George explores the meaning of concordism and the marketing of GA to creationists

I wasn’t trying to define concordism, I was just saying it’s more a starting point in interpretation not an ending point. Corcordist interpretations arise because people start with presuppositions about how the text should convey meaning (usually in a way decontextualized from its original culture based on modernist ideas about language and communication) and about inspiration (God put meaning in the text that was beyond the comprehension of the original authors and audience) and about inerrancy (“wrong” concepts about science or history can’t be found in Scripture). People who like concordist interpretation are motivated to defend Scripture against any insinuation that it is not “literally true.” They are motivated to look for scientific reasons to support the Bible’s truth claims or to take the Bible’s truth claims as more reliable than science. They are motivated to defend the doctrine of “perspicuity of Scripture” which some people take to mean that no extra knowledge about the cultural context is necessary to understand the intended meaning.

Not sins. Not an accusation.

That was the case McKnight and others have tried to build. That it was the most likely conclusion they would have come to.

You said “if someone can think “Adam wasn’t real at all…but represented Israel”…I hardly think it is possible to sweep Joshua’s interpretation away.” If someone thinks Adam isn’t real, he/she is definitely going to sweep Joshua’s interpretation away because they are mutually exclusive.

Maybe I misunderstood and you were saying something along the lines of "If the Adam is Israel interpretation is valid, then by the same evaluation criteria, Joshua’s interpretation should also count as valid. If that is so, I would say the evaluation criteria that makes the “Adam is Israel” interpretation valid is extensive study of the ANE and ancient Jewish cultural context as well as analysis of a whole history of Jewish rabbinic interpretations of Adam. What parallel to this do you see in Joshua’s interpretation? He is supporting his views with genealogical science, not biblical scholarship. I think you have mistakenly understood the evaluation criteria to be “not concordist.”

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@Christy

You know I love you like a younger sister, right? A much younger sister!

But I think you are so keen on painting Genealogical Adam in a discouraging light, you are not being objective on what exactly Concordism looks like: you are being distracted by the “science-y” part of @Swamidass’ narrative.

In fact, I think you’ve written on concordism in other threads that suggests to me that you need to get back to the books, and get a better “lock” on what’s actually at stake. Here’s an example:

As you can see in the image (in case you or others can’t, here’s the entire (short!) text:

Addressed to @Marg:
“But don’t you think part of the interpretive process is understanding what it meant to the original audience, and then moving beyond that to try to understand what enduring truth the text is teaching? I don’t think it is so much that they had one lesson and we have another as we have to work a little harder to get the lesson, because our context and conceptual frameworks are different.”

According to the articles by our guest writers, it’s the last part that is actually Concordism! But I’m thinking you meant “going beyond” in the most restrained of ways - - not going beyond what the ancient audience understood … but only going beyond what was apparent to the ancient audience with a superficial reading!

In a subsequent post in that same thread, you rightly say this:

Here are some examples by our guest writers, starting with McKnight. I will summarize them in “sound bite” format, followed by slightly more meaty background details:

[1] NT Wright per McKnight: “Adam & Eve are Elected by God out of an Evolved Population of Humans”

[2] Denis Alexander and Ted Davis’s example from B. Ramm: “Day-Age Interpretation of the 6 Days”.

[3] Alexander’s example from Shatz: “Genesis 1 is about Big Bang Cosmology”.

[4] Alexander’s 3 examples of “Type C” (or “Good”) Concordism:
(i) Bible’s view on extra-terrestrials (but no verse is offered);
(ii) Bible’s view on Cognitive Psychology and/or Human Identity (but no verse is offered);
(iii) Bible’s view on Quantum Uncertainty (but, again, no verse is offered).

[5] McKnight’s view of Alexander’s proposal that “God revealed himself to a couple or community of [evolved] humans”. It was this “accusation” that triggered Alexander’s defense of what is Concordism, and what is Good vs. Bad concordism.

Versus

[6] McKnight proposes this as a non-Concordist proposal: Genesis 2 should be understood as a figurative comparison of Adam as an allegorical Israel (in exile).

So, now we have a pretty good aggregation of Concordist scenarios, plus McKnight’s so-called Non-Concordist proposal, to compare to the whole point of this discussion:

@Swamidass’s proposal: “God created Adam & Eve in an act of Special Creation . . . but after he had already created a population of humanity by other means.”

@Christy, as we have already touched upon, the trouble-point is not Joshua’s proposal that Adam and Eve were made by special creation. This can’t be concordism because this is actually the plain reading of the text.

And I hope I have gained your acceptance on the “Genealogical” and “Evolutionary” aspects of Joshua’s scenarios: he is not attempting to argue that some obscure part of Genesis is describing the “science of Evolution” or the “science of Genealogy”. These two elements of “Genealogical Adam” are defended by scientific observation derived from the evidence we see in the modern world. Joshua is not saying the Bible is “teaching Evolution” or “teaching Genealogical” notions of “progenitorship”.

There is only ONE part of the Genealogical Adam scenarios that can be accused of being Concordist: that Genesis 1 should be understood as a reference to an earlier population of humans, made separately from Adam and Eve (as we read in Genesis 2).

While it is true that Joshua proposes that this earlier population was created by God using Evolutionary principles (instead of Special Creation from dust or ribs), Joshua is not saying anything like “Genesis 1 is a veiled reference to Evolution”. So let’s not get hung-up on this red herring!

The Big Question then?: The Big Question is super simple! Along the lines defined by McKnight, and by you Christy!, which says Concordism is avoided by sticking to ideas that would have been valid considerations of the Bible’s ancient audience - -

Can we believe that the ancient readers of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 would have speculated on whether these 2 chapters were implying that there were humans prior to the creation of Adam & Eve for the Garden of Eden?
Is it reasonable to think that the writers of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 intended their readers to implicitly understand that Adam and Eve were not “literally” the first and sole humans - - in the same way that McKnight asks us to accept the idea that the writers of Genesis wanted their readers to implicitly understand that Adam is a literary proxy for “Israel in Exile”?

I think the answer is super obvioius: unlike McNight’s example (which relies on understanding the ancient world view of ANE civilizations), Swamidass’ example only requires common sense: when the Genesis writer tells us that Cain fled his family and had a child by an unknown woman, and built a city for an unknown people, it was INTENDED to provoke the reader into understanding that there were more humans than “just” Adam and his immediate offspring.

Not only is it reasonable to propose that this was the intention of the writer of this part of Genesis, but (unlike McKnight’s example), it is actually unreasonable to think the writer of Genesis expected any other reader response! McKnight’s proposal (Adam = Israel) is not nearly as obvious as this; and in fact, McKnight (and you @Christy) have had to specifically invoke the importance of learning more about the ANE cultural views, in order to defend the McKnight proposal!

In contrast, Genealogical Adam requires no special knowledge. Anyone who knows that it takes 2 biological parents to have a son, and that it takes more than just a handful of people to occupy a city, knows enough to conclude: that Genesis author is a clever one! He could have easily have provided some additional detail, or to have excluded Cain’s son and city. But he didnt’; and there’s something important in that!

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BACKGROUND DETAIL ON THE EXAMPLES OF CONCORDISM

NT Wright’: “Adam and Eve have been elected out of the many (hominins) who were available, and that they in some sense represented all of humanity – [which] sounded to me [McKnight] a bit concordist.”

Alexander’s view of the Day-Age Proposal:
Alexander quotes @TedDavis on the meaning of Concordism:
"According to the historian Ted Davis, an influential early use of the word “concordism” is found in the writings of Bernard Ramm, the Baptist theologian, in his book The Christian View of Science and Scripture [1954]. Ramm writes with regard to the Day-Age Theory
"… (the idea that the days of Genesis 1 represent long periods of time): “It is called concordism because it seeks a harmony of the geological record and the days of Genesis interpreted as long periods of time briefly summarizing geological history” (p. 145). Ramm labeled such a view “moderate concordism.”

Alexander quotes Shatz regarding the “Bold” or “Hard” Concordists who propose that Genesis 1 is a veiled reference to Big Bang cosmology! Certainly many of us would agree that it seems unlikely that God was “waiting for the day when Bible readers would discover that God had already written about the Big Bang”. Much of this skepticism comes from the fact that a divinely inspired description of the Big Bang (even a veiled one) would not read like the opening section of Genesis 1!

This Big Bang scenario would be consistent with Alexander’s quote from a Patheos.Com article on concordism:
"Other Type B understandings are cautious about such impositions, but nevertheless state that “The concordist not only believes that nature and Scripture will harmonize, but sees specific references in the Bible to current scientific understanding of the universe.”

In his article, Alexander concludes by offering a THIRD TYPE (“TYPE C”) of concordism… a so-called GOOD KIND of concordism!:
“Scot McKnight finishes by suggesting that the concord he prefers “is one that sees Genesis 1-3 more in conversation with the ancient Near East accounts of origins and purpose”. That’s fine, but there’s no need to choose between this and Concordism Type C – we need both. There are too many “either-or” narratives in the world right now. Let’s have more of the “both-and.”

I think his 3 examples of this GOOD KIND are rather “inscrutable!”:

“Three examples (amongst many) of Type C:
[1st] … the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) - how does their putative discovery relate to the theology of the atonement? There are plenty of books and articles being written about this topic, a trend which first began in the 17th century.” [< Huh? What?!, G.Brooks]

[2nd] … how does cognitive psychology relate to theological insights concerning human identity? There is a growing Type C literature here." [< What the heck?, G.Brooks]

[3rd … how does the theology of God’s divine action relate to the proposal that God interacts with the world through quantum uncertainty?" [< These 3 don’t sound very concordist at all, without the Bible verses that are supposed to be related to them!, G.Brooks]

So it isn’t clear (to me, anyway) whether Denis Alexander considers his position on Adam/Eve to be Type “B” or Type “C”!. McKnight pronounces it as concordism:

“Even if I’m mistaken about Wright’s concordism, I see the same concordism in Alexander:
In the second type of model (my [Alexander’s] personal preference), God revealed himself to a couple, or community, of farmers in the Near East at the very beginning of a putative proto-Jewish era, the so-called ‘Homo divinus’ . These lived in fellowship with God, understanding their responsibility to care for God’s earth, but subsequently turned their back on God in disobedience, leading to human autonomy and a broken relationship with him (“sin”)…”

And finally, we have McKnight’s personal interpretation of Genesis 2, which is NOT Concordism, even though it seems more like concordism than even Alexander’s 3 examples of “Type C” concordism:

McKnight’s Interpretation of Genesis 2: "…understanding Genesis 2 as a figurative comparison of Adam as an allegorical Israel (in exile).
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[END OF BACKGROUND DISCUSSIONS]

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:heart:

Once again, there is some kind of weird projection going on about my motivations and emotional state when discussing all thing Genealogical Adam. I don’t have a dog in this fight. It is not a useful model for me personally. I don’t resonate with the approach to the Bible.That doesn’t mean I hate it and want to see it go down in flames.

“Moving beyond the meaning to the original audience and trying to understand what truth the text is teaching” is “application” or if you want a fancier word “contextualization” or for some people, “hermeneutics.” It’s a standard part of Evangelical Bible study. It’s not the same thing as “concordism” and I have no idea why you would think that. It’s answering the question “If this is the truth that was revealed to them, how do I live in light of it in my different time and place?” The “going beyond” has nothing to do with harmonizing with extra-biblical scientific or historical knowledge, it’s just acknowledging we have a different context

The original audience was not experiencing the story the way we are. They were not reading it, most likely, at least not in its current form (Genesis was composed/compiled over centuries and redacted), and their understanding was informed by a lot of background we don’t necessarily have access to.

Actually, this is a trouble point. You are right that it is not inherently “concordist” to say Adam and Eve were specially created from dust and a rib. It’s just literalist. But when you enlist science to back up your literalist interpretation, that counts as concordism in many people’s books. It works both ways -the “find concordance with science in the Bible” direction and the “find concordance with the Bible in science” direction.

Who is saying that, or hung up on that? Not me.

Yes. If we assume that ancients could manage figurative language as well as we can today, and there is no reason to believe they couldn’t. Do you have compelling evidence that ancient cultures could only understand origin stories as objective factual history? That’s the whole point of showing that Adam and Eve was a story about Israel. To show that it wasn’t understood “literally” but “literarily.”

Well, what counts as common sense from our modern Western perspective at least. Did you know in the Mixteca everyone knows there are foods that are inherently “hot” and foods that are inherently “cold” and it’s “common sense” which are which and “common sense” which you should never eat when you are pregnant or have a cold. How come we are so dumb we don’t know these obvious things?

To you. Again, that’s the point of a culturally contextualized hermeneutic, revealing what isn’t obvious to us, but would have been clear to the original audience.

Or in other words “doesn’t require understanding the context the text was produced in.” That doesn’t make an interpretation better in my book, it almost surely guarantees it is missing important things.

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@Christy

This is your key paragraph… and frankly, I can’t make heads or tails of it.

Some people might want to claim Genealogical Adam is Concordist … and if they do, they are wrong.

You wonder how weird “projection” gets thrown your way… and yet let’s inventory your objections:

1) It’s too literal for the Creationists; or do you mean it’s too literal for the Evolutionists, who are NOT our problem?

2) People will erroneously THINK it’s concordist. You mean… SOME Evolutionists will incorrectly think it’s concordist. Again, it’s not the Evolutionists who are our problem.

3) And your statement “find concordance with science in the Bible” vs. “find concordance with the Bible in science” is untenable - - IF our problem is with Creationists and not with Evolutionists.

When an health insurance salesman is trying to sell his health product to people who need it (this assumes that there are people who actually need the product) - - having someone interrupt the conversation by pointing out Millionaires don’t like Health Insurance is really not the point. Very few millionaires need health insurance of any kind.

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It’s too literal for me.

I don’t evaluate interpretations of Genesis based how palatable they are to Creationists or Evolutionists. I also don’t think Creationists are a “problem.”

What does your view on evolution have to do with whether or not you label an interpretation concordist?

Untenable? It’s not an argument, it’s a description. I didn’t make it up. I’m telling you how people use the word “concordism.” It’s not a “vs” situation, it’s an “and” situation. There aren’t “two sides to the corcordism debate” or something. People use the word “concordism” to describe both taking the Bible to be describing scientific truth and taking science to be supporting truth taught in the Bible. I’m not arguing that is what concordism should mean, I’m just telling you how the word is used.

I don’t understand your thinking process. I don’t understand why you think the label is “erroneous” or why you think evolutionists will have a different “concordism evaluation” than creationists. You realize that for creationists, concordism is a good and maybe even necessary thing and it is assumed that a good interpretation will be concordist? That flows naturally from the idea that you don’t need special insight into culture or context to understand the Bible (so “literal” interpretations are good) and that the Bible is inerrant in all it claims about history and science. If you are so concerned about championing GA to creationists you should be marketing it as concordist.

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I really think that Dr Robert Carter’s response was quite well nuanced, as well. The Big Tent ... and Genealogical Adam! - #141 by Randy

I wish he were here to clarify it.

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I don’t understand the contrast. While this type of language can be used a great rallying cry of Protestantism (the ‘plain sense’ is where it’s at!) how is telling people you don’t need any ANE knowledge- common sense will help you interpret the Bible a good idea?

It’s almost like telling people you guys can just look in the sky and figure out key ideas using common sense. Just don’t try to use special knowledge from telescopes or general relativity or anything.

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Last I heard, Joshua explicitly denied endorsing any position on origins.

In arguing before Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, Moses called the nation God’s “firstborn son” (Ex. 4:22), and upon that basis Israel came to view itself as collectively taking up the task of obedience and succeeding where ha’adam had failed. This was standard fare in Jewish theology of the time.

So, you’re suggesting that the original audience would have read/heard the story of the man’s creation from dust, his inability to find a suitable partner among the animals, and the subsequent creation of the woman, and then they would have speculated that it was not about the creation of the first humans. That doesn’t even pass the “smell test.”

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@Jay313

My apologies.

The intention in my mind was clear… but the words I chose did not honor my intentions. Let me re-phrase my original sentence which you quote in your posting above:

New, Revised, Version:
“Joshua says that science is not in a position to deny a supernatural event as obscure as God creating one man from dust, or as obscure as God creating one woman from a rib of one man.”

I think that will pass muster now!

My apologies to @Swamidass for being a little too cavalier in my prior wording! :smiley:

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Okay, how about this. As I understand it, Joshua is arguing that when it says Eve will “become the mother of all living” what that means is that 2,000 years later she will be the genealogical ancestor of everyone on earth. That meaning was accessible to no one until 2018 when Joshua explained genealogical science and Adam and Eve to the world. That’s concordism by most definitions. It is saying that the verse means something that could not possibly have been understood by the original audience, but some more advanced scientific understanding or construct later brings to light its truth.

@Jay313,

I am constantly amazed at how poorly you understand my viewpoints - - on most any topic.

In reference to your Pharaoh comments: Yes. Very nice. But if we are going to compare apples to apples, you seem to have missed my point:

To paraphrase, McKnight asserts that Genesis is a figurative story, allegorizing Israel (in exile) as the “first man” (in exile). And, further, that this allegory ESCAPES the status of Concordism because it is conceivable that the original readers of Genesis could have well had these very same thoughts. Fine.

And so, now I am asking the reader to do two things with Joshua’s scenario:

[1] Would the original reader of the first chapters of Genesis have likely wondered if the writer was implying that there were other humans that existed before Adam was miraculously created to tend God’s garden?

AND

[2] Would more readers have concluded that the first part of Genesis implied existence of pre-Adamite humanity …

OR, would there have been more readers who concluded that the first part of Genesis was an allegory about Judah in Exile?

In my own personal view, and partly due to McKnight’s own comments, a reader would not have needed any special knowledge of the mind set of the ANE and related world views in order to speculate: “Hey, if Cain had a son, and built a city, it sounds like there were other people around…” (rather than, hey, I wonder if this story about Adam is just a story to draw my attention to Judah’s future?/past? exile?).

@pevaquark

Until such time that @Swamidass is allowed to post his thoughts on BioLogos, he is responding to questions (as above) at my own thread at PeacefulScience:

​https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/disputing-charges-of-concordism-at-biologos/3833/3?u=gbrooks9

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George on PS:
“I wrote a few postings, with one specifically comparing many of the most widely known Concordist Views with Joshua’s work. It was a lot of investigations aggregated and boiled down into a single assessment! These posts attracted the responses of Ted Davis and some moderators.

LOL. That’s normally what happens when you start a post

and then tag Ted Davis. Don’t try and make it out like we are just lying in wait for you to mention Genealogical Adam so we can pounce on it.

To the contention that propping up literal interpretations with genealogical science is equivalent to propping up mythical interpretations with genetics science, I would say, sure, that is a fair thing to consider. Again, concordism is not a “charge” or an “accusation.” The question would be whether anyone is saying “genetic science is what makes this passage’s figurative meaning clear.”

I don’t think anyone is saying that. They are saying genetic science rules out a literal interpretation. To the extent that Joshua is saying genealogical science does not rule out a literal interpretation, I would not call that concordism, and I think of it in the same category as saying genetic science does not rule out a figurative interpretation. But if the argument is that it makes a literal interpretation or some extra layers of meaning clear (Eve becomes the mother of all living genealogically, what evolved pre-Adamite homo sapiens population gave birth to Cain’s wife) that is concordism.

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Not for lack of trying …

No. That’s my off-the-cuff answer.

The concept of “pre-Adamite humanity” is an oxymoron that would not have occurred to the original audience. It’s the equivalent of “pre-human humanity.” In other words, a nonsensical concept in their world (and ours).

This, again, is nonsensical. We’re discussing the original audience. Special knowledge of the mindset of the ANE? They were immersed in the worldview of the ANE. They were surrounded by ANE mythology. They were the ANE! All of these parallels to ANE mythology that we have to discover and decipher and study would have sprung immediately into their minds, just as the phrase “East of Eden” immediately brings cultural associations into our minds, whether of Genesis or James Dean.

As for your last question, I would guess that a community in exile would find a story about the first man and woman being exiled for disobedience quite relevant to their own lives, whereas the question about Cain and “other people being around” has almost no relevance or practical application, either then or now. Which do you think they cared most about?

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In preparing to lead a RC adult Confirmation class, I thought it very important to present a rational view of how the scientific treatment of natural phenomena (and especially of Origins) was in concordance with an enlightened interpretation of Genesis. Since joining in this BioLogos Forum, I realize I could have done a much better job. However, I found it difficult to follow the ‘back and forth’ discussions presented in this current thread; i.e. all the nuances that can be seen in definitions of the word “concordance”. Finally I was forced to ask: SO WHAT? How much practical application is there in the degree that modern science concords with Scripture? Obviously we would much rather that the Faith which guides our lives is not an insult to our intelligence ( which should be seen as a treasured Gift from our Creator.) So we should not make it more difficult than need be to live a life guided by a Faith that we can be comfortable with, but one which challenges us to meet the demands of universal love and empathy which raises humans above the level of purely animal life.

IMHO we should be grateful for the Jewish Scripture that is the foundation for our Christian Faith. It was the fruit of a long intellectual struggle to discern the nature of our Creator and what purpose He had in mind in creating us. It certainly was an improvement over the prevailing ANE worldview, and should rightly be considered as God-inspired. Of course, Christians believe that this inspiration was insufficient, and God found it necessary to send His Son, Jesus, to ‘perfect’ it. But the acceptance of Jesus’ message was not a ‘fait accompli’. Soon after Jesus’ death, Paul had the rather painful ‘inspiration’ that Jesus’ message was meant for the gentiles also. And the missionaries that carried it ‘to the far corners of the earth’ too often garbled it in the process.

Perhaps it is the result of an over-active ego, but I like to keep my mind and heart open to direct inspiration from my Creator. I like to think that the German grenade that busted my skull was meant to get my attention for a forthcoming message–something like the bolt of lightning that scripture describes as knocking Paul of his horse on the way to Damascus. Art least it ‘opened my mind’ so I was attentive when the message finally did arrive.
Al Leo

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@Christy,

Hmmmm… even when I parse the core of your discussion into separate points (that’s why I have appended [A], [B] & [C] next to your statements!), I really don’t see how you get from one point to the other. And I’ll show you what I mean by this:

Let’s suppose someone doesn’t think the Bible is literally true… and his real area of interest is, say, UFO’s and aliens! And without a smidge of commentary on this chapter or that verse … this fellow rights a whole book about aliens coming to Earth before the time of Solomon. And the book proposes that the kings of Israel were secretly endorsed and supported by Alien “powers”.

But he fills the book with real cosmological science… with estimates of where the most likely exo-planets could be found, and proposals for what kind of technology the aliens would have had to develop. Except for the “aliens” angle, … his book is chock full of real physics, real QM analysis, technology that is being explored by humans in the most advanced laboratories. BUTTTT … to save us all a little time, let me just end the scenario with “blah blah blah”!

Okay… is such a book about such a topic this Concordist? How could it be? He hasn’t proposed any interpretations of any verses … he hasn’t tried to integrate any of the story lines to any particular UFO patterns. But he talks about science being the answer to what happened 3000 years ago.

Frankly, I wouldn’t buy the book. But I also wouldn’t have the boldness to call it Concordist.

Every definition I’ve read on concordism focuses on just one thing: is the proposal trying to put technologically or scientifically “out-of-context” ideas and thinking into the minds of the biblical writers?

As you know, there are lots of people who look at what they think God would WANT us to discover in the Bible, so that, one day in this century, or in some future millenia, humans will be stunned to see that God’s book secretly had the information embedded in its most cryptic verses.

And rightly or wrongly, I think you and I would agree that this kind of thinking is Concordism. McKnight and Alexander consider attributing any kind of advanced science in the Bible to be one form of Concordism or another !!!

But accusing @Swamidass of making such attributions is just a pile of baloney. It’s a wrong-minded attempt to use “science” as a stick against a “scientist”.

@Swamidass’s scenario includes Genetic insights… and it includes Genealogical insights… but at no time does Joshua say these “discoveries” or “insights” were buried in the Bible’s texts just waiting for humanity to discover them.

Joshua uses only one premise buried in the Bible’s texts: he asks us to consider whether the original readers of the Bible might have considered the chapters of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were not about the very same time and place?

If there is no sensible reason to imagine that any of the original readers might have made such a consideration, then he is promoting concordism plain-and-simple. But any honest examination of the disparities between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and the events of Cain’s life (Genesis 4) would leave any normal reader into thinking something very strange is being described.

Frankly, there is no way to avoid that conclusion. And that is what makes Joshua’s proposal something OTHER than concordism.

In the quote I take from your posting, the last thing you say is:

“. . . if the argument [explains that] . . . Eve becomes the mother of all [the] living … [and that] pre-Adamite [humans] gave birth to Cain’s wife)… that is [C]oncordism.”

At this point you will object. You will object because I have removed the references to Genealogy and to Evolution. These are the scientific elements enlisted into the overall understanding. But that’s not where concordism lies. There is always modern science that can be examined.

Concordism comes from what we say is “embedded” in the text! And Joshua is nowhere near Concordism in this regard:

the scenario is built on two categories of facts:

  1. the minor, but still obvious, differences between how Genesis 1 describes Humanity’s arrival, and how Genesis 2 describe’s the arrival of a specific Man. Any writer worth his salt would have been able to write those chapters without triggering inconsistencies.

  2. and the less minor, and very obvious, lacunae on the issue of who Cain feared, who mothered his child, and who was living in this city he founded? Any writer worth his salt could have written chapter 4 without eliciting all these “problems”.

And so this is what makes Joshua’s proposals non-Concordist: these are not modern concerns super-imposed on ancient biblical text. These are concerns immediately apprehended in the ancient text, apparent to any adult reader.

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I am looking forward to his book.

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I want to thank @aleo for getting me to look at this paragraph more closely. I can see that I was remiss in not tackling this paragraph when I responded to another part of your post.

If I were going to make an educated hypothesis in response to your question, I would say that the author was very quietly showing that “the pitch” that the priests were making about the origins of humanity was somehow wrong.

If author of the first chapters of Genesis was trying to smooth over the issues, he would have done so by eliminating the points of suspicion. But what we see is a different kind of literary behavior. He smooths things out just enough that he can credibly tell the High Priest (or his minions): “look at how I tied these two different ideas together into a seamless narrative!”

It must have been a pretty big mess of different texts, or what he left wouldn’t have been considered acceptable. It must have already represented a lion’s share of changes … and so “the bosses” left it as the “harmonization” left it.

Or perhaps they were all the scribes were of one mind: they wanted it to look coherent and seamless to those who didn’t really understand Jewish legend and history … but for those with more intimate knowledge, they all knew what the little incongruences would tell the next generation.

Here’s an example from another culture: Why would any Romans want to see a ridiculous story about a she-wolf raising twins - Romulus and Remus?! What was the point of that story?

Well, the real point is that the upper crust Romans didn’t like the story the way they had originally heard it told: the term “she-wolf” was the Roman slang for prostitutes that served the port area. And if there were historical twins… they certainly didn’t want them growing up in a bordello.

So the unpleasant story got sanitized … with a ridiculous story that was charming enough that future generations were quite happy with it.

It would help if you would stop trying to find arguments in simple observations and descriptions. Your A, B, and C are not points intended to follow from one another. They are just observations.

Seriously? No, George, because he isn’t offering an exegetical interpretation of a Bible passage, he is writing a work of science fiction with biblical allusions.

Who would?

That is only one kind. The other kind finds scientific meaning in the text, even though the original writers didn’t know it at the time.

Yes, that is concordism.

Obviously not. No one is saying he’s getting scientific insight from the Bible. But if you say “Eve will become the mother of all living means at some point 2,000 years later, all humanity will be genealogically descended from her” isn’t that using modern scientific constructs to explain or add to biblical meaning? That is making the Bible concord with modern knowledge.

I’ll object because if you remove those things, you remove what is Joshua actually adding to the conversation. We know the text says Eve will become the mother of all living and lots of people have contended that Adam and Eve did not give birth to Cain’s wife. So what?

You should really read up on how most scholars believe Genesis was “written.” They don’t think a guy sat down with a quill and a papyrus one day and “wrote” the Genesis we have in our Bibles, that’s for sure.

:joy:

Make sure you convey this attitude toward Scripture when you are plugging your GA interpretation to your Creationist soon-to-be-converts. They’ll totally relate.

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