Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

philtill@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> The counter-argument you raise below, that Noah's family could have
> personally transmitted the practices across the time of the Flood --
> that argument would work better for the metallurgists than for the
> pastoral nomads or traveling bards. That is because only metallurgy
> was a technology; the other two were primarily lifestyles that did not
> require any new technology. It is possible, for example, that Shem
> could have learned the technology of metallurgy and taught it to his
> descedants. But it is hard to see how Shem could have kept the
> "lifestyle" of the pastoral nomads or the traveling bards alive
> and transmitted it to his descendants so that it re-started after the
> Flood. Lifestyles are passed from generation-to-generation by living
> that way, not by teaching facts.
>
> Regarding the timing of metallurgy, I must point out first that the
> interpretation works best if you accept that Jabal, Jubal and
> Tubal-Cain were probably not intended to be understood as literal
> individuals. IMO it is too coincidental that three siblings would
> invent such remarkable aspects of culture within a single generation.
> As you correctly say, the timing is not correct since metallurgy began
> around 6000 BC, a few thousand years earlier than pastoral nomadism
> (which is believed to have begun with the Sahara's desertification
> around 3000 BC). And it is too pat that the names Jabal, Jubal, and
> Tubal-Cain all rhyme and happen to mean the exact things that they
> invented. Likewise, it is too pat that all the other names in Cain's
> geneology are distorted versions of the names in Seth's geneology.
>
Doesn't the Seth line also tell a story with their names? I can't
remember the details, but I remember our Bible teacher at school
speaking with some enthusiasm about how the names in Seth's line tell
the story of the Savior to come -- as you alluded to elsewhere in your
post. So doesn't this make Seth's line also a candidate for literary
device in that it is "too pat"? A counter-argument would be that those
names came to be associated with those meanings over time, but this
seems weak also and would, in any case, preserve the literal aspects of
both lines. Trying to separate those two genealogies with a literal
and figurative dichotomy seems problematic from any angle.

-Merv

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Received on Fri Mar 23 09:49:15 2007