All the Way Back to Adam
- stephenstrent7
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
This post is from Chapter 6 of my forthcoming book, Noah’s Flood and the Philosophies of Men.
When I was a student at BYU, I took a genealogy course where our grade depended on the number of “Family Group Sheets” we turned in. To pad my grade, I filled out sheets for my own lineage all the way back to Adam. I could do this because I am descended from several lines of European nobility that connect to Charlemagne (748 – 814 AD). Once you link to Charlemagne, medieval records ostensibly carry the line back through history to the first patriarch.
However, in 2015, Adam Rutherford published an article in The Guardian titled, “So you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European.” Rutherford declared, “…we are all special…If you’re vaguely of European extraction, you are also the fruits of Charlemagne’s prodigious loins…This is merely a numbers game. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. But this ancestral expansion is not borne back ceaselessly into the past. If it were, your family tree when Charlemagne was Le Grand Fromage would harbour more than a billion ancestors – more people than were alive then. What this means is that pedigrees begin to fold in on themselves a few generations back, and become less arboreal, and more web-like.”1
Rutherford’s bold statement was based on a 2013 paper published in Nature by Peter Ralph and Graham Coop, in which they reported finding, “…that a pair of modern Europeans living in neighboring populations share around 2-12 genetic common ancestors from the last 1,500 years, and upwards of 100 genetic ancestors from the previous 1,000 years…individuals from opposite ends of Europe are…expected to share millions of common genealogical ancestors over the last 1,000 years.”2
There is no credible, scientifically verified genealogy for Charlemagne, going back to Noah in 2348 BC, and then on back to Adam. Any such lineage was likely fabricated by creative medieval genealogists to provide legitimacy for European royalty. Because the Franks had been Christian since the sixth century,3 their kings wanted bloodlines that led back to Christ, and, therefore to Kings David and Solomon. It’s too bad the medieval genealogists hadn’t read Ralph and Coop’s paper; perhaps if they had, they wouldn’t have had to make up royal genealogies.
Charlemagne lived approximately 1200 years ago, when the population of Europe was about 25 to 30 million. For context, King David lived about 1800 years before Charlemagne and about 1300 years after Noah. In David’s time, the world population was around 50 million; in Noah’s time, it was near 30 million; and in Adam’s time, perhaps 5 million. Crucially, the population of the “known world,” those living around the Mediterranean, typically accounted for only about 20% of the total world population.4 If we apply the logic from the research of Ralph and Coop, Charlemagne was almost certainly a descendant of David, who descended from Noah, who descended from Adam. This statistical reality has stripped kings of their “unique” status, proving that the subjects they ruled likely shared the same prestigious bloodlines. What made kings “special” was not biological exclusivity, but the political narrative they maintained to stay in power.
Another challenge posed by the data from Ralph and Coop is that relatedness drops off precipitously as you move away from the “center of interest,” such as central Europe. With Noah’s family centered in the Middle East, European descent from his sons would be mathematically low, with Gomer acting as the primary ancestor for that region. Many patriarchal blessings, including mine, state a descendancy from Ephriam, who lived some 600 years after Noah and Gomer.
Given this context, the strange passage in Moses 7:52 is particularly striking: “And he [the Lord] sent forth an unalterable decree, that a remnant of his [Noah’s] seed should always be found among all nations, while the earth should stand…” Why on earth would the Lord tell Joseph Smith that “a remnant of his [Noah’s] seed should always be found among all nations” if everyone is descended from Noah?
Genesis 9:18-19 states, “Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These three were the sons of Noah, and from them the whole earth was populated.” Of course, the word “earth” here is the Hebrew word הָאָֽרֶץ׃ (hā·’ā·reṣ), which means “earth” or “land,”5 not the planet Earth (ארץ (eretz). Even if Noah’s sons populated the entire known earth at the time, that region accounted for only about 6% or less of the actual Earth’s surface.
We are told in Doctrine and Covenants 84:14-1, “Which Abraham received the priesthood from Melchizedek, who received it through the lineage of his fathers, even till Noah; And from Noah till Enoch, through the lineage of their fathers; And from Enoch to Abel, who was slain by the conspiracy of his brother, who received the priesthood by the commandments of God, by the hand of his father Adam, who was the first man.”
These verses provide Abraham’s line of authority, not a census of the world's population. Just as these verses do not imply that Enoch or Abel were the only men living in their eras, they do not require Noah to be the solitary ancestor of every human being. Noah is central to the narrative because he was a key link in the transmission of the priesthood and the covenants of God.
Ultimately, the scriptures teach that all who come unto Christ become the children of Abraham. By extension, they become the children of Noah and Adam—if not by literal physical birth, then through the spiritual process of adoption.6
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Rutherford, Adam, The Guardian, So you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European; theguardian.com/science/commentisfree/2015/may/24/business-genetic-ancestry-charlemagne-adam-rutherford
2. Ralph, Peter, and Coop, Graham, The geography of recent genetic ancestry across Europe, PLoS Biol, 2013;11:e1001555
3. Costambeys, Marios, Innes, Matthew, and MacLean, Simon The Carolingian World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 35-38
4. Wikipedia; statista.com/statistics/1303831/western-europe-population-development-historical; ourworldindata.org/population-growth-over-time
5. Bible Hub: Genesis 9:19
6. Galatians 3:29
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