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markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 3/25/2005 3:05 PM (GMT -6) |   | MephEternal said...
Hmmm...how much of a caricature do you think that it is? Remember, both Jesus AND Paul believed in a literal Adamic couple. This is REALLY obvious with Paul in Romans. Just saying that the story represents however many human beings were on the earth at the time will NOT square with Jesus and Paul's assertions.
Ok, I'm not sure this is a point I'm willing to concede to you, but I don't really want to argue it here.
mephi said...
Next, I've always thought Sanders' take on sin was nonsensical. He has always taken sin to be the ultimate irrationality...and that's how he comes up with that. (He mentioned that in "God Who Risks" and the "Universal Salvation" books). But hey, let's forget about how counterintuitive THAT idea actually is when tied to the idea of a "freely made decision". Let's go with it for a while. So God truly believed that, given the grand scope of his program filled with FREE BEINGS, that absolutely NO ONE would sin? That literally NO free being would screw up and deviate from God's perfect standards?? Hmmm... Ok, let's even give God that. So Satan and about 1/3 of the angels actually fall into this "incredible implausibility". So, after this, the infinitely intelligent God (who incidentally had to see this possibility coming before Creation was created) genuinely believes that it's still "incredibly implausible" that Satan and those angels could EVER dupe any human beings into sinning?? Do you see how silly this gets, man? Really.
OK well maybe incredibly implausible is a little strong, would it work better if I said that God though it plausible that creation would continue without sin? TBH I don't find Sander's argument as counterintuitive as you seem to, wasn't it you after all arguing for something of this sort in your universal salvation thread although in a different kind of context?
mephi said...
Finally, with respect to them having a LOT of help from God and not being exposed to Satan's full power. Heh. Surely, you've GOT to admit that the odds were not in Adam and Eve's favor. In the story, it doesn't look like the serpent had to do too much AT ALL to get the couple to sin. Just plant the idea in their heads. But hey, it you want to make it some titanic struggle where they resisted the serpent's wiles for decades, and God helped them every step of the way, then fine. Let's read all that in. The fact of the matter is that they STILL fell into sin and God would have seen this coming a mile away...if indeed God is infinitely intelligent.
I don't think that the genesis story gives the whole picture, only certain aspects of it, I'm not arguing for titanic struggle but deliberate and purposeful disobedience rather than easy slip
mephi said...
Tell you what, man. You believe whatever you want. I can't buy it.
Hey don't do this to me bro,  am I really being that unreasonable? I'm not saying you have to buy it, but I don't think it's so implausible that you have to write me off like that.
[quote]
I just don't see us seeing such glorified pictures of early human history as some of the Jewish, Moslem, and Christian views of Adam seem to hold. That's all.
No, you don't....but of course you're not going to! firstly I think the Christian views of early human history have often been far too glorified for their own good - just look what the creationists want us to believe...but also they're not the kind of issues that are really addressed by the anthropologists; from that kind of view you assume a kind of uniform development and don't look for the possibility of any specific supernatural intervention. Are our views to be so much influenced by secular attitudes that we rule out this kind of thing? | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/25/2005 5:30 PM (GMT -6) | |
Keith (previous): Further, Trees with fruit on them that give off spiritual decay or growth, or anything thing spiritual for that matter, are really hard to find these days...as in, I see no reason to believe that the author is trying to get us to believe there really was such a thing. Again, if there was, fine. But the account in Genesis, like much apocalyptic writing, isn't written to cause one to take to the literal (with, however, the exception as to how Scott as addressed the matter in his post above mine).
Jeff: The genitive can imply causation in a very lose sense - like the "abomination of the desolation." Not a problem for the natural idiomatic usage of language at all.
Keith: If the account is to be taken literally and historically, the events portrayed reflect a clear temptation that the fruit itself imparts knowledge and wisdom, that the fruit of the tree of life imparts eternal life. That’s the story and the the context of the events as they unfold. The serpent tempted, Adam and Eve ate, and the Lord proclaims that man has, indeed, become like God, one of Us, or the gods.
Keith (previous): It is the the purpose of the author—as evidenced I believe, by what looks to be a mostly non-literal account—in which we will find a much more bigger picture than the literal can paint in these passages.)
Jeff: It looks non-literal for the same reason the miracles of Christ and the apostles would look ridiculous to some unbelievers - because it's way beyond our own experience.
Keith: The miracles of Jesus may have looked ridiculous, though I can’t see why you would say that. I mean, what looks "ridiculous about someone getting healed (okay, maybe watching Lazarus come out with a bunch of wrappings and bandades on him looked a little silly)? There is no correlation between the miracles of Christ and the possible non-literal interpretation of Genesis. Further, that the miracles and events in Genesis are way beyond our experience doesn’t have a bearing upon the manner of approach toward an interpreation of the text. As I noted before, if you and I were people who believed in something completely different than Christianity, I hardly doubt that we would strongly lean toward a literal interpetation of Genesis.
Jeff: I've been waiting for the detailed explanation of how your hermeneutic generates that picture. When are you gonna give it up? Moreover, your view rules out other riches that could be true if it IS historical.
Keith: What is there to give? There are many scholars who hold the same suppositional approach to Genesis’s creation account as I do. What is it that I can give you to support what is, in my opinion, the obvious when we set aside our tradional presupposition? I don’t see where there’s even a need for a detailed hermeneutic—if one can even be given—in order to start with that presupposition. The account speaks for itself. I don’t know what else I can give you.
Keith (previous): Pre- or post-fall carnivory. Nature itself suggests many animals have always been carnivores.
Jeff: Really? How does nature suggest it?
Keith: How does nature not suggest that there has always been carnivory? Where do the fossil records and other concrete evidence show the contrary?
Keith (previous): This isn't to be taken lightly.
Jeff: You're right. For at least one of us is dead wrong.
Keith: No, not dead wrong. We’re just approaching the Creation account with differently. I don’t think one of us would be "dead wrong" unless we each held tremendous opposing theologies. The issue isn’t "was it literal or was it figurative?" The issue is, does it convey the inspired theological message God intented.
Keith (previous): ...the style of the Genesis account and what this style suggests—that the text is not, therefore, to be taken so literally
Jeff: WHOA!!! Where was the evidence for that conclusion?
Keith: I’ve already given you the plain and obvious: serpents don’t talk, trees don’t have fruit that give knowledge, etc. The account is littered with more than enough information to cause us to see, were we not the least bit believers in this account, that it just might be figurative or of a certain type of genre other than plain, historical narrative. Surrounding cultural writings of the Ancient Near East attest to this similar style of Genesis when addressing their creation accounts. (see my next post for some references I received from Scott some time ago).
Jeff: How can we determine if ANY of it is historical based on your view? Was Luke wrong in saying that Adam was the son of God? Couldn't that mean that Adam was directly created by God like an angel? And if so, why is it any harder to believe that God created Eve from Adam's side? And if so, the whole thing sounds non-literal to the modern mind. So where you gonna stand with respect to Luke? What was he saying? What was HIS intent?
Keith: Okay, first, what was Luke trying to do, Jeff? Prove that Adam really existed or that Jesus was truly who he said He was? Consider Matthew’s use of what he deems as OT prophecy: why does he quote Hosea 1 to support Jesus having come out of Egypt when there isn’t even the SLIGHTEST hint of this passage as being Messianic? Why does he refer to Isaiah 7 as fulfilling prophecy when the context of Isaiah 7 virtually lacks any substance for interpretting it as such? The guys (Luke, Matthew, etc.) were taking what they believed were the best ways to make a culturally-backed up presentation about who Jesus was. That the lineage might actually have been many more people, as some scholars believe, is irrelevant. The connect is the point. The connection subtantiates who Jesus is, not because he can be shown to be literally x amount of forefathers removed from Adam or otherwise, but because He is of the Jewish race, from the line of Shem…a son of man and of God. What vindicates who Jesus really is is His life, death and resurrection. What sets the context to makes this THEOLOGICALLY rich and meaningfull is his sonship with God and with Adam.
Next, There is no reason at all to not interpret Luke as a historian; however, that does not mean that every single word he writes is literal history. That’s not his point in everything he has to say. If he is working within the cultural framework of the day, which RELIGIOUSLY believes that Adam and Eve and the rest of scripture historically took place, then Luke will write accordingly; in a quasi-historical framework. Examine the Jewish thinking of Adam during and after the time of Christ (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=758&letter=A&search=adam, which Meph posted earlier, I believe), and you will see how the Adamic account is tremendously embellish in order to make what was already theologically rich even more rich and more culturally relevant and meaningful. The issue isn’t "Just the facts, Ma’am," but "What does this have to say about the character of our relationship before God?"
Finally, you asked, "How can we determine if ANY of it is historical based on your view?" Is it to hard to see the difference in genre, style and intent betweem the authors of Genesis and Luke? Luke is very clear about his intent; we are directly told that he had taken the best reliable references he had and was creating an account of Jesus’ ministry. That’s a far, far different cry of genre and style than what the author of Genesis is doing.
Let me now point a few things out to you, Jeff, from your previous posts that I hope will contribute to an understanding of how I am seeing your approach to the Creation account problematic and inconsistent.
Jeff: You just haven't provided any evidence that the author's intent was non-historical. Remember, I believe debate requires inductive rules. Private opinion is not what I'm concerned about here.
Keith: What inductive reasoning requires that the text be interpreted literally? Why in the world would anyone ever believe Genesis is literal and historical—happened just as it says it did—if they were not first taught by way of presupposition? What inductive reasoning do you have for your approach to an interpretation of Genesis that is any more authoritative or better than personal opinion (read: supposition)?
Neither Jesus nor Paul come right out and say, "Yup, it all happened as you heard it, by golly! It’s literal and it’s historical." Rather, what we at least see is both Paul and Jesus refer to its THEOLOGY and message as real, and thus the reason for the seemingly historical belief of the Adamic account, no less than we would refer to the message of the boy who cried wolf as real without demanding a historical account of the story. (No, I’m not equating the two styles or messages, but I think the point is clear.) Whether Paul, Jesus or the rest of the NT gang believed the accounts to be literal or not is not explicitely stated, and it doesn’t have to be stated; however, if they did believe all of it to be completely historical (and this is VERY important), they would have believed so FOR RELIGIOUS REASONS! That was the glue that held the account together, not the idea that Moses had given a factual account of the creation so that years later we might be able to scientifically verify it.
I think Scott has hit it right on the head when he talks of a quasi-literal understanding of the text. The Ancients’ understanding of the account would have been with little, if any, scientific thinking, but it would most definitely have been with tremendous religious conviction. You see this in their own writing and thinking. God has to work within the framework of any given culture, and if He doesn’t want to blow them out of the water with more confusion then understanding, He must work within that culture’s frame of thinking. It is no big deal, therefore, if the Jew in Jesus’ day held to the account as a real story. We would expected them to have done so.
To approach the text, however, with a literal, historical supposition is to have missed the way the Ancients would have approached it. That is so very important (see the material I reference in the next post). We all miss the boat—Christian, non-Christians and non-theists—if we have not first understood what this kind of style of writing was meant to convey and how it was to be understood. We see the same necessity of understanding apocalyptic genre in the few hundred years both before and after the appearance of Christ. The authors weren’t meaning to say, "Yes, I really, really, really had this vision. I did. It all happened just as I wrote." No, they were trying to SAY something to their people in a culturally relative (and accepted) way.
Jeff: But it is also possible that the Serpent (Dragon?) was merely the appearance of a cherubum - Satan!
Keith: Your evidence? This sounds like presupposition trying to keep from sinking more than an inductive reasoning having found solid ground!
Jeff: Taking Gen 1-11 at face value, I would assume that carnivory did not come into being until well after the Flood, and it may have taken millions of years and theistic evolution for it's development.
Keith: Note that after this part of your post, you then said, "I think the genealogies are the strongest evidence that they took it historically. And I can't imagine what would count as evidence that they took it otherwise." So, if it’s historical, particularly according to the lineages, evolution can’t have played a part in this. Yet this is the very evidence you give that could thwart a literal/historical interpretation!
Jeff: For all I know, mosquitoes evolved from some nicer flying insect. Can you prove otherwise?
Keith: Your evidence? See, you are already presupposed, Jeff, that there must be another answer to why mosquitos suck blood today. You have already concluded in YOUR presupposition (ain’t it grand that we can all have presups! What’s life without a presupp or two, you know!)…where was I? Oh, yes. You have already concluded by your presuppositions, not by sound hermeneutics or inductive reasoning, that mosiquitos are a breed from some ancient inspect that used to eat, or suck, veggies for dinner! Again, evolution can’t be true—theistic or not theistic—if the account is to be taken literally.
As I mentioned above, yy next post below has some good references Scott gave me some time back. The text for each reference in the post is 99% Scott's with little editing on my part. Definitely spend some time going over these references, Jeff. I think you’ll be sufficiently challenged.
Well, I hope I’ve given the conversation more food for thought…bloodsuckers and all!
For good conversation,
Starkman Post Edited (Starkman) : 3/26/2005 6:37:59 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/25/2005 5:32 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Here are some references with regard to my posts above. Scott Jorgenson shared these with us some time ago on another thread.
Starkman
Paul Seely: "The Geographical Meaning of 'Earth' and 'Seas'", http://www.occasioncameras.com/creationdays/pdf/earth.sea.seely.wtj.pdf
Paul Seely: "The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications",
http://www.occasioncameras.com/creationdays/pdf/seely.babel.wtj.2001.pdf
What I haven't been able to find online is Seely's "The Firmament and the Water Above", published in the WTJ in two parts. But I have electronic copies that I can forward to you upon request.
Seely also does have a shorter, earlier essay treating the same subject in much less detail ("The Three-Storied Universe"), and it is available online at the Web site of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA, a group of American scientists who are Christians) since it was published in their journal. Here is the URL: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1969/JASA3-69Seely.html
Note: A couple of rebuttals to Seely by inerrancy apologist "J. P. Holding" (a pseudonym apparently) are available at the Answers in Genesis Web site, but they are more effective in isolation than when read in the context of Seely's complete original papers and his subsequent response to Holding (of which I also have an electronic copy).
Let me note he also has a book by Seely, Inerrant Wisdom, which makes a biblical case against the doctrine of inerrancy - largely not built on the ANE material, however, and much more broadly-focused across the whole Bible rather than Genesis 1-11 (which he in fact rarely mentions directly). For Genesis in particular, I would stick to Seely's papers. For inerrancy in general, I would read his book (which, if not still available through distributors, is available from the publisher - that's where I got my copy).
Getting back to Genesis interpretation - my highest overall recommendation is Conrad Hyers' The Meaning of Creation (hopefully still in print). He covers both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 in light of the ANE historical-cultural context. You can also find a paper by Hyers, published in the ASA journal (Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith) and available online at the ASA Web site, which pretty well condenses the ideas presented in the first half of the book:
Conrad Hyers: "Dinosaur Religion: On Interpreting and Mis-interpreting the Creation Texts", http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1984/JASA9-84Hyers.html
Conrad Hyers: "The Rise and Fall of Creationism."
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1917
John Stek (at Wheaton and chairperson of the original NIV translation committee, if I'm not mistaken) provides an excellent chapter within the larger edited volume, Portraits of Creation. The chapter is entitled "What Says the scripture", and makes use of insights from the ANE historical-cultural context. The rest of the book deals with scientific matters from a Christian perspective, not biblical issues, but nonetheless I recommend the whole volume to you. Again, I hope it is still in print.
Meredith Kline is famous as a strong proponent of the framework hypothesis - seeing Genesis 1 as a literary framework organized topologically to emphasize the teaching point. Kline doesn't interact too much with insights from ANE culture, to my knowledge, but since the framework view is part of my understanding, I recommend him. He's published quite a bit on it; here are some articles by him available online:
Meredith Kline: "Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony",
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1996/PSCF3-96Kline.html
Meredith Kline: "Because It Had Not Rained",
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/WTJ/WTJ58Kline.html
Finally, Henri Blocher's book, In the Beginning, is a good, dense analysis of Genesis 1 through 3. Like Kline, Blocher doesn't really interact with ANE data, and is somewhat more conservative as well (assigning some historicity to Adam and Eve, for example).
I mentioned John Walton because apparently his recently-published Genesis commentary makes use of the ANE data (this according to what I've read). But I haven't looked at the commentary myself so can't personally vouch for it.
In addition to the above references, I can also recommend a couple of additional miscellaneous ones:
Robert Schneider (professor at Berea, an American Christian liberal arts university): "What the Bible Teaches about Creation", http://www.berea.edu/SpecialProject/scienceandfaith/essay01.asp - this essay is an excellent summary of all the above
Dennis Bratcher (Wesleyan scholar and minister): "The Fall - A Second Look", http://www.cresourcei.org/gen3.html - this essay skirts historicity and looks at what teaching points we can draw from the Genesis 2-3 narrative as story
Here are a couple of other good Westminster Theological Journal papers, this time by Mark Futato:
Mark Futato: "Because It Had Rained", http://www.thirdmill.org/files/english/theology/92974~9_27_99_7-13-34_PM~TH.Futato.Rained.1.pdf (part 1) and http://www.thirdmill.org/files/english/theology/79611~10_4_99_5-20-49_PM~TH.Futato.Rained.2.pdf (part 2)
These papers advance some particular arguments for ahistorical (or at least dischronological) interpretation of Genesis 1-3, and propose that the ANE civilization most in mind in those chapters is Canaanite rather than Babylonian or Egyptian (a slight scholarly difference with others - most scholars primarily see Babylon, not Canaan, in Genesis 1 and in fact that is a significant reason they date Genesis 1 late, to the period around the exile). My mind is that there is probably a layering of tradition there, as the texts and the traditions they were based upon were adapted and reapplied to the succession of ANE opponents facing the Hebrews (Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, Babylon).
Davis Young’s article in harmonizeing the different views of Genesis
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Bible-Science/CSR5-95Young.html
Denis Lamoureux, theistic evolutionist, biologist and theologian at the University of Alberta in Canada. You can find a good online article touching on this and many other things related to theistic evolution (which he calls "evolutionary creationism") at http://www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/3EvoCr.htm.
Keith Miller – "Perspectives on an Evolving Creation" Miller is a theistic evolutionist and evangelical Christian paleontologist Keith Miller. | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/26/2005 7:26 AM (GMT -6) | |
TGB said...Hey Starky- Keith Miller is a Catholic. Can a Catholic be an evangelical? Hmmm. I guess anything is possible now a days. Tom
Oh...um....Delete...where's the Delete key...."Erase Keith Miller...Must erase Keith Miller..." | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/26/2005 9:52 AM (GMT -6) | | Keith, I only have a few minutes to respond to a couple of points. Get back with you and Scott later as I have time!
Jeff (previously): Taking Gen 1-11 at face value, I would assume that carnivory did not come into being until well after the Flood, and it may have taken millions of years and theistic evolution for it's development.
Keith: Note that after this part of your post, you then said, "I think the genealogies are the strongest evidence that they took it historically. And I can't imagine what would count as evidence that they took it otherwise." So, if it’s historical, particularly according to the lineages, evolution can’t have played a part in this. Yet this is the very evidence you give that could thwart a literal/historical interpretation!
Jeff: First, I would think the genealogies have gaps in them since every other biblical genealogy does. Second, since many of the ancients thought the world and human existence was very old, I have no reason to assume that Moses thought otherwise if the genealogies were understood to have gaps. Thus, I, like Glenn Morton, assume lots of time may have occurred in the post-Flood period. Consequently, evolution could have occurred then - both theistic and non-theistic.
Jeff (previously): For all I know, mosquitoes evolved from some nicer flying insect. Can you prove otherwise?
Keith: Your evidence? See, you are already presupposed, Jeff, that there must be another answer to why mosquitos suck blood today. You have already concluded in YOUR presupposition (ain’t it grand that we can all have presups! What’s life without a presupp or two, you know!)…where was I? Oh, yes. You have already concluded by your presuppositions, not by sound hermeneutics or inductive reasoning, that mosiquitos are a breed from some ancient inspect that used to eat, or suck, veggies for dinner! Again, evolution can’t be true—theistic or not theistic—if the account is to be taken literally.
Jeff: The words "For all I know" indicate I'm not assuming one way or the other. I do BELIEVE one way. But that's different than presupposing or knowing. Where I require induction is in the exegesis of the text. My BELIEF of that inductively-exegeted interpretation is NOT induction. It is faith, pure and simple. If you require sufficient evidence for all your beliefs, what do you make of Christ's statement, "Blessed are those who believe and have not seen." Or Paul's, "We walk by faith, not by sight." Aren't these statements indicating that faith is a kind of trust in God's word that should exist without compelling evidence?
wjsPost Edited (jefscott) : 3/26/2005 8:56:42 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/28/2005 8:53 PM (GMT -6) | | Keith, I have a little time, so let me respond to a bit more of your last post:
Jeff (previously): How can we determine if ANY of it is historical based on your view? Was Luke wrong in saying that Adam was the son of God? Couldn't that mean that Adam was directly created by God like an angel? And if so, why is it any harder to believe that God created Eve from Adam's side? And if so, the whole thing sounds non-literal to the modern mind. So where you gonna stand with respect to Luke? What was he saying? What was HIS intent?
Keith: Okay, first, what was Luke trying to do, Jeff? Prove that Adam really existed or that Jesus was truly who he said He was?
Jeff: Does the fact that he wasn't trying to prove that Abraham really existed prove he wasn't suggesting that Abraham was a historical person? This argument proves too much.
Keith: Consider Matthew’s use of what he deems as OT prophecy: why does he quote Hosea 1 to support Jesus having come out of Egypt when there isn’t even the SLIGHTEST hint of this passage as being Messianic? Why does he refer to Isaiah 7 as fulfilling prophecy when the context of Isaiah 7 virtually lacks any substance for interpretting it as such? The guys (Luke, Matthew, etc.) were taking what they believed were the best ways to make a culturally-backed up presentation about who Jesus was.
Jeff: Paul says the scripture FORESAW that uncircumsized gentiles would be saved by faith. The fact that no one at the time knew that the scriptURE foresaw that application of that verse doesn't negate the fact that God DID foresee it.
Keith: That the lineage might actually have been many more people, as some scholars believe, is irrelevant. The connect is the point. The connection subtantiates who Jesus is, not because he can be shown to be literally x amount of forefathers removed from Adam or otherwise, but because He is of the Jewish race, from the line of Shem…a son of man and of God.
Jeff: How can I know that the connect to Shem is historical if the connect to Adam is NOT historical. It's the same genealogy.
Keith: What vindicates who Jesus really is is His life, death and resurrection.
Jeff: No doubt there. But THAT same Jesus spoke of "erring" with respect to the scripture - i.e., He believed there was a TRUE meaning and a myriad of FALSE meanings.
Keith: What sets the context to makes this THEOLOGICALLY rich and meaningfull is his sonship with God and with Adam.
Jeff: Not if Adam didn't exist to actually be a father.
Keith: If he is working within the cultural framework of the day, which RELIGIOUSLY believes that Adam and Eve and the rest of scripture historically took place, then Luke will write accordingly; in a quasi-historical framework.
Jeff: But how am I to know that the Jews of that day didn't believe in the historicity of Genesis for the same reason I do - because it SEEMS historical.
Keith: you will see how the Adamic account is tremendously embellish in order to make what was already theologically rich even more rich and more culturally relevant and meaningful.
Jeff: How do you know they tremendously embellished it? I can see how a normal inductive hermeneutic would lead to that conclusion, but if even the historicity of Genesis 1-11 is up for question, I can't imagine how you know what it "really" means.
Keith: The issue isn’t "Just the facts, Ma’am," but "What does this have to say about the character of our relationship before God?"
Jeff: How do you know that?
Keith: Is it to hard to see the difference in genre, style and intent betweem the authors of Genesis and Luke?
Jeff: Gen 1-3 is talking about the very beginning of the creation of God. The creation is a singularity - even in the big bang theory. That's why physicists have a hard time explaining it in terms of mundane physics. To say that the creation account should sound mundane just seems silly to me. It would HAVE to be different - just like the beginning of the NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH will be very different from what our everyday, mundane experience looks like. But that doesn't mean it will not be REAL HISTORY.
Keith: That’s a far, far different cry of genre and style than what the author of Genesis is doing.
Jeff: It can only be assumed non-historical IF you insist that the beginning of the creation MUST look like all things have continued the same since the beginning. But not even secular scientists believe that. They appeal to all kinds of bizarre and unique "events" to account for the universe.
Finally, I am NOT saying that you are wrong. To use your words, it JUST MIGHT end up being that way. I just don't see how you are using induction to arrive at your conclusion. In the article you referenced by Hyer, he says that Gen 1 is "CERTAINLY" relevant to modern society/culture. Now if he is willing to say that ALL creation myths are EQUALLY relevant to modern society, I'll go with it - though I don't know how that is true. Otherwise, he is revealing what I had wondered about to Scott - that this whole approach assumes that Gen. has to be salvaged and given some kind of relevant meaning (much like some of the "historical Jesus" crowd who deny His miracles but want to salvage a "relevant" Jesus).
But to approach a book uniquely is to abandon an inductive hermeneutic. Inductive hermeneutics applies to all literature - that's why it has a scientific quality to it. When people make special exceptions for a specific text, they're cheating - because they're not playing fair. They're basically saying that they will not allow their pet text to be non-relevant to modern society NO MATTER WHAT! It's a move of desperation, and many, like Thomas Huxley, see it for what it is.
wjsPost Edited (jefscott) : 3/28/2005 7:59:23 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/29/2005 1:43 PM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...Starkey, question. In your view, how does primal humanity relate to Satan's being the "god of this world." What do you think Paul's view may have been about this?
Hmm...
Well, with regard to primal humanity, I think neither the account of the Fall, which includes the presence of Satan, nor any other part of scripture teaches that Satan became the god of this world by getting Adam and Eve to sin. I think it is false theology to say that Adam and Eve "surrendered" something over to Satan or that God had to pay something to Satan for the return of the kingdom.
Further, it is not explicit that Satan was the god of this world prior to the Fall. All we are told was that he was on earth. We are also not explicitely told how much power he had, but we might infer from his rondezvous with Eve that he was not able to harm the human race, only influence it.
This said, and with what we do know about his activity as the god of this world, I think it can be reasoned that his "godness" of this world is meant to convey a title that is fitting for a being who is both outside of relationship with God and is in the company of others who share the same fate. He is god of this world because the world is fitting for his kind.
(Let me parathetically add here that I don't take stock in Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world to Jesus as saying anything about Satan "owning" either the world or its kingdoms. He owns nothing. There was not a contract, of which I am aware of, that proves the world was handed over to Satan at the Fall. Satan was only able to offer what he does have; the high place (because, apparently of his power) of his position in the world. Satan tried to make the kingdoms look, however, as if they were not what they are: decrepid and wasteful, outside of relationship with God. This, he figured, would be tempting to anyone, not just Jesus.)
As to Paul's view of the Adamic account, I think it is safe to say that Jewish thinking, as I am discovering it, was not tightly fit into a literal historical belief that it all happened exactly as it says it did. The Jews embellished and created color to the text to make their theology that much more richer. Paul never comes out and says, "Yes, it happened just as it is written," but we see him treating it as if he must have meant that. Why? Because the theology stands, which means, there must be some correlation with regard to the concept of mankind, having been made in the image of God, falling from his first perfected, or completed, position in relationship before God.
I think Paul, as a Jew, would have taken on the many nuances of Jewish thinking and theology, some of which would have been historically thought-out and other parts not so. If, prior to his salvation experience, Paul did not hold to a staunch literal claim on the Fall, did he come into revelation from God after he got saved, revealing to him that the Fall was literal, historical and exactly as Moses gave it? I don't think so. I think what Paul found was the reality that the account can be treated as if it were historical because the theology is literal and complete. Were we to sit down with Paul back then and ask him how it all happened, he might have said, "exactly, word for word, as you read it in the Torah." I'm really not sure. But even in his own day I wonder if "thinking" Jews were not obvious to some of the textual issues we find today that cause us to take a step back from "On my mother's black Bible, it happened exactly as it says it did." Would they have understood something about squaring the complexities and difficulties by giving the literal look a second look? Or would they have even it thought, because the theology was enough? Don't know for sure.
My take.
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? Post Edited (Starkman) : 3/29/2005 12:46:13 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 3/29/2005 2:35 PM (GMT -6) | | Stark:
Let me parathetically add here that I don't take stock in Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world to Jesus as saying anything about Satan "owning" either the world or its kingdoms. He owns nothing. There was not a contract, of which I am aware of, that proves the world was handed over to Satan at the Fall. Satan was only able to offer what he does have; the high place (because, apparently of his power) of his position in the world. Satan tried to make the kingdoms look, however, as if they were not what they are: decrepid and wasteful, outside of relationship with God. This, he figured, would be tempting to anyone, not just Jesus.
So, this "high place of his position in the world" linked to his power over the world that Satan had. That he tried to tempt Jesus with. Are you saying that he ALWAYS had this? If he didn't always have this, when did he acquire it? When God gave the command to "have dominion" to the Adamic couple, what was the theological truth behind this? Was humanity to have dominion UNDER Satan's overarching power over the world? OR did humanity lose this authority to rule TO Satan by the fall?
I'm trying to understand how this works out for you THEOLOGICALLY. How death came through Adam and all that. Very curious.
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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Starkman
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| Posted 3/29/2005 5:43 PM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
So, this "high place of his position in the world" linked to his power over the world that Satan had. That he tried to tempt Jesus with. Are you saying that he ALWAYS had this? If he didn't always have this, when did he acquire it? When God gave the command to "have dominion" to the Adamic couple, what was the theological truth behind this? Was humanity to have dominion UNDER Satan's overarching power over the world? OR did humanity lose this authority to rule TO Satan by the fall?
I'm trying to understand how this works out for you THEOLOGICALLY. How death came through Adam and all that. Very curious.
A lot of the answers here are found in understanding what it means when scripture says Satan is the god of this world. I'll first need to refine something I said in that post in order to not cause confusion in this post. Here's what I said:
Further, it is not explicit that Satan was the god of this world prior to the Fall. All we are told was that he was on earth.
As I stated earlier, Satan does not "own" this world, and there was no contract between him and God, of which we are aware, transfering anything over to Satan. Further, I hold that the kingdoms Satan offered Jesus were not Satan's in the first place, IF by "kingdoms" we mean countries and physical kindoms owned by Satan, as if he has the Deed of Trust on the world or something like that.
So what, then, does it mean for Satan to be the god of this world? It is, as I said in my last post, to be in a place of position: he in company with those also outside of relationship with God. And since he (Satan) is apparently the most powerful being of all in his company, he rules. All of this is precluded, however, where there is no realm to exert his power. As far as we can tell, that realm has been in place at least since the Adamic events. (For this conversation, I am speaking from the belief that Satan was cast out of heaven along with a horde of angels who followed him) As "Satan," then, where Satan is he and his "kingdom" are, even if he is in the presence of God. Satan's kingdom is fully represented. It matters not how many are in company with him. What constitutes Satan's kingdom is that he is outside of relationship with God and that there are others in company with him. This constitutes his realm, his kindoms, his sphere of existence and how his rein (and reign) is exercised. What Satan offered Jesus was the opportunity to have this reign, over all peoples, peoples that would worship him if Jesus would worship...Satan. Satan was not offering Jesus a title deed or tracs of land. He was offering him the chance to rule over souls, which most sinners seem to love to do. (That Satan does not literally own the world should cause us, then, to ask some questions: were Jesus to have worshiped Satan, do we really think Satan would have had to have given Jesus the rule? As a matter of fact, how could he give it to Jesus? There are, as we shall see, only two realms of rule, and only room for one ruler of each realm.)
God's command to Adam, however, was to rule over what was in right relationship with God, viz., the world. However, with Adam's departure from his proper relationship with God, he is ostracized and is found suitable for only one other realm, for other than God's realm and sphere of rule, there is only one other realm in existence: Satan's. Theologically, this is the heart of why Satan is in the Fall account: he represents the only other realm available for mankind to live in. Mankind thinks, just as Eve thought, that he can live in his own realm. Not so. That is why Christ is said to have destroyed the power of the Devil and to have loosed those who through fear of death were all their lifetimes subject to it. There are only two kingdoms, not three.
The Fall, then, must have some credibility as to its historicity. This is why Glen Morton, as I am told, has struggled hard and long to come up with a means to explain a literal "fall" in conjunction with evolutional evidence. For him, and many others, the any evolutional concept must eventually meet up in a serious encounter with some sort of fall. These two have got to meet somewhere down the line. But does this mean that I have to believe that the details (and very few of them at that) in Genesis are exact, down to the wire? I don't know that I'm expected to HAVE to believe that in order to appreciate the theology of the account and to hold to some sort of concept of a Fall so that the theology stays cohesive with and meaningful to man's fallen status.
Finally, no, Adam is not said to have rulership over Satan, at least not directly. But is it not indirect rulership over him, or rather, above him if Adam had stayed in right relationship with God and ruled as he was supposed to? Would not Satan's kingdom have been subjugated and powerless (not conquered, necessarily) to enforce its influence were Adam to have stayed "above" him, and not "below" with him? (This by the way is what it means to be "born from "above": to be in that realm where God is and no longer in the realm where Satan is (Col 1:13 - He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son). What could Satan have done if his power was neutralized? He would have been helpless, as far as the account leads us to believe.
I hope this adds to the conversation.
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us?Post Edited (Starkman) : 3/29/2005 4:48:15 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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scott_jorgenson
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Date Joined Dec 2002
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| Posted 3/29/2005 5:54 PM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
Question for Keith, Scott, or Meph: What does "quasi-historical" mean, and Can you give me an example of it? Jeff,
By "quasi-historical" I simply meant a narrative's being taken as historical (to some degree) by a community, at the same time the same community regards the same narrative as (to some degree) ahistorical (eg moral, allegorical, metaphorical, etc). Perhaps there is a better, or accepted scholarly, term for this - I don't know. Incidentally, "quasi-historical" is a term I invented while writing earlier in this thread, hoping it would convey something about the partly-historical, partly-ahistorical way in which legend is/was regarded by pre-modern communities. Perhaps I failed in my attempt to make it self-explanatory :-) but in any case I wouldn't go looking for usage of "quasi-historical" among others' writings.
As for an example, see the Arthurian legend. Here you have a legend arising out of a pre-modern community in perhaps the 5th century AD (pre-Saxon "barbarian" Britain) and perhaps based on certain historical events and characters - we don't know and can't tell, is the modern critical consensus. But the legend was accepted as history, in at least broad-brush sense, by later (still pre-critical) British historians of the first millenium AD, and by the Anglo-Saxon (and broader European) medieval community that followed (also largely pre-modern, despite the Greco-Roman critical influence hibernating in some of the monasteries). Despite this, the wide appeal and value of the legend among those communities was not based on its historicity but on the themes - teaching points, if I may - of golden age, duty, honor, and so forth that the legend contains. And because the value of the legend was not found in its historicity, that is why its actual narrative details had such fluidity, evolving over time to suit the teller and his audience. Thus is illustrated how a typical pre-modern community values legends primarily for their moral edification rather than their historicity: seeing some historicity in them, and yet not being so concerned with that historicity as to, for example, insist on critical validation of the legend's narrative, or suppress divergence and evolution of it.
Basically, I think this model fits Genesis well - with the exception of the point about continuous divergence and evolution in the narrative. (Arthur never reached a final canonical form - whereas evolution of the Genesis traditions seems to have ended at least by the final redaction in the middle of the first millenium BC, which is when other evidence suggests the Jews first started to regard their texts as authoritative Word of God and so became concerned about textual preservation and closure.)
The versions [of Arthur] that are most familiar...took shape in medieval Europe. One reason for their becoming popular was that they appealed to a wide variety of interests, in an age when there wasn't much in the way of imaginative fiction...One way or another, his legend embodies the dream of a golden age which is found in many societies and mythologies...
English kings during the Middle Ages definitely believed in Arthur. It was good for their morale and good for the Crown's mystique that they should be heirs of such a famous monarch. Practical politics were involved. Edward I claimed to rule Scotland on the ground that Arthur had ruled Scotland!...
As I said, his legend in its best known form was a medieval creation, and authors in those days didn't care about authenticity like a modern historical novelist. When they handled a traditional story they updated it, putting things in terms of their own time, irrespective of when it was supposed to have happened...
Best regards,
Scott
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
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| Posted 3/29/2005 7:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Scott, thanks for the info:
Scott said...
By "quasi-historical" I simply meant a narrative's being taken as historical (to some degree) by a community, at the same time the same community regards the same narrative as (to some degree) ahistorical (eg moral, allegorical, metaphorical, etc).
I assume you mean that some "parts" of the account are not historical whereas other "parts" are historical. But assuming, for the sake of argument, that all references in the NT to Gen. 1-11 are made to make points whose meaning is the same independent of their historicity, how do we infer gender egalitarianism from those verses which appeal to Gen. 1-3 to "teach" subjection of women, etc? Or that divorce is legitimate in certain cases given Christ's discussion of divorce around Gen 1-2?
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One Love
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| Posted 3/29/2005 9:05 PM (GMT -6) | | Starkman,
Intriguing indeed.
Ok. This is what I'm hearing...
Satan's only influence and "kingdom" is over the hearts and minds of other sentient beings. Insofar as Satan brings those beings (with all of their own spheres of influence) out of God's domain, they are BY DEFAULT, in his domain...because there are only two dominions of reign.
Thus far, I don't see Doc or anyone of that persuasion disagreeing with you very much as all. Let's keep going...
When the primal couple fell into Satan's "kingdom", they fell into a state where their hearts and mind were under Satan's influence. Effectively, the divinely sanctioned rule that they were supposed to enforce ceased to exist....as now, they were under Satan's power.
Again, I could see Doc going with this. And many other Christians. But let's get to something else. Paul.
Romans 5:12-21 NIV
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned– for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought
condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
See also 1 Corinthians 15.
It would seem to me that Paul believes that there is some UNIVERSAL PERIL that the primal couple placed all of humanity into...by their moving outside of a obedient relationship with God. And that peril deals with DEATH. Something that was PASSED ON, it seems, to all human decendents of the primal couple. And insofar as that universal peril involving death was USED by Satan (according to scripture, Satan had the POWER of death), ALL of humanity was definitively under the power of Satan in that respect. Which is why Paul makes such a big deal about Christ being the last Adam, who is a lifegiving spirit (1 Cor 15:45).
It seems very obvious to Paul that the reason WHY the whole earth was under thrall of the devil was BECAUSE of the primal couple's screw up. There's no doubt about it. And it would make sense, even with your perspective. Insofar as Satan can extend his lies into the hearts and minds of human beings and EMPOWER those lies via cultural establishment of those lies into beliefs and instituations like the decadent Roman culture...not to mention the whole "death" thing...the world WOULD belong to Satan in a true sense.
Now, according to you, if the primal couple had NEVER have sinned against God, then chances are that Satan would have remained relatively powerless OVER HUMAN BEINGS (even as Satan may have had power over other aspects of Creation). That's important.
Ok. Now let's take all this...and put it together.
You have the fall of a powerful sentient being, Satan, and other powerful sentient beings. Next,you have a primal couple of homo sapiens sapiens who are in some type of positive relationship with God, possessing the ability to be stewards over their sphere of influence in God's creation...as well as the IMPLICIT authority of being humanity's progenitors. They fall away from that positive relationship into the realm of Satan. In so doing, they effectively becomes "slaves" to Satan's lies and place themselves and ALL of their human descendents in grave LASTING peril by their decision. All this has worked itself out in history, such that it can truly be said that Satan is the "god of this world"
This is theologically represented in the Creation story, right? Cool. Great stuff!
Now we get to my problem...
YOu said:
The Fall, then, must have some credibility as to its historicity. This is why Glen Morton, as I am told, has struggled hard and long to come up with a means to explain a literal "fall" in conjunction with evolutional evidence. For him, and many others, the any evolutional concept must eventually meet up in a serious encounter with some sort of fall. These two have got to meet somewhere down the line.
But it's the very idea of THIS type of historical fall that gives me problems! It still essentially has the idea of ANCIENT human beings being pitted against the wiles of a VASTLY more powerful and intelligent being who actively works against God's purposes...and being EXPECTED to NOT fall into a negative relationship with God and exercise their rule. If we are assuming the infinitely intelligent God here, we'd be hard pressed to say that God couldn't see the tragedy coming a mile away. Basically the problem is still there. You have God wagering the the destiny of the entire human race (with respect to death and it's tyranny)...on two naked humans who probably spent time picking parasites off of one another while eking out some type of living. And SOME people want to say that God was SHOCKED because it was such a remote possibility that such a thing would occur...Satan actually fooling the primal couple!
This is what's ultimately getting me. This seems utterly ridiculous. Beyond the creating human beings from dust. Beyond creating the woman from the man's rib. Beyond the talking snake. Beyond the multiplication of pain during childbirth. Beyond the idea of the primal couple naming ALL the animals. Beyond the whole primal couple supposedly living over 900 years. I cannot fathom the infinitely intelligent God GENUINELY expecting a primal highly-developed hominid couple to triumph over Satan's (and his cohorts') deceiving wiles. This, I submit, passes the boundaries of what can be called reasonable. It might make sense if we believed that Adam and Eve were some super-special creatures like some early Jewish and Christian persons believed. But we don't believe that. (Do we???)
The more I talk about it, the more bizzare it seems to me.
I could deal a lot easier with the idea of a divine set-up. That God had all this planned out from the beginning. That human beings would fall into sin and that Christ would come as a human being and redeem humanity. The "good" creation would become "perfect" in Christ. Some form of upward fall or something. But actually, even THAT's stretching it a bit. I have a MUCH easier time just DENYING the whole "Adamic couple" thing and saying that the divine battle between God and Satan has been waged since nearly the beginning of Creation...and that human beings (however they emerged) just got caught up in the middle of that struggle. One doesn't have to say that death came as a universal peril upon all humanity AS A DIRECT RESULT of any primal human couple's "sin" against God.. They can say Paul was wrong about that. And insofar as Paul believed in a literal Adam and Eve story where "Adam was created BEFORE Eve"...well, he coulda been wrong about that, too.
But I guess that's just me.
Thanks, Starkman, for you ideas. REALLY cool!
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/30/2005 9:02 AM (GMT -6) | | Heh. I aim to please and amuse! 
(Adam naming the bud--bud-urrr-fu-fu--budderflyeeee) 
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
Post Edited (MephEternal) : 3/30/2005 8:08:05 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/30/2005 2:07 PM (GMT -6) | | jefscot,
Back atcha, dude...
Ok, where did we leave off?
Jeff: Does the fact that he wasn't trying to prove that Abraham really existed prove he wasn't suggesting that Abraham was a historical person? This argument proves too much.
Keith: No, obviously it doesn't. My contention is that Luke is not EXACT in his history; the geneologies, it is well agreed upon today, are insufficient. And if evolution is true, and millions of years have transpired from the Adamic account, then Luke's geneology need not, and indeed cannot, reflect historicity. How would he possibly be able to make the leaps and bounds in his geneology to substantiate a bonified historical lineage to Adam? At best, Luke would have had passed -down story/mythos information. The answer is that he wasn't trying to make a case for the historicity of Adam and Eve. This doesn't "prove" that Adam and Eve weren't real, it simply means that I don't think Luke was the least bit interested in trying to prove that they were. It wasn't his purpose to link Jesus to the primal couple for the sake of proving...what? That Jesus really was a human? No. But to prove the theology that was promised both to and through the couple. Luke's lineage substantiates who Jesus is and what He did, not who Adam and Eve are.
Keith (previous): Consider Matthew’s use of what he deems as OT prophecy: why does he quote Hosea 1 to support Jesus having come out of Egypt when there isn’t even the SLIGHTEST hint of this passage as being Messianic? Why does he refer to Isaiah 7 as fulfilling prophecy when the context of Isaiah 7 virtually lacks any substance for interpretting it as such? The guys (Luke, Matthew, etc.) were taking what they believed were the best ways to make a culturally-backed up presentation about who Jesus was.
Jeff: Paul says the scripture FORESAW that uncircumsized gentiles would be saved by faith. The fact that no one at the time knew that the scriptURE foresaw that application of that verse doesn't negate the fact that God DID foresee it.
Starkman: Okay...you lost me here. My point in using the above examples of Matthew's use of OT prophecy and applying it to Jesus was to show that these guys had an agenda; the dynamism of the Spirit's work in uttering scripture allowed for writers to make Messianic passages out of what would have been otherwise considered non-Messianic. Literally, they took what was hardly applicable as Messianic when it was originally given and made it Messianic for their purposes. That's not wrong, it's not cheating, and it's perfectly fitting that the Spirit would inspire them to do this. They saw the "bigger picture" of what Hosea, for instance, was really all about and used that to carry it to its ultimate conclusion in Jesus.
Jeff: How can I know that the connect to Shem is historical if the connect to Adam is NOT historical. It's the same genealogy.
Starkman: First, why does Shem HAVE to be historical? I'm not saying he's not, mind you. I'm just asking to know why it's important to you. Second, as I mentioned above, how in the world is anyone going to hold to a literal connection to Shem if we have millions of years of evolution in between Shem and Jesus? Where's the evidence to substantiate the lineage?
Jeff: But THAT same Jesus spoke of "erring" with respect to the scripture - i.e., He believed there was a TRUE meaning and a myriad of FALSE meanings.
Starkman: I've never conteded that the meaning (the theology) is in question. I'm only contesting (or rather, questioning) our need to hold to a literal view of the accounts that contribute the theology. Let me note, too, that Jesus did not say that there was only one meaning to every scripture. What he did affirm was that there are erroneous ways of interpreting scripture. There may be several true meanings to the scriptures. The folks Jesus was talking to didn't hit upon any of them.
Keith (previous): What sets the context to makes this THEOLOGICALLY rich and meaningfull is his sonship with God and with Adam.
Jeff: Not if Adam didn't exist to actually be a father.
Starkman: So, you're saying that there could be no theological value to the account if Adam wasn't real? Again, Jeff, the theology isn't dependent upon historical veracity. It's depended upon the meaning that can be extracted from the account. Same thing applies when we tells stories that aren't true and we say, "The moral of the story is..." There is no logical or deductive reasoning for concluding this. I don't think you live this consistently with truths from all other literature. I think it is only because we feel that the Bible simply cannot be God's word or trustworthy if it isn't all fact. But that's to impose upon it something I see no reasoning to impose on it. I mean, where did God ever say that this is how he delt with all the writers: giving them only the facts? That He didn't say this doesn't mean we could not still conclude that the Bible is 100% factual, but there's way too many reasons not to. And that shouldn't bother us.
Keith (previous): If he is working within the cultural framework of the day, which RELIGIOUSLY believes that Adam and Eve and the rest of scripture historically took place, then Luke will write accordingly; in a quasi-historical framework.
Jeff: But how am I to know that the Jews of that day didn't believe in the historicity of Genesis for the same reason I do - because it SEEMS historical.
Starkman: What if they did? What if they didn't? The theology...the theology...doesn't change. Regardless! That is what I think is critical. What if, though, the Jews believed 100% in a literal Adam and Eve? Does that mean they are right? One needs to study second-temple Judaism, I think, to get an idea where the Jews were coming from in Jesus' day. I think we will find that it is not cut-and-dry as thought. NT Wright writes about this. Good stuff he does.
Keith: (previous) you will see how the Adamic account is tremendously embellish in order to make what was already theologically rich even more rich and more culturally relevant and meaningful.
Jeff: How do you know they tremendously embellished it? I can see how a normal inductive hermeneutic would lead to that conclusion, but if even the historicity of Genesis 1-11 is up for question, I can't imagine how you know what it "really" means.
Starkman: Okay, here's a link Meph gave some time back in this thread:
This is only one example of the various flavors of embellisment you will find in Jewish and Hebraic theology. Others, I'm sure, can contribute more about this that I can. Once again, some good scholarly works are out there that bring this out.
Keith (previous): The issue isn’t "Just the facts, Ma’am," but "What does this have to say about the character of our relationship before God?"
Jeff: How do you know that?
Starkman: A presupposition that scripture is not interested in facts but in relationship. It isn't that it doesn't contain facts, but those are only vehicles to get to the relationship. Again, consider how Matthew uses the OT to shape a concept of who Jesus is. This would be HIGHLY unacceptable in our modern way of biographical writing. Further, apocalyptic writings were notorious for using pseudonyms, namely those of respected prophets and cultural personalities of old. The message was in the symbolism. We hardly see that today in our style of writing. Finally, the movement of the OT testament is fluid when one steps back and sees that its inspiration is to convey something about the character of God, his desire for relationship with us and how He has brought that to pass, and not the facts behind it all.
Keith: Is it to hard to see the difference in genre, style and intent betweem the authors of Genesis and Luke?
Jeff: Gen 1-3 is talking about the very beginning of the creation of God. The creation is a singularity - even in the big bang theory. That's why physicists have a hard time explaining it in terms of mundane physics. To say that the creation account should sound mundane just seems silly to me. It would HAVE to be different - just like the beginning of the NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH will be very different from what our everyday, mundane experience looks like. But that doesn't mean it will not be REAL HISTORY.
Starkman: Do you believe that EVERY detail given in the book of Revelation about the New Heaven will be EXACTLY as it is given? Are the last chapters of Isaiah absolutely literal? Don't you not make room for the author trying to convey something theologically in the use of a certain style or manner of writing as is clearly obvious in some books, like the Psalms? I cannot help but think that were we to sit back and watch the creation and Fall take place, it juuuuust might not have been EXACTLY as it is described in Genesis.
Jeff: It can only be assumed non-historical IF you insist that the beginning of the creation MUST look like all things have continued the same since the beginning. But not even secular scientists believe that. They appeal to all kinds of bizarre and unique "events" to account for the universe.
Finally, I am NOT saying that you are wrong. To use your words, it JUST MIGHT end up being that way. I just don't see how you are using induction to arrive at your conclusion.
Starkman: I think I asked this before, Jeff, but I'm not sure: what process of induction leads you to believe that serpents talked, that trees have fruit on them that imparts knowledge, etc.? If you were not a Christian and just picked up the Bible to read it, would you induce a literal interpretation of the creation account and Fall?
Jeff: In the article you referenced by Hyer, he says that Gen 1 is "CERTAINLY" relevant to modern society/culture. Now if he is willing to say that ALL creation myths are EQUALLY relevant to modern society, I'll go with it - though I don't know how that is true. Otherwise, he is revealing what I had wondered about to Scott - that this whole approach assumes that Gen. has to be salvaged and given some kind of relevant meaning (much like some of the "historical Jesus" crowd who deny His miracles but want to salvage a "relevant" Jesus).
Starkman: First, there is quite a big difference between the genres of Genesis and, say, Luke or Matthew. As I noted, Luke was very careful to tell his reader that what was being told was, as best as he could say, very reliable and true. BUT...this does not take into account that STYLE back then allowed for certain...what we'd call aberations or derailments according to our way of writing today. Luke isn't really a good example for this just because of his qualifier. Take John, though. Do we really think that the world could not contain all the books that could have been written about all that Jesus said and done (Jn 21:25)? Obvious hyperbole. To take that as a fact would be...well, crazy! Further, John re-arranges the order of materials presented so as to make his theological point. No harm done because that's how they wrote may biographies back then. (Study any good commentary on John and this is explained well). Biographies back then were not written to document fact as much as they were to document movement. We see this as creating contradiction and then we do everything in our power to straighten it out. That misses the theological purpose of the order in the first place.
Jeff: But to approach a book uniquely is to abandon an inductive hermeneutic.
Starkman: I can't see that the kind of approach toward understanding the creation account and Fall that I am talking about is unique. Induction tells me that the account is probably not literal, at least not all of it. I have every reason to believe that when I consider the cultural mileu of the time it was written (this kind of genre was common back then) and the fact that serpents don't talk, trees don't bear fruit that does this, that and the other...as I've said. What non-Christian (completely unfamiliar with Christianity or Genesis) would ever pick up Genesis as literature and induce it all as having happened exactly as it describes. I contend that quite the opposite is attributed to the account: anything but fact.
Here's the rub, Jeff. Here's where I'm coming from. I have learned just enough to know that things, like physics, creation, this, that and the other are not tightly fit and wrapped as we sure wish they were. I know that there are some very good arguments for evolution. I also know that there is some serious reasons to take an old-earth theory very seriously. I know, too, that ancient cultures neither thought nor wrote as we do today, as hard as that is to imagine. Further, ancient religious expression was much different than ours is today (what the hek will "modern" mean in another hundred years?!) And finally, I have come to believe that God's word is much more interested in the theology it passes to us than all the information used to carry the theology. This means simply that there are things in scripture of which I will probably never know as to their historicity. This bothered me greatly for years. I wanted to be able to be rock-solid in the belief that it all happened just as it says.
Anyway, my point, Jeff, is that I now realize—and I do give a lot of credit to Scott for being the one to get me started in the direction I'm now going—that I was fighting a not-the-issue battle. The issue isn't is everything in scripture factual; rather, the issues is, because I already presuppose the Bible to be inspired of God, I could care less if many biblical events are factual or not (oh, mind you, there are those events that must be historical, obviously, like the resurrection of Christ). What I realized was that I must first make peace with the idea that God is bigger than Form Criticism, Formalism, Historical Criticism or any other "ism." I must first decide that if God is God, then He really has inspired the scriptures. He will survive the onslaughts. When I finally came to this conclusion, I had only two other issues to resolve: the issue of what it means for scripture to be "inspired" and what exactly is it that is inspired.
I settled these by going back to what I think is the heart and soul of scripture: a living, vivacious and dynamic means God has given us to arrive at a theological understanding of relationship between Him and us. This is big, broad and vast. It means that I can hold to the integrity of scripture as divinely overseen by God, but not be tangled up in trying to figure out how this is so. It also means I can recognize the theology as coming from God, rich for establishing relationships between God and us without worrying so much about how the vehicle (the accounts of the texts themselves). I'm not discounting the need for any of those "isms." I just think that abuse on any side of them happens when we forget that we either presuppositionally (on good reasons to do so) except the scriptures as inspired or we do not. All analysis and hermeneutical praxis either takes this into consideration or it doesn't. When it doesn't, we are left with watered-down information that becomes usless and, often times, destructive. Obversely, when these disciplines are conducted with our pressuposition, rich rewards are found. (John Goldingay's "Models for Interpetation of scripture" brings this to the forefront.)
How is it that if Genesis is not 100% historical the basic theology, which is so plainly clear (okay, at least to me), cannot be true? We don't force that induction on every other story we tell. We accept the telling of the story to suffice. But somehow conservative Christians, because of the modern era of years ago, have felt the need to equat truth with facts. We testify, however, in our daily lives that this is not nearly always the case. How many fairy tales, Aesop fables, an "moral of the story" accounts do we pass on to our children without the slightest bit of concern about the historicity; only the truth they convey.
Some truth is, by all means, based on facts, but it's mostly the stuff that doesn't HAVE to be 100% historical that I'm talking about...like obtaining a real and true theology from the creation and fall accounts. It simply won't make a diddly squat of a difference if it didn't happen exactly as we have it. It would, however, make all the difference in the world if Jesus did not rise bodily from the grave. We must be able, then, to first make distinctions between what is and is not essential with regard to historical veracity, and then, more importantly, we must strive to obtain the clearest and most true-to-the-meaning theology possible.
Well, I gotta go eat!
For the conversation,
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 3/30/2005 2:32 PM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
...
I assume you mean that some "parts" of the account are not historical whereas other "parts" are historical. But assuming, for the sake of argument, that all references in the NT to Gen. 1-11 are made to make points whose meaning is the same independent of their historicity, how do we infer gender egalitarianism from those verses which appeal to Gen. 1-3 to "teach" subjection of women, etc? Or that divorce is legitimate in certain cases given Christ's discussion of divorce around Gen 1-2?
Regarding your first sentence above: Calling something quasi-historical (ie legendary - I think that is probably the best term) means that the community in which the narrative circulates considers at least some part of the narrative to be historically factual, but, beyond that, considers the real value of the narrative to be moral, theological, pedagogical or etc. In other words, it means they incidentally thought that at least some parts of it were historical, but they cared far more about what it meant to them beyond that.
Notice this has nothing to say about how many "parts" of the account, as you put it, really are historically grounded and how many are not. Identifying a narrative to be legendary or mythical (ie quasi-historical, to use my poor attempt at a self-explanatory term) says much more about how it is viewed and functions within the community, than it says about how much of it is factual. For example, the origins account promoted by scientism as popularized by Carl Sagan and others - you know, "intelligent life emerging from the Big Bang at long last to contemplate the majesty and mystery of the cosmos" - functions among the adherents of scientism as modern-day myth or legend - despite the fact it is indeed historically factual (at least, according to professional consensus as best as can be judged today). So with Arthur and Genesis we have legends with little verified historicity to them, while with Cosmos we have a myth with much verified historicity to it, yet in all these cases we have myth/legend because of how the community regards it.
Now, we can't press this comparison too far. Arthur and Genesis come from pre-critical, pre-modern societies - which the anthropological evidence shows uniformly provide a natural home for myth/legend, evidently because they know so little of formal critical method and thus care so little about its fruits. Cosmos comes from a critical modern community, which is steeped in critical rationalism and skepticism and thus cares a great deal about the historicity of its myths. A colorful and memorable (but ahistorical) myth would not be the best medium through which to reach such a community, even though that same myth might be an excellent vehicle for reaching a pre-modern community (think of Paul becoming all things to all men). So the analogy only goes so far - but it does illustrate how the definition of legend, myth, or quasi-historical narrative - whichever term you like - is more one of function in the community rather than measure of factuality.
As to the remainder of your comment: no comment. Except to observe that the fact that most modern evangelicals do, indeed, find more place for women than the letter to Timothy, based on Genesis 2-3, would allow; and as well they find more allowance for divorce than Jesus would allow, also based on Genesis. And I don't disagree with them. What this goes to show us is that many of those who profess hard inerrancy - a Bible that is always utterly plain, perspicuous, accurate, and consistent in everything it touches upon (as if everything Paul wrote jibed with everything Moses wrote) - by their own ethics show the instability of that hard line. Indeed, such ethics are only defensible as Christian, in my opinion, by appealing to the kind of progressive and dawning awareness that happens as evolving communities integrate across the whole of scripture and subordinate any dissonant elements (whether within the text of scripture or their society) to the kind of love demonstrated by Jesus. I remember reading that you have Craig Hill's book, In God's Time - I'm talking about what he calls the "but in Christ" experience (see his first chapter). It is that experience, rather than prooftexting from individual scriptures, which allows us as Christians to abolish slavery, support individual freedoms, elevate the status of women, children, and minorities, permit divorce under a number of circumstances, and adopt and actualize any number of other ethical positions that lack clear positive direction from the Bible, or even contravene certain biblical directives. And I support that approach, but it sure isn't consistent with a hardline view of biblical inerrancy, which is another reason (besides the evidential reasons) I reject that view.
Best regards,
Scott
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/30/2005 2:33 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey Meph,
Just a few things...
It might be, according to the Genesis account, that there really wasn't that much of a difficulty to thwart off Satan's attack as we might think. Apparently, all that was requred, according to the text, was that man believe God and not anyone or anything else. Eat, you die. Don't eat, you live. It would seem that mankind had every reason for believing God and that this should have been a no-brainer, and thus an easy stay-in-the-victory.
What makes it difficult to depart completely from the idea that somehow man is responsible for the Fall and in some reasonably similar capacity as given in the account of the Fall is JUST BECAUSE the theology of the Genesis account and (to include) Paul works from this premise. Paul's whole point was that there was a transgression on behalf of mankind. I wouldn't be too bothered if it wasn't via a literal Adam and Eve, but I would be concerned if there were no concept of man, made in the image of God, having transgressed in some form or another. If this cannot be found in our history, it seems to me that the theology given in both Genesis and Paul in Romans 5 would be highly suspect, if not dubious. But...Paul, in Romans 5, holds to man's Fall not in declaration of a victory in Satan's favor, but in a defeat on man's behalf. As if man could have (perhaps rather easily) avoided this. Any man, whether it is the first or one many after the first.
Either way, I say that the first person we meet in heaven named Adam, we just haul off and smack the *&#$ out of him! He should have known to change his name!
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/30/2005 3:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Starkman:
It might be, according to the Genesis account, that there really wasn't that much of a difficulty to thwart off Satan's attack as we might think. Apparently, all that was requred, according to the text, was that man believe God and not anyone or anything else. Eat, you die. Don't eat, you live. It would seem that mankind had every reason for believing God and that this should have been a no-brainer, and thus an easy stay-in-the-victory.
Hmmm...I'm sure you've seen the state of early homo sapiens sapiens. If you are saying that "all" these beings had to do AT BASE was have UNSWERVING faith in some form of divine revelation given by God to them, then things REALLY don't make sense. Surely, God looked at the beings JUST PREVIOUS to the advent of homo sapiens sapiens and saw how they lived. Did God REALLY expect for these beings to be able to keep SINGLE-MINDED focus on divine claims...in NO WAY deviating from them? That's retaining MORAL PERFECTION, man. That's a tall order to ask from some primatives. Remember it was from ONE ACT OF SIN (says Paul) that ALL HUMANITY was plunged into the realm of Satan's influence...culminating in death. This is NO small matter.
Are you trying to say that God made some type of ideal place for the primal couple to live such that they would NOT have any reason to question divine revelations? Some REAL Garden of Eden? Are you believing in the Tree of Life too? Even SO, we are still dealing with a being diabolical in every sense of the word who was a very powerful messenger of God at one time. Seems problematic to me, yo.
If I just HAD to believe in the historicity of the fall, I'd have to think it was a big set-up. Otherwise, I'd rather just not believe in it.
********************************
Starkman:
What makes it difficult to depart completely from the idea that somehow man is responsible for the Fall and in some reasonably similar capacity as given in the account of the Fall is JUST BECAUSE the theology of the Genesis account and (to include) Paul works from this premise. Paul's whole point was that there was a transgression on behalf of mankind. I wouldn't be too bothered if it wasn't via a literal Adam and Eve, but I would be concerned if there were no concept of man, made in the image of God, having transgressed in some form or another. If this cannot be found in our history, it seems to me that the theology given in both Genesis and Paul in Romans 5 would be highly suspect, if not dubious. But...Paul, in Romans 5, holds to man's Fall not in declaration of a victory in Satan's favor, but in a defeat on man's behalf. As if man could have (perhaps rather easily) avoided this. Any man, whether it is the first or one many after the first.
I hear ya. I do see the problem clearly. If there was no HISTORICAL fall that precipitated UNIVERSAL PERIL involving "death" for all human descendents of the primal couple, then Paul was dead wrong on that point. But the question is: How much taffy are we gonna pull to make that work? Even NT Wright says that it's slightly hard to conceptualize what this "sin" MIGHT have been...though he assumes it to be true because of Paul's assertion. I'm a little more skeptical than that.
Again, as far as I could go would be to say "intentional set-up" kinda Job-style. That's IF I had to try to salvage some type of biblical inerrancy view...but since I don't have to do that...
*****************************
Starkman:
Either way, I say that the first person we meet in heaven named Adam, we just haul off and smack the *&#$ out of him! He should have known to change his name!
Actually, I'd probably go the Joseph route. "What you screwed up doing bad, God meant for good"...or something like that...
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/30/2005 3:23 PM (GMT -6) | | Scott:(emphases mine)
As to the remainder of your comment: no comment. Except to observe that the fact that most modern evangelicals do, indeed, find more place for women than the letter to Timothy, based on Genesis 2-3, would allow; and as well they find more allowance for divorce than Jesus would allow, also based on Genesis. And I don't disagree with them. What this goes to show us is that many of those who profess hard inerrancy - a Bible that is always utterly plain, perspicuous, accurate, and consistent in everything it touches upon (as if everything Paul wrote jibed with everything Moses wrote) - by their own ethics show the instability of that hard line. Indeed, such ethics are only defensible as Christian, in my opinion, by appealing to the kind of progressive and dawning awareness that happens as evolving communities integrate across the whole of scripture and subordinate any dissonant elements (whether within the text of scripture or their society) to the kind of love demonstrated by Jesus. I remember reading that you have Craig Hill's book, In God's Time - I'm talking about what he calls the "but in Christ" experience (see his first chapter). It is that experience, rather than prooftexting from individual scriptures, which allows us as Christians to abolish slavery, support individual freedoms, elevate the status of women, children, and minorities, permit divorce under a number of circumstances, and adopt and actualize any number of other ethical positions that lack clear positive direction from the Bible, or even contravene certain biblical directives. And I support that approach, but it sure isn't consistent with a hardline view of biblical inerrancy, which is another reason (besides the evidential reasons) I reject that view.
Not to be kissin' up or nuthin'...but VERY, VERY well said! 
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 3/30/2005 3:34 PM (GMT -6) | | OK, the issue about the fall seems to be this;
Mephi thinks the dice were clearly loaded in Satan's favour.
Now, there seem to be a number of factors involved here;
The power given to Satan
The intelligence of the humans
The degree to which God was active
there are a number of ways it seems you can paint a word picture of the situation; from my point of view I don't see why you can't picutre it as a stable situation with the world in harmony with God which required a deliberate, decisive act of rebellion to turn away from that (and I'm talking big act here, the type of willpower it takes to get out of before 4am in the morning to go downstairs and see what that noise was) - a situation rooted in the Spirit of God and in his relationship with man and creation. Now this deliberate act of rebellion opens up the chink through which Satan is able to enter creation, and from the little foothold to begin and take things his way. | | Back to Top | | |
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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 3/30/2005 3:49 PM (GMT -6) | |
Starkman said...
...
Keith (previous): Consider Matthew’s use of what he deems as OT prophecy: why does he quote Hosea 1 to support Jesus having come out of Egypt when there isn’t even the SLIGHTEST hint of this passage as being Messianic? Why does he refer to Isaiah 7 as fulfilling prophecy when the context of Isaiah 7 virtually lacks any substance for interpretting it as such? The guys (Luke, Matthew, etc.) were taking what they believed were the best ways to make a culturally-backed up presentation about who Jesus was.
Jeff: Paul says the scripture FORESAW that uncircumsized gentiles would be saved by faith. The fact that no one at the time knew that the scriptURE foresaw that application of that verse doesn't negate the fact that God DID foresee it.
Starkman: Okay...you lost me here. My point in using the above examples of Matthew's use of OT prophecy and applying it to Jesus was to show that these guys had an agenda; the dynamism of the Spirit's work in uttering scripture allowed for writers to make Messianic passages out of what would have been otherwise considered non-Messianic. Literally, they took what was hardly applicable as Messianic when it was originally given and made it Messianic for their purposes. That's not wrong, it's not cheating, and it's perfectly fitting that the Spirit would inspire them to do this. They saw the "bigger picture" of what Hosea, for instance, was really all about and used that to carry it to its ultimate conclusion in Jesus.
...
Interesting, and I think I agree with Keith. The New Testament writers' use of the Old Testament used to trouble me greatly, because it seemed that what they were doing was the same fraud as any untrustworthy scholar today might engage in: ripping the words of a respected elder out-of-context so as to rub-off some of his esteem on one's own position - and, in the NT case, treat the elder's words untruthfully, as some sort of conscious before-the-event and therefore supernatural prediction of one's own view. This troubled me because it seemed to imply that the NT writers were, in fact, acting like religious hoaxers in our own day would.
Since Keith brought up Matthew's use of Hosea, let's consider that. We have Matthew (in Matthew 2:14-15) writing:
Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’ (NRSV)
when in fact what Hosea wrote (in Hosea 11:1-2ff) was plainly not a messianic prediction but instead a metaphor for the Exodus:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols... (NRSV)
It seemed to me like Matthew was claiming that Hosea had been making a historical messianic prediction here, saying that the Messiah would be a divine Son of God literally brought up from out of Egypt sometime in future history; and that Matthew was claiming this prediction-of-the-future was fulfilled in the historical event of Jesus' family's return to Israel. But of course Hosea wasn't making that sort of prediction of future history at all, let alone a messianic one - it is obvious from the context of Hosea. So was Matthew basically hoaxing here, just like we would be in this modern day if we were to pull such a thing? And indeed this is exactly the sort of conclusion reached in polemics against Christianity today by some philosophical skeptics, orthodox Jews, etc.
It was only as I became aware of the differences in literary genre in the pre-modern age that I finally saw that this wasn't the case at all. By saying "...this was to fulfill...", Matthew was not necessarily saying that Hosea had been making a prediction of future space-time events, like Jean Dixon or Nostradamus making predictions of events in their respective futures. Why not? Because it is so blindingly obvious that Hosea is not making such a prediction; and it would have likewise been obvious to precisely those readers for whom Matthew was bothering to even make the Hosea reference in the first place. Ie, in citing Hosea, Matthew was addressing an audience that knew and valued the Hebrew scriptures - an audience to whom it would have been blindingly obvious that this is not what Hosea meant. Surely nobody like Matthew would have based his apologetic on such weak and self-defeating terms. What else could Matthew have meant then?
The answer, I saw, comes from looking at how the Jews of the day treated their own scriptures. They treated them respectfully but not strictly literally, especially the prophetic writings. See Brent Sandy's book, Plowshares and Pruning Hooks, for an excellent discussion of the evidence for this. They also did midrash around their scriptures, appropriating passages and extrapolating fresh meaning from them - meaning not literally (historically-grammatically) contained within them. Now, measured against a modern critical hermeneutic, we may be dismayed by that, but there is nothing to indicate (in scripture or reason, in my opinion) that God frowned upon such "loose" interpretive methodology, as if he were some Greek rationalist deity concerned first and foremost about imposing good critical epistemology on his people, and only then inspiring his theological and moral message among them. Rather, and as always, God inspired his writers using the tools they already had, the literary conventions of the day.
So what could Matthew have been doing then? From the example of midrash in particular, I've come to believe that what he was saying was this:
"See how Jesus' story recapitulates pivotal episodes in Jewish history. See how the pattern of words used in the prophets for other things fit Jesus' story as well. Here, with Hosea 11:1, it is not that Hosea predicted Jesus' return from Israel as a future space-time event. It is that the arrangement of Hosea's words regarding Israel fits the story of Jesus so well too. Thus see how Jesus is connected to the Jewish experience, and indeed recapitulates, culminates and fulfills - as in 'fills full', 'makes complete' - that experience."
Now today, of course, where we commonly use "...this was to fulfill..." to mean an event that matches-up against a previous prediction, someone speaking or writing like Matthew did would be inappropriate. It doesn't fit the expectations and demands of our culture, and indeed is suspicious in light of them. But in the milieu of Jesus' day it was just the opposite. But only through an appreciation of literary genre in cultures remarkably alien to our own, and God's willingness to condescend and accommodate to genre and convention, are we able to understand that.
Scott
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