Adam is Israel

(cont’d…)

The whole point of Israel—from Genesis 11:27 onward—is that BECAUSE Adam fell and all of mankind with him (Romans 5), God needed to enact a plan of salvation for the WORLD (Gen. 12:2-3).  He began this with Israel, whom he formed to be his covenant people who, through faithful obedience to the Law, would reveal the light of God’s nature and demands to the rest of the world (cf. Isa. 42:6; 51:4; 60:3).  As Israel promulgated the Law, they would reveal God’s righteous standard.  They would show off his protection of his people and the blessings given them upon the obedience of faith.  As such, the nations would be drawn to God through her.  And the Law’s sacrificial system would act as a type pointing to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. 

An additional reason Israel was formed and patterned after Adam is to show that if even God’s blessed covenant people failed to enact the salvation and righteousness for which they themselves were saved and created in the Exodus, then salvation is a hopeless work from man.  It must be alone a work of God, which is the message of the New Testament.

For all these reasons (and more, I’m sure), I find it very unlikely that Israel’s history predates that of the Adam story.

Paul Seely wrote: “As for the people living outside of Eden, I agree with Chaka 5744. I once read an account of a missionary to a pre-scietific tribe in Africa, who after listening to their origin stories, commented that they contradicted each other. The natives were amazed that anyone would care.”

It seems people care who are engaging ‘science and religion’ dialogue. To us, ‘logical inconsistencies’ matter.

E.g. if one accepts a polygenesis of human beings, i.e. different groups, different places & times in natural history, one *inevitably* sacrifices ‘unity of Humanity.’ It then becomes easy to posit ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ races of human beings & use words such as primitive, savage & civilised. Neo-evolutionary anthropologists have rejected this categorizing.

Likewise, to say that ‘African tribes’ are ‘pre-scientific’ is in one sense condescending. These people certainly have ‘knowledges’ that others do not possess. Does ‘more science’ = ‘better’?

Also, Paul, please correct me if I misunderstood what you meant in saying Pete takes a ‘rabbinical approach.’ Adam *is not* Israel in a historical meaning?

Hi, Andrew:

I think you raise an excellent point that Adam’s saga if it was a historic event should precede Israel and not the other way around.  If Adam was a “creation” only for the purpose of story telling then the Israel first Adam second chronology would work.  The exile from Egypt, however, precedes the eighth century BC.  Scholars debate but two dates are in the mix so to speak - 1440 BC and 1290 BC.  The Babylonian exile can be dated beginning at 597 BC.

Pete (6098, 6099), OK, I will back off a tad: I admit “there is clearly a pattern that Adam and Israel share”: (God’s man is given a geographical area to inhabit and a law; he breaks the law and is exiled.”). But is that pattern rooted in the context of Genesis? It looks to me like the pattern that exists between the six days of creation and the geological ages (just ignore the differences). But, I think exegeting Genesis on the basis of of these historical parallels is to distort Genesis. You say, ”The Israel parallels in the Adam story are strong.” Strong? Here is your opportunity to educate me: What essay(s) would you cite to support this idea?  Not essays which are themselves imaginative, but What is the hard evidence from the text that the final reviser was intending to speak to the Israelites about their pre-exilic sin and exile? Prove that the parallels with Israel are not being read into Gen 2 and 3 by subjective rabbinical-type imagination. I worry about replacing historical-grammatical interpretation with subjectivity

Paul (6217). Thanks for your comment. I think I understand what you are saying now. You are concerned that the Adam/Israel connection is not based on “hard evidence” but on subjective rabbinical-type imagination” and so is untenable. You see little difference between this type of subjectivity and reagin geological ages into the days of creation. The problem with this, though, is that you are not accounting for the Bible’s literary quality. No piece of literature does what you expect of the Bible in order to allow literary/theological allusion. No piece of literature announces “Here are my themes, here is where you can find them, and here is how you put them together.” Literature does not not work that way. Rather, learned, skilled readers discern thematic connections, present them as such, and let other learned readers ponder the possibilities. You are free, of course, not to be convinced, but it cannot be o the basis of their failing to be an objective evidential anchor of sorts that we can appeal to. To expect such a thing is to turn a blind eye to the very nature of Scripture, where thematic connections are precisely what is happening between books—indeed, between testaments. (cont)

(cont) The book of Revelation is unreadable apart from the author alluding to OT apocalyptic literature in order to foster a connection. he does not tell us what he is doing. He only expects us to be so immersed the literature to see them for ourselves. You cannot escape this in your interpretation of the flood. You show clearly that it does not work like modern science but ancient science. Absolutely. But, what is the story saying? Why is it there? What is the author drawing on to make his point? To fail to discern thematic connections between the flood and creation—or between the flood story in Genesis and Atrahasis—is to fault to read, even though the author does not tell us what those connections are directly. As soon as we say anything meaningful about a text that moves beyond its boundaries, we are inevitably in a world of “rabbinical imagination.”  I might add to that we can learn an awful lot from rabbis and other early interpreters about how the Bible works. Try it, it’s fun.

You mentioned “other scholars.” I’m working on a paper about this at the moment, and I’m having trouble finding sources that draw parallels between Israel and Adam. It seems strange, since the parallels are so obvious, but I’m having a tough time of it. References would be great.

First it was Sailhamer completely disregarding the context of Gen 1, and telling us the “earth” in Gen 1 is the land of Israel. They made him president of the Evangelical Theol. Society. Then it was Beale telling us no matter where you look, you will find the Temple. They made him also president of the ETS.  Now you are telling us Adam is Israel. You wouldn’t be bucking to become president of the ETS by any chance, would you?

Haha, Paul. I will look into the presidency thing, but I think I have a better chance of becoming the president of Russia or resident theologian in an OPC congregation.

Yeah, I think Sailhamer is wrong (but interesting). I think Beale overstates and misunderstands temple ideology to promote a fundamentalist bibliology.

Re: Adam/Israel, I assume you understand I am not making a simple equation. When I say “Adam is Israel” that is a shorthand way of saying that the postexilic compiler of the Pentateuch subsumed Israel’s traditional creation story (Gen 2ff) under a larger, universal picture painted in Gen 1. I am not making an equation, but saying (suggesting, actually) that Gen 2ff. has become an “Israel story” in postexilic ideology. In other words,  postexilic Israelites, in response to the national crisis, are reading their history into primordial time. This fits well with the only other reference to Adam in the OT after Gen 5, 1 Chron 1:1, where Adam is the first name in what is a postexilic genealogy of ISRAEL.

“Nod” (נוד) is an etymological etiology intended to explain the apparent peripatetic lifestyle of Cain and his descendants, the Kenites. The Kenites were metal workers and Nok is the oldest site of metal working in Africa.

In 1984, Nigerian philologist, Modupe Oduyoye noted that the Hebrew words for Nod נוד and Nok נוך are virtually identical. Apparently the opportunity to play on words was too great to resist and the author of Genesis used it to suggest that the Kenites were without land holdings, like their ancestor Cain.

Oduyoye saw a connection between Cain and the ancient metal working civilization of Nok in the Jos Plateau of Nigeria.(The Sons of the Gods and the Daughters of Men: An Afro-Asiatic Interpretation of Genesis 1-11, Orbis, 1984, p. 21.) I agree that Nod is Nok.  Cain and Seth married daughters of Chief Nok.  This is the older African layer of the text.  Abraham’s ancestors came from this part of Africa.

Peter Enns and Paul Seely,

I think Carol Hill has made some important points concerning the subject regarding Adam as Israel. Carol has published some articles on the ASA site outlining the Worldview approach and she followed those up with a presentation this past summer at Baylor University.

Here are some points she made.

• God’s first intervention into human history. The story of Adam & Eve is told from the worldview of the creation narratives of that day, but differs significantly because of the revelation of God to the line of Adam.
• Adam: First human to be given a “soul” (spirit) (Gen. 2:7).

• Sin dispensationally conferred on the human race through Adam (Rom. 5:12); similarly, grace conferred on human race through Christ (Rom. 5:15). Grace not biologically passed down because Christ is not the biological father of any of us; similarly, sin is not passed down biologically from Adam. Therefore, all humans (from Adam’s line or not from his line) fall under the dispensations of sin and grace.

(1) Historical: Adam and Eve were real historical people.

Here is a link to Carol’s Baylor presentation.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/meetings/baylor2009/Baylor_paperlinks.html

Hi Alice:

I’m not sure where “Nok” is but I know where Enoch was.  Enoch was situated at the same place where Erech was or right across the street.  Akkadian and Sumerian literature used unug and uruk interchangably.  If you locate Eridu in southern Mesopotamia and go north up the old irrigation canal across the Euphrates you will come to the city of Enoch, the city Cain built.  Look at the map on my web page:  www.historicalgenesis.com.

Peter, you mention at the end of your post that this perspective was “widely recognized” by many interpreters ancient and modern.  I just began reading Jacob Neusner’s book “Handbook of Rabbinic Theology” (2002).  He comprehensively shows how ancient Rabbinic thought follows this same Adam=Israel structure.  Just one quote from page 310—“In line with the Torah’s narrative, Israel represents the new Adam, God’s way of correcting what went wrong in the initial creation.  The Land of Israel stands for the new Eden…the story told from Joshua through Kings matches the story told in Genesis.”  He continues developing this structure for the next 200+ pages.  So the Rabbis have been there before us.

Hi Keith,

Interesting comment from Neusner.

Would you be willing to follow-up on the issue that Pete is raising about the ‘historicity’ or ‘non-historicity’ of Adam in Neusner’s text? Does ancient Rabbinic thought accept an historical Adam and Eve or not?

~
There are two different issues (at least) raised in this thread. 1) the parallels between Adam and Israel, 2) the challenge to historical Adam presented by evolutionary theory.

Dr. Enns said from the top: “Adam is the beginning of Israel, not humanity.”

This pov has been rejected by a majority of BioLogos readers in the three threads that have discussed it. However, as a structure or parallel, many people have expressed agreement with Pete’s postion (e.g. Chaka’s #5649).

James R. White’s critique of Peter Enns’ “Incarnational” model of inspiration at the link below…

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2010/03/james-r-white-critique-of-peter-enns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+puritanreformed+(Daniel’s+Place+-+(Reformata+et+semper+reformanda))&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

I read the original article and was struck with the supposed deductions that are drawn here. One must be careful to avoid taking “liberties” with scripture to the degree of proposing “some new thing.”
Granted, even the best hermeneutics still requires leaps of faith. However, where scripture is silent and vague…there are reasons for this.

Lastly, I found the article to be immensely thought provoking. Studying the Word of God via patterns of human behavior often leads to even greater mysteries. Clearly, if Adam represents Israel, where does that place Abraham who is the father of the faithful. A radical approach begins with Abram as he is “called out” to travel in a land he knew not. Hebrews 11, states that they didnt “obtain the promise but were sojourners and pilgrims”. This appears to break the pattern of an “entering in.”

Interesting.

TWJ - #6791 on March 13th 2010 wrote:  “James R. White’s critique of Peter Enns’ “Incarnational” model of inspiration ....”

Here’s more for consideration:

Inerrancy and Human Ignorance
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/inerrancy.html

Religious and Philosophical Reasons Why We Don’t Have Inerrant Copies

Note the word, “copies” When discussing Biblical inerrancy, it is important to remember that ONLY the original texts of the Bible are claimed to have been inerrant.

Great article. I have learned so much on this site. I am so thankful to those who conceived of it and implemented it. Thanks to Pete Enns and the rest who stretch our understanding and help us resolve the conflicts between the literalists and the realists. The truth is there, we just need to dig for it.

Peter,
What do you think of Meredith Kline’s view that Israel is Adam?  It’s sort of similar, but kind of the flip side of your view.  Instead of the story of Adam being used to explain Israel’s current condition, the whole covenant with Moses becomes a sort of re-enactment of the Adamic covenant of works to point people to their need of a savior.  This view seems pretty strongly inline with Paul’s understanding, and it encourages us to actually take the Bible as the true word of God.  It encourages us to conclude that God’s covenants and revelation are in fact supernatural, and not just the fallible musings of an ancient people.

And you wonder why WTS let you go?