RE: [asa] Original Sin and Genesis 3

Hi Phil, you wrote:

>These filler ideas are all based on the belief that Moses originally
intended the text to be read as literal history. I'm moving toward the
idea that this was not Moses' intent.<

What would you suppose were Josephus' intentions who corroborated Moses?

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/> 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, December 10, 2007 8:22 PM
To: dopderbeck@gmail.com
Cc: christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Original Sin and Genesis 3

David said: What "Western" preconceptions? Is relationality and
fellowship with God not part of the Eastern tradition?

No, I'm not saying anything about Eastern theology since I don't know
anything about it. I only added "Western" in case Eastern theology
happens to be different and I wanted to limit the statement to what I
know about.

But I do think you're telling us about your (and our) preconceptions and
not about the text. The text doesn't say much of anything about the
nature of Adam's fellowship with God prior to the Fall, nor how it would
have affected him both pre- and post- Fall. We have filled in the
details with all kinds of invented ideas, and these form our view of the
"text", but really it's not too closely related to the text at all.

These filler ideas are all based on the belief that Moses originally
intended the text to be read as literal history. I'm moving toward the
idea that this was not Moses' intent. If we suppose that Moses intended
the text to be interpreted according to the common genre for origins
accounts of the time, then we would not have invented the same filler
ideas. How much of our theology is really based on filler ideas rather
than on the actual text?

David wrote:
>> Anyway, before deciding on an exegesis of this phrase, I'd like to
understand (1) the nuances of the original Hebrew; (2) any cultural and
contemporary literary context for this kind of "knowledge"; and (3) how
the phrase has been understood in the tradition (including the Eastern
tradition). I don't think we can decide it just based on what the
English word "knowledge" might mean to us today.<< (end quote)

I'd add some others to your list and put them ahead of these three. I'd
put no value in (3), or in what anybody thought about the text after
Alexander the Great had conquered the Levant. By that time, worldviews
had changed so much that the culture was completely disconnected from
the original context. That rules out getting any value from the church
fathers of the 1st century, or subsequent. It's better to go back to
Sumerian and Babylonian literature, which is surely connected to this
text since Abraham came from there and since the account was set there.
So evaluate it by that standard, and not by 1st century Hebrew thought,
which evolved 1 1/2 millenia later. If we had other material from
Moses' time, then that would be even more helpful, but unfortunately we
don't. So the Mesopotamian literature is the best we've got to go on.

So first I'd ask, what was the common genre that Moses' audience and
that Abraham's forebears would have assumed for this text to decide how
to interpret it? Second, does the text (prior to the Seth geneology)
fit the pattern of a mythopeic genre or does it fit the pattern of
literal history? Those would be the first two things to resolve before
getting into the nuances of single words.

Did you see that silly movie "Galaxy Quest" starring Tim Allen? The
premise of that movie was that a far distant civilization in space saw
our TV broadcasts of a show much like Star Trek, and they assumed it was
history instead of fiction. So they based their entire culture on the
TV show. The basic problem was that they failed to recognize the genre
and so they didn't follow the correct rules associated with interpreting
that genre. We are like the far distant civilization trying to
interpret the account that has been broadcast to us across 2 1/2
millenia of time. We might have gotten the genre wrong. Like in the
movie, when faced with facts to the contrary, we may need to reassess
that most important question before getting into other details.

I spent a few years studying Sumerian, Babylonian, and Greek mythology.
From all that I read, the Genesis 1-4 accounts (until after the birth of
Seth) read just like that genre. That's not to say that the Bible is
false because it is a "myth". Rather, it is to say that perhaps Moses
intended his audience to be educated and bright enough to understand the
rules of that very common genre, and that they would therefore
understand what to take away from the text and not get caught making up
irrelevant filler material to make it seem more plausible as a story of
literal people. If God did indeed inspire Moses to write an allegorical
account about mankind's Fall, then we should interpret it as allegory
and not as literal.

By comparison, other cultures understood that the genre of "myth" was
not to be taken literally. For example, Homer and Hesiod were very
inventive in writing their versions of the Greek myth. They adapted and
changed as required for the sake of their literature. Their accounts of
the Greek gods were not considered by them to be a literal history that
had to be told verbatim. It was understood to be a medium for
communicating abstract concepts by using symbols, and therefore could be
changed by the poet. Later generations then cast the myths into stone
as though they were actual accounts. But the original authors did not
treat them this way.

Think of the symbols in Genesis 3 and 4: the talking snake, the two
trees with metaphysical powers, the woman being made from a body part of
the man, the names of the Cain geneology being symbolic distortions of
the Seth geneology, the three rhyming sons of Lamech who invented major,
diverse cultural advancements in just one generation and all in one
family. Are these really plausible? Do snakes really talk? Were they
really the craftiest beast of the field? Was it three brothers who
invented music, pastoral nomadism, and metallurgy? Or is the Bible
telling us that sinful people invented these things as part of mankind's
overall effort, like Cain, to assert his value through his own works
apart from trusting God? Sacrifices of crops that mankind grows by his
sweat, rather than the blood sacrifices and faith of Abel?

It really does seem to be a different genre than the later events in
Genesis, does it not? The Bible does have miracles, and I want to
affirm my belief in them away by all means. But here I'm talking about
looking for the overall pattern of the account to see what Moses
intended. I don't know any other part of Scripture that are as symbolic
and unworldly as this one, except the parables that are told by the
prophets and Jesus, which were intended to be read as parables.

Also, the Bible does imply that all mankind is biologically descended
from Adam. Both Cain (the evil people who invent the idea of cities
along with all the major cultural advancements) and Seth (the godly
people) are descended from him, and nowhere does it state that anybody
else lived who was not descended from Adam. It would be impossible for
such a purposeful tale as Genesis to fail to state that others not
descended from Adam lived as his neighbors, if in fact the author
intended that to be part of its background setting. That's just
unfathomable! The author told us about the origin of rain and animals
and plants and stars and sin and thorns and cities. How could he fail
to tell us about the origin of people? Think about that.

The wife of Cain and the people who populated Cain's city are much
better explained as being normative to a telescoped, symbolic tale of
that genre. The author would not feel the need to tell us that Adam had
many other children if Adam were a non-literal representation of the
origin of humanity, and Cain were a non-literal representation of the
origin of cursed, wandering mankind who eventually invented cities. It
would be understood that they were symbolic and so of course many other
people were born by the time "Cain" (mankind) built cities. On the
other hand, if the account were meant to be literal, then the author
would never have failed to tell us that God created people apart from
Adam's children if in fact he had believed such a thing to be true.
It's a terrible ad hoc assumption that goes against reason to say that
Adam had historical neighbors that are hinted at but not directly
explained in the text.

And we now know that biological descent from only one man who lived in
_Mesopotamia_ makes sense only if the text is part of a non-literal
genre. So if we hold the theological position that the text is
inerrant, as I do, then it makes sense to believe on theological grounds
that it was intended to be non-literal.

Phil

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Received on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:25:53 -0500