Saturday, May 23, 2020

S. Joshua Swamidass on Evidence for People Outside the Garden of Eden


In an interesting book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve, S. Joshua Swamidass offered the following in support of the thesis that there were people outside the Garden of Eden:

Cain, Abel, Seth, and Enoch

Were there people outside the Garden? Several hints come from the story of Cain, Abel, Seth, and Enoch. Cain murders his brother Abel. God exiles Cain, and Enoch is born to Cain in exile. Seth is given to replace Cain. Then, Adam and Eve have many more children. The details of this narrative trouble any theory that does not include people outside the Garden that did not descend from Adam and Eve.

First, Cain is banished to the erets of Nod, way from the adamah near the Garden. He is fearful he would be found and killed, God protects Cain with a mark, decreeing that anyone who kills Cain would suffer judgment from him (Gen 4:14-16). With the mark, God endorses the legitimacy of Cain’s fear. This suggests there really were people in Nod that, perhaps, had a sense of morality in that they would want to bring Cain to justice (Rom 2:15). Who were they and where did they come from? Scripture does not tell us.

Second, after he is exiled, Cain suddenly has a wife, who bears him a child named Enoch (Gen 4:17). From where did his wife come? It is possible that Cain’s wife was his sister. When Cain was exiled, why did his sister-wife go into exile with him? Perhaps, Cain found an unrelated wife in the land into which he was exiled.

Third, Cain builds a city (Gen 4:17). From whence came the inhabitants of this city? They seem like people outside the Garden. Alternatively, some theorize a multicentury gap in Genesis 4, reordering events in the narrative. For example, it is not only after Seth is born, after Cain’s city is built, that the text reports Adam and Eve bear more sons and daughters (Gen 5:4).

Fourth, the genealogies suggest that Abel, Cain, Seth, and Enoch are the eldest sons of their lineages, and that Abel does not have children. Cain’s genealogy is reported, starting from Enoch; Seth’s genealogy is reported too, but Abel’s is not. This makes sense of Cain and Enoch both being firstborn sons, and Seth was given to Eve, who was left without a son.

Fifth, Eve’s son Seth is appointed by God to “replace” (Abel Gen 4:25) when Adam is 130 years old (Gen 5:3). How does Seth “replace” Abel? It seems that with one son murdered and the other exiled, Adam’s family was left without a male heir. Seth replaces Abel as the heir of Adam’s lineage. This is why Seth’s lineage is traced, even though Cain is the eldest and Abel was next in line. If Adam or Abel already had other children, it is unclear how Seth would “replace” Abel.

Gap theories to populate Cain’s city and the land of Nod are troubled. For literalists who argue Scripture clearly teaches a young earth, why is a gap in Genesis 3 acceptable, but unacceptable between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2? All gap theories reorder events. For example, Adam and Eve’s children must have come before the city, not after, even though Genesis only mentions them after. Why is reordering of events permitted when interpreting Genesis 4-5? If a strict literal reading is important, these questions cannot be ignored. It seems that gap theories for Cain stir up far more questions than they answer.

Inferring people outside the Garden resolves all these tensions, without creating new ones. Even if an imaginative gap theory could answer these questions, it would not rule out people outside the Garden. Either way, we are filling in the details not stated in the text. For this reason, Scripture suggests there were people outside the Garden. (S. Joshua Swamidass, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry [Downers Grove, Ill.: ICP Academic, 2020], 143-44)

Elsewhere, Swamidass answers some possible objections thusly:

Textual Objections Not Definitive

There are several texts in Scripture put forward to demonstrate that there are no people outside the Garden. None of these texts are definitive demonstrations against people outside the Garden.

Some understand Genesis to describe several “first,” and each of these is evidence that there were no other people in the world. Adam was the first man, Eve was the first woman, they were the first farmers, Cain built the first city, and his descendants were the first metal workers. None of these events, however, are actually described as “firsts.” The claims of being first is not directly substantiated by any words in the text of Scripture itself. They were merely inferred. If we must make these inferences, they are accommodated within the periscope of Scripture, which only speaks of textual humans. In this pericope, Adam and Eve, for example, are the first biological humans, and Cain’s city is the first city.

Some object that the genealogies of Jesus demonstrate that there were no people outside the Garden. These genealogies might be used to argue that Adam and Eve were a real people in a real past. They do not, however, tell us that Adam and Eve’s lineage never interbred with others. They, obviously, record only part of Jesus’ ancestry, and cannot possibly list all of his ancestors. It is obvious, for example, that most of the women and children are unstated in these genealogies. Scripture does not identify most of the women, nor tell us where they came from, nor where most of the children went.

Some object that Jesus states “at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’” in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6, which demonstrates, they argue, that the creation of Adam and Eve occurs at the beginning. To which beginning is Jesus referring? The beginning of which story? This cannot be a reference to the absolute beginning of all things in Genesis 1:1. At the beginning of all the people outside the Garden, they are made “male and female.” At the beginning of textual humans, Adam and Eve are made male and female too. Through either periscope, that of the people outside the Garden or that of Adam and Eve, God made them male and female.

Some object that Genesis 2:5 and 2:22 tells us there was “no one to work the ground” and that Adam did not find anyone suitable to be his wife. Does this tell us there were no biological humans anywhere across the globe? Genesis 2 is narrated through the periscope of a defined area where the Garden is planted by God (Gen 2:8-15); it is not speaking about the whole globe, just this area. With this in mind, perhaps the text teaches that there are no people near the adamah of the Garden, without saying anything about antipodeans in Australia (Cain is banished to the erets of Nod, away from the adamah where his family lives [Gen 4:14]. This may hint that there were people living in erets, a larger area than the adamah of the Garden). In parallel with this line of reasoning, perhaps the text means there was no one suitable to join God in the Garden, even though there were biological humans around. The same reasoning applies to the difficulty in finding a mate for Adam. There might have been women across the globe, but perhaps no suitable woman for Adam in the Garden. An archetypal or typological layer to the Genesis 2 narrative, also, would explain why the narrative is told in a manner that suggests their solitary uniqueness. In a typological echo of the deeper past, Adam and Eve’s story might resonate with the history of the people outside the Garden too. In this way, Genesis 2 could be typologically teaching the uniqueness of biological humans in all creation, even as it describes a single historical couple within a larger population.

Some point to Acts 17:26, where Paul teaches that “from one” God mad all the “nations” (not biological humans). Though sometimes rendered “one blood” or “one man,” it is just “one” in Greek. The argument goes, “from one” means that we all arise from a single couple, without any interbreeding with others, even though a couple is not “one” person. If sole progenitorship is connected to descent, however, it is indistinguishable from the doctrine of monogenesis. Using the same phrase, all of Israel comes from “one” man, Abraham (Heb 11:12), but the same passage notes his linage interbreeds with others (Heb 11:31). The same could be true of how “one” Adam gives rise to all of humanity to “the ends of the earth.”

Some point to Romans 5:12-14, where Paul teaches that death comes to all humankind through Adam’s sin. The people outside the Garden would be subject to death long before Adam’s sin. Scripture, however, is bound to Adam, Eve, and their descendants, not speaking about others. Through this periscope, there is no death, physical or spiritual, in the humankind of Scripture until the Fall, just as Scripture teaches.

None of these texts, therefore, are definitive evidence against people outside the Garden. Scripture does not tell us for sure. In our “backward-looking” view of the narrative, even before science, we do not know for sure. The traditional account includes this mystery within it, and foreclosing this mystery presses other concerns on the text. (Ibid., 145-47)

Of course, early LDS such as Joseph and Hyrum Smith and Orson Hyde would welcome this as they affirmed prophets before Adam (and, ipso facto, people outside Eden, albeit, before Adam and Eve). See: