Preadamism
From a creationist perspective, the preadamite hypothesis or preadamism is the assumption that human beings existed before Adam was created. It implies that these people and their descendants are outside the order of salvation. In this context, the term pre-adamites is used in the literature with a corresponding scope of meaning: On the one hand, it functions as a synonym for the presumed human individuals who existed before the creation story, on the other hand, the proponents of the hypothesis are sometimes referred to as "pre-adamites".
In terms of the history of ideas, the preadamite hypothesis must be assessed ambivalently. From an enlightened point of view, it provided a basis for the development of the modern worldview under the scientific paradigm ( paleontology , evolutionary biology ). It should not be overlooked, however, that it has always been instrumentalized to discriminate groups of people by portraying them as descendants of the preadamites (and thus as inferior because they stand outside the creation story).
Important representatives of the hypothesis
In antiquity used as a power-political argument against the Christian worldview, the pre-adamite hypothesis of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was taken up in a humanistic spirit to develop a rationalistic worldview, in order to ultimately function, as it were dialectically wrong , as an argument of religiously disguised racist ideology .
Antiquity
An early, politically motivated proponent of the hypothesis was the Roman emperor Julian (331–363). He took the view that human history began not just from one, but from a whole series of indigenous peoples who were at the beginning of creation. The background of his position was the rejection of Christianity, which Constantine had promoted, and the will for a social return of pagan beliefs.
Renaissance
In 1591 Giordano Bruno argued that no one could actually imagine that, for example, the Jewish people and the Ethiopians had the same ancestors. So at that time not just one Adam, but several different first humans should have been created, or the Africans were the descendants of pre-Adamite tribes of humanity. In his pantheistically motivated observations of nature, which among other things had a great influence on Galileo Galilei , Bruno assumed an infinity of the universe. In the aforementioned De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi (1584), he also put forward the thesis that in this unlimited cosmos there is not only an infinite number of earth-like worlds, but that there are also intelligent beings, i.e. extraterrestrial intelligence, give (see below: Miscellaneous).
Isaac La Peyrère and the Enlightenment
The Frenchman Isaac de La Peyrère is generally considered to be the father of modern pre-Adamite theory . In his book Prae-Adamitae , published in 1655 , he referred to the words of the apostle Paul in Romans ( Rom 5,12-14 EU ) so that “if Adam sinned in a moral sense, there must have been an Adamic law after he sinned. If the law began with Adam, then there must have been a lawless world before Adam, in which people lived. ”According to La Peyrère, there were two creations, first that of the Gentiles and then that of Adam, the progenitor of the Jews. La Peyrère thought that the assumption of pre-Adamite existence also explains the circumstances of Cain after the murder of Abel , because according to Genesis he took a wife and founded a city.
Racial ideological instrumentalization in the 19th century
An approach of modern racism is based on this assumption about the origins of mankind differentiated in the history of salvation; for while in the Enlightenment preadamism was largely accepted as a challenge for the proponents of biblical creation theorists, it turned into a racial ideological argument in the 19th century.
Against the background of the interpretation of Cain's wife as the preadamite, the mark of Cain was interpreted as the dark skin color with which the descendants of this connection are consequently forever drawn - this idea, which arose in Europe in the 18th century, was later taken up by a number of American authors , especially by southerners after the lost civil war. The Mormons in the meantime even elevated this view to dogma by denying blacks the priestly ordination, which is very important in their religion and which is given to all men. Likewise, the pseudo-scientific race theory of a Samuel Morton or a Josiah C. Nott is in this tradition. Extreme Anglo-Israelism and the anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement also refer to a racist interpretation of the pre-Adamite hypothesis.
Pre-Adamites in the Islamic faith
Unlike the Christian belief, the acceptance of living beings before Adam was an integral part of Islamic teaching. Traditionally, the word khalîfa in sura 2 verse 30 was sometimes understood as the successor of an already existing species that is identified with the jinn . According to this, God would have already wiped out past civilizations after they caused disaster and killed one another, and man is a successor to these civilizations. Some Islamic sects, such as the Alawites , elaborated the idea of pre-Adamite living beings and added a circle consisting of six different beings: Hinn , Binn, Timm, Rimm, Dschann and Jinn, which represented a development of evil up to the appearance of Adam , symbolized.
Even if the idea that human-like beings inhabited the earth before Adam was generally accepted, the idea that there were other people was controversial. According to that controversial idea, several Adams already existed on earth, whose descendants each lived on earth for over 50,000 years. This idea was still accepted , especially among Sufis and Ismailis .
Others
In the fairy tales and myths of many peoples, the idea of a pre-Adamite being is reflected in the type of the wild man .
Isaac La Peyrère, who also dealt intensively with the history of Greenland and Iceland , assumed that the pre-Adamite peoples were originally native to the polar region. Important authors of fantastic literature such as Edgar Allan Poe , Jules Verne , Kurd Laßwitz or the expressionist Georg Heym took up this motif in their texts.
Secondary literature
- Paul Richard Blum: Giordano Bruno . Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-41951-8 .
- Klaus Bringmann : Emperor Julian . (= Design of antiquity ). Primus, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-89678-516-8 .
- Jon Krakauer : Murder on behalf of God. A report on religious fundamentalism . Piper, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-492-24276-6 .
- Joachim Metzner : Personality Destruction and the End of the World. The relationship between delusion and literary imagination. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1976 (= Studies on German Literature, Volume 30).
- Martin Schneider: The world view of the 17th century. Philosophical thinking between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-15764-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Amira El-Zein: Islam, Arabs, and Intelligent World of the Jinn. Syracuse University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8156-5070-6 , p. 39.
- ↑ Sura 2 verse 30 (online)
- ↑ Patricia Crone: Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness. Volume 3, Brill, Leiden 2016, ISBN 978-90-04-31931-8 , pp. 230-231.