded, a more limited geography. This view now seems to be dominant among LDS scholars and is advocated in publications by FARMS and FAIR.

This scaled-back view of the Book of Mormon is much easier to reconcile with science, especially as DNA evidence has shown Native Americans to have a significant genetic link to Asia. However, this view also runs into difficulties with the text of the Book of Mormon, which never mentions any people not derived from the Middle East. To resolve this problem it is argued that the Book of Mormon was an ethnocentric account, and that the text contains clues pointing to the existence of outsiders.

We face a similar problem in reconciling the science supporting human evolution with the scriptural belief that Adam and Eve were the first and only humans, and that all people are descended from them. Science has little to say about whether Adam and Eve were historical figures, but it does have something to say about where humans have lived and when, and it also has something to say about our genetic diversity. Rather than go into details now, suffice it to say that from a scientific standpoint, the notion that Adam and Eve are the exclusive ancestors of all people just isn't feasible.

It may be that Book of Mormon scholarship has prepared the way. One potential resolution to this conflict is to apply the same kinds of arguments as those made for a limited Book of Mormon geography. That is, that the account of Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants is an ethnocentric one focusing on the founding parents of the first gospel dispensation and God's covenant people, and that although the text is silent on the existence of others, their existence can reasonably be inferred from (or is at least allowed by) the text. This kind of argument preserves the historicity of Adam and Eve as well as their importance as the leading patriarch and matriarch of the human family while freeing us to accept the broad outlines of human history made clear through archaeology and genetics.

In forthcoming posts I'll sketch out a little more of what I think this argument might look like.

Posts in this series:
Before Adam
Adam and Eve: Reading Between the Lines
Some First Parents are More First than Others
Michael Ash on Lineage Histories
The Family of Adam
The First Man

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Another Reason Flood Geology Doesn't Make Sense

I've had this post percolating in the back of my mind for a while. I don't know why I got to thinking about it recently, but it's been a while since I've posted on creationism, so here it is.

According to young-earth creationists (YECs), the Grand Canyon was formed by water run-off from Noah's flood, perhaps in as little time as days (the Flood having deposited the sediment in the first place). It's a position they are forced into given the premise that the earth is only about 6,000 years old. How else do you form the Grand Canyon in so short a time?

Two years ago my family and I visited Arches National Park in Utah. Before heading home for the day we stopped at Dead Horse Point, which is near the park and overlooks the Colorado River. (See Utah Geology Show and Tell.) It isn't the Grand Canyon but it is impressive, and if creationists are right it must surely have been formed at the same time as the Grand Canyon. However, something struck me as strange. Have a look at this picture and see if you notice what I did.



If you noticed the U-turn in the river, you are a winner. Here is what it looks like from above, via Google Maps.



Moving water can be extremely powerful. So how is it that water powerful enough to purportedly carve out such large and deep canyons in a short amount of time was forced to make this loop? This isn't an isolated occurrence; use Google Maps to explore the Colorado River and its tributaries and you'll find many other examples of these kinds of meanders. My favorite one is Horseshoe Bend, which is just southwest of Page, AZ.



Again, this is the Colorado River--just about 100 miles upstream of the Grand Canyon. And again, why would such powerful water be forced to take this circuitous route, especially if the sediment was soft--having just recently been deposited? (For more fun, go look up Gooseneck State Park.)

I'm not any kind of authority on geology or hydrodynamics, but I figured I couldn't be the first one to notice this problem. I was right; it's one of a number of problems with the YEC view of the formation of the Grand Canyon listed at talk.origins. The mainstream view on the formation of the Grand Canyon is covered in this Wikipedia entry. It's actually kind of complicated. But lest you think that geologists don't believe in catastrophic floods, read about the scablands of Washington State, where there were possibly as many as 100 catastrophic floods that originated from a lake in Montana.

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Climate Legal Alchemy?

The Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, is launching an extensive investigation into the career of climatologist Michael Mann. Although currently at Penn State, Mann was at the University of Virginia from 1999 to 2005. Cuccinelli has ordered the university to turn over just about every piece of paper, electronic document, or computer code that Mann ever touched while at UVA, and is acting under a Virginia law that allows the state to recover money fraudulently obtained from it. His theory seems to be that Mann's climate work is fraudulent, and therefore Mann should have to return the 500,000 dollars in state grants that he received.

The disturbing thing about this is that there doesn't seem to be any real basis for thinking Mann defrauded Virginia. The hacked emails of 'Climategate' seem to be the sole justification for this intrusive investigation. However, investigations of those emails by Penn State and the British government have not found any evidence of fraud, and none of Mann's publications have been retracted. Cuccinelli is suing the federal government over regulation of greenhouse gases, and it seems likely that this investigation is a fishing expedition undertaken in the hope that some kind of damning evidence can be found to bolster that suit.

Some have suggested that if Mann has done nothing wrong then he should have nothing to worry about, and that his work will gain credibility by being exonerated. But this misses the mark for several reasons. First is the principle of the matter--an AG launching an intrusive investigation into someone with no real basis to suspect fraud. Second, as we've seen with the frenzy that occurred over the Climategate emails, truth can take a backseat to misinformed impressions. At the least, you have to worry that the AG will not understand scientific culture and seek to punish ordinary scientific behavior. (Imagine being privy to legal correspondence where attorneys talk of trying to influence a jury, or trying to get their case before a more favorable judge or moved to a more favorable location. Within certain limits that is normal legal maneuvering, but it sure could sound sinister.)

More worrisome is the potential for the motivated AG to turn a scientific dispute into a legal issue, and the chilling effect that could have on scientific research that is politically unpopular or controversial. The answers to big questions usually come in bits and pieces, and subjective decisions must be made along the way. Further, hypotheses are not often falsified with one experiment. Just as we test and re-test ideas that seem to have merit in order to be sure that they stand up, sometimes we test and re-test ideas that seem to fail in order to be sure they deserve to be buried. In my opinion, passing legal judgment on such efforts and trying to claw back the research money involved is not a precedent we want to set.

Below is a list of some of the people and organizations who oppose Cuccinelli's actions.

UVA Faculty Senate
Nature
The Union of Concerned Scientists
The American Association of University Professors, joining the ACLU
The Washington Post
Even Michael Mann's persistent thorn-in-the-side, Steve McIntyre, opposes it.

Although it doesn't specifically address this situation, a recent letter signed by 255 National Academy of Sciences members, including 11 Nobel laureates, certainly applies. To wit:

We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.

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Son of a Neandertal

I've been slow to mention this, but I want to briefly comment on the publication of the draft of the Neandertal genome. The question that has received most of the attention is this: Did humans (i.e. Homo sapiens) interbreed with Neandertals?

Until recently the only evidence on which to base an answer was the morphology of the skeletal remains combined with dating indicating co-existence in Europe and the Middle-East. Initial genetic evidence based on mitochondrial DNA seemed to indicate that there was not any interbreeding, although certain human genes--it could be argued--hinted at the opposite conclusion.

Now that we have a draft of the Neandertal genome--a composite from three individuals--it appears that ancient Neandertals and humans did indeed engage in some limited interbreeding. To understand how the scientists arrived at this conclusion, we need to back up for a moment.

Several lines of evidence indicate that all living humans can trace their genetic roots to Africa. Basically, Africans have the most genetic diversity of all groups of humans. And whether you look at mitochondrial DNA, the Y chromosome, or other genetic markers, when you group them according to relatedness, all non-Africans are essentially a subset of what is found in Africa.

Africa was the birthplace of both Neandertals and modern humans. However, Neandertals had already left Africa by the time humans began spreading throughout the world. They co-existed in some parts of the world for thousands of years, and then around 30,000 years ago Neandertals went extinct.

With that in mind, the scientists compared the Neandertal genome with the genomes of several people from around the world. They found that for a small portion of the genome, the persons from France, China, and Papua New Guinea are more closely related to Neandertals than either are to Africans. The picture will be refined as more genomes are used for comparison, but we now have a broad outline. To put it crudely, at this portion of the genome, Africans have the original 'modern human' version, but Europeans and Asians have the Neandertal version. This suggests that at some point along the way--probably fairly early in the human expansion from Africa--there was some interbreeding.

Since I'm of European descent, I wouldn't be surprised to find that I share the Neandertal version. I guess it's time for an identity crisis.

For more knowledgeable commentary than mine, see Carl Zimmer and John Hawks (an actual anthropologist).

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BioLogos and the ANE Context of Genesis

Among the features of BioLogos are a collection of "Scholarly Essays." Two that I want to highlight here, and that I think should be read together, are: "The Biblical Creation in its Ancient Near Eastern Context" by Joseph Lam, and "Biblical Creation and Storytelling: Cosmogony, Combat and Covenant" by Brian Godawa (see link above). These essays are similar to resources I highlighted in my earlier post, Taking Joseph and Brigham's Advice with Genesis.

Both essays address the themes, motifs, and purposes of the creation account in Genesis 1, particularly in relationship to the Ancient Near East (ANE). I am not going to re-hash them; go read them. But I do want to comment on something from the Godawa essay.

First I should say that it makes sense to me that Moses and the Israelites were not prepared to hear about many of the scientific facts and ideas that we take for granted. They weren't dumb, they simply lived in another world. A crash course in physics, geology, and biology probably would not have been that helpful. But even if we accept this, why would God make up the particular story we have in Genesis and the Book of Moses? I think Godawa may have hit on part of the answer.

One of the functions of ancient creation narratives is to literarily encode the religious and political overthrow of one culture by another. When a king or kingdom would rise to power in the ancient world, they would often displace the vassal culture’s creation stories with their own stories of how their deities triumphed over others to create the world in which they now lived....

God was preparing Israel to displace the pagan Canaanites and their gods both physically and literarily, so He inspired this authorship of the creation account to express that ancient Near Eastern motif of justifying transcendent authority and land ownership with a creation story.

I think this is a significant idea for understanding why God would give a less-than scientific/historical account of the creation. It wasn't just that the people would not understand much of what we take for granted, although that was probably part it. God's people needed a creation story that would help to give them a sense of identity and explain why the God of their small nation was superior to the gods of the surrounding empires, and worthy of worship. It was also going to have to compete with the stories of the gods of those surrounding empires. Since they lived in the ANE, it makes sense that God would use the surrounding themes and motifs and re-formulate them into a new creation story with its own theology. A creation account involving millions of years and impersonal, poorly understood laws of nature just wouldn't cut it--and given the culture, it might sound plain crazy.

Obviously I don't know whether this is actually correct, but it seems plausible to me.

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