Three Options on Genesis 1 and 2

Not at all.

Their view officially allows for Nephilim as a place of legitimate differences of opinion, and there is no way to change this without an internal rebellion. Nephilim are as exciting as dinosaurs. You can’t stamp out that draw, and it is explicitely in the text. If Nephilim are biological humans (but not textual humans i.e. the Genealogical Adam), you have zero conflict with the YEC position on Acts 17:26 as currently stated.

Can you spell out the acceptable views of Nephilim for YECs? Anything more than (a) angels, (b) offspring of evil humans mixing with godly humans, and (c) simply men of renown not connected to any strange interbreeding? Are YECs taking sons of God and/or Nephilim to be other hominins?

@swamidass
Not to be disingenuous, but Adam, being the sole father of all mankind, would be genealogical (insofar as he is at the beginning of all of our genealogies). I hope that that came out coherently :wink: ! Although I have not given the topic large amounts of thought, I am highly disinclined to believe in pre-Adamites or humans outside the Garden of Eden (due to lack of scriptural support among other things. The idea that nephilim=pre-adamite humans strikes me as quite a stretch [kind of like behemoth’s tail being an elephant’s trunk :wink: ]).

@deuteroKJ, Thanks for bringing this up.

1 Like

Here is a really good example of YEC scholarship by Bodie Hodge. Nephilim: Who Were They? | Answers in Genesis A less studious article echoing similar points much less rigorously is here: Battle over the Nephilim | Answers in Genesis

Of course, they do not mention the Genealogical Adam. The issue is that with the range of options they do allow, they have no basis by which to say that the GA is opposed to scripture. The best that can be offered is:

That is not a declaration of heresy but of personal disinclination, which is okay. This, actually, is the point. Whether they personally like it or not, there is not Scriptural evidence against this loophole.

As for the allure of Nephilim, even Ken Ham can’t stay out of the fun:

1 Like

Thx for the links. Interesting in the 2nd one is this: " Every view teaches that the behavior described in Genesis 6:1-4 was sinful and contributed to the worldwide wickedness that brought about the Flood judgment." Though v. 3 states, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever,” there’s nothing explicitly in these verses about wicked behavior. It’s an inference (one I agree with, but not forced by biblical literalism).

1 Like

As you said, it will be pretty entertaining to see how this plays out.


A good analytical treatment of the three major views regarding the Nephilim is here:
http://www.evidenceunseen.com/bible-difficulties-2/ot-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/gen-64-who-or-what-were-the-nephilim/
I tend towards Kaiser’s view of it being about the culturally elite among humanity, i.e. the families of the major rulers and kings (those who, in my view, had a familial “leg up” in their knowledge of good and evil, and were thus not as morally and intellectually underdeveloped.
Shades of “Animal Farm”… : )

@swamidass

And so where would this interpre-tation … [[“Gen 2 starts off right where Gen 1 leaves off”]]… fit into you scenarios?

Every time I see another examples of Ken Ham’s wild speculations about the ancient past (e.g., gladiators fighting giants and dinosaurs), I want to ask him “Were you there?”

It amazes me that someone who ceaselessly harps on distinctions between “observational science” and “historical science” (to insist that scientists really can’t know much about the past can nevertheless be so confident in telling people of alleged past events upon which the Bible is totally silent (e.g, the Noahic Ice Age and how ark animals returning to post-deluge Australia rode on vast floating vegetation mats.)

1 Like

It’s Option #1 in the earlier post:

2 Likes

I’m all in for option 3! @Djordje, @Randy, @AllenWitmerMiller, are you with me?

I think such a reading is by far, the most sensible reading. The problem with it, I feel, only comes when you get to the NT, and if you accept the deuterocanonical books, The Wisdom of Solomon.

I suppose that I see scripture as more like a community, and so some biblical writers (the compilers of Geneis 1-3 most likely), as well as others around that time, saw Genesis 1-3 as giving a very rough sketch of God’s creation of the world and human beings. God is creator of everything, humans are male and female in God’s image, and we blew it from the beginning. Somewhere down the line, Jews began to read the story as a historical description of how humanity was ACTUALLY created. Although they drew the right theology from the stories, they took it too literally. Paul inherited this tradition. He got his theology right, but probably took the story more literally than the compliers of Genesis took it.

Or then again, maybe he didn’t. It’s hard to know for sure, since he allegorizes the story of Sarah and Hagar, says Christ was the rock in the wilderness, that rules about oxen treading out grain were written “for our sake,” etc.

It seems safe to say Genesis 1-3 is the culmination of two theologically complimentary stories and Paul uses them, just like everything else in the OT to explain the significance of Christ’s life giving death and resurrection that saves both Jews and gentiles. If we asked him today whether he thought Adam was a literal person, I personally think he might say something like,

“well sure I did, but that wasn’t really my point. He could very well be symbolic but my point would still stand. Just as death came through this one man in the story in Genesis, life comes through the one man that I met on the Damascus road. Whether the death man was literal or not is sort of inconsequential. My point was that Christ brings life to all. Using Adam just seemed like the best foil to Christ I could find in the Old Testament. I mean, Adam seems to stand for all people, both Jews and Gentiles, so using Adam this way seemed like a rhetorical slam dunk. And from the Gentiles I spoke with after writing the letter, I’m glad I used this analogy. It helped them really ‘get’ what Christ did for them.”

I guess I took us off subject. I should start a thread on Paul’s interpretation of Adam

1 Like

I tend to lean toward #3 but I’m not dogmatic. It is also possible that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 had circulated as oral traditions for many centuries and were chosen for the opening of Genesis for sequential or recapitulatory purposes—even though they were perhaps entirely independent prior to that. (And as I so often add with such topics, none of this requires a threat to inerrancy. Reweaving oral traditions in no way thereby makes them “fictional” or less significant.)

2 Likes

@AllenWitmerMiller,

I agree with you to an extent, but I’m not sure how God could have created animals both after his creation of humanity (Gen 2-3) and before his creation of humanity (Gen 1). Unless he created two sets of different animals. But if that were the case, where the animals from the first creation? It says Adam was without a helper.

As @deuteroKJ says regarding Gen 2:19:

“The verb clearly describes a creative act, and does not support “summoning.” According to most scholars, the pluperfect translation “had formed” in Gen 2:19 is an unnatural reading of the Hebrew (wayyiqtol verb, or the so-called waw consecutive, normally conveys sequence, concomitant act, or even a summary of a scene, but rarely pluperfect). I know it’s the preferred translation of Jack Collins (who’s behind the ESV translation), but it’s driven by a desire to show more consistency in the order of events between Gen 1 and Gen 2. The more normal way to convey pluperfect (for a “flashback”) is to use the relative particle 'asher (“who, which, that”) + Perfect (qatal) verb.”

The only other option I’m aware of is to take John Walton’s functional interpretation of this verse, but I find that very ad hoc.

It seems that we have two stories that are chronologically incompatible. As with the gospel stories that contradict each other, it seems the best option is take each story as making theological points and look to the points of agreement between them. In no way am I saying the gospels aren’t historical. But for example, the cleansing of the temple and the date of the crucifixion are different in certain gospels due to the theological point each author wanted to make with them. I think both of these events (obviously the cruxifixion!) are historical, but I’m not sure we can put them in a strict chronology.

2 Likes

It sounds like you are assuming that order-of-presentation communicates order-of-chronology. That makes sense in our culture—but I doubt that that was the case in theirs. (Of course, even in our cultural traditions, the presumed order-of-presentation “rule” doesn’t always apply.)

For people who grew up with Indo-European languages which focus on chronology (e.g., with time-relationships verb inflections; complex auxiliaries), learning languages which do NOT emphasize things like temporal verb tense can be quite a jolt. No doubt you’ve been observing that in your seminary’s Hebrew courses.

2 Likes

@AllenWitmerMiller

I’m really not sure I understand what you are trying to say. So what exactly is going on in Genesis 1-3 and what is the relationship this story/ies has with history?

@Mark

I think im with you too!