So many books have been written on this subject. And the Bible and science have different concerns. We must therefore remain humble, and recognize that we may never be able to fully harmonize the two. But here’s some brief reflections.
The age of the earth: Genesis 1v1-2v3
An initial reading of Genesis 1-12 that calculates years through the lists of names (genealogies) might suggest that God created everything in six literal days as recently as 10-4 thousand BC (the young earth creationism view). Although we must assert that he could well have done so, the scientific evidence for a very ancient universe and world is nevertheless compelling because it comes form various different disciplines: eg. Huge amounts of time are needed to explain the vast number of plants and creatures found in the geological column, the size of coral reefs that only grow slowly, and the evaporation of ancient seas that have left salt beds in deserts. An older earth is also supported by the number of yearly silt layers created by thawing ice, of strata in ice core samples, and of rings in ancient trees. On top of this, we have radiometric dating, and astronomical observations such as those which imply the light from the stars has taken millions of years to reach us.
This can’t all be explained by the changes to the natural order that may have taken place because of the great flood. And so, some suggest that at some point between 10-4 thousand BC, God created the universe and world with the appearance of age (the mature creation view), because that was necessary for it to operate as it needs to: eg. so that there was already light from stars and salt in the deserts. This is possible and shouldn’t be wholly discounted. But the problem with it is that it would not explain such things as the existence of ancient fossils or of features resulting from erosion, which do not seem necessary. Moreover, it implies that the creation the Bible says “clearly” displays God’s power and nature (Rom 1v20), doesn’t actually reflect his truthfulness because it appears to be something it is not.
What then are we to make of Genesis 1v1-2v3? It certainly speaks in terms of days not aeons, which is signalled by the mention of evening and morning, and it being the pattern of the working week in Exodus 20v11. The most convincing explanation is that, in an accommodation to the minds of those Genesis was first written to, it is an artistic account of creation over however many billions of years using the analogy of a working week. Such artistry is suggested by the fact that the account is a prelude with the history proper starting from chapter 2v4, that 2v4 (ESV) describes the whole creation account of chapter 1 as a single “day,” that the text itself tells us the cosmos and planet were created an unspecified time before the first day (1v1-2), that the account is arranged with days 1-3 corresponding with 4-6, structured to counter the formlessness and emptiness of v2, and that it includes a refrain in the declaration “it is good.” Its purpose also seems quite clearly to show what it means to “image” God by ordering and filling the world just as he did in creation (1v26-28).
2v5-7 are particularly important in showing 1v1-2v3 isn’t to be read literalistically. Reading the two chapters as a whole, the account of Adam and Eve’s creation is portrayed as taking place in day 6, as the absence of woman is “not good” (2v18), whereas at the end of day 6 with male and female created, all is “very good” (1v31). But, 2v5 tells us no vegetation had yet sprung up, whereas 1v12 tells us it all had on day 3. The literary links between the two chapters show the writer is too intelligent for this to be an unintended contradiction. Rather, the word often translated “earth” in 2v5 is better translated “land.” The point is therefore that in the area in which Adam was created the land was barren – perhaps due to its annual dry season or more likely, because God hadn’t yet ordered the climate for arable farming because he hadn’t yet provided man to do it. Either way, the readers would have noted that normal providence in the growth of vegetation was at work when Adam was created on day 6, not the miraculous growth implied on day 3 if the days are read literalistically. In short, a careful reading signals to them and us that the days of chapter 1 are analogical.
Of course, this old earth creationism view would mean that natural turmoil, and death and struggle between animals, would have occurred for millions of years before the events of the Garden of Eden. However, we should note four things: 1/ Psalm 104v21 speaks of God providing prey for lions, with no sense that such carnivorism and death is somehow wrong (although, Is 65v25 suggests that may be just for this present age). 2/ Romans 5v12 tells us that the death that comes because of sin is human death, not animal death. 3/ The suggestion of Genesis 3v22-23 is that death is the norm, with Adam and Eve only exempted from it by having access to the tree of life. 4/ The detail of Romans 8v18-23 doesn’t require us to say that natural disasters are due to the fall, as the “bondage to corruption” it speaks of (Rom 8v21 ESV) is that of the corruption of humankind through sin as outlined in Genesis 6v11-12, meaning that Adam’s descendants can’t bring the creation to flourishing until redeemed (Rom 8v21). A harshness of farming the ground is therefore the only environmental consequence of the fall in Genesis 3 as God curses the primary sphere of man’s work just as he has woman’s. This is supported by the equivalent being the focus of blessing and curse under the Mosaic covenant (Deut 30v9).
A key query over this view is that if creation wasn’t in a literal working week, it would imply a huge period of the earth’s existence before the sun and moon were made on day 3. Some suggest that because the filling days (4-6) correspond to the forming days (1-3), they may have progressed in pairs but been structured consecutively to stress the two works of God in countering the formlessness and emptiness of the earth in v2. So, light/dark with sun/moon/stars, waters/sky with fish/birds, and land/sea/vegetation with animals/man. This does seem a natural fit with current scientific theory. One alternative is to say that to counter the tendency to worship the sun and moon as primary, Moses relegated them to fourth day and renamed them simply as “lights” made to serve humanity. It is also quite possible that what is being described on day 3 is the appearance of the sun, moon and stars as earth’s atmosphere changed, rather than their creation. It is notable that they are set in the expanse which is the sky (Gen 1v17) rather than above it, which implies a focus on their appearance from the ground. And, in accommodation to his ancient readers, saying God “made” them and “set them” in the sky could be intended to mean nothing more than he lay behind their appearance at that point, rather than suggesting their actual creation on that day. The word “made” does allow this.
The creation of humanity: Genesis 2v4-3v24
This is a harder one to resolve. What’s called “micro-evolution” clearly occurs as organisms adapt to their environment. However, modern science also asserts a “macro-evolution” of all species from the first spark of life. It appeals to the existence of what it says are transitional fossils, the appearance of increasingly simple organisms towards the bottom of the geological column, similar species living in the same regions, the anatomical, cellular and molecular similarities between creatures, and genetic similarities in which there seem to be similar “defective” genes passed down.
These are not insignificant points. Nevertheless, they could be explained by the wisdom of God in designing according to patterns and with regional commonality in order to fit certain environments. And there are question marks raised over the theory of evolution by both Christian and non-Christian scientists: Some evidence points to new species appearing in sudden bursts that might be consistent with a period of creative activity by God known as progressive creation. Moreover, evolution cannot explain the creation of life in the first place - which appears to be mathematically impossible, nor its development in the time given to the complexity we see today, the difficulty in seeing how transitional aspects of organisms might form, the “over-design” of humans that cannot be explained merely by what was required to survive, the surprising jumps in the fossil record, the existence of human consciousness, or our ability to reason to a far higher degree than is simply necessary for our survival.
Of course, the Christian could hold to a what’s termed theistic evolution, which would explain how creatures have developed so significantly. In which case, we might speculate that the disease and apparent viciousness of animals that seems to have been a part of it, were either temporary necessities in God’s good purposes, which will be no more when Christ makes all things new (Is 65v25), or that they were not necessary, but somehow a result of Satan’s influence on the creation.
The real problem with macro-evolution, however, comes in its implications for humanity. Interestingly, current science suggests that modern humans developed in Africa from around 1 million BC, and then migrated to the Ancient Near East where Eden was located between 100-70 thousand BC, before developing language around 50,000BC and spreading throughout the world. This is a remarkable fit with Genesis 2v7-8 which speaks of Adam being created in an arid land, and then placed in Eden which was “in the East,” and from where his descendants grew, developed languages at Babel, and then populated the known world as recorded in Genesis 10-11. Moreover, Genesis speaks of humans being in existence away from the area where Adam and family lived, raising the possibility of contemporary hominids who weren’t his descendants (Gen 4v14, 16-17).
Yet there are significant difficulties with locating Adam and Eve at the end of this evolutionary history: 1/ The description of Adam being created from “dust” may be metaphorical as it is when Job describes his own birth that way (Job 10v8-9). Indeed, the word “formed” that describes his creation (2v7) also describes the creation of animals from the ground (2v19). Nevertheless, the New Testament says, “man did not come from woman,” and that Adam was Son of God with no ancestors (1 Cor 11v8, Lk 3v38). This could simply mean that Adam was not taken from woman in the way that Eve was from him, and had no ancestors of the same type of man. This would leave the possibility of him being an evolved hominid God “renovated” into a new order of image-bearing human. But this isn’t the natural reading. 2/ Eve is said to come from man (his rib) and so was not born naturally. The sense may be that this is because she and all other human beings are to be biologically of him. And she is certainly named “the mother of all living” (Gen 3v16, 1 Tim 2v13, 1 Cor 11v8). 3/ It is common in biblical genealogies to skip generations to progress through large periods of history. Nevertheless, even with such gaps in Genesis 5 and 11, they would have to be quite extreme to stretch earlier than 10,000BC, let alone 100,000BC. And it is in the “neolithic” age from 10,000BC in which we see the rise of agriculture, city life and civilization that is portrayed in Genesis 4-11. 5/ Current science suggests that anatomically modern humans living before this were religious, violent, and suffered disease and death. This would seem to imply the existence of sin and it’s consequences before the period in which the Bible suggests Adam and Eve lived. And if they were descended from these hominids, it would mean they would not be perfect.
Conclusions.
Adam and Eve are portrayed as real individuals throughout the Bible, and Genesis 2 and 3 leads seamlessly into the history that follows. So, we can’t say Genesis 2-3 is just a story to teach something about humanity more generally. They existed and their fall into sin was real. So, how should we assess all we’ve considered?
Most importantly, we should remember that because the Bible seeks to explain creation in a memorable way to a whole variety of cultures throughout history, it keeps it simple and so just doesn’t seek to address the sorts of questions we bring in the 21st century. To my mind, there is therefore limited merit in trying to work it all out. Better to say that Christians have different views about what the text is intending to portray, there is no obvious contradiction between science and scripture, and the important thing is what we make of Jesus.
Nevertheless, if we are to consider possible scenarios, I would focus on the following:
1/ Adam and Eve may have been specially created by God (perhaps with Adam being a renovated hominid) sometime after 10,000BC, as the source of a race of human beings who bore God’s image in the sense that they reflected his character and were to act like him. They were enabled to escape the death occurring within the natural order by access to the tree of life, and were called to fill and subdue the world, which might have been intended as something they should have done without interacting with the already existing humans (who may have evolved or been brought into being by some other means). Nevertheless, Adam and Eve fell into sin, bringing changes to childbirth on their descendants and to the natural order (Gen 3v16-17), and interbreeding with wider humanity in such a way that the entire civilized world known in New Testament times was by some means descended from them - which might explain our genetic links to ancient hominids. The difficulties with this view are that Adam and Eve aren’t direct ancestors of all humanity, and that it doesn’t explain the sin and death of what seem to be modern humans earlier in prehistory. Here we could speculate that the fall in Eden was a pattern or paradigm of a fall of wider humanity in the distant past (see appendix), just as Israel’s sins were later a pattern of the sin of the entire world (Rom 3v19). Adam’s particular sin therefore brought death because it forfeited access to the tree of life to his descendants, whether those that were immediate, or through subsequent interbreeding.
2/ Adam and Eve may have been specially created by God (Adam possibly renovated) as the source of those science regards as “modern humans,” around the time they were located in the Ancient Near East from 100-70,000BC. This enables them to be the source of all humanity that migrated around the world from 50,000BC and potentially removes the problems of scenario 1. The difficulty is that this is so long before the events Genesis 4-11 seems concerned with, which better fit the neolithic age. However, too much shouldn’t made of this. Our knowledge of the distant past is minimal. It is not impossible that the culture of Genesis 4 was present from around 100,000BC, then lost as humanity spread out after the flood, before being rediscovered and then described by Moses in terms that would have made sense to his hearers.
3/ Adam and Eve may have been specially created by God (Adam possibly renovated) as the source of “modern humans” from 100-70,000BC (or even earlier). But by giving them names that mean “man” and “life-giver,” the writer signals that their fall was as representatives of all subsequent men and women. Using creative license, he may have therefore artistically blended them in his narrative with the parents of Cain and Abel whom he also called Adam and Eve in Genesis 4v1. This would seamlessly compact the vast history of humanity into the neolithic age after 10,000BC, and link the fall of the first human pair in distant pre-history with the line leading to Abraham and Israel. It certainly removes the problems of scenarios 1 and 2. And there is precedence for this sort of thing in scripture. As the ideal prophet, it is possible Moses received knowledge of such distant things by prophetic revelation. And using the same means of communication, later prophets speak of David reigning over Israel when they really mean Christ as his greatest descendant living hundreds of years later (Jer 23v5, Ezek 37v24). And Christ himself is described as the “last Adam,” which implies there’s a sense in which every man can be said to be an “adam” (1 Cor 15v45). The problems with this view is that nothing really suggests it in the text. Moreover, Eve’s declaration in 4v1 implies Cain is the first male born, and 4v16 suggests God’s Edenic presence is still around because the events of chapter 3 had only recently happened.
APPENDIX A: Where was Eden?
Genesis 2 assumes that Moses’ hearers would have been able to locate the general area Eden once was. Most likely is that it was where the Euphrates and Tigris flow into the Persian Gulf. And there is evidence to support the other two ancient rivers in the region. This would mean that the location of Eden is now under water. An alternative, is that it was in the region comprising Israel and Lebanon – “east” of where Moses wrote (Gen 2v8). Supporting this is: (1) Cush could be the Ethiopia area, with Havilah probably nearby, implying the Euphrates and Tigris were once joined to rivers there, possibly by the Rift Fault System that runs through Lebanon and Israel to where the Red Sea now is. (2) This would explain why Abram was promised the land from “the river of Egypt” to the Euphrates (Gen 15v18). (3) Ezekiel likens the cedars of Lebanon to the trees in Eden (Ezek 31v3-9, 16-18). (4) The King of Tyre (part of Lebanon) is said to have been “in Eden” (Ezek 28v9). (5) Israel is given Eden-like language and promises (Is 51v3, Ezek 36v35, Ezek 47, Ps 46v4). (6) Canaan was the “house of God” and “gate of heaven” (Gen 28v17). (7) It would certainly be theological neat for this to be where Eden once was, as the centre of the paradise to come. However, we really cannot know with any confidence.
APPENDIX B: An evolutionary scenario?
If one is convinced of "theistic evolution," to my mind the best model to encompass the idea of a wider evolved humanity (and this is very tentative), is a paradigmatic-historical reading of Genesis 2-3, in which the events of these chapters are literal events that also provide a summary of what had already been experienced by the wider human race, which rebelled against God along the lines outlined in Romans 1v18-32 corrupting his “good” creation and causing it to be made subject to futility as in Romans 8v18-25. This would essentially compact the vast history of humanity we now know of as an accommodation to the limits of the first readers because Genesis is primarily concerned with the birth of Israel through Abraham in the Ancient Near East. This is preferred to simply saying the Bible has no concern for wider humanity, for if that were the case we would have to conclude from the fossil record (if the science is right) that the “good” creation included animals and a wider humanity that were violent and horribly diseased. This paradigmatic view sees “man” in general created in 2v7, and then one given the representative name “Adam” taken and placed in Eden, 2v8.
All this enables us to locate Adam in the Neolithic period, whilst accepting hominids in existence long before that. The garden of Eden is a subsequent creation of what the wider world “should” have been and so a fitting picture of the world to come (Rev 2v7), with death and the curse on childbirth and the land something that is already experienced by humanity outside the area as seems implied in Gen 3v22. This would make the destruction of Adam’s line in a great flood of the known world at the time a fitting paradigm of the final judgment on the entire earth, explaining Jesus’ words in Mat 24v37. This view also anticipates and aligns with the idea of Israel’s sin as “son of God” (Ex 4v22-23) being paradigmatic, so condemning wider humanity (Rom 3v19). Indeed, Paul’s explanation of sin and death coming to “all” in Romans 5v12-22 would then be concerned with the line of Adam in particular, but confirm the fitness of death where there is no law (Rom 5v14) to any wider humanity because of his role as paradigmatic representative after the fact – just as Christ’s paradigmatic representation brought life to believers who lived before him (Rom 3v25). Adam’s descendants should therefore be seen as a sort of “covenantal line” or “race of redemption,” that failed to point wider humanity to the true God and everlasting life through access to the tree, but paved the way through Israel, who also failed, to Christ, who as the second Adam would do just this, and form a new humanity in him to fulfil humanity’s original role.
Although this model would seem to require Eve to be specially created from Adam (1 Tim 2v13, 1 Cor 11v8) so all his line stem from him, it would at least allow a genetic link between Adam and other hominids. Creating from dust isn’t necessarily a literal description (Job 10v9), nor being presented as without parents (Heb 7v3). And Adam is said to be “son of God” like Jesus, who was born of a human mother but also by a miracle of the Holy Spirit (Lk 3v38, Rom 5v14).