Creationism Series Part Two

Adam and Eve’s Time in the Garden

How long were Adam and Eve before they were driven out?

Creationism Series Part Two

Khen Lim




Adam in the Garden of Eden (Image source: hopestillfloats.wordpress.com)

The question of how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden has wider implications as to how different people read into it. The liberal narrative rails against Young Earth Creationism, pushing the idea in schools, universities and colleges that millions or perhaps billions of years could have lapsed before the couple were banished from the Garden. 

At least that’s the view of once sworn atheist (but later a converted Christian and theistic evolutionist) John N Clayton who wrote the book, ‘All the Stupidity of the Bible.’

According to Clayton, Genesis 3:16’s talk of God’s curse of childbirth pain on Eve was compelling evidence that she must have given birth to a whole lot more children while in the Garden of Eden than the Bible reveals. He reasoned that if that weren’t the case, then God’s curse is meaningless:

“Then He said to the woman, ‘I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy and in pain, you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband but he will rule over you.” (Gen 3:16, NLT)

Clayton’s view is not difficult to understand but that doesn’t mean he is entirely right. According to his logic, God can only “sharpen” childbirth when Eve had already known what childbirth pain was all about in the first place. What this then means is that Eve would have had children before the sin was committed and certainly while she and Adam were still in the Garden. 

What that then implies is that they would have to be in the Garden for a lot longer a period that we thought. This is because childbirth as well as rearing children requires considerable time, time that may suggest that they were in the Garden for an extended period of time.

In his website ‘Does God Exist?’ (1980), Clayton wrote:

“Every evidence we have biblically indicated that mankind’s beginning in the Garden of Eden was not a short period which involved one man and one woman.”

If that were the case, Adam and Eve would have to have lived in the Garden for quite a while because Genesis 4:17 tells us that after they were driven out, Cain then went through a series of events, beginning with the murder of his younger brother followed by his separation from his family. In turn thereafter:

“Cain left the Lord’s presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” (Gen 4:16, NLT)

He didn’t just settle there, his wife bore him a son and named him Enoch. After that:

“Then Cain founded a city, which he named Enoch, after his son.” (Gen 4:17, NLT)

Clayton insists that to build a city from scratch requires far more manpower than just he and his wife could expend and with this, he would also have needed more time to first build up his family. In much the same way as Noah who required his family to help him build the Ark, Cain would therefore have required more hands to help him; certainly far more than just he, his wife and Enoch. Verse 18 adds that Enoch begot a son Irad, Irad begot a son Mehujael, Mehujael begot a son Methushael and then Methushael begot a son Lamech.

Further down, Cain’s genealogy expands all the way to verse 24. However these verses tell of a time after Enoch. So, for Cain to have children prior to Enoch during his time in the Garden (assuming he was born before the Fall), they would have been offspring the Bible doesn’t talk about. And that’s a lot of assumptions to make!

Clayton’s claims are very hard to accept for a few reasons. Firstly, the Bible did say that Adam lived till he was 930 years of age (5:5). Simply put, this is another way of saying that if at all, he couldn’t have been in the Garden for longer than his own lifespan. That in itself is the limit that Scripture set for the stay in the Garden.

The second thing to be mindful of is that Seth was certainly born after Cain because he was God’s replacement for Abel who was murdered (4:25); that and the fact that Seth was born outside the Garden. Genesis 5:3 then reveals when he was born, his father Adam was already 130 years old. Conclusively then, Adam and Eve could not have been in the Garden for longer than 130 years.

Earlier on, we have established that as a first child, Cain without a doubt filled that credential. No doubt too, he was born outside the Garden. Carrying sin meant that he had to be born after the Fall of his parents. And once they fell into sin, God banished them without hesitation because He needed to safeguard the Tree of Life. 

Thereafter, anything is literally possible including the very prospect that Adam and Eve had a whole brood of children with outside of the Garden. Remember that Genesis 4:1 affirms the first conception – meaning Cain – only after they were expelled from Eden.

In Genesis 1:28, God gave Adam and Eve a hugely important command:

“Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the Earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” (NLT)

Contextually, this command was given well before the two committed the sin. It was a blessing to go forth and populate the world with children in their likeness and this was also reflected in Isaiah 45:18. It was also a God-given mandate to be rulers over all other living matter. 

This command is important in our discussion especially from the standpoint of sin. We know that sin is doing the things God doesn’t want us to do and/or not doing the things God wants us to do.

Either way, sin is disobedience. When an instruction is handed down by God, we are to heed it to the very letter. Therefore when He commanded Adam and Eve not to partake of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it is a command that they should obey. The fact that they did not heed Him, a sin is committed.

Similarly, if God told them to “be fruitful and multiply,” that is also a command that they were to obey. Had they stayed on in the Garden for a far longer period than we thought, that command would have been fulfilled and it would be filled by more than just Adam and Eve. 

And in that sense, Cain and Abel would most likely have been born before the banishment. But Scripture has proven they were all born outside the Garden.

Therefore, to piece these together, the only way for Adam and Eve to obey God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply,” they would have done so only after they were driven out of the Garden. That command was heeded with the births of Cain and then Abel. Clayton’s view therefore is untenable.



Adam and Eve (Image source: ubdavid.org)

Even Christ Himself attested to the limited time that Adam and Eve stayed in the Garden. When He said, the devil “was a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44), He was referring to the curse of mortality upon all humans because of their sin of disobedience against God. In Luke 11:46-52 (NLT) when Jesus was accused of offending the legalistic Jews, He replied:

“Yes… what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands and you never lift a finger to ease the burden. What sorry awaits you! For you build monuments for the prophets your own ancestors killed long ago. But in fact, you stand as witnesses who agree with what your ancestors did. They killed the prophets and you join in their crime by building the monuments! This is what God in His wisdom said about you: ‘I will send prophets and apostles to them but they will kill some and persecute the others.’

“As a result, this generation will be held responsible for the murder of all God’s prophets from the creation of the world – from the murder of Abel to the murder of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, it will certainly be charged against this generation.

“What sorry awaits you experts in religious law! For you remove the key to knowledge from the people. You don’t enter the Kingdom yourselves and you prevent others from entering.”

The phrase “from the creation of the world” – or in other translations, “from the foundation of the world” – speaks to us of the Adamaic period. Just in case the reader gets foggy, Jesus added the parts “from the murder of Abel” just so that we are clear on which part of the genealogy He was referring to. 

Although theoretically, the time when Abel was murdered and the time of the actual Creation were distinctly apart, they were close enough for this purpose to be clear to the reader that Jesus was referring to the same Adamaic period.

If these two events were way too far apart in time, then it won’t make sense for the Lord to refer to the two events as if they were within the same time frame. In other words, unlike how Clayton theorised, the murder of Abel did not take long to materialise and therefore, the time Adam and Eve were in the Garden was but a tragically brief period.

In all of this that had happened, Satan was of course at the centre of it all. He and his cohorts – Matthew 13:38 (NLT) calls them ‘people who belong to the evil one’ – had laboured feverishly to destroy man at every opportunity. 

Since they were defeated and unceremoniously thrown out of Heaven, he has been persistently vengeful against God. He has been plotting and conniving. He has been so bent with hatred to buckle God’s plan as best as possible. He has been building his army and what better a way than to seek the services of God’s own kind!

In the form of the serpent, the devil visited upon Eve in the Garden of Eden with the view of executing his evil plan and that was to seek revenge against God. Completely vanquished and exiled he might be, Satan has no plans of simply walking with his tail between his legs and call it a day. Instead, what devastating defeat God inflicted on him simply made him madder. Such is his vengefulness:

“Terror will come to the Earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.” (Rev 12:12a, NLT)

While there is still time for him to wreak destruction, that is precisely what he planned to do. The difference, however, was that instead of hitting back at God, he resorted to rain havoc on His creation and what better than targeting Adam and Eve. And with that, Satan used all he had in his scheming cunningness to lure and devour them:

“The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the Garden?” (2 Cor 2:11, NLT)

Despite his inglorious defeat, the devil’s determination did not subside. Rather he was now even more determined to be the great deceiver that all of us have been warned against. The Apostle John reminds us how much of a seething liar he is:

“This great dragon – the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world – was thrown down to the Earth, and with all his angels.” (Rev 12:9, NLT)

Because God proved to be beyond his ability to hit back without suffering even worse defeats (Job 42:2, 1 Jn 4:4), Satan’s plan was to undermine human vulnerability. Animals would be very easy target but which one? Since there are literally thousands of different species, no one particular stood out to be more desirable than the others. Besides, there is much doubt as to whether such a plan would have hurt God.

On the other hand, to strike at God’s precious creation, the human, would be more devastating. The only living creations formed in His image (Gen 1:26-27) and much pleased with it (31), Adam followed by Eve worked out to be the ideal prey to him.

In his book entitled, ‘Systematic Theology,’ Rex A Turner Sr (1980) reinforced this view about how Satan chose to work:

“Satan cannot attack God directly; thus he employs various methods to attack man, God’s master creation.”

Satan knew that if he couldn’t get at God directly, it was fine because he had a better way to outrage Him. If he could aim squarely at the ‘apple of God’s eye’ and the ultimate creation of His infinite ingenuity, he would have played a great strategic hand. 

But there is one problem – time. Satan realised he did not have all the time in the world to make his move. He would have to strike at the very first opportunity he had. He couldn’t sit around and procrastinate.

Neither could he twiddle his thumbs and leave Adam and Eve alone to further and fruitfully develop – and strengthen – their relationship with his nemesis, God. In other words, if he left things too long, they would produce offspring that would simply make things even harder for him.

All of this meant that Satan was not in the position to wait. He did not have the luxury of time to overanalyse what his odds were. At this point, he saw the advantage and the opportunity. He knew he could really strike at God’s heart and grieve Him while his anger and bitterness were still simmering. 

His thirst to get even was simply going to have to be tapped as soon as possible. With a naïve pair like Adam and Eve, his evil plan could unfold in which he would forever spoil the innocence of humanity with sin. God’s perfect world would no longer be perfect and His creation in His likeness would be an embarrassment to Him.

Simply put, Clayton’s notion that all of this would take a lot of time to unfurl simply doesn’t work. Given the time frame that Satan would have had, the sense of urgency would have forced his hand.

Next, Clayton explained that Genesis 3:16’s use of the phrase ‘sharpen the pain of your pregnancy’ merely reinforces the conviction that Eve already understood childbearing pain except this time, it would be further amplified. However Eve didn’t have to have experienced childbirth to know what God’s curse was about. 



Eve lured by the devil (Image source: pinterest.com)

What God simply said could well amount to this: “Listen here, Eve, because of your part in committing the sin, the pain you are expected to encounter in childbirth would now increase.” Not only did she not have to have given birth to understand the concept of pain but in her relationship with God, she might already have understood what it meant.

What Clayton might not have taken into account is the many things that the Lord, in their communing, might have talked about. If He could explain Adam’s responsibility over the Garden of Eden as well as the naming of all the animals, He could just as easily talked about what pain was about. 

It might sound trivial but in any such dialogue between God and His two creations, anything can be discussed without the Bible fully exploring all of it. What we know in Scripture is what was probably deemed important for us to know but that doesn’t mean that, that was all they spoke about.

In the last point, Clayton decided that for Cain to build a city (Gen 4:17), he had to have enough people around to help him with the heavy lifting work. Again, the assumptions were misplaced or misguided because the use of the word ‘city’ does not necessarily have the same implications as we have today. 

According to the Google online dictionary, the word ‘city’ is simply “a large town” but dwell deeper and its antonyms include metropolis, town, municipality, megalopolis and also megacity.

In other words, the aspect of size or complexity can vary just as its original Hebrew meaning, which appears to be similarly broad and vague, for it could simply mean “a place of lookout, especially as it was fortified.” For all intents and purposes, the biblical use of the word ‘city’ might actually be a reference to a large enough settlement in which the inhabitants were not dependent on an agrarian culture that might have been prevalent in the surrounding areas but instead had assumed a range of specialised occupations that could cater to the centralised presence of trade, food storages and administrative power.

The city Cain founded and named after his son Enoch (4:17) may well be the ancient precursor to the metropoles of today but it would have been nothing like it in size and complexity. John Wills (1979) in his book, “Genesis – The Living Word Commentary,” explains it correctly, saying:

“However, a ‘city’ is not necessarily a large, impressive metropolis but may be a small unimposing village of relatively few inhabitants.”

In simple terms, Clayton made the erroneous assumption that a city at the time of Cain took on the same stature and implications as it does today. We all know that cannot be right.



Next Week: Unlocking Adam's True Age (Part Three)

References

Clayton, John N. (January 1980) Does God Exist? Available at http://www.doesgodexist.org/

Turner, Rex A Sr. (1980) Systematic Theology (Montgomery, AL: Alabama Christian School of Religion)

Willis, John T. (1979) ‘Genesis,’ The Living Word Commentary (Austin, TX: Sweet)