God's relationship to early humans

Faith & Science Conversation
61

Jon I think you express a key “hump” that’s difficult for us moderns to get around. For whatever reason it’s just very difficult for us to understand HOW different mindsets were in the past. We read stories of how the earth was carried on the shell of a turtle; how creation was made out of the dead carcasses of gods; and how many many acts of creation were described in very sexual acts (the Greeks being a prime example).

We see their stories and depictions and come to the conclusion that ancient people must have been totally insane. How could they believe the world was being carried by a giant turtle? Did they ever feel the earth rumble as the turtle was walking? What if the world slipped off the shell?

We think this way because of a huge disconnect in mindset. They did not express the world around them through purely material depictions — the stories explained who they were as a people, and how they viewed “ultimate reality”. Obviously orgies were some sort of sacred thing to the Greeks and so their pantheon of Gods reflect that reality. The Enuma Elish “god wars” and carcass-creations described how they viewed the world — bloody and cruel. Men were made to be slaves to kings and gods alike … not to have godlike qualities of conscience moral decision making.

-Tim

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Bingo! Once one understands, of course, one can critique - and decide why following the God of Israel makes more sense than Marduk and his gang.

I find myself wondering whether, if we worked harder at this, we’d be better able to communicate the gospel with, say, hunter-gather peoples without insisting they share take our modern mindset too, thus often committing them to second-class citizenship when they get throughly confused.

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@Jon_Garvey
@TimothyHicks

To continue the theme of strange religious practices and 'worldviews;, it is interesting to contemplate on the ubiquitous spiritual/religious content of all cultures (at least all that I know of) in ancient times, and yet how cruel and perhaps insane many of them were - the discussions in BioLogos on the ‘fall of mankind’ does not regard this historic act worthy of consideration (perhaps the obsession with biological evolution/diversity seems to have developed a blind spot). Yet we may wonder why so much sin and perverse beliefs are found during such times - and in the most advanced civilisations. The so called primitive races seem to have developed a nature based spirituality, although I am not well versed on the level of cruelty and perversity some of them contained.

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I seek to help lead the charge on the specific discussion of what this so-called ‘Fall’ really means.

There is a traditional view that Adam was PERFECT before the ‘fall’. But Adam was not immortal at the
time - - only eating from the Tree of Life would extend his life forever. Adam clearly was NOT perfect…
just look at his (and Eve’s) decision making process!

ALL of material creation is imperfect … all of material creation is and was in a Fallen state - - because
only the Divine is Perfect. The need for imperfect humanity REQUIRES the atonement and the bridge
that the Son represents.

George Brooks

65

The fall is another way of referring to Genesis and the choice made by Adam and Eve - I do not see any reason to elaborate or create a lengthy narrative besides that in Genesis. The questions posed by some in this forum are related to what may happen to a single pair (Adam and Eve) in opposition to some type of prolonged evolution of various pre-humans, and if the matter is confined to a specific male and female, how would this be transmitted to all of humanity.

My comment(s) is to turn this thinking ‘up side’, by pointing out that throughout recorded history we see clear data showing religious practices that are consistent with a fall, or a turning away from God and into cruel and insane superstitions.

The universe and the earth were created by God who approved the creation by declaring it good. This has nothing to do with perfection or immortality. Once sin entered the creation, humanity made choices contrary to God’s will and all creation has suffered as a result of this.

It would be wise for all of us to be better acquainted with the teachings of the Church, especially during the early centuries.

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Dear GJ…

And what would this “clear data” be for showing that there was a TURNING AWAY from God?

Even in the idealized story of Eden, conflict with Deity appears to be the NORMAL nature of
humanity… essentially from the very beginning!

As far as I can see, the phrase “The Fall” is a fairly late Christian apologetic… the Hebrew
does not use the phrase “The Fall”.

By definition, if we are not God, we exist in a “fallen” state - - but figuratively speaking. The Fall
would have been much more significant if we had been created Divine to begin with.

George Brooks

67

I have mentioned all of recorded history; Cronos who ate his children because a witch prophesied one of his sons (Zeus) would overthrow him, Egyptian pharaohs who believed they were gods and the entire reason for the Egyptian people was to prepare tombs from which they would cross over to whatever, Babylonian religions (Marduk and his mob), Roman emperors declaring themselves gods … this is history which shows how far these civilisations were removed from worshiping God, and understanding the creation was made good.

The term “The Fall” is merely a phrase used to refer to these results that had the genesis in Adam and Eve.

68

I have started a new thread on the phrase “The Fall”.

The book cited says the Hebrew interpreted Genesis as an EXILE, rather than a FALL.

I know that sounds a little bit like a quibble … but this is what I think creationists are
doing with Genesis - - quibbling over a nonsensical application of Hebrew lyric thought.

George Brooks

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It is difficult trying to decipher what our ancestors thought and believed some 40,000 yrs ago. Paleoanthropologists must depend on some hard evidence that survives. I go along with Ian Tattersall who was very impressed with the polished ivory beads left with a burial–grave goods that took an estimated 3,000 hours to craft. That is about as hard evidence of a belief in an afterlife as one is likely to acquire. This is part of the Great Leap Forward that also produced magnificent cave art, music, and most important, language. Why not pick the GLF as the ‘moment’ to celebrate humanity’s first communication with its Creator, Angelo?
Al Leo

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70

@Jon_Garvey

I thought you’d be interested in this!

@Ian_Panth posted a link to his email interview with J.T. Wright

In Wright’s answer, he referenced the “Temple”:

". . . in any case only a very wooden-minded reader would suppose that Genesis 1
referred to six 24-hour days. The great irony of all this is [:]
(a) the six-day creationists routinely miss the main points that Genesis 1 was written
to teach, particularly the creation of the heaven/earth world as a TEMPLE in which
God dwells and is represented visibly by his image, i.e. humans, the
‘royal priesthood’; [IP – see John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One]. . . "

Notice the 3 different ways of parsing this?

ONE:
Your position is that Genesis presents the Cosmic Temple (not a real cosmos)

    • and that this has nothing to do with the truth of Young Earth Creationism (< Jon, did
      I get that right? You are a Young Earther? My apologies if I misunderstood you. In
      any case, there must be SOMEONE who holds this view.)

TWO:
Wright’s position is that Genesis presents the Temple (not a real cosmos)

    • and only a wooden-minded reader would think Genesis is speaking about
      literal 24 hour days.

THREE:
My position is that Genesis may have intended to veil references to
a Cosmic Temple, but the writer ALSO wanted the reader to believe
the Cosmos really was built quickly and not a long time ago.

George Brooks

71

I’m pretty sure Jon isn’t a Young Earther.

In any case, George, does it seem odd to you as a Christian, that you would prefer Position #3 — a view that puts Genesis 1 more in the realm “inspired … But also containing many falsehoods” over Position #1 (inspired, containing next to no falsehoods, because it wasn’t trying to teach physical sciences.)…

Just some thoughts! I have to go here in a second but I’ll come back on later!

-Tim

72

@TimothyHicks,

I suppose it seems paradoxical. But my view of the writings of the Old Testament (especially) God did not

    • and could not - - teach the scribes views about the world that harmonized so well with Sumerian and
      Babylonian world views. He/She/It just wouldn’t do that.

So, prima facie, parts of Genesis are man-made fiction. Secondly, I’m not overly convinced that
Genesis ‘veiled’ a Cosmic Temple any more than I think Sumerian or Babylonian scribes ‘veiled’
a Cosmic Temple. But it is easy enough for someone to DESCRIBE it as such.

Do we LITERALLY think Rainbows didn’t exist until after a world-wide flood? Prima facie, this is
a fiction - - a beautiful fiction . . . but a fiction nevertheless.

George

73

Hi George

Best to read N T Wright’s chapter in John Walton’s recent book, where he endorses Walton, Middleton and Beale - three of my main sources on Genesis, though several others helped develop my understanding of ancient mindsets) Or actually, you could read pretty well any of his theology, which is very much of wholecloth. But you’ve missed out the way I understand his position - that Genesis presents the real cosmos as a real temple, and that it’s still a valid way to look at it, and will become even more so when Christ returns.

What I’m not specifically clear on is the extent to which he thinks it’s an account of physical creation as well - Walton has been criticised for “excluding the material world”, but much of that, I’m sure, is because his critics fail to esape the modern worldview. and assume that physical = scientific. They make a false distinction, but some things Walton says encourages them, as I think he’s slightly ambivalent - so maybe Wright is too. for all I know…

In that reagard you’ve still completely misunderstood my position (well, Wright is a better writer and still takes several books to explain it). I’m not a young earther - since the only reason to be one is taking Genesis materialistically I doubt there are many YECs who accept its temple-centredness.

I haven’t at all said that Genesis 1 is not about the real cosmos. I’ve been arguing all along that to say “the real cosmos” can only mean “the material fabric of the cosmos” is to play the scientism game, and to recognise only either “hard facts” or “imaginary symbols”. But the temple imagery is not “symbolic” of some material reality: it’s another way of seeing the reality.

Genesis 1, I hold, is about the real cosmos as Temple. That’s the reality they saw - which doesn’t mean they failed to notice rocks, seas, stars or bats, but that what was important about them was their role as temple furnishings or worshippers, not how they were made.

So it’s not that if you went and told Moses or whoever that animals really evolved, and that the world is actually a round ball of rock, that they’d protest that God made them miraculously and the world is a flat disk with a hard sky. They’d more likely look blank and ask why you were so concerned about building materials rather than worshipping in the temple.

I don’t think I’m far from Wright on that (and I’m getting pretty close to him on his views on the NT, too!).

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@Jon_Garvey,

If Write says only a block head believes Genesis is about real 24 hour days of creation . . . that would suggest
Wright doesn’t even think the writer of Genesis took his own writing to mean 24 hour days.

My spin? I think the scribe said: "I don’t know for sure how long God took to do these things . . . but if I were
God, this is how I would have done it … "

George

75

Why is it harder to imagine God speaking in the mindset of an ancient culture if it’s conceivable for him to speak in ours? First rule of communication: it’s impossible to communicate at all outside the medium of a culture. Our job is to understand that culture, rather than imposing our own on its texts, and then we might just hear God speak.

Worldviews are not necessarily “right” or “wrong” - they just have different perspectives. Since ANE culture was particularly concerned about religion, it was especially well-suited to God’s desire to reveal himself… which may not be coincidental, though as I said, if he wanted to make sense at all that’s the language he would use.

But the literalist in you is still strong, George - since Genesis does not literally say that there were no rainbows before the Flood, there seems no reason to care about what we literally think about the matter. There were, after all, bread and wine aplenty in the world before Jesus said “This is my body and blood”. And circumcision was practised by the Egyptians before it became the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant.

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@Jon_Garvey,

I don’t really know how to categorize your views. You seem to favor writing Apologia for the errors of the old ones.

Instead of saying the Scribes were wrong about Rainbows, you seem to insist that the Scribes were just
using FANCY TALK about the Rainbows… and that they didn’t really believe God created rainbows after the Flood.

Well . . . I would agree with that . . . as long as you don’t also say “And they were “mysteriously correct”
about Rainbows. too!”

They wrote about a domed earth because that’s all they could imagine. The wisest men on earth, for centuries
before them said this was the best answer. So they wrote it down that way too.

George

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@aleo That’s really cool! Thanks for the reply :smile:

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Well George, I guess some of it is to do with attitude.

Somebody tells me some news - do I assume that he’s probably lying until I can get proof, or that he’s probably telling the truth until I have specific reasons to doubt him?

That is doubly important when the guy telling me stuff is the same guy that Jesus based his teaching on.

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79

For a scholarly discussion of the “firmament” (and Genesis in general), see Robert Alter’s Genesis: Translation and Commentary
or Denis Lamoureux’s Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution

Both are excellent.

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You wrote, "I suppose it seems paradoxical. But my view of the writings of the Old Testament (especially) God did not

    • and could not - - teach the scribes views about the world that harmonized so well with Sumerian and
      Babylonian world views. He/She/It just wouldn’t do that."

Not sure what you mean by this? God would not, could not, teach the scribes views that harmonized with Israel’s neighbors? In what way are they harmonized together? They seem quite different to me.

You wrote, “Instead of saying the Scribes were wrong about Rainbows, you seem to insist that the Scribes were just
using FANCY TALK about the Rainbows… and that they didn’t really believe God created rainbows after the Flood.”

I don’t think there’s anything in the text that says that the appearance of the rainbow was the first time a rainbow came into existence. It says, “This is a token…” Elsewhere in the Bible it says, when it talk about tokens, it’s talking about things that have already existed. Circumcision was already in existence … The text doesn’t even define what circumcision is, but it assumes the reader already knows what it is. Jesus says the same thing with bread and wine… They are tokens / symbols. What’s going on in the next is that the rainbow has been given new MEANING, not that the rainbow is it’s first appearance. Same with the bread and wine … They gained new meaning as a symbol of remembrance for what God did for us. The Garden of Eden has four rivers… These can’t exist without rain. In Genesis 1, plants grow but no rain is mentioned.

I don’t think the Hebrews were ignorant over basic things like plants needing water, or rivers coming from rain or from off of mountains. Maybe the shape of the earth, at that point in time wasn’t clear, but like Jon was saying, they had more important questions to ask … Why am I here and what’s my purpose?

I also don’t think that the Hebrews were ignorant of evening and morning resulting from the sun … Yet sun doesn’t come into being until after three “days”. They weren’t describing how old the earth really took to make in the scientific sense. It’s theological messaging.

@Jon_Garvey

You wrote, “So it’s not that if you went and told Moses or whoever that animals really evolved, and that the world is actually a round ball of rock, that they’d protest that God made them miraculously and the world is a flat disk with a hard sky. They’d more likely look blank and ask why you were so concerned about building materials rather than worshipping in the temple.”

Wonderfully stated. I agree.

-Tim