Is the Hebrew phrase, "formed from dust" a repudiation of normal childbirth for Adam?

I wouldn’t at all mind showing Keller how he can tune up those basic beliefs by considering a sequential reading of the first two chapters. I’m pretty sue Eric Metaxas wouldn’t just dismiss the possibility, either.
Collins, as far as I can tell, has just not engaged in conversation with anyone in particular on this topic, other than maybe Walton, who has unnecessarily shot himself in the foot.

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@Guy_Coe

Here again I think Walton’s concept of “archetypes” has traction. In the first place (on the opposite pole from your argument) it excludes mere allegory. Adam is not “typical” of man in the sense that if you roll the experience of mankind into one and personify it, you get Adam.

Thence to your archetype/prototype distinction. Let’s apply it to the importnat matter of orginal sin again.

If Adam is a prototype, then all men sin because God didn’t change the design.

If Adam is an archetype, then all men sin because Adam sinned.

Edit - actually, that approach works for Eve, too, though not necessarily resolving thematter of special/visionary creation.

If Eve was a prototype of woman, then her being formed from Adam’s side is an interesting anecdote explaining Adam’s particular relationship to her.

If Eve was an archetype, however, then her origin and relationship have something to say to people nowadays, cf 1 Timothy 2:13-14.

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Look I am the last one to give credence to “argument from authority” when the subject matter is as accessible as the text of the Holy Writ. With the tools available today the serious layperson can delve far deeper into the text than could Erasmus when he edited the KJV. But it seems to me you are being inconsistent on multiple levels.

You boast that you could ‘easily point out the flaws in Jack Collins refutation’ of Walton, but so far as I can tell, and the other members of this board please correct me if I am wrong, you have not even been able to point out the flaws in my refutation of Walton’s interpretation. To the extent you have tried you relied heavily on a technique you advised me against- using distant unrelated passages which happen to use the same word or two in order to determine meaning rather than relying on what the immediate surrounding text is saying about the event. Before you “easily” take on Collins’ refutation, you might want to try taking on Moore’s. Outside of what I have been shown, I am no biblical scholar, just a committed layperson. Before you ‘tune up’ Keller, you might want to “tune up” those of us here.

Can you not see how you are trying to have it both ways here? I need to “do some homework” because I just don’t have the expertise to understand Walton’s brilliance and depth. But when others on this board point to the learned scholars who have examined and rejected Walton’s views you dismiss the views of these experts as something easily correctable by you! The truth seems rather to be it does not matter if one is a lifelong professionally trained bible scholar like Keller and Collins or a beefy self-taught Hillbilly from Arkansas like me. We all come to the conclusion that the text does not support what Walton claims about it.

Or to put it more accurately, we don’t agree that the text isn’t saying what Walton says that it isn’t saying. Scripture is deep and humans are shallow. I have no doubt that there are permutations of meaning echoing from the events described in Genesis 2 and Walton may be describing some of those permutations well. But they were extra layers of meaning laid upon an event, and when he denies the event from which the permutations come he errs.

Considering what I just wrote above perhaps you should take the course that Joshua advised and simply consider adding the real event to the permutations that Walton endorses. Seek that path which allows you to keep the meat of what he is saying while also adding the historicity and reality of the foundation events as described by the text. I don’t think any of us would object if you simply stick with what Walton says it means. Our objection is when he denies the reality of what the text says happened.emphasized text

Believe me, I am all about what the text actually says happened, but it’s clear to me that the content of Adam’ revelatory sleep is, in fact, not a description of the means by which God brought Eve into existence --any more than “formed of dust” is for Adam. This is a common Hebrew idiom that Job, for example, presents as not being in conlict with a normal embryological development and childbirth.
If you take another look at the thread title (though we’ve wandered afield of it), that’s all I’m trying to clarify --for both Adam and Eve.
Now, there are those that take affront to that characterization, wanting for me to say they were “specially created” instead --which I haven’t actually disavowed.
But, if you were to ask me, Mark, about my daughter’s birth history, and my answer was “Emily was specially created by God, just for us!” --would I thereby be claiming she was “poofed” into existence, or that she didn’t have a normal birth and childhood?
Can you see how insisting that is, in fact, how those phrases are functioning in chapter two with reference to Adam and Eve, is an unwarranted dogmatism? We have to allow for colloquial language use in ancient Hebrew as well.

@swamidass

Let’s trademark this … while there is still a market for it!

[ Naturally, I’m jesting … ]

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What flavor do you want to be known for? I’ll take “dust.” Who want “imago” and who wants “evo-devo?” : )

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Clever indeed, but I have instructed my wife to shoot me if she ever sees me marketing stuff with my name as the product- coffee mugs, T-shirts, etc. She has agreed to do so.

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"Evo-Devo over here please… 2 scoops! With Jimmy… (not plural, just one Jim!)

You sure you don’t want a “dusty imago over evo-devo?” It’s on the menu… ; )

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Nice to be at the same smoothie counter with you guys.

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Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 provides a profound and sobering summation of the human experience where we are all destined to return to “the dust of the ground.” It refers to all of us, not just Adam:

1 Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
2 before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
3 when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
4 when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
5 when people are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.
6 Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (NIV)

We are all formed from the dust of the ground. That’s why we eat food, which is more dust of the ground.

We find the same description in the Psalms:

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. – Psalm 103:13-14 (ESV)

The Apostle Paul calls all humans clay in the hands of the potter:

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? — Romans 9:21 (ESV)

The Book of Job uses descriptions very similar to the creation of Adam:

Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether. Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust? — Job 8:10-12

Adam, Job, and all other humans are “formed from dust.” Nothing about that description precludes normal childbirth origins.

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And remember

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
— Kansas 6-7:77

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And if that’s the case, it removes the basis for the common (mistaken, to my mind) assertion that the Adam and Eve story must be located chronologically, and recapitulatively, as beginning DURING the “sixth day,” as Adam is thus conceived to be presented by the Bible as the first “imago Dei” human being ever. This results from a good-hearted, but (again, to my mind) mistaken attempt to harmonize with Paul’s “first man” comment in I Corinthians 15:45, when in fact, Adam is only meant as a first type of a certain kind of man (morally fallen due to knowing rebellion against God’s command) in a contrast with Christ as the antitype, in a contrastive comparison only.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.” – 1 Corinthians 15:42-49 NASB
Adam is no more thus revealed as the “first man ever” than is Jesus presented as the “last man ever.” That is a misreading of the text’s intention.
Clear that up, and you have no remaining reason for reading chapter two recapitulatively to chapter one, day six.