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Genesis Chapters 1 - 3. Problem: God’s Empty Threat.
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Problem: God’s Empty Threat • Genesis Chapter 2 (KJV):16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” • But this doesn’t happen > Adam lives to the age of 930. Eve lives a similarly long life. • NB: Bible is the word of God. It is also assumed by ancient interpreters to be perfectly coherent.
A Day of God Sometime before the 2nd century BCE, someone connected this problem with a verse in the book of Psalms. Psalms 90: 4 - “For a thousand years in Your sight are as yesterday, the way it passes, or like a watch in the night.”If one day (“yesterday”) in God’s sight actually equals a thousand years, then the fact that Adam died at the age of 930 would put his demise some time in the late afternoon of a single “day” of God’s.
The Sun Created on the Fourth Day.. • This idea helps solve another problem. According to Chapter 1, God created the world in six days. But the sun, moon and stars were created on the fourth day. How could there be ‘days’ without a sun? They were ‘days of God’ – a thousand year unit of time known only to Him. World really created over a period of 6000 years.
But how were Adam and Eve punished? • New problem > So Adam died on the ‘day’ he ate from the tree of knowledge but what kind of punishment is it to die at 930? What if God had originally intended Adam and Eve to be immortal? Then, it was the loss of immortality that would be their punishment. Perhaps their immortality was to be sustained by the Tree of Life and so banishing man and woman from the Garden was to take away their immortality.
The Documentary Hypothesis • Modern scholars, observing what seemed to be inconsistencies in the text, questioned whether chapters 2 and 3 (the Adam and Eve story) had even been written by the same hand that wrote chapter 1 (creation of the world in six days).
When did God create woman? • Chapter 1: 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Chapter 2: God creates Adam. At first he is alone. Almost as if the creation recounted in chapter 1 had never happened. Then creates all the animals and has Adam name them and only then creates Eve.
When did God create birds? • [On the 5th day, prior to creation of man and woman on the 6th day] 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.” [Man and woman created on the 6th day]. • Gen 2:19 Animals and birds created after Adam, in conflict with chapter 1.
When did God create plants? • Gen 2:4-7 seems to announce a wholly new beginning. Seems to say humanity was created before plant life but Chapter 1 has vegetation created on the third day (along with the earth) and humanity created on the sixth.
What is God like? • Chapter 1: God is a cosmic sovereign. • Chapters 2 and 3: God is a divine craftsman. He Himself shapes Adam out of the mud and breathes air into his nostrils. God walks about the Garden (Gen 3:8). When Adam and Eve hide from him, he calls out “where are you?” Apparently, he does not know. At the end, God makes clothes for the pair – another hands-on act.
‘God’ vs ‘Lord God’ • God is referred to quite consistently in chapter 1 by the word “God” (elohim). • Starting at Gen 2:4, exactly where the story of Adam and Eve begins, he suddenly becomes “the Lord God”. The word “God” is now preceded by YHWH (the proper name of the Hebrew god). “The Lord God” is used consistently until the end of chapter 3. • The writer who referred to him as God saw him as a cosmic deity. • The writer who used the name “the Lord God” conceived of him in more personal terms, a sort of divine humanoid who walked around and shaped things and made clothes.
J • Story of Adam and Eve a product of the author known as J: uses YHWH; anthropomorphic conception of God; focused on humanity; the effect of past events on humanity’s present condition • People have to work for food, women have to suffer the pain of childbirth because of the first humans’ disobedience. • Human beings are called man (adamin Hebrew) because that’s what the first created human was called. This in turn was because he was made out of the ground (adamah)
Adam and Eve as allegory • Interesting theory about the meaning of Adam and Eve – seems to reflect the moment humanity discovered the secret of agriculture.Figuring out that seeds can be collected and then deliberately planted in fields was a great step forward for humanity. But agriculture brought with it certain pains – working long hours under the sun, earning one’s bread “by the sweat of your face” (Gen 3:19)
Adam and Eve as allegory • At a similar stage of historical development, people began to wear more clothes. • At a similar time, human beings discovered that childbirth is the result of an “act of planting” nine months earlier. Before this discovery, a father may not understand he has any specific relationship to this or that child. Afterwards, the man “will cling to his wife and they shall be one flesh” (Gen 2: 24).
Adam and Eve as allegory • Ancient Israelites were engaging in a speculative reconstruction of how these events – how humans came to be farmers, learned the secrets of childbirth and came to fashion clothes for themselves - occurred millennia earlier.
The Snake Serpent of the story is clever and convinces Adam and Eve to become ‘clever’. May have connection with worship of snakes elsewhere in the Near East. Divine serpent an apt vehicle for transmission of the sacred knowledge of agriculture. By eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, humans have acquires powers previously held exclusively by God: “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (3:22)
