All of this only matters if you take Genesis to be narrating objective literal history, (as opposed to say, a theological narrative intended to make theological points and contribute to the overarching story of the Bible). So making points about tense and aspect are irrelevant to anyone who rejects concordist approaches to interpreting Genesis.
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interesting thoughts but new research into hebrew grammer suggest this is likely based on a mistranslation:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://individual.utoronto.ca/holmstedt/HolmstedtDissertation.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj745Lzr8TgAhUQx58KHXLxAJoQFjAAegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw0X7_PShOOFu6Q_SBfhFilA
I know of no serious scholar who approaches the biblical text without first ensuring that s/he understands the specific meaning of the text correctly. ‘Correctly’ is the operative word. If you know of someone who approaches the biblical text in the way you’ve suggested, I would really appreciate knowing who and what hermaneutics s/he is using.
Now, to your point: if aspect (or tense) specifically, or grammar generally isn’t important to the theological points the author is trying to make, why did you raise it in the first place? And, while we’re at it, why bother with vocabulary and grammar and narrative and context? Why not just make up your own theology based not on what the biblical text says, but on what you want it to mean?
Oh, and one final point. I think you misunderstand literal vs truthful. Orwells’ Animal Farm is literally about talking barnyard animals and a political structure they seek to put in place. There is not truth to the idea of talking pigs. Rather, Animal Farm is an allegorical polemic directed against Communist Russia. With respect to the 2nd creation story, the author wrote a literal account depicting the story of Adam and Eve becoming separated from God because of the choices they made. Figuratively, it stands against the pantheistic cultures of those days who believed their fate was dictated by capricious gods.
That is how I read the text also.
Disagree. If anything the opposite is more likely. History can be random while in a story made up for teaching the events likely teach something. Anyway the whole book Genesis is written with a clearly historical intent – even if it is not history by modern standards to which the adjective “objective” might apply. The most you can say is that the early part of the story has a mythical character which I believe simply points to a transmission by a long oral tradition, when there was no specialization of human activities into such things as science, religion, history, sermon, law, philosophy and entertainment. I think this is the best explanation why so many ancient stories have such a recognizably mythical character to them.
Dear Michael,
I disagree with the direction your translation is taking, suggesting that Eve and God created man. When we know all things were created through the Word - Jesus.
But this is not the point of this post and it distracts from the lost meaning of the second fall from 3:24 to 4:1 - Time. In 3:24, God casts Adam and Eve out of Eden, out of the idilic place where they were tested. They were cast into the harshness of the world. So the real question is, how much time did God leave between casting them out of Eden and placing them on Earth? My answer is: billions of years.
Well, I would challenge the idea that the “sexual awakening” interpretation of the story has the widest support. It is a common interpretation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but it’s definitely a minority opinion. No need to revisit that discussion, though.
More like I stuck my toe in the water. haha. But, from what I can tell, Zevitt’s proposal has its detractors, such as this review by Stuart Creason. He said, “reads like two lengthy journal articles, one which covers a construction in Classical Hebrew which Zevit names the “anterior construction” (chapters two through four and seven) and another which contains Zevit’s rather speculative remarks on tense and aspect in the Hebrew verbal system and on how tense may have been indicated historically in Hebrew (chapters five and six). Of the two parts, the first is more successful than the second, but neither presents a compelling case for the claims that the author makes.”
Always enjoy your take on things, but I don’t think it’s quite as settled as you sometimes make it seem.
I’ll clarify. Yes, obviously to understand a text you need to pay attention to the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. But I reject the idea that “correct” meaning is decoded by unpacking lexical items and grammatical constructions. That’s code model thinking, and that model of communication has been discarded by the vast majority of linguists and cognitive psychologists in favor of the inferential model of communication. Inferences are shaped to a large degree by shared conventions in the speaker and hearer’s context.
It seemed to me that you and others are obsessing over certain sentence-level syntactical features and applying some kind of truth conditional literality to the use of certain constructions.
What do you do with the fact that tense/aspect/modality shifts frequently occur in narratives (cross-linguistically) to mark peak or to “background” information or events and don’t necessarily correspond with the narrative’s timeline? This is a well-attested fact. (For example, in English, shifts from the narrative mainline past tense to present and present progressive often mark climactic events. It has nothing to do with the timeline of the story shifting out of the past into the present. It’s a discourse feature.) You won’t analyze discourse-level features correctly if you focus only on sentence level grammar.
As to Bible scholars who take the approach of focusing on the story, there is a whole school of thought called narrative theology. There is a whole commentary series by Zondervan called The Story of God that takes the approach I describe. Tremper Longman wrote the Genesis volume. Scot McKnight is the editor.
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Mitchell, very interesting. You are saying that God is dead. I really don’t think so. This shows how our ideology gets us in trouble.
No I am not. And jumping to that conclusion is absurd. Just because the sun is not alive doesn’t mean that it is dead.
If you say God is alive then it doesn’t mean anything similar to what we mean when we say that we are alive. Thus this is just showing the limitations of human language. Frankly if anyone can be said to be pushing a dead god then it is those who claim that God is timeless, unchanging and incapable of a long list of things, which I do not.
To be sure, the Bible speaks frequently of the living God. But what does this mean? Does it mean that God has a beating heart or DNA? Does it mean God eats and breathes? Does it mean that God continues to grow and learn?
It means that God is present and active. It means that God speaks for Himself and has a living relationship with us.
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You seem to have accepted the lie that humans have made God in their image instead of the truth that God made humans in God’s Image. Being alive does not mean breathing and beating heart. It means being active, aware, and caring.
You are right. the God of the philosophers is dead and I am glad you are beyond them, but you still have a ways to go.
This got me to read up on “narrative theology” which Wikipedia discusses under the name of “postliberal theology.” This introduced a spread of derived movements: radical orthodoxy, scriptural reasoning, paleo-orthodoxy, and the emerging church. I was only familiar with the last of these.
I can certainly get behind the idea of Christianity as a language but not with the idea of Christianity as a culture. I consider the confusion of the religion with culture to be one of the biggest problems in religion, and so I wouldn’t want to legitimize and endorse that. I share some of the concern that systematic apologetics (assuming this refers to proofs for the existence of God) has a negative effect on Christianity.
So now these other derived movements…
radical orthodoxy: I certainly support opposition to Spong’s effort to move Christianity away from theism. A lot of the other ideas are interesting, but I am not encouraged by the involvement of neoplatonist philsophy.
scriptural reading: An ecumenical movement based on meetings with other religions to read their different scriptures and discuss how they apply to contemporary issues. Sounds great but my interest is minimal.
paleo-orthodoxy: Looks like an effort to go back to the understanding of the early church by studying the works of early church fathers. This is certainly worthwhile and I see potential for correcting some medieval distortions in western Christianity but don’t think something is correct just because it was believed by the early Christians.
to a materialist it is as difficult to see life as a non material property as it is to understand the value of the water of purification over the value of the fine wine.
shows a peculiar use of language. Whilst is something is that is not white is not black because being white is a composite function of emitting all photons of all energy bands at detector saturation limit. To a dim detector the world is rather bright 
The logos is a hard nut to crack as it requires the logic use of language on the receivers end.
suggests that Mitch must have a rather interesting understanding of life- let alone everlasting life. If a living God cannot transcend time, cannot be unchanging and is not allowed to be logic it sounds like the belief in a God that has to undergo evolution according to those who created him in order to be accepted as a living God. Who in his right mind would want to believe in an irrational God?
The version of narrative theology I had in mind might be a little different. Narrative Theology Explained | Roger E. Olson
Thanks for this Christy, I agree in principle, but think that any worldview gleaned from this process should be tested as @marvin suggested in another thread.
Best Wishes, Shawn
Ok… I am reading through that now…
First thing that occurs to me is to object that narrative is only one of the literary forms in the Bible so there is reason to be wary of the a theology which ignores this fact. I am encouraged by the claim to do away with inerrancy which I think is unsupportable. The focus on God’s character is also encouraging. I am suspicious of this idea that parables explained mean that the parable should be preferred over the explanation. I quite agree that the Bible does not interpret itself and I like that it is practically saying that Jesus is the lens through which it should all be understood as I have said. I am intrigued by the de-emphasis upon theology and doctrine saying that it should be secondary to the narrative, but I would put the life-changing experience of Christianity before narrative and community. These ideas of “living the story” and “faithfully improvising the story” are a bit ambiguous so I am not sure what to think about those. I can get behind “perfection with respect to purpose” as a descriptor of the Bible, or as I would put it, we should not think that we can do a better job than God in writing the Bible for everyone and we should trust that God’s will is accomplished in the Bible enough to tell people to read it for themselves, even with regards to whether they accept it or reject it. I also agree with putting the Jesus before the Bible, and consider belief because the Bible says so to be very strange and even absurd.
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@
@mitchellmckain and Marvin
As I see it there are basically three options for who is God, the god of the philosophers, which is a dead unchanging god, the God of the New Testament, Who is the Trinity, and the God of the OT, Which is sort of a hybrid of the two others.
The god of the philosophers is unchanging because it is Simple and Absolute, because this is what the laws of philosophy dictate it to be. The Trinity is One and Three in accordance with the experience of the Church with the Messiah, the divine/human Son of God, Jesus Christ. The God of the OT is not the God of the NT because this God is One but not Many. This God is thought to be Personal and Active, but theologically cannot be because this God is Simple. The Trinitarian God of the NT is Personal as Jesus is Personal.
A Person is complex and one. The Trinity is Complex and One. The Trinitarian God is Personal. A simple God is not personal.
James 1:17 (NIV2011)
17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, Who does not change like shifting shadows.
It is God’s Goodness that never changes.
The Simplicity of God has a rich doctrinal history, especially (but not exclusively) among the Reformed.
The simplicity of God means God is not made up of his attributes. He does not consist of goodness, mercy, justice, and power. He is goodness, mercy, justice, and power. Every attribute of God is identical with his essence.
@hwddle, thank you for your reference. the above quote is taken from this article on Divine Simplicity.
It says that God is not a composite of things. That is of course true, unless one thinks that the Trinity is a composite. But God is One God in Three Persons, so how can God be Simple?
One statement of the Trinity taken from Augustine says, The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father, but they are all God. They are all God, but they are each God in a different manner. They are all the same, and yet all different. There is only one way to be simple.
It seems to me that according to the Biblical faith, God does not have an Essence, in that this would add a fourth Person to the Trinity or would not be Personal.
Essence is a concept and language of philosophy which has been added to theology. It distorts our understanding of Who God is and does not add anything positive. We need to redeem the concept of the Trinity which is essential to our understanding of the God of the NT.
I see this as derived from the archaic philosophy which confuses reality with language, where we tack adjectives onto nouns. Even when a person is kind and merciful, this does not mean that the person is composed of kindness and mercy. But saying the person is identical with kindness and mercy is just as absurd. I certainly disagree utterly with the idea that God is in any way identical with power, and believe that God has demonstrated that He is quite capable of setting power aside when He chooses.
God is neither composed of attributes nor identical with them. God is an infinite spirit which has some attributes by nature and other attributes by choice. God is powerful by nature, but He is good, merciful, and just by choice. But even though God is powerful by nature, God’s omnipotence MUST include a power over Himself to be what He chooses to be, and thus if He chooses to be a helpless human infant then He can certainly do so. I cannot agree with this trend of making God a slave to theology with a list of things God cannot do as the chains which make this enslavement rather evident.
God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and Not just the Spirit. God IS WHO GOD IS, and not Who anyone defines God to be.