Adam of Gen1 is the same Adam of Gen 2

Faith & Science Conversation
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So when it is not actually declared a parable by Jesus or explained by them, then it must be taken literally, such as…

Matthew 9:16 You think Jesus is giving us a lesson on patching clothes?
Matthew 9:17 You think Jesus is concerned that we understand how to store wine properly?
Luke 15:11-32 You think Jesus is just telling a story about a man with two sons?

Most Christians think these are parables even if Jesus did not say they were parables, and even though nobody explained them either. Your rule for when things should be taken figuratively in the Bible is a failure.

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A literary figure is a character we recognize for their role in a literary work that is a familiar part of our cultural landscape. Dante is a historical figure, but also a literary figure since he is a character in his Divine Comedy. Most people are more familiar with Dante the literary figure than Dante the historical figure, even if they haven’t read the work. Most people are probably more familiar with the literary Julius Caesar of Shakespeare’s play than the historical figure.

This is a pretty complicated topic and the average person doesn’t usually know what they are talking about. (I feel like I can say this because I have done academic research in the discourse analysis of figurative language in the last year. :wink: )

To oversimplify, in linguistics, “literal meaning” is the meaning of a sentence with no pragmatic inferences. Pragmatic inferences are things that the hearer assumes the speaker intends to communicate based on a shared context. So the literal meaning of “I’m starving” is that I am dying of malnutrition, but if I say this to someone while perusing a menu at a restaurant in perfect health, the hearer will make the pragmatic inference that my intended meaning is not literal, but it is a hyperbole intended to communicate that I am looking forward to a good meal. If I say “The window is still closed” the literal meaning is a proposition about the window’s position. But if I said that in response to my husband asking if I felt hot and we shared knowledge that it was cooler outside than in the house and I had asked him five minutes ago to open the window, the pragmatic inference about my meaning would be that I was offering an explanation for the temperature and my state of discomfort, and probably making a request that he open the window. Almost all of our communication involves pragmatic inferences based on shared context, not “literal meaning” of the words we use.

Words themselves can have multiple senses, a primary ('literal") sense, and an extended figurative sense. So a hawk in its primary sense is a bird of prey, but in its figurative sense is someone who favors aggressive military responses. It’s important not to conflate words with figurative senses and passages with figurative meanings, because words are often used in their primary, literal senses in figurative passages. When Langston Hughes writes "Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair/It’s had tacks in it/And splinters/And boards torn up/And places with no carpet on the floor— " you do not need to posit special figurative meanings of the words tacks, splinters, boards, or carpet to understand the figurative meaning of the passage-- that the life described has had times of irritation, danger, and lack of luxury. The brain calculates this all rather effortlessly by a process called conceptual domain mapping, and it is they way we understand figurative language. It doesn’t have to do with certain words being “figurative.” We just infer pragmatically that Hughes is not talking about a literal stairway and our brains map what we know about stairways onto life and allow us to understand the figurative meaning.

When you talk about parables, you are talking about genre. Genre does not tell you whether language is figurative or not. You can have intended literal meaning in poetry and intended figurative meaning in a weather report. Language is figurative if it requires conceptual domain mapping to process an underlying metaphor. Language is non-literal if it relies on pragmatic inferences.

When people talk about literal history, they really aren’t talking about the language used or the genre, they are talking about whether they interpret the speaker to be intending to communicate straight facts. This judgment is actually much more difficult than people pretend it is and it’s not something you can calculate based on grammar, vocabulary, or genre. You have to understand the shared context of the original speaker and hearer, understand their conventions and expectations for how different kinds of information would be typically communicated, and try to recreate the pragmatic inferences that would have been assumed in the context. When people say that Genesis would or would not be interpreted as straight facts, or as a story intended to teach a truth, they are making assertions about the inferences that would have been normal at the time. And that involves saying what was going on in other people’s minds, which is not an exact science and can’t be definitively proven by pointing to words in the text.

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I look forward to reading your comprehensive book on how we communicate. You make it all very accessible. I suspect teaching children puts you in a mindset for clear communication. Please do let us know when you publish.

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Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7 the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 20: But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said,“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,'for she was taken out of man.”

Some say that adam in Gen 1 was different than Adam in Gen 2. If this is true there would have been no need for God to created Eve, there would have been plenty of women for Adam to select from but as scripture states “But for Adam no suitable helper was found”. Adam was not alone if other humans existed, just get a woman outside the Garden. So adam 1 is the same as Adam 2. Adam 1 was made in the image of God, nothing more was needed for Adam 2 to get a wife, no need to create Eve. Eve was called woman because she was taken out of man so what do you call the females in Gen 1 since supposedly they weren’t taken out of man? And if the women in Gen 1 were not taken out of man then the following would not apply to those humans, Genesis 2:24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

If Cain supposedly chose a his wife from a population of women that already existed, then God would have had no need to create Eve for Adam. So Cain married his sister which was not condemned until the law, for whatever reason God chose to do so. Just as God chose to change the covenant from the old to the new in Christ. Old contract said don’t eat certain foods ect. New contract said all foods are permitted. Old said “honor the Sabbath”, new says, “don’t let anyone judge you on Sabbath days”.

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I would perhaps suggest @Cody_G that your examples might not follow as logically from your example from Cain as they might appear.

Most would say that issues around food laws and sabbath regulations relate to the keeping of ceremonial laws. I’d also point out that how Christians are to relate to the Sabbath laws is an extremely contested issue which is very complex, and wide ranging in the views held by Christians of all stripes today.

Sexual ethics, in this case incest, are governed by the moral law, which if anything becomes stronger in the New Testament. For example, polygamy is not explicitly condemned in the Old Testament, where as it is in the New Testament (An elder/overseer must be… “a husband of but one wife” 1 Tim 3:2, Titus 1:6 (ESV).

The problem of incest is further compounded in that there would need to have been generations of son-sister or worse father-daughter or mother-son sexual relationships before one could even legitimately pursue cousin-cousin marriages. Either way, incest among members of the nuclear family would have had to go on for sometime before there was a big enough population for Cain to found anything that remotely resembled a city in Nod (even by ANE standards). That might sound shocking, but the suggestion we are considering is that Cain and his sister-wife are the only two people living in Nod at this time. Personally, I think the simpler option is to suggest that Cain married into a well established tribe in Eden and migrated them to Nod, or married into a nomadic tribe in Nod and convinced them to settle down.

The point is the plain reading of the text neither supports or invalidates either mine or your position because it is silent on where Cain found his wife:

Genesis 4:16-17:
So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.

I’m sure we can agree that the text above says nothing about a sister leaving with Cain and it says nothing about Cain’s family relation to his wife. Neither does it say anything about Cain meeting a women near Eden or in Nod. Where Cain found his wife is not the concern of the text.

So, can we agree that whether Cain married his sister or married a human women not of Adam’s line, we are both making an appeal to information not found in the text itself? Can we agree on that at least?

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Liam,
As was pointed out previously, the information expressed in Genesis has a flow that unites adam1 to Adam 2 making them the same person. In the Gen 5 quote below, God unites the supposed two adams and shows that adam 1 is Adam 2.
Genesis 5: This is the book of the generations of Adam.
In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; (adam 1) and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
3 And Adam (Adam 2) lived an hundred and thirty years,". So adam 1 and Adam 2 is this Adam that lived a hundred and thirty years and so on…

The initial declarations of God about the creation of mankind dictate the flow of what comes after the initial creation.
Since mankind was created in God’s image and without sin I conclude that it would have been proper for sinless humanity to become one flesh with their siblings. But as Jesus said in Mark 10:6 "But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." So marriage between parent and offspring would not be in God’s design.

As far as Cain building a city, it appears that the word can mean, a city, a place guarded by waking or a watch, a mere encampment or post. So Cain went to an area called Nod east of Eden and started to build a encampment-a guarded area-a city. This statement does not demand an existing population of people already there who needed a metropolis to live in, he simply began to build encampment or settlement.
In reference to scripture not mentioning that his wife was or was not his sister is not necessary, as the already declared statements of God clarify that.

At the beginning of creation God made one man and then from him he made woman, from them all mankind is produced.

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Cody - welcome to the forum. As you have stated, what is critically important is that through one man we have sin and death and through another we have life.

I take a literal view of scripture, and that it means what it says. It is the plenary inspired Word of God. After years of studying the Bible I noticed a repeating pattern in the genealogies of Genesis and Chronicles, the line leading to the Messiah is always given after the line or lines not leading to the Messiah. I reviewed Genesis 1-5 and concluded that this pattern is actually set in this are of scripture. The first creation narrative concludes with the statement " These are the generations of the heavens and the earth and when they are created."

I always had an issue with the inconsistencies in the creation sequence (notice no sea life is created in the second story). My logical conclusion from the literal text is that there are two creation narratives, the second is a local creation of Adam, Eve and the Garden.

I do not see how you can take any other conclusion from the text than God created Adam and Eve directly. Paul strongly ties the purpose of Jesus directly to the actions of Adam, so without a literal Adam, why would Jesus have to literally suffer and die for my sins to be forgiven?

I speculate that we are all descended from Adam through Noah.

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Maybe because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and the wages of sin is death. This is true whether or not Adam is an archetype of humanity or a literal first human.

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The purpose of the Garden was to show that even under perfect conditions, where man did not have to struggle for food or for survival, he would rebel against God. I would argue that a wife from outside the Garden would violate this test. Adam and Eve choose to violate God’s one rule sheerly out of their own choice, not out of any survival need.

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Is there any other reference in scripture that uses this archetypical approach? (I am asking, I don’t know). I have found a vision is a vision, a metaphor or a simile is a metaphor or a simile, but I see no reference to a metaphor or vision in Genesis 2.

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I think metaphorical thinking underlies most of human thought, so I don’t draw these sharp distinctions between metaphor and something else. I think its a mistake to assume that Scripture will overtly tell you “this is an archetype” or “this is a metaphor.” Those are things we infer. It would seem to me that most of the time Scripture talks about humanity, the “nations,” or “the flesh,” it is using archetypes and we are supposed to read our own experiences into those generalizations.

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A post was split to a new topic: Spin-off discussion about Cain’s wife

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A literal reading of Ezekiel 16 clearly states that God married a woman named Jerusalem. In both accounts, the question is the genre, not the the literal meaning. For me, the symbolic names, mysterious trees, talking serpent and other details make a strong case for it portraying truth (including historical truth) through using a couple human characters to represent both many generations (the historical) and all humanity (the archetypal). Ezekiel too seems to use his story to both tell the nation’s history and portray who the Judahites truly are.

The biggest challenge to this reading is the genealogy. But to me that is a smaller problem than the evidence within Genesis 2–3 that points to this kind of reading.

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I feel it is not difficult to determine what is a metaphor, what is a dream or a vision and what is real based on the text surrounding the passage and its context in the Bible as a whole.

I disagree, this is clearly a metaphor. The reason I know is this metaphor is that it is consistently used throughout the Bible. In Hosea, Hosea’s marriage is used as the same metaphor of the relationship of God with Israel (in Ezek 16, the more specific Jerusalem is used) and the unfaithfulness of Israel is compared to an unfaithful wife. If this passage stated that Jerusalem lived for 865 years, and had one child at 700 years old and another at 730 years old, and Jerusalem was included in genealogies in both the Old and New Testament, I would start to question whether or not this was a metaphor or there was a real woman named Jerusalem. It is even stated in Luke 3, that God is the father of Adam, which is consistent with the direct creation of Adam philosophy.

Many on this forum are motivated to share their faith and see, as I do, the Answers in Genesis view of the world as a great deterrent to many men and women in science (myself included), so I am applauding the efforts of those on this website.

I feel, however, there is no scriptural support for the archetype model.

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Have you read Walton’s "Archetypal View"portion on “Four Views On the Historical Adam”? Pretty interesting and in contrast to Lamoureux, Collins and Barrick (EC, OE, and YEC). Good for a point by point contrast from a Scriptural point of view. Thanks.

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I have read summaries of the “Four Views” and I have read Walton’s “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” in which he describes the archetypical models of Adam and Eve based on scripture. He describes the archetypical role of Adam and Eve in a similar way the fundamental christians describe the “Corporate Headship” of both Adam and Jesus and concludes based on scripture that Adam, Eve and Jesus all had a Corporate Headship aspect and an historical aspect. He points to the specific and related genealogies, that sin entered through one man at a specific point and time and that Adam was formed of the dust of the earth in both the Old and New Testaments.

Walton, interestingly enough, point out that the creation narrative of Adam and Eve is more about the origin of sin than the origin of man. I find it critically important that Adam and Eve have been removed by the “survival of the fittest” model outside the Garden and placed in an ideal location for man with all there needs being met, so sin was a decision of revolt against God instead of being a means of survival.

Walton, as I do, proposes a sequential interpretation of Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. (I am by no means putting my Biblical scholarship on an equal plane with John Walton, I am a biochemical engineer, my study pales in comparison) He points to the inconsistencies in the creation sequence among other rationale and cites Genesis 4 to provide evidence of the existence of others outside the Garden. I feel that most fundamental christians attribute these individuals to other offspring of Adam and Eve as they had lived for so long.

I think a stronger argument would be the consistencies of the genealogies where the pattern was set for the line or lines not leading to the Messiah always given before the line leading to the Messiah in Genesis 1 (not leading to the Messiah) given before the line of Adam, which leads to the Messiah. As a secondary argument, I argue that the “daughters of men” in Gen 6 refer to the lines created in Chapter 1 and the “sons of God” refers to the offspring of Adam, as otherwise the need for Noah to be perfect in his generations would be meaningless.

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I used the woman Jerusalem as an example because it is easier to see, and it shows that this style of writing exists in Scripture. If my example was just as contested as Adam, it wouldn’t help much. So, keeping in mind that I agree with you that it’s a metaphor, let me make my best case for a literal woman Jerusalem using arguments eerily similar to those raised for a literal man Adam.

First, the book of Ezekiel tells us when we’re going to get something figurative. Chapter 17 introduces a section with Yahweh telling the prophet to “propound a riddle, and speak an allegory.” Chapter 16 has no such markers. If the woman Jerusalem isn’t a literal woman, the text would tell us.

Second, if the woman Jerusalem was only figuratively a woman, Ezekiel wouldn’t give her genealogical information. Yet he tells us “your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite” and “your elder sister is Samaria” and “your younger sister … is Sodom.” Cities don’t have fathers, mothers and sisters. People do.

Third, there are other passages that speak metaphorically about Israel or Judah as God’s wife. Metaphorical uses don’t come from nowhere. If it wasn’t for God’s literal wife, Jerusalem, those metaphors would lose their foundation.**

Fourth, Jesus treats the woman Jerusalem as literal when he refers to her in Luke 13:34: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!” (Luke 13:34, NASB).

I’ve used the NASB because even though this translation, like many, adds the words “the city,” at least they have the decency to mark them in italics since they’re not present in the Greek. Jesus doesn’t call Jerusalem a city. He refers to her using feminine forms and speaks of her children. Cities don’t have children, but women do. It doesn’t work to see the children as a metaphor for the people who live in the city, since then it would be the children who killed the prophets, not the city they lived in. Cities, apart from the people within them, don’t stone people to death! Jesus speaks of the woman Jerusalem and her children as distinct entities, both personal.

That’s probably enough. My point is that all of the above misses the forest for the trees. Similarly, we could discuss all sorts of details about the Eden story and how it’s referenced in the New Testament, but none of that changes that adam means humanity, that Genesis records before and after the Eden story that the adam God created includes male and female, and that between those references we get a vivid story of the adam in a garden where two trees, a serpent and a human couple all seem to be more than they seem.

I’m not trying to convince you to abandon a sequential reading or an individual Adam (and I agree that a sequential reading is the best way to maintain an individual Adam). I jumped in because you mentioned not being able to see how anyone could reach “any other conclusion from the text.” Hopefully all the responses you’ve received make that a bit easier to see, even as you continue to see the best case pointing elsewhere.

** I know, this one’s really weak. It roughly parallels the argument that Scripture only speaks metaphorically of other people being dust, or all beasts receiving their breath from God’s Spirit because it literally happened to Adam in Eden. Not a strong argument in either context.

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Below is an excerpt of something I posted in another thread. I’ll drop it in here in hope that it will be helpful in this discussion too.

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The following was my response to a personal interaction with another poster. He stated that he believed he understood what I said about Adam being the first man but disagreed in some respects to my conclusions. He was wondering if because of what I stated about Jesus being the 2nd adam meant I believed he was not saved because he did not believe the same way that I did about Adam being the first. And I believe there were a couple of other posts about faith in Jesus is more important than correct knowledge about Adam. This was my response to his question with a few added statements.

"The gospel is not: If thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Adam is the first man thou shalt be saved.

The gospel is: The Word became flesh (mankind), he became sin for us and died in our place, he suffered both spiritual and physical punishment from the Father that we should have suffered, he rose from the dead for us and ascended to the Father for us to make us justified, righteous and holy and to save us from the wrath of God against all who continue in sin.

This is what Jesus has done for me. In Christ the second Adam I was executed, went through the punishment for my sins, was raised a new creation and have been given power and authority over the sin that God says abides in my flesh. If I continue trusting in the Father and the Son, love and obey them, then I will know them and they will save me from all the snares of my enemy and safely bring me into the New Jerusalem, the city of our God. And I shall behold the Lamb of God seated at the right hand of the Father and shall thank and adore him forever. That my friend is good news to me.

I don’t normally post on forums, it seems to me they can very easily become like the people Paul spoke to in Acts 17:19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
I know that some people are trying to get answers to questions in the hope of understanding God better but I expect a lot is just the desire to listen to and speak about new things. Oh well, the Father knows those who are his and he will separate the wheat from the chaff and burn up the chaff in the lake of fire. Oh Father, keep us safe to the end."

And this is eternal life, to know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

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