Our anti-Bible world ridicules those who insist that Adam was a real, historical person, and consequently many Christians doubt Adam too. Old Testament professor John Walton recently wrote that perhaps “God chose one pair from the rest of the early hominids.”¹ Do we come from apes or Adam? Two links between Adam and history reveal the relevance of the world’s first man.

How many times have news reports asserted that an old bone, shell, or piece of charcoal was carbon-dated as tens of thousands of years old? These age assignments clash with the Bible’s record, which indicates a maximum age for the universe of six or so thousand years. Should carbon-based “ages” force us to reject biblical history?

In church, a friend asked me about the movie Jurassic World. Its high-tech presentation makes the idea of scientists resurrecting dinosaurs from DNA “mined” from fossils almost seem believable. What parts can we trust, and what parts can we toss?

A man once told me he was a “New Testament Christian,” meaning he did not believe in Genesis as history, but he did believe in Jesus. I asked him if he could think of any New Testament teaching not based in Genesis. He couldn’t. Can you? Tight historical links show that the core ideas of the gospel hinge on Genesis.