Re: [asa] The Bible does not require a Neolithic Adam!

Glenn,
 
I'm truly sorry that you felt insulted by my response. I didn't make this clear: the reason I didn't interact with any of your **specific** arguments is because I actually do agree with all of them -- at least I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on any that I don't fully understand. I think that probably most people on the list will also agree with your data that, for example, Neandertals used tents and kept flocks, or that murder with an axe or spear was first done by a homo erectus. I can agree, at least I have no reason to disagree, that none of the things mentioned in the Bible were first invented by Akkadians or Sumerians. I'm even willing to accept that the mention of metals **could** have been a reference to wickedness and not metallurgy. I'll grant you that for the sake of discussion. I have absolutely no problem with it. Therefore, I saw no reason to argue any of these points.
 
But nonetheless, most people -- like me -- have not been convinced by these many excellent arguments that you put forth, and never will be convinced by them. As you say, you "write things that nobody believes." Don't you care to know why? If you just add more and more excellent arguments on top of your previous excellent arguments, do you think you will get a different response now compared to what you have gotten in the past? I can tell you without any doubt that you will not get a different response, because you are arguing the wrong problem. Your particular data and particular arguments are not the problem, and they never have been.
 
I was trying to respond to what I perceive is the **real** reason that your arguments have not persuaded people. I was trying to do this in good faith, not to insult you. The real problem has nothing to do with the veracity of your arguments. The problem lies at a higher level. When we synthesize all the arguments into a view of the Bible, there is one last sanity-check where we say, "but do I really believe this is what Moses intended his original audience to understand?" I think this is the step where you lose people. It is certainly where you lose me.
 
Language and communication have so many degrees of freedom that they can be deconstructed and put back together to mean any number of things. It doesn't surprise me that you have found a way to read the Genesis words and sentences such that they may refer consistently to homo erectus. Likewise, it doesn't surprise me that, at the same time, Dick and others can read it such that Adam is a neolithic individual. I don't believe in "smoking guns," because there are too many smoking guns lying around and everybody interprets them differently. The real problem here is philosophical -- what are the rules of exegesis? What is our theory of inspiration?
 
Instead of arguing about metallurgy in Genesis, you would make much better progress arguing these higher-level questions that are actually responsible for losing your audience. You would need to answer these types of objections:
 
1. Why would Moses think that his original audience (13th-15th century BC Israelites) needed to know about the advances of Neandertal and Homo erectus cultures?
 
2. What did Moses put in the text so that his original audience would understand that he was talking about creatures who lived millions of years ago, not about the very similar stories and cultural issues that actually existed in the societies that surrounded them at that time?
 
3. Why should I believe that Moses' original audience would listen to these words and picture something completely different than what existed in their own ANE culture?
 
4. Do we see a pattern in the Bible that God directly inspires an author with the names and details of an account when there was no ordinary path of transmission of those details?
 
These are just a sampling that I generated off the top of my head.
 
If you can get people to agree with your basic premises of exegesis, then the rest of the task will be easy for you. But if you don't address the major philosophical differences, then no amount of arguing about metallurgy or homo erectus culture will ever convince anybody, no matter how consistent your specific reconstruction of the text may be.
 
I mean this in charity and good faith as an honest response to your post. Although your arguments about metals are interesting, I don't view them as a winning argument because of the final "sanity check" that involves the higher level issues.
 
God bless,
Phil
 
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Received on Mon Oct 23 15:24:23 2006