I don’t want to wade into this too far since there are loads of assumptions I do not share with DeYoung, but Christopher M. Hays and I are offering a response in a way that is as inclusive as possible for those readers who do sympathise with DeYoung and the Gospel Coalition. DeYoung lists 10 reasons to believe in a historical Adam (in block quote below), which we take to be the standard North American evangelical positions, and we respond to his comments.
1. The Bible does not put an artificial wedge between history and theology. Of course, Genesis is not a history textbook or a science textbook, but that is far from saying we ought to separate the theological wheat from the historical chaff. Such a division owes to the Enlightenment more than the Bible.
Indeed, the biblical authors do not put an artificial wedge between history and theology. But what DeYoung fails to appreciate is that a) the thought wouldn’t have occurred to an ancient writer in the way DeYoung assumes; and b) all post-Enlightenment readers are caught in the struggle to overemphasise the historical, which is not least the case for DeYoung himself and most other evangelicals who believe that the weight of the writers’ theology rests upon the foundations of post-Enlightenment epistemology. Many of the greatest commentators in church history, and almost all from the early period, show little concern to debate the historical merits of the biblical texts. If one wants to defend the historical Adam, one should first recognise one’s own location in a modern historicising tradition, and work from there. Denying it, or alleging that one’s interlocutors are the only ones who create the false dichotomy, doesn’t really help one’s cause.
2. The biblical story of creation is meant to supplant other ancient creation stories more than imitate them. Moses wants to show God’s people “this is how things really happened.” The Pentateuch is full of warnings against compromise with the pagan culture. It would be surprising, then, for Genesis to start with one more mythical account of creation like the rest of the ANE.
The Pentateuchal warnings against syncretism and/or compromise have no bearing on the forms of literature and methods of rhetoric useful to the biblical authors (or, for DeYoung, Moses). DeYoung seems to be suggesting that because the Pentateuch warns the people against being like the other nations, the literature of Israel must also be entirely unique, otherwise they have compromised. If this is his suggestion, it is patently false, given that the entire body of Israelite literature takes up forms that were already known in the Ancient Near East. The Proverbs are but one example: many of these weren’t supernaturally delivered to Solomon but were rather internationally known and taught already in Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources long before the book of Proverbs was compiled. Why, then, couldn’t Genesis ‘start with one more mythical account of creation like the rest of the ANE’? Moreover, no scholars would argue with DeYoung that the Genesis narratives are meant to supplant the other ANE myths. Of course they are; but that doesn’t require them to be of a different genre. A literary form can be identical to the one it is opposing while at the same time constructed to be superior ideologically.
To go further, since DeYoung’s argument has to do with Adam’s historicity, let me note another point. There is a real problem that I have not seen DeYoung and company deal with: the virtual disappearance of Adam in the remainder of the Hebrew Bible. Now, because I think the late date of the completion of Torah during the post-exilic period under the Persians in the 6th century BCE makes the most sense of why this is, I’ll explain it briefly. Although one source of the creation narrative (Genesis 2:4b-25) has been considered very old (10th century), its place in a narrative alongside the other part that was written in the 6th century (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) is a Persian period development during the days of Ezra. Thus, while the older story may well have been in both oral and text forms for many centuries, it was not contextualised as we now have it until the sixth. This means that many of the other biblical materials were already written before anyone could ever have seen the text of Genesis. The absence of Adam, then, is hardly confusing. Some of the Prophets wrote long before this text would have been finalised, so of course they’re not going to put weight on Adam. However, since DeYoung wouldn’t accept this explanation, but would rather see Moses as the author of the Pentateuch in the 13th or 14th century, I think it’s probably more difficult for him to explain why Adam receives hardly a mention throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible. If he was as important to Israelite theology as he is to evangelical theology, where did he go?
3. The opening chapters of Genesis are stylized, but they show no signs of being poetry. Compare Genesis 1 with Psalm 104, for example, and you’ll see how different these texts are. It’s simply not accurate to call Genesis poetry. And even if it were, who says poetry has to be less historically accurate?
I’m not familiar with the evangelical literature on Genesis 1-11, so I can’t say I know who is describing the opening chapters of Genesis as ‘poetry’. It is rather a highly complex section of several different literary registers, but it is certainly some sort of elevated prose, even if that tag is unsatisfactory. And comparing Genesis 1 to Psalm 104 (especially in English translation) is not a fair comparison. Apples and oranges. There are, to be sure, many other genres besides history and science, and there is no intrinsic reason to assume the historicity of Genesis 1-11 any more than one does a poetic text. One can answer DeYoung’s question ‘who says poetry has to be less historically accurate’ by pointing to the Song of the Sea at Exodus 15 and comparing it to the account of the victory in chapter 14. They are obviously doing different things, and the poetry is demonstrably not to be read historically. This stuff permeates the texts of the Hebrew Bible, and demanding historical veracity out of them is to demand something they do not need to deliver. Nor can they. Consider even the differing conceptualisations of Creation in other parts of the Hebrew Bible. Does DeYoung really want to read Isaiah 51:9-11 as historical fact? In this text, the prophet is recalling a familiar ANE motif of the deity subduing the chaos monsters at the beginning of time, thus creating something out of chaos, rather than creating ex nihilo (Note: creation ex nihilo is a patristic innovation, not pressuposed by anything in the Hebrew Bible, nor even in Jewish interpretation; consider Rashi’s commentary on Genesis that clearly shows this assumption that God made something out of pre-existing chaotic matter). Here is Isaiah 51:9-11, where ‘creation’ amounts to God slaying Rahab, the monster, and from this death of the monster comes creation.
Awake, awake, put on strength,
O arm of the Lord!
Awake, as in days of old,
the generations of long ago!
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
who pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep;
who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to cross over?
So the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Psalm 74:13-17 gives us not Rahab, but Leviathan, but the assumption is the same, and it is based in the mythological world of the ANE. Creation = God slaying a monster. Tell me, should we be reading this poetic account as historical, and if so, why do most creationists and literal-Adamists (nice, eh?) not use these texts?
You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
You cut openings for springs and torrents;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you established the luminaries and the sun.
You have fixed all the bounds of the earth;
you made summer and winter.
4. There is a seamless strand of history from Adam in Genesis 2 to Abraham in Genesis 12. You can’t set Genesis 1-11 aside as prehistory, not in the sense of being less than historically true as we normally understand those terms. Moses deliberately connects Abram with all the history that comes before him, all the way back to Adam and Eve in the garden.
This is another odd claim, as I wonder if all evangelical Old Testament professors would teach a literal reading of Tower of Babel, the lengthy years of human life, etc. Am I wrong about this? I could be, so wouldn’t mind clarification. The suggestion that ‘there is a seamless strand of history from Adam in Genesis 2 to Abraham in Genesis 12′ is incredible, and is easily dismissed by recognition of the redactional seams throughout, such as the accounts of the Flood, and the problem of the genealogies, for which see next. The literalism required to see this seamless history is one that strains incredulity, and certainly backs one into a very tiny corner.
5. The genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3 treat Adam as historical.
Again, odd. The genealogies are one of the last places one ought to look for historically accurate information, and one should, once again, really take stock of the reason for which genealogies in the ancient world were constructed. Consider also the problem of genealogical information since even within the Pentateuch there are so many variant traditions about the dates. In the genealogies, the Septuagint reveals a Hebrew text that has a different reckoning to the one found in the Masoretic text. The Samaritan Pentateuch has affinities with both the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, but then has unique figures of its own. We have, then, various artificial attempts at chronography by the ancient producers of Scripture. Here below are the differences between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint.
| Patriarch | Masoretic text | Septuagint | ||
|
First Son |
Remaining Years |
First Son |
Remaining Years |
|
| Adam |
130 |
800 |
230 |
700 |
| Seth |
105 |
807 |
205 |
707 |
| Enosh |
90 |
815 |
190 |
715 |
| Kenan |
70 |
840 |
170 |
740 |
| Mahalalel |
65 |
830 |
165 |
730 |
| Jared |
162 |
800 |
162 |
800 |
| Enoch |
65 |
300 |
165 |
200 |
| Methuselah |
187 |
782 |
187 |
782 |
| Lamech |
182 |
595 |
188 |
565 |
| Noah |
500 |
450 |
500 |
450 |
| Shem |
100 |
500 |
100 |
500 |
| Arpachshad |
35 |
403 |
135 |
430 (400) |
| Cainan |
– |
– |
130 |
330 |
| Shelah |
30 |
403 |
130 |
330 |
| Eber |
34 |
430 |
134 |
370 (270) |
| Peleg |
30 |
209 |
130 |
209 |
| Reu |
32 |
207 |
132 |
207 |
| Serug |
30 |
200 |
130 |
200 |
| Nahor |
29 |
119 |
79 (179) |
129 (125) |
| Terah |
70 |
135 |
70 |
– |
| Abraham |
100 |
75 |
100 |
75 |
Most modern readers really don’t care how old the Patriarchs were, but for the many who want to use the Bible to prove the date of the earth the schemes have very important implications. The causes for the lengthening of the age of the earth by 1380 years in the Greek version lay in the potential disputes the Jews would have encountered with their Egyptian contemporaries. The Egyptian chronology of Manetho in the first half of the third century indicated that the first Pharoahs would have lived some 3000 years before his time, but according to the Hebrew Torah the flood happened in 2348-2349 BCE, an impossibility if Manetho’s chronology was considered reliable. It is not, of course, to modern scholars, but it must have been to the translator of Genesis, who lengthened the generations by 1380 years, 606 years before the flood and 780 after, a feat accomplished also by the addition of a Cainan who does not even appear in the Masoretic text. The Septuagint’s version of the Primeval History is not that of the Masoretic text, so we see already, very early on, that Jewish readers of Scripture felt these bits of genealogical information could be manipulated.
The same thing happens for the Chronicler, whom DeYoung mentions. He makes the genealogy do what he needs it to do. For example, he condenses the material from the Pentateuch so that he can get to Abraham and his descendants as quickly as possible; he focuses squarely on the tribes of Israel; he presents Judah–the fourth son of Jacob–first and in greatest detail; skips over other parts; includes info not found in other biblical lists; omits Athaliah; highlights the lines of Levi and Benjamin (presumably because of their faithfulness to the Davidic line), etc.
6. Paul believed in a historical Adam (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45-49). Even some revisionists are honest enough to admit this; they simply maintain that Paul (and Luke) were wrong.
7. The weight of the history of interpretation points to the historicity of Adam. The literature of second temple Judaism affirmed an historical Adam. The history of the church’s interpretation also assumes it.
Simply put, just because ancient readers assumed something to be the case, insofar as they had little contrary evidence, doesn’t mean that when we do have contrary evidence we should continue to assume what our predecessors did solely on the basis of intellectual inertia. When Copernicus and Galileo suggested heliocentrism, the Church leaders decided to stick with what all their predecessors (and the BIBLE) assumed (namely, that the sun revolved around the earth). And then they looked pretty dumb for a while, before they finally wiped the egg off their faces and admitted that they needed to think differently about how they understood the truthfulness of the biblical texts that betray geocentric assumptions. Tradition is valuable, but much more insofar as it is addressing contested points than when it transmits uncritical assumptions.
8. Without a common descent we lose any firm basis for believing that all people regardless of race or ethnicity have the same nature, the same inherent dignity, the same image of God, the same sin problem, and that despite our divisions we are all part of the same family coming from the same parents.
Lack of common descent doesn’t mean you lose ‘any firm basis’ for believing in human equality; it means that you change how you argue that case. DeYoung is being cavalier in assuming that the way he sees things is the only way things can be seen.
9. Without a historical Adam, Paul’s doctrine of original sin and guilt does not hold together.
It is perfectly plausible to account for the truthfulness and coherence of Paul’s argumentation in Romans 5 without assuming the historicity of Adam. Peter Enn’s new book does this (and so will Chris Hays’ forthcoming essay).
We’d invite any dialogue on these points from DeYoung or any other professors (or anyone else). We also want to make one last suggestion for Christian readers. It would be very beneficial to read more widely outside of one’s tradition, and to consider the vast resources available to assist in the interpretation of Scripture from the last two millenia of Christian exegesis. One should not imagine that everything of value must come from the Reformers and their theological heirs. To do so leaves one impoverished when there is so much more from the Christian exegetical tradition. We should, however, warn you, since to do so may challenge one’s long-held beliefs; may reveal that one’s interpretations are very narrowly conceived and tied to a very tiny fraction of Christian tradition; and may shine lights in dark places that one doesn’t know exist.
All best.
This was a fun read. I applaude you both for your patience and courtesy in dealing with DeYoung’s less than helpful post. It is tempting to either ignore this stuff or mock it, but you are modelling precisely the kind of scholarly engagement that could potentially be of real benefit to people. Thanks, Chris
Chris, thanks very much indeed. These are precisely the aims we have. Many thanks.
I wrote a few blogs on this subject a while back after Christianity Today released a couple of articles about an historical Adam. They can be found here:
http://hamiltonmj1983.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/a-response-to-no-adam-no-eve-no-gospel/
http://hamiltonmj1983.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/more-on-adm-and-eve/
http://hamiltonmj1983.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/could-jesus-have-been-mistaken/
http://hamiltonmj1983.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/historicity/
This one probably received the most attention with people talking back and forth about how historicity affects meaning.
I will probably be posting about this particular DeYoung post later today, so check back!
Thank you for a great response, as well. I appreciate your bringing Psalm 74 and Isaiah 51 into the mix; the Old Testament (and particularly Isaiah’s) use of myth is my main research focus at the moment.
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This is wonderfully helpful in the conversation. I would suggest that most evangelical OT professors would teach a literal Tower of Babel and historical Adam. However, what is helpful here is the interaction (which I had not seen in such concise form) of the problems of historical lineages between Masoretic and Septuagintal readings.
Likewise, though I prefer a historical Adam, the case does need to be further developed about how the lack of one doesn’t create theological problems for Pauline soteriology. What would be the initial steps in reconciling a seeming incongruous fault if a historical Adam didn’t exist? It seems that when one reads Paul and much of the Patristic literature (which continues to be formative for contemporary theology) about Adam (I’m thinking specifically Athanasius “De Incarnatione”) there is a necessity of a historical Adam. I’m rambling, nevertheless this is a helpful (and sane) response to a growing point of discussion. Much thanks!
wait a minute, are you THE Garet Robinson?
A comment about the genealogies: DeYoung is deliberately selective in comparing Luke 3 and 1 Chronicles 1. By contrast, we might point out that Matthew’s schema (Matt 1) omits Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, and Jehoiakim.
I would love to dialogue on these points; alas, I am not a professor. Hopefully, some of your own caliber will respond. I will be watching the professionals from my spot on bleachers.
James McGrath’s contribution: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2012/02/ten-really-bad-reasons-to-believe-in-a-historical-adam.html
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Hey Mike/Chris,
Great post. This is nicely done. I greatly appreciate the tone of your argument, which is not an easy thing to get right.
Steve, thanks very much for this. Really appreciate it.
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I loved this post. Although this, “offering a response in a way that is as inclusive as possible for those readers who do sympathise with DeYoung and the Gospel Coalition” made me smile. There are so many layers of scholarship required in this post that I find exciting and interesting, but that would be a huge barrier for readers who sympathise with DeYoung. I could be wrong, I suppose. I know there are evangelical scholars. But, I think this is probably not a piece that would bridge the divide.
E. W. Faulstich’s chronology is strong evidence to refute those that would undermine truth of the Bible.
“Adam was born 3/24/4001 BC.”
http://biblechronologybooks.com/scientificmethod.html
“Two days earlier earth, moon, mercury, venus, and mars were in 343 degree geocentric alignment.”
His books are available free through his website for postage.
http://www.lewisdt.com/research/biblicalchronology.html
“Eugene Faulstich, of the Chronology-History Research Institute, refined the above Ussher method. He knew that Biblical months always began on the evening of a new moon, and that years began on a vernal equinox. So Faulstich used a computer program to calculate many timing cycles, including precise moon phases, vernal equinoxes, Sabbath and Jubilee years, priestly cycles, astronomical events such as eclipses, and also backward-extrapolated Gregorian (modern calendar) equivalent dates. By careful study of Biblical texts, as well as some extra-Biblical sources such as Babylonian king-lists, he arrived at what he considers much more precise dating of most Old Testament events. For example, his creation week occurred March 20-26, 4001 BC, at a time known to have a highly unusual planetary alignment. He based his work on the Hebrew (Masoretic) text.. E.W. Faulstich, Bible Chronology and the Scientific Method, Part II : Creation Through the First Temple., (Spencer, Iowa: Chronology-History Research Institute, 1990 ). “
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Great post. I appreciate what you had you say and, in case it’s not obvious, I agree.
Hi Timothy Michael Law,
You and Enns and Chris Hays have not reconciled Christianity with evolution. Such a task is more daunting than moderate and even liberal theologians realize.
How was mankind expelled from Eden if a paradise called Eden never existed? The world is a mixture of life and death, as well as a mixture of aggression and sociability. Has been and still is. If it has been “redeemed” it’s been “redeemed” from a condition that existed long before humankind evolved, a condition that God instituted and used to produce humankind in the first place. This strikes me as absurd in ways I’ll try to elucidate below.
A side question, how was the serpent cursed if serpents are not cursed in any biological way at all?
Our ancestors were never “expelled from paradise” because the earth already contained species with aggressive tendencies, species that suffered, died, went extinct (sometimes in massive extinction events) long before humanity evolved. Sociability was also around before humanity ever evolved.. So how exactly are we to understand the “paradise” that humanity was supposedly “expelled from?” Living things suffered and died, species went extinct, sometimes in mass extinction events. At other times they got along in a sociable fashion. So where can one situate either a “paradise” or an “expulsion/fall” from it? The world features both sociability and aggression, birth and death, same as it does now, and it did so both before and after humans appeared.
Worse yet, without an enormous percentage of all organisms dying rather than surviving to the age of reproduction there would have been no gene shuffling (and subsequent whittling down of organisms leaving the most adept at producing more organisms), hence no evolution of new species, including the human species. Part of the very process of evolution of all species involved aggressive vying for mates, eating other living things, suffering and dying in cold snaps and droughts, dying from poisons produced naturally by bacteria in spoiled food, having their young die of from childhood bacteria and viruses, as well as mass deaths due to asteroid collusions and volcanic eruptions, all of which paved the evolutionary route to our present diversity of species.
There was an evolution of brains and consciousness over vast periods of time that also involved suffering, death and the extinction of countless precursor and cousin species. Greater conscious awareness certainly appears to have proven itself a useful tool in those species survival. But in other ways the evolution of increasing consciousness has increased a species’ ability to feel pain by adding new elements of psychological suffering to the many natural ones. Heightened consciousness in mammals also appears restricted to a few large-brained species including cetacea, elephants and great apes. Some large-brained birds also exhibit heightened consciousness like parrots and corvids. But none of those play a role in the mythical story of the expulsion from Ede—instead “the serpent’ is declared in the Bible to be “the most shrewd beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” (Snakes have probably been frightening our ape-ancestors and cousins for ages before humans ever evolved. Even today chimpanzees will cry out at the sight of just a rubber snake, get all its mates over to take a look and then beat the rubber snake with a stick over and over again.)
Having invoked “the shrewd serpent” motif in the biblical tale the need for blaming and cursing the serpent also arose. But In what biological way can one say the snake or any other species is “cursed?” The story seems to owe much to human-centric revulsion at “dirt” and the idea of “crawling on one’s belly.” Primates that walk on two legs are revolted by the idea of crawling on their bellies and licking dirt. Being low on one’s belly is also a metaphor for subservience. But to snakes it’s an evolutionary advantage. It allows them to sneak up on prey by lying low in the grass, out of sight, and approach silently, without footsteps. That’s part of what freaks out chimpanzees apparently. Nor were the ancient Hebrews aware that snakes poked out their tongues to gather molecules hanging in the air, the same molecules we gather by breathing in through our noses and then those molecules stick to the membranes of the inside of our noses where our organ of smell is contained. The snake has to slowly swallow its dinner whole and needs a separate narrow breathing pathway so its organ of smell is found on the roof of its mouth, that’s why they stick out their tongues, not to “eat dirt” but to collect the same molecules from the air that we collect simply by breathing them in through our noses, but those molecules collect on the snake’s moist tongue and are then pressed against the roof of its mouth where it’s organ of smell is located. That’s how snakes smells what’s in the air. They don’t smell like us. But there’s no wisdom involved in calling what snakes do, “eating dirt” as the authors of Genesis do, especially since there are plenty of animals other than snakes that spend far more time in the dust of the earth and pass far greater amounts of dirt into their mouths than snakes do. Neither do all snakes species crawl on the earth so much as crawl round in the tops of trees in rain forest canopys, while others spend a lot of time swimming in water. So how exactly was the serpent “cursed” In Genesis? One might as well consider worms, moles and gophers even more cursed if the idea of eating dirt upsets you.. So it seems to be a totally human-centric story, “Oh how cursed I would be if I was forced to go on my belly all the days of my life with my face near dirt!” Think of what the Hebrews might have thought of intestinal worms. They weren’t cursed more than snakes? But the ancients were writing fairy tales based on human-centric prejudices, and probably also based on appearances as well, since the animals and fruit trees all “appeared” to only give birth to “their own kind,” and the sky appeared to meet the earth at the horizon of a flat earth, and the breath and heart appeared to encompass a person’s life and direct him rather than that silent organ, the brain where our “life” really is centralized in the central nervous system.
The inspired Psalmists fair no better when it comes to their levels of ignorance of the biological world. Maybe they were simply in the job of praising their Deity like they would a Mesopotamian a king, i.e., without raising any embarrassing questions no matter how obvious.
PSALM 104 The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from the Lord…Oh Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all…both small and great beasts…These all wait upon thee; that thou may give them their meat in due season.
The inspired psalmist forgot to mention that “the Lord” either gives lions “their meat in due season;” Or has them be eaten by their own mother (because they are runts or deformed); Or has them be eaten by a rival male who has taken control of the pride; Or has them starve because their parents fail to bring enough food home or die trying; Or makes young lions the “meat” of some other predatory species that catches them off guard; Or (if they are male) has them grow up and be killed in combat by another male seeking territory or mates; Or makes them the “meat” for a parasite or disease organism. It’s all the same to “the Lord.” In 1994 one thousand lions, one-third of the population of East Africa’s Serengeti park, died from painful convulsions by a virus that attacked their blood cells, lungs and brain, i.e., the Canine Distemper Virus. The lions probably picked up the virus from hyenas who picked it up from domesticated dogs that lived just outside the park. (That same year, a tenth of the 500,000 western gray kangaroos in South Australia and the 2.8 million gray kangaroos in neighboring New South Wales, went blind due to a mystery virus.) Perhaps “the Lord” supplied those viruses their “meat” in due season?
____________________________
PSALMS 145:5,9,16,19 & 147:9 On Thy wonderful works I will meditate…The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works…Thou dost open Thy hand, and dost satisfy the desire of every living thing…[By giving them other living things to prey upon? But then how is the desire of every living thing satisfied? – E.T.B.]…He will also hear their cry and will save them. [But if He “hears their cry and saves” them from being eaten by some living thing, then He is starving that other living thing. – E.T.B.] He gives to the beast its food, and to the young ravens which cry.
A recent study showed that one-third of adult birds and four-fifths of their offspring die of starvation every year (David Lack, “Of Birds and Men,” New Scientist, Jan., 1996). Not surprising, since birds have to eat from one-quarter to one-half their body weight daily, so starvation is a common killer of birds. Neither does “the Lord” “save” the baby birds that get tossed out of their own nest by the young of a rival species, the cuckoo. The female cuckoo lays her egg in the nest of other birds, and when the cuckoo chick emerges from its egg it tosses the other eggs or other baby birds out of the nest, so only the cuckoo chick is fed by the other bird’s parents. Nor does “the Lord” “save” the baby birds that I saw on the “Hunting and Escaping” video (in the Trials of Life series) which were dragged from their nests by sea birds of a rival predatory species in order to feed the predator’s own hungry chicks. Nor does “the Lord” “save” baby birds tossed out of the nest by their own parents because their chicks were not developing properly or swiftly enough.
BACK TO GENESIS–The story of the expulsion from paradise appears to be a story about a deity unwilling to openly share knowledge—the fruit of the tree of knowledge to be exact. (The deity’s supposed reason for creating Adam was not so he could eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but instead to tend the deity’s paradisical garden, to be a gardener. That’s what the inspired author of the story says. I guess that’s why God used some chimpanzee genes left over from earlier that “day” when he was creating all the beasts of the field, but tweaked them to create a species with a larger brain, upright posture, and opposable thumbs. By fiddling a bit with apes genes, the deity ended up with humans and chimpanzees being as closely related genetically as sibling species of near identical fruit flies.)
So, Adam was forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge and when he did, God exclaimed “He has become like one of us!” and decided to evict him from paradise before he could eat of the tree of eternal life as well. The story perhaps was meant to explain why humankind is more intelligent than any other living thing God created, even able to name those other things, yet why we also suffer death just like all other living things, being created from dust and returning to it just like them in the end, thus having god-like intelligence but lacking the second god-like trait, eternal life. But it explains nothing and illustrates nothing except the human longing to not die. And it doesn’t portray the deity in such a pleasant light either, initially creating Adam just as a gardener, and forbidding him knowledge and eternal life which we had to take for ourselves. And then the deity curses the first pair of humans, mere children, expelling them for their first negative act without a moment’s hesitation. Is that a lesson for how parents ought to treat their own children? As for the expulsion story combined with the Noah’s Flood story, taken together they raise the question of why God expects us to treat our own children with so much love when he expelled his own at their first infraction of the rules, and then drowned all their progeny except eight, and much later we find in Revelation that drowning was too good for them, for there’s also a fiery lake prepared for a host of Adam’s children as well. If you can believe such stories. Even mythically they appear filled with ignorance and inspired more by human imagination than God.
Ed, you ought to write a book (because I think you just did).
So, what’s wrong with a bunch of OT stories “inspired more by human imagination than God.”
Counter question for you Peter, Why limit yourself to “OT stories” being inspired more by human imagination than God?
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dear dr law,
i realise that the discussion is long ended, but i would be very interested to know your view on how an historical fall might be reconciled with an allegorical adam.
i was surprised to see that dr de young does not mention the theological necessity of an historical fall, which to me might lead to a much stronger defense of an historical adam.
Thanks Bruce, never too late. I’d point you to Pete Enns’s most recent book where he articulates this. In brief, an ‘historical’ fall isn’t necessitated by orthodox theology nor especially by reading the text, even if one wants to retain some sort of notion of universal sin. But systematic theology is outside of my comfort zone!
Tim,
If we grant the tenets of the doctrine of inspiration, how do we reconcile this doctrine and Paul’s misunderstanding of science and an historical Adam?
Thanks!
thanks for writing. that’s not my territory, however, but I do appreciate you reading.