Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Part 3 - Evidence of Mankind
As I wrote in Problems with Interpreting the Flood - Part 2 - Evidence for Global Catastrophe, any physical evidence for The Flood used by Creation Scientists generally points at the KT Impact 65 million years ago, or at the global ocean that first formed on the earth around 4.5 billion years ago. Furthermore, these two global events are strong evidence for God’s sequence of Creation recorded in Genesis 1. This tells us that whatever else is true, The Flood was not a global event. Otherwise, there would be evidence of it, and there is not. However, this also tells us something else: because the evidence we have for previous global events confirm Genesis 1 so well, we should proceed in confidence that The Flood did happen. However, we should read it carefully for signs that it was not global, and investigate the language and other evidence for why The Flood would be recorded in such a global-sounding manner. Before we embark on that journey however, the Bible still has more to say about the events that set the stage for The Flood, events that help us understand the context in which we will proceed.Â
In Genesis 6 - Which Mankind?, I write about how a casual reading of Day Six in Genesis 1 makes it sound like mankind was created as a race and told to subdue the earth. Genesis 2 makes it sound like a single man was put into a garden, provided a wife, and told to care for it. It is only after this man and woman sin that they are banished and made to live off the land. So, which is it? Did God create a population on Day 6? Or just Adam, and potentially Eve? Well, if we try and shoehorn the two accounts into one, it is simply fraught with contradictions. However, a scientific understanding of the scripture suggests that these creative activities were separate from each other, and should be read sequentially.
First, God created Adam the race to subdue the world; he later created Adam the man to maintain the Garden of Eden. Science backs this up, recording the first appearance of modern man about 200,000 years ago; mankind then subdued the world beginning about 50,000 years ago (Out of Africa Hypothesis). Also through science, we know that agriculture appeared 10,000 years ago. It lines up very nicely with Day 6 (creation of mankind, blessed to subdue the world), followed by Adam’s banishment from the garden (forced to live a life of agriculture). Later in scripture, that same sequential vehicle is employed in Genesis 5. First Adam the race, followed by Adam the man; a discontinuity summarizing the discontinuity between Genesis 1 and 2. But just like Genesis 1 and 2, a sequential reading allows for Adam the race and Adam the man to be different entities… suggesting Adam the man is part of the Adam the race. This agrees completely with the interpretation that the race was created before the man. I saw this discontinuity in the scripture before I ever studied the science. However, now it makes sense to me. It would seem that Moses left out just enough detail of his fragmented knowledge, that what he committed to parchment was literally true. To clarify…
 1 This is the written account of the generations of mankind…Â
      When God created mankind, he made mankind in the likeness of God. 2 He created mankind male and female and blessed mankind. And when they were created, he called them mankind 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
We can now see, without changing the Hebrew, that Genesis 5:1-2 refers to all of mankind, who subdued the earth before Adam was born. After Adam was born, he lived for 130 years before he had his son Seth. With verse 3, the scope of Genesis 5’s narrative has abruptly narrowed from discussing all of mankind to discussing those people descended from Adam and Eve. Do you think Moses was aware of this? Personally, I do not. However, I do think he was somewhat aware that what he knew of mankind’s creation and Adam’s life were separately true… yet both were named “Adam”, which is the same word for “mankind”. For God’s part, He guided Moses’ writings, letting Moses express the small portion of truth that Moses understood, but in a manner consistent with the additional truth that God withheld. What I see in scripture is Moses writing faithfully that somehow mankind was what God created and blessed on Day 6, yet the significant narrative of individual lives begins with Adam the man. Furthermore, there was something about Adam and his descendants that made them significant enough to refer to as if they were all there was.
Genesis 2:4-7 thus reads:
 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
 As I have written before, verses 4 to 6 summarize the conditions of the earth just before the formation of the deep in Genesis 1:2. This sets verse 7 as a process that began even before Day 1, and completed sometime around 6,000-10,000 years ago… after mankind had subdued the earth. That process was the formation of man from the dust of the ground… Evolution without the randomness. However, in some respect, Adam was the first member of mankind to be a “living being” in some respect that was never true before. God breathed something into his nostrils that set Adam and his descendants apart from the rest of the mankind. I believe Adam was the first man to truly meet God. Evidence exists for a spirituality of sorts long before Adam was born, that evidence also suggests that they did not know God. But, Adam did. Adam knew Him. Adam believed Him, and obeyed Him… until he disobeyed Him. At that point, he was banished to farm the land, land which God cursed. But the bell was not to be unrung. Adam knew who God was. By narrowing in on Adam’s line in Genesis 5:3, Moses was focusing in on the totality of mankind who knew of God, and could make their choices for God or against Him… and as a Genesis 5 and 6 go on to say, mankind (in this respect) was choosing against Him. From here on out, instead of coming up with a new word for “mankind who can know God”, Moses simply focuses on that group. We see it Genesis 5:1-3, and can thus carry it forth into the narrative of The Flood.