Simple theological question, but of wide breadth?
Were the historical Adam and Eve of semitic, Middle Eastern, ancestry? Perhaps they were African? Ultimately their lineation led to speciation. The Arabs and the Jews, but the sad part is they have much more in common, than difference.
In the newer Christian sense, are they Jewish?
They wouldn’t have had an ancestry…
Yes, but all ancestry leads from them in a biblical sense. Were they not Yahweh’s sole creation and lineage?
I was under the impression that they didn’t really have any religion in particular, other than knowing the big guy who tossed them out of the Garden. I thought that Abraham was the founder of monotheism and hence, first Jew. What the hell do I know?
Right. According to the bible, Adam and Eve had no ancestors (unless you count Eve as Adam’s daughter because she was made out of his rib) and were the ancestors of all living people.
And, going along with the story, they weren’t Jewish. They weren’t anything other than just worshipers of God. Judaism wouldn’t come along until Moses and the Exodus when the Israelites accepted the Law at Sinai.
All of the Israelites were descendents and Family of Adam and Eve and were descendant by a well accounted family tree (Genesis). I consider my filials, well… filials. Under one Father.
All of humanity is descended from Adam and Eve, by the Genesis account. By your reckoning, does that make us all Jews? Plus, we are all descendants of Noah (hence the Noahide commandments, which apply to all). The Jews are the descendants of Abraham who entered into the Covenant at Sinai. There’s an afwul lot of us who don’t meet those criteria of Jewishness, and we are not considered Jews, either by ourselves or by those who are Jewish.
Well, a lot are gentiles by Jesus’ Law.
Right. You, me, Ho Chi Minh, Nelson Mandela, Sitting Bull, we’re all descended from Adam and Eve. One group of those descendants went on to become the Jews (and another group went on to worship Zeus, and so on).
What’s Jesus’ Law?
Well, it wouldn’t seem so incongruous if a half of humanity weren’t basing their God on some African/Middle Eastern God’s tribe and synthesizing it for illogical function.
Sorry, could you explain your statement?
I find it ridiculous that anyone would argue the lineage of God Yahweh and his people. They are the originators after all. From a parasociological and linguistic viewpoint Adam and Eve are the Simple Tribal Father and Mother of the Jews, all that came after was simply a matter of conquest and some rather important Cultists.
sorry, I’m still not understanding what you mean. Who’s arguing what? According to the Jewish creation myth, Adam and Eve were the parents of all mankind. The tribal father and mother of the Jews are Abraham and Sarah, or maybe Isaac and Rachael (Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, who got renamed Israel. The Israelite tribes traced their descent from the sons of Jacob.)
However, maybe I’m still not getting it. What do you mean by a parasociological and linguistic viewpoint? Who got conquered, and what cultists are you talking about?
You’re saying that the Jews are descended from Adam and Eve? Granted.
You’re saying that this makes Adam and Eve Jewish? Nonsense. By exactly the same reasoning you could “prove” that Adam and Eve were Monegasque Citizens. Neither the status of “Jew” nor the status of “Citizen of Monaco” existed in Adam and Eve’s time.
just out of curiosity if anybody has done the math - at what rate would the descendants of Adam and Eve need to have been breeding to populate the world to where it is today?
A net growth rate of about 12% per generation would be plenty - for every eight people in one generation, you need nine in the next. That’s very quick and dirty figuring 6000 years = 200 generations and present population equals 10 gigahumans. There may be many excellent reasons for calling the Genesis account absurd, but population growth isn’t one of them. Numbers would need only to double in each generation for world population to hit the billion mark within five hundred years (and we’re quietly confident that it was way lower than that in 3500BC).
Well, if you start with just two persons, and you assume that in each generation everybody reproduces, and each person produces two surviving progeny (i.e. each couple produces four surviving children), then after 32 generations you have more than six billion people in the world. This effectively involves each generation doubling in size. Allowing 25 years per generation, that takes just 800 years.
Of course, historically it is not the case that each generation doubles in size. Some members of each generation do not reproduce, and those who do reproduce do not necessarily have two surviving children each. If we reduce the reproduction rate from 2 to 1.5, then it takes 54 generations (about 1,750 years) to exceed six billion people. If you reduce it to 1.25 it takes 98 generations (just under 4,000 years).
if we assume Adam and Eve were around six thousand years ago - and why wouldn’t we assume this? - then the long-term rate of increase, generation upon generation, required to reach 6 billion peopel today is about 1.157 - i.e, each generation needs to be about 15.7% bigger than the one that preceded it.
So, not impossible, once you’ve got over those awkard early generations where the complete extinction of the species through a 'flu epidemic is a real risk. On this model, there are less than a hundred individuals in each of the first twenty-six generations. Plus, of course, a genaration of two can’t increase by 15%; the mimimum possible positive increase is 50%. In that respect the early generations of the model are quite unrealistic.
Footnote: Of course, you would have to figure that the population was knocked back to only 8 by the Flood, and start again from there. Even so, it’s still not a problem merely in breeding terms. 
:dubious: