Were Adam and Eve merely fictional persons?

[Butterflies61]

The Genesis account in the Bible tells us Adam was the first human creature and Eve, the first woman was his wife.

[mike11111]

Now listen, you lot! If you don't stop all this silly squabbling I shall be left with no alternative to melt down the whole caboodle and start again. However, in deference to modern thinking I shall probably create Adam and Steve, rather than Eve. Might have to give the third chapter a bit of a re-write, though, the bit where they discover their nakedness and stroll off into the cool of the glade. Don't want the kiddies getting the wrong idea.

Yours kindly,

Jehovah. (Oy, who threw that stone?)"

[Butterflies61]

Well, I have read everyone’s comment on my question and I see that there are some interesting and diverse remarks. Now let me give you my view on the question.
First, let us review the key elements in the account of the creation of the first man. Regarding Adam, the Bible says: “Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) Is this statement scientifically credible?
The human body is made up of 41 chemical elements. These basic elements—carbon, iron, oxygen, and others—are all present in the “dust” of the earth. Thus, as Genesis states, humans truly are formed “out of dust from the ground.”
How did those lifeless building blocks come together to form a living human? To illustrate the enormity of the challenge, consider the NASA space shuttle, one of the most complex machines ever devised. This technological marvel took teams of engineers years to design and put it together. Now consider the human body. It is made up of some 7 octillion atoms, 100 trillion cells, dozens of organs, and at least 9 major organ systems. How did this biological machine of mind-boggling complexity and superb structure come to be? By blind chance or by intelligent design?
Moreover, what makes humans live? Where does the spark of life come from? Scientists confess that they do not know.
What of the description in Genesis that Eve was fashioned from Adam’s rib? (Genesis 2:21-23) Before dismissing the account as myth or fantasy, consider the following facts: In January 2008, scientists in California, U.S.A., produced the world’s first mature cloned human embryos from adult skin cells. In fact, using similar techniques, scientists have cloned at least 20 animals. The most famous of these, Dolly the sheep, was cloned in 1996 from the mammary gland of an adult sheep.
What will come of such experiments remains to be seen. But the point is this: If humans can use biological material from one organism to produce another one of its kind, could not the almighty Creator fashion a human from existing biological material of another human? Interestingly, surgeons routinely use the rib bone in reconstructive surgery because of its ability to regrow and replace itself.
Some people are surprised to learn that Adam and Eve are mentioned repeatedly throughout the Bible
For example, the Jewish ancestral lists recorded in the Bible book of First Chronicles chapters 1 to 9 and in the Gospel of Luke chapter 3. These remarkably detailed genealogical records span 48 and 75 generations respectively. Luke traces the genealogy of Jesus Christ, while Chronicles records the royal and priestly ancestral lines for the nation of Israel. Both lists include the names of such well-known figures as Solomon, David, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Noah, and finally Adam. All the names in the two lists represent real people, and Adam was the original real person on each list.

[Butterflies61]

continued....
In addition, again and again the Bible presents Adam and Eve as real human beings, not as mythical characters. Here are some examples:
• “[God] made out of one man every nation of men.”—ACTS 17:26.
• “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus . . . death ruled as king from Adam down to Moses.”—ROMANS 5:12, 14.
• “The first man Adam became a living soul.”—1 CORINTHIANS 15:45.
• “Adam was formed first, then Eve.”—1 TIMOTHY 2:13.
• “The seventh one in line from Adam, Enoch, prophesied also regarding [the wicked].”—JUDE 14.
More important, Jesus Christ, the most credible witness in the Bible, acknowledged the existence of Adam and Eve. When challenged on the subject of divorce, Jesus answered: “From the beginning of creation ‘[God] made them male and female. On this account a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will be one flesh’ . . . Therefore what God yoked together let no man put apart.” (Mark 10:6-9) Would Jesus use an allegory to establish a binding legal precedent? No! Jesus quoted Genesis as fact.
So, at the end of the day, the overwhelming evidence would be that Adam and Eve did exist and no amount of ooing and arring is going to change that. Evolutionists can say that man evolved from a peasoup of matter, or that fish came out of the water grew legs and then stood upright, or that monkeys became man (actually a pig has the closest makeup to human body). Nothing can come from nothing – one species cannot change into another. Man can reason, animals can’t.
So the conclusion of the matter is that Adam and Eve were real people and not just fictional.

[starone]

Good stories though aren't they. And they make super films.

[keyplus90]

What gets me is that all of the people who are atheists or agnostics say or believe things that have been manipulated, altered or tampered with. But then they blame religious people to be unmoved.

Logically what is better? To believe in something which has been said and is there forever and is truth until proved wrong with a proven FACT? or

To believe in a theory that can take a u turn as many has done in the past?
Personally I would stick with the first.

I did mention in the beginning that I am not a scientist and my knowledge on this subject is not thorough, although now a days all you need internet connection and you may become expert on the basis of what others know. And I would accept what other experts of that field will give me. In that matter when we come towards evolution and other topics then I can easily google and find that many well known scientists do not agree with it. We also find out how out of the way few scientists have gone in forgery to prove evolution. Why? The only reason I can think of the wrong doings of the church in last few centuries in the West. Almost all of the real life well known scientists accept and say "we do not know". Perhaps scientists on AB know more than the people in real life and therefore are more convinced. And that is the reason I have stopped talking about few subjects on internet debating sites long ago because people seem to take liberty for being behind the screen and stay adamant about things that they may not stick to in real life. For example you would see on internet site people saying “God does not exist”. Whereas people in real life, the people who these people are depending upon, even they would put it a bit more carefully by saying "almost certainly God does not exist".

[jackthehat]

There is NO overwhelming evidence that they ever existed.......outside of a few religious texts.......which is where the argument becomes circular; they exist because they are in the bible....they are in the bible so they must have existed...

By all means, hold on to your fantasy, clutch it to you and may it see you through the bad times, but please PLEASE don't try and convince the rest of us rational human beings that, by deconstructing scientific progress, you can prove that *anything* in Genesis is factual (in its true sense).

[carrot99]

...but who was Cain's wife?

If God made man in his own image it's a bit odd that the first man born on earth turned out to be a murderer - and he murdered the second man born. Obviously God was upset about that but he didn't stop Cain going on to have his own son and possibly passing on the `may be murderer' gene, did he?.

[chakka35]

Butterflies61 - it would take too long to go through all the false reasoning (including much begging of the question) that you use to justify the existence of various mythical characters.

But surely it has been explained many many times on this and other sites that monkeys did not 'become man'.

I explained the recent evolution of man a few posts ago. Do you not read the replies to your own question?

[lankeela]

Even my R I teacher at school made things simpler than this - eg the feeding of the five thousand she said probably meant that one person offered to share their lunch with another and so everyone else did the same, voila five thousand fed from the act of one person sharing. Sure these 'stories' evolved the same way, after all, that what the bible is - a book of stories, reprinted over the years. And as they say, it loses nothing in the telling! From a confirmed agnostic. Did you hear about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac? Sat up all night wondering if there really was a dog.

[whiskeryron]

An interesting theory is that Adam & Eve represented male & female alien settlers who came from outer space to ''seed'' this planet, this could explain ''God ( advanced alien) made man in his own image''. It has also been theorised that house's of worship ( churches/minarets etc were built looking similar to rocket ships that the original beings arrived in. After all one theory is as good as another.

Ron.

[Zeuhl]

<<More important, Jesus Christ, the most credible witness in the Bible>>

There is no credible evidence that Jesus existed at all. Even if he did the attributes attached to that figure are clearly related to earlier belief systems and mythologies.

If that is your 'most credible witness' your argument for veracity in the old testament -creative writings that have no provenance at all - is pretty flimsy.

And as stated above; monkeys did not turn into humans - humans evolved from them. That's why monkeys still exist in their own right as far as their place in the ecosystem is still valid and sustainable.

Evolution is not 'blind chance' - it is an incredibly complex, elegant and organic process that does not require an external 'designer'. Or do you also believe that god is personally designing each unique snowflake as it descends from the sky?

[Butterflies61]

I will try to go through these recent comments so forgive me if I miss anything out.
Firstly:
Zeuhl: <There is no credible evidence that Jesus existed at all.>
Investigate the historical evidence that Jesus was a real person. Josephus and Tacitus were two respected historians who lived in the first century and were not Christians. They mention Jesus Christ as a historical figure. Describing how Roman Emperor Nero blamed the Christians for the fire in Rome in 64 C.E., Tacitus wrote: “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”
Regarding the references made by first- and second-century historians to Jesus and the early Christians, the Encyclopædia Britannica, 2002 Edition, says: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.” In 2002, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal stated: “Most scholars, barring the stray atheist, have already accepted Jesus of Nazareth as a historical person.”
Extract from Watching World –Awake magazine Dec/2003

<A recent analysis of the DNA of chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as of certain monkeys and macaques, has revealed that their genetic makeup is not as similar to man’s as scientists once thought. “Large differences in DNA, not small ones, separate apes and monkeys from both humans and each other,” says Britain’s New Scientist magazine. “There are large deletions and insertions sprinkled throughout the chromosome,” explains Kelly Frazer of Perlegen Sciences, the California, U.S.A., company that did the analysis. New Scientist characterized the differences as a “yawning gap [that] divides monkeys and us.”:>
Evolutionary views permeate not only the schools but all areas of science and other fields such as history and philosophy. Books, magazine articles, motion pictures and television programs treat it as an established fact. Often we hear or read phrases such as, ‘When man evolved from the lower animals,’ or, ‘Millions of years ago, when life evolved in the oceans.’ Thus, people are conditioned to accept evolution as a fact, and contrary evidence passes unnoticed.
Whiskeyron: Interesting theory but don’t think its true.
Lankeela: Teachers don’t know it all!! Especially Religious teachers. My religious teacher was a nutter and only ever taught us about Abraham!! But as Jesus was the son of God and performed miracles for a purpose it is not a story. The lesson is that he was showing what he can & will do when earth is restored – ie no more famine.
Chakka35: Yes – I read the posts. It was a generalisation re monkeys to man. I know they don’t turn into man!!
My final comment – The scriptures tell us that “The senseless one has said in his heart: There is no Jehovah. They have acted ruinously, they have acted detestably in their dealings. There is no one doing good”.

[Zeuhl]

Butterflies

your so called historical evidence for jesus is not contemporary and recognised as suspect in that those writers had a reputation for reiterating hearsay.

Also, as posted on AB on several occasions here is a summary of the inadequacies of your evidence:

<<You would think that as Jesus (according to the Bible) commanded vast crowds of people wherever he went, his words and deeds would have been recorded in copious amounts of contemporary documents. But what we actually find is a rather embarrassing historical hole where the Galilean carpenter should fit. The historical record is devoid of references to him until decades after his supposed death. The very first documents that do mention him are two brief passages in the works of the historian Josephus, written around 90 AD, but the longer of the two is widely considered to be a forgery and the shorter is likely to be one as well. The first unambiguous references to a historical, human Jesus, do not appear until well into the second century when they are mentioned by Tacitus who can hardly be described as contemporary to Jesus.

This is a person whose death apparently prompted a great earthquake, a worldwide three-hour darkness and the bodies of the saints arising from their tombs and walking the streets of Jerusalem, showing themselves to many people. And yet not a single one of these quite extraordinary events was recorded by a single contemporary historian....

[Zeuhl]

contd

<<It’s not as if there were no capable historians living in the vicinity at the time. For example there was Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived from about 20 BC to 50 AD; none of his works contain any mention of Jesus or Christianity. Justus of Tiberius, a native of Galilee who wrote a history around 80 AD covering the time Jesus supposedly lived, does not mention him once.

The historian Pliny the Elder, born around 20 AD, who took a special interest in writing about science and natural phenomena, doesn't make any mention in his thirty-seven-volume “Natural History” about an earthquake or a strange darkness around the supposed time of Jesus' death – and yet he would have been around to witness these extraordinary events in which he would have taken an acute interest.

There are only two real possibilities. One - Jesus did exist but his words and deeds have been greatly exaggerated to absurd levels by those who want to portray him as the literal son of God. Or two - Jesus didn't really exist at all and is rather, a spiritual ideal to which Christians should aspire.

There is another reason I think that Jesus may not be a real historical figure. If I were to ask the question: Whom am I describing?

His birth was heralded by a star
His birth was witnessed by Shepherds
He was 30 when baptised
His baptiser went on to be beheaded
He was followed by 12 disciples
He walked on water and healed the sick
He gave a 'sermon on the mount'
He was crucified
He was buried in a tomb
He was resurrected after 3 days

Of course, I talking about the Egyptian God, Ra, who pre-dates the birth of Jesus by several thousand years.

If the evidence for a literal Jesus is looked at dispassionately and objectively, it seems unlikely that he existed. It is far more likely that Jesus as an apocryphal figure that has been constructed to represent all that is good about mankind.>>

[murraymints]

well....would you Adam and Eve it?...

[Butterflies61]

I've said my piece and I reiterate Psalm 14 v 1 about the senseless one.

[Zeuhl]

No intelligent response then Butterflies to factual information that scuppers your ludicrous arguments?

Perhaps you can serve as a good example of the power of faith over rational thought.