¶1I like you had read the literature stating that with heliocentric certainty the human population could not have evolved from a single human pair regardless of when they lived. And this was established fact. And when I began to look into this, I found to my shock that that was not at all the case. that if in fact Adam and Eve lived earlier than 500,000 years ago, then the existence of a founding pair of the human race is [music] entirely compatible with the evidence of population genetics. Today we speaking with a highly respected guest about Adam and Eve.
¶2Is it possible that they actually existed and that they are ancestor of all humanity? Our guest is Dr. William Lane Craig today who has written a highly acclaimed book titled Inquest of the Historical Adam. Dr. Craig, thank you for joining us today.
¶3>> My pleasure. I'm looking forward to our discussion. >> Yeah, it's a it's a really great honor for us. Let's I I think it's a big topic where we can uh talk much about it and uh let's just start with the >> with the real issue there. >> You argue Dr.
¶4Craig that Adam and Eve were real historical persons but they may have lived far earlier than most Christians traditionally assume. What's the core of your model in two or three sentences? Maybe. My hypothesis is that when you do a literary analysis of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the so-called primeval history, what you discover is that these chapters belong to a genre of literature which is not to be interpreted literally but uh is filled with figurative and metaphorical images uh depicting real people who actually lived. And therefore, we turn to modern science to ask ourselves, well, when did Adam and Eve live?
¶5And my argument is that if they lived about 750,000 years ago, then there is no scientific problem at all with saying that the entire human race is descended from this founding pair as the Bible teaches. >> Thank you. Uh that is very interesting especially for me. Uh I'm a student of literature so uh I find that very interesting. Uh another question that we thought of was um in Germany there is uh a study group called Vonbison.
¶6It means uh word knowledge maybe and that would be a yeah a good translation of that. A member of that group Benjamin SH he writes that you want so you Craig uh you want to reconcile the theology of uh with evolutionary biology and make theistic evolution respectable among conservative Christians. Do you feel correctly understood by that statement? >> Well, if means by that that the purpose of the book is to reconcile Christian theology with evolutionary biology, then that's clearly mistaken because anyone who reads the book will notice that it has almost nothing to say about evolutionary biology. The burden of the scientific portions of the book is to ask the question when did humanity originate on this planet.
¶7How they came into existence is left an open question. What I want to uh determine is where Adam and Eve most likely existed in human history. So that's the uh burden of the scientific portion of the book. We had a conversation with Richard Bucks and you know him or at least you know his work. >> Yes.
¶8>> And we asked him if he has a question for you and um the question was what is exactly your um your idea with the model you you propose with the historical Adam and Eve? Is it just like a hypothesis or do you think it is something like this is the best we can get so far with our knowledge today? >> Well, I would say both. I've already referred to it as a hypothesis. And when you assess the evidence for this hypothesis, it does seem to me that this is the best explanation on offer when you compare it to uh other hypotheses concerning Adam and Eve.
¶9You argue that a great deal is at stake for the Christian faith when it comes to the historical Adam. What exactly is lost if Adam was not a real person and the fall is merely a symbolic story? >> I think the problem with treating the story of the fall as purely symbolic is that the apostle Paul in Romans chapter 5 clearly treats it as a historical event. He regards Adam as a historical person through whom sin came into the world and then spread throughout humanity. Uh and notice that for Paul, Adam has historical consequences outside the story.
¶10And that means that he does not regard Adam as purely a literary figure. For example, the literary figure Hamlet in Shakespeare's play was a prince of Denmark, but he had no effects outside the literary world of the play because he's a fictitious character. So similarly, if Adam is a purely fictitious literary figure, he can have no real world effects um as a result of his sin. And yet that's exactly what Paul teaches. So if we deny the historicity of Adam and Eve, I think we're going to have to revise our view of biblical inspiration and authority such that Paul and other New Testament authors could teach theological error.
¶11And that would be a very radical revision indeed. Many people assume that population genetics has uh disproved the Christian conviction of a single founding couple a long time ago. But as Colin mentioned already, we spoke to Richard Bucks. He is a professor of evolutionary and genomics and he taught us other ways in our last episode. He said that genetics can neither prove nor disprove Adam and Eve.
¶12Was that a surprise for you or did you already sense it while you were working on your book? That was definitely a surprise to me. I like you had read the literature stating that with heliocentric certainty, that is to say, as certain as the earth goes around the sun, the human population could not have evolved from a single human pair regardless of when they lived. And and this was established fact. And when I began to look into this and read the work of people like Richard Bugs and Joshua Swami Das uh I found to my shock that that was not at all the case that if in fact Adam and Eve lived earlier than 500,000 years ago then the existence of a founding pair um of the human race is entirely compatible with the evidence of population genetics.
¶13>> Before you found that that it is possible that Adam and Eve existed, >> did you fear that if you tackle this great project that maybe there's an outcome that you didn't like? >> Oh yes, that that's very true. I approached this with an open mind and for those who knew me as I was going through this there was a great deal of anguish and uh struggle in approaching this topic and I wasn't sure exactly where I was going to end up. So this was yes personally a a a real struggle for me >> and is it is it right? It was my impression that on YouTube there's now very much um conversation about that topic from you.
¶14Is it now in the last I don't know two or 3 years the topic you speak most about or is there is it a false impression? >> No, I I don't think that that's the case. I did recently publish the book Inquest of the historical atom and that's prompted interviews and podcasts but also I've been working on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement which is also very controversial and so have been speaking on that. And then the good old calam cosmological argument is still much discussed. It was the centerpiece of my conversation in London a couple of weeks ago with Alex O' Conor.
¶15So, I've got my uh fingers in a >> Yeah, maybe we should make another episode about the atonement. That would be great. >> But uh let's uh stay here um with Adam and Eve. We had also a conversation with another very um great theologian with Jack Collins. >> Yes.
¶16And it became clear when we talked to him that the original audience of Moses did not read Genesis 1-11 as a statement about time periods. Ancient Israelites simply didn't ask those kinds of question. And so the Bible doesn't force a particular age of the earth on us. You take that freedom and argue in your book that Adam and Eve live roughly uh 7050,000 to 1 million years ago as you mentioned. How did you arrive at that date?
¶17>> Well, given that the Bible doesn't tell us when they lived, as Professor Collins points out, one has to turn to contemporary science to try to figure that out. And on the basis of archaeology, it seemed to me uh almost certain that Naandals had the same cognitive capacities as do homo sapiens and that therefore they were truly human. They were our cousins. Uh and therefore if Adam and Eve are the progenitors of the entire human race, they had to be the progenitors of not only homo sapiens but also Neanderls as well. And that pointed to a period of time prior to the of the Neanderl line and the line leading to Homo sapiens which is around 700.
¶18A study in science showed that the human ancestral line bottlenecked to fewer than 1,300 individuals around 900,000 years ago. And that confirmed uh that was confirmed by an independent geological study and again by the original authors. You've called this a dramatic confirmation of your model. What exactly is being confirmed here? >> This appeared after the book was published and it shocked me.
¶19In the book, I simply argued that it's possible that uh somewhere around 750,000 years ago or so, uh the human population went down to a single founding pair uh from which it is descended. But this uh study by Chinese population geneticist to which you referred shows that between around 900,000 and 800,000 years ago over a window of about 100,000 years the average population of humanity on this planet was below breeding individual. iduals. Now, what's important to understand is that that is not an estimate of the minimum population size. That's an average over 100,000year period.
¶20So, that is entirely consistent with my hypothesis that during that time the population went down to two people from which it originated. When we speak of scientific confirmation, what one means is that in probabilistic terms, the probability of the hypothesis given this new evidence is significantly greater than it was before that evidence was discovered. And so it does seem to me that this new genetic evidence does provide significant scient uh confirmation of my hypothesis. Richard Bucks also explained to us that even if Adam and Eve really existed, no population genetic model would ever show an effective population size of two. The very event would be essentially undetectable.
¶21And does that mean the bottleneck of 1,300 is actually irrelevant to your model because it's neither for nor against it? >> No, it it doesn't imply that. As I say, uh this figure of 1300 is not the minimum population size. That is an average over a window of a 100,000 years. And that's very consistent with saying the population during that time rose and fell.
¶22sign around that average. And so this uh additional evidence makes my hypothesis that it went down to two much more probable significantly more probable than before this evidence was revealed. >> If Adam and Eve had lived uh one no 900,000 years ago, they belonged to the species I believe homohidal beenzes. uh and many people could now argue can a homoidal beanis be a human in a theological sense so the image of god with a soul and inherent dignity and so on some would argue that that is reserved for the homo sapiens what you what would you say to that >> well it's clearly not reserved for homo sapiens because as I say neanderals exhibited the same sort of modern cognitive capacities that homoap sapiens do. Um, and that would I think include symbolic thinking and even probably language use.
¶23So that's uh difficult to establish archaeologically. But the archaeological remains of Neanderl culture indicates that these people had a cognitive capacity similar to ours. Now, Homohidalbaganzis had as well a um brain capacity uh comparable to the range of modern homo sapiens. And therefore uh in terms of the brain size, he would be also able to have uh that sort of intelligence. And associated with homohyle burgenzis as well are archaeological signatures that indicate uh technological ability and planning uh and activity of that sort.
¶24One of the most dramatic uh concerns uh eight wooden spears that were discovered near to Shernigan, Germany. And these spears are sculpted uh 6 to eight long and they are made in such a way that uh the bulk of the weight is in the first onethird of the spear and then they taper off toward the butt and this makes them suitable for throwing and use in hunting. and the Kernigan spears were found with the remains of a herd of horses that were evidently the prey of these hunters. Uh so this indicates planning activity uh a strategy for uh hunting these animals and these spears have been reproduced by scientists modern replicas of these spears made and tested by German Olympic athletes uh javelin throwers. They had never used these wooden spears.
¶25But when they tested these spears, they compared favorably with modern Olympic javelins in terms of distance, accuracy, and depth of penetration in the target. So just technologically, these show a very advanced intelligence. And these spears were dated somewhere around 300 to 400,000 years ago so that they would naturally belong to the period of time when homohyanzis uh was extant. There were no skeletal remains of humans found with the spears but a similar spear has been found in Claxton, England. uh and there it did uh or was associated with uh human uh skeletal remains that have been identified as belonging to homohyleberenzis.
¶26So I think we can say that homohidlebergenesis had the cognitive capacity to be endowed by God with a rational soul and therefore created in the image of God. >> Yeah. When I'm on the autoban from the city where I live from Makkabborg, I always uh see uh a shield from Sherningan and I'm always thinking about these spears that you mention is uh yeah very very near to us. >> Yes. >> I I was thinking about Dr.
¶27Craig, is it would it be also possible that the Homo erectus that lived before the Homohal began is also human that not Homohagenzis are the first image bearers of God but also the Homoct? >> It's possible and I have some uh creationist friends who actually believe that the difficulty with Homo erecto is that this species lived over about a million years. It was incredibly long lasting and during all of this time it showed almost well not almost it showed no technological development. It remained primitive and never showed any sort of advance. But I do think that when you get to the very latest stages of Homo erectus that there you do have skeletal remains that are quite similar to modern man.
¶28And so it could be possible that Adam and Eve belong to a very late um developing species of homo erectus and so to speak to homohylebagenzis. >> Yeah. But it wouldn't be a great problem I think for your model if we would found something that uh that we would think maybe the late Homocto is also human. So it it wouldn't change much. >> I don't think so.
¶29Do you? I mean we're we're speculating here about the dates and the species. Um Homohyleberenzis in a sense is just a placeholder. It's just the name that is given to that human species that gave rise to Neanderals and Homo sapiens. He is the last common ancestor of Neanderals and Homo sapiens.
¶30But we know almost nothing about his origin or where he he came from. Um so in a sense nothing of great significance hangs on the name here. The point is that this ancestral species to Neanderthalss and homo sapiens was uh credibly regarded as a fully human being. >> Yeah. But it would, I think, imply that if there are also other homminites that were humans that Jesus died for them, too, like for us, right?
¶31And that seems that's I think that sounds very strange for many Christians. Do you think it's just a kind of species egoism that we cannot imagine that? >> I do think that. I I think it's almost a kind of room. Uh, frankly, when you look at Neanderal culture and the sophisticated tools and so forth that they developed and used, um, to try to write them out of the human race and say these were just beasts, not human, I think is, as I say, really almost an outrageous form of racism.
¶32Uh if we can get used to saying that all of the different peoples of the world today from Australian aboriges to Finnish Laplanders uh with their fair skin uh are all human. Why can't we say that Neanderthalss and uh homohylebergenesis were human as well? I I and so in the book I talk about this. I think that we may well see some of these people in heaven because I think that Christ died for every person who's ever lived on this planet to redeem them and uh bring them into relationship with himself. >> I'm listening to this conversation.
¶33I keep thinking if Adam and Eve were homohidal beansist, they it sounds like they had parents too. So either there were other homohybean instances or an even earlier hominous species. Doesn't your model actually by an evolutionary an ancestry after >> I don't think that it implies it but it is consistent with it as I say it leaves it an open question. A person could maintain that God miraculously created Homohidleberg, the first pair of that uh species out of the dust of the earth if he wants to. But I think that would be a gross misunderstanding of um the Genesis creation story.
¶34But you could hold that. But on the other hand, you could say that uh they Adam and Eve did have homminin parents. Um and perhaps God produced a biological u mutation in their brains that equipped their nervous systems to be the seat of a rational soul. that God then infused into this first human a rational soul so that they became the first truly human beings on this planet. Either way I think is consistent with the Genesis account.
¶35>> If Adam and Eve were a part of Homohaidenza's group, >> do you imagine that they were called like Abraham out of a group and then he breathe his life into them? um or how how do you imagine that creation? >> It would not brea be that he breathes life into them because if they were part of a of a group um then these other organisms would be living as well but they would not be human. Uh they would not have a rational soul. So what God infuses into Adam and Eve that is different than any progenitors or contemporaries would be that they had a rational soul and that's what makes them truly human.
¶36So here I you see my theological commitment to the reality of the human soul and to thinking that part it means to be made in the image of God is to have a rational soul to be a person a selfreflective rational uh person capable of making moral choices. And what do you think when when they became human and uh you already mentioned that they get um a rational soul. What has started there? Was it um the the the sense of beauty and also so what is all implied in that getting a rational soul or was it also something that developed over time? >> The outworkings of this would obviously develop over time.
¶37uh paleoanthropologists uh distinguish between biological evolution and cultural evolution. And even in biological species that uh are fully modern uh physically and have a cognitive capacity comparable to modern man. It may take long long periods of time for cultural um pro byproducts of that to evidence themselves. Unless the environment is changing to call the uh need for new technology, new innovations, um a a a modern uh a cognitively modern uh species could go a long time without showing significant cultural evolution. And I think one of the most dramatic illustrations of this are the Andaman Islanders.
¶38I don't know if you've heard of this group, but uh in the Indian Ocean there's a small uh island group called the Andaman Islands. It is prohibited by international law for anyone to act with the people on this island because these people are still living in the stone age. They are like nanderals and homohyal burgenesis. And therefore the fear is that coming into contact with modern culture would just be devastating. It would destroy them.
¶39And so no one is allowed to have contact with these people. Now now just think of that. They are certainly human as fully human as you and I just as intelligent. But in their environment that has not led to cultural evolution that is modernity that's surrounds them on this planet that builds nuclear submarines and travels to the moon and writes orchestral pieces and things of that sort. It it's just astonishing that these stone age people are still living today because of their isolation.
¶40So, I think that illustrates that there can often be a big lag between um your your biological development and your cultural development. >> Genesis 4 also tells us that Cain practiced agriculture and Abel raised livestock, both of which archeologically speaking only emerged around 10,000 years ago. If Adam lived 900,000 years earlier, how do you explain the fact that his sons were already farmers? >> Well, to think that they were already farming is again to interpret this literature literally. And the point that I and Jack Collins have made is that that is a mistake.
¶41um they could anacronistically attribute activities to these people that would be familiar to the author and his audience uh without thinking that they were actually engaged in farming in in a literal way. This type of literature shouldn't be interpreted with that sort of wooden literalism. And in any case, it could well be that they were engaged in such activities and that that then dis for a long time and then reappeared. That happens as well in cultural evolution that sometimes cultural advances disappear for a while and then are reinvented again when the need arises. I think an a bigger objection among Christians again against an ancient Adam goes like this that Christ had to both suffer and die and if physical death and suffering are God's answer to sin they cannot have been part of the good creation beforehand.
¶42You respond that a functioning ecosystem simply requires animal predation. But should that really constrain an almighty god? I mean his possibilities are unlimited. What do you think about >> I think this question is confused. Uh it's conflating two different issues.
¶43Um one of the issues would be is whether animal predation and death are the result of Adam's fall. And I would maintain that they are not. there is no reason to think that um there was not animal predation and death prior to fall. So that would be one issue. The other issue is really the problem of evil.
¶44Um does God have morally sufficient reasons for creating a world that involves animal predation and suffering? And here, as I say, his rationale could be to have an effectively functioning ecosystem that would provide the arena for the human drama that will eventually play itself out on Earth. Now, you're right. His possibilities are not limited in that way. God could have created a universe operating according to different laws of nature where perhaps food for the animals just appeared overnight miraculously out of nothing.
¶45Um but there's no objection to saying that an all good and all powerful God might prefer to create a functioning ecosystem like the one we observe that does feature animal predation uh and suffering. that is he has morally sufficient reasons for doing it. >> There's sometimes the idea that the fall of Satan is also an important theological point in the starting of death and um do you have any thoughts to this idea that the fall of Satan maybe has an impact on >> Well, I I just don't see that anywhere in the narrative. Uh there is nothing in the Bible to tell us about an angelic fall or the origin of Satan or the consequences of that angelic fall. We're we're just here in the realm of sheer guesswork because the Bible doesn't address it.
¶46One of the conclusions that I did come to in the book as a result of my study that surprised me honestly and caused me to uh change my mind was that I think Adam and Eve were created mortal. I think they were created um as ordinary mortal human beings. Um and that was why the tree of life was placed in the garden. so that by eating of it they could rejuvenate their youth and continue to live. But once cast out of the garden, then their natural mortality took over and they would eventually perish.
¶47So when God says to them, on the day that you eat of the knowledge or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die. They don't die physically. They don't drop over dead. Rather what happens is they die spiritually. There is an instantaneous alienation from God.
¶48They are estranged from God and ashamed and hiding from God. And so I think that the consequences of sin entering into the human race are not physical death. I think they were created mortal. Rather the consequences of sin is spiritual death. and alienation from God.
¶49And that is the um consequence of sin that needs to be overcome by Christ's atoning death. >> Now, we can go a little bit further in in Genesis uh to the flood actually. So, the flood is often dated to a few thousand years before Christ. But if Adam and Eve lived 900,000 years ago, that would mean that there's a huge gap in in between this. So why would Genesis go silent for nearly a million years?
¶50Can it really be that nothing happened in that enormous stretch of time that God considered worth mentioning? The question is misconceived because it forgets that we're talking about a kind of literature here that is not to be interpreted literalistically. And the flood story is part of that same primeval history that runs through Genesis 11. It's only with Genesis 12 and the call of Abraham that we then begin to get um a a more historical narrative. But the flood story like the story of the fall, like the Tower of Babel, all of these are part of this literary genre that does not need to be taken literally.
¶51And therefore it would be I think a huge mistake to try to date the flood a few thousand years before Christ. And I think also I mean there are 11 chapters for a very long period of time but I think we are talking about very few people right because if we compare it how many people live um since the Bible is finished uh to to today there are so many millions of people that the Bible is not talking about. But if we think about these early uh long period, there are not that many people, right? >> That's right. What you have in Genesis 1 to1 are genealologies of a very tiny 2,500year history from the creation of Adam to the call of Abraham.
¶52And so this is just a little tiny snapshot uh of what was in truth a a vastly longer period of time. Let's move uh to a maybe maybe that's an objection. I don't know if you hear it often uh that is more more practical that people say it is interesting you have strong arguments for your model but at the end of the day it is just not practical. before I start telling my kids about uh 9,00 years uh and homohillebeas, I'd rather stick with the six day creation. Do you hear something like this sometime?
¶53>> Yeah, I have really struggled with this question myself. How do you share this with children and I I'm not sure how to do that at this point. But what I will say is that if you stick with teaching six day young earth creationism to your children, then you may well be consigning them to unbelief because their secondary school and university training. They're going to be taught uh geology, evolutionary biology, history, linguistics that is completely incompatible with that belief in a recent six day creation. And so I I think a parent who makes that choice is consigning his children to unbelief, disastrous consequences.
¶54So I would rather figure out a way uh whereby we could share these stories with children um while at the same time and not insisting that they be understood literally. Children love stories and they don't always take stories to be literally the case and I I I think somehow we need to figure out how to present them in that way. >> Yeah. I think you you mentioned it in a few other podcasts about this topic that there's much misunderstanding or sometimes you get a critique about something that you haven't said in the book. There seems to be some people that just misunderstand your your model.
¶55Um why do you think people misunderstanding the the way you present um the the uh Genesis 1 to1 My honest impression is that they haven't read the book. They've gotten this impression from uh what others have told them and they've never bothered actually read the book. So I've seen people say that uh William Lane Craig denies the historicity of Adam and Eve when the whole purpose of the book is to defend the historicity of Adam and Eve and the scientific credibility of an original founding pair. So unless a person has read the book, I don't think their criticisms have much value frankly. Has it changed something for you that story of Adam and Eve that ancient?
¶56Um, and now when we think uh when we read now Genesis 1-11, we have a very it is more a young book if we compare the the the time where Adam and Eve lived and when it was written down. Is it do you think it is a problem that even if it is a different uh genre that we have that that great time gap between the historical person Adam and Eve and when it was written a few thousand years ago? >> I don't think so at all. Um, I think that theologians would be largely in agreement that there is no theological significance to when you date the origin of humanity, whether recent or ancient, it just doesn't seem that much question. And so theologians are typically fairly blasze about the uh question of the antiquity of man because it's just not a theologically charged issue.
¶57So um I don't see any problem posed by saying that Adam and Eve lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. Um, and then this was written down under divine inspiration by someone uh in ancient Israel. >> Maybe one last question. >> What would you say to Christians who fear that the that anchoring Adam so deep in prehistory is more likely to weaken their faith than to strengthen it? Yes, this is a real problem and it's hard to know what to say about this.
¶58Um, to give an analogy, uh, my friend Michael Lacona is a New Testament scholar who works on the problem of gospel inconsistencies, uh, contradictions between the four gospels concerning the life of Jesus. And Mike has written a great great deal upon these uh gospel inconsistencies and uh trying to show how they do not undermine the reliability of the gospels. And his wife Debbie once made a very interesting remark to me about this. She said, "I find that Mike's work is very helpful for those who are aware of the problem, but it really shakes the faith of those who are not aware of the problem because his work then makes them aware of the challenge of all these gospel inconsistencies." So there is a sort of blissful ignorance that some Christians can live in where they they're just not aware of the difficulties. But I think that's increasingly difficult to do with the question of Adam and Eve because as I say in secondary school and university students are regularly taught um the age of the earth and that there are skeletal and archaeological remains from human beings going back hundreds of thousands of years.
¶59And so it's really hard, I think, to just sort of close your eyes to all this and remain in blissful ignorance. Now, if somebody wants to do that, I suppose that's their prerogative. But I think that that person, as I say, is going to be in real danger of losing his children because he will leave them exposed to these critiques. And it's not going to be good for the vitality and strength of the church. Uh in modern Germany, secular society such as you live in, it's vitally important.
¶60I think >> I was thinking uh when I read your book that this this seems very conservative if you think about it and if you compare it to different models because I thought the the only thing that you have to believe is that Adam and Eve uh lived a very long time ago >> but I think it's not that much. >> I I I agree with you. You know, this is the perception of very conservative Christians who believe in young earth creationism is that this is somehow radical and progressive. But oh my goodness sake, if you were to go to, you know, a modern contemporary German university like the University of Munich where I studied, this would be seen as ridiculous. to defend the historicity of Adam and Eve.
¶61They they'd say I was uh you know part of I was a caveman [laughter] myself to believe such a thing. So it really is it is conservative. Um but for those who are brought up uh with this sort of young earth perspective as I say it it sounds radical. >> Dr. Craig, it's a great blessing this talk, but also your whole work.
¶62And I think um for myself, it was it was really helpful to see that at least there is a model that can fit the data together from science and also from a theological perspective. So, uh thanks a lot. It was a great honor to talk with you today. >> Well, I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you very much.
¶63God bless you. [music] >> [music]