Where is there any mention in the Bible that there existed any humans before [Adam and Eve]?
Directly? Nowhere. But there is
indirect evidence in Scripture for more humans than Adam and Eve.
For example, when Cain was banished from Eden to homeless wandering, he expressed fear: “Whoever finds me will kill me” (Gen 4:14). Notably, he does not use a kinship term like “brothers” (אַחִים,
ʾāḥîm) or “house of my father” (בֵּית אָבִי,
bêt ʾābî), but rather an open and indefinite “whoever” (כּל,
kôl). He is not worried about revenge from his family but the vulnerability of exile, of
no longer belonging to God’s protected community. He is not afraid of remaining among kin, but about being cast out from among them. So, God reassures him that divine protection will follow him in exile, such that Cain will be avenged sevenfold if anyone kills him (v. 15). [1]
A similar pressure emerges when we consider the world in which Abraham lived—a world of cities, kingdoms, and civilizations stretching from Uruk in Sumer to the Longshan in China. The global population was roughly 25 million people, about 4 million of which lived in Mesopotamia and the surrounding Near East alone. Attempting to derive that world from
just eight people in only 300 years misses the demographic target by nearly three orders of magnitude. From the Flood to Abraham, the young-earth creationist model comes in about
500 times too low. The picture coheres, however, if we carry forward the population implied already in Cain’s fear, treating the biblical genealogies as covenantal lineages rather than exhaustive census records—which a redemptive-historical hermeneutic would have us do.
This also entails denying a global Flood with a universal biological bottleneck, but there are a lot of good reasons for doing that—textual, theological, scientific, historical—and rather poor reasons to keep it, which is why it’s basically just young-earth creationists who believe it.
Edited to add: I am reading a new book,
The Generations of Heaven and Earth by Jon Garvey (2020), and he adds an interesting piece of indirect biblical evidence for non-Adamic humans, evidence I had not considered before. In this chapter, “Where Are All the People in Genesis,” he details nine pieces of evidence—some of which mirrors what I’ve argued here—but the one that struck me regarded Genesis 4:26, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.”
“Which men would those be?” he asks rhetorically. In Genesis, the expression “calling on the name of the Lord” is covenantal language typically denoting formal worship, often in a sacrificial context. Its appearance in connection with Seth’s line should therefore be jarringly unexpected. His parents had known Yahweh face to face, and his older brothers had worshipped him with offerings. It is quite unlikely, then, that Seth’s family were those who began to call upon the name of the LORD. Garvey argues that this verse “appears to suggest that some outsiders began to worship Yahweh, either under his covenant name or at least in substance.”
Now the introduction of outsiders to Yahweh, like the growth of population recorded in these chapters, would actually be a limited fulfilment of the commission that God had always intended for Adam, and so it has a logical place in the unfolding story. This mission was impaired, but not cancelled, by the Fall, just as the parallel commission of Israel, marred from the start by the rebellion at Mount Sinai, nevertheless moved forward under the hand of God.
Greg Beale deals with this at length in A New Testament Biblical Theology, tracing the commission down through its various bearers from Noah onwards, and writes:
After Adam’s sin, the commission would be expanded to include renewed humanity’s reign over unregenerate human forces arrayed against it. Hence, the language of “possessing the gate of their enemies” is included, which elsewhere is stated as “subduing the land …”
Such an understanding takes what is otherwise both a curious and (in the absence of an outside population) incomprehensible snippet of information and ties it into the whole missiological purpose of Genesis, the Torah, and indeed the whole Bible. Adam’s people are damaged goods, but God’s word was not spoken in vain. But in order for this to be the case, we need to see and acknowledge the “invisible” population surrounding the new-creation population which Yahweh has seeded into the world. Somehow people began to perceive the Lord through this family—perhaps through intermarriage, even—and to call on the name of the Lord.
Paul tells us that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Perhaps this verse includes some of the very first followers of Christ in history.
Jon Garvey,
The Generations of Heaven and Earth: Adam, the Ancient World, and Biblical Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020).
Footnotes:
[1] Interestingly, the
Book of Jubilees names Cain’s wife as Awan, identifying her as the third child born to Adam and Eve and roughly fourteen years younger than Cain. On this chronology, Cain is about 32 when he murders Abel (then about 25), making Awan about 18. After Cain’s banishment, Adam and Eve live with Awan alone for 28 years of mourning before Seth is born three years later. Jubilees places the birth of Enoch about 190 years after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden, making it reasonable to infer that Awan had left Adam’s household and joined Cain around that time. On these numbers, there is no rational scenario where Cain builds “houses” much less a “city” by and for himself earlier or with his wife and infant son later (Gen 4:16-14;
Jub 4:9). “A city for one family is called a ‘house’,” writes Garvey. “Even if Cain and Awan lived for centuries, that kind of population growth is frankly incredible.”
