First mention of evolution being taught?

[webdog]

From the "sons of God" threads, something caught my eye from the extrabiblical book of Jasher 4...

and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.

Was the teaching of mixing one animal species with another the first known teaching on evolution? It obviously provoked the Lord, so whatever it was had to have been wrong, and would seem to refute evolution.

 

[amity]

It sounds to me like it refers to breeding one animal species with another. Don't cross horses and donkeys. Don't cross long horn and Angus.

Can you please tell more about the book of Jasher?

 

[webdog]

Species cannot interbreed with other species. That text states the "teaching" of mixing one species with the others (cattle, beast and fowl of the air), like our modern evolutionary teaching that reptiles turned into birds, fish turned into amphibians, etc. I don't see why interbreeding within a species would infuriate God, as God designed animals of the same kinds to breed within their species.

I probably know as much as you do about Jasher. I know he was the son of Caleb, and the book was probably rejected as Canon due to the fact it mentions the death of Enoch...and not that God took him away instead.

 

[amity]

Species cannot interbreed with other species. That text states the "teaching" of mixing one species with the others (cattle, beast and fowl of the air), like our modern evolutionary teaching that reptiles turned into birds, fish turned into amphibians, etc. I don't see why interbreeding within a species would infuriate God, as God designed animals of the same kinds to breed within their species.

I probably know as much as you do about Jasher. I know he was the son of Caleb, and the book was probably rejected as Canon due to the fact it mentions the death of Enoch...and not that God took him away instead.

Yes, part of the scientific definition of a species is the inability to breed with other similar animals. But this passage was not translated by scientists. I think that is what it is getting at anyway. No donkey+horse=mule. I don't see why mixing linen and wool would infuriate God, either, personally.

The reason I don't think this passage can be stretched to apply to evolution is that that evolution teaches a divergence and not a mixing in any sense.