The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins, 10th Anniversary Edition

by Peter Enns

Publisher:

Baker

, 2021

Overview

Can Christianity and evolution coexist? Traditional Christian teaching presents Jesus as reversing the effects of the fall of Adam. But an evolutionary view of human origins doesn’t allow for a literal Adam, making evolution seemingly incompatible with what Genesis and the apostle Paul say about him. For Christians who both accept evolution and want to take the Bible seriously, this can present a faith-shaking tension.

Popular Old Testament scholar Peter Enns offers a way forward by explaining how this tension is caused not by the discoveries of science but by false expectations about the biblical texts. In this 10th anniversary edition, Enns updates readers on developments in the historical Adam debate, helping them reconcile Genesis and Paul with current views on evolution and human origins. This edition includes an afterword that explains Enns’s own theological evolution since the first edition released.

Key Features

• Explores Christianity and evolution.
• Offers a way forward by explaining how this tension is caused.
• Helps to reconcile Genesis and Paul with current views on evolution and human origins.

Contents

• Introduction
• Part 1: Genesis: An Ancient Story of Israelite Self-Definition
• 1. Genesis and the Challenges of the Nineteenth Century: Science, Biblical Criticism, and Biblical Archaeology
• 2. When Was Genesis Written?
• 3. Stories of Origins from Israel’s Neighbors
• 4. Israel and Primordial Time
• Part 2: Understanding Paul’s Adam
• 5. Paul’s Adam and the Old Testament
• 6. Paul as an Ancient Interpreter of the Old Testament
• 7. Paul’s Adam
• Conclusion: Adam Today--Nine Theses
• Afterword: Adam, Evangelicalism, and the Metanarrative of Evolution
• Indexes

Praise for The Evolution of Adam

Pete Enns offers us another masterwork. With Enns’s characteristic accessibility, The Evolution of Adam is a road map for how Christians of sincere faith can understand scriptural depictions of human origins while also accepting the theory of evolution via natural selection as scientific fact.

—Mike McHargue, science expert, bestselling author, and podcaster

If you’re not Christian, you might be surprised to learn that Christians fight a lot about the Bible’s debut character, Adam--or maybe not. Christians fight about a lot. If you are a Christian, you should buy Pete Enns’s book. I bought it in graduate school and was unforgettably impacted by its rare combination of scholarship and soul. You will not find a more honest and empowering book on the origins of life than this one.

—Jonathan Merritt, contributing writer for The Atlantic; author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch

Pete Enns’s still-relevant The Evolution of Adam is thoughtful, accessible, and timely. Enns facilitates a conversation between traditional approaches to reading the Scriptures and scientific understandings of the world, the cosmos, and the human species. He does this by drawing attention to the contexts in which the Scriptures were produced and interpreted and by discussing how those contexts contribute to an understanding of Scripture that may be new to contemporary readers. His synthesis respects the faith and good intentions of religious readers as well as the scholarly and scientific bodies of knowledge of the last three centuries without constructing some sort of Frankensteinian hybrid. His nine theses provide a concise, comprehensible approach to what can be a difficult conversation.

—Wil Gafney, Right Rev. Samuel B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible, Brite Divinity School

Product Details

• Title: The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins, 10th Anniversary Edition
• Author: Peter Enns
• Publisher: Baker
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Pages: 272
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9781587435201, 9781493432707, 1587435209, 1493432702
• Resource ID: LLS:EVLTNADAM10
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-15T20:40:15Z

About Peter Enns

Peter Enns is an American Old Testament scholar and was professor of Old Testament and biblical hermeneutics at Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS), Philadelphia until 2008. He has a BA from Messiah College (1982), an MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary (1989), and MA (1993) and PhD (1994) from Harvard University where he also served as a Teaching Fellow from 1990–1994. Enns was the editor of the Westminster Theological Journal from 2000–2005. WTS suspended Enns following the end of the Spring semester, 2008 due to the theological issues raised in his book Inspiration and Incarnation. Enns decided to leave WTS after 14 years and did so on mutually agreeable terms with the WTS administration. He is currently the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University. He also writes and podcasts at The Bible for Normal People.