The Historical Adam?

A full disclosure: I have yet to read William Lane Craig's latest book, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration. I have however read a recent online article in which he summarizes his arguments regarding the historical Adam. Now, as someone who teaches New Testament at the post-secondary, and also as someone who happens to hold an undergrad degree in anthropology, I am keenly interested in discussions which lie at the intersection of biblical studies and human evolution. And also as someone willing to give others the benefit of the doubt, I made every effort to suspend judgment until I had fully engaged with Craig's thought. Nonetheless, I have found some parts of his argument a bit troubling.

Craig's argument, at least as presented in the aforementioned article from First Things, can be summarized as follows:

1) Approximately 500,000–750,000 years ago, two members of the now-extinct Homo heidelbergensis were born with a genetic mutation that greater enhanced their cognitive ability.

2) This mutation means that they were the first human beings, made in God's image.

3) Other individuals of the species Homo heidelbergensis who did not have this mutation were in fact not human beings, and did not bear God's image.

4) One of these two individuals who now bore God's image happened to be male, and the other happened to be female.

5) These two individuals happened to be in the same place, at the same time, and to have produced offspring.

6) All modern humans are descended from these two individuals.
7) These two individuals are the historical Adam and Eve.

A first observation: this argument is likely to appeal to few people. Young Earth Creationists will object to the suggestion that there was even a world much less members of the genus Homo 500,000–750,000 years ago, while anyone with a basic grounding in evolutionary science is likely to recoil at the suggestion that two members of the same species just happened to be born with the exact same mutation at the same time, in the same place, and that one just happened to be male and the other female and that they just happened to become mates. But that aside, I would like to focus upon another matter, namely the way in which Craig exacerbates the classic problem of the other humans of Genesis.

In Genesis 4, after killing his brother Abel and receiving God's curse, Cain laments that "I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me." This verse, as long noted in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, would at first glance seem to suggest that there was a considerably greater number of people on the planet than just Adam, Eve, and their children. And at first glance, Craig's hypothesis can account for this, by arguing that the people Cain feared are simply other members of the species Homo heidelbergensis (and perhaps also other now-extinct hominid species). But that's where it gets into trouble, because Craig has denied that these are human beings. And this trouble becomes particularly acute when we read in Genesis 4:17 that after fleeing to the land of Nod Cain knew his wife. As long noted, the only possibilities on a literal reading of Genesis are that a daughter (or granddaughter, perhaps) of Adam and Eve for some reason made her way to the land of Nod and married Cain, or that there were other humans out there among whom Cain could find a mate. If Craig opts for the former, then he has to deal with the issue of primordial incest that haunts literal readings of Genesis 1–5; if he opts for the latter, then given that these other beings are on his account not actually human he has in fact introduced the spectre of bestiality. Instead of an option between primordial incest and the existence of non-Adamic human beings, Craig has instead to choose between primordial incest and primordial bestiality.

And this gets even more problematic when we come to Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve from whom all modern humans on a literal reading of Genesis descend. Because now Craig must deal with whether all humans are descended from a single brother and sister (whose children in turn would have had to marry close kin, and in fact that would have been the case for several generations), or whether all humans are descended from a man and his animal "wife." (And this doesn't even get into the issue of whether an animal can give consent for sexual relations with a human). Indeed, the possibility of humans descending from non-humans at crucial points in our lineage is more than a little troubling, given recurrent racist tropes which try to identify certain groups of modern Homo sapiens as the product of humans mating with apes. In principle, if Seth could have mated with a non-human Homo heidelbergensis, then why couldn't (for instance) Ham? It wouldn't take much for someone to smuggle the curse of Ham in through the backdoor of Craig's argument, as presented.

Again, as a matter of fairness, I must again note that I have not read Craig's monograph-length treatment of these matters. Perhaps he addresses them adequately there. From what I have thus far read of his argument, it really seems to be little more than an updated form of "pre-Adamism," the history of which David N. Livingstone has documented so thoroughly. What remains to be considered is whether it manages to be a substantive improvement over earlier iterations of such theorizing. Thus far, I am inclined to think that he has created more problems than he solves.