A Literal Adam And Eve?

[Adrift]

No scholars or theologians that I know of. I may have picked up the idea at one online forum or another over the years and just started seriously considering it in the past few.

I know it's way out of the mainstream. But I also know that there are multiple passages of Scripture where ISTM it's the natural interpretation. If it were just one or two, I could easily write it off as hyperbole or some form of rhetoric. When I see several, I have to take it more seriously and literally. And when I see that there are other passages that pretty obviously conflict with the idea, I have to wonder which ones I'm actually supposed to believe.

Yeah, it is interesting, though I can't help feel that maybe there's a missing the forest for the trees thing going on here. I think Witherington's points are interesting, especially his interpretation of Romans 13:8 (though, of course, there are other passages that emphasize the love of neighbor motif without direct mention of love of God).

This all deserves its own thread, but it's definitely something worth more investigation.

[Cow Poke]

This is all off topic of course, but my church just did a several month long series of teachings on this, how the first half of the 10 commandments are essentially to do with love of God, while the other half are to do with love of neighbor, so it is kind of timely.

Interesting ... that was my Wednesday night topic last week, entitled "Follow Directions".

[NorrinRadd]

Interesting ... that was my Wednesday night topic last week, entitled "Follow Directions".

I also have some issues with treating the Bible as an instruction manual.

[NorrinRadd]

I'm not understanding the issue - it's obvious that "the Big 2" represented a package deal, and, together, they covered the 10 with the first of the "Big 2" dealing with the first 4 of the 10, and the second of the "Big 2" dealing with the remaining 6 of the 10.

As Adrift noted, this is getting well off-topic and should possibly have its own dedicated thread. However, here is where it's currently being discussed, so I will address it at least briefly here.

I would not use the "Big 2" passages in and of themselves to support the idea that "love" replaces all the Mosaic Commandments. Those passages themselves do not support that. Or more precisely, not all of them do.

Mark 12 presents them as two distinct Commandments that are the "greatest," and presents them in a clear hierarchy.

Matthew presents them as two Commandments, but says the second is "like" (or "the same as") the first, which at least softens the hierarchy. He explicitly says the Law and Prophets "depend on" (lit. "hang from") those two, which is clearly NOT the same as saying they REPLACE all others. (OTOH, Matt. is also the one who teaches that the "Golden Rule" *does* encapsulate the "Law and Prophets." IMO, "Treat others as you wish others to treat you" is the best possible practical description of "Love your neighbor as yourself.")

Luke 10 presents them as one composite Commandment, and DOES explicitly say that obeying this single compound Commandment is sufficient to obtain eternal life.


I've often heard that idea about the Greatest Commandment encapsulating the first four of the Decalogue, and the Second-Greatest Commandment encapsulating the other six. It makes *some* sense, unless we press details too far. I am not one who believes that the Lord's Day is now the Sabbath; I do not believe the New Covenant includes "special" days.

Finally (for this post), the idea that "Love your neighbor as yourself" is sufficient in and of itself finds its most explicit support in Paul, in Rom. 13 and Gal. 5. It also finds some support in James 2.

[NorrinRadd]

Yeah, it is interesting, though I can't help feel that maybe there's a missing the forest for the trees thing going on here. I think Witherington's points are interesting, especially his interpretation of Romans 13:8 (though, of course, there are other passages that emphasize the love of neighbor motif without direct mention of love of God).

This all deserves its own thread, but it's definitely something worth more investigation.

I have that book by BW3, but have not cracked it yet. I'll have to look that over, as well as his Romans and Galatians commentaries.

[Cow Poke]

I also have some issues with treating the Bible as an instruction manual.

The "Follow Directions" was in direct relation to the teachings of Jesus, particularly in regards to "the Big 2". I think it's a pretty good idea to follow THOSE instructions.

[Rushing Jaws]

It seems that though Eve is called the mother of all living, and that in Adam all men died, and sin entered the world though one man, that many Christian don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve. How can that be - it would undermine the whole story of sin and redemption.

I believe that pride, anger, covetousness and treachery are all great evils. I believed that before I read Lord of the Rings, and those lessons can all be drawn from LOTR.

To


Christian rejection of the historicality of Adam does not imply that mankind needs no Saviour, and in no way does it imply that Christ did not die for our sins. Rejecting an alleged cause of reality X, does not imply any rejection of the reality of X. Conversely, one cannot argue, from the existence of debris in New York in 1933, that the debris was caused by King Kong. Nor is this a good argument:

That the Adam-story is part of God-breathed Scripture, does not require acceptance of its truth as historical truth. The parable of Jotham in Judges 9 is part of God-breathed Scripture: it does not follow that, because the trees in the parable engage in debate, God through Scripture is saying that trees engage in debate. Still less can it be inferred that the parable is proof from Scripture that the Ents in LOTR engaged in the Entmoot LOTR describes.



And many statements are either approximate:

Babylonian mathematics at the time (6th century BC), but it has given rise to debate within rabbinical Judaism from an early period due to the concern that the biblical text might here be inaccurate.

Rabbi Nehemiah in the 2nd century argued that the text is not claiming that π equals 3, but that instead the Hebrews measured the diameter from the outside edge of the rim of the bowl, while the circumference was measured from under the rim, since it cannot be measured with a cord along the outside edge of the rim. After accounting for the width of the brim--"about an hand breadth"--this results in a ratio closer to the true value of π. Taking a cubit to be about 18 inches and a handbreadth to be
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_Sea

https://biblehub.com/genesis/11-9.htm

One of the reasons to reject the historicality of the Adam and Eve story, is that their names are Hebrew. If the story were historically accurate, and they were the first two human beings, and they lived only about 6,000 years ago, one would expect the first two humans to have Sumerian names. Sumerian is about 2,000 years older than Hebrew, and is one of the earliest languages to have left any written remains. The Hebrew puns in Genesis work only if the texts were composed in Hebrew.

So the fact that X in the Bible has the linguistic form of a statement, is not necessarily proof that the statement is to be taken as strictly true. This is why familiarity with the literary genres in which the Biblical texts are written, is so important and so valuable.

[seer]

Yet the New Testament takes Adam as a literal person, and in the Genealogy of Christ. And that sin entered the world through this ONE man. And that Adam was the FIRST man.

[Teallaura]

Nitpick: a difference is not necessarily a significant difference - especially when using somewhat imprecise measurement systems to begin with. A difference of less than 1% isn't statistically significant* in this instance - only a hyper literalist would take this as either not literally correct or a significant error.





*Dubious that it can even be noted without modern standardized measurements.

[Rushing Jaws]

Yet the New Testament takes Adam as a literal person, and in the Genealogy of Christ. And that sin entered the world through this ONE man. And that Adam was the FIRST man.

• there was an historically real individual man named Adam
• he had an historically real wife named Eve
• he died at the age of 930 years
• he and Eve had 3 named sons
• the names of these sons were Cain, Abel and Seth
• he and Eve also had other sons, and daughters as well
• the account in Genesis 1-5 is to be taken as providing historically accurate biographical for the lives and times of the very earliest human beings
• the very earliest human beings spoke the Hebrew language

[Rushing Jaws]

Nitpick: a difference is not necessarily a significant difference - especially when using somewhat imprecise measurement systems to begin with. A difference of less than 1% isn't statistically significant* in this instance - only a hyper literalist would take this as either not literally correct or a significant error.





*Dubious that it can even be noted without modern standardized measurements.

[Teallaura]

Er, I was nitpicking...

Also, I don't ascribe to that definition of inerrancy. Nor do I accept hyper-literalism as a counter argument to literalism.

If the Israelites saw the sun stand still, then they are reporting what they literally saw, not the mechanism by which it was achieved. To claim otherwise is to claim more than the text supports.