Purely academic question: what was the second sin committed by Adam and Eve? They may well have committed different sins for their encore, or maybe the same one. In either case, we will never know because it is not written. Why not? Why couldn't we have a running diary for their first year out of the Garden of Eden? Wouldn't their continued fall from Grace be informative for the rest of us?
I think we can infer from the Old Testament focus on Cain and Abel that Adam and Eve committed no murder, from the focus on the Tower of Babel that there were no pride issues, and from The Flood that they did not have any tendencies toward wickedness in a general sort of way. We can hopefully rule out adultery and covetousness, as well. Therefore, it was probably something we would consider hopelessly mundane and uninteresting.
I like to imagine that any further sin was an echo of sinning at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (a very long name, why not just use a maple or chestnut or cedar?). Based on their specific genders, I imagine Adam would have dealt with a great deal of anger, every time a thorn ripped his flesh or he tripped on a tree root while gathering/growing food. I think Eve would have wallowed in bitterness and resentment, every time she labored to deliver a child or noticed her uncomfortable, primitive clothing that gathered bugs and would not dry off. Almost every day would be a constant reminder of a single, epic failure on their part. I think they likely would have blamed Satan, blamed God, and blamed each other. Blaming themselves for their own plight likely did not come to mind.
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It's an interesting thought experiment, but I have to ask, you aren't one of those "young Earth creationists" who believes that everything in the Bible is literally true and the Earth is 6000 years old, do you? To put it another way? Do you think the Garden of Eden story is literally true, or merely metaphorical?
Sorry it took so long to post your comment. Internets only happen 2 to 3 times a week now. I have often wondered when reading Genesis what words in ancient Hebrew could POSSIBLY have existed when Genesis was first written/spoken to describe the vast scale of time and space. For example, our common language reaches about 1 trillion, because of the magnitude of our government's expenditures. And even that has little physical meaning to most people. Most Americans (including me)really don't grasp the meaning of much higher than 500,000; the price of a really nice house. So, is "day" literal as many believe it is, or is it just the best expression that could be contrived to describe stages of creation? The first few verses of Genesis describe the activities of God without really defining if they fit the first "day", so I wouldn't know how to categorize that. I think that the salient point from a standpoint of Faith in a sovereign God is that it is axiomatic that God could create a universe in an hour, a week, or eons. His turf; His power; His rules. Whichever it is doesn't change the creator/created relationship. I do believe in the literal truth of the Garden of Eden, which is related but separate. Why believe otherwise? My point there being that if you believe the truth of Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, and others, Adam and Eve are hardly going to give you pause. If you don't believe in any of the rest of the bible, I wouldn't expect any acknowledgement of the account of Adam & Eve, either.
Thanks for the response Stew. It seems to me that you have a dichotomy in your thinking that perhaps you haven't considered.
You're somewhat vague when you speak about what the Hebrew word for "day" was meant to refer to. I take it that you, like most liberal christians, subscribe to the day/age interpretation where day is understood metaphorically to mean age. In that understanding, a day (age) could really be millions/billions of years. This interpretation allows for acceptance of the scientifically based understanding that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, with God being the intelligent designer.
However, that view of Earth's creation doesn't jibe with a literal belief in the Garden of Eden story, which is where the dichotomy comes in.
Acceptance that the Earth is old, as scientists have been able to show (using the earthly presence or absence of a variety of radioactive isotope with varying half lives, among other methods) is generally paired with a belief in God as the intelligent designer who directed abiogenesis (the origins of life) and subsequently evolution.
I take it then that you reject evolution? A belief in the literal truth of the Garden of Eden story seems to requires a rejection of evolution.
If evolution took place, the whole "God creating mankind" part of the Garden of Eden makes no sense. There would be no first pair of humans, just a population of hominids that became more and more human-like. This is not what we see in the Garden of Eden, we see Adam and Eve fully formed humans.
Even if we say that God took two of these hominids and pushed them the final step to humanity, that is still unsatisfying. God does not create woman until the Garden of Eden, how did sexual reproduction to get to that evolutionary point take place?
It seems like some fairly massive contradictions have to be settled (or ignored) in order to believe the literal truth of the Garden of Eden story. It is also necessary for a Christian to believe in it (to my mind). With no Adam and Eve, there is no "fall" and therefore no need for Jesus to sacrifice himself to himself to provide us with a loophole for his rules (no doubt you'd put it differently, but I don't think that's an unfair summation).
Anyway, I'm bursting with things to discuss and am starting to get a bit scatter shot. To recap:
-I take it you subscribe to an old Earth with God directing its progress?
-I take it that you reject evolution despite this Old Earth belief?
-How can evolution and the Garden of Eden story coexist in your thinking, if they do?
I understand I spouted a mouthful with my last post. I know you've got a lot on your mind with 3 kids. I am eager to have a conversation about this, but I understand your time restraints. Let me restart things with a simple question that we can maybe start an interesting conversation with: What do you think the Bible is?
Myself, I think it is the product of many authors. These authors lived in the middle east during the bronze age, and sometimes borrowed from stories that were in the local zeitgeist. The new testament authors lived a generation after Jesus lived (if he ever did) and recorded third hand accounts of what supposedly happened. Paul recorded fourth hand accounts.
As a way of sparking conversation, I ask you, what do you think the Bible is? Is it infallible? Is it literal? Is it allegory? How do you distinguish between the two if it contains both?
Hope all is well man,
Your friend,
Matt
Matt,
No need to start over. I have just not made the time to reply. I'm supposed to be doing online training for a development program at work, and in 5 months I have done... zero. Same story all over the place. Enough of that:
Yes, I do believe in a literal Garden of Eden. I believe in the fall of Man. I have spent pleny of time in the woods, and seen natural selection at work, but that does not believe that Man is here as he is as a result of evolutionary processes. Here's the fundamental issue: if you can believe in a sovereign God that can work whatever end He chooses even through the free will of Mankind... then any of these things are possible. If you believe in the inerrancy of scripture, as I do, then the possible becomes the certain when written.
Which brings us to the bible. The bible was certainly written by many hands. The key is that it is inspired by God. Therefore, original manuscripts are infallible. Progressive translation is NOT infallible, which can certainly cause difficulty. Many modern (post-1950) translations attempt to convey mood or meaning, rather than directly translate, to gain ease of expression in English. This is bound to cause error in interpretation, which is unfortunate. However, if you stick with a King James or American Standard version, you should be in good shape. True study (which I do too infrequently) requires verifying the full context of an expression, finding the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic word used, and cross-referencing it with other contexts to determine the best meaning for the word. One thing I hope to study more is the selection of the text of our bible from a large body of writing (the apocrypha is omitted, for instance), and what was deemed essential.
As for local stories influencing the bible, we all know that there are stories of great floods, for instance, in many cultures. But, if it actually happened wouldn't you expect exactly that? The human race is winnowed down to a single family, so that part of oral history is propogated throughout the world. At any rate, the story of the Old Testament is rife with disdain for Baal and Ashtaroth and Dagon... and one of the main purposes of the O.T. is to cause God's people to live apart from the world. Makes the contamination by local legend philosophy rather shaky.
Paul did not walk with Jesus, it is true. He also participated in martyring (a new verb?) Stephen, who was one of the first deacons of the church. As the Jewish leadership knew all about Jesus, and Paul was a contemporary of Jesus, I would still not call his writings fourth hand. The gospel books (excepting Luke, of course) were written by disciples. To say they were written a generation after Jesus death may be correct, but that is because he died in his early 30's, and some of his disciples lived to a greater age. There is no reason to doubt the authorship of the gospels, though.
God requires absolute truth and righteousness. He is forgiving, fortunately. Why his reveleation is incomplete (he'll never tell me directly when the Lions will win the Superbowl) cannot be explained, and our little minds would fail to grasp The Ultimate Answers, anyway. To put stories as allegory would only conflict the clearly stated events and truth of other sections, so why bother? The conclusion then is that it must be true. Unless time travel were invented, we cannot go back to verify biblical events, and even archaeologists will not be able to definitively prove or disprove things, at this point. This is why we have to have faith, one way or the other. Either we have faith that God has created, revealed, and left us free will, or we have faith that there is no God, we can handle it, and trust in our own mental capacity and sense of human brotherhood.
MATT, I AM HAVING TROUBLE POSTING ANY COMMENTS OVER 4,000 CHARACTERS TONIGHT. WILL TRY AGAIN SOON. SORRY.
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