OEC and redemptive history

[August]

If we accept OEC as our creation position, then we accept that the universe and the earth was created progressively over a period of millions and billions of years. And then more specifically, if we consider the history of humanity, it can be anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 since humans appeared on earth.

As far as we can determine, redemptive history started between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, and went through the different periods from there. Even if we are liberal with the evidence, and stretch it to 15,000 years, it still leaves a whole lot of human history before the Biblical redemptive history starts.

What happened to those who lived before the Biblical history of redemption started?

[RickD]

If we accept OEC as our creation position, then we accept that the universe and the earth was created progressively over a period of millions and billions of years. And then more specifically, if we consider the history of humanity, it can be anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 since humans appeared on earth.

As far as we can determine, redemptive history started between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, and went through the different periods from there. Even if we are liberal with the evidence, and stretch it to 15,000 years, it still leaves a whole lot of human history before the Biblical redemptive history starts.

What happened to those who lived before the Biblical history of redemption started?

That's a great question, August. It's a thought I've been struggling with. If we take the anthropologists findings about Australian aborigines to be true(they've been there for @ 40,000 years), then that poses a problem for progressive creationism. Most prominent OECs that I've studied, place Adam at the most, about 15-30 thousand years ago. Then the flood that wiped out all of humanity maybe a couple thousand years later. Then how did the native Australians get to Australia? Whether OEC, or YEC, the native Australians pose a problem in my mind. Does anyone have an answer to that? Going on the age of the aborigines, lets see if my logic is correct.
(1) Aborigines aren't human
or
(2) Anthropologist dating of aborigines is off
or
(3) The Genesis flood didn't kill all humans, only the local people and animals
or
(4) Aborigines migrated quicker than I believe they could have
or
(5) The genesis story of Adam and Eve is ONLY a history and the beginning of the Jewish people, not all humanity

Let me know what I missed.

[August]

I think you've hit on most of it. The one alternative is that the creation narrative for humans culminated in a spiritual creation in the 10,000 years ago time-frame, and that the actual bodily creation happened before that. It is still weak though...why would God let humans run around for thousands of years with a soul? Something is not adding up.

[Canuckster1127]

Adam's creation and being made a living soul marks humanity, with the fall and history since then being the beginning of redemptive history.

All humans prior to that were either hominid without being living souls or any that died before the fall were redeemed. (Yes I know that presents some difficulties with some passages in Romans in which all humanity is identified first in Adam and then the redeemed subsequently in Christ.) Paul being Jewish, may be speaking there in the context of Jewish History which is then extended out to the Gentiles under Christ.

Don't know that I can add to it more than that right now.

[Maytan]

Doesn't this fall under the same question "What happened to people before Christ died on the cross?" I don't see how it's relevant how many years there were between the start of humanity and when Christ died on the cross. Either way, there were still people before he died on the cross.

Am I misunderstanding something?

I think you've hit on most of it. The one alternative is that the creation narrative for humans culminated in a spiritual creation in the 10,000 years ago time-frame, and that the actual bodily creation happened before that. It is still weak though...why would God let humans run around for thousands of years with a soul? Something is not adding up.

In this case, didn't Hugh Ross answer this in his book "Who was Adam?". He explains how God could have used neanderthals and the like before Adam's creation.

There's actually this talk on Youtube, split into 11 parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo8T1_PArJY

[MarcusOfLycia]

Your timeline is missing an event:

Creation -> Fall -> Old Testament -> Christ -> New Testament

The difference is important, because pre-Adam would have been pre-Fall, which was the reason Christ's death was required in the first place.

[August]

Doesn't this fall under the same question "What happened to people before Christ died on the cross?" I don't see how it's relevant how many years there were between the start of humanity and when Christ died on the cross. Either way, there were still people before he died on the cross.

No, it doesn't fall under the same question. Was everyone before Christ lost? There is a redemptive history that spans from Adam to Christ. The question is as I stated, if we follow the genealogies and use other ANE dating methods, then Gen 1 is between 6000 and 10,000 years ago, while science shows that man has been around for significantly longer than that.

All humans prior to that were either hominid without being living souls or any that died before the fall were redeemed.

If we follow the timeline for human development, it seems that the point at which humans became self-aware was about 30,000 years ago. That would be the point I would suggest a soul came into play.

Pre-fall redemption was not needed, because sin had not yet entered the world. But the Bible states that there was a beginning, and shortly after the beginning, there was sin. Do we then assume that the period from man getting a soul to where sin entered was 20,000 years?

[August]

Your timeline is missing an event:

Creation -> Fall -> Old Testament -> Christ -> New Testament

The difference is important, because pre-Adam would have been pre-Fall, which was the reason Christ's death was required in the first place.

I get that, but it doesn't work. The people that lived before 10,000 years ago were apparently self-aware, and there clearly was sin in the world. Unless Adam was at least 20,000 years earlier than we currently assume.

[MarcusOfLycia]

If you take the position that sin existed before Adam, there's a lot of theological implications and a lot of meanings that get messed up real fast. It makes the entire Garden of Eden scenario untrue, it removes Satan from the equation of tempting man to sin in the first place, etc. It basically makes the first few chapters of the Bible totally irrelevant if you ask me.

[August]

If you take the position that sin existed before Adam, there's a lot of theological implications and a lot of meanings that get messed up real fast. It makes the entire Garden of Eden scenario untrue, it removes Satan from the equation of tempting man to sin in the first place, etc. It basically makes the first few chapters of the Bible totally irrelevant if you ask me.

Well, that is the problem and why I brought it up.

It is not my personal position, but I have seen it argued by some atheists.

[MarcusOfLycia]

Gotcha. I'm curious to see how others answer it, too. I've had a real hectic couple of weeks, so I'm pretty mentally exhausted. I'll try looking at it though when I recover a bit. I always get stuck on these sorts of things and think about them all the time til I think of a decent answer or encounter one that some proposes.

[zoegirl]

I'm still pondering....it's a good question...

[RickD]

The only thing I can come up with is that there were hominids that kept getting more physically human-like, until a point where the hominid was almost the same, or the same as modern humans. I mean physically. That would solve the problem of humans sinning before Adam. Not human(no soul and no concept of God and death) equals no sin. Just like any other animal. Then maybe God then created the first human, and breathed life into him(soul). All physical evidence of pre-Adam peoples would get to a point of being almost no different, or no different than modern humans. That would account for the findings of "people" that existed before the time Adam was assumed to be created. That would still leave a problem such as the Australian aborigines. They seem to be the same now as they were 40,000 years ago.

Thanks, august. You've got me thinking too much now.

[Gman]

Fyi... Reason's to Believe is putting the first humans around 50 thousand years ago and the flood around 40 thousand years ago...

[Gman]

As far as we can determine, redemptive history started between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, and went through the different periods from there. Even if we are liberal with the evidence, and stretch it to 15,000 years, it still leaves a whole lot of human history before the Biblical redemptive history starts.

What happened to those who lived before the Biblical history of redemption started?

John I'm not sure where you are getting the redemptive history times.. You mean the genealogies?