Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?

Many have doubts if Adam and Eve existed really

The first men in Genesis may well have been rudimentary, as shown by the evidence of fossils of prehistoric times. The religious ideas of Adam may have been pure, but in the form of practical insights as primitive peoples and children; It was not of high theological knowledge.

Adão e Eva existiram de verdade - 1600x1200

Adam (= Adam, man) and Eve (= Mother of the living) represent the human being created by God. They are as real as the human race is real. God presented the human his origins, the real man and woman and not fictional beings. They existed in fact; they were the first humans who received from God an immortal soul.

Adam and Eve are not proper names

On the other hand, Adam and Eve are not proper names like John, Peter and Maria. So, they do not necessarily represent only the first couple of humans, but humans first. They are names of Hebrew origin meaning “man” and “woman”. So the Church leaves the scientists to study how humans emerged as brought by God; If only a couple (monogenism) or several couples from the same trunk (poligenism). What the Church does not accept is that humanity has come at the same time, several trunks, in different places.

So what the Bible means to teach us?

The Book of Genesis, in its first three chapters, uses figurative language to reveal religious truths, not historical or scientific. In summary, the Bible wants to teach us the following:

1) God created the human being, man and woman, and may have used the evolution of pre-existent matter until we reach the degree of complexity of the human body;

2) the Lord granted the first parents special spiritual graces: “justice” (harmony with his wife, with nature and with God), and “State of Holiness” (deep communion with God, divine life and participation), preternatural gifts (don’t suffer, die, infused knowledge, etc).

3) the creator showed the first parents a life model figured by the prohibition of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This meant that the man shouldn’t be the arbiter of good and evil “, and he was raised to the special communion with God, and should not simply act according to his good sense or its rational intuitions, but according to standards of the dignity as son and daughters of God;

4) man, by pride and disobedience, said ‘ no ‘ to this model of life and to the invitation from the Creator, thus losing the “State of Holiness” and “justice”. In this way, the suffering and death entered the world because of original sin; This led St Paul to say that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6, 23).

There’s no need to exaggerate the perfection of the primitive State of mankind because of the preternatural gifts, and “justice”. It was a beautiful state, but only under the religious and moral point of view, not under the aspect of civilization or culture.
 

Felipe Aquino

Professor Felipe Aquino is a widower, father of five children. On TV Canção Nova he presents the program “Escola da Fé” [School of faith] and “Pergunte e Responderemos” [Ask and respond], on Radio he presents the program “in the heart of the Church”. On weekends he preaches deepening meetings throughout Brazil and abroad. He wrote 73 books of Catholic background by publishers, Loyola and Cleopas and Canção Nova. His teacher’s page: www.cleofas.com.br Twitter: @pfelipeaquino

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