Adam formed of the dust - Redux

[Guest tomk]

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

<begin speculation>

Why do we take this literally:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground

But we take this figuratively:

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

God is the Father of our Spirits -- the creator of worlds without end -- but when it comes to making man IN HIS IMAGE -- He resorts to a pottery wheel? It just doesn't make sense to me. Especially when He had a perfectly suitable female companion with whom He could literally "make MAN in His own image" just as we make children in OUR image (which ultimately is GOD's image)

Doesn't it make more sense that Adam and Eve were made by Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother in the same way that we make children today?

Can this hypothesis be true, and not take anything away from the "Only Begottenness" of the Savior?

I believe it can.

<end speculation>

[Hemidakota]

Noting the Son tells story to illustrate gospel principles. He was no different from His own learning from the FATHER. Perhaps a story is being told of the beginning.

[lilered]

Make sense to who? Man! God does things in his way, not the way man believes he should.

Check out Nephi 9: 28 & 29

Under your scenario, Heavenly Mother would have had given birth to both Adam and Eve, then as brother and sister they would have the head of the first family here on earth?

[Hemidakota]

28 O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.

29 But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.

Ok!

Not to minced versus out of content, let see exactly what Nephi was talking about:

27 But wo unto him that has the law given, yea, that has all the commandments of God, like unto us, and that transgresseth them, and that wasteth•the days of his probation, for awful is his state!

Tom, let me find the oppossing views of President Young, Elder Pratt, Moses, Abraham, and Prophet Joseph Smith.

[Hemidakota]

May want to look at Professor Draper findings:

The Creation of Humankind, and Allegory?: A Note on Abraham 5:7, 14–16

[Hemidakota]

Check out the footnotes.

15. An account made by Josiah Quincy in the spring of 1844 gives some supporting evidence that Joseph Smith understood the Garden of Eden story in a literal sense. According to Mr. Quincy, the Prophet showed him some of the papyrus material. Quincy reported that, "Some parchments inscribed with hieroglyphics were then offered us [by Joseph Smith]. They were preserved under glass and handled with great respect. . . . 'Here we have the earliest account of the Creation, from which Moses composed the First Book of Genesis.' The parchment last referred to showed a rude drawing of a man and woman, and a serpent walking upon a pair of legs. I ventured to doubt the propriety of providing the reptile in question with this unusual means of locomotion. 'Why, that's as plain as a pikestaff,' was the rejoinder. 'Before the Fall snakes always went about on legs, just like chickens. They were deprived of them, in punishment for their agency in the ruin of man'" (Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals [boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883], 386–87, as quoted in The Pearl of Great Price, Studies in Scripture, vol. 2, ed. Robert L. Millet and Kent P. Jackson [salt Lake City: Randall Book, 1985], 92).

[Guest tomk]

Make sense to who? Man! God does things in his way, not the way man believes he should.

Check out Nephi 9: 28 & 29

Under your scenario, Heavenly Mother would have had given birth to both Adam and Eve, then as brother and sister they would have the head of the first family here on earth?

Spiritually, isn't it that way, anyway?

[Hemidakota]

You have to get past 'the ramblings of Professor Nibleys' [i have great respect for this teacher] talks, but contain wealth of tibits that has me searching the sideliners curves he throws out to the class.

However, note the part when he talks about Adam.

Before Adam - Maxwell Institute Papers

[Guest tomk]

Can you sum it up for me?

What are his conclusions?

[Hemidakota]

Which one?

[Guest tomk]

This one:

Before Adam - Maxwell Institute Papers

[Hemidakota]

Point 1 - Something I always talked about here over several posting about observational viewpoints of different authors regarding the same scenery:

The Latter-day Saints have four basic Adam stories, those found in the Bible, the book of Moses, the book of Abraham, and the temple—each seen from a different angle, like the four Gospels, but not conflicting if each is put into its proper context. And what is that context? One vitally important principle that everyone seems to have ignored until now is the consideration that everything is presented to us in these accounts through the eyes, or from the point of view of, the individual observers who tell the story. Historians long ago came to realize that the boast of German Geschichtswissenschaft—to report what happened at all times "wie es eigentlich geschah," the whole truth, the complete event in holistic perfection as it would be seen by the eye of God—is a philosopher's pipe dream. And, indeed, it is from the philosophers that we got it, rooted as the fathers and the doctors are in the sublime absolutes of Alexandria: There is God and God only, and his holy and infallible book was written by his very finger, untouched by the human mind. We must credit the Moslems with carrying this doctrine all the way. Not only is it the crime of Shirk to credit the existence of anything besides God, but his book is as divine and ineffable as he is. I have been told that it is presumptuous for mortals, let alone infidels, to pretend to understand anything in it.

The Latter-day Saints, inheritors of the Christian version of this teaching, are constantly converting statements of limited application to universal or at least sweeping generalities. To illustrate, I was told as a child that the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians, and the Andes all came into existence overnight during the great upheavals of nature that took place at the time of the Crucifixion—an absurdity that plays into the hands of critics of the Book of Mormon. But what we find in the 3 Nephi account when we read it carefully is a few sober, factual, eyewitness reports describing an earthquake of 8-plus on the Richter scale in a very limited area. Things that appear unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make perfectly good sense from another. The Nautical Almanac gives the exact time of sunrise and sunset for every day of the year, yet astronauts know that the sun neither rises nor sets except from a particular point of view, the time of the event being strictly dependent on the exact location. From that point of view and that only, it is strictly correct and scientific to say that the sun does rise and set. Just so, the apparently strange and extravagant phenomena described in the scriptures are often correct descriptions of what would have appeared to a person in a particular situation. You and I have never been in those situations. To describe what he sees to people who have never seen anything like it, the writer must reach for metaphors and similes: "His eyes were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; . . . his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters." (D&C 110:3; italics added.) There was no fire, no snow, no rushing waters, but that is as near as Joseph Smith and Sidney Ridgon could come to telling us what they experienced when "the veil was taken from [their] minds, and the eyes of [their] understanding were opened!" (D&C 110:1.) They were reporting as well as they could what they had seen from a vantage point on which we have never stood.

Professor Hugh B. Nibley

[Hemidakota]

Point 2 - Sideline curve - If Adam obeyed, he would qualify for the higher trust

"They obeyed" is the active voice, introducing a teaching that, in my opinion, is by far the most significant and distinct aspect of Mormonism. It is the principle of maximum participation, of the active cooperation of all of God's creatures in the working out of his plans, which, in fact, are devised for their benefit: "This is my work and my glory" (Moses 1:39.) Everybody gets into the act. Every creature, to the limit of its competence, is given the supreme compliment of being left on its own, so that the word "obey" is correctly applied. "We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell." (Abraham 3:24.) Why? "And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them." (Abraham 3:25.) What he commands is what will best fulfill the measure of their existence, but they are not forced to do it—they are not automata. Adam was advised not to eat the fruit but was told at the same time that he was permitted to do it. It was up to him whether he would obey or not. If he did obey, he would qualify for a higher trust.

[Hemidakota]

Point 3: He believes the same way as Joseph Smith, Adam was made from the elements of the earth

The book of Abraham is more specific. After the great cycles of creation come the smaller cycles, starting with a very dry planet followed by a very wet phase. (Abraham 5:5–6.) Man is formed of the elements of the earth like any other creature, and he lives in a very lush period, a garden, which is however reduced to an oasis in an encroaching desert. (Abraham. 5:7–10.) To this limited terrain he is perfectly adapted. It is a paradise. How long does he live there? No one knows, for this was still "after the Lord's time," not ours. (Abraham 5:13.) It was only when he was forced out of this timeless, changeless paradise that he began to count the hours and days, moving into a hard semi-arid world of thorns, thistles, and briars, where he had to toil and sweat in the heat just to stay alive and lost his old intimacy with the animals. (Genesis 3:17–19.)

Joseph Smith accepted this notion while Brigham Young and Parley P. Pratt did not.

[Hemidakota]

Point 4 [conclusion] - sideliner about time reckoning:

The questions most commonly asked are: When did it happen? How long did it take? Our texts make it very clear that we are not to measure the time and periods involved by our chronometers and calendars. Until Adam underwent that fatal change of habitat, body chemistry, diet, and psyche that went with the Fall, nothing is to be measured in our years, "for the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning." (Abraham 5:13.) Until then, time is measured from their point of view, not ours. As far as we are concerned it can be any time, and there would be no point to insisting on this again and again if all we had to do to convert their time to our time was multiply our years by 365,000. Theirs was a different time. The only numbers we are given designated the phases of periods of creation: "and this was the second time" (Abraham 4:8), "and it was the third time" (4:13), and so on. The periods are numbered but never measured. The Gods called them "days," but the text is at great pains to make clear that it was day and night from their point of view, when our time had not yet been appointed. "And the Gods called the light Day, and the darkness they called Night. And . . . from the evening until morning they called night; . . . and this was the first, or the beginning, of that which they called day and night. (Abraham 4:5.) Doctrine and Covenants 130:4–5 explains that "the reckoning of God's time, angel's time, prophet's time, and man's time [is] according to the planet on which they reside." That implies different time schemes at least. In moving from one system to another one also changes one's timing. "There are no angels who minister to this earth but those who do belong or have belonged to it. (D&C 130:5.)

[Hemidakota]

I don't know if the latest release diaries of Joseph Smith will yield anything knew since most of it has to translated [humor] from handwriting.

Now, you have different set of viewpoints. I know there is article, long term memory issues here at work, about the biblical term 'Dust' as an element. It was quite intriguing but I need to do some digging but for now, my home computer requires a new flat screen since the old one final died.

[Moksha]

I think science teaches us to take allegory for what it is - something to impart wisdom and a sense of God's grandeur - not as something to stymie our understanding of God's methodology.

It is difficult for scientists to create amino acids, the building blocks of life in a laboratory, let alone imagining them springing from common dust. Dust in this instance would have to mean organic molecules.

[lostnfound]

Point 3: He believes the same way as Joseph Smith, Adam was made from the elements of the earth

Joseph Smith accepted this notion while Brigham Young and Parley P. Pratt did not.

Why did they disagree?

[MaidservantX]

I would not advance it as doctrine of the Church, but in my own mind I easily reconcile that "dust" means elements -- and most pertinently that our bodies are subject to the forces of a physical (and mortal) world as we begin this journey of overcoming those very same elements (through the atonement and obedience). Also in my own mind, I accept that Adam and Eve were born -- that all humans are born, going into an infinite past history. I am curious about the notion that God the Father is the physical father of Adam; I have heard this before, and while I am open to it, I am in the process of some thoughts and learning that do not allow me to conclude that at this time.

[japacific]

Do you think there were any people before Adam?

[Snow]

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

<begin speculation>

Why do we take this literally:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground

But we take this figuratively:

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

God is the Father of our Spirits -- the creator of worlds without end -- but when it comes to making man IN HIS IMAGE -- He resorts to a pottery wheel? It just doesn't make sense to me. Especially when He had a perfectly suitable female companion with whom He could literally "make MAN in His own image" just as we make children in OUR image (which ultimately is GOD's image)

Doesn't it make more sense that Adam and Eve were made by Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother in the same way that we make children today?

Can this hypothesis be true, and not take anything away from the "Only Begottenness" of the Savior?

I believe it can.

<end speculation>

Depends of which creation account to believe. The one in Genesis 1 or the one in Genesis 2.

[lostnfound]

Do you think there were any people before Adam?

nope

[Moksha]

Do you think there were any people before Adam?

The Neanderthals. Don't know about classifying Homo Erectus as people in the sense we would need to do Temple ordinances for them.

[japacific]

What if they found the bones of people that lived before when Adam would have lived?

[Moksha]

What if they found the bones of people that lived before when Adam would have lived?

Unless of course you envision Adam as being among the first of the Homo Sapiens series on the plains of the Serengeti around 200,000 years ago, like I do, then there would be many bones of modern man found prior to a circa 6,000 BC Adam.