By Allan Michaels "bkdiscov" (Settle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
Either a whimsical and entertaining fantasy, or a serious and realistic attempt to reconcile science and religion, FIRST, MAN. THEN. ADAM! puts forth the daring idea that Adam and Eve were members of an advanced species from far off outer space who crash-landed their spaceship, effectively stranding themselves, here on a very primative earth occupied by early Homo Sapiens.
Skilled in genetic science, they were able to breed with these early peoples, to produce a long-lived (900 years!), durable and intelligent species from which present mankind is descended!
Dr. Ginsburgh, a Physicist, maintains that the Biblical Genesis story is a true though transformed history of this and following events (with the spaceship as the Garden of Eden and the ship's central computer as the Tree of Knowledge, for example). The shorter lifetimes and growing subsceptibility to disease of each suceeding generation of these early space/earth men and women is stated to be due to continual dilution of the space people's genetic heritage by interbreeding with native earth people.
A large number of occurrances described in Genesis are shown to be consistant with this space origin theory. The description of the origin of the universe given in Genesis, can, according to Dr. Ginsburgh, by giving modern interpretations to some of the terms used in the description, be shown to be entirely consistant with the current Big Bang Theory!
Altogether, this is a stimulating and challenging attempt to reconcile religion and science, and can be read as a serious theoretical proposal, or if this is too hard to accept, as, at least, a very entertaining speculation. Unfortunately, the book is not easy to find...
