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Adam and His Kin or alternative
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My daughter started reading this book this morning and is disturbed by the idea that it is “adding to the scriptures”. I am wondering if any of you have felt that way… And if anyone knows an alternative that would just tell the history from other sources than the Bible… as history, rather than making a story of it. I thought I could be OK with this, but I see her point and want to give her room to follow her own conscience in this area since that is the very thing we have instilled in her (Don’t take for truth any man’s writings without comparing it diligently to the scriptures…). Anyone have thoughts on this or alternatives to suggest?
I was impressed when I saw this post–love that your daughter is being discerning! My boys were asking me the same thing when I was reading aloud from the Exodus commentary which also reads story-like in parts. I’ll be interested in the responses here–maybe Sonya will weigh in.
My 14yo son read Adam and His Kin at the beginning of the year and I think I emphasized to him that it’s not Scripture and that may have been recommended advice in the SCM lesson plan, if I am remembering correctly. Maybe the thinking is that by that age they would be able to differentiate? I can understand the struggle, though. I sometimes feel that way with children’s bibles–like, why am I reading this and not just the straight-up Bible?
My daughter felt the same way about this book so I just put it aside and took it off her reading list. I enjoyed the book myself and was able to separate fact from fiction while still appreciating the on the ground view it gives us of what it may have been like for “Adam and His Kin”.
I’m not sure that there is a good replacement for it. You might like Genesis: Finding Our Roots by the same author-Ruth Beechick. It’s more of a bible study/history study on the book of Genesis. We read it as part Ambleside Online’s year 6 readings. We both learned a lot from it but it’s not in story form like Adam and His Kin.
I’d also just set it aside. We enjoyed it, but I can certainly see why it would bother others. I’m not sure if this would help her or not, but I believe much of the story comes from Jewish tradition and other ancient resources, so it’s not completely fictionalized. It also isn’t the inerrant Word either.
I absolutely loved the book! So much so that it has sparked a lot of imagining about Noah and his sons, and about how all thses old guys (Adam, etc.) could have talked to each other, etc. in my “free time”. I have read and re-read the Biblical account, and read a few “historical fiction” novels centered around Noah and I just love wondering what life was really like. Could they have been somewhat as advanced as us? Why not? Everything was totally destroyed, except for the lives on the ark. So we don’t really know for sure……oh the possibilities! I still like wondering about it!
We recommend it to be read (1) alongside the Bible accounts, so the students will be studying the truth of God’s Word, and (2) by older students, so they will already be grounded in truth and able to discern what is taken directly from Scripture and what is speculative.
We included it because sometimes it’s easy to read Biblical accounts and not “personalize” the people we read about. We might not stop to think about what their day-to-day life might have been like with human limitations and relationships and how they might have been connected to each other and such. So we describe Adam and His Kin in our lesson plan book as a “speculative yet intriguing narrative of what life may have been like for the main Bible characters through Abram.”
As with any of our book suggestions, feel free to substitute if it’s not a good fit for your student.
Thank you all so much for your thoughtful comments. Sonya, I fully appreciate your reasons for including it, and your taking the time to reply…and I’m still looking forward to reading it myself! I think I will just initiate conversations with her and her dad based on what I am reading… And we’ll see what happens from there. And I think we will get the other book Melanie suggested and have that as an alternative for her to read. It may help her to separate fact from fiction for the history that is apart from the Bible. But, as Beechick says in the preface, a lot of history is speculation…
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