In that he is a character in a story which belongs to the literary genre of mythology. A genre which uses allegory and symbolism to communicate abstract ideas or “truths.”
In the case of Adam, he’s also a myth in the sense that no such person relly existed in literal history. Adam means “man.”
Ok…that’s a start.
But I was looking for more than “Diogenes says so.”
Best as I can tell, the bible has many accounts that have been established as historical facts. (as to places, people and events etc) Many of these historical facts have been accounted for by historians and others going back thousands of years.
It also includes metaphor, poetry, song, symbolism, allegory—things that communicate abstract ideas or truths.
Are you advancing the idea that the bible, in it’s totality, is nothing more than a collection of myths; and that no [reasonably verifiable] facts of history can be found within it’s pages?
Actually, very little can be historically confirmed and virtually nothing before about the 7th century BCE. Much is contradicted by the evidence, though (including pretty much the entirety of the books of Genesis and Exodus, for instance).
No, I’m only saying that the creation story in GENESIS is a myth. The Bible cannot be categorized in toto to any single genre.
Of course true facts can be found in the bible. There really was a country we now call “Egypt”. There really was a Nile river, and rushes grow there, and you really could build a cradle out of rushes and float a baby in it. There really are horses, and cattle, and donkeys. People really did use swords and ride chariots and worship gods called Baal and YHWH. And so on.
Just like in the ancient Greek myths, there really were cities called Athens, Sparta, Mycenae, there really were islands called Crete, Cypress, Rhodes. There really were guys who wore bronze armor and went around hitting people with bronze swords. And they drank wine and ate bread and built ships. And there really was a big palace on Crete, there really was an Oracle at Delphi, there really was a Mt. Olympus.
That doesn’t mean that just because Mt. Olympus actually exists that Zeus lived on top of Mt. Olympus. Just because the ancient Greeks really built ships doesn’t mean a guy named Jason with one sandal really built a ship called the “Argo” and he really sailed it across the black sea, and that his shipmates were Orpheus and Heracles, and that he really killed a dragon that really guarded a golden fleece.
If we had an accurate record of the twists and turns these stories took in the oral tradition before they were written down, maybe we’d be able to sift the exact nuggets of truth from the myth. Maybe the story of the Argonauts had some basis in fact, maybe the first version of Jason and the Argonauts was, “My uncle Zorba sailed all the way across the black sea and back on a trading voyage, married a local girl, and made a bunch of money.” And we could trace as various parts of the myth were added…the one sandal, the name “Jason”, Medea the sorceress, the golden fleece, the dragon, Medea killing her children, Heracles and Orpheus as part of the crew of the Argo, the clashing rocks, and so on.
Except all we have are the scraps of the oral tradition that were actually written down and preserved to the present day.
And the same with the bible. The Bible consists of straightforward parables (no one, not even Biblical literalists, believe there really was a Good Samaritan, the story of the Good Samaritan was what we call “made up” to illustrate a point), history, mythology, law, morality plays, poetry, songs, geneology, and God knows what else, all put together over thousands of years from all kinds of sources and written down for all kinds of purposes.
But in many cases, even if some of the stories in the Bible had some basis in fact, they’d bear about as much relation to those facts as the figure of Santa Claus does to a guy who lived in Asia Minor in the third Century AD and became bishop of Myra. There probably was such a guy. But he didn’t wear a red fur suit and drive a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer. And the history of how and why we now tell stories of this guy in a red suit can illuminate the way the stories of greek myth came to be…or many of the stories of the Bible.
What part of the biblical Adam story do you think might be established as historical fact? Being the first human created out of dirt by supernatural means, or just a guy named Adam living a long time ago? Or something in between?
No Biblical literalist is going to come to a reconciliation of belief with a person who accepts the literary tradition of biblical authorship which is why I was rather careful in the construction of my final sentence:
Everything we know about Adam is from the biblical presentation which employs (in the anthropological sense) Myth, the use of Story by a group to present and explain a Truth as understood by that people.
Regardless whether Chapters 2:3 through 5 of Genesis is a factual recounting of events or simply a story created to pronounce one or more separate Truths, the presentation takes the form of Myth–Story, making it impossible to use it self-referentially to determine its own factual nature.
That is why I did not say that Adam was a myth; I said that he is known only through the presentation of Myth.
Again, I am a Christian who finds many truths, much beauty, and the foundation for my life in the scriptures.
But this argument is not one that can be “won” by either side. Those of a scientific bent can present facts, fossils, carbon dating, Phoenician records, native american tools from 10,000 years ago etc until they are blue in the face and the entire argument can be, let’s not say defeated but “neutralized” for literalists by saying that we can never understand the mind of God. Both sides will have become further entrenched in what they already believe regardless of the facts or the eloquence with which they are presented.
Certainly there is plenty in the bible that can be supported by the archaeological record and by science and history. That goes without question. However there is much that must be taken as myth, allegory or morality tale. I believe that the biblical creation accounts are such stories. The archaeological records only negate the truth of the creation if you claim the genesis accounts as factual records. As factual records they can be destroyed by a first year seminary student. Hell, some of the kids I teach in high school could destroy them if you insist they be taken as an alternative to the Big Bang (or whatever science is calling the creation of the universe this week).
However there is value and truth in the Genesis accounts if you view them as an ancient people’s struggle to account for the origens of the world in which they lived. The real applicable, useable angle of the Genesis story is that we struggle with the same questions as the ancient authors did. Why are we here? Why is there not nothing? Where did all of this come from? The difference is that we have better tools by which to observe the same universe. But the same questions remain. And I believe that some day there will be sufficient technology to render the 21st century worldview as laughable and primitive, however those advanced people will still be trying to answer these same questions.
So laugh at Genesis if you want. Claim it as fact if you think it is. Either way, someday there will be people who look at our world view, some of whom will find us laughable primitives, others who will consider us brothers trying to answer the same eternal questions.
My brief diversion was inspired by the comment,* “a character in a story which belongs to the literary genre of mythology.”*
First, I guess, is that I find little use for labels, although they have some utility. (like expediancy in conveying a group of ideas) Still, I think they are overused.
And so it occurred to me that I have never seen a scholar or historian refer to the bible (unless an ardent atheist for example) in such a way. (even if they believed the bible contained many myths)
I am not a cynic, but it seemed to be a debating tactic; to set the table in such a way that we begin the discussion with the [if unchallenged] premise that the bible “belongs to the literary genre of mythology.”
And so the bible cannot "be categorized in toto to any single genre ", and in fact ,has no need to be categorized in any particular genre (especially for the purpose of this discussion) unless you have an axe that needs grinding.
Off the top of my head I think of at least a couple dozen characters, and many historical events that are beyond dispute. Further, all of human history is sketchy the farther back into human history you travel. The fact remains: the bible has many persons, places and events that have been independently verified.
Further, the lack of recorded history places the same burden on the skeptic as it does the non-skeptic.
Very interesting post.
If I understand your meaning correctly, the only correct answer as to Adam’s age is “We don’t know.”
In fact, as to his very existence we can only say, “We don’t know.”
Now those are succinct and simple,----and more to be said that can give “We don’t know” context----but at the core isn’t it true that we don’t know?
Oh, most certainly. 
This of course refers to the Biblical Eve…which is of course fictitious. The actualy biological ‘Eve’ is something entirely different of course. However, it does follow that if there was in fact a real, biological ‘Eve’ that there HAD to be an ‘Adam’ in there some where. 
-XT
Yes it is.
But anyone asserting that he did live to be 900 based solely on the bible will still bear the burden of providing better proof for such a remarkable claim. If they want to be taken seriously by folks who don’t take the bible literally, that is.
Now that’s not true. There’s tons of stuff in Exodus supported in the historical record. For example, the country of Egypt existed in ancient times, and … and …
Okay, I got nothing.
Even if you believe that the Genesis story of creation is 100% true and the universe came into existance ca. 4K years ago, surely no one is suggesting that the story of Adam was passed down thru 1500 years without accumulating error before being written down for the first time?
And if not, we must fall back on the alternate claim that the first person to write the story down did so with divine guidance and made no mistakes. That is contradicted by the copious errors in the first books.
All we are left with is the possibility that some of the story was written down with divine guidance. Which part? The only corroborating “evidence” exists in stories we unhesitatingly call fictional from other cultures.
To sum up, if anyone like Adam existed, which is extremely doubtful, we know absolutely nothing for sure about him. Including his shoe size, hair color and lifespan.
So the question, “How old was Adam, really?” is nothing more than a koan – “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It has no answer.
Wait a minute. The first shoes were size 9EE. Ergo, Adam wore a 9EE. Are you saying the first shoe was not worn by Adam?
No, this isn’t correct. We do have enough evidence from the written histories of various cultures, unwritten evidence from archaelogical remains, evidence from biology and paleontology, and evidence from just about every other branch of science or scholarship to say that Adam–the first human being, created from nothing (or from dust) in the last 10,000 years, and from whom all human beings are descended–is a “myth”, not just in the sense of a literary genre but in the popular sense of “a made up story that isn’t true”. Only by engaging in a lot of seriously radical epistemological screwing around–“Last Thursdayist” sorts of ideas about “Maybe God made light from distant stars already in transit, and planted the fossils in the rocks, and planted potsherds from human cultures in the Yangtze River basin, and planted fossils of Australopithecines, and diddled with the DNA–inlcuding non-coding sequences–of humans and chimpanzees and gorillas to make it look like humans and chimps have a more recent common ancestor than either of them do with gorillas”–can you make it any more fair to say “We don’t know” about the existence of Adam than it is fair to say that about Zeus, or Audhumla the great Primeval Cow.
You haven’t read many scholars or historians then. That the creations stories of Genesis belong to the genre of “myth” is an uncontroversial categorization in academia. You’d be hard put to find a historian or Bible scholar (even among theists) who would argue otherwise.
It fits every literary criterion for that categorization. It’s also demonstrable ahistorical. Would you have a problem calling Greek or Sumerian creation stories myths? If not, then it is you who has the burden to show why one particular ancient creation myth should be taken as historical (contrary to all physical and historical evidence) but others should not be.
You can easily categorize individual books or stories of the Bible. You just can’t categorize the whole thing because it’s not a single work, it’s a collecton of works. It’s not one “book,” it’s a library of books, comprised of a diversity of genres, including legal codes, poems, genealogies, sermons, local legends and folktales, “prophetic” writings, “histories” of dubious veracity and myths. The creations stories belong to the last category. That’s not to say the whole Bible belongs to that genre any more than calling the Song of Solomon a “song” implies that whole Bible is a song.
Not as many as you probably think. There are a few later kings which are verifiable as well as some peripheral figures like Xerxes, Pontius Pilate and Augustus Caesar. Few of the central historical claims are verifiable and nothing in Genesis.
The fact that a few places and names are verifiable does not prove the Bible is historically accurate anyway. There really was a Troy. So what?
There is much in the Bible which has been positively shown to be ahistorical by archaeological, geological and documentary evidence. Very few serious historians, archaeolgists, etc. ever set out to “debunk” the Bible. Their goal is to find out what happened. The evidence points where it points.
Interesting post as well.
I don’t mean to be flippant, but why should anyone care about being taken seriously by anyone who doesn’t take the bible literally?
Let me explain…
I see claim after claim after claim on this MB that I know intuitively can’t be backed up. The irony to me, is that the very crimes commited by those slack jawed, doed eyed, bronze age sheep herders who post here (few as they may be…) are also commited by the intelligentsia. The very same crimes.
As far as it goes, that is my interest. If allowed I would argue this from a atheist sock-puppet identity. It is the contradictions, the hypocrisy that piques my interest.
As it relates to Adam, it is true that the bible contains allegory, poetry, symbolism, visions, parables, [intentionally] fictional characters and metaphor. However, a serious student of the bible will recognize, in my view, that the account of Adam is not written in this style. It is highly detailed, and includes not just his making and environment, but his wife,children and extended family, and his relationship with God.
Further, the thrust, intent and context of the whole bible indicate that the Jews believed that Adam was a real person.
Now the evidence that the Jews saw Adam as a real person is compelling, and approaching overwhelming. Does that make it so? Of course not. (see above, and Tom’s comment about “making it impossible to use it self-referentially to determine its own factual nature.”)
The point is this: For those who parrot the storyline that the Adam account was written as myth I say: prove it. The most compelling evidence is the writer of the Adam account believed what he wrote. Now as I stated above, it is certainly possible that the writer was deluded/deceived, but it’s clear that he believed what he wrote.
Even more importantly, the later generations believed. In fact, the existence of Adam is central [in Paul’s mind, and to the early Christian Jews] to understanding the crucifixion.
In Paul’s reasoning, Jesus was the ultimate corresponding sacrifice; the perfect human life offered up as a “corresponding ransom” for the perfect life of Adam. (with Eve, the only humans to be “born” sinless; to be born perfect.) In Paul’s theology, Jesus had to die; he had to answer for the endemic sin visited upon humans by the [willful] sin practiced by the [perfect] first human pair. Jesus offers up his perfect life to pay for Adam’s perfect life. (and the sin that Adam’s offspring would inherit) If Adam becomes fictional, much of Paul’s theology evaporates. (I’d be glad to provide sites)
None of this makes Adam real, but it is clear that if he is fictional, the Jews, Christian Jews and Gentiles labored with this misconception. (as well as bible ‘literalists’ today)
In my opinion the only intellectually defensible answer to the OP is this:
It seems to me that this position is the only intellectually defensible postion, for it is at this crossroads that we can be sure: There is a character in the bible named Adam and it appears that a great deal of people believed he existed as the father of all humankind.
But all roads diverge here. The historian heads off in the direction that his craft takes him, with the methodology, practices and the constraints common to historians. So does the scientist.
And so does both the atheist and theist. (and of course either the scientist or historian may have his perspective colored by these views) So each one chooses the methodology that suits him. Can Diogenes prove that Adam doesn’t exist? Nope. Can raindog prove he does? Nope.
Yet both are confronted with the same evidence. The difference lies in what each is willing to accept as methodology.
Note that I haven’t taken the position that Adam existed, nor have I taken the postiton that he lived 900 years. (although that it what I may believe) Can you empirically refute my answer to the OP above?
If you cannot, please tell me the qualitative difference between the believer who maintains the existence of Adam and Diogenes et al who are strident that he doesn’t. They only differ in what they choose to accept as evidence!
QtM, if the price of being taken seriously by you is that I must accept the premise that only observable, repeatable ,empirical methods may be used to establish Adam’s existence and/or age, I respond as follows:
Using those same methods, show me that he didn’t exist, for if you take this position (vs. ‘we don’t know’) your burden is no less than mine
If I choose, after evaluating all the evidence, to believe that God does exist; and if as part of this I believe that there are phenomena that cannot be established/explained through human observation, please show me how this cannot be so. It is my contention that science (as the religion of the atheist) must by definition be silent on this matter.
It is my further contention that if you are unable to answer affirmatively your need to be taken seriously by me is no less than my need to taken seriously by you.
“Adam” means, I take it, a fully human male who (along with his fully human female partner, Eve), came from nothing or from non-living material, and were the ancestors of all human beings. They may or may not have lived within the last 10,000 years.
Didn’t happen, they never existed. We know that humans did not all evolve from a single couple; the human species evolved from non-human ancestors, and are in turn one branch of the apes, who were one branch of the primates, and so on. Mountains of facts from science and history, from archaelogical sites in the New World to DNA and protein sequences, confirmsthis account, and disprove the Adam and Eve story. If you insist on a young Earth timeframe, it just gets worse.
This can be denied only at the price of some sort of radical skepticism, whereby if I claim my father was Napoleon Bonaparte and my mother was Cleopatra, and I am thus the rightful heir to the thrones of both France and Egypt, you are obliged to say “Well, that’s your perspective, and there’s no way I can prove you wrong, but I don’t personally accept that.”
Science is not a religion.
Sorry, raindog. The burden of proof is still on the one making the extra-ordinary claim. Such as Adam living to 900. It certainly is not up to me to prove he didn’t.
And it matters not a whit to me that you don’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t take the bible literally.
Happy new year!
Well…how about 150,000 years ago and not from ‘non-living material’?
Well, we didn’t EVOLVE from a single couple, no…but we are all DECENDED from a single couple (appearently). No? Or has Mitochondrial Eve been disproved and I just don’t know it? Granted its been a while since I heard about this theory, but I thought it was pretty solid.
-XT