Pre-Adamite

The pre-Adamite hypothesis or pre-Adamism is the theological belief that humans (or intelligent yet non-
human creatures) existed before the biblical character Adam. Pre-Adamism is therefore distinct from the
conventional Abrahamic belief that Adam was the first human. Advocates of this hypothesis are known as
"pre-Adamites", along with the humans who they believe existed before Adam.

Contents
Early development
900–1700
Age of Enlightenment
1800–present
Racist pre-Adamism
Non-racist pre-Adamism
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Early development
The first known debate about human antiquity took place in 170 AD between a Christian, Theophilus of
Antioch, and an Egyptian pagan, Apollonius the Egyptian (probably Apollonius Dyscolus), who argued that
the world was 153,075 years old.[1]:26

An early challenge to biblical Adamism came from the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, who, upon his
rejection of Christianity and his return to paganism, accepted the idea that many pairs of original people had
been created, a belief termed co-Adamism or multiple Adamism.[2]:6 [1]:27-28,125

St. Augustine's The City of God contains two chapters indicating a debate between Christians and pagans over
human origins: Book XII, chapter 10 is titled Of the falseness of the history that the world hath continued
many thousand years and the title of book XVIII, chapter 40 is The Egyptians' abominable lyings, to claim
their wisdom the age of 100,000 years. These titles tend to indicate that Augustine saw pagan ideas
concerning both the history of the world and the chronology of the human race as incompatible with the
Genesis creation narrative. Augustine's explanation aligned with most rabbis and with the church fathers, who
generally dismissed views on the antiquity of the world as myths and fables, whereas Jewish and Christian
claims were based on revealed truth.[1]:27

Augustine did take a critical view of the young earth narrative in some aspects, arguing that everything in the
universe had been created simultaneously by God, and not seven literal days. He was primarily concerned
with arguing against the idea of humanity having existed eternally rather than a Bible-based chronology of
human history.[3]
900–1700
In early Islam, a common belief held that mankind is actually the successor of other intelligent creatures such
as Jinn and Hinn. Medieval Muslim traditions referred to the Jinn as pre-Adamites,[4]:39 depicted as human-
like in various ways. Although the notion of Jinn as pre-Adamites was generally accepted, the idea that other
humans lived before the known Adam was controversial. From the mid-ninth century onward the idea
appeared that God created several Adams, each of whom presides over an era lasting around 50,000 years.
This concept was regarded as heretical, but was widely accepted by Ismailis and Sufis.[5]:230–232

A book titled Nabatean Agriculture, written or translated by Ibn Wahshiyya in 904, collated texts about the
activities and beliefs of Arabic groups such as the Nabataeans, in defense of Babylonian culture against Islam.
The book discussed the ideas that people lived before Adam, that he had parents, and that he came from
India.[1]:28 It proposed that Adam was the father of an agricultural civilization, rather than the father of the
entire human race.[2]:7

The Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi wrote his Kitab al Khazari between 1130 and 1140, featuring a discussion
where the King of the Khazars questioned three theologians (a Jewish rabbi, a Christian, and a Muslim) which
was the true religion, and raised the challenge that people in India said they had buildings and antiquities
which were millions of years old. The rabbi responded that his faith was unshaken, as the Indians lacked "a
fixed form of religion, or a book concerning which a multitude of people held the same opinion, and in which
no historical discrepancy could be found." The rabbi dismissed Indians as dissolute, unreliable people, whose
claims could be ignored. Later in the book, Halevi rejected the Nabatean claims as these people did not know
of the revelation in Scripture, and he dismissed Greek theories of an eternal world. In his conclusion, Halevi
maintained that Adam was the first human in this world but left open other possibilities: "If, after all, a believer
in the Law finds himself compelled to admit an eternal matter and the existence of many worlds prior to this
one, this would not impair his belief that this world was created at a certain epoch, and that Adam and Noah
were the first human beings."[1]:27–28

The claims in Nabatean Agriculture were also disputed by Maimonides (1135–1204) in The Guide for the
Perplexed. He attributed the concepts to the Sabians and said they were just legends and mythology which
deviated from monotheism though drawing on Jewish sources, but in refuting the speculations, he circulated
an outline of the ideas among other scholars:[2]:7–8 "They deem Adam to have been an individual born of
male and female like any other human individuals, but they glorify him and say that he was a prophet, the
envoy of the moon, who called people to worship the moon. and there are compilations of his on how to
cultivate the soil." He noted the claim that Adam came from India, and went on to Babylon.[1]:29–30

The presence of a belief in the existence of men before Adam among the Familists, a religious community in
Friesland, was noted by John Rogers in 1578.[6]:51

In 1591, Giordano Bruno argued that, because no one could imagine that the Jews and the Ethiopians had the
same ancestry, God must have either created separate Adams or that Africans were the descendants of pre-
Adamic races.[7]:25–26

The 17th-century French millenarian Isaac La Peyrère is usually credited with formulating the pre-Adamite
theory because of his influence on subsequent thinkers and movements. In his Prae-Adamitae, published in
Latin in 1655, La Peyrère argued that Paul's words in Romans 5:12-14 should be interpreted to mean that "if
Adam sinned in a morally meaningful sense there must have been an Adamic law according to which he
sinned. If law began with Adam, there must have been a lawless world before Adam, containing people."[6]:53
Thus, according to La Peyrère, there must have been two creations; first the creation of the Gentiles and then
the creation of Adam, who was the father of the Hebrews.[8]:152 The existence of pre-Adamites, La Peyrère
argued, explained Cain's taking of a wife and the building of a city after Abel's murder in the Book of
Genesis.[1]:43
Lazslo Toth writing in Politica Hermetica states that "racial theory has as its official birthdate 24 April 1684,"
when François Bernier distinguished four or five races in an article titled A new division of the Earth,
according to the different species or races of men who inhabit it published in the Journal des sçavans. Because
of widespread theological opposition to the pre-Adamite theories of his friend La Peyrère, Bernier published
his paper anonymously.[9]:52–53[10]

Age of Enlightenment
During the Age of Enlightenment, pre-Adamism was adopted widely as a challenge to the biblical account of
human origins. In the 19th century, the idea was welcomed by advocates of white superiority. A number of
racist interpretive frameworks involving the early chapters of Genesis arose from pre-Adamism. Some pre-
Adamite theorists held the view that Cain left his family for an inferior tribe described variously as "nonwhite
Mongols" or that Cain took a wife from one of the inferior pre-Adamic peoples.[8]:154

1800–present

Racist pre-Adamism

In 19th-century Europe, pre-Adamism was attractive to those intent on demonstrating the inferiority of non-
Western peoples, and in the United States, it appealed to those attuned to racial theories who found it
unattractive to contemplate a common history with non-whites.

Scientists such as Charles Caldwell, Josiah C. Nott and Samuel G. Morton rejected the view that non-whites
were the descendants of Adam. Morton combined pre-Adamism with cranial measurements. As Michael
Barkun explains:

In such an intellectual atmosphere, pre-Adamism appeared in two different but not wholly
incompatible forms. Religious writers continued to be attracted to the theory both because it
appeared to solve certain exegetical problems (where did Cain's wife come from?) and exalted the
spiritual status of Adam's descendants. Those of a scientific bent found it equally attractive but for
different reasons, connected with a desire to formulate theories of racial difference that retained a
place for Adam while accepting evidence that many cultures were far older than the few thousand
years that humanity had existed, according to the biblical chronology. The two varieties differed
primarily in the evidence they used, the one relying principally on scriptural texts and the latter on
what passed at the time for physical anthropology.[8]:153

In 1860, Isabella Duncan wrote Pre-Adamite Man, Or, The Story of Our Old Planet and Its Inhabitants, Told
by Scripture & Science, a mixture of geology and scriptural interpretation. The book was popular among a
number of geologists because it mixed biblical events with science. She suggested that the pre-Adamites are
today's angels.[2]:90 Since they were without sin, for sin did not enter the world until Adam disobeyed God,
there was no reason for them not to have been at least raptured into heaven, anticipating what would again
occur with the second coming of Jesus Christ. Duncan also believed that some angels had sinned and fallen
from Heaven, which caused them to become demons. Duncan supposed that such an upheaval would leave
geological scars on the earth. The concept of ice ages, pioneered by Louis Agassiz, seemed to provide
evidence of such events, drawing the line between the pre-Adamic era and the modern one, which she posited
began about 6,000 years ago.[11]:142–144
Buckner H. Payne, writing under the pen name Ariel, published a pamphlet in 1867 entitled The Negro: What
is His Ethnological Status? He insisted that all the sons of Noah had been white. This created a problem then
regarding non-white races if the Flood had been universal and the only survivors were white. Payne's solution
was to suggest that the Negro is a pre-Adamic beast of the field (specifically, a higher order of monkey), which
was preserved on Noah's Ark. According to Payne, they were a separate species without immortal
souls.[12]:149

The Irish lawyer Dominick McCausland, a Biblical literalist and anti-Darwinian polemicist, maintained the
theory to uphold the Mosaic timescale. He held that the Chinese were descended from Cain and that the
"Caucasian" race would eventually exterminate all others. He maintained that only the "Caucasian"
descendants of Adam were capable of creating civilisation, and he tried to explain away the numerous non-
"Caucasian" civilisations by attributing them all to a vanished "Caucasian" race, the Hamites.[13]

A. Lester Hoyle wrote a book in 1875, The Pre-Adamite, or who tempted Eve? He claimed that there had
been five distinct creations of races, and only the fifth, the white race, of which Adam was the father, had been
made in God’s own image and likeness.[12]:150 Hoyle further suggested that Cain was the "mongrel offspring"
of Eve's being seduced by "an enticing Mongolian" with whom she had repeated trysts, thus laying the
foundation for the white supremacist bio-theology that miscegenation was "an abomination."[2]:197

In an unusual blend of contemporary evolutionary thinking and pre-Adamism, the Vanderbilt University
theistic evolutionist and geologist Alexander Winchell argued in his 1878 tract, Adamites and Preadamites, for
the pre-Adamic origins of the human race, on the basis that the Negroes were too racially inferior to have
developed from the Biblical Adam. Winchell also believed that the laws of evolution operated according to the
will of God.[14]:50

In 1891, William Campbell, under the pen name "Caucasian", wrote in Anthropology for the People: A
Refutation of the Theory of the Adamic Origin of All Races that the non-white peoples were not descendants of
Adam and therefore "not brothers in any proper sense of the term, but inferior creations" and that polygenism
was the "only theory reconcilable with scripture." Like Payne before him, Campbell viewed the Great Flood
as a consequence of intermarriage between the white (Adamic) and nonwhite (pre-Adamic) peoples "the only
union we can think of that is reasonable and sufficient to account for the corruption of the world and the
consequent judgement."[15]:43

In 1900, Charles Carroll wrote the first of his two books on pre-Adamism, The Negro a Beast; or, In the
Image of God in which he sought to revive the ideas previously presented by Buckner H. Payne, describing
the Negro as a literal ape rather than human.[16] In a second book published in 1902, The Tempter of Eve, he
put forth the idea that the serpent was actually a black female, and that miscegenation was the greatest of all
sins.[17]:277 Carroll claimed that the pre-Adamite races, such as blacks, did not have souls. He believed that
race mixing was an insult to God and spoiled God's racial plan of creation, and that the mixing of races had led
to the errors of atheism and evolution.[12]:150

The Scottish millennialist George Dickison wrote The Mosaic Account of Creation, As Unfolded in Genesis,
Verified by Science in 1902. The book mixed science with a scientifically enhanced reading of Genesis and
lists geological discoveries that showed that men existed before Adam had been created and that Earth was
much older than the 6000-year-old span of the Adamic race. Dickison welcomed scientific discoveries from
fossil evidence and the palaontological record and used them as evidence for pre-Adamism.[12]:165–166

The doctrine known as British Israelism, which developed in England in the 19th century, also sometimes
included a pre-Adamic worldview but that was a minority position. The model viewed pre-Adamites as a race
of inferior bestial creatures apart from Adam, who was the first white man and consequently the first son of
God. In the narrative, Satan seduces Eve, and the resulting offspring is a hybrid creature, Cain. Later, Cain
flees to East Turkestan to establish a colony of followers intent on realizing the Devil’s plan for domination of
the earth. A further elaboration of this myth involved the identification of the Jews with the Canaanites, the
putative descendants of Cain, but the eponymous ancestor of the Canaanites is not Cain, but Canaan. It
followed that if the tribes of Judah were supposed to have intermarried with Cain’s descendants, the Jews were
both the offspring of Satan and the descendants of sundry nonwhite pre-Adamic races.[8]:150–172

In the United States, philo-Semitic British Israelism developed into the anti-Semitic Christian Identity
movement and the serpent seed doctrine. Identity preacher Conrad Gaard wrote that the serpent was a "beast
of the field," was the father of Cain, and since Cain married a pre-Adamite, his descendants were a "mongrel,
hybrid race."[8]:177–178

Non-racist pre-Adamism

The occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph published Pre-Adamite Man: Demonstrating The Existence of the
Human Race Upon the Earth 100,000 Thousand Years Ago! under the name Griffin Lee in 1863. The book
took a primarily scientific view of pre-Adamism, relying on evidence from linguistics, anthropology,
archaeology, paleontology, and ancient history. Being a polygenist, Randolph argued that the color of races,
particularly black, was not the result of climate and was proof of separate, pre-Adamite origins.[2]:110-111

Pre-Adamite theories have also been held by a number of mainstream Christians such as the Congregational
evangelist R. A. Torrey (1856–1928), who believed in the Gap Theory. Torrey believed it was possible to
accept both evolution and biblical infallibility, with the pre-Adamite as the bridge between religion and
science.[2]:202

Gleason Archer, Jr. was a believer in pre-Adamism. In his 1985 book A Survey of Old Testament Introduction
he wrote,

"To revert to the problem of the Pithecanthropus, the Swanscombe man, the Neanderthal and all
the rest (possibly even the Cro-magnon man, who is apparently to be classed as Homo sapiens,
but whose remains seem to date back at least to 20,000 B.C.) it seems best to regard these races as
all prior to Adam’s time, and not involved in the Adamic covenant. We must leave the question
open, in view of the cultural remains, whether these pre-Adamic creatures had souls (or, to use the
trichotomic terminology, spirits)."[18]:204

Archer asserted that only Adam and his descendants were infused with the breath of God and a spiritual nature
corresponding to God himself, and that all mankind subsequent to Adam’s time must have been literally
descended from him. Regarding the concept of pre-Adamic races (such as the Cro-Magnon man), he says:
"They may have been exterminated by God for unknown reasons prior to the creation of the original parent of
the present human race."[18]:205[19]

More recently, such ideas have been promoted by Kathryn Kuhlman and Derek Prince among Pentecostals,
John Stott among Anglicans, and Old Earth creationist Hugh Ross.[20]

See also
Creationism
Curse of Ham
Garden of Eden
Multiregional origin of modern humans
Sons of Noah
References
1. Popkin, Richard Henry (1987). Isaac La Peyrère (1596-1676): His Life, Work, and Influence (htt
ps://www.google.com/books/edition/_/lkFaju2praAC). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill
Publishers. ISBN 90-04-08157-7. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
2. Livingstone, David N. (2011). Adam's Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human
Origins (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/yZbdf7kJVpwC). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8813-7. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
3. Young, David A. (1988). "The Contemporary Relevance of Augustine" (http://www.asa3.org/AS
A/PSCF/1988/PSCF3-88Young.html). Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. American
Scientific Affiliation. 40 (1): 42–45.
4. El-Zein, Amira (2009). Islam, Arabs, and Intelligent World of the Jinn (https://www.google.com/b
ooks/edition/Islam_Arabs_and_the_Intelligent_World_of/JjTctEZXHCQC). Syracuse University
Press. ISBN 978-0-815-65070-6.
5. Crone, Patricia (2016). Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness: Collected
Studies in Three Volumes, Volume 3 (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Islam_the_Ancient
_Near_East_and_Varietie/uDBRDAAAQBAJ). Brill. ISBN 978-9-004-31931-8.
6. Almond, Philip C. (2008). Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-Century Thought (https://www.google.
com/books/edition/Adam_and_Eve_in_Seventeenth_Century_Thou/Rx1el1IsopEC).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09084-1.
7. Graves, Joseph L. (2003). The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the
Millennium (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Emperor_s_New_Clothes/TXv7KfkomI
8C). Newark, NJ. ISBN 0-8135-3302-3.
8. Barkun, Michael (2014). Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity
Movement (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Religion_and_the_Racist_Right/qb0EAwAA
QBAJ). University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-46961111-2. Retrieved 26 January
2021.
9. Smith, David (2008). Flood, Gavin (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (https://www.g
oogle.com/books/edition/The_Blackwell_Companion_to_Hinduism/SKBxa-MNqA8C). Wiley.
ISBN 978-0-470-99868-7.
10. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2010). Religion, Caste, and Politics in India (https://www.google.com/boo
ks/edition/Religion_Caste_and_Politics_in_India/XAO3i_gS61wC). Primus Books. p. 124.
ISBN 9789380607047.
11. Gould, Stephen Jay (2011). I Have Landed (https://www.google.com/books/edition/I_Have_Lan
ded/Mz_PSe5PexMC). Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674061620.
12. Kidd, Colin (2006). The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World,
1600-2000 (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Forging_of_Races/aNT3q1HjY_MC).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-79729-0. Retrieved 18 February
2021.
13. Maume, Patrick (2011). "Dominick McCausland and Adam's Ancestors: an Irish Evangelical
responds to the Scientific Challenge to Biblical Inerrancy". In Adelman, Juliana; Agnew,
Eadaoin (eds.). Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (https://www.google.co
m/books/edition/Science_and_Technology_in_Nineteenth_cen/9RH4tgAACAAJ). Dublin: Four
Courts Press. ISBN 9781846822919.
14. Smith, Christian (2003). The Secular Revolution (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_S
ecular_Revolution/jHHnv5FbzWgC). University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23000-0.
15. Harvey, Paul (2005). Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from
the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era. UNC Press. ISBN 0-8078-2901-3.
16. Kim, Claire Jean (2015). Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural
Age (https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/rIiSBwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=charles%2
0carroll). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316298978.
17. Fredrickson, George M. (1987). The Black Image in the White Mind, the Debate on Afro-
American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Blac
k_Image_in_the_White_Mind/MB8Zmmm7L-wC). Wesleyan Press.
18. Archer, Gleason Jr. (1985). A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Revised edition (https://ww
w.google.com/books/edition/_/V7MflAEACAAJ). Chicago: Moody Press.
ISBN 9780802484475.
19. Grigg, Russell. "Pre-Adamic man: were there human beings on Earth before Adam?" (http://cre
ation.mobi/article/453). Creation.mobi. Retrieved 10 February 2013.
20. Ian Taylor. "Pre-Adamic Man" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130117105139/http://www.creatio
nmoments.com/content/pre-adamic-man). Creation Moments. Archived from the original (http://
www.creationmoments.com/content/pre-adamic-man) on 17 January 2013. Retrieved
10 February 2013.

Further reading
Frederickson, George M. (1987). The Black Image in the White Mind. Wesleyan University
Press. ISBN 0-8195-6188-6.
Haynes, Stephen R. (2002). Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514279-9.
Swain, Carol M. (2002). The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80886-3.

External links
A.J. Maas, "Preadamites" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12370a.htm), Catholic
Encyclopedia (1911) : Catholic view
"Neanderthal Man: Pre-Adamite, Co-Adamite, or Adamite?" (http://www.marycoredemptrix.com/
CenterReview/center_review_6_2004_adamite.html), 29 Creation Research Society Quarterly
(Mar. 1993) : Protestant creation science view
Hugh W. Nibley, "Before Adam" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070716050459/http://farms.byu.
edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=73), Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute : Latter-day Saint
view

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