The book of Moses provides
much more detail than does Genesis concerning the conditions into which Adam
and Eve were placed after they left Eden: “And it came to pass that after I,
the Lord God, had driven them out, that Adam began to till the earth, and to have
dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the swat of
his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve, also, his wife, did labor
with him” (Moses 5:1).
Tilling the earth suggests
agriculture, and the earliest agriculture so far discovered began around 11,500
years ago with eight “founder crops”: emmer, einkorn wheat, bitter vetch,
barley, flax, lentils, peas, and chick peas; mainly in what is now Syria—some 5,500
years before Adam (K. Kris Hirt, “The Eight Founder Crops and the Origins of
Agriculture”). Fig trees were first cultivated around the same time (Mordechai
E. Kislev, Anat Hartmann, and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Early Domesticated Gif in the
Jordan Valley,” Science, 312:1372-1374, 2006). Rice was first domesticated
in China around 8,200-13,500 years ago (ricepedia.org/culture/history-of-rice-cultivation).
Plants were not domesticated in a single generation but required many
generations of selective breeding to obtain suitable plants with suitable
growth and high yields. Furthermore, agriculture involves a very sophisticated set
of skills, not developed by a single individual. Was part of the “knowledge”
obtained by Adam taught to him by someone who had been employing agriculture
over a considerable period of time?
God commanded Adam and Eve “that
they should . . . offer the firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto
the Lord” (Moses 5:5). “Their flocks” suggested that Adam and Eve also had
domesticated animals. Ancient domestication of animals has been identified in at
least eleven separate, independent places in both the Old and New World (G.
Larson, et al., “Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies,”
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 111:6139, 2014). Wild boars were changed into
domestic pigs in Europe and Asia around 10,500 years ago (Greger Larson, et
al., “Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into
Europe,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 104:15276-15281, 2007). Sheep and goats
were domesticated just north of the fertile crescent around 11,000 to 13,000
years ago (M.E. Ensminger and R.O. Parker, Sheep and Goat Science, Fifth
ed., [Danville, IL: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1986]). Wild aurochs
were domesticated into cattle in Turkey and Pakistan around 10,500 years ago (E.J.
McTavish, J.E. Decker, R.D. Schnabel, J.F. Taylor, and D.M. Hillis, “New world
cattle show ancestry from multiple independent domestication events,” Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci., 110:1398-406, 2013).
The term “flocks” specifically
suggests that Adam and Eve were herding domestic sheep and/or goats.
Domestication does not occur immediately but requires many generations of
animals. It is very likely that Adam and Eve emerged into a society where
domestic sheep and goats had already been around for several thousand years. (Trent Dee Stephens, The Infinite Fall:
A Scientific Approach to the Second Pillar of Eternity [Springville, Utah: CFI,
2021], 128-29)
