@gbrooks9 , I have ready made it clear on many occasions that it is not warranted from the text to speak of Adam as “created,” since that Hebrew verb is nowhere used in the account about him. Instead, it says he is “formed from dust,” a reminder of his creaturely continuity with the “imago Dei” humans from the previous chapter, and then placed in the garden.
The fact that Eve’s identity was revealed to him in a visionary dream (see Walton) as formed from his “side,” is a deeply ontological reminder of her essential oneness with him, though she is very different. This vision was necessary because he grew up, as far as we can tell, with no other contact with members of his own species until well into his adult years, having been raised in the garden by the Malak YHWH, most likely as an orphan who never knew his parents. This is NOT the “two creations” view you’d like to pigeonhole me into. It is a reasonable set of construed circumstances based upon a sequential reading of the two very different accounts and the revelation of the text. You’ve never heard of it before because it is new (which means your other pigeonhole about me being “an RTB person” isn’t entirely true, either). It also means, by the way, that it is silly to look for a “bottleneck” centered around Adam and Eve, because they are both born to regular parents, and brought together as adults. This does no damage to the GA scenario; instead, it complements it, a fact to which @swamidass will attest.
In the interest of avoiding a duplicate of a duplicate admonitionment over the use of the word “created”, could you supply me and the rest of your audience with the VERB that we can substitute for the word “created”.
Is it your intention that I should use the word “formed” or “built” instead of “created”? This is not a frivolous question. Since I have no important metaphysics or theological point that rests on the precise meaning of the word “created”, I have been quite cavalier in continuing to use it.
The only way for me to avoid it is for you to provide a substitute that you will be able to appreciate and admire in all mu future postings!
How convinced are you that Genesis, which provides narrative for the oldest of Hebrew timelines, was in fact written before any other book of the Jewish Bible?
In the writings of Greek legend, it was not unusual for writers to compose a “backstory” for the period prior to a myth or legend that was being told, mouth to ear, for as long as anyone could remember.
Thus books that were written about Greece’s oldest periods were frequently written after the stories that covered more recent times.
The next three minutes in this video gives you some of it…
PS- scholars now see Job as one of the youngest books in the OT.