Is There An Historical Adam?

[Tribunal]

How close are we to finding the historical Adam? Noah? Moses? Abraham? What do we know so far?

[Calm]

Define "finding". A body? Evidence of existence or just evidence of possible existence. And how close must the actuality be to the text to qualify?

[altersteve]

What kind of evidence for these people would you expect to find?

[thesometimesaint]

Tribunal:

Depends on what you define as "Historical".

Ancient religions such as Jews, Christians, and Muslims have a Adam. I believe that Adam was a real person, but I don't know how to go about proving it.

[mfbukowski]

Honestly, the answer is unknowable and therefore irrelevant in my opinion.

In other words it is just as reasonable to believe that these individuals existed as not to believe.

It might as well be a question about life on other planets, in my opinion. But then I admit to being totally illiterate in Biblical Archaeology - mostly because it is irrelevant to my faith. If they found absolute incontrovertible evidence of any of these people, the question would still remain- did they in fact have the spiritual experiences as recorded in the Bible?

In essence it is the same kind of question as to whether or not the human being known as Jesus of Nazareth was the savior and the Son of God. If we went back in a time machine and met him, we still wouldn't know that without a revelation such as Peter had.

And guess what? We can have that revelation right now without a time machine! So that makes it all a little easier!

Edited September 12, 2011 by mfbukowski

[The Nehor]

All the following assumes you are using academically accepted methods of analyzing history:

How close are we to finding the historical Adam?

Nowhere near.

Noah?

Except through the various flood stories? Not likely.

Moses?

Some historians suspect there is a kernel of truth in that story but it will be almost impossible to substantiate without more information.

Abraham?

The most we can do is say he fits the setting without more info.

Edited September 12, 2011 by The Nehor

[ERayR]

How close are we to finding the historical Adam? Noah? Moses? Abraham? What do we know so far?

I couldn't tell, there are an awful lot of unidentified bones in museums all over the world.

[The Nehor]

I couldn't tell, there are an awful lot of unidentified bones in museums all over the world.

But it's likely they've all been resurrected so I doubt that's them.

[ERayR]

But it's likely they've all been resurrected so I doubt that's them.

Could be but I haven't talked with them, that I remember, for awhile.

[Sevenbak]

Define "finding". A body? Evidence of existence or just evidence of possible existence. And how close must the actuality be to the text to qualify?

A body? He would have been resurrected shortly after Christ, but according to Jewish lore, Adam's body was preserved and brought aboard the ark, then taken by Shem (who is most likely Melchizedek) and buried in the city he founded, Salem, or Jerusalem.

[Questing Beast]

Abraham appears on the edge of recorded history. Behind Abraham is mere myth. His milieu, as given in Genesis, better fits the 7th century BCE, though, and not the purported time in which he is supposed to have lived. There is no archeological evidence for Moses, or the Israelite captivity and exodus or conquest of Canaan. Even King David is only attested outside of the Bible by a single reference (I forget at the moment what that reference is, but it's mentioned in "The Bible Unearthed"). Nobody asserts, that I know of, that the "house of David" never existed. From that point on there is actual extra-biblical evidence for the more politically prominent persons mentioned in the OT....

[Robert F. Smith]

How close are we to finding the historical Adam? Noah? Moses? Abraham? What do we know so far?

Whether a particular personage within the Council in Heaven became the first "man" (Hebrew 'adam) is not a matter of historical inquiry, even though geneticists may from time to time express an opinion on what DNA sequencing shows. It is not even clear to what degree such a question has a figurative content. Holy Writ and esoteric ritual do not participate in true historiography in any case, thus leaving us to depend on the approach taken by mfbukowski herein. The same may apply also to any speculation about the actual existence of Noah.

When addressing the possible existence of Abraham or Moses, other possibilities obtain. The times and circumstances in which they are purported to exist are well-known to history, and vast information about those times is available archeologically and historically. Thus, even though we do not in fact have contemporary accounts of either man, a good many relevant correlations can be made between Scriptural accounts and the facts of history and archeology. Scholars have spent a good deal of time examining the facts, but the results of their efforts are mixed. I have tried to summarize what is known about Moses and the Exodus (and even David) HERE. I have taken a somewhat more detailed look at Abraham in my forthcoming Commentary on the Book of Abraham.

.

[Robert F. Smith]

Honestly, the answer is unknowable and therefore irrelevant in my opinion.

In other words it is just as reasonable to believe that these individuals existed as not to believe.

It might as well be a question about life on other planets, in my opinion. But then I admit to being totally illiterate in Biblical Archaeology - mostly because it is irrelevant to my faith. If they found absolute incontrovertible evidence of any of these people, the question would still remain- did they in fact have the spiritual experiences as recorded in the Bible?

In essence it is the same kind of question as to whether or not the human being known as Jesus of Nazareth was the savior and the Son of God. If we went back in a time machine and met him, we still wouldn't know that without a revelation such as Peter had.

And guess what? We can have that revelation right now without a time machine! So that makes it all a little easier!

Chris Smith suggests that the Adam & Eve story is metaphorical HERE. Can a metaphor be true? If so, in what sense?

Edited September 13, 2011 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

I was duped. Sorry . . .

Edited September 13, 2011 by Robert F. Smith

[Calm]

<br />A body?  He would have been resurrected shortly after Christ, but according to Jewish lore, Adam's body was preserved and brought aboard the ark, then taken by Shem (who is most likely Melchizedek) and buried in the city he founded, Salem, or Jerusalem.<br />

I don't believe that we are resurrected with the identical bodies we die with as that seems in contradiction to the reality of what is found when graves are opened plus what is the necessity? It is not like we have an identical body all though mortality, we lose significant mass every year. If our spirits are rejoined with the identical body, at time in our lives is that body from? And what happens if the identical molecules have been used in multiple 'to be resurreted' beings? Who gets dibs, the first person to use it or the last, the most righteous with all others going without? Makes no sense so subsitution must take place for some, so why not all?

It seems to me most logical that rather than using the mortal elements, that our resurrected bodies are likely formed out of a more evolved, pure and incorruptible element thus nothing is lost to the mortal sphere even when we evolve beyond it...we take what we bring, so to speak, our already eternal spirits.

[The Nehor]

It seems to me most logical that rather than using the mortal elements, that our resurrected bodies are likely formed out of a more evolved, pure and incorruptible element thus nothing is lost to the mortal sphere even when we evolve beyond it...we take what we bring, so to speak, our already eternal spirits.

I would agree except for the Savior's precedent which suggest that however the Resurrection works it disposes of what we would term "the physical remains".

[Calm]

But it was an exception in many ways, why assume in this aspect it is the standard?

There was a necessity for his physical remains to be gone, otherwise his dead body could be used as evidence he was an imposter. There is not the same need in other cases.

Edited September 13, 2011 by calmoriah

[Benjamin McGuire]

Robert writes:

Chris Smith suggests that the Adam & Eve story is metaphorical HERE. Can a metaphor be true? If so, in what sense?

Sure, metaphor can be factual truth. Metaphor can also be completely factually inaccurate. I am not sure we can really talk about the metaphor itself being true (only whether or not it is a good or applicable metaphor). If we decide that something is a metaphor, asking if it is true in many senses becomes a rather meaningless exercise - we are asking it to answer a question it was never intended to answer - and the metaphor itself doesn't become a proposition that can be evaluated for truth until it is interpreted. And Chris's blog makes this suggestion - the historical nature of the narrative of Adam is rather irrelevant to the value of the text as a metaphor.

What makes the difference between a lie and a metaphor is not a difference in the words used or what they mean (in any strict sense of meaning) but in how the words are used. Using a sentence to tell a lie and using it to make a metaphor are, of course, totally different uses, so different that they do not interfere with one another, as say, acting and lying do. In lying, one must make an assertion so as to represent oneself as believing what one does not; in acting, assertion is excluded. Metaphor is careless of the difference.—Donald Davidson

I think that no matter what else we might say on the topic, if our exposure to Adam comes through our texts, and through our more obvious metaphors (our temple worship for example), then we can be fairly certain that the historical Adam (should there have been one) bears little resemblance to our imaginings. We might also ask (similar to Robert's question) in what sense we speak of a historical Adam.

Ben M.

[The Nehor]

But it was an exception in many ways, why assume in this aspect it is the standard?

There was a necessity for his physical remains to be gone, otherwise his dead body could be used as evidence he was an imposter. There is not the same need in other cases.

Other then being the first I see no reason to think it was any different then any other resurrection.

[K-2]

What about Adam's altar? That's pretty close to the historical Adam, I'd say...

LINK

[mfbukowski]

Chris Smith suggests that the Adam & Eve story is metaphorical HERE. Can a metaphor be true? If so, in what sense?

Well there are philosophical views of the nature of language which say that everything linguistic is in some sense a metaphor, and that is the sense I am using the term here.

After all, words are NOT "things"- precisely what words are is of course subject to quite a lot of debate, yet I think it is common sense that language cannot fully capture the essence of the richness of experience.

Language does a specific job as intended by the speaker and nothing more. Seen in this light, science itself is a "metaphor" and a linguistic construction of a specific way of viewing many scientists experiences or observations, all "put down on paper", dissected, analyzed, abstracted and filtered through a human brain.

So for me, truth or falsity has little to do with whether or not a given statement is a "metaphor"; truth and falsity is a property of propositions which are all, at least in this sense, metaphors themselves.

Again, the basic concept is that language never can fully convey the richness of experience, and therefore is inherently a story about that experience, not the experience itself.

This is especially true in an historical context, so even an account of, say the Battle of Gettysburg, or of the events of 9-11-2001 is a given individual's "story" - given from a specific vantage point, always again in language as an "abstraction", perhaps one might call it a "representation" (though that is a controversial term philosophically) of the experience, but it IS NOT the experience.

So for me the truth or falsity of a proposition has to do with how well it accomplishes its purpose and allows us to communicate, each of us acknowledging that we are speaking contextually, because we cannot speak about "what really happened" since the very act of speaking about it tears apart the ephemeral fabric of the experience.

Edited September 13, 2011 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

I think that no matter what else we might say on the topic, if our exposure to Adam comes through our texts, and through our more obvious metaphors (our temple worship for example), then we can be fairly certain that the historical Adam (should there have been one) bears little resemblance to our imaginings. We might also ask (similar to Robert's question) in what sense we speak of a historical Adam.

That's precisely the issue.

[phaedrus ut]

Without a historical Adam there is not Fall of Adam which in Latter Day scripture is reinforced in the BOM, the D&C and the PoGP. Denying the existence of a literal Adam is just as tricky and admitting he was real.

Phaedrus

[Whiskeypete]

I find it interesting that almost no one recognized the Savior after He was resurrected.

[Whiskeypete]

iphone app sent dupe replies...

Edited September 14, 2011 by Whiskeypete