Read: Question #2, p. 9-11, in Banned Questions about the Bible by Christian Piatt.
Scripture Passage: Genesis 2:4-25; 4:1-2, 17-26.
This is one of the first questions I remember asking my Sunday school teacher when I was in third or fourth grade. We read about the birth of Cain, Abel, and, later, Seth. Then, suddenly, spouses appear. Where did they come from? My teacher’s surprised look stuck with me more than her answer. I don't know if she didn't expect the question or had never considered it herself. I asked several other people and the best answer I recall was, “Maybe God created wives for them.” That’s not in the Bible, but it was probably better than some of the other possibilities.
Christian Piatt responded:
“Stories like these are challenging for those who take the Bible literally because they lead to some potentially creepy conclusions.” [p. 9]
Joshua Einsohn wrote:
“The Bible does not answer all the questions it raises. Rather than bending over backward to try to come up with a literal rationale, why not assume that these stories were meant to teach, instruct, and give comfort?” [p. 10]
Do you believe the story of Adam, Eve, and their children happened exactly as it is written in the Bible? If so, where do you think the spouses came from?
Some people say the story of Adam and Eve should be read as a parable about the beginning of life and not as a factual account. What do you think?
Does your faith depend on Adam and Eve being actual, physical human beings or on Noah’s flood covering the entire earth? Is every story in the Bible meant to be taken literally or could these accounts be parables?
How do you tell what passages in the Bible are parables and what are factual?
What other stories in the Bible do you find challenging to interpret literally? We may follow up with some of them here.
What questions come to your mind when you read the account of Adam and Eve or when you read the responses in Banned Questions…?
Please click on “Comments” below to share your thoughts and to read what others are saying. Come back often to continue the conversation!
This reminds me of the time I sat in on one of Brian's Sundays school classes, maybe 1st grade. They were covering the story of Adam and Eve and the fall from Grace. One of the kids popped up with, "so the snake really talked to them, like Harry Potter?" I had a hard time not laughing watching the poor teacher's discomfort! I thought to myself that this is why I could never teach Sunday school, I'd want to try to explain the concept of allegory! Can't the Bible be the word of God without being literal? The Bible is full of amazing messages to help guide our path and bring us closer to God. I'd rather focus on figuring out that message.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about your comment and how we might approach this story in a way children might understand the complexity behind the story, and then I came across this quote from Madeline L'Engle (who wrote "A Wrinkle in Time" a long time ago and a book called "The Story as Truth" a few years or so ago):
Delete“When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle
Allegory is a good way to think about this, and much of the Old Testament. For me, it helps to remember that the Bible's purpose is to teach us the nature of God and to tell the story of the relationship between God and humanity. In that light, what's important about the creation story isn't the particulars of HOW things happened (where our modern scientific minds naturally go), but WHAT happened: humans are tempted, disobey and sin.
DeleteI like the idea of "story as truth" and would like to explore that further. Nelson, do you have a copy of the book by Madeleine L'Engle?
DeleteYes, Judy, I have a copy of the book. I'll be glad to loan it out if you'd like to read it.
Delete1. It could be literal truth. It doesn't say that Adam & Eve and their progeny were the only people God created. Gen 2:7 says "God formed man from the dust of the ground" and Gen 2:19 says "... the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky." If God could form Adam & Eve plus animals and birds, why couldn't He form a few extra humans for their kids to marry? It wouldn't be the only place that the Bible left stuff out. Some people use the lineage in Gen 5 to argue that the Bible says the earth is only 6,000 years old although science tells us otherwise. One counterargument is that the Bible doesn't say that it's a complete lineage and even that "begat" or "begot" doesn't necessarily mean that they're the son or daughter of the previously cited individual, just that they're descended from them somewhere.
ReplyDelete2. One point of logic. In the book, Einsohn asserts that if the passage was meant to be taken literally, there would be explanations of how the fifth, sixth and seventh humans came along. I don't see why that would necessarily follow and Einsohn utterly fails to explain it.
3. That said, I find a more plausible explanation is that the story is more allegorical and is meant to explain how humans started to ancient people who had no conception of science. It is interesting that 2:7 uses the phrase "formed from the dust of the ground" and 2:19 uses the phrase "formed out of the ground"; could it be that it's sort of a shortcut for saying that God created a scientific process whereby all life on earth started from primordial ooze and then over millions of years evolved to humans and animals? Unfortunately, some of us humans are more towards the primordial ooze end of the spectrum.
4. In apologetics, the best explanation I've found is that some parts of the Bible are meant to be taken literally while others are allegory. Unfortunately, I can't recall how you're supposed to tell the difference. It could be sort of a slippery slope.
Dave
Is there an easy way to tell when a passage in the Bible is meant to be interpreted literally and when it should be read as an allegory or a parable or some other literary form? Some of the stories in the Bible make a lot more sense to me - and convey a lot more truth and meaning - if I don't take them literally. I've met folks would say that's against God or heretical. This might be a question to elevate to a separate post for discussion.
DeleteAs a scientist, I am comfortable believing that God set a process in motion that ultimately led to the life we see now and I don't consider evolution to be the antithesis of faith. But I also know some people who don't see it the way I do. In too many cases, this debate between creationism and evolution has done little more than to create an artificial barrier between religion and science and has probably contributed to driving more reasonable people away from God than bringing them to God.
Maybe the point is that we can get so wrapped up in trying to make the world fit the story that we miss the bigger picture of the world that is conveyed in the story. Jesus used parables that conveyed a lot more about how we can live in a relationship with God than any list of do-not-do-this rules could ever do. Maybe that's what the stories in the Old Testament are doing as well.
I was thinking this week about the snake as well. When did humans begin to fear snakes? Adam and especially Eve didn't seem to be scared of the snake. They were intrigued by him. I wonder if fear came into the world after the Fall?
ReplyDeleteI would love to hear more about the apologetics slant you mention in 4. Dave.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing for me on this question is that Estie asked me exactly this question while we were reading the Lego Bible (Yes, Lego animantion with caption bubbles) about two days before you posted the question. I tried to basically explain allegory to a 6 year old... and then I just went back to reading. Then a minute or two later, Avery says to me after reading that Noah was 800 years old, "Oh wow! Just like Yoda!"
I still need to get the Piatt book.
Randy
Randy
Obviously, God just built some more Lego people! You can also still find the Brick Testament online at http://thebrickbible.com/. One of the things I liked about the way Grace has done Bridges to Worship with the children (or at least how I recall it) is that they tell the story and get the children engaged by asking a lot of "I wonder what happens next..." questions. I'm not sure I know how to explain allegory to a 6 year old, but it's good to let them engage their imaginations in the story (even if you end up with a Star Wars mash up).
DeleteYep, I'm thinking that maybe this conversation needs a follow-up post asking about how to explain allegory to children (or others who don't see it).
First, many thanks to Nelson for setting up this site. What a wonderful way to explore faith questions together! My own take on the creation story is pretty much summed up by Jim, above, when he says: "the Bible's purpose is to teach us the nature of God and to tell the story of the relationship between God and humanity." On the "slippery slope" question, I think you can draw a line between Genesis 1-11, and Genesis 12. The first 11 chapters are not trying to describe real historical figures or events, but rather to address ancient questions about the origins of life, good and evil, and language. They echo other primordial narratives of the time, but with the crucial added ingredient of a monotheistic, fully engaged God -- which changes everything. So we don't really need to wrestle with questions of where the other wives came from -- or, for that matter, how all those animals really fit into the ark. Once we get to Abraham, we are dealing with something that is closer to a "history" but again, not in the modern sense of the word.
ReplyDeleteBut I am wrestling with a set of cascading theological questions that are raised by the story of the fall if you agree with Nelson (as I do) that evolution is not the antithesis of faith. (And maybe these are among the banned questions; I confess I have not read Piatt's book.) If Adam and Eve were not historical people but represent us all, or perhaps humanity as a whole at some point in the evolutionary trajectory when prehuman's became human, then how did the "fall" happen? And if the fall was not a unique historical event, but one that represents individual "falls" for each of us, then what do we do with the voluminous theological literature (beginning in the Bible itself) that connects suffering and (especially) death to the fall? If the evolutionary account is correct, we have to assume that suffering and death were around long before "adam and eve" or anyone or anything else was capable of a conscious act of sin. Adding to the problem, the Bible paints death as a bad thing associated with sin. In evolution, death is a creative force that drives progress in favor of the fittest -- which is to say, death is the scalpel God used to create humans. (Nelson, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think as a general rule short-lived species, like fruit flies, can evolve more quickly than long-lived ones.) I'll stop here, but would welcome wisdom from others.
I like the idea of death and evolution being the scalpel God used to create humans.
DeleteThe book has another question about the different creation stories and how to interpret them. This might be a good place to open that question (or part of it). Could the fall have been part of this evolutionary process? At some point humans began to develop an awareness that went beyond pure instinct for survival, acquiring the ability to learn, reason, and manipulate the world around them. We see these as good things because it enabled humans to grow as a species and to exert some dominance over the wild world around them. Maybe the fall came when humans also developed an awareness that what we've learned can be used both for the good of all (learning to hunt effectively would bring in more food to support more humans) or for bad (taking from others, eliminating competitors).
Or, maybe, the stories of the fall are humanity's way of trying to make sense of why all of us eventually die. I'm going to need a good night's sleep and an infusion of coffee in the morning before I decide whether I believe one or none of these possible explanations.
Growing up Roman Catholic, we were taught NEVER to question God or the Bible. This question is very interesting and I would like to believe that God created wives for Adam and Eve's children.
ReplyDeleteThis all reminds me of a question a fifth grader asked at Club 456 this week: How come God didn't create humans before the dinosaurs? Why couldn't he create the world as it is in modern times, why did we have to go through all that evolution?" I love how our 456ers ask us these deep questions!
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reason God created dinosaurs first was so we could have the movie “Jurassic Park”. I think that the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY displays man and dinosaurs on earth at the same time. Scary, huh?
DeleteHere's another question on Adam and Eve: Were they Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon?
ReplyDeleteI find this interesting first because I think a lot of folks (myself included) believe(d) that they were just like us today.
I also think it raises the question of the relationship between religious thought and scientific/academic thought. Are these mutually exclusive lines of thinking? Or are they/can they be mutually supporting?
I want to come back to the rest of the creation story in a future discussion. In particular, your questions on whether religious and scientific thought are mutually exclusive or supporting have been something that I, as both a follower of Jesus and a scientist, wrestle with. I'm still working on that post because there are a number of aspects (and maybe they're all screaming for their own forums).
DeleteIn the meantime, here's something I found interesting on reading Genesis as an adult: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/09/reading-genesis-lets-be-adult-about-this-shall-we/