The Historicity of Adam: how important

[Deadworm]

As a non-Baptist, I can't respond to the thread with that title, but I can't resist posting Karl Barth's witty response to a form of that question:

Karl Barth was the most famous Protestant theologian of the 20th century. After one lecture, a Fundamentalist student approached him and asked: "Dr. Barth, was there a talking snake in the Garden of Eden or was there not?" Barth smiled and wryly replied, "It's not important whether there was a talking snake; what's important is what the snake said!"

 

[Aaron]

Did God say there was a talking snake in the Garden?

 

[Deadworm]

Did God say there was a talking snake in the Garden?

No, the scholarly consensus is that Genesis 1-3 evolved from ancient near eastern creation mythology and must therefore be treated as allegory. The story of Adam and Eve works well as allegory as a portrayal of the origin an nature of evil and the birth of conscience. The scholarly consensus is that the first creation story was created for the Temple liturgy as a poetic liturgical piece. Note all the liturgical repetition ("And God said...and it was so...and God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day." The inspiration of both stories must be understood in terms of the type of literature represented. If you take both stories literally, you have to believe these 8 absurdities:
1. Snakes crawl today because a snake said the wrong thing in the garden (3:14).
2 God didn't want humanity to discover the difference between "good and evil (3:22)."
3. God didn't want humanity to become "like God (3:22)" despite the fact that God created man "in His image (1:26-27)."
[Both outcomes were only achieve through disobedience!]
4, God didn't create man for creative challenging work (3:17-19). The need for such work is a "curse."
5. What we know to be outer space is in fact "waters" that God separated from our earthly "waters" with a "dome (1:6-7)."
6. God created vegetation the day before He created the sun (1:11, 14).
7. God created our world in 6 24-hour days--an absurd concept because it takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate towards sunrise and the sun was not even created until the 4th day!
8. There is actually a temporal boundary between God's rest on the 7th day and subsequent earth history during which God is presumably no longer "at rest." Otherwise, it is meaningless to say that "God rested" on the 7th 24-hour day!

 

[Aaron]

No, the scholarly consensus is that Genesis 1-3 evolved from ancient near eastern creation mythology and must therefore be treated as allegory. The story of Adam and Eve works well as allegory as a portrayal of the origin an nature of evil and the birth of conscience. The scholarly consensus is that the first creation story was created for the Temple liturgy as a poetic liturgical piece. Note all the liturgical repetition ("And God said...and it was so...and God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day." The inspiration of both stories must be understood in terms of the type of literature represented. If you take both stories literally, you have to believe these 8 absurdities:
1. Snakes crawl today because a snake said the wrong thing in the garden (3:14).
2 God didn't want humanity to discover the difference between "good and evil (3:22)."
3. God didn't want humanity to become "like God (3:22)" despite the fact that God created man "in His image (1:26-27)."
[Both outcomes were only achieve through disobedience!]
4, God didn't create man for creative challenging work (3:17-19). The need for such work is a "curse."
5. What we know to be outer space is in fact "waters" that God separated from our earthly "waters" with a "dome (1:6-7)."
6. God created vegetation the day before He created the sun (1:11, 14).
7. God created our world in 6 24-hour days--an absurd concept because it takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate towards sunrise and the sun was not even created until the 4th day!
8. There is actually a temporal boundary between God's rest on the 7th day and subsequent earth history during which God is presumably no longer "at rest." Otherwise, it is meaningless to say that "God rested" on the 7th 24-hour day!

Noted. Genesis 1-3 is not the word of God.

Did God say a donkey spoke?

BTW, the Documentary Hypothesis, to which you're appealing in your Temple liturgy assertion, has been thoroughly refuted by archaeological discoveries of the late twentieth century and their contributions to textual criticism, and is no longer a viable theory in any serious academe.

Jussayin'

But back to Genesis: Did God say a donkey spoke?

 

[Aaron]

Noted. Genesis is not the word of God.

Did God say a donkey spoke?

No, the scholarly consensus is that Genesis 1-3 evolved from ancient near eastern creation mythology and must therefore be treated as allegory. The story of Adam and Eve works well as allegory as a portrayal of the origin an nature of evil and the birth of conscience. The scholarly consensus is that the first creation story was created for the Temple liturgy as a poetic liturgical piece. Note all the liturgical repetition ("And God said...and it was so...and God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day." The inspiration of both stories must be understood in terms of the type of literature represented. If you take both stories literally, you have to believe these 8 absurdities:
1. Snakes crawl today because a snake said the wrong thing in the garden (3:14).
2 God didn't want humanity to discover the difference between "good and evil (3:22)."
3. God didn't want humanity to become "like God (3:22)" despite the fact that God created man "in His image (1:26-27)."
[Both outcomes were only achieve through disobedience!]
4, God didn't create man for creative challenging work (3:17-19). The need for such work is a "curse."
5. What we know to be outer space is in fact "waters" that God separated from our earthly "waters" with a "dome (1:6-7)."
6. God created vegetation the day before He created the sun (1:11, 14).
7. God created our world in 6 24-hour days--an absurd concept because it takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate towards sunrise and the sun was not even created until the 4th day!
8. There is actually a temporal boundary between God's rest on the 7th day and subsequent earth history during which God is presumably no longer "at rest." Otherwise, it is meaningless to say that "God rested" on the 7th 24-hour day!

Oh, a couple more things.

Paul referenced this Temple liturgy a couple times. Since, in reality, there was no serpent, no Adam, no Eve, nor historical chronology in Genesis 1-3, what did Paul mean when he said:

1 Corinthians 11:8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.

2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

1 Timothy 2:13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
​

In the case of the first reference, I thought he was basing the decorum in Christian worship on the order God established in nature—that womankind was taken out of man. Eve was made of one of Adam's ribs. But since that's not really the case, what does it mean that "woman is of the man"?

In the case of the second, what does it mean that the serpent beguiled Eve? When did this happen? and what is signified by Eve?

And in the last, Adam (whatever that means), first appeared (to borrow Evolutionary vernacular), and then Eve. Again, what does it mean, and to what event is the Apostle alluding?

 

[Jordan Kurecki]

I sense unbelief masquerading as intellectualism.

 

[Revmitchell]

The op is heresy

 

[InTheLight]

I sense unbelief masquerading as intellectualism.

I think you have a spelling error. Did you mean to say, "I sense unbelief masquerading as pseudointellectualism."



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL

 

[Jordan Kurecki]

I think you have a spelling error. Did you mean to say, "I sense unbelief masquerading as pseudointellectualism."



Sent from my Pixel 2 XL

Yes

 

[Aaron]

The op is heresy

Indeed, and, again, it's not what Genesis says that is in dispute, it's whether or not one believes it.

The inspiration of both stories must be understood in terms of the type of literature represented. If you take both stories literally, you have to believe . . .

And that's the real hang up. Unbelievers laugh at things they cannot grasp, like the Epicureans laughed at the idea of the Resurrection. How absurd.

And so Wormy imagines 8 absurdities, thinking that some things are too hard for God. But you will see that the absurdities he lists are not really difficulties posed by the text, but by a host of his own arbitrary presuppositions.

1. Snakes crawl today because a snake said the wrong thing in the garden (3:14).

This, of course, is an old wives' fable. The serpent, which was created for the service of man, and was to be under his dominion, rose up in defiance against him, and corrupted him with a lie. He was put back down.

2 God didn't want humanity to discover the difference between "good and evil (3:22)."
3. God didn't want humanity to become "like God (3:22)" despite the fact that God created man "in His image (1:26-27)."
[Both outcomes were only achieve through disobedience!]

I want you to note Wormy's praise of disobedience.

Moving on.

God gets to set the limits, and even today, when we're commanded to put a difference between good and evil, we're forbidden to have much knowledge about the occult. No good comes from it.

What evil existed at the time of Adam and Eve? Only that of the Devil and fallen spirits. Why should Adam become acquainted with the God's enemies? What could Adam do about them, and what could possibly go wrong? The only outcome would be Adam's corruption, and that's exactly what happened.

4, God didn't create man for creative challenging work (3:17-19). The need for such work is a "curse."

One is rarely confronted by a more astounding feat of eisegesis. This is a huge assumption based on a premise uneducated by real world experience. His job was agriculture and animal husbandry. It is in relative peace and safety that man can be creative and make tremendous and rewarding advances. Imagine being able to work on things that bring you pleasure and fulfillment without having to work to eat. It's the curse that stifles creativity. Let's take Wormy out of his relative peace and safety and drop him in the Congo wearing nothing but animal skins, and see how he fares.

5. What we know to be outer space is in fact "waters" that God separated from our earthly "waters" with a "dome (1:6-7)."

Dome is not mentioned anywhere in the narrative, and, again, the problem here isn't what Genesis says, but whether or not one believes it. But taken at face value, the narrative describes an earth as that realm beneath the expanse that separated the waters of the deep. The expanse is called heaven. What is above the heavens? Water. What is below the heavens? Water, and dry land appeared when the waters below the heavens were gathered into one place.

What's the problem here? Modern physics poses no problem to that at all. Relativity assumes everything in the cosmos is in motion, but it also allows one to assume a motionless point in the center, and explain the resulting observations.

The problem here isn't science, but the philosophies of scientists. It's the presupposition of an isotropic, uncentered and unbounded universe that allows the argument against this narrative. Not any observation or experiment to date.

6. God created vegetation the day before He created the sun (1:11, 14).

So?

7. God created our world in 6 24-hour days--an absurd concept because it takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate towards sunrise and the sun was not even created until the 4th day!

Which answers your difficulty about vegetation. Again, the issue isn't what is said, but what is believed. And there is also the tendency to discount the miraculous, and assume certain things to be scientific certainties that are not.

8. There is actually a temporal boundary between God's rest on the 7th day and subsequent earth history during which God is presumably no longer "at rest." Otherwise, it is meaningless to say that "God rested" on the 7th 24-hour day!

He rested from His creation. God is no longer creating. That stopped on the sixth day.

You have yet to raise any real challenge.

 

[Aaron]

Interesting notions about a cosmology based on a literal reading of the Genesis 1 :

Thoughts on the rāqîa‘ and a Possible Explanation for the Cosmic Microwave Background

God made the rāqîaʿ to separate the waters above it from the waters below it. If the rāqîaʿ can best be identified principally as what we call space today, then there are three startling conclusions. First, assuming that the waters above are a finite distance away, then the universe is bound, or has an edge. While this possibility is permitted within the physics of space and time as we now understand it, this position is decidedly unpopular among cosmologists. If the universe is unbound, then the universe either can be finite or infinite in size. If finite, then the universe has curvature so that space closes back on itself so that there is no boundary. Outside of the creation literature, very little work has been done on cosmological models that are bound.

Second, since the rāqîaʿ was spread out from the waters below the rāqîaʿ, and the earth formed out of those waters, unless this spreading was asymmetrical, then the earth must be at, or at least near, the center of the universe. ... Among non-biblical cosmologies, this is to be resisted more strenuously than a bound universe. The reason is that this runs counter to the Copernican principle, which asserts that the earth is in no particularly significant location. Most cosmologies today deny that the universe has a center, opting for either an infinite universe or an unbound finite universe. In either case, the universe has no center. There is no way at this time observationally to determine if either of these views is correct.

...

Third, the Bible implies that the boundary of the universe is accompanied by water. Unlike what the canopy model proposes, the waters above the rāqîaʿ did not condense at the time of the Flood, and so still ought to be beyond the rāqîaʿ.

...

All baryonic matter (such as water) must radiate, if it has any temperature. We have never observed, nor can we conceive of matter, with absolutely no temperature, so the assumption that the water at the edge of the universe has temperature seems warranted.

...

What do we observe? The universe appears to be bathed in a radiation field called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The currently measured temperature of the CMB is 2.725 K. Since 1965, the CMB has been interpreted as the best evidence for the big bang model.

...

...if water truly is at the edge of the universe as Genesis 1:6–8 suggests, then we ought to expect that the universe is surrounded by water, which ought to radiate. Assuming cosmological redshift, regardless of its cause, the radiation from this water ought to be a cool blackbody, which is what we observe. It was possible that between 1929, when Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, and 1965 someone could have predicted the CMB, if they had taken Genesis 1:6–8 seriously. ​

The CMB was recently mapped, and an undeniable structure was discovered that is aligned with the earth. A defining feature thereof has been dubbed "The Axis of Evil," because like the notion of a bounded universe, it violates the Copernican Principle, and suggests that the earth occupies a favored location in space.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf​

 

[Yeshua1]

No, the scholarly consensus is that Genesis 1-3 evolved from ancient near eastern creation mythology and must therefore be treated as allegory. The story of Adam and Eve works well as allegory as a portrayal of the origin an nature of evil and the birth of conscience. The scholarly consensus is that the first creation story was created for the Temple liturgy as a poetic liturgical piece. Note all the liturgical repetition ("And God said...and it was so...and God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day." The inspiration of both stories must be understood in terms of the type of literature represented. If you take both stories literally, you have to believe these 8 absurdities:
1. Snakes crawl today because a snake said the wrong thing in the garden (3:14).
2 God didn't want humanity to discover the difference between "good and evil (3:22)."
3. God didn't want humanity to become "like God (3:22)" despite the fact that God created man "in His image (1:26-27)."
[Both outcomes were only achieve through disobedience!]
4, God didn't create man for creative challenging work (3:17-19). The need for such work is a "curse."
5. What we know to be outer space is in fact "waters" that God separated from our earthly "waters" with a "dome (1:6-7)."
6. God created vegetation the day before He created the sun (1:11, 14).
7. God created our world in 6 24-hour days--an absurd concept because it takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate towards sunrise and the sun was not even created until the 4th day!
8. There is actually a temporal boundary between God's rest on the 7th day and subsequent earth history during which God is presumably no longer "at rest." Otherwise, it is meaningless to say that "God rested" on the 7th 24-hour day!

Again, you are equating "scharly" views to this concept of genesis, but that would be JUST those who are liberal/critical in their theological viewpoints, who see the Bible as not being inspired, not historically trustworthy. So they come up with this patchwork view. the nail to the coffin to that viewpoint is how Jesus and paul viewed genesis account, as they both saw it as describing real historical peoples and real events!

 

[MartyF]

No, the scholarly consensus is that Genesis 1-3 evolved from ancient near eastern creation mythology and must therefore be treated as allegory. The story of Adam and Eve works well as allegory as a portrayal of the origin an nature of evil and the birth of conscience. The scholarly consensus is that the first creation story was created for the Temple liturgy as a poetic liturgical piece. Note all the liturgical repetition ("And God said...and it was so...and God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day."

Hello,

I hope that you're reading any posts. I want to be helpful here. Aaron said some good things.

I will invite some pain and say that I am not against the first three chapters being seen in part as an allegory. However, it is clearly not mythological. If you read contemporary mythological literature, you'll see a definite difference. Mythological literature tries to explain every aspect such as why there are seasons and what causes the Sun to move. Genesis and the Bible doesn't try to explain these things. It's not written like a myth.

One thing you don't seem to understand and I'm not sure if Aaron explained is that Adam and Eve started out like God. The "snake" lied to them. It's what the "snake" does. What eating the fruit did was enable Adam and Eve to make up their own definitions of what is right and wrong. They chose their own wisdom over God's wisdom. Their disobedience also separated them from God. They didn't become more like God - they became less like God.

This is really about Evolution. You have to see that Evolution is not a product of science any more than Scientology is. In the 19th century everything was governed by religion and some people wanted to get rid of that Christian God so that they could live like they wanted to. (Sound like Adam and Eve?) Evolution is a myth created to explain how the world and people could come into being without there having to be a Christian God. Just like Scientology has a myth to explain why people need to hand them money. Evolution is the Atheist/Deist's way to explain how creation happened with an absent or nonexistent God.

If there are Christians who believe in Evolution, it is because they have been mislead as to the origin of Evolution. They, like many, believe that scientists discovered it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who called themselves scientists and needed an explanation for a Godless world made up Evolution from Whole Cloth. The only way to explain certain things was to say it took "millions of years". The "millions of years" explains away everything unexplainable while preventing anyone from proving them wrong. That's why evolutionists hate people who are Young Earthers. A Young Earth would invalidate all of Evolution which has to have "millions of years" to hide they fact they made it all up.

Marty

P.S. Consensus means everyone agrees. Hence, a claim of consensus is usually false.

 

[Yeshua1]

Hello,

I hope that you're reading any posts. I want to be helpful here. Aaron said some good things.

I will invite some pain and say that I am not against the first three chapters being seen in part as an allegory. However, it is clearly not mythological. If you read contemporary mythological literature, you'll see a definite difference. Mythological literature tries to explain every aspect such as why there are seasons and what causes the Sun to move. Genesis and the Bible doesn't try to explain these things. It's not written like a myth.

One thing you don't seem to understand and I'm not sure if Aaron explained is that Adam and Eve started out like God. The "snake" lied to them. It's what the "snake" does. What eating the fruit did was enable Adam and Eve to make up their own definitions of what is right and wrong. They chose their own wisdom over God's wisdom. Their disobedience also separated them from God. They didn't become more like God - they became less like God.

This is really about Evolution. You have to see that Evolution is not a product of science any more than Scientology is. In the 19th century everything was governed by religion and some people wanted to get rid of that Christian God so that they could live like they wanted to. (Sound like Adam and Eve?) Evolution is a myth created to explain how the world and people could come into being without there having to be a Christian God. Just like Scientology has a myth to explain why people need to hand them money. Evolution is the Atheist/Deist's way to explain how creation happened with an absent or nonexistent God.

If there are Christians who believe in Evolution, it is because they have been mislead as to the origin of Evolution. They, like many, believe that scientists discovered it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who called themselves scientists and needed an explanation for a Godless world made up Evolution from Whole Cloth. The only way to explain certain things was to say it took "millions of years". The "millions of years" explains away everything unexplainable while preventing anyone from proving them wrong. That's why evolutionists hate people who are Young Earthers. A Young Earth would invalidate all of Evolution which has to have "millions of years" to hide they fact they made it all up.

Marty

P.S. Consensus means everyone agrees. Hence, a claim of consensus is usually false.

Evolution basically tries to get as you said here God out of the equation, so can accept a naturalist viewpoint, and so eliminate sin, hell, and need to get saved by Jesus Christ!

 

[Revmitchell]

As a non-Baptist, I can't respond to the thread with that title, but I can't resist posting Karl Barth's witty response to a form of that question:

Karl Barth was the most famous Protestant theologian of the 20th century. After one lecture, a Fundamentalist student approached him and asked: "Dr. Barth, was there a talking snake in the Garden of Eden or was there not?" Barth smiled and wryly replied, "It's not important whether there was a talking snake; what's important is what the snake said!"

If he said that it was stupid. You cannot have something said if that someone (the snake) does not exist.