For those interested in the on-going debate over whether Adam and Eve are historical or archetypes, there is a discussion going at Stand Firm (a site from which I'm banned). Go here.
Fr. Kennedy and his followers insist on reading Genesis 1-3 as history and call those who don't agree unorthodox. Yet they ignore the historicity of Genesis 4-10.
Confusion will reign until people accept what the Bible says about Abraham's ancestors coming from Africa. Only then can we put this material in its proper cultural context.
Genesis is first and foremost about Christ and the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15). The rulers listed in the Genesis genealogies are Christ's historical ancestors, the people to whom God gave the promise that the Woman's Seed would crush the head of the serpent and restore paradise.
Why can't Adam (Ha-Dam) and Eve (Ha-Va) be both archetypes of the first created couple and historical persons?
The first created people appeared on earth suddenly and unheralded about 3 million years ago in East Africa. This is also where the oldest human fossils have been found. This is also the point of origin of the genetic types (molecular genetics) and of modern languages. Genesis tells us that Abraham's ancestors came from this part of Africa (Kush) and that Eden spanned from two rivers in East Africa to the Tigris-Euphrates in Mesopotamia. So is there reason to accept the Biblical account of Adam (Ha-dam, the Blood) and Eve (Ha-va, the Birther) as first parents? Absolutely!
Fr. Kennedy and his followers insist on reading Genesis 1-3 as history and call those who don't agree unorthodox. Yet they ignore the historicity of Genesis 4-10.
Confusion will reign until people accept what the Bible says about Abraham's ancestors coming from Africa. Only then can we put this material in its proper cultural context.
Genesis is first and foremost about Christ and the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15). The rulers listed in the Genesis genealogies are Christ's historical ancestors, the people to whom God gave the promise that the Woman's Seed would crush the head of the serpent and restore paradise.
Why can't Adam (Ha-Dam) and Eve (Ha-Va) be both archetypes of the first created couple and historical persons?
The first created people appeared on earth suddenly and unheralded about 3 million years ago in East Africa. This is also where the oldest human fossils have been found. This is also the point of origin of the genetic types (molecular genetics) and of modern languages. Genesis tells us that Abraham's ancestors came from this part of Africa (Kush) and that Eden spanned from two rivers in East Africa to the Tigris-Euphrates in Mesopotamia. So is there reason to accept the Biblical account of Adam (Ha-dam, the Blood) and Eve (Ha-va, the Birther) as first parents? Absolutely!
Related reading: Questions Students Ask About Genesis; Answers to Questions about Adam and Eve; Are Adam and Eve Real?; The Biblical Meaning of Eve; St. John Chrysostom on Eve's Sin; Elder Jospeh on Adam and Eve
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5 comments:
Semi-interesting debate, but I must say the Tim Keller paper linked is just dreadful. He's just not a sophisticated thinker, but this is amongst the worst things I've seen as far as output.
First, his argument for authorial intent opens up a whole can of worms including the likely composite nature of the Genesis creation account(s) that makes his argument simply nonsensical. I don't see any way you can go down this path and pretend that composite historical authorship hypotheses simply don't exist.
Worse still in this regard is that, he completely ignores any patristic evidence that speaks to the sense in which early Christians actually received the Genesis account. Peter Bouteneff's useful summary of this data is a good starting point. This also means the essentially Christological rendering of the Genesis narrative is seriously obscured. This is a general defect in his approach to Scripture, but it is severely problematic here.
Similarly, his discussion on original sin is rooted in Augustine (as he acknowledges explicitly) rather than Scripture or earlier Judaic readings, and so excludes most of Christian/patristic exegesis, as well as the historical understanding of almost all Christians outside of Western Europe. It's fine that he stakes this position as a normative part of protestantism in the US, but it undermines his prior argument.
His grasp of sociobiology (as evidenced in The Reason for God, another horrible work) is severely underdeveloped, so he passes over Sam Harris's points that cannot be defended with acceptance - even granting cognitive theory and behavioral economics a kind of standing as hard sciences.
I won't go on except to say that we need serious Christian engagement with the world, and it clearly is not going to come by way of protestant evangelicals. Indeed, they continue to do more damage to Christianity with each passing year.
I agree with you on all points.
Last year I posted a link to Peter Bouteneff's recorded talk for Come Receive the Light. It is excellent!
The link is here:
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2009/08/peter-bouteneff-on-genesis-and-church.html
Ms. Linsley, regarding your first post: Bingo. There's a weird kind of water that a certain type of Calvinist & also, more broadly, evangelical Anglicanism drinks tthat is strangely non-catholic or orthodox but at the same time almost biblically fundamentalist. I see some of this in my AMIA parish. Best, Brent
"we need serious Christian engagement with the world, and it clearly is not going to come by way of protestant evangelicals."
Agreed. Arius did not do a tenth of the damage to Christianity that has been done by Augustine and Calvin.
--The Pilgrim
Hello, Father.
I have no recollection of being warned, but no matter. The deed is done!
When S/F blocks access perhaps the person doing so could give a reason to the person being blocked. Then there is the possibility of learning from one's mistakes. : )
The Fathers read the Adam and Eve story as historical because Adam and Eve in biblical parlance are the original first parents. Now the question is "first parents" of all humans or of the people who gave us Genesis? (Likewise, universal flood or extensive regional flood?) This story belongs to those who gave us Genesis, and to understand it we must understand their cultural context, which was African... and specifically, Kushite.
The genealogical data in Gen. 4 and 5 shows that Kain and Seth married the daughters of a ruler named Nok (Enoch), so the Bible itself makes it clear that the story of Adam and Eve may not be historical.
Christians disagree on the historicity of Adam and Eve. When I'm labeled as a non-orthodox believer because I don't accept the psuedo-science and poor biblical interpretion of Young-Earth Creationists, it hurts. (I know my skin should be thicker. Afterall, I've been through the Anglican wars.) To understand the range of viewpoints on this, read: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-what-sense-are-adam-and-eve-real.html
Most of what I read at biologos isn't very helpful. The Keller piece isn't worth re-reading.
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