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

You agree that the language in 2 Peter could be figurative. You mention that the contemporary Jewish eschatology saw both the flood and the coming judgment as universal.

Yet you have ignored my suggestion that the "heavens and earth" is not to be taken literally as the actual destruction of the universe (or even the earth for that matter), but instead is to be seen as a typical use of contemporary eschatological language that the judgment that was coming was a complete destruction of the old covenant, the end of temple worship. It was the end to the law, that which brought sin to man. This was to be followed by the age of the church, the age of grace, the kingdom of Christ.

Creation, destruction, recreation. It is all there in my interpretation, and consistent with the contemporary Jewish understanding of the time. Obviously the entire universe was not destroyed by the flood, it was a judgment. And obviously the destruction of the heavens and earth discussed by Peter (or whoever) is not necessarily a physical destruction either, a position you have consistently ignored.

Go through the entire bible and do a search on heavens and earth. You will see that in the earlier writings it means literally the entire physical universe. In the prophets, sometimes in the psalms, and often in the new testament however it is figurative language. Remember, Christ, John, and most NT authors were expecting this judgment to take place within their generation, and if it did not, it leaves us with some very serious problems for the inerrantist.
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: philtill@aol.com
  To: dopderbeck@gmail.com
  Cc: gmurphy@raex.com ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2007 9:06 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

  I want to bow out of this discussion of II Peter, too, but I never did state my main belief on the larger topic. So here it is:

  Several years ago I went through the entire OT and looked for all uses of "universal" language, such as was used in the Flood. This includes terms like "entire earth," and "under all the heavens." It was a very useful study, and I highly recommend it. It can be done in about an hour by skimming the text quickly.

  What you will find is that these ancient peoples used these kinds of terms very loosely and that they did not at all take them literally. For example, the king of Persia would boast how he was lord over all the earth, everywhere under the heavens, etc., even though everyone knew that the Greeks were not under his rule, nor the steppe nomads nor Indus valley people nor Carthaginians (for a few examples). He was not laughed out of his palace for making those kinds of boasts, since apparently it was just normal bravado for a monarch and/or idiomatic language.

  With the famine at the time of Joseph, the text says that all the nations from the entire earth were coming to Egypt for bread. Surely the Hebrews knew, no matter how early or late we understand the text to have been finalized, that this was not literally true.

  There are quite a few such examples. (I don't have my list any more because my harddrive crashed and I haven't recovered the data, yet.)

  The term "entire earth" was probably loosly meant for "the whole wide region around us, much farther than I'd like to walk" or something to that effect.

  So my conclusion about the Flood and about the NT's treatment of it is that it very well may have been written using hyperbolic language in order to add emphasis to the theological message. That message was simply that God judged the entire culture where Noah lived, with devastating effect and inescapable extent, but rescued Noah because he was godly. The symbolism of the animals is (IMO) a clear typological message about Christ saving peoples from all nations, and so it is a **prophetic** account and relevant for more than just the ancient people. But considering the linguistic norms with hyperbolic, universalizing speech that we see in those ancient cultures, I would not try to draw any conclusions about the scope of the flood relative to modern standards, neither from the original text nor from what the NT writers had to say about it. I think that the descriptors of the scope were very culturally conditioned a nd were a part of the "style" that God's breathing into the text did not erase. (I think it possible that the author of II Peter may also have been accustomed to hyperbolic speech, too, although I did not want to admit that in our prior discussion since that would have muddied the other arguments. For example, note in Acts 17:6 the hyperbolic use of the term kosmos, where it refers only to Macedonia, Asia Minor and the Levant. Not much of a kosmos, hunh?) So I am happy as an inerrantist and as a conservative evangelical that we should not take such descriptors literally in many instances.

  I hope that as we become increasingly aware of the literary sophistication of ancient peoples then we will gain a much higher view of the biblical text. But this process involves primarily a recognition of the **literary** features of the text, so that we don't take things too literally where we shouldn't. The text is no more literal than the author meant it to be (nor any less). With Dick, I would agree that a program of reversing the excesses of higher criticism would involve the kind of historical work that he is doing, since that corroborates the real history. But I would tend to agree with George that primarily we need to be sensitive to the literary features because the authors were writing in a different era than ours and they were communicating primarily theology. So for what it's worth (probably not much) I see my own view of the Scriptures as being somewhere between George and Dick -- its relationship to Me sopotamian accounts is neither entirely literary nor entirely historical. I think that sort of view will in the end justify my belief in inerrancy. My program in studying the Bible as literature is to work on that hypothesis.

  God bless!
  Phil

   
  -----Original Message-----
  From: dopderbeck@gmail.com
  To: philtill@aol.com
  Cc: gmurphy@raex.com; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 2:44 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

  Just one other quick note: I had a chance to browse the Word and Abingdon commentaries on 2 Peter on the Amazon website. Word's is by Richard Bauckham. I ordered both. According to these sources, the author -- and apparently it is not clear that Peter actually was the author -- borowed heavily from contemporary Jewish eschatology, reflected in sources like Enoch and Josephus -- that had transmorgified the Bible's account of the flood as an event affecting only the earth into an event affecting the entire universe. Thus, the author would have concieved of the history of the universe in three stages -- created / completely destroyed / and re-created, with another eschatological complete destruction and re-creation coming. These commentaries seem to suggest that the teaching we're intended to glean from this letter isn't the specific underlying cosmology, but the fact that God has judged in the past and will surely return to judge as Christ promised, despite the perplexing delay in his return. Very interesting and tricky hermeneutical issues raised by all of this.

  Thoughts?

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Received on Sun Apr 1 07:43:35 2007