On the Historicity of Adam, Evolution & Pre-Adamites

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said?…”

Gen. 3:1

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to… birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things… who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.”

Rom. 1:22-25

“Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding… oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.”

1 Tim. 6:20,21

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Order of Contents

Articles
Books
Latin
On the History of
On Theistic Evolution
For Pre-Adamites

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Articles

1600’s

van Mastricht, Peter – ‘Do All Men Owe their Origin to the One Adam?’  in Theoretical-Practical Theology (RHB), vol. 3, ch. 9, section 13

“The philosophers, among whom was Aristotle, because being devoid of revelation, they could not reach to the first man, thought of an infinite subordination of men, and at the same time, of the eternity of the world.  Democritus is reported to have stated that men crawled forth from the earth like maggots.  Epicurus said that man was a composite of the fortuitous confluence of atoms, and in addition that
they arose from the earth like fungi, and are daily animated by the certain position of the stars.  Paracelsus [d. 1541], besides the human posterity of Adam, numbered four other non-Adamic races of men, and assigned them to each of the elements…”

Turretin, Francis – Institutes of Elenctic Theology  (P&R), vol. 1, 5th Topic, ‘Creation’, Question 8, ‘Was Adam the First of Mortals, or did Men Exist Before Him?  And is the Epoch of the Created World and of Men’s Deeds to be Referred much farther back than Adam?  The Former We Affirm; the Latter We Deny, Against the Preadamites’, pp. 457–62

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1800’s

Dabney, Robert – On the Theory of Evolution  being chs. 6 and 9 of The Sensualistic Philosophy  Buy  1875, p. 107 ff. and p. 165 ff., 23 & 43 pp. respectively

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1900’s

Berkhof, Louis – On Evolution  HTML  1949  two excerpts, 14 & 15 paragraphs respectively from his Systematic Theology 

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Books

1800’s

Hodge, Charles – What is Darwinism?  Buy  (1874)  190 pp.

Hodge takes up the theory of Evolution and has concluding sections titled, “The Evolution Theory Contrary to Facts and to Scripture,” and “Darwinism Tantamount to Atheism.”

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1900’s

Mauro, Philip

Evolution at the Bar  1922  80 pp.

Mauro (1859-1952) was a Bible believing lawyer who wrote a number of excellent works.

The World and its God  1905  125 pp.

Morris, Henry – The Twilight of Evolution  Buy  1963  97 pp.

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2000’s

Versteeg, J.P. – Adam in the New Testament: Mere Teaching Model or First Historical Man?  tr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (1978; P & R Publishing, 2012)

Here is a review by Dr. Wes Bredenhof.

VanDoodewaard, William – The Quest for the Historical Adam: Genesis, Hermeneutics, and Human Origins  (Reformation Heritage Books, 2015)  400 pp.

Here is a review by Dr. Wes Bredenhof.

ed. Phillips, Richard – God, Adam, and You: Biblical Creation Defended and Applied  (Presbyterian & Reformed, 2015)  210 pp.

Here is a review.

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Latin

Articles

1600’s

Saldenus, Guilielmus – Exercitation 5, ‘A Brief on the Pre-Adamites’  in Theological Leisures… (Amsterdam: 1684), pp. 59–72

Heidegger, Johann Heinrich – Exercitation 4, ‘Adam & Eve’, section 38  in Rashi Avot: Select Exercitations on the Sacred History of the Patriarchs  (Amsterdam, 1667), pp. 137-140

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Books

1600’s

Maresius, Samuel – A Refutation of the Fable of the Pre-Adamites, Discharged in Seven Main Theses, with an Apologetic Preface for the Authenticity of the Scriptures  (Groningen, 1656)  689 pp.  ToC

Hulsius, Antonius – No Pre-Adamite Being, or a Confutation of a Certain Vain and Socinian Dream, in which a Certain Anonymous Author [Peyrere], under Pretext of Sacred Scripture, has Lately Attempted to Impose upon the Incautious, Pretending that Men were in the World Before Adam  (Leiden, 1656)  107 pp.

Hulsius (1615-1685) was a reformed professor of theology at Leiden.

Pythius, Joannes – An Exetastic[?] Response to a Tract by an Uncertain Author, Recently Published with the Title, Pre-Adamites, in Two Books  (Leiden, 1656)  414 pp.  No ToC

Pythius was reformed.

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1700’s

Bernal de Quiros, Hyacinthe – A Historical-Critical Dissertation on Pre-Adamites, being Some Positions out of Ecclesiastical History  (Bern, 1758)  68 pp.

Bernal (-1758) was a Romanist theologian for Benedict XIV, but then he became reformed in 1752 and became a professor of Church history at Lausanne, Switzerland at that time until his death in 1758.

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On the History of

On the Whole of Church History

Wikipedia – ‘Pre-Adamite’

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On the 1600’s

Articles

Popkin, R.H. – ‘Heresy: Isaac LaPeyrère and the Pre-Adamite Scandal’  in D. N. Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins  (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)

La Peyrere (1596–1676) was a French-born theologian, writer and lawyer.  La Peyrère was pressured to renounce his views and publicly converted to the Catholic Church towards the end of his life, though the sincerity of this conversion has been questioned.

Morrow, Jeffrey L. – ‘Pre-Adamites, Politics and Criticism:
Isaac La Peyrère’s Contribution to Modern Biblical Studies’  in Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies, 23 pp.

Bredenhof, Wes – ‘Pre-Adamites — Old and New’  2015

Dr. Bredenhof contextualizes La Peyrere’s work and sketches Maresius’s Latin refutation of it.

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Book

Popkin, R.H. – Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676): His Life, Work, and Influence  (Leiden: Brill, 1987)

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On the Late-1800’s

Webb, R.A. – ‘Girardeau & the Evolution Controversy’  1916  54 pp.  being ch. 8 of The Life Work of John L. Girardeaup. 231 ff.  Buy  ed. George Blackburn

Here is a chapter length history of Girardeau’s courageous stand against evolution as a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, SC, which divided the faculty.

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On Theistic Evolution

Theistic Evolution is the belief that God (Theos) providentially guided the process of Evolution.  Sometimes it critiques evolution by chance, but then affirms that the intervention of God overcomes the improbabilities of chance.  It still remains incompatible with the Genesis account.

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Articles

Payne, J. Barton – “Theistic Evolution & the Hebrew of Genesis 1-2”  Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 8.2 (1965), pp. 85-90

Barton argues against Theistic Evolution.

Bredenhof, Wes – ‘Theistic Evolution and the Creation of ‘Human Beings”  2018

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For Pre-Adamites

Peyrerius’s main arguments interpreting the Biblical data from his two main Latin works are given in 11 points by Alexander Winchell, Adamites and Preadamites; or, a popular discussion concerning the remote representatives of the human species and their relation to the Biblical Adam  (Syracuse, NY: Roberts, 1878), pp. 5-6.

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Related Pages

Creation

Commentaries on Genesis