From Jesus to Adam

Whenever there are discussions about the beginning of humanity, sooner or later a discussion related to religion ensues. According to the classical interpretation of Islamic sources, it is said that God created Adam directly, without any intermediate steps. According to some modern interpretations, however, theory of evolution can help us explore the dawn of humanity in line with the Islamic sources. In my previous blogs on the theory of evolution (1, 2, 3, 4), I tried to shed light on the matter, so I don't want to repeat myself. Here, I would like to do something unusual: bring the story of Jesus pbuh to the table.

Indeed, the example of Jesus to Allah is like that of Adam. He created Him from dust; then He said to him, "Be," and he was. (3/59)

The usual approach in context of Adam and Jesus is to employ the story of Adam in order to explain the birth of Jesus without a father. If you think for a second, creation of Adam is something of an unknown past, whereas creation of Jesus is something only two millennia away. Plus, we know a lot more about the latter. Then, why not use story of Jesus's creation in order to understand humanity's initial creation!

According to the Quran, Jesus was created without a father (3/47). That means, his creation was out of the ordinary. Then, according to the equivalence set by the verse above, we must admit that creation of Adam was also out of the ordinary. About this point, everybody agrees. The disagreement comes about the nature of that extraordinary event.

Second, we know that Jesus was not created as a fully developed human being. Rather, he was born out of a mother, like the rest of us. The miraculous step is his conception in Mary's womb. Can this fact tell us something about our foremost father? I would say "most definitely". Again using the equivalence in 3/59 from the Quran, we can hypothesize that Adam pbuh was not created directly as a complete human being. But, when we choose to go with this idea, we must think about the form of miraculous initial creation?

If we take the example of Jesus's miraculous conception, one possibility is that a fertilized egg was created miraculously, and this cell was planted in a medium that is suitable for this purpose. Such a proposal may sound extremely unusual, but supporting verses from the Quran can be found:

And Allah has caused you to grow from the earth a [progressive] growth. (71/17)

The first underlined part in this verse is actually a single word, a verb that suggests a growth like a plant. Similarly the second underlined part is a single word in Arabic, again suggesting a plant-like growth. This is why it has caused discussions among the scholars, and the traditional perspective regarding this verse holds that this verb refers to the feeding of humans and animals from plants. Nevertheless, in context of our discussion, it makes more sense to go with the obvious meaning, i.e. growing like a plant!

Another verse with similar meaning is from the chapter Al-Luqman, given below. The underlined verb is actually an Arabic word suggesting a plant-like growth, and that's why the translators decided to put in parenthesis an explanation to this end. But the original text is general in meaning, not specific to plants!

And We sent down rain from the sky and made grow therein [plants] of every noble kind. (31/10)

In the end, the above suggestion is only a brainstorm, and is open for criticism. Only God knows the truth.