Re: [asa] ORIGINS: (Adam or a group of Adams?) pseudogenes are overwhelming evidence for evolution...?

Hi Dick,

I don't follow your point.  The original author apparently took Seth's geneology and changed the names to create Cain's sequence in order to teach a theological lesson.  In order to accomplish this, the author needed to say that Cain (= "smith" or forger) forged a city, which God rejected in the Flood.  Jared could be made into Irad, which means "city of a fugitive," but how could Enosh be made into something about a city?  Answer:  change it into the name of the very significant city Unug, which was a leading city of that time and famous since that is where Gilgamesh was king.  It was a real city, yes.  The Cain geneology would have made no sense if it wasn't a real city. 

Also, to accomplish this, the author had to criss-cross the order of Kenan and Enosh so that Cain was in the first place and Enoch in the second.  The author also criss-crossed the second pair of names putting Irad after Enoch so that the two "city" references were one after the other.  (the comparison lists are below)

Phil

   Godly                Ungodly
   ======          ========
    Seth               (no one comparable)

    Enosh    \    /   Cain
    Kenan    /    \   Enoch

   Mahalalel \  /    Irad
   Jared      /  \    Mehujael

   Enoch             (no one comparable)

   Methuselah      Methushael

   Lamech           Lamech

   Noah              (no one comparable)

-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
To: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 9:20 pm
Subject: RE: [asa] ORIGINS: (Adam or a group of Adams?) pseudogenes are overwhelming evidence for evolution...?

Hi Phil, you wrote:

Cain = "a smith," someone who forges things with his hands, by extension someone who works with his hands in order to forge out his own significance (e.g., farming, cities, sacrifices that God rejects).  He represents pre-historic mankind who "wanders" on the Earth without permanent community.

Enoch = "Unuk," the first civilization that Cain forged.  (Note how Cain can't be a literal individual, because he can't be cursed to wander and yet build a city at the same time.)

The idea that the line of Seth is literal where the line of Cain is figurative breaks down here at the beginning.  The Sumerian unug was a literal city.  After “the flood swept thereover,” kingship was restored at Kish.  The city Cain built is the second city named in the Sumerian king list as restored.  The SKL lists it as E-Anna(k) (phonetically in English) where Mes-kiag-gasher was high priest and king.  Remember how long the patriarchs lived in the days of Adam.  If Cain also lived to over 900 he could wander for hundreds of years before settling down and building a city.

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of philtill@aol.com
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 7:22 AM
To: bernie.dehler@intel.com; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] ORIGINS: (Adam or a group of Adams?) pseudogenes are overwhelming evidence for evolution...?

Yes, I think the Biblical account is clear

that Adam was a unique person and that's why it was used in genealogies;

but I also think it is wrong

The idea that I've been exploring in recent years is this:  that Adam in the Seth geneology was a historical person, the actual father of Seth; yet since his name happens to mean "mankind" and since he is the first person in the Semitic geneology, the original composer of Genesis 2-4 took this as an opportunity to "reflect" him backwards to represent the origin of mankind.  Thus, the "Adam" of Genesis 2-4 is a literary contruction based upon the name of a real person "Adam" found in the geneology. 

It all depends on how the genre of Genesis 2-4 was used at the time.  We need to be more careful not to treat the genre differently than the original author treated it.  It's not correct to say that the use of a "mythological" genre for those chapters represents "error" in the Bible if the biblical author intended it to be understood according to the norms of that genre.  It means what the original author meant it to mean, nothing more, and hence it is not error.

I think there is internal evidence that the original author knew that Genesis 2-4 was not literal.  For example, the Cain geneology is obviously a pure literary construction intended to parallel the Seth geneology and teach a lesson about mankind.  Taking the names of Cain's geneolgy, they are all distorted versions of the names in Seth's geneology, and it means this:

Cain = "a smith," someone who forges things with his hands, by extension someone who works with his hands in order to forge out his own significance (e.g., farming, cities, sacrifices that God rejects).  He represents pre-historic mankind who "wanders" on the Earth without permanent community.

Enoch = "Unuk," the first civilization that Cain forged.  (Note how Cain can't be a literal individual, because he can't be cursed to wander and yet build a city at the same time.)

Irad = "city of a fugitive," so that even though mankind now lives in cities, rather than wandering like Cain, they are still fugitives from God just as much as Cain was.  They still run from God in their hearts if not with their feet.

Mehujael = "cursed of God" because the curse on Cain still continues into Cain's civilization.  Man has forged cities but he has not successfully forged his own salvation or significance in this world.  He has not escaped the curse.

Methushael = "man of Sheol" because death hangs over mankind.  Man's attempts to forge salvation are a failure and the flood is impending.

Lamech -- the meaning is unknown, but possible means nothing more than to parallel the Lamech found in Seth's geneology.  The Lamechs are the ones who speak in each geneology, and their respective speeches amplify the differences between the godly and ungodly responses to life in this world.  The godly Lamech speaks how they have been patiently waiting for salvation from the curse, and how Noah will bring that salvation.  The ungoldy Lamech speaks how he has been violently taking revenge far more so than God himself does, 70 times 7.  He is continuing the murder introduced by Cain, and boasting of his power because he is still trying to forge out his own significance in this world.  This is the violence that God judges in the Flood.

Lamech's three sons (parallel to Noah's three sons) represent profound cultural achievements (pastoral nomadism, music, and metallurgy), how "Cain" continues to forge his own significance in this world by cultural advancement.

The last of these three sons of Lamech is named Tubal-cain, which literally means "World-smith".  This pretty much summarizes it:  Cain has been forging his "world".  The Cain geneology both begins and ends with a person called "Cain" and this forms parentheses around the account.

This "forging" of Cain ends in judgement, the flood.  God rejects Cain's civilization, just as God had had rejected Cain's sacrifice of grain.  In both cases, the works of mankind's hands are unable to bring salvation.  The "Cain" is unable to "cain" his own place in this world and God rejects his efforts.

This is in contrast to the blood sacrifice of Abel, and the patient waiting of Seth's line culminating in Noah (whose name means "rest").  Indeed, the entire story of Mesopotamia leading up to the flood is selected by the author as a theological case-study to teach us that mankind's works are unable to effect our own salvation.  All Cain does is contaminated with sin and fails to save.  This is the point of the story.

So you can see that the Cain geneology is a pure literary construction based on distorting the names found in the Seth geneology.  If so, then this implies that what precedes the Cain geneology may also be a literary construction:  the Cain/Abel account, and the Garden of Eden account.  Both are intended to teach the existence of two curses:  the curse on man that separates us from God, and the curse on man that makes our works unable to redeem us.  Just as the Cain geneology is based on the names found in Seth's geneology, so the Garden of Eden account may also be based on a name found in Seth's geneology:  Adam the literal man --> Adam the universal progenitor who was cursed.

But the names in Seth's geneology (including Adam) are accompanied by birth and death dates and the sequence of names does not form such a "pat" message as does the sequence of distorted names in Cain's account.  So I take everything from Seth (and his actual father Adam) on down to be historical based on oral or cuneiform accounts -- including the local mesopotamian flood.  When the Bible says that Adam knew his wife again and she conceived Seth, this is where the symbolic language of the mythological genre comes to an end, and the account begins relating what the author had received as historical data.

I've been working on this hypothesis for several years now, and I have great hope that this will lead to a consistent and high view of both Scripture and Science without abusing either.  There are a number of other internal evidences that will take too much space to continue listing here.

Phil

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Received on Mon Nov 5 22:55:44 2007