Christy
August 27, 2017, 11:43pm
124
You make it sound that if something isn’t literal history it has no purpose in the narrative. I don’t think that is how the original audience would have approached things at all. Here are two old threads with some thoughts on the Adam’s rib thing, because I don’t have time at the moment to re-type all the things I and others said in those threads.
It seems like you are saying that the interpretations offered by Bible scholars are attempts to make a text that meant something different once upon a time, mean something palatable now. And that the goal of doing so is to somehow redeem what was originally an unpleasant story, so we don’t have to abandon it as hopelessly archaic and outdated.
But I would argue that is neither what Bible scholars do, nor their goal, at least if we are talking about the Evangelical ones whose ideas I referred t…
I think God putting Adam into a “deep sleep” was the cultural way of talking about God giving him a vision imparting great spiritual truth. (This comes out in comparative ANE lit studies.) The word translated “rib” is an unfortunate tradition in English, and the Hebrew word is usually used for a side or a half. So God was showing Adam that Eve was his “other half,” the designated counterpart provided him by God (also a theme in ANE lit), and that together they formed a complete whole, “the two b…
Hello there,
I personally am persuaded that John Walton’s view is a rather good explanation. Essentially, the story of Eve being made from one of Adam’s sides (the Hebrew word is “side,” not “rib,” used elsewhere in the Pentateuch to refer to one side of a building) is a vision given to Adam by God to demonstrate Eve’s ontological equality with Adam. The words used here for “deep sleep” are used elsewhere in the OT to denote a dream state where God gives a prophetic vision. Showing Eve as Adam’…