This is a copy of the wonderful article
Every second or third issue of Scientific American has an article describing aspects of our human origins. Not one of these papers mentions Adam and Eve. The omission is not surprising. Scientific research deals with physical aspects of reality, while the biblical creation of Adam relates to the spirituality of the neshama, the soul of humanity instilled in Adam on Rosh HaShana, almost 6000 years ago. That is the special creation described in Genesis 1:27. But what of Adam’s body? Was it also a special creation? Or is there the possibility that the human body developed over time, until it became a vessel capable of receiving and containing a neshama? (As a note of clarification, the term Adam refers to man and woman, as stated in Genesis 5:2).
Anatomically, the human body indeed appears related to less complex forms of life. Many of the enzymes (protein-based catalysts) that direct human functions are near-perfect replicas of those found in other phyla. The gene which controls the positioning and orientation of the human arm is found in all vertebrates and in insects as well. The similarity is so great that when portions of this human gene are implanted in the genome of the Drosophilia fruit fly, it determines the positioning and orientation of the fly’s wing. The same is true for the genes controlling eye development, and a host of other genes. These genes have in excess of a hundred active sites. The similarity among them could not have occurred by chance. To scientists, this speaks of a common ancestor. The bones of the forelimb of the alligator and the fin of a beaked whale are those of the arm and hand of a human, different in lengths of course, but all the bones are there. The structure of the human brain mirrors that of mice and monkeys. The human embryo develops a yolk sac similar to that of a fish egg, then a tail, and then skin folds similar to gill slits. The ontogeny of the human fetus appears as a recapitulation of phylogeny provided we recall that at each stage it is the primitive or juvenile — not the adult — structure that forms in the fetus.
Though the number of fossils attributed to Homo habilis and Homo erectus are few and incomplete, by the time we reach strata of 50,000 years ago, we find enough Cro-Magnon fossils to fill museums. And they do. The Cro-Magnon fossil is in essence an exact match of the modern human skeleton, including cranial capacity and shape. The scientific publications that discuss these fossils and the artifacts associated with them, are not based on the machinations of a few demented scientists. Evidence is overwhelming for the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, weaving 9,000 years ago, pottery 8,000 years ago, cave paintings 10 to 30 thousand years ago. To deny their existence is counter productive from a theological stance.
But there is no need to deny them, provided we believe that the biblical insights brought by Onkelos, the Talmud, Rashi, Maimonides and Nachmanides are valid.
The first objection to investigating the possibility that Adam had an ancestor is temporal. Agriculture 10,000 years ago? I thought the world is 5762 years old as of Rosh HaShana, September 2001. Where are the missing years? In Leviticus Rabba (29:1) and elsewhere we are told that all agree, Rosh HaShana commemorates the creation of the soul of Adam; that the Six days of Genesis are not included in the years of the calendar. Yet the Talmud (Hagigah 12A) and Rashi, based on the verse “And there was evening and there was morning day one” (Gen. 1:5), inform us that the days of Genesis are 24 hours each, right from “day one.” If they are 24 hours each, why exclude these six 24 hour days from the rest of the 24 hour days that follow Adam? Nachmanides tells us why: because these days contain all the ages and all the secrets of the universe (commentary on Ex. 21:2 and Lev. 25:2). It took Einstein’s discovery of the relativity of time to solve the seeming paradox of how the ages of the universe could pass in six 24-hour days. Viewing the creation from today, looking back in time from the perspective of our very large universe, the universe appears 10 to 20 billion years old. Looking forward in time as does Genesis chapter one, viewing the universe from a time when its scale was 1012 times smaller than today (ref. 1), that is, from the start of “day one,” the universe looks a mere six days old. That’s the nature of time in a world where the laws of relativity are part of the laws of nature. “The standard interpretation of the redshift [the stretching of radiation wave length and the concurrent lowering of that radiation’s frequency] as an effect of the expansion of the universe predicts that the same redshift factor applies to observed rates of occurrence of distant events . . . even when the epoch is so early the redshift cannot be observed in detected radiation” (refs. 2, 3). So the time is there for 10,000-year-old agriculture and 30,000-year-old cave paintings. The question is do these ancient, pre-Adam inventions threaten the Torah view of our origins?
The union of theology and paleontology
“And God said let us make Adam…” (Gen 1:26).
“And God created the Adam…” (Gen. 1:27).
Here we learn here that Adam is made and created. We even know the raw materials used in the making: “And the Eternal God formed the Adam dust from the ground…” (Gen. 2:7). Juxtaposing Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” with Exodus 31:17, “…for in six days the Eternal made the heavens and the earth…” we learn that, while the biblical use of the word creation implies an instantaneous input by God, making in biblical parlance is a process verb requiring material and time: “for in six days.”
Something was made over time that was Adam, but not quite the complete Adam. It required the creation, the implantation of the soul of human life. Whether the making of Adam prior to creation of the soul lasted a microsecond or a million years, is not certain from the Torah. Other verses give us a clue if not a definitive answer.
The Talmud (Eruvim 18A,B) expands upon the birth of Seth, Adam and Eve’s third child. It wonders why the Torah gives two accounts of Seth’s birth.
“And Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and called his name Seth…” (Gen. 4:25).
“And Adam lived 130 years and was father to a son … named Seth.” (Gen. 5:3).
The Talmud (Tractate Eruvim) learns from these two verses that following the murder of Abel by Cain, Adam and Eve separated for 130 years and only then did Adam know Eve “again.” During those 130 years Adam sired children by beings other than Eve. The Radak comments that those children were actual children, lacking only the neshama, soul to make them human. Maimonides (Guide 1:7), based on Eruvim and the Zohar, describes those children as being human in shape and intelligence, but less than human in spirituality.
Nachmanides, focused on a superfluous prefix, lamed, meaning “to”, in Genesis 2:7:
“…and breathed into his nostrils the neshama of life and the Adam became to a living soul.”
The “to” Nahmanides said comes to show a change in character and “it may be that the verse is saying that it [Adam] was a completely living being and [by the neshama] it was changed into another man.” Another man! According to Nahmanides, the leading kabbalist commentary on the Torah, there was a man before the creation of the neshama but that hominid man was not quite human.
Onkelos summarizes it all, 400 years before the Talmud and 1,000 years before Nachmanides. The phrase nefesh chayah, a living soul, appears three times in this portion of the Torah: for aquatic animals (Gen. 1:20), for land animals (Gen. 1:24) and for humans as “to a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). In the first two instances Onkelos translates the term literally, a living soul. But for humans, because of the “to”, Onkelos translates the term as “and the Adam became a speaking spirit.”
The ability for spiritual communication is what makes humans different from all other animals. Not our strength, not our smarts. But our spirituality. Speech in humans is the manifest link between the physical and spiritual aspects of our existence. The neshama provides that link and urges us to feel the transcendental unity pervading all existence that is spoken of in the Shema: “Hear Israel, the Eternal our God , the Eternal is One.” A transcendent unity is the mark of the Eternal. Hominids with human bodies co-existed with, and pre-dated, Adam. Ancient commentators were aware of this reality. Their discovery as fossils poses no wonder to Torah. The biblical definition of a human is an animal — a hominid – – into which a created neshama was implanted.
Although the neshama leaves no fossil remains to prove its arrival on the stage of humanity, the effect of its creation is written loud and clear in the finds of archaeology. Writing and commerce and the appearance of large cities all date to 5000 to 6000 years ago, the time of Adam. Writing was invented to satisfy the record-keeping needs of commerce and commerce was invented to satisfy the material needs of large cities. The question remains, why did large cities emerge at this time? I propose that the spirituality of humans granted by the neshama and their desire to communicate that spirituality to others was the driving force that changed civilization from clusters of clan-sized villages to the cities of Uruk and Ur in Mesopotamia.
REFERENCES
1 J. Silk, The Big Bang, W. H. Freeman, New York, 1989. P. 72.
2 P. J. E. Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1993, pp. 91, 96, 135.
3 M. Fukugita et al., The history of the galaxies, Nature 381:489, 1996.
