Some time back someone asked me whether the man Adam and his wife Eve discussed in the first four chapters of Genesis are the couple from which all races of the world came about. In my first response, I tried to constrain, myself to the limits of the question and I discussed what the Hebrew name Adamah means. In our discussion group, someone else brought it up, this time referencing the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:26 where he said:
“And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation”
The Four Views
The task to investigate the origin of diverse races; need to begin from the point of an inquisition of the various understandings of Adamah that exist today. Allow me to share the four views that Mathew Barrett discusses in his book; ‘Four Views on the Historical Adam.’
- Historical Adam (Old-Earth View): According to John Collins, professor of Old Testament, “the best way to account for the biblical presentation of human life is to understand that Adam and Eve were both real persons at the headwaters of humankind.” In other words, Collins believes that the Fall was both moral and historical.
- Historical Adam (Young-Earth View): William Barrick, Professor of Old Testament, states, “Adam’s historicity is foundational to a number of biblical doctrines and is related to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. The biblical account represents Adam as a single individual rather than an archetype or the product of biological evolution, and a number of New Testament texts rely on Adam’s historicity.”
- Historical Adam (Archetypal Creation View): John Walton, professor of Old Testament, asserts “Adam and Eve are real people in a real past. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that the biblical text is more interested in them as archetypal figures who represent all of humanity. If this is true, Adam and Eve also may or may not be the first humans or the parents of the entire human race. Such an archetypal focus is theologically viable and is well-represented in the ancient Near East.”
- No Historical Adam (Theistic Evolution/Evolutionary Creation View): Denis Lamoureux, professor of science and religion, argues that Adam did not exist as a person. However, his story remains “a vital, but incidental, ancient vessel that transports inerrant spiritual truths: only humans are created in the Image of God, only humans have fallen into sin, and our Creator judges us for our sinfulness.”
I agree with the fact that Adam and Eve were real historical figures and while I take that same route with other scholars like John Walton, John Collins and others who believe so. I branch off to a different route when I argue that though Adam and Eve were real people in the real past, they were exclusively the ancestors of a particular race. The story of Adam and Eve in the book Genesis is not there to communicate the origin of races but rather, we have the story there to communicate the theological conflict between humanity and his creator.
Adam in the OT (Old Testament)
It is interesting to note that the Old Testament is not obsessed with the man Adam. In the Old Testament, we don’t have a character known as Adam active and participatory in the narratives of then as that character appears in the story of the creation and the fall (Genesis 2-4). Of the 560 times, the Hebrew word appears in the OT, it is only once (1Chronicles 1:1) when the name Adamah is used as a proper name. in all the other occurrences the term ‘Adamah’ means mankind/humanity. To the Hebrew non-believer, Adam is an individual who is the head of their race’s genealogy (1Chronicles 1:1; Genesis 4:25-5); just as other races have genealogy stories like the Baganda in Uganda have Kintu and Nambi. However, to a Hebrew and a gentile believer, Adam is all humanity in their various races (Genesis 1:26, 28; Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26).
Adam in the NT (New Testament)
The term Adam appears in the NT and it is used more like a proper name to represent an individual than it appears to mean the human race altogether as it is in the OT. It should be noted however that of the 7 times the name is clearly mentioned; 2 times the name is used to communicate genealogy (Luke 3:38; Jude 1:14) and five of the times the name is mentioned it is used as a teaching model (Romans 5:14; 1Corinthians 15:22,45; 1Timothy 2:13,14).
The other times again Adam is mentioned in the NT, it is not by name but by inference are by Jesus in Mathew 19:4-6; and largely by Paul for instance in 1Corinthians 11:8. We must understand that Adam in the NT is used by the canon teachers to reflect their teaching of ADAM-CHRIST TYPOLOGY (Romans 1:18-32; 5:14; 8:18-30; Philippians 2:6-8; 3:21).
The NT teachers speak to two audiences; the Jewish audience that appreciates Adam as their racial ancestor and at the same time the Gentile audience to whom the man Adam is equivalent to their first ancestors respectively. In the NT, Adam is literal to the specific genealogy and non-literal and a teaching model to all other races and genealogies. Adam, therefore, is a type of all the Adams of all other races who respectively represent our fall equally (Romans 5:19). It therefore true that there was a historical Muganda Kintu (Buganda Adam). What is not true, however, is the conclusion that it is from that same Buganda Kintu that we the Banyarwanda or Chinese came to be.
ACTS 17:26
We now turn to Acts 17:26. First of all, there is no mention of the historical man Adam in Genesis 2-4 in verse 26 of Acts 17 by Paul. It is Eisgesis (reading one’s conclusions into the text) to conclude that Apostle Paul was saying all races and nations come from one man known as Adam in the Bible.
Secondly, that conclusion can only be based on the isolation of the verse from its immediate context. Whenever we read and quote bible verses out of context, we turn these verses into pretexts and end up doing what I call Biblical Electrical Engineering where we connect verses to make our own light. The apostle was not discussing the birth of nations as we see in Genesis 10 but rather, the teaching was about the worship of one true God in contrast to the various idol worship in Athens (17:16-22).
As Apostle walked through these idols, he realized that the Athenians had a god for almost everything in the economy of life. They exhausted all gods to the extent of the ‘unknown God’ to whom they also built an altar (17:23-25). It is this UNKNOWN GOD who is contextually the ‘subject’ of the apostle from verse 26 through 31. Let’s look at it now.
Verse Syntax
The verse is one that has variants from the Greek manuscripts themselves. For instance, in one Greek manuscript, especially the one from which the KJV draws, adds the word ‘Blood’. While other Greek manuscripts don’t have the word blood. Acts 17:26 does not say that God made all races out of one man (Adam), but according to the adjective ‘Henos’ (one) in the genitive case, it is from God himself where all races have their origin. Races are not offsprings of the man Adam but they are offsprings of God himself (17:29).
Logically
To argue that all races come from one human being is to support the theory of evolution against the truth and reality of creation. Evolution is the only coherent explanation of different races which come from one specific race. It is therefore Christian for us to maintain that races did not evolve from one race but were all created by God. What the NT argues in its use of Adam is that the entire humanity (all races) have a common design (Genesis 1:26-31; Acts 17:29 – even modern science attributes that human DNA points to a common source) but without a common ancestry (Genesis 4:14-17; Genesis 10-11).
We are not products of another human being. We (all races) are products of God and are created in the image of God. To be descendants of a one-man Adam makes us copies of what is not original; we are not copies we (all races) are in the image of the one (Henos) creator.
God bless you I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM, and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest Isaiah White (+256-793/775 822833 for further inquiries)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
@Think & Become
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 