Re: The puzzle of Adam

George,

thank you for your detailed comments! I am having the same formatting
difficulties. Perhaps it's because (after 6 years) I changed to new
software (Windows XP with Office 2003, from NT4 with Office 97). My
replies to your remarks are set between PR: and :PR

Blessings
Peter

 
George Murphy wrote:

Peter - Comments are interspersed below. For some reason your text
doesn't seem to have the usual markers in this reply so my comments are
in braces { }.

Shalom
George

....

    {One would expect stories about creation & primordial history to be
put in terms that made sense for people of the cultures, places &c in
which they were written. Thus it's no surprise that the early chapters
of Genesis are set in Mesopotamian locales & that they apparently make
use of traditions from earlier cultures
in those areas, traditions that retain some accurate historical detail
(names &c). If this is what you mean by "historical background," fine.
But there's no reason to insist that that must mean anything like a
connected historical account.}

 PR: I agree that the text must make sense for the first readers. But I
wouldn't say that Gen.1-11 are "set in Mesopotamian locales", but that
they report things that happened there (although, of course, they don't
give any kind of complete and connected historical account). And I
wouldn't talk of "making use of traditions from earlier cultures", but
that the texts were first written by people living through the events
recounted or their descendants after oral transmission, and that's the
reason for the accurate historical details (together with divine
providential care). I don't see any need to recur to earlier cultures.
We don't talk of the Gilgamesh epic making use of traditions from
earlier cultures, either. :PR

   {These early chapters of Genesis do contain broken myth, in Brevard
Childs' sense, though not to the exclusion of historical details.}

PR: I haven't read Brevard Child, but just remember something you once
explained on this list. If by "broken myth" you mean that the writer
occasionally makes allusion to pagan myths, opposing them with his own
theological emphasis, I agree that this might be found in some places.
But this need not include the explicit adoption of contrafactual claims. :PR

....
  {Gen.2:4a-25 is a story of the origin of the first human beings and of
other animals. There is simply no suggestion that there are any other
humans or humans /in posse/ outside the boundaries of Eden when the
events described here takes place. Furthermore, the fact that the
origins of both Adam and Eve are described in ways very different from
the normal way in which human beings come into the world argues against
the idea that at the same time there are already other creatures who are
the same biologically as this man & woman and are reproducing in the
ordinary manner.}

PR: I am sure we are not the first ones to ask whom Cain feared in the
land of Nod, whom he married there, and for whom he built a city. And
the "sons of God" marrying the "daughters of man" has probably been
interpreted before as dealing with different human peoples or tribes,
rather than male demons or Cainite women. These, at least, are some
suggestions that there were other humans at that time. But even if all
interpreters up to now had been unanimous in considering Adam to be the
unique common ancestor of humankind, are we forced to adopt their
opinion? It is not explicitly taught in the Bible. On the other hand, we
are the first generation of humans who know for sure about what I call
the "puzzle of Adam", i.e. the contradiction between a non-mythological
interpretation of Adam as the first human and the facts. I agree that
the origin of Eve is described in an unusual way, and I conceeded the
possibility of a special miracle. But the description of Adam's "origin"
does show parallels to other, "normal" people, as I indicated in my
post. I agree that Adam and Eve are a very special pair, according to
the text. But so are Abraham and Sarah. Each new covenant brings novel
revelations from God, usually clothed in surprising symbols (here I mean
symbols which were, at the same time, very tangible, historical facts,
like the exodus, the tabernacle, the virginal conception, the
resurrection of Lazarus, or pentecost). :PR

    {It seems to me that the "severe conflict" that you are trying to
avoid by your argument is a result of your thinking that the historical
& geographical details in early Genesis require those texts to be
"historical accounts" in some approximation to the modern sense of the
term. As I said above, this is just not necessary.}

 PR: I don't a priori require any biblical text to be a specific genre
or type of literature, but try to determine this from the text and its
context. Maybe I have to specify that, for a narrative, the
approximation has to take into account aspects and formulations which
would be very unusual for modern history, such as symbols, metaphors,
anthropomorphic language, nonscientific selection of details, explicit
reference to God and eternal ("supernatural") reality, etc. Furthermore,
the character of the text as divine revelation through a human prophet
must be taken into consideration. All this would contribute to making
the text unrecognizable as a "historical account" in the modern sense.
Observed facts can be both formulated by the prophet in his own
understanding and language, and at the same time built into divine
revelation by God's guiding the prophet's thinking and selection of
language features. Such a combination must be postulated for revelatory
texts, but is impossible for any merely human one. I think it is an
unnecessary mutilation of the texts to frame them as "broken myths". :PR

   {& lest there be confusion, I should add that by speaking of these
texts as "stories" and referring to their cultural conditioning &c, I am
definitely not denying that they are authoritative theological texts.}

 PR: agreed. :PR

Now evidently, if Gen.2 were a creation story, these indications
(apparently meant to be historical) would be in severe conflict with
what we know about the origin of the first humans. In Gen.1, we
obviously do have a creation story. Gen.1:1-2:4 uses the verb "bara'",
which specifically designates divine creation out of nothing, a few
times, as well as other expressions for divine (possibly mediate)
action. As appropriate for a creation story, the geographical focus of
Gen.1:2-2:4 clearly is the whole earth, without any regional restriction
on it.

In contrast, the text of Gen.2:5-25 never uses "bara'" and is clearly
restricted to a region and time which do not fit with what we know about
the origin of the first humans. The "puzzle of Adam", therefore, cannot
be solved while believing Gen.2 to be a creation story.

This is the crucial point, in my opinion, - the key for a possible
solution to the puzzle of Adam.

 The erroneous traditional interpretation of Gen.2 as a creation story
has necessarily led to the observation that the "two creation stories"
are in conflict with each other, and, consequently, at least one of them
cannot describe historical facts. The only things that are therefore now
usually read from Gen.1-2 are theological (and psychological) truths.
Any satisfactory solution to the "puzzle of Adam" is in this way
excluded a priori.

{You need to define more precisely what "the puzzle of Adam" is. If
it's the question of when and where the first human creatures appeared,
I don't think you're going to get much help from Genesis. If it's
questions about what it means for us to be creatures of God and why all
people are sinners, then that is precisely a theological question.}

 PR: Above, I'm introducing this section with some paragraphs from my
first post, because they belong to an answer for your request. I call it
the "puzzle of Adam" because the question of whether or not Gen.1:27 and
2:7 refer to the same event is a major point to consider when looking
for a consistent interpretation of the whole text. It has to be dealt
with carefully on the Bible's own terms, in comparison with reality,
rather than just following traditions from earlier readers who could
hardly have had any idea about the time-frames involved. It is the
confounding of these two verses that led to the opinion of the "two
creation stories" (apart from the obvious stylistic differences, easily
attributable to a different focus), which in turn led to most of the
other odd problems, like the time of the animals' "creation", desert,
"mist", rain, Eve as a "substitute" for an animal helpmate, etc., not to
speak of the theological problems of the inheritance of "original sin",
possibly "baptismal regeneration", etc. I am not trying to "get much
help from Genesis" for finding out when and where the first humans
appeared. That's mainly a scientific question, and we are to find out
ourselves, without expecting much help from the Bible. On the contrary,
today, science can help us to find a better interpretation than the
traditional one. Knowing that first humans came much earlier than with
the beginning of agriculture leads us directly to see that Gen.2:5-25
cannot be both a creation story and a narrative with some basis in
historical fact. If you opt for "creation story", this immediately
relegates it to the sphere of myth, leading to problems with a genuine
divine inspiration, not only in Genesis, but also variously in the NT. :PR

 ....
{But Gen.2:4a-25 says nothing at all about humanity being created in the
image of God. That is an important theological concept at a higher
level, but should not be used to interpret the stories of the creation
(yes!) and sin of humanity in Gen.2 & 3.}

 PR: Exactly! to the first sentence and the first half of the second
one. Why? to the last claim. Gen.1 obviously links creation of humans
with the image of God. Sin is linked indirectly to the image, because
sin is not possible without the image. Therefore, in his fall, Adam must
be seen as a typical representative of all of humanity before and after
his time, but not as the cause of their own fall. :PR

 ....
{Certainly the extreme Augustinian idea that original sin is literally
"inherited" cannot be deduced from Gen.3 or Rom.5. But the Augustinian
tradition is correct in emphasizing the universal character of sin and
its seriousness. In particular, the fact that _all_ human beings are
sinners means that we are sinners from the beginning of our lives, from
our origin (i.e., "original sin originating"). Now as far as
understanding the need for salvation is concerned, this is all we need
to say. The fact that we can't trace this sinful condition back to some
1st human couple does _not_ (pace a lot of anti-evolutionary arguments)
obviate the need for Christ.}

 PR: I fully agree. :PR

 {But it does pose questions about the doctrine of creation. For if
_all_ humans beings are sinners for their entire lives, and have been
all the way back to whatever we understand the first groupof humans to
be, then we have to ask _why_ humanity is in this condition. It's not
enough to say "we just are" because that implies that God created
humanity sinful - i.e., that God is the creator of sin.

 Thus it's necessary to ask how & why humanity _became_ and continues to
become, sinful. But this is necessary for an adequate understanding of
creation & sin (as well as salvation), & not in order to salvage some
historicity for Gen.3.}

 PR: You are right that this is an important question. But the whole
Bible is notoriously silent about the question of the origin of evil. As
far as the origin of human sin is concerned, we have clear indications
that satanic temptation is involved, not only with Adam, but generally.
I am not going to deal with Satan's fall here. That God created humanity
sinful doesn't follow at all. We have to take seriously human
personhood, which derives from the image of God and implies a freedom of
choice for or against God. Inherited sinfulness (Erbsünde), be it
inherited from Adam or someone 100,000 years ago, is a red herring. The
only thing such a concept can do is to make us think we have an excuse
for what is our own sin. :PR

 ....
{The idea of "federal headship" does not work. A parallel with the role
of Christ fails: Christ is not the representative of humanity simply
because of God's arbitrary choice of a particular /Homo sapiens/ but
because, /inter alia/, he is the natural Son of God. He is not even -
strictly speaking - "a" human person because his /hypostasis/ is that of
the 2d Person of the Trinity. I.e., God did not choose a particular
human being & then become somehow united with him in Nestorian fashion.
He is, OTOH, what God has always intended humanity to be - thus
relativizing the importance of understanding who "Adam" was. Christ is
the "last Adam" as the eschatological fulfillment of humanity, though of
course not the last human to be born in a temporal sequence.}

 PR: You are right. Maybe I shouldn't use the term "federal headship".
The only thing I wanted to say with this term is that Adam could very
well be the typical representative of fallen humanity, just as Christ as
the founder or author of the faith (Heb.12:2) is the head of redeemed
humanity. As Christ's headship is independent of time (before or after
the representative's life on earth), so could Adam represent those
before and after his time on earth. As soon as we give up the false idea
of biological inheritance, time becomes irrelevant. :PR

 {That being the case, the idea that Adam was the 1st "federal head" of
humanity and that somehow his sin is imputed to other humans, really
solves very little. Besides this being a quite arbitrary act of God, it
hardly explains why all human beings from their origin commit actual sins.}

PR: I agree, and I don't believe in any imputation of sin, although of
course I believe in an imputation of Christ's righteousness to the
believers. In Rom.5:12-21, there is more contrast than parallelity
between Adam and Christ. :PR

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)