Someone recently asked me if I thought that Adam was the first man.  I actually did hesitate before I said, "What kind of man?"   Adam was different.  He was unique.  There were no men before him that were like Adam.  Adam held the Spirit of God.  And we are Adam's "seed".

When we look at the scripture in Gen. 5, the entire chapter is a bunch of "begats".  Which if you are like me, you usually skip when you are reading the Bible.  But the "begats" let us trace the time from Adam to Noah.  It seems that Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years.  One hundred thirty of which were before his son Seth was born.  Seth is the only other son--mentioned by name--that Adam and Eve had.  It is the genealogy of Seth that is traced to Noah.  Noah lived five hundred years. (There is no genealogy for Cain.  He is outcast.)  Through these "begats" we are able to trace the limits of time that passed from Adam to Noah.  Through other "begats" in other scripture we can determine the outside limits of time from Noah to Christ.  And of course, Christ lived approximately 2013 years ago.  You can't possibly come up a scenario that is older than 10,000 years.  And that is a stretch.

Because of  skeletal remains discovered through archeology, we know there were men on earth up to 40,000 years ago in Africa.  (I used to have a Time or Today or some other such publication that had a cover picture of a woman with the title, "We have found Eve and she is black.")  Certainly scientists had found an African woman that was born long before Eve.  And through mitochondrial DNA--using placentas from women today--they had traced the time to when she lived, and had determined that we all have some of her DNA.  It was an interesting study.  I loaned the book to some one and they didn't return it or I would be more precise.

There is  one interesting sentence in Gen. 5:3.  "...Adam...begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth."  Seth is honored.  He is the firstborn as far as Adam is concerned.  Abel is dead, and Cain is forever cursed and banished. Mention is made in verse 4 that after Adam had Seth, that Adam had other children.  Daughters are born after Seth--this is the first mention of daughters.

I answered the question at the beginning of the blog, "Adam and his descendants were designed to hold the breath of God.  After Adam, all men had this capacity.  And God was getting ready to fill them up."