Genesis 9:8-11 - The Recipients of God’s Covenant with Noah (Part 3) - The others were in God’s image, too
As wrote in Genesis 9:8-11 - The Recipients of God’s Covenant with Noah (Part 2) - Who else was there?, it would seem that most of the modern world did not initially descend from Adam, let alone Noah. My list was not exhaustive, but according to fossil records, the following major populations of people have been around since before Adam:
- China - 67,000 years
- India - 30,000 years
- Africa - 200,000 years
- Native Americans - 16,500 - 40,000 years
- Australia - 40,000 years
- Middle East - 60,000 years
Adam descended from the Middle Eastern population, after it left Africa. He lived somewhere around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. The cap of 10,000 is based partially on when agriculture began, given that Adam was banished from Eden to live a life of agriculture.
This suggests the potentially offensive proposition that the populations above were not created in God’s image, as meant in Genesis 2:7. However, please recall what I believe that verse meant: it was the first time God directly introduced Himself to someone… Adam. It was the first time He even gave someone something from His mouth to believe, and to obey: tend the Garden, don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge. It was the very first command, and it was given to Adam.
Adam’s descendants were the first people of the world to be raised with Adam’s knowledge of God, so they too were obviously in God’s image.
Scientifically, the rest of the world was not made through Adam. Consider Genesis 2:7…
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.
Now wait a minute. Wasn’t Adam created in God’s image? Well, where does it say that? It says Adam was created from the dust… and he was, over a span of 4.5 billion years. It says God breathed life into Him… and He did, but it was the breath of new life, in the same way that Jesus breathes new life into us today. No more, no less. Where does it talk about being in God’s image? Well, that would be in Chapter 1…
 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
 27 So God created man in his own image,
      in the image of God he created him;
      male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Oh.
So, it looks like everybody else in the world was made in God’s image, but before Adam. Well, we’ve been over this on this blog before: Look at God’s blessing. He told them to fill the earth and subdue it, and to rule over the living creature that moves on the ground. He goes on to give them every green plant for food, and tells them to subdue the animals. This was their blessing, and it was given around 200,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens Sapiens first appear in the fossil record. (It could have been given as long ago as 5 million years ago, when the first humanoids first appear in the fossil record, but I’m assuming that our current form is who God was talking to in Genesis 1)
What a relief!
Now, here is the serious point. The majority of the population on earth, though created in God’s image, and blessed to multiply and fill the earth, did so before Adam was ever born. God created them and blessed them, but they did not know Him. That was reserved for Adam, his descendants, and those people who would later interact with Adam’s descendants.
This really explains an awful lot. It explains why there are so many other religions in the world. Human beings were created to perceive the spiritual realm on a certain level, to understand right and wrong, and so each people developed some way of related to the great beyond. They did the best they could, but it was Adam’s descendants were first given the key. Eventually, this would lead to establishment of the Jewish people, and they would give way to the Christian church. The world is an awfully big place. It would seem that Adam’s descendants have populated just a portion of it… and in Genesis 9, God was hitting the reset button on them, through Noah.