B.H. Roberts teaches that Adam was not literally created from the dust and Eve was not literally created from Adam's rib; Adam and Eve were brought forth by procreation "in some older world."

Date
May 1889
Type
Periodical
Source
B. H. Roberts
LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

B. H. Roberts, "Man's Relationship to Deity," The Contributor 10, no. 7 (May 1889): 265

Scribe/Publisher
The Contributor
People
Joseph Smith, Jr., B. H. Roberts, Adam
Audience
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
PDF
Transcription

The Prophet Joseph Smith is credited with having said that our planet was made up of the fragments of a planet which previously existed; some mighty convulsions disrupted that creation and made it desolate. Both its animal and vegetable life forms were destroyed. And when those convulsions ceased, and the rent earth again was again consolidated, and it became desirable to replenish it, the work was begun by making a mist to rise that it might descend in gentle rain upon the barren earth, that it might again be fruitful. Then came one of the sons of God to the earth—Adam. A garden was planted in Eden and the man placed in it, and there the Lord brought to him every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and Adam gave names to them all. Afterwards was brought to Adam his wife, whom since she was derived from man, he named woman; and she became his help-mate, his companion and the mother of his children. In this nothing is hinted at about man being made from the dust, and woman manufactured from a rib, a story which has been the cause of much perplexity to religious people, and a source of much impious merriment to reckless unbelievers. We are informed that the Lord God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb before it grew on our planet. As vegetation was created or made to grow upon some older earth, and the seeds thereof or the plants themselves were brought to our earth and made to grow, so likewise man and his help-meet were brought from some older world to our own, to people it with their children. And though it is said that the "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground"—it by no means follows that he was "formed" as one might form a brick, or from the dust of this earth. We are all "formed" of the dust of the ground, though instead of being moulded as a brick we are brought forth by the natural laws of procreation; so also was Adam and his wife in some older world.

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