INSIGHTS | BOOKS
HUMAN ORIGINS
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Adam, Eve, and the evolution of humankind
A theologian looks to science for clues about the Bible’s first couple
A
dam and Eve are not figures that
turn up often in serious scientific
discourse. Introducing them as historical characters in, say, an evolutionary biology lecture would raise
more than a few eyebrows. William
Lane Craig, a widely published philosopher, theologian, and Christian apologist,
is not one to shy away from such a provocative pairing, however. In his latest book,
In Quest of the Historical Adam, Craig sets
out to bring academic and scientific rigor
to bear on the famous first couple of Genesis. He seeks to answer two questions:
whether his theological commitments as a
Christian necessitate believing in a historical Adam and Eve and, if so, what science
can tell us about that couple.
The first question occupies more than
half the book, and to answer it, Craig
draws on a range of academic fields, including myth studies, the study of ancient
Near Eastern religion, and biblical criticism. The conclusions of this largely nonscientific portion of the book are twofold.
As far as the Genesis story of Adam and
Eve is concerned, Craig concludes that it
was written in mythological terms and,
while intended to teach theological beliefs,
was not meant to be taken literally (a view
that will not endear him to creationists).
By contrast, he concludes that some statements about Adam in the New Testament,
specifically ones in Paul’s letter to the Romans, do entail a real, historical Adam,
one who was the first human.
This reasoning, which Craig ultimately
finds convincing, is the crux of the book
and the basis for the scientific investigation that follows. However, it is also the
least-developed part of Craig’s argument.
In his section on Genesis, for example, he
probes the authors’ understanding of the
historicity of what they wrote, but he does
not similarly probe Paul’s own understanding of his interpretation of the same text.
Rather than ask how exegetes within Paul’s
cultural milieu, that of Second Temple Judaism, viewed the historicity of their interpretations, he assumes that Paul, by
The reviewer is at the Infectious Disease and Microbiome
Program, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge,
MA 02142, USA. Email: sfs@broadinstitute.org
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treating Adam as a historical figure whose
actions had real-world consequences, is asserting that Adam really lived.
Having established that he should believe
in Adam’s existence, Craig sets out to locate
him. He does so in the form of a question
amenable to scientific analysis: When did
hominins acquire the cognitive capacity for
abstract thought, symbolic behavior, and
the like, such that they should be considered human? The relevant subject matter is
large and touches on evolutionary biology,
paleontology, paleoneurology, archaeology,
and genetics; the data are often scanty and
contentious. Nevertheless, he does a more
than creditable job of synthesizing both the
Craig’s theory of human origins allows for admixture
with other early hominin lineages.
conclusions and the uncertainties offered
by these various fields, often drawing on
primary scientific literature to do so.
Craig argues, for example, on the basis
of brain size, that the first humans could
not have lived before the time of Homo
heidelbergensis and late Homo erectus. A
number of facts about Neanderthals—symbolic behavior, ability to cooperate and
plan, probable linguistic capacity, possession of human-specific genetic modifiers of brain development—convince him
that they qualify as human. He therefore
concludes that humanness was a trait inherited by Neanderthals, Denisovans, and
Homo sapiens from their common ances-
In Quest of the Historical
Adam: A Biblical and
Scientic Exploration
William Lane Craig
Eerdmans, 2021. 439 pp.
tral populations and that Adam must have
lived circa 700,000 years ago.
Out of necessity, given scant scientific
interest in the topic, Craig abandons the
formal scientific literature for a discussion
of the limits that human genetic diversity
places on the occurrence of a population
bottleneck of size two in our ancestry. Relying on less-formal studies, he concludes
that population genetics can rule out a
pair of sole genetic progenitors for humans within roughly the past 500,000 to
700,000 years. This conclusion, while reasonable, turns out to have little relevance
to Craig’s overall argument; we eventually learn that his model allows for an unspecified amount of admixture from other
hominin lineages into the descendants
of Adam, eliminating the need for such a
tight bottleneck. A more clearly stated hypothesis in this section would have saved
the reader time and frustration.
Craig’s goal in writing this book, of
course, is not a scientific one, and it cannot
be judged on scientific grounds. I suspect
that for many scientists, including religious ones, the exercise will be seen as misguided or simply incomprehensible. Even
leaving aside the religious motivations,
biologists are likely to be highly skeptical of the idea that humanness is a binary
condition that can be induced by a change
in a single pair of ancestors—declaring the
change to be miraculous and to incorporate an immaterial soul, as Craig proposes,
will not make it more appealing.
While my own reaction is along similar lines, I very much welcome the book. I
think that it is entirely a good thing that an
individual with Craig’s theological commitments and credentials turns to science to
answer questions about the physical world,
takes evolution as a given, and puts in the
hard work to understand scientific findings. I can only hope that others who work
at the intersection of science with philosophy or religion emulate his efforts. j
10.1126/science.abl8547
science.org SCIENCE
IMAGE: IAN DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
By Stephen Schaffner