Jeremy Christian's Take on Adam

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That makes no sense to me. If it was God’s intent to create Adam with free will, then why did he have to eat forbidden fruit in order to get it? And how does anything else you’ve been talking about, this will to dominate and such, equate to free will? Particularly, how can you say that “native” people lack free will?

Disagree. It’s not about farming. It’s about increased community size and population density. It happened in many other places independently, in China, many times in the Americas. Your claim that all those involved contamination from the MIddle East is without foundation. Your claim that is involves some kind of genetic change is without foundation.

All I see is you stringing together idiosyncratic interpretations of a few vague references into a story unsupported by text or external evidence. To whit:

Note that the change is the ability to recognize good and evil, apparently to feel shame. Not, as you imply, the ability to murder, which is ancient in the human population, apparently extending past our common ancestor with chimps. If there’s a case to be made for Cain inheriting anything, it’s that he feels the need to conceal his crime from God, and thus has some sense of shame. But this can’t be the change that arises from Adam and Eve. Let me point out, for example, Ötzi, who was both murdered and wore clothes, and who long precedes your date for the garden.

Note that there is no mention at all that this intermingling was forbidden or that it’s what produced the wickedness or that the lineage of Adam was intended by “the sons of God”. Nor is there any indication that “wickedness” is a new capability or something that was inherited or has anything to do with free will. I will also point out that if God’s intent was to get rid of the wickedness, and it’s inherited, Noah would be the last person to save. You paint a picture of a God who has no idea what he’s doing and causes disaster after disaster through incompetence.

There is no evidence that either of these things ever happened. The notion that a tower built up to heaven is even possible is absurd.

Wait, isn’t that specific line the source of “wickedness”? How is that “holy seed”? This doesn’t seem at all coherent.

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The significant element was not the fruit itself, but the act of eating it. This is an “unnatural” act in that it’s equivalent to matter defying the law of gravity.

Free will is better understood as the modern human ego. The I/me/my. It’s the capability to behave of our own volition, even if it’s contrary to God’s will. It’s the knowledge of good and evil.

Yes, and with farming came increased community size and population density, which did happen in many other places, but none of the rest of it did. If it were due to population density alone then it should have happened way more frequently.

But it only happened where those who originated in Mesopotamia went. The sons of Moses.

You’re right, this wasn’t the first murder. Murder was very rare in human history, but not unheard of. But what you pointed out is what’s relevant. This inclination to conceal. The reason he killed Abel. He was mad about the favorable response Abel got over him.

It’s not the wearing of clothing. Humans wore clothes for all sorts of reasons. It’s why.

The intermingling is the reason given for the flood. It produced children (“the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them”). Children of daughters of “humans”/ “man”. Then it immediately goes into how God saw wickedness in humanity.

No, not incompetence. Free will is an element that caused Him to regret, meaning He didn’t anticipate the outcome. Wickedness is only possible if you’re capable of behaving outside of God’s will. God’s observing of it is what tells us it’s new. He’s noting developments, unanticipated actions that warranted a flood. Damage control. God very much knows what He’s doing, but free will is something that is, by design, unpredictable. A will apart from God’s. He can’t anticipate what it will do. It is an awesome gift.

Do you fault people who just came out the other end of a flood for wanting to build a tower?

There’s evidence of both. Sir Arthur Whooley in his excavations noted a thick silt deposit in Ur that was sandwiched between Ubaid and Uruk artifacts (4000BC).

There’s the base of a tower at Eridu that’s believed to be the base of the Babel tower.

Line is the source of wickedness? Not sure what you mean.

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Is anyone else interested in trying to get a coherent story out of Jeremy? I’m giving up. Or would anyone care to agree with/support his claims?

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What specifically are you having a hard time following? How about if someone else explains?

More from Taylor’s book ‘The Fall’ …

Two Predominant Versions of the Fall Myth

“…it’s likely that this first type of Fall myth comes directly from the original Saharasian peoples. The second type of myth, on the other hand, appears to derive from the old Neolithic peoples who were conquered and enslaved by them. This doesn’t refer to environmental factors, but sees the Fall mainly in terms of degeneration of the character and behavior of human beings, a long, slow process which unfolds through different historical epochs.”

Judaism/Christianity

It’s significant that the Bible tells us that the Fall occurred as a result of Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. This suggests that the Fall was connected to gaining a new intellectual power of awareness. We’re told that now Adam and Eve were “given understanding” and, even more significantly, that now they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and covered themselves. This suggests that the Fall was linked to the development of a new self-awareness within human beings, which gave them a new ability to observe and judge themselves.

Hindu/Indian Mythology

The ancient Indian epic of Mahabharata says that the "holy men of old’ were “self-subdued and free from envy,” suggesting a lack of self-awareness and self-assertion.

Chinese Mythology

"While according to the Chinese myth of the Age of Perfect Virtue, when human beings fell out of the Tao they developed a new kind of individuality and self-sufficiency. They started to live by their own will rather than the will of nature."

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@Jeremy_Christian seems to be an avid reader and deeply engaged in this conversation. For now, I suggest giving up trying to extract a story that you will find coherent @John_Harshman. Give him some time to process what he is seeing here. Hopefully he will learn a lot from participating in conversations here, at least in how to better communicate his position. Perhaps if you pick it up in a month or so it might be easier to move forward.

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This falls right into the gap where discussions about people with /without souls or people with /without the image of God are had on this site in regards to what makes Adam significant if not the first human.

This is the answer.

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This is not the only approach. Also your use of the phrase “free will” is confusing.

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I’m not sure what you find confusing. Free will has long been a Theological concept central to many religions, including Christianity. Augustine wrote a whole book on the topic. So what exactly is confusing about my use of that term?

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As @John_Harshman aptly puts it, your particular usage is “idiosyncratic.” Do you know what we mean by this?

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I know what it means, but am not sure how my use of the term is different than anyone else’s.

It’s freedom to choose your own actions, right?

It’s what makes us capable of evil, right?

The opposite of deterministic, right?

What am I missing?

What’s idiosyncratic about my particular use?

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Grnesis 1:28 - Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Homo sapiens did not have free will before Adam. This is why they did exactly as God commanded. They filled the Earth and established themselves as the dominant species in the animal kingdom.

Adam and Eve did not do what God commanded. They chose of their own volition to do what they wanted. That’s free will. Everyone “of Eve” has free will.

There is a definite point when human behavior changed from their natural mode of operation and that change originates right where /when Genesis is set.

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OK @Jeremy_Christian - I’ve done a piece on The Hump responding in greater depth to your topic of civilized v primtive cultures. Here.

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Thank you for this, @jongarvey. This is a good read and gives me a better understanding of your viewpoint. It shows me that you’re familiar and have read quite a lot on the same topics I have. It’s cool to get to speak about these things with someone who’s so informed and familiar.

You - “He makes much of God’s inability to do anything to control free-will, because it is an absolutely independent power… a view all too prevalent today, as I have often explored before, but not actually what is taught either by the Bible or by the better theologians down the centuries.”

I disagree with your comment here that this isn’t taught by the Bible. I don’t see how this element of the story can be missed or misconstrued. It’s a central element to a good portion of the story being told.

The Adam/Eve garden story demonstrates it directly. The story of the Israelites in the wilderness mirrors that story in that it begins with them receiving laws/commandments, then describes their constant disobedience afterwards. Laws are only necessary where the ability/tendency to break them exists. And punishment is carried out, like parents with their children, in an attempt to correct behavior. The story of the bible is not a story of a God in full control of everything.

You - “If your primitive Hottentot manages to retire from the Human Zoo or Barnum’s circus and produce children, a generation of assimilation into Western culture will make them intellectually and spiritually indistinguishable from the mass, albeit certain genetic traits may well be more or less common amongst them.”

Your assuming that I’m claiming they’re “lesser” in some way. That we’re “better”. That my claim is that they’re something less than full human. I have said many times that I am not saying they are less capable. They’re fully capable. I’ve never once said or even implied that they’re in any way below us. I agree they’re fully capable. That is not what I’m claiming is different.

You - “they have lost land to commercial logging not because they lack intelligence or free will, but because they lack the tools of civilization to fight back adequately.”

And why do they lack the tools of civilization to fight back? Because they lack free will. It’s not that they were incapable of inventing and building the tools, it’s that they were never compelled to do so. Like I said before, they were perfectly capable of sitting down and designing a writing system, they just had no need for it.

Necessity is the mother of invention, but if there is no need?

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Jeremy

The one clear thing I took away from your stuff was that you were not implying any inferiority. My comments were just covering the possibilities.

Whereas it’s true that bot the Eden story and that of Israel are about disobedience, it doesn’t follow that the existence of free will in them implies the lack of it before.

But whether you like it or not, the claim about (in this case) a specific Ecuador tribe, if not demeaning, is simply misrepresenting them: talking to any member of such a tribe will show they have exactly as much free-will as you or me. Less autonomous individuality, probably, but that’s a feature of modern Western civilization since the Renaissance rather than a universal.

There are tribes which have steadfastly refused to countenance contact with outsiders, even when others around have traded and even assimilated. That’s an expression of choice.

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You - “Now, there is something to be said for this, firstly in the coincidence of apparent timing and culture between the Fall narratives and the rise of politicized city states in Mesopotamia, which were accompanied by vastly greater disparities of wealth and status, organised war and institutionized brutality – as well as false religion.”

Genesis 6:11-12 - Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

Then, after observing their building of a city and a tower from bricks they had made …
Genesis 11:6 - And the Lord said, “Behold, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do.

You acknowledge both the rise of civilization and the increase in violence during this point in history in this specific region. Both of which were observations made of man by God in Genesis 6 and 11, but somehow see it only as a “coincidence of apparent timing”?

It says “the people on earth had corrupted their ways”. This period in history can indeed be seen as a corruption of “their ways” as this was a complete alteration of human behavior as it had been for tens of thousands of years up to that point. Both in violence as well as technological capability and action.

And the fact that in both cases it says God in response to these observations took action, first with the flood, then with the scattering, that these were developments God took issue with and that these were not common.

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Joshua said something similar. That by all appearances his dog has self-awareness and free will. Please don’t take from this that I’m equating indigenous humans to dogs. I am not. This shows me a lack of understanding in your inability to identify free will or the characteristics that signify it. All living things are aware of self to some extent and can be observed making decisions based on preference or observations. Free will isn’t simply the ability to make a choice.

It’s when those choices begin to alter the common behaviors and way of existing prior (for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways). A sign of free will is the rise of civilization or the severe uptick in violence, or the large difference between two peoples of the same species as has been observed many times over between “civilized” humans and indigenous. Where each appears almost alien to the other.

Your dog having free will doesn’t refer to their ability to choose this treat over that one. Ever seen Planet of the Apes? That’s more what should be expected. A complete alteration to the behaviors commonly associated with dogs in your experience. Sure, your dog can choose a preferred toy from the toy box, but he/she still very much acts like a dog. Leave here, go to Africa or India, encounter a dog, you pretty much know what to expect. A dog.

What then is the significance of the Eden story? What was the purpose of creating a garden with one forbidden tree right in the middle? How does it not follow that this was a new capability unique to Adam?

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As others have said, you’re using “free-will” in a non-standard way. Suggest reading up Augustine (or his commentators) in the first instance. Can you point me to single author who identifies “free-will” with “the ability to alter common behaviours?”

As I said before in the Romans quotation, and as much in the Bible shows, the possibility of unbelief and disobedience arises from the establishment of a relationship of faith and loyalty. And loyalty cannot exist without the possibility of disloyalty - and hence the provision of the tree of knowledge. This (at least) is given as a test - parallel and equivalent to the covenant 10 words given to Israel on Sinai. But in fact, it’s also given as the means to grow in wisdom, for “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

The most direct parallel is seen in the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, which are in several ways deliberately based on the events in the garden. From Hebrews 5, which refers to this above all the events of Jesus’s life:

During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him…

Here you see that the ability to make choices was the same for Jesus as for Adam or anyone else. Jesus had made choices throughout his life. But, as in the garden, the particular circumstances here involved the choice willingly to obey his Father, or be diverted by Satanic temptation. The choices he made under pressure, although he was never disobedient before, are said (a) to have taught him obedience and (b) perfected him to be able to change the world according to God’s plan.

This would have been Adam’s role too, not in relation to anything special in the ability to choose, but in the obedience of the choice he made - to choose according to God’s will is freedom (Jesus being both the epitome of human freedom and the epitome of obedience to the Father). To choose against God’s will, as Adam did, is to lose true freedom and become a slave to sin.

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I have read Augustine’s book before, but it’s been a while. I will certainly revisit.

This, I feel, demands some clarification that I’m sure is going to be met with plenty of resistance. The difference here seems to be the difference between philosophy and science.

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.
Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat with a flashlight.

While I certainly understand and don’t begrudge yours and others reliance on the “best theologians” or other forefathers of the church and the like, there’s something significant we have that they never did. Context. An actual overall view of the historical landscape and developments happening around the events being described.

These philosophical musings, while potentially insightful or thought-provoking, can only really rely on the text as if playing out in a vacuum. The only ‘truths’ to be gleaned have no basis in the context of the environment these events are playing out in.

What I’m describing is what’s been observed in the merging of text and history. If you look to the past to find agreeance with what I’m saying you’re most likely not going to find it, not because it is wrong, but because what I’m talking about those people of the past were not privy to. They simply did not have access to the accumulated knowledge we have now.

It’s like trying to grasp the particulars of Gone with the Wind with no knowledge of the civil war. There’s much to be misunderstood or missed completely.

What I found potentially exciting about this site is that it’s populated with people willing to break away from old ways of thinking and truly re-evaluate the texts in the light of modern knowledge. This is one of my issues with organized religion. It’s the insistence to rely on the past and not embrace the progress of knowledge. This, in my opinion, arrests development. The amount of resistance I’ve been met with since was something I thought discussions here would finally be free of. Or, at least, not as hampered by.

At this point I wonder how this group ever considered alternate takes on the Adam story at all.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: What a Model of Adam Noteworthy?

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Jeremy, the names listed in Genesis 4, 5, 10 and 11 are the names of ruler-priests, not the first people on Earth. These are typical of ancient king lists, as are the lists of Genesis 25 and 36. All these men are of the Hebrew (Habiru/ 'Apiru) royal priest caste which practiced endogamy and had a unique marriage and ascendancy pattern.

We can’t use the numbers in Genesis to put together your time scheme as they are highly symbolic: Cain (7); Lamech the Elder (77); and Lamech the Younger (777). Paleopathology indicates that the lifespan of ancient peoples living in an area extending from the Nile and North Africa to Turkey and Mesopotamia was about 34 years. This applies to peoples in the Late Paleolithic - 30,000 to 9,000 B.C., the Mesolithic - 9,000 to 7,000 B.C. and the Early Neolithic - 7,000 to 5,000 B.C. This would apply to all the rulers listed in Genesis, although rulers tended to live longer than the average people.