Maybe. But I don’t think God’s timing is necessarily dependent on human capacities at all. For centuries there have been highly developed cultures all over the world where Christianity has not penetrated. I don’t think this situation is because these humans lack some capacity and God is waiting for them to be “ready” to relate to him. I don’t think there was anything special about the humans in first century Palestine. God chooses whom he chooses, for his own purposes, not because we have “arrived.”
True enough. There is reference to the sensuous nature of man that can induce cravings that can lead to sin. That’s what I think I was thinking of as a way to sin. But I suppose, even then, that is idolatry of whatever the craving is for. Thank you for the correction.
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Good to hear your voice, @ZGB. Zackary, while perhaps the Old Man has something to do the “reptilian brain” inside us, I think Paul is more specifically describing us when enslaved to sin. There is something to the thought that as Christians we can rise above and master the baser urges and desires of our animal being, so see your point.
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Oh, don’t think of it as a correction, think of it as idea bouncing. 
We’re all just throwing stuff to the wall and seeing what sticks around here.
Sarx in the NT (flesh, meat, body, sin nature) is a notoriously hard word with a wide semantic range that is notoriously hard to translate. I think you are right that there is an element of physicality and base instinct that is tied up with it in some contexts and that Paul says we need to discipline or master.
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Not to nitpick, but can’t animals idolize? Like when a dog idolizes its human owner?
So maybe the self-awareness is what gave us the moral capacity to sin and to consider the existence of a Creator? I haven’t been very sure how close the account of Genesis 2 is to what first-person account would say. Perhaps Adam and Eve were the first two humans to consider the existence of a Creator? Btw, I have ASD, so if I say or forget to say something that comes across as cold or uncaring, don’t take it personally.
Good to know.
I suppose animal behavior (such as a dog ‘reverencing’ the master) could be considered ‘idolatry’ to the extent that such an animal can be expected to be aware that its allegiances ought to be channeled higher up. Most of us probably agree that the non-human animal world doesn’t include such moral awareness (of that kind of extent - the kind that warns us we are “too worshipful of this, when our true worship is owed to that.”) So just as a young child is not deemed to be accountable, so the other animals never appear to us to be culpable of anything more than Fido knows good and well he shouldn’t have pooped on the carpet. And that is about the extent of “moral awareness” that we imagine animals might have.
I would say that is anthropomorphic, figurative language, not actual idolatry. The dog is not giving the owner allegiance and worship that rightfully belongs to God.
I would say that the dog just doesn’t have the capacity to comprehend its own existence, and thus the existence of a Creator.
Very true. I’ve always attributed the root of sin to pride. Which itself stems from self-awareness. Before self-awareness and pondering the question of existence, the “idolatry” that humans would practice would have been considered akin to animal behavior. Where that line is drawn, I cannot say for certain.
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3:20 - The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
I certainly don’t read Gen 1-3 literaly 
Thanks for sharing. I am not YEC, I think there is compelling evidence there was an explosion of intelligence and creativity ± 10,000 years ago. I am aware of ANE also.
All what living? Are plants not alive? Animals? Apparently you don’t take this literally any more than I do. And I have examined the Hebrew and the word used definitely refers to all living things and not to people. In a symbolic metaphorical Lord and Lady sort of way she might have been considered mother even of all the plants and animals – and in that sense even mother of all the homo sapiens. If we are really going to take seriously what the text ACTUALLY says then this would be the reasonable understanding of what is meant. No need for your anti-science alterations of the text.
I do believe that Eve was at one time the mother of all human beings that were alive at that time. But being a mother does not equate to being sole genetic progenitor. I know plenty of mothers which have no genetic relationship with their children. And I have little doubt that when Cain and Seth took wives that their wives called Eve their mother even though they had no genetic relationship with her (despite your desire to believe in incest for that family). But when Cain and Seth had children, Eve was not their mother but their grandmother.
Like I explained above I do believe that Adam and Eve were the first human beings. I just don’t believe that humanity is just a biological species any more than I believe that humanity is descended from magical golems. There is a genetic inheritance from a biological primate species, homo sapiens, and there is a memetic inheritance from God. THAT is our humanity! This may not fit with some political agenda you have, but it fits with the Bible, Christianity, and science just fine.
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Are you saying the persons in Gen 3 necessarily are not the same as in Gen 5 ?
No, I’m saying that a reference to Adam in Ch 5 in a genealogy does not, for me, indicate “interpret Genesis 2-3 as a literal historical account.” That’s like saying if you found a reference to Robin of Sherwood in some historical document that every legend about Robin Hood should be taken as a completely factual historical account. That doesn’t follow.
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But to be fair… if you found a copy of this historical document included in a particular account of Robin Hood, it does suggest that person who put these together believes and/or want readers to believe that this is an historical account of the documented historical person.
But, considering when this must have been compiled, it certainly does not mean that the whole thing is up to modern standards of historical accounts.
But there is a difference between communicating “this person existed” and “this story about this real person is 100% factual.” I just don’t see why establishing a person’s existence in history by using them in a genealogy establishes the historical factuality of a different account of that person, especially when the account has a bunch of textual clues that it is not meant to be taken literally. “This is history” is an assumption about the intent of a text, not something entailed by what name is used in it. You can prove Abraham Lincoln existed as a real person, but that doesn’t then automatically entail every narrative about the man is true and historical. I think to get from A to B with Adam, you are pulling in lots of assumptions about the Bible and the intent of Genesis 2-3 as givens that aren’t givens for a lot of people.
Yep that was the point of my “modern standards” comment. In the past there wasn’t such a sharp divide between the different activities like history and entertainment. It was enough that they had such a story to tell and so why not pass the story on without worrying about such things as historical accuracy.
But the apparent intent of the author of the text is likely to connect with ones attitude about the text, like thinking this is a message from God. And there lies the divide between objective and subjective apprehensions of knowledge and understanding. To be sure, objectively that genealogy doesn’t establish any such thing. But I can well understand why ProDeo would think it does establish this, as subjective as that conclusion may be.
Which is why I make a distinction between something being literal and something being historical. I see no reason why the attempts at history from so long ago, before there were such specializations of human activities, should expect to be taken literally. Therefore, we can acknowledge that there is some historical intent by those who composed the text without expecting this to be a completely literal account of events. And as for textual clues, representing one who is generally known to be Lucifer as a talking snake is a pretty big one!
But again we are not talking about every narrative but about the narrative which has that historical document as a part of it. Of course you can complain that modern scholars think this was put together from a number of different sources, but I am not sure that is going to mean all that much to someone who attributes the final product to the work of God.
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I don’t believe Eve was capable giving birth to a cavia, humans only and thus she is the mother of all living humans and thus the people who Cain feared were the offspring of Eve.
A new species can only survive by incest and laws against incest were given only at the time of Leviticus.
And I don’t believe in talking snakes, magical fruit, or golems of dust and bone, any more than you believe in Eve giving birth to plants and animals. But your beliefs cannot change the text which says in Hebrew that she was named “Eve” because she was the mother of all living things. So we hold onto our beliefs in reasonable things by understanding that the text is not to be taken literally. You don’t take it literally either when it contradicts your beliefs, so I don’t take it literally when it contradicts mine. So the fact is, I see that the Bible showing us that the snake is really this being known as Lucifer. So do you take that part any more literally than you do the “mother of all living things”? I see the Bible talking about tree of life in many passages in the Bible as representing all sorts of things like wisdom rather than a species of fruit bearing tree. And I see in the words, “formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” God making the body of man from the matter of this physical universe and then by speaking to him giving Adam the ideas which brought the human mind to life. And so the text isn’t a fairy tale comic book Walt Disney movie after all, but about real life!
Incorrect. Such extreme inbreeding greatly reduces the chances of survival. Besides, the human genetic data shows that the population of our genetic ancestors was never below 10,000 for hundreds of thousands of years at least. And further calculations are likely to extend this time even longer until the ancestors are no longer recognizable as human. More importantly the further back into the past you place Adam and Eve before the advent of human civilization (around 10,000 BC), the less significant you make Adam and Eve and their relationship to God.
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Agree on the literal part, lots of symbolism (talking snakes representing the devil, symbolic trees, the Lord God walking in the cool of the evening) but surely there was a fall due to disobedience resulting that A&E were kicked out Paradise, away from the presence of the Lord and living in different world, the same world we live in. I may assume we are in agreement that part is historic?