Did Paul take Genesis literally?

Incorrect. I took exception to both extreme views and to your insistence on forcing this into a black and white choice.

No, you cannot read it completely literally because the Bible doesn’t support this. The Bible makes it clear that metaphor, symbolism, parable, and allegory is quite often being used. It is dishonest to do so selectively and then pretend that you are doing otherwise.

I am no more interested in the content of the gospel of Thomas than I am in the Quran, Book of Mormon, the Hindu Vedas, or the Watchtower magazine. And the same goes for the book of Enoch and other non-canonical texts.

Then you have blinders on and blinded you can’t tell what is valuable and what is not.
Your remark indicates you have no counter argument.
That’s fine.

I wrote:

mitchellmckain responded:
No, you cannot actual read it completely literally because the Bible doesn’t support this. The Bible makes it clear that metaphor, symbolism, parable, and allegory is quite often being used. It is dishonest to do so selectively and then pretend that you are doing otherwise.
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That’s what I wrote! There is a surface layer and an allegorical layer for a fuller deeper exegesis.
Please read the posts you’re replying to. You called me dishonest after failing (or refusing) to read my post.

How true. But try telling a literalist that. Someone at church was advocating a literal reading of Genesis last night, and I brought up that that also required accepting a three-tiered cosmos with a solid firmament as that is literally what Genesis states and they immediately cut me off as they could not stand the cognitive dissonance. I regret having brought it up, as I imagine I caused them pain, and also am now probably labeled as a disruptive heretic.

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Such is the limitation of blog posts on scholarly topics. He has a book length treatment of the subject, if you are interested.

https://www.amazon.com/Scripture-Authority-God-Bible-Today-ebook/dp/B004HD62K8/

I didn’t say that I didn’t look at them. I have looked at them. I can tell you more about the gospel of Thomas, the Book of Mormon, the Hindu scriptures, and the Jehovah Witnesses than most people here. But it is from looking at them, I decided that they did not interest me. All of us have to choose what to devote our time to. You might as well tell me I have blinders on because I am not interested in the reality shows, French politics, mountain climbing, Nietzsche, or rap music.

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Your response noted…

Re: the Gospel of Thomas

This is just Canonical prejudice. The final redaction of Thomas may be a bit late and go in a different direction but it contains some sayings of Jesus independent of the Gospels. In some cases, form criticism suggests some of the sayings are earlier. One would think a Christian would want to access as many sources about Jesus as they could rather than naively and blindly limit themselves strictly to a collection of books some Christians decided were authoritative 300 years later. Pretty much a blind fundamentalist attitude.

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No, you are just being disingenuous now. What you are saying is you are not interested in early sayings of the historical Jesus because they weren’t included in your canon and you are dismissively lumping them together with the Book or Mormon, Hindu Scriptures etc. The blinders charge stands unless as a Christian you oddly don’t really don’t care about what the historical Jesus taught and said. You may be in good company at least. The apostle Paul is right there with you.

Vinnie

Hmm… Am I the only person to find this extremely disturbing? Women not being worthy and having to “resemble males”. Yes, I get that it’s not meant to be literal, but even then this is as misogynistic as it gets. And this is on top subjugation of women in Genesis. So I guess I will just have to completely ignore those bits of scripture, I’m sure God won’t mind lol

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Before modern science the majority view was that it was literal history. It is not at all clear that much of what modern Christians are now FORCED to call metaphor, symbolism, parable and allegory are actually made clear as such in the Bible. This borders on being delusional.

Vinnie

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You are misinterpreting Thomas. Mary has to become male just as the male disciples have to become female. They have to return to their primordial state in Genesis. As Saying 22 reads:

Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, “These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom.” They said to him, “Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?”

Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom.”

This is not misogyny in Logion 114. Read Genesis 1:27:
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

In the view of this document, God’s image is male and female as one person. It is about getting back to that. Stevan Davies commented on this verse: “Does this mean that God made the ideal person male in his own image, or does it mean that God made the ideal person in his image and made that one being male and female? Surely it is the latter. There aren’t two Gods making separate sexual images of themselves, after all. There is one God making one image, and since that image is made male and female, the primordial person is of both sexes. Accordingly, if the one who enters the Kingdom is to return to the seventh-day state of infancy, he will do so before the mythic time of the separation of the sexes. (Genesis 2:22).” S Davies, The Gospel of Thomas Annotated and Explained p. 32

Crossan offers a similar explanation of the theology here in Birth of Christianity:

"Hold together creation, wisdom, light, and image, reread the creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:2 against that background, and apply those readings to Jesus and to Christians.

God begins, in Genesis 1:3, by saying, “‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” So Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas 77:1, “I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.” God ends his creative proclamations in Genesis 1:26-27, by saying, “let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,” and the story concludes, in Genesis 2:2, with these words: “[O]n the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” So the Gospel of Thomas 50 can present a small catechetical summary of Christian existence derived from God, light, image, and rest:

Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Where have you come from?’ say to them, ‘We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.’ If they say to you, ‘Is it you?’ say, ‘We are its children, and we are chosen of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the evidence of your Father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is motion and rest.’”

“But what about Genesis 2-3? What about the story of the first sin, the fall, and the expulsion from Eden? To get back to that inaugural moment of creation, of wisdom and light, of motion and rest, you would have to get back before the story of the fall. It would be necessary to get back before sin–better still even earlier, before that androgynous being called Adam-the-Earthling was split into Adam-the-male and Eve-the-female. It was that primal and as-yet-undivided being who was made in God’s image. It was those split beings, Adam and Eve, who sinned, fell, and were expelled from paradise. The ideal state imagined by the Gospel of Thomas is that of the primordial human being, Adam as one, as single and unsplit, as neither male nor female, as asexual. First came split, thence came the sexes, thence came sin. The Gospel of Thomas is about returning to that inaugural moment at the dawn of creation, before sin, before serpent, before split. It is about paradise regained from the past, not about parousia awaited in the future.” (Birth of Christianity, p. 267)

Crossan also wrote: “If your experience of the present world finds it radically amiss, you can only go, in terms of time, either to future or to past to find that ideal or utopian world whose existence profoundly subverts present normalcies and fundamentally criticizes present actualities. Negation of the present world goes either backward or forward in time to locate that perfect otherworld alternative.” Birth of Christianity p. 266

Logion 114 is essentially saying Mary must be born again in terms of GThomas’ theology as must all people. This is a fascinating interpretation of early Genesis.

Vinnie

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I am copying that post to a file. It is always amusing to me how someone looking for a balanced view of things is so often equated with an extremist by an extremist on the other end of the spectrum. I can pull this out the next time I am equated with a liberal extremist to demonstrate this kind of black and white thinking on BOTH ends of the spectrum.

Don’t I know it! People are funny creatures.

As for the whole male and female thing I think this is a purely biological distinction with no applicability to beings like God or angels who are not biological. So God? Not male. Not female. And not both either. One might as well obsess over whether God is a vegetarian or not. It is nonsensical.

Marta responded:
Hmm… Am I the only person to find this extremely disturbing? Women not being worthy and having to “resemble males”.

rich responds:
Yes. It looks that way, but it conforms to the theology of Genesis which was written entirely by men for men who went to war in antiquity. The theology is that before Eve was taken from Adam’s rib (Adam in Genesis can mean mankind or a man), when all of mankind was still in Adam, there was no sin because there was no desire which is the necessary catalyst for sin. So the resolution to the Fall is to recombine male and female which is what Jesus intends to teach to Mary (the self sacrifice denies bodily desire), but women were not ordinarily taught the self-sacrifice because it was employed to make men fearless for war (it denies any concern for the body, only considering what the spirit deems appropriate).
You also have to be fair to men. Women were not taught the self-sacrifice because they were not conscripted for war out of deference to them and their role as mothers “of all who live,” not out of misogyny. That’s an assumption you are making from a 21st century perspective. In ancient times, the biological role of women was glorified. Women were not expected to want to go to war or be best suited for war, so they didn’t need to learn the self-sacrifice which is theology but also a discipline for fearlessness.

Now, we’ve talked before, and I’m not going to argue the point. That’s the theology. If you don’t like it, I understand, there’s a lot not to like about the Torah, it’s all war, but that’s what’s there and it is common for theologians to designate Jesus the pre-Fall Adam because he made the self-sacrifice and had no desire for his own welfare, only the welfare of others. Be happy that Jesus recognizes that there is something special about Mary, her courage or her discipline, that makes her eligible in His eyes to assume the difficult discipline that He himself will teach her.

This the final logion in the Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas teaches the self-sacrifice, and it is widely studied by biblical scholars.

I seek truth over balance. GThomas has stuff to offer about Jesus and early Christianity. Dismissing it and lumping it with that other literature as you did reeks of canonical prejudice despite your specious rationalization. Its the fundamentalists who are afraid of “other Gospels” and treat them unfairly and irrationally.

I stand by my statement that a literal Genesis is nonsense. I understand why some people hold to it. They think they have to take it literally or their faith is wrong. It is a choice, in their mind between Jesus and Science. That is an easy choice to make for many who knows the Lord and have the Holy Spirit. For others we cannot engage in such intellectual schozophrenia. At any rate, the false dichotomy is the real problem. Christians shouldn’t be emotionally blackmailed into choosing to believe nonsense over science.

Vinnie

No one is obsessing. That is an interesting word choice. You are a modern person reading Genesis that can make that distinction. Our ancestors didn’t understand chromosomes and just because we do today does not mean there is not a deeper spiritual dimension to being male and female.

We need to look at Genesis and GThomas with pre-scientific lenses if we want to understand what it is actually saying. And in fact, you seem to agree with Thomas to an extent. God is not male or female. The primordial being created in his image is sexless or both male and female. Maybe the second creation story is the one that introduced the patriarchal themes (Adam first then Eve from his, subordinating women, who were considered property in the Old Testament, to men)??

If God really wanted to flout convention and ruffle feathers, I suppose he could have showed up in Nazareth as a women and not chosen 12 male apostles. Gender issues in Biblical studies are very important. We need to understand our biases and the historical and cultural limitations of everything we read including our Lord and Savior who emptied himself and was born and raised in this time period. I do not think he was omniscient nor existing outside that matrix during His earthy life.

Vinnie

Yes, it is disturbing. Even more depressing is that the Gospel of Thomas is actually trying to portray good news for women. It accepts as given that women have inferior bodies – a poisonous idea with a surprisingly long shelf life – but it allows that women can cast off their female bodies and soar (spiritually) just as high as any man.

And that’s where Genesis offers much better news. On the first page, the sexes together reflect God. In Eden, the woman and man are made of the same stuff. The woman is not a malformed man. Rather than disparage the woman as lesser or having a broken body, the man praises her as his matching counterpart. When Genesis does speak of men dominating and subjugating women, it locates that in human sin rather than within the structure of creation.

If the problem is our fallenness and not our created bodies, then female bodies cannot be the problem. Yes, new creation will be an upgrade, but no sex is more in need of that upgrade than the other.

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It’s not non-sensical, mitchellmckain. It’s brilliant. The Torah is absolutely brilliant. It’s also called wonderful and terrible.

Vinnie is not an extremist. He’s telling you what’s in the text.

The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings that are read over and over until they are understood, like a textbook for the self-sacrifice, the Law written on the heart. There was a group who studied the Law written on the heart at Qumran. They sang Thanksgiving Hymn 12 of the Dead sea scrolls. They were hiding in Qumran because they were being persecuted by the Pharisees. Instead of hiding Jesus did a 3 year public ministry and went straight to Jerusalem. He LIVED and died in the self-sacrifice. His life was a demonstration of the self-sacrifice.

And they, teachers of lies and SEERS of falsehood,
have schemed against me a devilish scheme,
to exchange the LAW ENGRAVED ON MY HEART by Thee,
for the smooth things (which they speak) to Thy people.
and they withhold from the thirsty the drink of Knowledge,
and assuage their thirst with vinegar…
DSS Thanksgiving Hymn # 12

There are a lot of competent exegetes who interpret Thomas very different and see charges of misogyny as anachronistic. I mentioned an interpretation by Davies and Crossan above that utilizes Logion 22 and basically teaches that males must become female and females must become males.The misogyny is in the patriarchal language and the parameters set by it. When becoming woman man will be a more perfect version of man and when a female becomes male she becomes man. The term is clearly the product of a patriarchal, male-dominated society. Just like our references to God as father and constantly using “He”. Male was become the catch-all state for the primordial being. The notion is certainly no more problematic or misogynistic than countless verses in the Old Testament or even in the letters of Paul.

For “becoming male” There are others who think it may simply be an argument against procreation and the world. It may actually be a call to celibacy. Then there are those who think the Thomas community or a later redactor of it had a low view of women. The easiest place to add something to an existing document without breaking any catchword sequences is of course at the end. This may even have simply been attached as polemic against Mary herself who offered a different view of things. Many scholars actually believe Thomas underwent multiple redactions. Sayings list are very easy to expand over time. Speculation only of course. There are multiple scholarly interpretations of Logion 114 that are credible, much too the chagrin of hypocritical apologists who would love to be able to dismiss it based on blatant misogyny despite not holding their own canon to the same standards.

Vinnie

Marshall, where does the Gospel of Thomas talk of the “inferiority of women’s bodies,” what you describe as a poisonous idea?
Please provide the logion.

I offer logion 29:

“If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.”

The body is inferior to the spirit, not particularly a female’s body. Marshall will show us where in the GofT a “woman’s body” is inferior to a man’s by providing the relevant logion for us to review.

In logion 114 Simon Peter says Mary is not worthy of life. He means not worthy of “life in the spirit” which requires making the self-sacrifice which is a sacrifice of the body for spirit. It’s bad enough that Jesus was crucified. I wonder if Marshall would have had Mary, a woman, crucified rather than Jesus to demonstrate her “equality.” As I’ve written here, the Torah was written by men for men because women were not conscripted for war.
The first diaspora in Genesis requires the enslavement of the Egyptians. The making of the nation by Moses in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy requires the killing of every living thing in the land of Canaan. Read the text! Women were not under Joshua’s command then and they should not be under Joshua’s command now out of love for them and deference to them, not because they are inferior.

I agree with Marshall’s remark: “Yes, new creation will be an upgrade, but no sex is more in need of that upgrade than the other.”

So does the Gospel of Thomas and the New Testament.