Polarizing Ideas In New Adam Book

Dr. Craig discusses a few of the primary views in his new book on the historical Adam that are receiving pushback from both polarities of perspective.

PASTOR ERIC: The idea of a historical Adam and Eve – the idea that all humanity goes back to two historical people who were the first human beings and we all share that common ancestry – is not a common or popular idea at all in most academic circles. But Dr. Craig and a few others are starting to really bring that back. At the same time I know you've said this is a book that you're bound to catch a lot of heat from both polarities of the theological spectrum because you're not a Young Earth Creationist on the one hand and you're obviously not a sort of liberal secularist on the other. So why do you anticipate catching flack from both sides of that?

DR. CRAIG: I so appreciate talking to you, Pastor Eric, about this because you were educated in seminary in the more liberal perspective which denied the historicity of Adam and Eve.

PASTOR ERIC: Genesis 1 through 11, we were told was just pure mythology mostly borrowed from older cultures . . .

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

PASTOR ERIC: . . . and it's never meant to be read historically in any way, shape, or form. It's just an archetypal sort of mythology.

DR. CRAIG: Exactly. So you appreciate the position I'm taking in this book is actually a pretty robust orthodox defense of the historicity of Adam and Eve at some point in the past. Whereas people who are more literalist and on the far right look at my book and, because I interpret much of Genesis 1 to 11 figuratively rather than literally, think that this is a compromise and it's moving in the direction of liberalism. And I think they do not understand what you understand having once been on that other side.

PASTOR ERIC: The poetry of it and some of the artistry. Sure.

DR. CRAIG: What I argue in the book is that the idea that there was a founding human pair from which all humanity has descended is perfectly consistent with the modern evidence of paleoanthropology and genetics so long as we date that human pair to have lived around 750,000 years ago. And that requires us to read some of Genesis 1 to 11 in a figurative rather than a literal way. You can't just count up the years and say Adam lived 10 to 20,000 years ago. I think that so long as you are willing to interpret those passages in a more figurative way then there's no problem with having a founding pair that lived around 750,000 years ago. I think that Adam and Eve were probably members of the species Homo heidelbergensis which was the last common ancestor of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Part of my work that was so fascinating to me was discovering the really full humanity of Neanderthals. They were different in some ways from Homo sapiens but these were intelligent human beings, our cousins, probably language users like early Homo sapiens, and I think were also descended from Adam and Eve, and we'll see some of them in heaven, I hope, God willing. The only thing to be added to this is that my interpreting some of Genesis 1 to 11 figuratively is not arbitrary. It's not – and I mean this as earnest as I can – it is not motivated by trying to make Genesis 1 to 11 consistent with modern science. Rather, it is based upon a literary analysis of the text itself which suggests that this text is not meant to be read with a sort of wooden literalness. In that sense, it's much like other portions of the Bible. The Bible has so many kinds of literature in it. For example, the book of Revelation is Jewish apocalyptic literature, and it's not meant to be read literally. These beasts and dragons that come and take over the world aren't animals. They're meant to be symbols of nation-states and alliances. Everybody knows that. The Psalms are poetry. So when the psalmist says, “Let the trees of the wood clap their hands before the Lord” he's not teaching botany! He doesn't think trees have hands! It's poetry. Similarly, I think that Genesis 1 to 11 belongs to a literary genre that you can show doesn't need to be interpreted with a sort of wooden literalism. And that gives room then for thinking that Adam and Eve could have lived much, much further back in the past than just 10 or 20,000 years ago.