Are we all descendants of Adam and Eve?

I think the enemy of God and man went first through the weaker vessel.I didn't say the weak vessel. I said the weak-ER vessel.
I don't think it was a 50/50 chance thing. I think Satan deliberately targeted the wife.I think Paul agrees - (First Timothy 2:9-15) Women were the first to witness the resurrected Son of God. The men were in bed depressed and sleeping. Neither your giggling or your interpretation can I take seriously.Any tee hee-ing from me would have to be related to how you are attempting to contort the story.While I have made a reasonable attempt to take your viewpoint seriously with its attempt to DE-mythasize the account and put a kind of humanistic sociological point of view to it, your lampooning attitude just poisons the well of discussion.I'm sure your skepto buddies are cheering you on. The last laugh may not be yours. The subsequent generations expected SOMEONE to come to relieve them of the labors of the cursed ground. They expected that that Savior was Noah - "And Lamech lived a hundred eighty-two years and begot a son. And he called his name Noah, saying, This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands, which come because of the ground which Jehovah has cursed." (Genesis 5:28,29) They still remembered the history of their forefather Adam. And they expected that a savior was to come. Where did they get this expectation ?I believe the got this expectation from the words that God had prophesied to Adam and his wife after their tragic misfortune of disobedience - "And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; He will bruise you on the head, But you will bruise him on the heel." (Gen. 3:15) We know the ultimate positive referent of this prophesy is Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was born of the virgin woman. That is the woman's seed.Many precursors and previews of the Savior Jesus came in the Old Testament first. Noah was one - a foretaste of the ultimate saving One - the Son of God. That they were expecting. They also received a promise of a savior to crush the one in the head who led them astray. And he would be bruised on the heel in doing so.Some of us take this a promise that they somehow hoped in, a setting of things right somehow. It is evidenced that they may have thought Cain was the fulfillment of that promise. Of course Cain became a big disappointment.The promise was for far in the future after Adam and Eve expired. But in this Savior all their decendents would one day be blessed. God continued this kind of universal promise of blessing in the calling out of Abraham - "in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3) I re-state that. His activity continues - the slander, the deception, and the opposition to God and God's purpose. In the form as a speaking serpent he disappears.In light of the rest of Scripture it is clear to me that this enemy was outside of man and got into man.This is really the significance of Adam EATING the forbidden fruit. What he ATE got INTO him. That was the line that he must not cross. Whatever else he did, as long as he did not EAT, he remained innocent.When he ATE, that evil matter entered into his being. Satan's entering and Adam's eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil coincided. We know that the two trees were mutually exclusive. So to eat of one closed the door to eat of the other.I think Adam never ate of the tree of life because of what 3:22 says "And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and live forever -

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... He placed the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life." Had Adam previously put forth his hand and previously eaten of the tree of life then upon eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil after that would have resulted in the same danger to God.So for this reason, at this time, I believe that Adam never ate of the tree of life. The two were mutually exclusive at that time.Sometimes I believe that had Adam eaten of the tree of life that it would have resulted in the destruction and judgment upon that serpent. And the serpent knew this and acted to preempt it.This is my speculation based on the whole scheme of the rest of the Bible's revelation.Adam was to keep the garden. And the creeping things he was to have dominion over rather than they have dominion over him.I think Adam in harmony with God would have said that this lying creature who is slandering His creator HAD TO GO. And God would have said - "Music to my ears. Get rid of him my son."By the way the church is going to put this snake into the lake of fire anyway. We will do so by allowing Jesus Christ to saturate us with His Spirit. Our turning our whole beings over to God's process is our executing the image and dominion with which God originally entrusted to man.We are the real environmentalists. And through our cooperation Satan the little lying snake will be crushed under the feet of the churching people as we follow our Victor Jesus. Our victory is based on His victory.

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"Now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ, for the accuser of our brothers has been cast down, who accuses them before our God day and night.

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And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their soul-life even unto death." (Revelation 12:10,11)

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"Now the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. " (Romans 16:20)

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The first step in crushing the snake is to stop listening to his way of slandering God and twisting God's words. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

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No examples of ancient writings paralleling Genessis.
Not even a try.Talking about laziness ...

As if you didn't accuse me of "intellectual laziness". Got a glass jaw Theodoric? You can dish out in spades but can't take your own medicine ? "Setting the bar higher for anything other than the bible" makes little sense to me. If the book is unique then we should just admit it. Doesn't mean you believe it.If the bar is highest with a unique book then that is just the way it is.I'll go back an reply to each line latter. By the way, who do you refer to as "OUR" in "our time" ? Do you have some concerted team effort back there coming in droves into the Bible Study room to preach evo fundie-ism or something ?If you can't be honest and admit that the Bible is unique in this regard (economy and scope) , then don't waste " our time" either ... a few of us who want to examine the Bible .I'll go back over the last few exchanges, get my bearings, and respond to your post you said I ignored. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Ah yes. Now I remember why I skirted over your post not wasting much time Theodoric When a guy thinks he has to become a potty mouth in order to make his point "strong" I consider it juvenile and bordering on having contempt for the Forum rules. (which curiously apparently no longer exist !?!)You can make your point without gutter language. That's why I said to myself " not going to spend a lot of time here."Debating skills you were wringing your hands over ? In a little while for my own sake, I'll go through your list of comments.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Can you point out the contradiction which makes Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 mutually exclusive ?I take the differences as not insurmountable inconsistencies but rather difference in emphasis.If you are referring to when the animals were created, I think the second account could be being told from a more local perspective. Ie. Since Adam was not alive when God had formed and created animals previously, He may have reserved the event locally for Adam to witness.I'm inclined to think that because exhaustive details are not provided we could view some details as being contradictory. We may just not have been told enough. We were told what was crucial.Also I think God knows that we human beings are prone to MISS the most important points. In both chapter one and in chapter two - it is MAN who is on the top. Among all the other living creatures man is at the most preeminent place.This is consistent in both chapters and is probably the point God did not want us to miss. Albeit we may scratch our heads - " Now did God make the other creatures FIRST and THEN man (ch. 1)?
Or did God make man FIRST and THEN the other living creatures (ch. 2) ?" It is a paradox. Maybe it is a contradiction. But I am inclined to think it is a device purposely included so that we humans would focus on what is most important in God's mind.Man was the top living thing on the earth among all other living things.
You know we are experts at missing the POINT when it comes to God's revelation. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I choose to look at matters of truth "holistically" involving my whole being. I don't mind getting around to the Homeric stories. But FIRST I need to consider this Bible thing. It has much more expedience to my understanding of the nature of the world, mankind, and our destiny.Achilles and Hector are interesting. But I have this book here "the Bible" which speaks, I think, much more to the central meaning of human life, accountability toward God, and salvation. It is at the top of the list of writings that my "gut" tells me is important for me examine. Homer's stories rank lower.Besides, an "intuitive" sense about evidence is warranted in this matter. If I am pretty sure that no one has ever witnessed a non human being giving birth to a human being, I intuitively suspect that claims that it happened are less than scientifically reliable. Through human history all the people came from people.Look at the other aspect of the problem, if all the humans have been observed to come from other humans, I also "intuitively" feel in my gut that an infinite regress is impossible. There had to be a first human rather than an infinite regress of ancestors. The first one had to have come about some OTHER way.1.) We observe all people came from other people.
2.) It is logical that an infinite regress of descent is impossible. So the first human must have come into existence another way. Above I gave you both logical evidence - what humans have observed through human history.
And I gave you some "gut feeling" about it too.As for objecting to my consideration of responsibility, I don't think you are totally without some feeling about what all this origin of man means to YOU personally, either.When some people boast of the wonderful things in medical field have resulted from science, I am sure that they are considering also what the healing benefits of these by-products mean to them and their loved ones. Sure scientists get a personal stake involved for mankind and even themselves.My basic feeling about science is that it is not a matter solely of objective curiosity. Eventually research results in making a better weapon, or advancing technology to get some "thing" to do a job for us, perhaps leaving us more leisure time."What is this knowledge going to do for us?" involves a concern for relieving personal discomfort, or personal inconvenience, or getting our enemies off our backs, or otherwise making the world a less burdensome place. And I spoke to that already. I said I first came to the Bible unwilling to take Genesis seriously. The authority of Jesus in His integrity, His unquestionably high level of honesty, wisdom, adherence for truth above His own life, not to mention I believe He both raised people from the dead and Himself rose from the dead. These factors added to the sense of His authority on the subject, which He apparently took as history - early Genesis.Skipping down - Okay. But I don't think I said that the mention of specific places, as much other ancient literature does do, was not my only reason for believing it. I said it "encouraged" me. Right here - I usually write this in response to people who say things like "Oh that book is like a Donald Duck Comic or a Harry Potter novel or the stories of Homer. There is nothing unique about the Bible."This is how I often protest to that unrealistic generalization. And typically they fail to counter that the Bible is just a book like any other book. They usually jump to some other objection. Like you do below If the Bible has a higher bar that is not "unfair" in some way. It simply makes the point for its uniqueness.
Uniqueness is just uniqueness. It doesn't prove it contains truth. It does prove that people are stupid to speak of it in the same sense as a Donald Duck comic, a Harry Potter novel, or even the Homeric stories. The issue was its uniqueness based on these aspects.
No logical fallacy there because I did not say these things PROVED it true.
These things argue for its uniqueness.
So skeptics can stop pretending that it should be given no more serious consideration than Harry Potter.At least some of us feel that way. C.S. Lewis area of expertise was literature of all types. He recognize bogus comparisons skeptics make between other writings and the Bible. Our priorities may be only to have our curiosity satisfied about many things. God's priorities are to relate to us the crucial pieces of knowledge which are related to our salvation and His eternal purpose.He could have given us 66 books which do nothing but discribe what WATER is or what the GROUND is made up of.
He has His priorities in revealing to us the most important things we need to know about His eternal purpose. And also how we may come forward to have a relationship of intimacy with God. It is a book of life - divine life. Is it a fact that there was no first human being - Adam ?
I don't think we can state that this is a known FACT.
There's a belief that no man was a first man.
I think it must be incorrect. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Apparently, while you were dozing off you missed my explanation of what could account for the dependencies in details between the two chapters.The second may have been more local so that Adam could witness some things which he would not have if he was created last.I don't see any devastating insurmountable contradictions, just possibly accounts told from different points of emphasis.Moses linked the two together in Genesis 5:1.If he as the editor or the author KNEW that some contradiction was so important to clarify that it ruined the overall impact of the revelation, he would have attended to that.My opinion is that probably as a faithful servant and prophet of God he did what God told him to do - no more, no less, no offering his own opinion to school God on what God should do.(like some other people I have met)

You have your method, I have mine.
I pasted the entire thing into a writer on the side, dealt with it, and pasted it here.And I have better things to do today too myself, than read your stuff.
I'm finished with you, whatever you wrote.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

That's not my view that it is either historical OR theological/philosophical. Why can it not be both?The divine revelation of the Bible unveils spiritual things, and these spiritual things are mysterious, abstract, and humanly speaking, unsubstantial. It is because of our limited ability to understand them, God was forced to disclose His divine revelation in the way of picture and allegory.Genesis chapter two was written in a figurative way. And many figures are found in the story. But elsewhere in the Tanach we have history with allegory built into the names of people and places by God's sovereign foreknowledge.So I take the name Moses to mean something. I take Moses as history too.
So I take the names of Abel, Enosh, Methuselah to have spiritually significance to them. I read them as historical too.The ark of the covenant is highly symbolic. One could die for touching it if one was not of the priestly order designated to handle the ark. That is highly allegorical. That is symbolic. I regard it as historical also.Aaron's budded rod is as opposed to the other men's rods in allegorical. Over the night Aaron's rod brought forth almond fruit and branches. The other competing men's rods went in dead sticks and came out the next day dead sticks. This is highly symbolic of resurrection - life from the dead establishing priestly authority. I take it as something that happened in history also.So a dichotomy of allegory verses history I do not see in many argued upon events. Rather I see history with the sovereign God who transcends time attaching allegorical significance to places, people, and events.Usually, when pure allegory is intended to be the only content, we can readily see that. But when we trace the genealogy from Adam down to Abraham in First Chronicles 1:1-27, whether we want to believe it or not, the AUTHOR intends for us to understand history there.Noah's flood is highly symbolic to the New Testament. The times of days, the lengths of time specified have a historical sound to them. The month and the day of the month are important to the writer.In fact it can be argued that the day the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat was the precise day in which Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And Peter speaks of the symbolic nature of the ark of Noah as related to New Testament salvation.It is too much to be a coincidence that the ark rested on dry land was the day Christ rose from the dead.So I believe I am dealing with history and symbolism ordained by God in His providence over time. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.