Table of Contents
I read Isaac La Peyrère’s Praeadamitae in the 1655 printing. The book is in Latin. The quotes below are my own English translations from that copy. The page numbers are the printed numbers in the book.
For the English translation of 1656, see my review of Men before Adam. For the wider subject, see Who Are the Pre-Adamites?.
The book at a glance
| Item | What the copy shows |
|---|---|
| Title | Praeadamitae, or "An Exercise on the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth verses of the fifth chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans" |
| Author | Isaac La Peyrère (c. 1596 to 1676). His name is not on the title page. |
| Date | "in the year of salvation 1655". No place and no printer on the title page. |
| Second part | Systema theologicum, "A Theological System on the Hypothesis of the Pre-Adamites. The first part", also dated 1655, in five books |
| Language | Latin |
| Copy I read | A copy from the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome, on the Internet Archive |
What the title says
The title page is the whole thesis in one line:
By which the first men, made before Adam, are brought in.
Isaac La Peyrère, Praeadamitae, title page (1655), translated from the Latin by me
He does not say that men lived beside Adam. He says that the first men came before him. Adam is a later man, not the first one.
The two parts
The book has two parts. The first is the Exercitatio, a short close reading of three verses of Paul. The second is the Systema theologicum, a full system built on the result.
The first chapter of the Systema sets out the key move. He reads “the law” in Romans 5 as the law given to Adam, not the law of Moses:
The verses of the Apostle. They deal in particular with original sin. The law in that place must be understood as the law of Adam, not the law of Moses.
Isaac La Peyrère, Systema theologicum, Book 1, Chapter 1, p. 1, translated from the Latin by me
If sin was in the world before that law, then a world without that law was there before Adam. People lived in it.
Chapter 8: neither against Christianity nor against Genesis
La Peyrère knew the danger of his idea. In chapter 8 of the Exercitatio he answers it head-on:
To hold that the first men were created before Adam goes against neither the Christian teaching nor the history of Genesis. Rather, it makes both clear. It agrees in every way with the histories and records of the nations.
Isaac La Peyrère, Praeadamitae, Chapter 8 heading, p. 25, translated from the Latin by me
The last sentence is the one I follow most. He brings in the long king lists and star records of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. A short timeline from Adam cannot hold them. A world with people before Adam can.
The flood of Palestine
In Book 4 of the Systema he limits the flood of Noah. The words of Genesis, he says, are the language of prophecy:
Genesis made all of this larger, in the speech of prophecy and in an inspired way of speaking, to show that all men and beasts of the land of the Jews died in that flood, in which all Palestine was put under water.
Isaac La Peyrère, Systema theologicum, Book 4, p. 219, translated from the Latin by me
This is a regional flood. It ends Adam’s line, except for Noah and his family. It does not end the peoples who came before Adam. I set this beside the many flood stories on this site in Utnapishtim, Ziusudra, and Noah.
What I take from the Latin book
| Claim | Where | Kind of source |
|---|---|---|
| The first men were made before Adam | Title page | Bible reading |
| The law in Romans 5 is the law of Adam | Systema, Book 1, p. 1 | Bible reading |
| The idea agrees with Genesis and with the records of the nations | Exercitatio, p. 25 | Bible reading and ancient history |
| The flood covered Palestine only | Systema, Book 4, p. 219 | Bible reading |
La Peyrère wrote as a theologian, not as an explorer. But his question is the one I ask on this site. Who was here before the story of Genesis starts? His answer is that the nations were. That leaves room for the older races in The Jinn, The Nephilim and the long numbers in The Numbers Before the Flood.
Related on this site
- Who Are the Pre-Adamites?: the wider subject, from early Islam to Bailly and Oahspe.
- Men before Adam (1656): my review of the English translation.
- Creation stories: origins and the world before Adam.
