The point of Scripture is to promote faith. To get you on the right path. It is not a life guide, or something you have to keep going back to. Once you have found your faith. Once you understand what Jesus did and what it means. There is no need to go back to Scripture. You can finish off your life on earth in communion with God. Scripture has done its job!
Why are people fussing over Scripture? It is dangerous!. You can loose the faith you found. You can convince yourself that Scripture did not say what you thought, and then it is a domino crash.
@adamjedgar who are you trying to convince. Us or yourself? Who looses? Especially if your convictions about the truth of Genesis are finally overturned? You continually claim that it will kill the Gospel. For who? You!
@St.Roymond, why do you need to keep studying Scripture? To show off? To teach? To reprimand?
What more do you need to know? what benefit do you gain by intellectual knowledge or finding the “perfect” translation? Pride maybe? Superiority? Who benefits? Certainly not me!
If the intention is to help others to find Christ you need to start from where they are, not from a place of authority or dogma. Setting a straightjacket serves no purpose.
Scripture was never meant to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be. It meets people where they are , but everyone here is convinced that, not only is there one way to read it, but they have it! And there is no other way to Christ!
vanity, vanity!
If there is one thing I have learned as a Preacher it is:
You cannot convert people. Not by argument, and certainly not by Bible bashing.
People have to make up there own minds. You give them as much information as possible, but both (or more) sides. You can explain why you believe something but you cannot insist that is the only answer. There is a point where intellect and knowledge fails.
And insisting on any specific understanding is a sure far way to get people’s backs up.
I think as a fact-literal Westerner, it is drilled into my head that “didn’t happen” means it isn’t real and it’s made up/fake. So yes, also as one who spent decades watching people argue for and against the historicity of Biblical stories this colors my judgment. We are condition to this. But I do understand:
the Bible is hardly concerned with history
Genre is important.
Narrative itself is immensely important.
Parables, poetry, myth, all important.
I do not demote these things and I would like to make it clear my issues ar not the same as Adam’s. He mentioned only a literal Genesis. My comments are about all of Biblical history which has no real claim to history either…
If the Exodus isn’t real, meaning God never actually delivered Israel from Egypt, there is a lot to lose. In fact, God is falsely seen taking credit for this in the OT a ton of times. (see Judges 2:1, 1 Sam 10:18 and dozens more). If you search Egypt in the Bible there are a LOT of verses where God is claiming to have saved Israel. If this is “fake” and made up it is absolutely and unequivocally inferior to God actually saving Israel and not lying or having some Biblical authors lie and say he did. A fictional story of someone saving someone else is certainly inferior to that actually happened. And taking credit for it if it didn’t is pretty despicable. Jesus is the Passover Lamb for an event that never happened? Matthew presents Jesus as a new and greater Moses–a literary figure that is mostly fiction if he ever existed? The same fictional character of Moses, along with Elijah, Jesus talks to during his transfiguration?
You can make that claim and I won’t disagree. But the whole Bible and any claim to inspiration falls apart when we start viewing the main events of salvation history as fictional. We also lose all the context for Jesus.
God actually calling Abraham, a fall actually occurring, the Exodus, Moses and the Law, etc., there are some really important events in the Bible where treating them as theological fiction has serious consequences. It should be noted is as far as the Bible goes, it makes no difference between Adam, Moses, David, Noah, etc., they were all real figures who existed in the past.
In this very same passage Paul ties Jesus to Adam: " 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.[d] 21 For since death came through a human, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human, 22 for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 23"
Part of his argument, where you claim the scriptures are clear is making sure Jesus saved us from the sin/death of Adam. The is why the resurrection is so important. The same figure that shows up in the Lucan genealogy (which is theological) as a real person and of course Romans 5.
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned— 13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. 15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
It is a bit ironic because since no one actually died from the fictional, made up Adam, Paul’s argument loses its entire thrust. “Accommodation” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, maybe more than it should be. Jesus is the antidote to a poison that never existed? This isn’t accommodation. This is Paul just making mistakes based on an incorrect view of the world.
For most models of inspiration, and for most Christians, if Jesus and other Biblical authors treat most of these people and events as real, I can’t fault Christians for following suit. There are certainly valid concerns about Gen 1-11, Job, Jonah, etc…but I’d guess most Christians probably aren’t willing to correct Jesus on anything.
So this is not an issue of genre. The issue is the accounts look like reports of events that happened and Jesus, the NT and 1st century Jews mostly all agreed. Jesus is presented in that story and he fulfills a lot of it which appears to prefigure Him. Once we toss that, the Bible starts losing its magic for many Christians. There is certainly a lot of myth in the OT. But my point from the beginning is this is a difficult issue. We need a lot more than tossing out the word “accommodation.”
Scripture brings life because it teaches us about Jesus and God who give life and use scripture as a tool to mediate it…Scripture is useful for teaching etc. And how many lifetimes will it take to understand what Jesus did and what that means? How many lifetimes to understand my faith? I’m not there yet.
I read it to grow closer to God and to improve myself. For some of us, this requires studying and learning and dealing with our doubts. We are also called to preach the gospel.
And I definitely never found you because you are the first Christian to tell me to stop reading and studying God’s word!
It is something when you think about the rational possibility of solipsism and its possible connection to our fallen condition. Especially when the temptation was to be like God and the serpent used the plural pronoun. Similiar to how non-dualists like Sam Harris say, “we are all capable of it.”
It’s a big mental hurdle for a lot of people doing ANE studies to make the jump to the entirely different worldview back then. I still have to remind myself of the characteristics of various ancient literary genres every now and then, resorting to checklists of differences, because the ways of thinking are so different as to be alien.
The first and third overlap in an important way: narrative form does not mean the content is history. It’s critical to recognize that given the all-too-common argument “it looks like history, so it is”.
Yes. And the flip side of that is that even if not all Israelites (or their ancestors) took part in the Exodus that does not detract from the reality that a core did.
But note how Adam is contorted to be the foil for Christ. Paul doesn’t use the language of heredity, since that wouldn’t work for Christ (we aren’t made alive through being Jesus’ biological descendants). Instead, Adam is this human that includes all humans. We die in Adam, not simply because of Adam or because we’re Adam’s kin. We are in Adam the same way we can be in Christ. Paul is not talking biology!
This symbolic use of Adam makes Mervin’s point: the Christ event is key, and everything else is shaped around it to better illuminate it – even Adam.
It doesn’t fall apart because Adam is symbolic, not merely made up. The man Adam often functions in the New Testament the same as the woman Church. Even though Jesus never actually married a woman named Church, the passages that talk about Church as Christ’s bride still work. Church is symbolic of something real – a real collection of real people.
It’s the same with Adam. In Genesis Adam means humanity, and I don’t think this is lost on Paul. Adam stands for humanity, so Paul’s argument doesn’t lose its thrust because humanity really does exist.
For Paul, especially in 1 Corinthians 15, Adam functions the opposite of a literal historical character. Rather than being someone else we can finger as the culprit to escape the blame, this Adam is us. Paul uses Adam to make the argument personal: if it’s about Adam, it’s about us. His “death came from a human… all die in Adam” is not much different than Nathan’s “a rich man took a lamb… that man is you!”
Some think Genesis 1 and the Bible uses ancient cosmogony and believed in a 3 tiered cosmos but they also want to deny that Paul believed in a literal Adam? This seems like special pleading to me as this was the main Jewish belief at the time and the “biology” of the day when tracing ancestry backwards. You think Paul actually believed God made a world with death in it before Adam’s sin? His words say otherwise. Adam represents us all but Adam is very much real— as real as Jesus was to Paul.
Enns writes:
I also treat Paul as a literalist about Adam because the issue, as I see it, isn’t how he handles his Bible. Rather, the issue is what we can reasonably assume of Paul as an ancient person thinking about human (and cosmic) origins.
It seems most defensible–least complicated–to see Paul as an ancient person (duh) who simply accepted as a natural course of events that, if all babies (animal or human) came from the union a male and female, then working backwards you’d have to conclude that somewhere back in primordial time God made the first two humans capable of procreation.
That is the biblical scenario in Genesis and in antiquity as a whole, and Paul accepted it in due course as a base point for discussion.
Adam is a literal, historical character. Just as there was a literal, solid metal slab in the sky to the author of Genesis 1, there was a literal Adam to Paul. Somehow we participate in Adam’s sin and experience his punishment. I’m not buying that Paul just uses a fictional character who never existed as a literary foil.
In Romans 5:
14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
You think Paul didn’t view Moses and the Law as historical? I would say he did and viewed Adam the same way. This is a weird argument to weave from a non-existent, fictional character to Moses, a real one— and talk about the Law and sin before Moses and how death reigned for even those who did not break a command like Adam. None of this works with a purely literary Adam to me.
We can still salvage parts of Paul due to Adam representing us all but it’s still incorrect on Paul’s part if Adam did not exist.
Whatever it originally meant does not necessarily apply to Paul hundreds or thousands of years later when we have genealogies going back to Adam and historian’s like Josephus reconstructing history to Adam. That “humanity” also had kids with specific names in the story as well… this is a tough sell. Since Adam was the first human it’s fitting his name would mean humanity. That doesn’t tell us much.
14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
I didn’t hear @Marshall talking about Paul’s assumptions or presuppositions regarding these things, had we been there to press him on this specific question (of Adam’s historicity). So I don’t think anybody’s “pleading” anything here. We’re talking about what Paul did with Adam, using him as a symbol for humanity. Whatever his shared cultural assumptions were - nobody has any reason to believe they would have been much [any] different from any other Jews at the time. They almost would certainly have believed the earth was stationary back then too - and would no doubt have made use of that fact (as the Psalmist actually did) to draw comparisons between that and the dependability of God. If you were to go back and question them about that - would their probable answers (“Of course the earth doesn’t move!”) then defeat the point of that particular scripture in your eyes?
The fact that we now may know more about some of these things than the writers who made use of them does not have any impact on their usage of them for the lessons they were aiming for.
That’s hard to say, actually. I know that as far back as the eighth century Jewish scholars recognized that the second Creation story wasn’t necessarily literal, so it might reach back to second-Temple Judaism. It might be an interesting rabbit trail to pursue, but it isn’t really relevant; the important aspect is the meaning Paul assigns.
True, and that’s a point that N.T. Wright makes when he says it doesn’t matter when Genesis was written, what matters in terms of the New Testament is how it was read in second-Temple Judaism.
It couldn’t be, for reasons already explained. I would put it that spiritual death followed the trespass, and physical death followed from spiritual death.
I think you need to distinguish between study and obsession.
And you do not know this already?
Teaching who? Those who are in need of Christ or just those who disagree with you?
No, it can be summed up in one phrase. He died for Our Sins.
Really? You talk like a committed Christian. You seem to be trying to teach. Or are you following John Wesley’s “Preach fait until you find it.”
All I am asking is that you understand why you need to keep studying Scripture. If it is just out of sense of obligation or following instruction then maybe you are doing it for the wrong reason.
If your faith is that fragile you should not “risk” it in Biblical discussion… It it isn’t as fragile as you are claiming then there are vanity issues you need to confront.
secular world view? What secular worldview…I am not Darwinian, you are (“Pot calling Kettle black” going on here)
You need to cite references please I already know your personal opinion on what you think it should be recorded as, however, the fact is, it was not recorded the way you claim.
The interlinear texts i quoted prove you intentionally changed the autograph to suit your own opinion (which is driven by your own evolutionary beliefs)
I don’t quote Hebrews because that discussion has already been had on these forums. Your incorrect rebuttal the Hebrews is that death is spiritual and that salvation is spiritual. Hebrews by itself leaves this door open. However, Luke 17 and 2 Peter 2 are very specific and very clear…these are not spiritual events!
i do not follow how you continue to make this claim. The text did not change (you have no evidence that it changed). You are trying to force the idea that a cultural oral tradition, reciting the Torah suffered as a result of Chinese whispers and changed. Im sorry but that is nonsense…we have consistently shown ( undeniably proven actually) in the Majority vs Critical Text debate, that the reverse is true of the Bible. the autograph has not changed. One only has to cross reference the two Testaments with each other to debunct your theory there.
The above is nothing more than a matter of opinion driven by modern evolutionary belief.
interesting comment that…how many “Christians” were persecuted BEFORE the emperor Constantine came on the scene and converted to Christianity stopping the genocide?
That is your habit…not mine. I do not place science in the mix. The bible is historically accurate because of its internal consistency…not because a secular scientist says so. The ancient Hitites are point and example.Secularists claimed that biblical culture was a fairytale “scientifically and historically false” they said…until archeology stumbled across irrefutable evidence of the Hittites proving beyond any doubt the Biblical account!
The entire story of Christ is pointless without a valid reason for it. The importance of historicity is obvious because if the entire story is just that, a story, then so is the outcome…its nothing more than fiction. The bible goes to a great deal of trouble to include names, dates, times, places, events, outcomes…in my view, these are far too specific to be only for the purposes of some moral principle.
We need saving because of exactly what Romans says “the wages of sin is death”. Sin came into this world through Adam. Christ died physically on the Cross to pay the wages of Sin. These are not allegories…christ didn’t need to die physically in order to spiritually save us…he could have died spiritually and had no physical interaction. The physical interaction and death of Christ actually proves Genesis is literal…a creator God bending down close and physically “breathing the breath of life into the nostrils of Adam, who then became a living soul”.
Is it to prove the prophecies pf the Old Testament?
Or is it to demonstrate God’s Love and forgiveness?
Does God forgive because of Christ’s sacrifice? or
Do we know God’s forgiveness because He demonstrated it with Christ’s sacrifice!
I hope you can see the difference.
Why does the cohesion of Scripture matter to you? Does your faith rely on it? Or does God need it?
It is you who is putting constraints on God by insisting on a specific view of Scripture. Why can’t you use Scripture the way it is intended instead of making it a lynch pin to faith?
Fine, it is your view. But why mut it be mine, or anyone else’s?
Is God so legalistic that He will only forgive those who fully conform to all the minutia? Who is limiting God?
You are trying to use Scripture in a way it was never intended. Not by God!
You have taken a gift from God and turned it into a complicated lock and key.
God does not forgive because we believe.
God forgives. We need to believe it.
But we do not need to believe it to make it happen, we just need to believe it to understand that it is there.
Scripture is Gods advert. It is not God’s Entry exam that we must pass.
Richard
PS don’t forget your pin number for God.gov to make sure He know its you being forgiven not some insincere imposter. And have you set up you secondary biometric log in check? Can’t be too careful when dealiing with God’s forgiveness.!
That Paul uses Adam as a symbol for humanity does not negate the physical reality of Adam or the consequences of his sin that Paul lays out and clearly believes in. He is a man as sure as Jesus is in Paul’s view. Adam brought physical death into the world. Jesus’s resurrection shows how God conquered death and will stop the sin of Adam. His argument makes little sense as written, otherwise.
Derek Kinder: Genesis an Introduction
On its historicity two things should be said. First, the New Testament assumes it and argues from it, making the first Adam as literal as the last, whose genealogy is indeed traced back to him in Luke 3:23ff. According to Romans 5:18, 19; 1 Corinthians 15:20, 21, Adam was ‘one man’, and his sin ‘one trespass’, as factual as the cross and resurrection. But secondly, granted this historicity, it may still be an open question whether the account transcribes the facts or translates them: i.e. whether it is a narrative comparable to such a passage as 2 Samuel 11 (which is the straight story of David’s sin) or to 2 Samuel 12:1–6 (which presents the same event translated into quite other terms that interpret it).
The doctrine latent in the chapter, that ‘sin came into the world through one man and death through sin’ (Rom. 5:12, RSV), emerges in sharp focus only in the New Testament. The Old Testament uses the story little, though it witnesses to man’s bondage; it has the materials of the doctrine but has not formulated it. Jewry, on the other hand, knows and rejects it. According to Isidore Epstein, ‘Judaism denies the existence of original sin … True, the idea that the sin of Adam had brought death on all mankind is not unknown in Jewish teaching, but the reference is invariably to physical death, and is not to be confused with the spiritual death from which in Christian doctrine none can be saved except through faith in the risen Saviour. Man can therefore achieve his own redemption by penitence …’ 24
There is a lot more to be said on this issue, however. See below:
8th century? Might as well be on another planet. The genealogy in Luke is enough for me along with Josephus’s antiquity of the Jews and Paul’s statements and the rest of the NT to settle the issue. Adam became (or was) a literal figure by the 1st century regardless of how the story initially started.
They didn’t subscribe to platonic dualism way back then. This is an example of reading material into the text. Jesus bodily rose from the dead. The first fruits of the general resurrection. Paul is arguing: How can you say the dead are not raised? He is not saying their mere spirit lives on. Jesus conquered death on the Cross and that is part of why Paul expected his return shortly after. The death that was a result of Adam’s sin that got humans kicked out of the garden and God’s presence where they were going to never see death.
If you read Genesis in its original context, physical death is probably more strongly preferred but it’s probably referring to the totality of the human, whatever that was at the time. In Paul’s time belief in the spirit/soul had developed significantly from when Genesis was written/combined into a single narrative. Back then the spiritual/physical aspect of humanity was not as popular or as much of a thing. Reading a soul or spiritual death back into the green would be like an account that only said “Jesus rode to Jerusalem” and an exegete imagining he did so in a car. It is an anachronism.
So I suppose Paul means more than just physical death but it’s just referring to the conception of the whole human in that case. The fall brought about physical (and spiritual death for humans) from a canonical perspective. Trying to make this only spiritual death is eisegesis and ad hoc apologetics.
In fact, in context this whole Garden story may have originally been something entirely different:
Bill Arnold: Genesis Coimmentr
Our answer must therefore come from elsewhere. The power of snake-imagery in the ancient world cannot be denied. Serpents were noted for their wisdom, protection, healing, and knowledge of death.125 The serpent’s ability to produce venom meant it was a threat to life, and paradoxically its ability to slough off its own skin seemed to give it the ability to renew life. Among the several ways in which snakes and snake-like creatures came to be worshipped in religions of the ancient Near East, one was as part of the Canaanite fertility cult that later Israelite prophets condemned.126 One possibility is that the mythological figure behind the serpent is Canaanite Baal, appearing in the form most tempting to ancient Israel, that of a serpent.127 In this theory, the Garden of Eden reflects an old Canaanite myth of a sacred grove, with a tree of life, living waters, guardians at the entrance, and especially a serpent. Thus it is possible an ancient story has been demythologized in order to expose the real nature of Canaanite Baalism, and not only to expose it, but to universalize the experience for all Israel so that obedience to Yahweh’s voice and repudiation of Baalism becomes paramount for all. It may be objected that such a reading runs counter to the explicit assertion of v. 1 that the serpent was one of the creatures “that the Lord God had made.”128 How can the serpent represent the archenemy of true faith when it is explicitly introduced as created by God? But the objection misses the symbolic transformation of the Canaanite mythology. God has created everything, including even the insidious serpent, which some unenlightened Israelites are tempted to follow. The transformation is profound because the serpent has no special powers beyond his ability to lie, trick, and confuse. But even these powers are only available to him when standing (or slithering) before humans. Before God himself, his answer will be one of resolute silence (3:14–15).
We also have to contend with:
What Genesis meant in it most ancient context as possibly thwarting Baal or Canaanite myths.
What Genesis came to mean over time and especially around the exile when it was out together
What Genesis means around the first century in the time of Paul (100% Adam is now seen as a real human) and Jesus.
What our canonical interpretation says when we look at all of scripture.
Then we need to evaluate that in light of science.
We also have to contend with the fact that Genesis consists of multiple sources that are sometime at odds with one another or themselves:
Hamilton: Word BC Genesis.
Those who embrace the theory of two sources (P [1:1-2:4a and 5: 1ff.] and J [2:4b-4:26]) in these five chapters are faced with the interesting use of ʾāḏām by P first in a generic sense (1:26—27), then as a proper name (5:1). If indeed P once existed as a separate document, the shift in meaning of ʾāḏām from 1:26— 27 to 5:1 would be decidedly jarring. For why would the author use the same word in back-to-back positions to convey two radically different concepts?
He does propose a solution to it. But here is Kidner:
The full implications of the warning, thou shalt surely die (AV, RV), will slowly unfold to the last pages of the New Testament. They are briefly discussedat 3:7; meanwhile it may be pointed out that these words do not necessarily imply that man was not naturally mortal. God ‘alone has immortality’ (1 Tim. 6:16, RSV), and the presence of the tree of life in the garden indicates that if man is to share the boon it must be an added gift. As R. Martin-Achard has put it: ‘Before the Fall, between Adam and death, which is part of his natural lot as an element in his human heritage, there stands the Living God; His presence is sufficient to ward death off …’.19 The translation of Enoch, ‘that he should not see death’ (Heb. 11:5), perhaps illustrates what God had prepared for man.
Many accept that death will happen soon to Adam is th correct interpretation but some like Walton argue that death could be interpreted as occurring over time as well or there is even another issue:
Hamilton: Word Biblical Commentary Genesis
The last part of v. 17 reads literally “in the day of your eating from it dying you shall die,” understanding the infinitive absolute before the verb to strengthen the verbal idea. We have already encountered the phrase beyôm (lit., “in the day”) followed by the infinitive construct in 2:4—“When Yahweh God made…” Here in 2:17 we have translated it as as surely as on the basis of its occasional use as an idiom meaning “for certain,” as in 1 K. 2:37, 42, where Shimei is threatened with death “on the day you go forth and cross the brook Kidron.” As the next few verses indicate, Shimei could not possibly have been executed “on the day” he exited his house. The verse is underscoring the certainty of death, not its chronology.325 Again, Pharaoh’s words to Moses, “in the day you see my face you will die” (Exod. 10:28), mean that if he values his life he ought not to seek a further conference with Pharaoh, or else Moses will be no more.
The traditional translation could be retained, however, by taking the phrase môṯ tāmûṯ (infinitive absolute followed by a finite form of the verb) to mean you are doomed to die, that is, a deferred penalty. The verse is concerned not with immediate execution but with ultimate death. The problem with this interpretation is that “doomed to die” forces on môṯ tāmûṯ a meaning that is not patently observable. Obviously Adam and Eve did not die when they ate of the tree. Thus, in what we consider a poor reading of the text, D. R. G. Beattie wonders why Satan is punished for telling the truth (they did become like God) and exposing God’s lie (they did not die)!326 Others have suggested that God does not carry out his death penalty against Adam and Eve but rather withholds it as an indication of his grace.327 Yet another alternative is that 2:17 means “on the day you eat of it you will become mortal.”328 This approach assumes that God created man immortal, a fact that is not explicitly stated in Genesis and seems contrary to 1 Tim. 6:16, which states that deity alone has immortality. Indeed, in no OT passage does the phrase môṯ tāmûṯ mean “to become mortal.”
Perhaps reexamination of this phrase will shed some light on the problem. First, we need to note the distinction in sections of the OT between “he/you shall die” (yāmûṯ/tāmûṯ), which is the Qal form of the verb, and “he/you shall be put to death” (yûmaṯ/tûmaṯ), which is the Hophal form of the verb. In the former, the executioner is God; thus the sense is: “he shall die (at God’s hands).” In the latter, the executioner is man, and the sense is: “he shall be put to death (by man).” Two Genesis passages illustrate this difference. In 20:7 God says to Abimelech, who is on the verge of adultery with Sarah, “restore the man’s wife … but if you do not … know that you shall surely die [môṯ tāmûṯ, as in 2:17].” God himself will directly intervene and strike down Abimelech. In 26:11 Abimelech says to anybody tempted to take advantage of vulnerable Isaac and Rebekah: “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death [môṯ yûmāṯ].” That is, Abimelech himself will mete out punishment against thenaggressor.329 Clearly then, the sanction that is held out before Adam in 2:17 is one that carries a divine implementation.
Second, we need to examine the uses of môṯ tāmûṯ in Scripture. In addition to its appearance in 2:17 and 3:4, it appears twelve, other times in the OT (Gen. 20:7; 1 Sam. 14:44; 22:16; 1 K. 2:37, 42; 2 K. 1:4, 6, 16; Jer. 26:8; Ezek. 3:18; 33:8, 14).330 All of these passages deal with either a punishment for sins or an untimely death that is the result of punishment. In two of these passages we observe that the threatened execution is not carried out. Thus in Jer. 26:8 a sentence of death is pronounced against Jeremiah: “You shall die!” Yet the death penalty is not exacted, for he is released on the basis of a century-old precedent set by Micah in the days of Hezekiah. In 1 Sam. 14:44 Saul says to Jonathan, who has just eaten the honey in ignorance of his father’s ultimatum, “you shall surely die, Jonathan.” Yet Jonathan does not die, but rather gains a reprieve.331 Perhaps then in 1 Sam. 14:44 môṯ tāmûṯ means “you deserve to die.”
Furthermore, note that the three passages from Ezekiel (3:18; 33:8, 14) hold out the possibility that repentance may avert death. This, then, could be another difference between môṯ yāmûṯ and môṯ yûmaṯ: the former allows for the possibility of pardon, whereas the latter does not. Of course, môṯ yāmûṯ by itself does not convey any idea of possible pardon or exemption from punishment. Additional information is necessary for that to be the case, as Jer. 26:8, 1 Sam. 14:44, and the three passages from Ezekiel make clear. All that môṯ yāmûṯ clearly conveys is the announcement of a death sentence by divine or royal decree.
There is nothing easy about interpreting Paul here but I take a few things as certain though.
Paul just referred to spiritual death and treating Adam as mere literary foil is wrong.
That the death in the Garden story is only spiritual death is wrong.
I also don’t think that just because Paul accepted a literal Adam we must. The 6 bullet points above hopefully make this clear.
At the end, how we understand inspiration/accommodation and our own accepted hermeneutic will influence this. But to argue that Paul’s mention of Adam as being real is not a serious issue in Christian interpretation is just detached from reality.
My intuition tells my you had a long road of struggle and are projecting. Reading and learning strengthens my faith, makes me dig deeper and rely on God more. If it didn’t’t, I assume my faith would be false.