The Adam and Eve Creation Story

By James Donahue

The fundamental Christians say they believe the Bible is "God’s Word" and because of this, they accept everything it says as "God’s Holy Word" and therefore it must be true. But then they have problems explaining a lot of inconsistencies that begin piling up right from the first Book of Genesis.

The creation of humans is a hum-dinger for starters: If the first man and woman were Adam and Eve, and they were parents of two sons. How did they manage to populate the rest of the world? Did the sons sleep and have children by with the only woman, their mother? And later they must have slept with their sisters. And of course this was incest, which God condemned, at least when God gave Moses the books of law on Mount Sinai.

The genetic assault on the purity of the original human creation from all of this incest might help explain all of the insane going-on in the world ever since. But on a more serious note, the archaeological discoveries of various humanoid remains throughout the world, and marking various times in history, belie the simplicity of the Genesis story. Either we evolved from primates or the DNA of the various human races was planted on Earth through alien visitations in the distant past.

If we look at the origins of the names Adam and Eve, we find some clues behind the true meaning of the myth that appears in this part of the creation story. Adam is a Hebrew word that means "to be red," possibly a reference to the color of his skin. Another reference might have been taken from the words akkadian adamu, which means "to make." Thus the name Adam is a reference to the creation of humanity.

The name Eve is derived from the Hebrew name Chawwah, which in turn comes from the Hebrew word chawah, which means"to breathe" or "to live." It was translated to the Latin word Eva by scribes during the Middle Ages.

The story about God using a rib from Adam to create Eve also offers an interesting twist when examined through the eyes of contemporary science. The bones contain bone marrow, which in the rib produces not only red and white blood cells and platelets, but it also houses stem cells. And stem cells have been found to be directly linked to reproductive cloning. Also the rib is the only bone in the human body that has the ability to regenerate itself. So Adam could really give up a rib during this magical event, and then grow it back.

The sons of Adam and Eve were given to us in the Bible story as Cain and Abel. The Hebrew name for Cain was "spear," while the name for Abel meant "breath." Thus the very meanings behind the given names defined their fate. Cain obviously used a spear to murder Abel and steal his breath.

In the story, Abel was a farmer who raised livestock while Cain was a tiller of the soil so he had to have been a metal smith who made things of iron. Thus he manufactured the very weapon he used to kill is brother. Symbolically the story points to the future when the manufacturing industry imposed itself on agriculture.

The Genesis story goes on to say that Adam and Eve continued to have children and specifically names two more sons, Enoch and Seth, who became the fathers of generations of additional children. After killing Abel, Cain left home and lived "in the land of Nod," and parented "sons and daughters," thus revealing that he was living among other humans already in existence on the Earth.

The Old Testament was written as a history of the Hebrew people. Thus the mythology in the Book of Genesis is obviously slanted to point only to the origins of this line of humans and no other. Thus we must recognize the stories contained in the book as slanted copies of existing mythology and certainly not a true record of how humans came into existence. It just didn’t happen that way.