Friday, August 11, 2017

Adam and the Genome 9: Seven Jewish Texts on Adam

Second to last chapter review of Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science, by Scot McKnight and Dennis Venema.

Previous posts
Personal Preface
Forward and Introduction
1. Evolution as a Scientific Theory
2. Genomes as Language, Genomes as Books
3. Adam's Last Stand?
4. Intelligent Design?
5. Four Principles for Bible Reading
6. Twelve Theses about Genesis

Chapter 7 is titled, "The Variety of Adam and Eves in the Ancient World. Let me dive into the seven Jewish texts on Adam that he explores.

This book, which is in the Catholic, Orthodox, and other Bibles, dates in its Greek form to the late 100s, but much of it was probably written in Hebrew around 200BC. McKnight spends more time with Sirach than he does with any of the other texts. His conclusions seem to be:
  • Sirach is processing the "literary" Adam more than the historical Adam. That is to say, Sirach is making use of Adam as a figure in the Genesis text rather than as a real person in history.
  • Adam becomes archetypal of all humans and especially Israel. We are not constrained by his choices but as humans we behave like him. This is especially true when it comes to Adam as a moral agent. Adam is a "volitional" Adam--he makes choices like we make choices.
  • Eve is treated harshly, which is typical of Sirach. She is considered the source of sin and death.
I've never been sad that Sirach is not in most Protestant canons.

Wisdom of Solomon
The book of Wisdom is also in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Paul may draw on it in Romans 1, and Hebrews actually alludes to it in 1:3.
  • Sin entered the world through the Devil's envy, an allusion to the Genesis 2-3 story.
  • Wisdom though protects Adam, delivers him from his transgressions, gives him strength to rule.
  • Wisdom is interpreting the literary text of Genesis, but Adam is also assumed to have been historical.
Philo was a Greek speaking Jew from Egypt who was about 15-25 years older than Jesus and who lived to about the time Paul was beginning his missionary journeys. He was very philosophical--a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism.
  • Philo "is the paradigmatic example of our thesis that each Jewish author saw in Adam what one believed and used Adam to prop up a theology or philosophy" (158).
  • Philo's primary interpretation of Adam is allegorical. There is the Platonic, archetypical human being and there is the shadowy, embodied Adam.
  • But Philo does seem to think of Adam as the geneological father of the human race.
Jubilees dates to around 150BC and was likely a proto-Essene document. It retells the Genesis story. The main function of Adam in this text is as a prototype of the Law-observant Israelite.

Josephus was a Jewish general to quickly surrendered to the Romans in the Jewish War (AD66-72) and thereafter became a Jewish historian writing in part for the Roman world. For him Adam was indeed the first man genealogically, but even more importantly he was an example of virtue.

4 Ezra
4 Ezra is an apocalypse that dates to about AD100 and it comes closest to Paul's use of Adam. 4 Ezra especially struggles with the problem of evil--why did God allow the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and its temple? Adam is the first human, a genealogical Adam. He is responsible for bringing the power of Sin in the world. We have a choice, but there is more of a sense of a Fall here than elsewhere.

2 Baruch
Another apocalypse that probably dates from around the same time as 4 Ezra, another book struggling with the destruction of Jerusalem. Each of us faces the same choice as Adam. Adam is everyone and we are all Adam.

McKnight's main point in this chapter seems to be that none of these Jewish texts focus on Adam as a historical figure. Yes, there is a sense that Adam is the genealogical father of the human race, but this is hardly the focus of any of these texts. Rather, 1) each author is focused on interpreting the text of Genesis (the literary Adam) and 2) they do so in accordance with their own theological agendas and purposes.

A common theme is that Adam is archetypal in some way, a model human either for good or bad. In particular, he presents the archetypal moral choice that faces every human. "The historical Adam that Christians now believe in has yet to make his appearance on the pages of history... The construct Christians use when they speak of the historical Adam is not to be found in the Old Testament or in other Jewish sources" (169).

Paul is now queued up for next week.

1 comment:

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks for this summary.