Some of your “speculative” views match mine pretty closely.
My view is that the “garden” was in effect a refuge from which they were safe and isolated from surrounding tribes.
I assume A&E were genetically the same as the others, but pure whereas the others would have the genetic imperfections you pick up over time. But that doesn’t have to be so. Their wives seem to have lived as long as they did, so maybe their genetic code was similarly pure, or maybe the mantle theory is right, that they were all protected from solar damage to the genetic code. Or maybe they took their wives from close relatives and didn’t seek out wives from other tribes so much until later. God always discouraged taking wives from among outsiders; this was for moral reasons but maybe it was to preserve the blood line for reasons beyond what we know. What do I know. :)
I do believe that A&E represented a kind of priesthood relationship, they were intended to walk with God in a close and familiar way. Over time they would have been injected into the surrounding tribes. As it was, Satan’s attempt to interfere merely caused God to inject them sooner than he would otherwise have done.
The idea was that as God’s bridge all men would be drawn into that kind of familial relationship through Adam’s family. And in fact that has continued to be God’s plan. So had Adam not sinned, thats the way it would have worked out. And if Adam did sin, its still the way it would work out.
I tend to assume that had Adam sought God after his sin, rather than running from God, the relationship would have continued as it had been.
As it is, God’s plan has been to bring us back into the original familiar and familial relationship Adam had enjoyed in Eden.
The “priesthood” role Adam was intended to play was unique, but was not intended to remain unique as all men were drawn into that relationship. Or at least potentially drawn into it as they chose and as they learned to walk in it.
So I’m not sure if the term “ensoulment” is exactly correct, but its as good a term as any to represent the change God sought in his relationship with the humanoids.
Dear brothers marron and TXnMA, I've been attending your recent exchange of replies with great interest, and have been mulling it over. Mostly I agree with both of you, my Christian brothers.
But I do have to say that I found the idea of "other tribes" more or less contemporaneous with Adam and Eve extraordinarily perplexing, from my POV; i.e., my understanding of Genesis. There is nothing in my reading of Genesis that could account for such a phenomenon as "other tribes."
Perhaps my understanding of Genesis is faulty. That cannot be peremptorily ruled out; so bear that in mind in what follows.
Genesis is God's account to us, of His ex nihilo Creation, of His "breath of life" that makes all things live, from the living Universe itself as constituted by all living, created things, up to and including Man.
It seems to me there is a huge cognitive, or epistemological gulf between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: Genesis 1 deals with the spiritual creation, with the Logos as articulated in the different realms of Being, as yet unmanifested. There is not a word of "matter" or of "incarnated material substance" in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 appears to function at the creative, divine ideational level -- at the level of divine Logos, in its differentiations as translated down to the world of human and creaturely existence in their respective gradations....
It isn't until we get to Genesis 2 that problems of "matter" are introduced into the divine discourse -- "the dust of the earth" that God used to "form" Adam's physical body. Note the word "form" -- it doesn't connote the same meaning as "create." Adam was "created" in Genesis 1; but he wasn't "formed" until Genesis 2. And as TXnMA points out, this "forming" was done out of already extant materials, according to God's laws.
When God creates a human, He creates an eternal SOUL, made in His image, and destined for communion with Himself, a relationship of beloved son with his Father. [Generic pronouns used here; no disparagement of the female intended.]
It seems to me a main idea of Genesis 1 is that it deals with the origins of human life. Thus it goes to the idea of "the first Man," which is Adam. Who later on acquired a "helpmeet," the "first woman," Eve.
In Genesis 2, we are dealing with the materialization, that is the incarnation, of two human souls made in Genesis 1. And the Bible very strongly suggests (to me at least), that these first two incarnated human souls were the very first parents of the entire human race. (You gotta start somewhere....) And they were fruitful; and they did multiply....
So, where do "the other tribes" come from?
Here it seems to me that both my dear brothers in Christ are in some way, shape, or form, backloading current genetic theory onto God's Beginning, trying to explicate a total mystery by the use of current scientific understandings.
If Eve is just a "clone" of Adam -- which I strongly doubt, for she was separately created "female" in Genesis 1 -- then any geneological heritage from what can only be understood as the ultimate of inbreeding (propagation with a clone), would wipe out all their progeny over the next indeterminate, yet countable generations, due to deadly mutations....
So, do we need to hypothesize "other tribes" to account for our desire for explanation according to the scientific explanation that we learn from studies of genetics? If so, please tell me how we humans think we can reduce God's action to purely human categories of understanding, in the first place.
I don't see anything in either Genesis 1 or 2 about the contemporaneous existence of "other tribes" with what transpired in the Garden of Eden.... But surely the purported existence of ""other tribes" would clear up some misgivings that we moderns might have, on the genealogical issue....
But then, I could be wrong. And if so, would be glad to be corrected by those more knowledgeable on this subject than I.
Thank you ever so much, dear marron, and dear TXnMA, for writing!