Tracing our genealogy back to Adam and Eve is a fascinating journey into the depths of human history. The Book of Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman created by God and were the ancestors of all humanity.
Millions of people have since sought to trace their lineage back to Adam and Eve, as a testament to their faith and their desire to understand their place in the world.
Bodie Hodge is a writer and researcher for Answers in Genesis, as well as being an authority on the dispersion of people groups around the world after the Tower of Babel. He frequently speaks at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter on topics such as dinosaurs and dragons and the Biblical response to racism.
Our Direct Ancestors
Bodie is also an avid genealogy fan, and he recently joined us on 20Twenty to discuss how we can appreciate the genealogies that appear in Scripture, including those that take us all the way back to Adam and Eve.
‘Those genealogies are actually amazing,’ says Bodie. ‘Just take, for example, the ones in Genesis Chapter 5. Those are all of our direct ancestors right there from Adam to Noah. What really blew my mind was to realise that people have been researching this and keeping track of ancient genealogies in places all over the world.’
Bodie believes that when we connect with a particular people group that goes right back to sons, grandsons or great-grandsons, it helps everything come alive for us. We feel that connection for ourselves.
God Created Everything
‘God created everything in six days,’ says Bodie. ‘It was a perfect creation. But because of man, sin, death and suffering came to the world. That’s why we need a Saviour. But then we have this flood about 1600 years after God created everything, and that of course rearranged continents and shifted things around.’
According to Bodie, what’s significant is after the flood, only eight people remained. Noah and his family were told by God to be fruitful and multiply. But what we saw was the descendants of Noah came together to build a city and a tower. They didn’t want to be scattered.
‘They tried to defy God’s command on that,’ says Bodie, ‘but God wasn’t going to let them get away with it. He came down and in a very gentle way, confused their languages and scattered them to different parts of the world. That scattering split apart the gene pool. People who ended up in Scandinavia, took genes for lighter skin, people who ended up in Africa, took genes for darker skinned people, others who went to the Orient, took genes for an almond-shaped eye.’
We Are All Related
‘But I want people to understand we’re all related.’
We all go back to Adam, which means there’s only one race, the human race. We’re all sinners in need of Jesus Christ, regardless of how we look.
Archaeologically people have been digging around the site of the Tower of Babel since about 1899. On Google Earth, archaeological remains can be seen even though the tower has been torn down and rebuilt over the years.
‘It’s not a battle over creationist evidence versus evolutionary evidence,’ says Bodie. ‘It’s a battle over the same evidence. The difference is the interpretation.’
‘And I’m going to start with the Word of God when I look at any piece of evidence.’
Listen to Bodie’s full interview on 20Twenty below:
