From One Man​—Everyone

16. What claim did Paul make about man’s origin?

¹⁶ Next, in Acts 17:26, Paul set out a truth that many people should think about, especially with so much racial injustice in evidence today. He said that the Creator “made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth.” The idea that the human race was a unity or brotherhood (with the implications of this for justice) was something for those men to consider because the Athenians had claimed that they had a special origin that set them apart from the rest of mankind. Paul, however, accepted the Genesis account of a first man, Adam, who became the progenitor of all of us. (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:45-49) You might wonder, though: ‘Can such a concept be sustained in our modern scientific era?’

17. (a) How does some modern evidence point in the same direction as Paul did? (b) What bearing does this have on justice?

¹⁷ The theory of evolution suggests that man evolved in various places and types. But early last year, Newsweek devoted its science section to “The Search for Adam and Eve.” It focused on recent developments in the field of genetics. While, as we would expect, not all scientists agree, the emerging picture points to the conclusion that all humans have a common genetic ancestor. Since, as the Bible long ago said, all of us are brothers, should there not be justice for all? Should not all of us be entitled to impartial treatment no matter what our skin color, hair type, or other surface characteristics? (Genesis 11:1; Acts 10:34, 35) We still need to know, though, how and when justice will come for mankind.

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“The Search for Adam and Eve”

Under that title, a Newsweek article said in part: “The veteran excavator Richard Leakey declared in 1977: ‘There is no single center where modern man was born.’ But now geneticists are inclined to believe otherwise . . . ‘If it’s correct, and I’d put money on it, this idea is tremendously important,’ says Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist and essayist. ‘It makes us realize that all human beings, despite differences in external appearance, are really members of a single entity that’s had a very recent origin in one place. There is a kind of biological brotherhood that’s much more profound than we ever realized.’”​—January 11, 1988.