From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Tue Oct 07 2003 - 17:14:51 EDT
Jay Willingham wrote:
>
> I paid close attention. I simply believe you cannot see the forest for the
> trees.
>
> To me the circumstantial evidence I pointed to in the literal text is more
> than sufficient to say the Lord and Adam and Eve had personal, face to face
> interaction prior to, and, as in the interaction with Cain, after the fall
> from grace.
>
> But I really do not know if this makes a whole lot of difference, especially
> when compared to the atonement string, so I will let you have the last word
> on this if you want it.
>
> As you do not believe Genesis 1-6 are allegory, what do you believe they
> are?
An allegory is a story in which the different elements really stand for other
things, as in Pilgrim's Progress. Paul's treatment of the story of Hagar & Sarah in
Galatians 4 is another example - he explicitly calls it an allegory.
The texts of Gen.1-6 are of different literary types. Gen.1:1-2:4a is probably
liturgy - with some theological polemic incoporated. Much of the rest of these chapters
consists of stories. There are probably a few bits of historical data - names &c - in
them but they are not historical accounts. They function as theological statements
about creation, sin, & the early stages of humanity. The genealogy of Chapter 5 is of
course a different kind of thing. & the strange first 4 verses of 6 are apparently a
piece of pagan myth which the biblical writer has used to make the point that divinity
is not something that can be conveyed biologically. Brevard Childs used the term
"broken myth" for that type of things.
I can't see the forest for the trees? A consistent biblical literalist (which
I'm not but I'm trying to communicate with those who are) has to look at the trees the
author has planted & can't feel free to plant ones of his/her own.
As to having the last word on walking & talking with God - well, instead let me
invite folks to respond to what I was saying to begin with before the topic got
deflected (as it so often does) into another debate about Genesis 1-3.
What I had said was that one can make a good case from scripture that the
Incarnation was not sinmply contingent upon human sin but was God's purpose for creation
from the beginning - as Ephesians 1:10 indicates. Would anybody like to discuss the
relevance of the Ephesians text to the question without once again turning the
conversation to Genesis?
& while I'm being a bit snotty, could I make 2 procedural requests?
1) Put replies at the end of messages to which you're replying instead of at
the beginning. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's supposed to be SOP for the
list. Once people start stringing out a thread in reverse order it's hard to change it,
responses get separated from what they're responding to, & it gets awkward to snip out
obsolete material.
2) Change the subject line when the subject changes. This is about the 10^6th
post on "RATE" & most now have little or nothing to do with RATE. There's a whole
dendritic structure of topics that's developed on this supposedly one subject & it's
hard to tell what's what.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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