Is the creation story with Adam & Eve historically accurate, or is it an analogy?

Question

I tried to post my answer, but the question got removed. Only if Noah's father, Lamech, were a real person. Since, Lamech would have been the last person capable of seeing Adam alive.

Answer 1

It's a "story".

Answer 2

Even major theologians believe that the creation story of Adam and Eve is a moral tale and should be viewed as such. The accounts in Genesis are contradictory to it's own self. In addition, the story of Adam and Eve was taken from another religion that was much older. This does not mean that God didn't create everything, just not in the way it is written.

Answer 3

The thing I find of interest is that the entire world should have been Judism after the Noah flood. Would seem to me that it would have taken several thousand years to repopulate that area of the earth with people, yet the generations used to date creation don't support that assumption. Not long after the Noah flood, the decendants of Noah are going to war against those of the non-Jewish persausion. Where did they come from. Seems to me if an angry God destroyed all but one family for straying away from faith--then those folks would be good little cowboys for a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn time afterwards. Noah's DNA should link directly to Adam's--and everyone today therefore should share the same mitochondrial DNA as NoaHs family. (One would have to suppose the existance of a maternal size--without daughters-no babyfactories). Where in recent vintage did the indians, aztecs, myans, chinese etc come from. Several thousand years does not seem to be sufficient time to repopulate the middle east and rebuild there-much less rebuild and populate the rest of the world.

Answer 4

Not analogy. An analogy is when you tell a story about something by talking about something else. Aslan in the Narnia stories is an analogy for Jesus.

Adam and Eve are allegorical. They are people who represent something. The woman depicted in the Statue of Liberty is allegorical. She represents the spirit of liberty. How can you make a statue of the spirit of liberty? You see her as a beautiful lady holding up a torch beside a harbor. Writers centuries ago would write books where Honesty and Ambition and Corruption and Responsibility would sit around a table and have arguments with each other. That is allegory.

That's how Adam and Eve are. They represent Man and Woman, -all- men and women. They were made by God, designed perfect, but became corrupt by the illegitimate use of their free will. I don't think this story was ever meant to be believed literally, word-for-word, it was meant to explain why the world, made by God, is so imperfect and unfair, why we all must work for a living and put up with all the bad things in the world.

But there is another way in which the story of Adam and Eve is an analogy. There is a theory of world history that talks about man's move from the tropics into the desert and temperate zones. Early man lived in a rainforest where all his needs were met. He didn't need to wear clothes, to build shelters, or to hunt or farm. He just picked fruit off trees and lived in caves. Eventually people moved into the temperate zones of Europe and the deserts of North Africa and there, because the conditions were less optimum, man had to learn to hunt and to raise food, to make clothes, to build homes, and in time to band together in groups, to develop technology, to learn to write (or even to speak, for that matter). And in time this led to all the great civilizations, inventions, works of art, big cities and nations, world wars, etc. etc. This all came from man leaving the garden! Adam and Eve being driven from the garden of Eden is a good analogy of that!

Answer 5

But if Lamech was not a real person, then neither was Noah or any of HIS descendants. Where does that leave US? I mean, the geneologies recorded in the first book of the Chronicles of Israel are very detailed, so if these people did not truly exist, starting at Adam and Eve, then NONE of the recorded geneologies are accurate!

(It even gives the age of Adam on the birth of his son, Seth, and upon Adam's death, et cetera)

Answer 6

Check your dates closely, and you will see that Methuselah, Noah's grandfather, survived him by years, and died around the beginning of the Flood. We can assume that his long age of 969 years was partly due to a good life, and God would have allowed him to die in peace.

You also forget the 7 other witnesses in the Ark with Noah.

It's real live history, an historical account. naysayers must come up with evidence to say otherwise.

Some top Archaeologists have been accused of being Christians or Jews, when their findings agree with the Bible. The reall accusation should be that the Bible has been proved time and time again as historically accurate.

Answer 7

Analogy (or allegory?) What's the better term? I think there was a historical Adam and Eve. But there were also beings called adamu ("primitive workers") who might have been fashioned first before the two, their ancestors. which explains how Cain got a wife.

Answer 8

Yes, they were real. Jesus believed they were real and he referred to them. He also had to replace Adam and become the new Father of the human race. Romans 5:12 and area and 1 Cor. 15:45. If Adam were not a real man, there would have been no need or reason for Jesus to correct Adam's one trespass with one act of righteousness to gain our lives back.

Adam and Eve were created perfect. They had no sickness and such. They would have lived forever. Sickness and death comes from all the wrongs that we have done in history: violence/war, poisoning the environment, etc.

You can witness the same truth in families that are very racially mixed and not prejudiced. A child can be any color when you have not made sure to marry those that look just like you as so many do.

Debbie

Answer 9

IF YOU ARE GENUINE ABOUT WANTING TO KNOW THE TRUTH, I HAVE IT RIGHT HERE:


I'm glad you brought this topic up, also, because it allows me to call upon your response to the work I recently published via Xulon Press.com, “TWO BIRDS ... ONE STONE!!” [by Denis Towers], which, my experience has been, during its brief and limited exposure so far, has proven a powerful faith-promoter.
It actually illustrates, following a 9 year research into the fact – one Heavenly-inspired [I believe] – a discovery I made 10 years ago, being a long-time specialist in Kinesiology and applied anatomy, that the typical ground snake presents as the precise antithesis of Man in ALL aspects, both – anatomically-functionally and psycho-behaviorally.
For many, this has proven quite an eerie finding!
But once one has recovered from the sheer gravitating shock of this perfectly central, yet simple, discovery, it is usually immediately realized that only a true and absolute brilliant Master mind could possibly have engineered such – that such an outcome could only be the result of meaningful deliberation and conscious decision, and, therefore, that “random mutation” [per the belief of ‘evolutionary theory’] certainly wasn't 'random", if at all!!
Overall, it has proven a highly intriguing, most fascinating and enormously revelatory study.
Of course, this finding not only tends to disprove 'evolution', but it also Powerfully supports the Biblical Adam and Eve account, wherein it was the very serpent – through whom Satan (a spirit only) was able to speak to Adam and Eve in the natural world – that same serpent which first set Man in opposition to God; and it was the serpent, therefore, that God chose to “curse above all the beasts of the field” [per description in holy writ] for its trouble.
As indicated, as 'fruits of its labor', God cursed the serpent 'above all the beasts of the field' ... hence making significant changes to it (a passing few recorded in scripture).
What this study appears to show is that those changes made were so as to symbolize or represent this very act of opposition of the snake as described – an act which effectively became the most transcendent single decision and most significant event among ALL events in the entire history and progress of Man, barring the All and Most important of all – that of redemption from this very event – the Atonement of Christ Himself.
Meantime, as stated, it seems that the Creator has temporarily signified, in effect, the serpent’s complete opposition to Man and God [in whose image we were created] … so that, in typical life-ironic fashion, what has tended to be the most unbelievable account concerning Man in the entire holy record: that which claims that a snake spoke to a man (all the more so since today the creature cannot even vocalize) – has become the very one that we have most scientifically proven took place (or supported)!!!!!
… but isn’t this, though, just so typical of the genuine ironies of real life?!

It has, indeed, become a most intriguing, diabolical world since the snake expressed its opposition to Man and God.
It has, likewise, been a most encompassing, intriguing and faith-promoting study to undertake.
From the reader’s viewpoint, I have known people so inspired by the work as to read it twice in the first week or so that they had accessed it.

I personally invite you to search it for yourself, and inform me of your experience.
Thank you very much.

Source(s)
Two Birds ... One Stone!!
by Denis Towers
published Xulonpress.com 2007

GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOUR SEARCH AS HE DID MINE.

Answer 10

Read up on the Anannaki on the Sumerian tablets. That's the original tale the garden of Eden story was based on. "god" wasn't even a 'god' in these stories; 'Eve" was male; and the snake was an Anannaki trying to help the humans escape slavery (who were around long before these folks showed up to mine gold in the area).

Answer 11

What proof would you have that would show that it was an analogy and not historically accurate??

How would you determine what is literal and what isn't?

We have evidence of a global flood and other historical evidence mentioned in the Bible. If those are literal, what makes them any different from the account of creation?