Our last Forced Choice was a landslide. Apparently there’s not a lot of debate around here that philosophy is good for theology (85%). I really thought more people would be hesitant with that one, but I’m glad to see I was wrong.
This week’s choice will jump right into the middle of the debate surrounding the historicity of Adam and Eve. This has gotten a lot of attention lately with prominent books from Peter Enns (The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins) and John Collins (Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who Were They and Why You Should Care), among others. If you’re interested, Brian LePort has been doing an series on both of these books (you can read the latest post here), and he also posted an excellent summary of views on the historicity of Adam and Eve.
But we’re not here to discuss the relative merits of the various positions. We’re just here to vote. So what do you think? Were Adam and Eve the historic individuals from whom all other humans descended?
But, since I think a simple yes/no vote is likely to mimic our earlier vote on evolution, I’d like to complicate things just a bit by offering some options about how long ago Adam and Eve were created (i.e. less/more than 10,000 years ago) and whether they were the ones from whom all other humans descended. The latter option covers the possibility that humans evolved like other creatures, and that at some point God selected two of them for special relationship with himself.
So, with that clarification in mind, use the poll in the sidebar to vote and let us know what you think.
I still want someone to tell me where Nod came from.
I get this is a forced choice, but I am sad to see there is not more of a “true myth” option presented: I can affirm that somewhere in history the first humans existed, and they spawned the oral tradition of Adam (man) and Eve (mother of all living things). I might not affirm that it is a factual story of creation that God choose to pass on to us (I don’t think facts and dates are the point of the story anyways), but I can affirm that the myth is rooted in a historical reality. Same way, I can affirm that humanity is descended from Adam and Eve, but Adam and Eve we have present in the creation story may not have been historic humans.
Yeah, I could have been more clear on that one. I consider that part of the fourth option since the Adam and Eve that we have in the text are not historic individuals, even though the story may be grounded in some historical persons/events. It’s similar to saying that King Arthur and Robin Hood are not historic individuals, even though their stories are almost certainly grounded in real events.
I am still simple enough to stand on the observation that the most natural reading of the Bible (both Genesis and the rest of the canon) clearly supports your first option: Adam and Eve were historic humans created less than 10,000 years ago and were the first humans from whom all others descended. That reading does not rely on one or two obtuse or disputed words or phrases; it is supported by the whole tenor of the biblical account, from Genesis 1-3 to OT and NT geneologies to the words of Jesus to the words of Paul. It seems to me that we would not even be having this debate if it were not for the contributions of secular scholars in fields ranging from higher criticism to evolutionary biology who have intentionally set out to interpret the data in a way that excludes the possibility of the supernatural. I am not denying that valid questions exist, but I am expressing my belief that the issues raised by these other disciplines should be discussed while standing upon the firm foundation of God’s divine self-disclosure in Scripture.
When such a stance is taken, some questions are still very difficult to answer, but others are surprisingly easily resolved. For example, the land of Nod quite likely was named after Cain himself, for “Nod” is a play on a word which means “wanderer” (according to commentator Kenneth Mathews), and we are introduced to the land of Nod in a passage which describes the sentencing of Cain to endless wandering. If this explanation is true, then this passage joins others in the Pentateuch in which a location is anachronistically referred to by a term which gained currency later in history.
This is not intended to be offensive, but I’m not sure how anyone who’s paid attention to the last hundreds years of Old Testament scholarship and knows something of the history of the Torah was composed would think that the authors of Genesis had actual supernatural knowledge about prehistorical events and people.
Paul D., you and I have very different conclusions about this quiz. I appreciate your desire to be unoffensive, and hope my comment above (and this one) is as gracious as yours. I would like to respond with a few thoughts to your sentence.
First, the last hundred years (and more) of OT scholarship has produced a wide array of mutually contradictory hypotheses of the composition history of Genesis. I agree with conservative scholars (such as T. Longman III, P. House) that the constantly shifting nature of this field of hypotheses casts doubt on the whole enterprise of denying primary authorship to Moses himself or of trying to explain the Genesis accounts as mere human productions.
Second, I want to paraphrase the end of your sentence to show the implications I think I see in your statement. Am I right that to deny that “the authors of Genesis had actual supernatural knowledge about prehistorical events and people” is essentially the same as to deny that “the first several chapters of Genesis are divine revelation about prehistorical events and people”? In other words, it seems to me that denying that the author(s) of Genesis posessed supernatural knowledge about creation is to say that the Genesis accounts of creation are not revelatory texts–that they do not come from the mind of God.
But that would contradict Jesus, who said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matt 19:4-5). In other words, Jesus said that the sentence “Therefore… one flesh” were spoken by the One who created humans, even though the actual text of Genesis does not attribute that sentence to anyone, but presents them as apparently directly from the author(s) of Genesis. (I realize this translation of Matthew 19:5 has been disputed, but find R. T. France’s defence of this translation convincing.)
Once you read the words of Genesis as spoken by God himself, then it means that to deny that the Genesis account presents a factual record of creation means not only to affirm that Jesus and Paul were confused about Mosaic authorship and the historical Adam and Eve (troubling enough), but that God himself intentionally spoke confusingly, in a way he knew would confuse Jesus, Paul, and the entire church until about the last century. I find it a stretch to believe that I can trust the sentence Jesus quoted as being factual, but must deny factual trustworthiness to the sentences which come immediately before and after that sentence in the Genesis account. That would require me to read Jesus’ quote as follows: “Therefore–because of the male-female creation account just given… which didn’t actually happen as just given, but nevermind, I can still draw a trustworthy conclusion from it–a man shall leave…”
May God give us wisdom and holy fear as we ponder such things. The implications for inspiration of Scripture are immense.
“…it means that to deny that the Genesis account presents a factual record of creation means not only to affirm that Jesus and Paul were confused about Mosaic authorship and the historical Adam and Eve (troubling enough), but that God himself intentionally spoke confusingly, in a way he knew would confuse Jesus, Paul, and the entire church until about the last century.”
Or it means that asculture and science grow it may effect how we see, understand, and study the words of scripture, yet their authority as the revelation of God and his good news (Jesus) remains unchanged. Just because one does not accept the idea that God dictated the first chapters of Genesis does not deny their inspiration, trust worthiness, or the very real idea that God uses things from within human culture (like an oral tradition of creation and primeval history) to show us who he is and that Jesus alone is our salvation.
Aaron, I hear what you are saying and it is an attractive position in many ways. However, if you accept that hypothesis, how does one explain the fact that Jesus appears to have read the early chapters of Genesis at face value, as a factual record? Are we now wiser than Jesus, thanks to the growth of culture and science? If so, how can we trust his words about anything? Or the words of Paul and the rest of the NT writers who read Genesis without the benefit of the growth of culture and science? After all, there is no indication that Jesus and Paul simply presented the Genesis accounts as myths which provide valuable teaching illustrations; rather, they presented them as realities upon which to build doctrine.
There is also no evidence that Jesus or Paul understood that the Earth revolves around the sun.
There is also no evidence that Jesus or Paul understood that the sun revolves around the Earth. In other words, we obviously know more than Jesus and Paul about a host of subjects–subjects of which the Bible never speaks. Such subjects are irrelevant to the question of biblical trustworthiness because they are not discussed by Scripture. Therefore I don’t think they speak to the question at hand: are the biblical accounts of creation trustworthy as factual records of what actually happened.
So do you think we are now wiser than Jesus and Paul in such a way that we now know they were wrong about things of which they DID speak and write, such as the historical existence of Adam and Eve? That is the relevant question, if I’m understanding things correctly.
Jesus and Paul did speak about creation. They did speak about Genesis. They did so from a cultural framework. The way they spoke about it does not seem to me to be at odds with the idea of creation as a true myth.
I just don’t buy into the thought that God dictated the primeval history to Moses (and others). Therefore, the history stories had to come down to the people of Israel another way, which in keeping with the times and culture would have been oral tradition. I see God keeping these stories intact, molding them, breathing spiritual meaning and life into them, preserving them so that we might know who he is, who we are, and what our hope is. To me, this is the most plain reading of the text.
Aaron, I actually agree with most of your last post! (All except the part about the creation records being a true myth rather than recording actual events.)
I think it is unlikely that God dictated the entire creation accounts to Moses. I think it is rather much more likely that they were passed down from Adam. If they actually happened, it would be strange indeed if they were not passed down orally! Then, I imagine, Moses wrote down these oral accounts, under the supervision of God in such a way that no errors were included and all of salvific value was included. I agree with all that and would add that the most plain reading of Genesis and the NT reflections upon it is that the Genesis events were understood by biblical writers and speakers (including Jesus, which is crucial) to have actually happened.
Blessings!
“the most natural reading of the Bible (both Genesis and the rest of the canon)”… you mean the most natural reading in which a God who creates everything from nothing has to make a woman from a man’s rib who is tempted by a talking snake by magic fruit? The most natural reading?
As to your selection of one VERY conservative scholar as a justification for supposed knowledge of the many “mutually contradictory hypotheses”: as someone who is writing his thesis on Genesis right now I’d be interested if you could give even one example, and deconstruct the “mutually contradictory” methodology, and and show an understanding how the methodology works and affects conclusions, and from that grasp of the fundamental issues posit a theory of how that relates to Mosaic authorship.
Scott, I wish you the best on your thesis. I haven’t had the opportunity to pursue accredited studies in that manner! My formal education ended with an honors BA in English Literature followed by a BEd. It is from that perspective–the perspective of one trained in simply reading a wide variety of genres of texts and assessing what those texts are communicating–that I say “most natural reading.” When someone simply reads the Genesis text itself, without trying to integrate scholarly theories of the past century, the most natural reading is to conclude that the author(s) of Genesis believed he/they were writing a factual record of what actually happened.
James Barr of Oxford University agreed (in a letter from 20 years ago): “So far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis geneologies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story.” Hugh Wilson, current Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, recently responded, “So far as thd days of Genesis 1 are concerned, I am sure that Professor Bar was correct…. I have not met any Hebrew professors who had the slightest doubt about this.” Emmanuel Tov of Hebrew University in Jerusalem writes, “For the biblical people this was history, difficult as it is for us to accept this view.” Similarly, the current warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge University, writes, “The position–that the author of Genesis 1 maintained that the world was created in six literal days–is nearly universally held [within secular academia].” That is the kind of thing I mean by “most natural reading.” To read otherwise is to read against the grain of authorial intent–not only in Genesis, but throughout the rest of the canon as it quotes or alludes to Genesis. Your original question reveals an anti-supernatural bias which was not shared by the biblical authors nor by orthodox Judaism or Christianity.
By “mutually contradictory hypothesis” I refer in part to the history of the documentary hypothesis. A cursory reading of this history reveals that no two major adherents agreed with each other on very many details–the number of sources (3 or 4?) the dates of each of those sources, and which portions of the Pentateuch were actually written by each of those sources. A general example, of course, is the use of names for God to determine alledged sources. One way this criterion is used inconsistently is explained well by Peter Enns: “Too often, appeal is made to a theory of a ‘mindless redactor,’ who evidently is not bothered by such tensions as the presence of the name of Yahweh in the immediate context of [Exodus 3:14-15], where that name is supposedly introduced for the first time. In my view, it has never been adequately explained why, according to source criticism, authors [italicized in original] are assumed to be consistent in their use of names for God and other terms, but redactors are perfectly happy to bring these sources together in seemingly contradictory ways.”
Douglas Stuart suggests another way to handle such literary elements as diverse names for God: “Did ancient Israelite writers have such limited vocabularies that they were incapable of routinely employing synonymns (variant vocabulary) for a given concept?… In fact, the contrary situation appears to be true. In ancient Israel there were four demonstrable indications of a preference for variety in written expression rather than of desire for stylistic consistency.” Stuart’s four indications include 1) word spellings, 2) parallel multi-word expressions, 3) grammatical forms, and 4) variant readings in the Masoretic stystem of Kethib-Qere (mixing consonants of one reading with vowels of another). Stuart continues, If these various indications of a preference for preservation of variety rather than consistency existed in the ancient world, is not variety of vocabulary an instance of the same phenomenon rather than an indication of multiple authorship?… Our conclusion, then, is that Moses was following the popular tendency of ancient literary convention in employing varying vocabulary forms and orthography.” [The Enns and Stuart quotes come from Stuart's Exodus commentary.]
Bruce Waltke, in his “An Old Testament Theology,” writes: “The practice [of tracing compositional history] is mostly eschewed here…. The recovered sources within the text are often too speculative to be foundational for the discipline of biblical theology…. Even more speculative are the attempts to generate a theology based on the oral traditions that allegedly circulated prior to the composition of the alleged sources. That many scholars accept such approaches as the focus of their attention–speculations built upon speculations with only a smidgen of actual evidence–partially explains the irrelevance and the bankruptcy of much biblical scholarship today. Sound doctrine cannot be based upon guesses.”
These are complicated issues and I’m sure you could quickly stump me with your formal training. However, I have attempted to answer your questions and I have also added to my original TWO (not one) scholars the voices of several more, some liberal and some conservative. To reject a scholar because he is “VERY conservative,” by the way, is an ad hominem attack and quite illegitimate, given that the scholars I have quoted are all extremely well versed in liberal authorship debates and have yet found the essentially Mosaic authorship of Genesis to be the most defensible position.
God bless!
Dwight
Simple hermeneutics: you are reading with certain presuppositions and lenses that makes “the most natural” reading to you something very subjective and mostly influenced by your experience, cognitive framework, and a whole bunch of modern presuppositions (which Heidegger called a “fore-structure”). Probably, the one thing I find that most laymen don’t realize is the generic difference between ancient documents and modern conceptions of ‘history’ and ‘theology’: simply put, the ancients did not conceive of these things in similar manners. especially, since all of our lenses have been clouded by Enlightenment categories of thought.
The Documentary Hypothesis does not become less valid because their are different formulations of it. The very basis of every different iteration is that there are apparent tensions in the text, and the “hypothesis” (really a theory as it is a overarching explanation of a large amount of data)is not ‘weakened’ by new understandings. it’s not as if another scholar added ‘H’ and source theory suddenly crumbled to its knees. And this certainly doesn’t add any credence whatsoever to Mosaic authorship. We posited another source therefore Moses must be the author is a ridiculous conclusion.
Quoting scholars is still not understanding the methodology, the many generic issues, and the conclusions they make from selected methodologies. Picking up a text and “reading it naturally as a modern” is a interpretive and generic mistake that does not recognize the document in context.
Scott, I am sure you have been trained beyond me in many aspects of OT study, and I don’t want to question that. However, I am most certainly familiar with your discussion of “simple hermeneutics” in your first paragraph. Not only did I study literary theory and criticism in university (where I encountered Heidegger), but I have also listened to seminary lectures on hermeneutics and read several hermeneutics textbooks, including Osborne’s work (including his dense appendices discussing the issues you are raising). Because I approach a text with different assumptions than you do (open to the supernatural rather than closed to it, as your first post suggests), that does not make my reading less likely than yours.
I agree with your observation that simply noting there are variant versions of the documentary hypothesis does not prove it is wrong. However, if the variations become great enough, then they do suggest that the conclusions are rather speculative, as Waltke suggests.
You suggest I am guilty of picking up a text and “reading it naturally as a modern.” I am sure I do that many times, and I am sure you do too. I agree that is a problem, and I agree we have much to learn from the studies of those who examine how ancient texts were read. (I have read Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament and found much of value.) However, I think the documentary hypothesis is more guilty of this charge than a reading which accepts primary Mosaic authorship. Ancient texts are open to the supernatural; the framers of the documentary hypothesis were not, radically skewing the range of possible conclusions in anachronistic ways. Those who adhere to Mosaic authorship accept the ancient testimony of Jesus and Paul; the documentary hypothesis does not, being driven instead by modern and postmodern skepticism of biblical authority. Indeed, at least as regards the NT, source critics used the conclusions drawn from the study of modern European texts and oral histories (tracing their development over hundreds of years) as a pattern with which to interpret the history of the NT documents–a classic example of taking a text and “reading it as a modern.”
I don’t understand the constant debate on this topic. There is reason to doubt that the first human was Manu, the progenitor of all humans, also known as Satyavrata, and his wife is Satarupa. We have this knowledge directly from the holy Mahabharata, and there is no misunderstanding in translation from the original Sanskrit. We likewise have no reason to doubt that the revered author of this holy text was Veda Vyasa (also known as Krishna Dvaipayana), who in the holiest Vaishnava traditions is regarded to be an Avatar of the highest God Vishnu, himself.
Why are we so prone to doubt our holy scriptures?
Beau, forgive the correction, but don’t you mean to say that there is “no” reason to doubt that the first human was Manu?
Thanks for point out my error, Will. Fortunately, we can be assured of nothing but inerrancy from our holy Mahabharata – straight from Vishnu’s mouth to the page.
I didn’t like the 4 options. I have no idea how old humanity is and don’t care. I do not think all humanity emanated from Adam. The people Cain feared and the land of Nod tell me Yahweh made other people.
I think Adam was the first to fail and as such, Paul was accurate when he claimed Adam brought sin into the world. It just wasn’t through genetics in all cases.
Re: All the different religions believes that first human was male and female. For the same male and female named differently like manu and ananti, adam and eve. May both are same male and female with different names.