Another Try at a Sequential Reading of Genesis

Ha! Most of my comments today were made from my iPhone while the kids were swimming in the pond at my college. Yes, I will be intermittent here, but I’m enjoying it. I do have a Fall semester to prepare for as well (including an upper-level class on Genesis, which I’ve never done. I decided to do chs. 12-50 first, so I can gain some trust before jumping onto the double-black diamond of chs. 1-11).

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A sequential reading of Genesis 1 & 2 SOLVES multiple Biblical riddles. Any other approach simply magnifies them.

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As father to a special needs daughter, I know all about theological/parental multitasking, too. It’s a better environment than late at night in a study somewhere. Thanks for making a good splash here today!

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Paul is talking about the law of Moses.verse 14 explains his point clearly-
14 Nevertheless, death ruled from the time of Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the same way Adam did when he disobeyed. He is a foreshadowing of the one who would come.
The idea is that the people in between Adam and Moses were not under the law… and yet they sinned. Indicating they were held accountable for their actions through a different kind of law( probably referring to the conscience).
This is in line with his conclusion in Romans 2-
12 For all who have sinned apart from the Law will also perish apart from the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law.

Here Paul is making the point that the fall was universal in its scope and not being under the law does not excuse anyone because they are linked to God through Adam.
I prefer to look at this in terms of covenants. Adam was the first man to have a covenant with God. Adams disobedience and breaking of covenant led to sin… All his descendents are also bound by the covenant whether they know it or not. (We see a general requirement for humanity to glorify God and practice the correct form of worship in Romans 1. A similar expectation is seen in Cain and Abels story)

It’s possible to speculate that God’s covenant with Adam extended to humanity outside the garden also.

The covenant God made with “imago Dei” humanity in chapter 1 was universal and prior to Adam’s covenant. Adam was then given the first “Thou shalt not,” which he transgressed, and brought about his enmity with God, the “death” of a soul formerly “alive” to God.

This is what I’ve found as a consistent position in the commentaries thus far (but I’ll need to get back to my office to do more digging…I’m relying upon Logos right now, which does have a good set of Romans commentaries, but I have many more in the office).

@deuteroKJ , Why would its absence, even if so, in the commentaries, deflect the argument that Adam received the very first “Thou shalt not?” Perhaps this has been largely overlooked? By most everbody but Paul?

Theoretically, the NT scholarly consensus (if there is one) can be wrong, but I tend to walk more cautiously before disagreeing with guys (and gals) who’ve earned my trust in their field of expertise. I don’t know yet if there is a consensus on Rom 5:13 in particular, but I do know the general view among modern NT scholars of the way Paul uses nomos (“law,” which seems to be a technical term for Paul as Mosaic law, not to be used synonymously with “command” etc.). Given this, my general tendency is to assume the consensus unless proven otherwise. Obviously this is a bias in my methodology, but proves to be more safe than not. Therefore, I’m not yet convinced “Thou shalt not” to Adam constitutes “law” in Paul’s mind (nor am I convinced a Mosaic law interpretation in Rom 5:13 is illogical). But I’m open to reconsideration.

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That’s all I ask. Odd court of appeals, though, to opt only for what’s “safe.” Glad to hear a sequential reading is under consideration, and, no, it may not matter much if your “cause and effect” analysis for sin and death turns out to support the larger issues well.

isn’t that what you (and I) are doing with sticking with orthodox theology as a safeguard?

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I’ve got my eye on the whole pie, but I know how the ingredients can affect the taste. Don’t want a pickle where a pecan should be!
Cheers!

My view did not rely on the idea there was no physical death before the Fall. I’m an OEC, not a YEC. I accept physical death before the Fall, but not human death. Claiming humans could die physically before the Fall but not spiritually seems to be at odds with scripture.

The issue is one of human death before the Fall. If I understand Guy correctly, he’s suggesting that humans lived and died for a long time prior to the special creation of Adam. If there is some way around this view, I would be more open to what Guy is suggesting but i don’t see an answer yet.

@Ronald_Cram,

Is it your intention to say Abel could not have died in Cain’s attack if it had been made BEFORE the Fall?

I think it is clear that murder is sin. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, then Cain’s murder of Abel would have been the Fall.

Well @deuteroKJ since you seem game (and keeping with your swimming pool adventures) I will “dip my toe in the water” then. Let me back up a bit and be more specific. We do speak loosely and say “this is a collective noun” but “Adam” is not a true collective noun. Examples of true collective nouns are things like “bunch”, “board”, “herd” etc. Collective nouns like that refer to a group of things and yet still have a plural form, while at the same time they always refer to a group of whatever is in the collective.

This is not the case at all with a-dam. Rather this is just a noun which has the same form whether singular or plural. It is a case of an irregular noun where the single and plural forms are unchanging, like (the example I think I gave in the book) deer.

So then I can say “In four days we can legally hunt deer” and this refers to the entire species. It is collective in that sense, just as 1:26 is referring to a collective.

But should I say “Last year I got an award for the deer I shot” then the presence of the definite article “the” indicates that it is referring to a specific deer or (because singular and plural form is the same) a group of deer. The article clarifies that I was not claiming to have eradicated the entire species. Notice that my prior reference to the species deer (“we can legally hunt deer”) and my use of the definite article (“the deer I shot”) does in a sense refer back to deer as a concept or the whole group of them but it is wrong to say that this reference means the deer specified by the definite article is equal to the entire species of deer or even the concept of deer.

Now it may still be unclear whether I have taken a single animal or a group of them, owning to the identical form of the noun in singular or plural. So if I follow on with this statement and say “He had the biggest antlers of any taken that year” then you know that I am referring to a single deer because I followed the reference to the deer I had taken with a singular pronoun.

Now you are the expert in Hebrew, and therefore I accept that what you say is possible in Hebrew, but considering what I have written above, your point about what is possible in Hebrew sounds extremely awkward when you lay it all out in English.

26: “Let us make Man in Our own image, and let them…” note a plural pronoun. Though I don’t think its in the Hebrew the context of the plural reference to God and 27c sort of demands it. That’s why the vast majority of translations give it a plural pronoun, though a few don’t use a pronoun here. The only one I can find that uses a singular pronoun is the
Douay-Rheims Bible. Now you are aware that I don’t take translations as binding when they translate the Hebrew inconsistently, but here the use of the plural seems justified.

27a. “So God created THE man in His Own image.” The article IS there. You are one of the few people on this board confident in your understanding enough to see what is there. Now you have suggested that the singular pronoun be “this” as in referring to the noun He spoke of creating in 26. That is, man as “mankind” or humanity. Consider how that reads. “So God created this mankind in his own image”.

Is there another mankind out there that we might think He was referring to? Indeed, verse 26 is not even strictly the same object as that in 27a, even if it is a collective because 26 describes the idea of mankind. Until 27a there is no actual and extant mankind to refer back to.

So while I understand that definite articles can be used to refer back to an already given example of something, this isn’t quite that. So one might say “King David went out to battle. THE king ordered his army to surround Moab.” Yes, in that case the definite article refers us back to David. But that’s because A) David was not the only king in creation so an article to make the ordering king more specific adds clarity to the text and B) There was already a David there to refer back to. He actually existed. Did Mankind already exist in 1:26? Does the article add any clarity to the text if it is only referring to humanity as a whole in this situation?

The vast majority of translators (with good reason that’s the key) assign a plural pronoun to the adam in verse 26. The Hebrew explicitly pairs both a definite article and a singular pronoun with the adam in 27a-b. It is not until you get to 27c that the pronoun switches up to plural again, matching what is implied in 26.

Look, you are the expert in Hebrew, and so if you say its possible, if one threads the needle just so, that I am mis-interpreting the passage then I accept that it is possible, if one threads the needle just so, that I am mis-interpreting the passage. But isn’t it also at least as likely that I am getting it right? That 27a and b refers to a single individual and 26 and 27c refer to multiple individuals? The grammar, as you are describing what it could be, sounds awkward and as forced as it can be in English.

What complicates all of that is that it’s in the middle of a chiasmus.

As you note, there are two types of collective nouns. I use the example “flock of sheep”–flock is the group collective; sheep is the other type (what you call irregular). Terrminology isn’t the issue; it seems we basically see this the same way.

Yes, that’s what happens in translation. As the old saying goes, “Translation is treason.” There is always a trade-off, a fudging that must take place from one the patient language to the target language. In this case, the use of the definite article is not exact between Hebrew and English (though it’s pretty close). The same goes for resumptive pronouns (i.e., a pronoun that refers back to an antecedent).

Actually the verb “let them have have dominion” is plural in the Hebrew.

I’m suggesting the article in 27a naturally refers back to the adam just mentioned in 26 (I used “this” as shorthand for “the one just mentioned”). There’s no need to force an awkward Engllsh translation. Assuming it is the same adam, the English translations are right to translate with “humanity/humankind” and not translate the definite article.

This seems off base. A definite article doesn’t necessarily mean your choosing one of many. Even in English we can say “the universe,” “the earth,” “the sun,” “the messiah,” “the church,” etc. Still, a Hebrew definite article need not be translated with “the” or anything (see above). Besides, you have the something similar (concerning the article, not singular/plural) in Gen 2:5-7 – "there was no adam [no article; perhaps fits your “idea”?] to work the ground…“the LORD God formed the man [with article].”

Your idea vs. object is too abstract for the Hebrew mindset (especially for it to show up in its grammar). It’s the general pattern in the creation days in Gen 1 for God to make a statement about intent to create (e.g., “let there be”), and then the description fulfilling that intent. Why break this consistency in the creation of adam? (I grant there are other discontinuities with adam in Day 6, but I don’t this as one of them.)

No, not likely. The grammar could be construed this way theoretically (or maybe I should say hypothetically, since we’re on a science blog), but its not the most natural reading to me. Thus, I would need strong warrant from other clues to consider it as a live option. But every angle I consider says otherwise–the general pattern in Gen 1; the poetic parallelism in v. 27; the later references to image in the Bible (against the ANE backdrop); the consistent translation and interpretation in the guild (and maybe church history, but I don’t know that); etc.

I don’t know what the rabbis did with this, but it’s the kind of thing up their alley. You might find some support among them.

I hope I’ve cleared this up above. I was explaining the function of the article, not how the English should be translated. Our present translations are just fine.

And now I must get back to other things. Thanks for the iron sharpening!

Thank you for pointing that out. This appears to strongly confirm the interpretation I am giving for these verses. You say it may be that ha-adam in 27a is only referring back to the adam in 26, but if so why is that adam is paired with a plural verb in 26 and the ha-adam in 27a is paired with a singular pronoun in 27b?

Translation may be treason but that’s an awkward fit in any tongue. A much better fit is that 27 is a list of three things done to fulfill God’s intent in 26.

That is just what I am saying is happening too. As I see it you are going “He said He was going to do X and then it says He did X”. I am saying “He said He was going to do X and then it says the things He did in order to do X”. I see that as what the other days do as well. If there is any difference its that in the previous circumstances He ordered some part of creation to do something and then helped. With man, He did it Himself.

That’s too bad. I guess I will have to find another Hebrew scholar who can continue this where we left off, because this conversation is by no means completed on my end. As for our present translations- they are getting better. For example most of them shifted from the old translating ha-adam in chapter two as “Adam” to the more correct translation of “the man”. They just haven’t made that final step yet and moved to consistency by extending that to the ha-adam in chapter one.

I peeked back. I just meant for today. I’d love to continue the convo.

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@Ronald_Cram… and how do you resolve the circulatory? There is no death until the fall… But you say intentional killing WOULD suffice to be the fall. No doubt. But how can you kill something that cannot yet die?

Do you agree that tigers were eating vegetation during this same time?

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