On Fri, 1 Dec 1995 17:44:52 -0600 (CST) you wrote:
DD>Either with or without a knowledge of Hebrew (I had one year of it
>in seminary, and survived!), I think that placing the weight of a "new"
>interpretation of the 'adam vocabulary on the presence or absence of a
>definite article is pretty risky stuff. You must ask yourself if the
>average ancient Hebrew, listening to the reading of the Pentateuch, would
>have caught from such a subtlety the message: "Ah, here God is referring
>to some creature much more primitive than I existing milllions of years
>ago, and HERE God is referring to my great, great, great (etc.) grand-
>father Adam, who had the capability of naming the animals and of under-
>standing the difference between obedience and disobedience to a divine
>command." Sorry, I ain't buying it. The first step in hermeneutics is
>to consider the range of possible meanings a text COULD HAVE CONCEIVABLY
>HELD for its original hearers.
I agree with this in principle, but as Pinnock ("The Scripture
Principle") points out, the lesson from the way the NT writers handled
the OT is that there is more meaning in Scripture than the original
hearers may have thought.
This is evident by 1Pet 1:10-11 where it seems that even the actual
writers of Scripture did not always know the full meaning of what they
wrote:
"Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that
was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care,
trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of
Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ
and the glories that would follow."
Surely it would not be beyond the ability of an omniscient Creator to
ensure that a certain flexibility is inherent in Scripture in order to
accommodate future advances in scientific knowledge? The fact that
for thousands of years "average ancient Hebrew" has understood Gn 1
man and Gn 2 Adam as one and the same, is no guarantee that he was.
Doubtless the same "average ancient Hebrew" might have thought the
days of Genesis 1 were ordinary solar days, but again that does not
necessarily mean they were. Ultimately Scripture must be interpreted
in the context of God's general truths revealed in nature.
All I claim is that the two-"Adam" model is at least linguistically
possible. In Gn 1:26-27 the Heb. 'Adam cannot fairly be translated
"Adam" and from Gn 2:19-20 'Adam can be translated "Adam". This is
only the first hurdle the model must overcome - there are many more!
:-).
I have started writing a paper on the two-"Adam" model, which I will
eventually post for Reflectorites' comment and criticism.
God bless.
Stephen