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Comment by jerzyt | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer - the last thing I want to do is to start a religious debate on HN. So, please, don't down-vote me because I'm going to mention Bible here. But I find it interesting that the Individual Ancestors Point is not that far off from the Biblical estimate of the Earth's age of about 6,000 to 15,000 years. So forget about "planting" the planet with "fake" fossils, Adam and Eve are right on the same timeline as the IAP. Which really isn't that surprising because that basically indicates the age of a modern human being, capable of passing down stories through an invention of a language, and eventually writing them down. So, at least in this case, the Bible got the math down fairly well, and I'm bringing it up purely as a historical document here.

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I don't really understand the point you're making, but the Identical Ancestors Point isn't a fixed point in history; it keeps moving forwards. So it is different now from what it was when the book of Genesis was written.

Taking the Bible at face value, Adam and Eve were created about 6000 years ago. At this time cities had already existed for thousands of years. So no, the Bible did not get "the math down fairly well".

Honestly, that's not even taking the Bible at face value. Attempting to date events in the Bible was pretty popular at one time, but it required a lot of special pleading and ignoring discrepancies (it's not like the Bible just says in the intro "this covers events from 4000BC to 22AD" or whatever; attempts at doing this mostly involve trying to infer it from ancestry and quasi-historical events mentioned), and isn't generally taken seriously by modern theologians.

Obviously the timeline in the Bible is ridiculous with people living for hundreds of years and so on. But if you take the genealogies at face value, this is the rough time scale since creation you end up with.

Which is of course a good reason not to take the Bible at face value as historical overall (even if some of the parts are reasonably historical).

A classic article in The Onion pokes fun at this: "Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World"

https://www.theonion.com/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-g...

That is an interesting point. In Hinduism there's some mythology around astronomical cycles that have similar spans to those mentioned in Bible. I've a far-out theory that Bible is actually referring to the same cycles.

Side track: there's a serious argument that parts of Bible are translated pretty badly (which puts into perspective people quoting it verbatum). I've been told of a specific example where (excuse the paraphrasing) Eve is said to emerge from the side of Adam, as in from the interior of his torso, and it's popularly taken to be a metaphor. Some interpret it to mean that a woman is somehow a byproduct of man, and thus lesser. Anyway, someone actually took up checking the translation and concluded that it's not that Eve emerged from Adam's side, but that she emerged at his side, as in stood by him. Going by what's written in a super old book that's been translated and altered many many times is, well, adventurous.

Hmm, I was really surprised about the part on woman creation, as I've never read such version (in Polish), but, indeed this https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2&versi... (very) strange translation mentions woman to be taken from man's rib.

This translation https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201&ver... looks much better

"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them"

and it makes much more sense in context of the rest of the Bible, especially New Testament.

You are looking at two different verses. NIV have basically the same text for Genesis 2:21:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2%3A21&...

> So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.

He took a rib from the left or from the right side? The truth would be easy to prove by counting how many ribs a man has on which side. If it's true, one side would have one rib more.

If the number of ribs is the same, then it's either that God didn't create a woman from man's rib, or he took two ribs, one from each side, and created two women.

Or the loss of rib isn't a form lamarckian inheritance.

I love this form of theology. Maybe the rib spawned the woman, similarly to how a woman gives birth to a child, without perishing herself.

I had heard a different theory, that this may be a mythological explanation on why humans don't have a penile bone like many common farm animals at that time (with 'rib' being a mistranslation of a more vague 'bone'). This would also make more symbolic sense, as a penile bone would be more obviously related to creation than a rib.

Quoting the wiki article for penile bone:

> The baculum (also penis bone, penile bone, or os penis, os genitale or os priapi) is a bone found in the penis of many placental mammals. It is absent in the human penis, but present in the penises of other primates, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee.

Well, ancient Israelis were quite likely to have known that sheep and goats have a baculum (and perhaps wonder why they do not), and less likely to have known about gorillas and chimpanzees.

Do you know this is actually a mistranslation from Hebrew, or are you just repeating an urban legend?

Image search for הצלע pretty much gives rib (and rib cuts). On the other hand, it's unclear that all of the many biblical references to feet are meant literally as pedal extremities.

I might well be perpetuating an urban legend.

Edit: seems that there is some theory advanced by real biblical scholars, but it also seems that it is highly unlikely to be true:

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/god-didn-t-use-adam-s-penis-b...

If you take the Bible at face value it contradicts itself. It all depended on the fan interpretation to to make sense. If you are non religious and think about the old testament just as what it was, its easier to understand the contradictions.

(1) In Genesis 1 the god creates animals before the man. He creates man and woman and tells them to be fruitful and multiply.

(2) In Genesis 2 God creates Adam before animals. Adam and Eve are put into special place called Eden and are not aware of their sexuality until they sin.

Judaism is folk religion of the Israelites, not universal religion. Old testament tells the story from the point of Jewish tribes. in it's current form it was created around (538–332 BC). Israelites “God’s chosen people” in the old testament. All the interaction with the god and men is actually about Israelites and God, not the humanity and God.

One way to think this is that genesis 2 is the general creation myth, Genesis 2 is the story of how God created two first Jews. Jewish people started to separate religiously from other Canaanites between 1200 and 1000 BCE, so maybe you can put the Adam and Eve myth there.

Just a note, but actually relevant to the main topic of the thread:

> Judaism is folk religion of the Israelites, ...

In the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah was just one of twelve tribes. Nowadays, the Samaritans still consider themselves distinct from the Jews with different tribal lineage.

> So, at least in this case, the Bible got the math down fairly well, and I'm bringing it up purely as a historical document here.

No. Genesis is not a historical document. It is an allegory about creation. Adam and Eve need not necessarily be the first humans, but they were the first to receive a divine spark called "the soul".

Genesis is a creation myth, not an allegory. And according to Genesis Adam and Eve were the first humans.

I found these kind of observations interesting. Just a note, maybe it would have help you to avoid the downvotes if you had quotations on "Adam" and "Eve"

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