My friend that lives in Texas and I have been wondering where the cave men fit into the Bible.

Question:
Pastor Rick: I have a question. My friend that lives in Texas and I have been wondering where the cave men fit into the Bible. This may be a strange question but in reading the Bible we both get the feeling that the people mentioned in there are educated men of a sort at least but when did the cave men exist? We cannot fit them in the history of the Bible.

Help!

Thanks, WT

Answer:
I think that it is not our thinking about the time that cavemen lived that needs to be adjusted, but our image of what a caveperson was.

The common image is that a caveman sat in his cave looking like an ape and grunting to communicate as he sat about beating his club on the ground. This might be a great image of what happens on most college campuses once guys move away from home for the first time. This is also the image that the world wants us to see. It helps to put years into the timeline for evolution to transpire. And it helps fill in many missing steps.

How else will an ape become a man without stopping at an ape-man phase for a few billion years?

When we look at bones of people who have gone before us, how can we know if the person shopped at JCPenny or if they made their own clothes? How can we tell what he talked about with his neighbors or what language he used?

If we throw out all the assumptions that the world has given us through the years and read the Bible’s stories again, we might see how these people fit into the story.

After the Fall, God replaced the clothes of leaves with animal skins (Genesis 3:21). The human race learned to dress the part of a caveperson.

After this conversation with God, the people are requested to leave the Garden and find a new home (Genesis 3:23). They, being the only ones alive upon the planet at the time, likely didn’t have a subdivision to move into. If God had to teach them how to make clothes, it must have taken a few years for them to figure out how to build a house. Seeking shelter in a cave would be a quick and easy solution which could turn into a lasting solution.

Skip ahead a few years. After Noah left the ark, God told Noah that he is welcome to eat the flesh of any animal as long as its lifeblood is not in the meal (Genesis 9:1-3) To me, this means that eating meal was not a desirable menu selection before the flood.

Back to the Adam story, God told them that they could eat any plant they like (Genesis 2:16).

Most scientist agree that the majority of the dinosaurs were plant eaters. If these huge animals preferred to eat plants and the people selected plants, they could all live together without worry of one group trying to have the other for lunch.

I have no problem with the people between Adam’s time and Noah’s time being cave-type people and they living side by side with dinosaurs all around them. They were a part of the landscape. No one mentioned them in the Bible because they were a part of life.

God had a new idea. Dinosaurs didn’t fit into the new picture. They didn’t fit into the ark. The new world after the time of the ark could have seen people still living in caves. If people and animals are becoming more of a problem with one another, it might be time to start figuring out how to build a home. God just taught us how to build an ark. We could use the same technology to build something to live in.

This is what makes sense in my mind. I know that there a few holes in my thinking. I don’t think there are as many holes as what the evolution people look over.

Hope this helps,
PaRick