Naming the animals: all in a day’s work for Adam
Could Adam have named all the animals in one day?
by Russell M. Grigg
Photo stock.xchng
Genesis 1:24–27 states that God made the land animals, as well as
the first man and woman, on Day Six of Creation Week.
Genesis 2:18–23 tells us that Adam named the animals before Eve was
created. So how could Adam have named all the animals in one day?
The time factor
Day Six of Creation Week began at evening (Genesis
1:31), and so consisted of about 12 hours of darkness followed by about
12 hours of daylight. There is no reason why God could not have made the land animals,
and Adam too, during the darkness period of Day Six, so that at first light there
they all were!
If, however, God used the daylight period, there is no reason to suppose that His
creative acts in making the animals and Adam took any longer than the instant for
Him to command these events to happen.1
So either way it need not have taken any time at all beyond first light on Day Six
for all the land animals and Adam to have come into existence.
Adam therefore had most of the daylight hours of Day Six in which to complete his
task. Note that this task did not include his searching out the animal, because
Genesis 2:19 tells us that God ‘brought them unto Adam
to see what he would call them’. Presumably this was in some sort
of reasonably orderly procession.
Naming the animals
The following points need to be noted:
1. Genesis chapter 1 says that the animals were created according to their kinds,
rather than according to their species—the phrase ‘after his/their kind’
occurs 10 times in this chapter (referring to both plants and animals). Exactly
what the term ‘kind’ (Hebrew min) corresponds to in terms of
the modern Linnaean classification system is not clear, but it appears that sometimes
the min corresponds to today’s species, sometimes to the genus, and sometimes
to the family. It indicates the limitations of variation. What is clear is that
numerically there must have been fewer kinds in Adam’s day than the number
of species we count today. [Ed. note: for more information, see
Ligers and wholphins? What next?]
For example, it is more than likely that there would have been no domestic dogs,
coyotes, and wolves as such, but rather one ancestral kind containing the genetic
information for all of these to appear under natural selection pressures.
Photo stock.xchng
This is not evolution, because no new information is added. In the same way, the
mongrel dog population of a few hundred years back was able to give rise (under
human selection) to the various modern breeds of dog—because the information
was already there in that population, much more than in today’s specialized,
genetically depleted breeds. That’s why you can’t start with a chihuahua
population, and expect that breeding/selection will eventually produce Great Danes.
2. Today we divide the animals into those we call tame (mostly herbivores), and
those we call wild (both herbivores and carnivores), but this distinction did not
apply before Adam sinned.
Genesis 1:30 says, ‘And to every beast … I have
given every green herb for food’, and Genesis 1:31, ‘And
God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.’
From these we conclude that animals did not kill each other for food pre-Fall, and
they had no reason to fear man.
This means that we can regard them all as being tame at the time Adam named them.
It also means that they would not have eaten each other, while taking part in any
naming procession!
The animals which Adam named are specifically described in
Genesis 2:20. They were the ‘cattle’,
‘the fowl of the air’ (birds), and ‘every beast of the field’. This classification
has no correlation with today’s arbitrary system of man-made taxonomy (amphibians,
reptiles, birds, mammals, insects), but is a more natural system based on the relation
of the animals to man’s interests.
If we compare this naming list with the creation list in
Genesis 1:20–25—birds and sea creatures (created on Day Five),
beasts of the earth, cattle, creeping things—we see there are several very
significant differences.2 Adam was
not required to name any of the sea creatures, or any of the creeping things. And
as the beasts of the field were not specifically mentioned in the creation list,
we can regard them as being a subdivision of the beasts of the earth. That is, Adam
was required to name only some of the total land animal population of his own day.
There is no suggestion that the naming was meant to be comprehensive. From this
it follows that Adam’s task was not to provide a scientific taxonomy, but
a set of general names of a selection of the animals, for the benefit of average
human beings who would come after him.
So what animals were named?
1. The cattle (Hebrew: behemah)
The Hebrew term used here usually refers to animals which lend themselves to domestication—what
we might call ‘domestic fauna’. Though no creatures were ‘wild’
in the modern sense, they would not all have been equally suitable for use by man.
It is interesting to note that most of the different breeds of what we call cattle
today can be traced back to a single basic type, namely the aurochs, which itself
is probably descended from the same created kind as the buffalo and bison group.3
Likewise, all the varieties of dog we have today have been bred from one basic dog/wolf
type. Similar considerations may well apply to many other species of animals we
use today, such as the horse.
All of this gives a total of a few dozen kinds at the most of behemah for Adam to
name.
2. The fowl of the air
The Bible mentions some 50 different birds, whereas modern ornithologists divide
the bird class into about 8,600 species. Of these, some 5,100 are in the order Passeriformes
(perching birds), divided into suborders, families, and subfamilies; and there are
about 3,500 species allotted to all other orders of birds in their families. Thus
there are 285 species in the pigeon family, 127 species in the cuckoo family, 18
species in the penguin family, and so on.4
So how many birds did Adam have to name?
It is instructive to consider what Encyclopaedia Britannica says about
parrots. ‘The avian order Psittaciformes [parrots, lories, cockatoos] contains
more than 300 species of generally brightly colored, noisy, tropical birds, to which
the general name parrot may be applied.’5
We do not know whether all such ‘parrots’ today are the descendants
of one created kind, or whether the parrots of today descended from a handful of
original kinds, which had (created) similarities to each other such that today we
group them all under ‘parrot’.
If they were from one created kind, then instead of the 300 we have today, there
would have been only one for Adam to name. Even if there were, say, three parrot
kinds originally, it would have been fully legitimate (just as today) for these
all to have been given the general term ‘parrot’. Therefore, only one
representative from the three kinds would have been needed in the naming procession
for the name ‘parrot’ (in whatever tongue Adam spoke) to have been given.
By the same reasoning, Adam probably named one ‘pigeon’, one ‘cuckoo’,
one ‘penguin’, and so on.
Colliers Encyclopedia lists a total of 163 families of all living, fossil,
and extinct birds.6 This means that
if Adam named only one representing each such modern group, to which the same ‘general
name’ could be applied, then there could have been fewer than a couple
of hundred birds involved.
3. The beast(s) of the field
The Hebrew word sadeh, translated ‘field’ in several Bible
versions, has the meaning of a flat open plain. The term ‘beast(s)
of the field’ occurs several times in the Old Testament. These
are all in a post-Fall situation, that is, after sin had entered the world.
They included animals that move in when humans move out (Exodus
23:29), ‘wild asses’ (Psalm
104:11), ‘dragons and owls’
(Isaiah
43:20),7 animals that prey
on sheep (Ezekiel
34:8), and a range of carnivores (Ezekiel
39:17). As the condition of sin did not apply when Adam named the animals, the most we can take from these verses is an indication of the variety of animals involved.
It is better to think of sadeh (‘field’) as referring to the
habitat, although not perhaps to the extent of asking ‘which field’?
or ‘was the field the Garden of Eden?’
Taking all these factors into account, particularly the matter of habitat, the beasts
of the field named were probably those animals which live today in open country
and venture close to human habitation. Not named were probably those animals which
live exclusively in forest, jungles, mountains, wetlands, deserts, etc.
On the basis of our earlier discussion concerning birds, it is clear that nowhere
near the number of species extant today would have been involved. Adam presumably
needed to name only one ‘snake’ (or at the most possible a few major
anatomical differences, like ‘python’, ‘rattlesnake’, ‘cobra’).
Likewise for many types of animals.
It is therefore completely inappropriate to talk of his having had to name the 6,000
species of reptiles or the 2,000 species of amphibians known today.8 Quite apart from the fact that many, if not most,
of these have been excluded on the basis of habitat anyway. Thus, even allowing
for extinct types, it would seem more than generous to allow for counting of a thousand
‘beasts of the field’—in reality, the figure may well have been
in the low hundreds.
Was Adam equal to the task?
We learn language by association, but Adam, from the moment he was created, had
language. Therefore he (and then Eve) must have already had built in ‘programs’
in their memory banks, so that when God said, ‘Don’t
…’ (Genesis
2:17), they immediately knew exactly what this meant. It seems that they
must also have known what it would mean to die, even though they had never seen
anything dead.
It is therefore reasonable for us to conclude that, at the ‘naming parade’,
Adam could speak a precise language, using one or two words in place of a long description,
just as our one word ‘elephant’ refers to ‘a large, big-eared,
trunk-nosed, tusked quadruped’.
It also means that he did not need to ponder each decision. His naming of each different
kind of animal could therefore have been both quick and appropriate, and also without
confusion, for he would have had the capacity to recall the names he already had
allocated with a pre-Fall memory that was crystal clear and voluminous.9
So, even in the unlikely event that there were as many as a thousand animals paraded
before Adam, how long would it have taken him to name them?
There are 3,600 seconds in an hour, so Adam could have completed his task in under
an hour. If he did it in a more leisurely and contemplative fashion, it would have
taken a few hours at the most (excluding time out for ‘coffee breaks’!).
Surely a pleasant day’s work, leaving plenty of time for God to create Eve
from Adam’s side that same afternoon.
Why?
Adam had been given dominion over the animals (Genesis
1:28), and God now provided him with the opportunity to exercise this responsibility
in a way which established his authority and supremacy—in ancient times, it
was an act of authority to impose names (cf.
Daniel 1:7) and an act of submission to receive them.
This exercise also shows that Adam was not an ape-man, and indeed it was intended
by God to show that he had no ape-like siblings among which to find fellowship or
a mate (cf. Genesis 2:20b: ‘for Adam there was not found
an help meet [i.e. helper suitable] for him’).
Contrary to the wishful thinking of evolutionists, the first man was not some stooped,
dimwitted, grunting hominid, separated from his ape-like ancestors by a genetic
mutation or two. The Bible portrays Adam as being essentially different from the
animal world, because he had been created ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis
1:27).
This term refers primarily to man’s God-consciousness—his capacity for
worshipping and loving God, his ability to understand and choose between right and
wrong, and his capacity for holiness.10
A secondary meaning includes such things as man’s mental powers, reason, and
capacity for articulate, grammatical, symbolic speech. In Adam, before sin, these
capacities may have dwarfed anything we know today.
God in His omniscience would have foreknown the rise of humanistic naturalism in
the twentieth century. This episode, way back in the Garden of Eden, highlights
for those who have an eye to see it, the false and unbiblical nature of the evolutionary
theory of human origins!
Related articles
References and notes
- See R. Grigg, Creation—how did God
do it? Creation 13(2):36–38, 1991. This shows
that God’s creative ‘speaking’ in Genesis chapter 1 was equivalent
to God’s ‘willing’ things to happen. Return to text.
- Some skeptics and liberals have put forward the mistaken criticism
that the order in Gen 2:19–20 is chronological, i.e. that Adam was created
before the animals, contrary to the order given in Genesis 1:21–26. However,
Genesis 2 is not a second and different creation account. This is shown by the omission
of any mention of the formation of the sun, moon, stars, or sea. Rather, chapter
2 gives more details about certain aspects of the creation which particularly concerned
Adam. It would be both legitimate and in keeping with the sense of the Hebrew to
translate Genesis 2:19 thus: ‘Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground
all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air …’. In fact,
more than one modern translation of the Bible translates this verse in this way.
There is no contradiction. (See Genesis contradictions?
for more details.) Return to text.
- See Carl Wieland, Re-creating the extinct aurochs, Creation
14(2):25–28, 1992. Return to text.
- ‘Birds’, Encyclopaedia Britannica
15:1–112, 1992. Return to text.
- Ibid., pp. 68–69. Return to text.
- Colliers Encyclopedia, p. 210, 1994. Return
to text.
- Several modern translations of the Bible render ‘dragons’ (Hebrew tannin) as ‘jackals’. However, it is possible that ‘dragons’ (KJV) is a more correct term and
refers, at least on occasion, to dinosaurs. If this is so, the number of dinosaurs
named by Adam would have been limited, as with the other animals, to the comparative
few whose habitat was flat open plains. Return to text.
- Especially so, when it is realized that many snakes are classified
today according to the presence, absence, or location of various internal parts.
Return to text.
- The human mind is capable of prodigious feats of memory, as for
example chess players who can play several tens of games of chess ‘blindfolded’
(i.e. without sight of the board and communicating the moves by a recognised chess
notation). Georges Koltanowski was a great expert, and also tackled 56 consecutive
opponents blindfolded and won 50 games with 6 drawn, in 9.75 hours, on 13 December
1960 (Guinness Book of Records, p. 245, 1972); or Hiroyuki Goto, who recited
pi to 42,195 places in Tokyo on 18 February 1995 (New Guinness Book of
Records, p. 309, 1996). Adam’s mind at this stage was not affected
by either genetic defects or sin. Return to text.
- The capacity for holiness, though flawed in the case of Adam and
all of his descendants (us) because of sin, was perfectly shown in the life of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Return to text.
| Manna from heaven? Because this site and the information it contains is free, you might think so. However, lots of hard work went into producing it. Your gifts help to produce this ‘manna’ for others.  | | |
|
