Answering Big Questions From Genesis

Dr. William Lane Craig tackles some of the most controversial questions concerning the first book of the Bible. Was Adam a real, historical person? If so, who was he and when did he live? Drawing on his book In Quest of the Historical Adam, Dr. Craig argues that Genesis 1–11 is best read as "mytho-history": grounded in real people and events, yet told in the figurative, symbolic language of ancient Near Eastern myth — not unlike the way the Psalms or apocalyptic literature aren't meant to be taken literally.

Dr. Craig makes the case that Adam and Eve must predate not only Homo sapiens but Neanderthals, whom he argues were fully human, tool-making, dead-burying persons, placing a historical founding couple as far back as 750,000 years ago, among the species Homo heidelbergensis. Along the way, he addresses why he considers young earth creationism a "nightmare scenario" for reconciling faith and science, why the doctrine of original sin doesn't require what most people assume it does, why a real Adam matters for the authority of Scripture and the words of Jesus, and how evolution and a historical Adam might fit together through what he calls a divinely imparted "rational soul."