If someone should find himself persuaded that there were, in fact, more human beings than just Adam and Eve at the beginning of humankind, then, in order to maintain good sense and a biblical mind, he should envision these humans as a single tribe. Adam would then be the chieftain of this tribe (produced before the others), and Eve would be his wife. This tribe “fell” under the leadership of Adam and Eve. This follows from the notion of solidarity in a representative.

According to author and Covenant Theological Seminary professor C. John Collins, “We need a real Adam and Eve if we are to make sense of the Bible and of life.” In his recent book, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care, Collins sees the Adam and Eve narrative as the “worldview story” of the people of God. He illustrates how that story presupposes a real first couple, and how modern life brings us to the same conclusion. This isn’t just the tale of two people, Collins says; it is fundamentally the story that explains who we are, how we got this way, and what hope we have for any relief. ByFaith Editor Richard Doster asked Collins why the truth about Adam and Eve is so important.

Why do we need this book right now? What’s the problem this book solves?

This book began as an invited paper: I was asked to present the case for an actual, historical Adam and Eve at the headwaters of the human race — in other words, the traditional Christian view of our origins. Of course that means that people have come to doubt the tradition — to doubt whether it corresponds to the facts of our origins, or even whether its factuality is important. What leads to such doubts? Of course, different people will be moved by different considerations; but generally speaking there are three factors that are currently leading people to doubt that Adam and Eve were real people at the headwaters of the human race — or at least to doubt that it matters one way or the other.

First, there is the fact that the themes in Genesis parallel themes we find in stories from other ancient Near Eastern cultures; this leads some theologians to conclude that Genesis is just as “mythical” in its intentions and meanings as these other stories are.
We might add to this the feeling that many people have, that since the Bible is such an “old” book, we do it and ourselves a disservice if we use it as a source for information about the prehistoric past.

Second, recent advances in biology seem to push us further away from any idea of an original human couple through whom sin and death came into the world. The evolutionary history of mankind tells us that death and struggle have been part of existence on earth from the earliest moments. Most recently, discoveries about the features of human DNA seem to require that the human population has always had at least as many as a thousand members.

One reason these appeals to the biological sciences get serious attention from traditionally-minded theologians is the work of Francis Collins, the Christian biologist who led the Human Genome Project to a successful conclusion. Collins has written about how his faith relates to his scientific discipline, advocating a kind of theistic evolution that he calls the “Biologos” perspective. Collins agrees with those biologists who contend that traditional beliefs about Adam and Eve are no longer viable.

The traditional narrative of our first parents, who were created morally innocent but came to disobey God, and thus brought sin and death into the experience of all humankind, does the best job with both the Bible and with the data of human life.

Third, some theologians and philosophers — and lots of “ordinary” people — think it is impossible that you and I could be affected at our deepest level by anything done long ago.

In the introduction you address nonbelievers, saying, “But think about the deepest intuitions you have about your own existence: … that there is something wrong at the heart of things, … .” You criticize nontraditional interpretations of the Genesis story because they fail to address our deepest intuitions. Still later you reference Pascal and G.K. Chesterton, who both described the Fall as capturing …our hope for something better. Why, in an investigation of objective truth, do you so heavily weigh things as ambiguous as intuition, hope, and nostalgia?

To begin with, these intuitions are, objectively speaking, part of the data that any good story of human life will have to account for. And it’s not just the “scientists” who have an interest in the story of human life; we all do. Indeed, we should rest our story on things that are accessible to all people, things that we all encounter every day — much as C. S. Lewis did in Mere Christianity.

The account of Adam and Eve is not just a tale of two people; the question of their historicity is not just a matter of whether these two people really lived. Rather, it is fundamentally the story that explains who we are right now, how we got this way, and what hope there is of any relief. Humankind is one family, and we must know whether our yearning for justice and compassion among human beings corresponds to anything real. Human beings are noticeably distinct from any other animals, and at the same time our best moralists tell us to treat other animals well — never dreaming of telling the animals to treat us well! Humans generally have some notion of an ideal state of things, an awareness that we don’t always find that ideal realized, and a set of remedies for the lack of realization of the ideal.

Some people in the sciences seek to account for these features of human behavior by explaining them away. I want to insist that these features join other aspects of human behavior found everywhere — like language, moral reasoning, and artistic experience, which make us unique among the animals and bestow on us a distinctive dignity and responsibility. These cannot be explained away. The Christian message claims to contain the true story of the world, and thus to set all human life in its proper context.

The author of the Adam and Eve story, you believe, wrote about actual events but also used rhetorical and literary techniques to shape his readers’ attitudes. Later, you explain that the Bible’s authors aim to give us more than facts; “they want to capture our imaginations, and to convey a particular worldview.”

Genesis, then, is not a literal history book; it’s obviously not a science book. When we read the first book of the Bible what, exactly, are we reading?

Well, the original purpose of Genesis was to provide the ancient Israelites the true story that explained both where they came from and what God had in mind in calling them; they were the heirs of God’s promises to Abraham. And we find in Genesis 12 that God called Abraham so that his family would be the vehicle of blessing to “all the families of the earth” — to all Gentile peoples everywhere. So Genesis 1–11 clarifies that the God who has called Abraham is in fact the one true God, the Maker of heaven and earth, for whom all humankind yearns.

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