The pros and cons of Eve-dropping

Faith & Science Conversation
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Not in translation. Not in Greek, so I don’t understand the point you are making. Paul is clearly using the proper name to refer to a person, a male person. The connection between the collective adam and the proper name Adam is irrelevant at that point. Paul clearly wanted Jesus and Adam (proper name) to be archetypes of two kinds of human identities, “in Christ” vs “in Adam.” I don’t have a problem with theological discussions that employ the identity archetype he invokes and use “in Adam” as a label for unredeemed humanity and “in Christ” as a label for redeemed humanity. I have a problem with Adam being the first human (and the human whose creation matters) instead of Adam and Eve being the first humans. Because that isn’t a discussion of spiritual identification, it’s a discussion of creation and the dawn of humanity and it’s not cool if the dawn of humanity gets reduced to the story of a male (and maybe we’ll mention his procreation partner once in a while because it’s hard to be a sole progenitor without a female around to help with the logistics).

I don’t really think this is what happened. In Romans 5 he wasn’t trying to talk about humanity, he was trying to talk about Adam. He wasn’t confused. He was invoking an identity archetype using two males in a very intentional way. Identity was found through male relationships in that cultural context.

When Adam is used as a proper name in Genesis, it always names a male character. There are only a couple places as I understand it where there is maybe some ambiguity between human, the man, and Adam because you have things like definiteness and context that make the intended referent pretty clear. And it is just not true that the intended referent isn’t male, because it sometimes is the name of the male character. But just like roses don’t have gender (in English), when Rose names a girl, it’s a gendered proper noun that would be referred to with “she.”

But this makes no sense if adam is not a proper name or at least referring to gendered “the man.” The whole story is about a mate and the creation of marriage which everyone then would understand to be male and female. You can’t say gender neutral humanity was lonely and needed a gender neutral helper. So a helper was found. Oh and later she had babies, because the helper was female. In whatever way the Genesis account is symbolic or archetypical of human universals, it clearly uses gendered archetypes to teach about them. There is a first couple in the story, not two gender-ambiguous “sides” of gender-neutral humanity coming together to form a more complete gender-neutral humanity. It’s very specific about humanity being male and female, as is Genesis 1.

There was wordplay. It wasn’t the case that adam was being used with a single sense and reference in the whole account.

I don’t see any evidence that he was accessing the sense of adam that meant humanity though. He was using Adam to refer to the male literary character.

I agree. I am just saying that nothing would have been ambiguous to native Hebrew speakers. The sense and referents in the passage would have been as clear as it is to us when the words are totally disambiguated by translation into human, the man (which is sometimes a good translation because it refers to the human male in the story, which we would most naturally call a man), and Adam. Just like the English sentence “Rose, who was seated by the fire, rose quickly and snatched the rose from the vase and chucked it into the flames.” English speakers will not struggle one bit to disambiguate the three “roses” and most likely in another (non-Latin) language with transliterating the name, the three words would be different. We also know that the ambiguous ‘it’ refers to the flower, not the vase because of subconscious rules of participant tracking that we have internalized. Our brains are amazing.

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I think it’s safe to assume Paul knew Hebrew and was familiar with Genesis in Hebrew as well as Greek. He knew what the Hebrew word adam meant. He sometimes quoted Scripture that followed the Hebrew and other times followed the Septuagint. I don’t think we can limit his knowledge of Genesis to what’s in the Greek translation.

Given that Paul knew what adam meant, I can’t see how he could possibly invoke Adam as an archetype for unredeemed humanity without drawing on the collective adam. He can’t use how we all have Adam as an ancestor since that won’t work for his other category, Christ. Instead of an ancestral “from” Paul uses a collective “in”: in Adam or in Christ. He’s using a word that he knows means humanity to label unredeemed humanity. That can’t just be him using Adam to refer to a male person.

I’ll come back to the “it would be so clear” point, but first the parenthetical. I don’t think “a man” is a good translation for adam for the same reason “female virgin” isn’t. It’s not enough that adam can be used to count female virgins or refer to a man. The word doesn’t connote gender or sex.

After adam’s sides are surgically split, we find out their sex when they’re called ish (man) and ishah (woman). Before then, we aren’t told anything about adam’s sex, aside from the generalized statement that God made adam male and female.

I do want to make sure I’m reading the text in a way that women don’t find demeaning. But I don’t want to exchange one blind spot for another. I don’t want to use the story to hurt women or singles. When interpreted as you describe, an unmarried man or woman may hear that they’re an incomplete human who God calls “not good.” This can be a damaging reading.

I do honestly think that the aloneness of adam is originally intended to mean more than lacking a way to reproduce. Perhaps that’s why procreation isn’t even mentioned here. The human alone with God is not enough. Humans need each other. Marriage is the clearest expression of that community and also the relationship the story goes on to portray. But as with most everything in the account, the particular stands for a greater collective. Adam found his “help facing you” in Eve, his wife. For others it may take the form of a friend, co-workers, a sibling, maybe a whole extended family. But the message is that we all need human community, not that we all need to get married.

Back to how clear the different adams in Genesis are. Those roses are all neatly distinct, so it’s simple. Genesis’ use of adam is not simple. Here’s one passage:

Whoever sheds the blood of adam[1],
by adam[2] shall that person’s blood be shed;
for in his own image
God made adam[3]. (Genesis 9:6)

The first two use the “generic somebody” meaning to refer to two different individuals (neither one necessarily male). The last might mean humanity or be the proper name of the first man. This next one is even trickier:

This is the book of the generations of adam[1]. On the day when God created adam[2], he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and he blessed them and named them adam[3] on the day when they were created. When adam[4] had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. (Genesis 5:1–3)

This time there are four adams. #4 is clearly a man’s name and #3 is clearly a collective name for humanity. That right there shows that Adam as a proper name is not always a male character. Even capital-A Adams might refer to more than a man.

But what of the first two? Is #1 the book of the generations of humanity or of the man named Adam? Normally we’d expect a person’s name with that generations formula, but since the last one gave us the generations of the heavens and the earth (2:4), humanity would also fit well here. And in #2, did God create humanity or a man named Adam? We can’t go by pronouns, since even though this adam is referred to as “him” rather than “them,” that’s the normal way to refer back to a collective noun that is grammatically masculine. Since #2 is made in God’s image, this seems to echo the sixth day and likewise should be humanity and not just Adam.

My point is that this isn’t easy to parse like the rose sentence. In Genesis the adams blur and overlap – intentionally so, I believe. If we flatten the adams so the first three are “humanity” and the fourth is “Adam” (or any other mixture), we’ll miss how the genealogy stitches them together with the same word.

In this thread you seem to assume that a word can only mean one thing in one place. I don’t think the writers of Genesis knew that rule. They seem to have frequently used wordplay, not as ornamentation, but to draw connections and convey meaning. You have also stated that when a word is used as a proper noun, its common meaning is irrelevant. Such a rule wouldn’t fare well with Pilgrim’s Progress, and it also doesn’t fare well with Genesis. Abel’s name is the word used as the catchphrase in Ecclesiastes: “vapour” or “meaninglessness.” And if you blink while reading Genesis 4, you’ll probably miss him. I’m convinced that’s intentional.

Those guidelines may generally be very helpful, but not all writing is the same. I know I have a hard time resisting adding puns or intentionally ambiguous phrases to my posts, and no doubt that sometimes inhibits their readability. Your writing tends to be much clearer and more precise. On this one aspect alone, I think Genesis reads more like me than you.

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It’s still irrelevant if Adam is an established proper name for a known literary figure. I know what ‘linda’ means in Spanish and what ‘tian’ means in Chinese. I don’t access those meanings when referring to people I know named Linda and Tian.

Well, because then his parallelism would be messed up because he isn’t comparing collective Adam to the collective body of Christ, and he isn’t. He is comparing two individuals, that’s the whole rhetorical move.

I’m really having trouble understanding how you can think this. Christ refers to a male person and Adam is part of an analogy with Christ, a male person. Yes, those ‘in Christ’ and ‘in Adam’ are subsets of collective humanity and it’s not gendered. But the meaning is not ‘in Christ’ and ‘in humanity.’ That doesn’t work on any level. Those in Christ are still part of collective humanity, just not the redeemed subset who now find their identity in Christ as opposed to in Adam. The conversation isn’t about ancestry, it’s about identity, something that was hugely important to Israel.

Even if you have a neuter human person being split into the counterparts Adam and Eve, male and female, you still end up with a male named Adam who is a figure in the story and a male person throughout the Jewish tradition that informed Paul. If Paul wanted to talk about humanity and not Adam the literary character, why would he not have used the Greek word anthropos?

I fully believe both men and women completely image God as individuals and it is nonsense that men need women or women need men to “be God’s image.” But the Adam and Eve story was used throughout Jewish history and by Jesus himself to speak of the institution of marriage and its ordination by God. My point was that you can’t make the story into something where the male/female binary isn’t a major element.

Agreed. He was alone in his task of working the Garden. I agree with all your points.

Agreed. And none of those translation decisions would fundamentally change the narrative to the point where you don’t get Adam the male character in the story. But it still makes no sense to me that Paul would have in his mind a Hebrew word for humanity, not a Greek word, and that he would use a Hebrew collective noun while writing in Greek, and that noun also happens to be the name of a familiar figure to his Greek-speaking audience, but he just knew they would understand he was code-mixing some Hebrew and meant to say humanity not Adam the male person. That makes no linguistic sense.

This is a fact of semantics and cognitive linguistics. You can only use a word in one sense at a time. In the case of puns or double entendres, you have to process meaning twice. Adam’s name is not a pun, it’s a proper name derived from a common word which is how most cultures everywhere get proper names. All the names in the Bible are derived from common words, the fact is just obscured to us because the convention has been to transliterate not translate names.

I was talking about sense and reference. When a common noun is used as a proper name, both its sense and its reference change. Yes, names can be significant in literature and authors can intentionally use names to emphasize the themes they are communicating. But adam and Adam have different senses and different references. The more familiar you are with a language and the use of certain nouns as names, the more intentional you might have to be about noting the significance of names used this way. For example, since Faith and Grace and Joy are common girls names in English, the significance of their literary use might not jump out as much as Chastity (though I knew one once) or Temperance.

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I think it does work if we don’t limit Paul to a single level. For both Adam and Christ, there is the individual and a collective. Paul understands Jesus as a real man but can also speak of how we are part of the body of Christ. “Adam” is a similarly flexible wineskin to hold Paul’s heady metaphor. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15 he at one point uses it for both sides, recasting his illustration as the first Adam and last Adam. It’s not about Jesus being another man named Adam, but Christ as the humanity from heaven that raises the humanity from dust.

Again, I’m not arguing for a collective-only intent – he focuses on how they are two men as well. I think the core of our disagreement is that I think Paul – like Genesis – can fuse these different levels, while you’re saying he has to pick only one.

Because anthropos doesn’t evoke Genesis’ thick portrait of adam as effectively.

It’s similar to when Jesus speaks of the Son of Man coming on the clouds. “Son of Man” there means so much more than a male human. If we don’t see how Jesus is evoking a complex character in Daniel, we’ll miss the punch of the reference. John’s use of logos may be similar, code-mixing some Hebrew thought into a Greek term.

You’re the expert here, not me, but I can’t see how this is true. This may be normally true in speech and even in a lot of writing, but how could this work for poetry? How can it work for meditation literature that is meant to be slowly absorbed over a lifetime rather than quickly parsed?

The way Genesis uses adam is not at all like how your earlier sentence used ‘rose.’ In that sentence, each ‘rose’ was distinct enough to be basically an unrelated word, though spelled with the same letters. For adam, the meanings are not just related but tangled:

  • humankind: “I will never again curse the ground because of adam” (Genesis 8:21)
  • human as species: “He shall be a wild donkey of an adam” (16:12)
  • a group of humans: “the city and the tower, which adam had built” (11:5)
  • any particular human: “whoever sheds the blood of adam, by adam shall his blood be shed” (9:6)
  • humanity personified: “My spirit shall not abide in adam forever, for he is flesh; his days shall be 120 years” (6:3)
  • something human: “the inclination of the adam heart is evil from youth” (8:21)
  • a name for humanity: “Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them adam” (5:2)
  • a name for a man: “The days of adam after he became the father of Seth were 800 years” (5:4)

Unlike the rose sentence, finding discrete translations for each meaning of adam loses the connective tissue that links them. When we see how rich the word adam is, a story of how God formed the adam takes on new dimensions. It’s a story about a man and a woman, but not just that. The archetypal dimensions of adam are already in Genesis, not something later readers invented.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to translate the word differently in context. Translation can’t convey everything, so of course translators will focus on the central meaning. But there’s also value in translations like Robert Alter’s that try to expose some of what standard versions miss. Of course his translation misses things too, and he’s written on how difficult it is to convey some of what is in the Hebrew. My request is to not dismiss attempts to see some of what gets lost in translation.

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Pax Christi everybody,

I read this today on Thom Stark’s blog, and I am not sure how to respond:

Dr. Rollston proceeds to identify texts from the New Testament in which women are in various ways marginalized. He cites 1 Timothy 2, and his remarks are worth noting at length:

**> The author is discussing worship and begins by stating that “men should pray” and then says “women should dress themselves modestly and decently.” So men are to pray and women are to dress modestly. That’s quite a contrast. But there’s more: “Let a woman learn in silence and full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to be silent.” The author’s rationale: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Timothy 2:8-14). So, according to this text, women were to be silent in worship because they were created second and sinned first. And the final blow is this: a woman “will be saved through childbirth, if she remains in faith and love and sanctification with modesty” (1 Timothy 2:15). This text is not too different from a Saying in the Gospel of Thomas (114) that says women can be saved once they become males. In any case, for the author of 1 Timothy, eternal salvation comes obstetrically.

repeat, except for fundamentalist Evangelical scholars, Dr. Rollston’s conclusion here is uncontroversial among even many of the more traditional Christian critical scholars. While the Evangelicals continue to protest, this reading is taken for granted among those who wish to treat the texts with honesty and integrity, rather than self-servingly.

Is this assessment accurate? I know that there’s a sentiment similar in the Book of Ben Sirach. You can find the rest of the article below. Tell me what you think.

http://religionatthemargins.com/2012/09/the-affair-of-mr-blowers-and-the-blog-of-the-three-young-men-a-response-to-christopher-rollston’s-cultured-despisers/

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There’s some more that’s relevant from a different article:

Citing the woman’s deception in the Garden as a justification for the prohibition of women teaching men is not a “move away” from the point; it’s an argument in support of the point. The argument is that, since man came before woman, a woman ought not to have authority over a man, and since woman was deceived (and not man!), a woman ought not to teach in the church. Note that 1 Timothy 14 actually does say, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived,” which is of course patently false. Adam was deceived, by Eve, who was deceived by the serpent. But moving on from that point, Moo’s objection that this reading doesn’t make sense because, “does Paul care only that women not teach men false doctrines? Does he not care that they not teach them to other women?” is a total red herring, for two reasons: (1) The context is teaching in the church, not just teaching in general. So in the church, if a woman were teaching, she would have been teaching over men and women simultaneously. So Moo’s rhetorical question just misses the point. (2) Paul doesn’t have to be concerned about women teaching other women in the privacy of homes if in fact women are to be in submission to their male masters, which is also Paul’s point, because “Adam was formed first, then Eve.” So Moo’s objections just fail utterly to dispense with this deeply misogynistic perspective enshrined in our canon. The plain fact is, as the consensus holds, the author of 1 Timothy argued that women should not teach in church because they are inherently more susceptible to deception than men, as evinced by Eve, before the fall.

Moo continues:

> More likely, then, verse 14, in conjunction with verse 13, is intended to remind the women at Ephesus that Eve was deceived by the serpent in the Garden (Genesis 3:13) precisely in taking the initiative over the man whom God had given to be with her and to care for her. In the same way, if the women at the church at Ephesus proclaim their independence from the men of the church, refusing to learn “in quietness and full submission” (verse 11), seeking roles that have been given to men in the church (verse 12), they will make the same mistake Eve made and bring similar disaster on themselves and the church. This explanation of the function of verse 14 in the paragraph fits what we know to be the general insubordination of some of the women at Ephesus and explains Paul’s emphasis in the verse better than any other alternative.2

But against Moo, we’ll quote Moo:

> However, Paul tells us remarkably little about the specifics of this false teaching, presumably because he knows that Timothy is well acquainted with the problem. This means that we cannot be at all sure about the precise nature of this false teaching and, particularly, about its impact on the women in the church —witness the many, often contradictory, scholarly reconstructions of this false teaching. But this means that we must be very careful about allowing any specific reconstruction—tentative and uncertain as it must be-to play too large a role in our exegesis.3

So according to Moo, this must not play too large a role in his exegesis, but after all else fails, he’ll use it to salvage a problematic text. And Moo, who argues that 1 Tim 2:12-14 is not limited to a specific context, but is of universal import, finally winds up arguing that one part of verse 14 was limited to a specific context, even though he argues that Eve’s deception is pre-fall and therefore technically a part of the order of creation argument.4 He also cites 2 Tim 3:6-7 as evidence that women were being deceived by false teachers at Ephesus. Let’s look, indeed, at how women are described by the author there:

> For among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

What a fair-minded description of women! “Silly.” “Swayed by all kinds of desires.” “Always being instructed, never making up their minds.” “Overwhelmed by their sins.” Sounds remarkably like another women we’ve met in the previous letter, who was used to provide a universal justification for the subordination of women to men: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

Moo hasn’t “ably answered” any objection here. He’s simply providing a way out for inerrantists who don’t really like what this biblical text says about women.

Surely there are other interpretations?

http://religionatthemargins.com/2012/03/another-attempt-to-discredit-my-book-discredits-itself/

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I feel like you are talking about two different things and conflating them: the intended referents of Paul’s sentences referring to Adam and Christ (the meaning of the sentences), and the literary “meaning” of creating an analogical archetype using Adam and Christ to communicate about humanity. The meaning of the analogical archetype is not located in the senses of Adam and Christ. The meaning of the archetype is a discourse level meaning, not a semantic level meaning.

Every word in an utterance can only have one sense unless it is an intentional pun or double entendre. It is not the case that within a given usage, the entire semantic domain of a word is accessed to process the utterance. Only the intended sense is, and most utterances are not at all ambiguous as to which sense is intended. If I remember correctly this idea that the entire semantic range is activated with every use was even one of the things D. A. Carson covered in his Exegetical Fallacies book about things preachers do during word studies that should not be done.

What you have shown is the semantic range of adam. There is no English word with the same semantic range, and this is a normal situation in translation. There is no English word with the same semantic range as NT sarx either. But when sarx is used to refer to an animal’s body it doesn’t also refer to sinful nature, even though both meanings are part of its semantic range. It requires multiple words in English to translate.

Native speakers don’t notice when they are selecting a sense from a word’s semantic range, because it happens subconsciously. But you do understand a single sense, you don’t access all of them at once.

For example, the semantic range of earth in English includes, soil, ground, globe, world, and it can be used as a proper name for the third planet from the sun in our solar system.

He cupped a handful of the sandy earth in his hand.
The kite went up into the sky and then fell to the earth.
He was the first pilot to fly around the earth.
The whole earth sings.
Earth is between Mars and Venus.

In translation, you probably would have words with semantic ranges that are not exact overlaps for your possible choices. In Spanish you’d have to choose what was most appropriate between tierra, suelo, globo, and mundo. But if you are a native English speaker, it’s clear what sense is intended when it is used in a context, and when you read the first sentence about soil you aren’t thinking about the planet or the inhabitants of the world.

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What exactly is his assessment? That 1 Timothy has been used throughout Christian history to marginalize women? Correct. That Paul intended to teach that women can be saved if they become males and salvation comes obstetrically? Never heard any such nonsense before.

Moo is a complementarian who wants to maintain that women can’t teach men.

The Evagelical egalitarian interpretation is usually that Paul was giving specific instructions into a specific cultural context where specific heresies where being taught.

See here for some examples:

I like the Artemis worship angle.

The word translated ‘have authority’ authentein occurs one time in the NT and rarely in the extant literature and what it means is hard to establish.

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Hi @Combine_Advisor, I’d say that some of that reflects a standard view, but there’s a lot of rhetoric that goes well beyond the facts.

So men are to pray and women are to dress modestly. That’s quite a contrast.

It’s a terrible contrast. 1 Timothy 2:1–4 begins by urging prayer without limiting it to one sex. When the discussion continues, it appears that men and women are called out for different bad behaviour. Men should stop arguing and lift up their hands to pray instead of fight. Women should make sure their professions of godliness (i.e. when they are praying out loud) are not contradicted by their extravagent clothing and accessories. To dress modestly here means not showing off their wealth.

So both men and women are praying, but they’ve been doing it badly. The text corrects them both so they can both pray properly. The sentence begins and ends with the out-loud speaking of each sex, “the men should pray … as is proper for women who profess reference for God” (2:8–10). It’s not about women professing silently any more than the men are praying silently. Both are speaking, and their speaking is not the problem.

So, according to this text, women were to be silent in worship because they were created second and sinned first.

For the created second, sinned first stuff, see this excellent post by Christy. For the silence, here’s something I wrote several years ago:

In 1 Timothy 2:11, a woman is to receive instruction quietly (hēsychia); this word also ends verse 12, and appears twice elsewhere in the New Testament.[1] In Acts 22:2, it is moderated by “more,” showing it does not mean complete silence. In 2 Thessalonians 3:12, it refers to avoiding needless chatter and distraction. Unfortunately, this word is frequently translated as “silence” when addressed to women[2] even though it consistently indicates a quiet demeanour.

[1] This summarizes the use of the noun form that occurs in the passage. A related cognate adjective, hēsychios (1 Tim. 2:2; 1 Peter 3:4), refers to the quiet lives and quiet spirit that are to characterize all Christians. A related verb, hēsychazō (Luke 14:4; 23:56; Acts 11:18; 1 Thess. 4:11), is used variously, but the only Pauline use refers to living quietly.

[2] Of the four occurrences (Acts 22:2; 2 Thess. 3:12; 1 Tim. 2:11; 2:12), the first refers to a Jewish mob, the second to people who had become busybodies, and the last two to women. The NASB and ESV translate all four occurrences using a form of “quiet.” Other translations are less consistent (italics indicate surrounding words):

  • HCSB (2003): “quieter,” “quietly,” “silence,” “silent.”
  • NRSV (1989): “quiet,” “quietly,” “silence,” “silent.”
  • NIV (1984): “quiet,” “settle down,” “quietness,” “silent” (the last becomes “quiet” in the 2011 update).
  • NKJV (1982): “kept all the more silent,” “quietness,” “silence,” “silence.”
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IIRC, this point was made forcibly (scathingly?) by James Barr in his classic The Semantics of Biblical Language.

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Yes, I think I have been messy in how I’ve talked about this. Maybe a different example would help. Rebecca is told, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” It’s straightforward to determine what the words ‘elder’ and ‘younger’ mean. It’s more difficult to nail down what they refer to: her children Esau and Jacob or the nations Edom and Israel? The primary intent seems to be nations, but since the prophecy locates these nations in her womb, I do think we’re supposed to see how her sons’ lives echo these words. Even though it’s not a pun (unless one expands that word more than usual), it does seem we’re supposed to understand it on two levels. But given how it’s written, we’re also not supposed to see this as two separate levels but as one reality.

But back to adam. I think the conflation you pointed out muddled how I described Genesis 5:1–3. I was using the literary meaning to say the 5:2 Adam is humanity and the 5:3 Adam is a man, but this doesn’t account for how there’s a single intended referent for the proper name Adam in this passage. It isn’t distinguishing two Adams. It’s beginning the genealogy of Adam by saying how God created humanity, male and female, named them Adam, and when Adam was 130 he became the father of Seth. The name Adam refers to one character, but this character is both male and female and the father of Seth. This character is both the human-who-becomes-two-people we met in Genesis 2 and the man who is one side of that character. This genealogy insists that we view these as a single character: Adam.

So when Paul names Adam as the one man he’s talking about in Romans 5, I believe he’s pointing to the same literary character. He attributes actions by both of them to the man the same way Genesis does. I agree with your critique that seeing all humanity in Adam in Romans 5 is an implication of his archetypal analogy rather than embedded in the name Adam. But because of how Genesis 2–5 is written, Adam and Eve are both embedded in a reference to the Adam of Genesis.

Agreed. Would you agree that sometimes a target language forces more precision in that sense than was present in the source language? For instance, we distinguish wind/spirit/breath, but perhaps they were originally taken as pretty much the same sense of ruach, even while Spirit was indeed a different sense. Similarly, if some alternate English language had the terms ‘sniff’ and ‘pant’ but lacked a general term like ‘breathe,’ then a translation from a text in our English would introduce more specificity to some instances of breathing than was originally there.

That’s the sort of thing I think may be happening with adam – some of its single senses are wider than what different English translations convey – but I certainly agree that I can’t just select whatever sense suits me.

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Good example. Clearly at the discourse level this is intended to be taken as a prophesy and Jacob and Esau and their personal stories do indeed become part of the tribal identities of the Israelites and the Amalekites. But at the semantic level, it’s clear the “nations” in her womb are metaphorical. Jacob is
a metaphor for Israel and Esau is a metaphor for the Amalekites. ‘Nations’ does not refer to them because those referents don’t exist in Rachel’s womb. Plus nations aren’t elder or younger, twins are. (I’m using ‘refer’ in the formal semantic sense.)

It incorporates metaphorical thinking, as does most of our language processing.

But…what would motivate any embodied, gendered human hearing the story to interpret it this way? It’s convoluted and unnatural.

So then in Timothy he’s referring to a different literary character, a male named Adam created before Eve, to make a very specific point about men and women, not humanity? That doesn’t make sense.

Yes, often. It is difficult to maintain the exact level of ambiguity or clarity present in the original or recreate the same pragmatic effects. I’m actually listening to the Bible Translation conference right now and I just sat through a whole paper on the issues with translating the vocative, “woman” that Jesus uses when talking to his mother at the wedding at Cana. Most interpreters feel it was to some degree formal and distancing (as opposed to “mom”) and a way of asserting that he was at the wedding as a rabbi with a public ministry. But in many languages, you can’t call your mother “woman” like that without sounding rude. Or without implying you are married. So do you say, “Dear woman,” make it “madam,” use “mother” anyway and obscure the significance of the fact that he didn’t use mother. It’s all very tricky.

I guess my main bone of contention with gender-neutral human Adam (who fathers children :face_with_raised_eyebrow:) is that, even leaving translation out of it, I don’t see a compelling reason why the Hebrew speaking audience would have come away with that interpretation. I’m pretty sure it isn’t at all reflected in the Septuagint, and those translators would have been very familiar with the Hebrew understanding of what the text meant and would be in a different position than us know when it comes to translating. It doesn’t seem to me to be how Paul interpreted Adam in the other places he is mentioned.

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The way the genealogy of Adam does not include two different figures called Adam. To take the same proper name and split it into two entirely different proper names with different referents even though in context they are linked does not seem like a reasonable approach.

My whole point is that we shouldn’t create two different literary characters when Genesis presents them as one character. We may want to talk about them differently, in ways that don’t perpetuate the male slant of the text, but that comes after understanding what’s being said.

This is not much different to how the biblical claim that God (leaving aside the incarnation) is not male or human is sometimes obscured by the Bible’s androcentric language and culture. So we may choose to use different God-language than the Bible in order to communicate the same truths about God in our own culture and language. Similarly, we might want to talk about Adam and Eve or Humanity instead of collapsing the man and woman into Adam the way Genesis does.

[self-editing a bunch where I got into the weeds]

I’ve said, “The name Adam refers to one character, but this character is both male and female and the father of Seth. This character is both the human-who-becomes-two-people we met in Genesis 2 and the man who is one side of that character.” I’m not sure why you characterize this as a gender-neutral character, or why fathering children raises an eyebrow (this character can mother them too!).

If the problem is that Adam can’t possibly be male and female no matter what Genesis 5:2 says because it’s simply impossible, I’d suggest again how Rebecca can have two nations in her womb. They are metaphors, and ones we’re supposed to take seriously.

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I know, I’m doubting that anyone would naturally hear the story as about the neuter Adam you think is there. I don’t think there are two capital A-Adams. I think there is textual evidence the named entity Adam was always interpreted to be a male character. I don’t buy proper noun Adam referring to a single ungendered human character who is part of the geneaology as a genderless father. That’s sus, as my kids would say.

So are you saying, it’s irrelevant what the original audience or Paul thought about Adam and his gender, we should make him a neuter character?

It’s not impossible, it’s unnatural and I would assume if it was the intended meaning that they would have put some effort into clarifying since the common ground with the audience that is being used to construct the meaning has zero experience with a genderless human person.

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Christy your argument is with your culture.

So here is my question for you. Is the Holy Spirit a he?

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“Christy your argument is with your culture.”

ROTFL, heartily agreed with your assessment, @Paul_Allen1. But which “culture” is that Christy is arguing with? Mexican?

Intentional gender disquiet and unrest, apparently also protesting the Apostles and the Orthodox Church for individualistic (protestant) “religion” in an “individualistic culture”, seems to mark the attitude of 21st century “enlightened liberal evangelicalism”.

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Gender culture is reaching into the church and some object to Eve in Genesis being a type for Christian women today. (I think of which are temporary measures)

Whereas I hold Galatians 3:28 makes us one in Christ where we work together.

Oneness, being part of one another, enables hierarchy to exist without worry about inferiority or superiority (1 Cor 12:15–26). Likewise, the oneness of husband and wife should eliminate questions of superiority and inferiority.

Harmony should be further ensured by the knowledge that every believer has equal standing in Christ.

Paul does not say that all will be one in Christ; rather, he boldly proclaims that all are one. Galatians 3:28 was true when Paul wrote it, even though Jews scorned Gentiles, slavery existed, and women, by civil law and custom, may have been at their husband’s mercy.

The fulfillment of Galatians 3:28 does not depend on the existence or obliteration of any social institution, custom, or gender inequality created by sinful humans who fail to see the image of God in all persons.

There should be no distinction between women and men.

So before I get shot down. A lot of this involves Paul’s and tradition. Paul refers to his specific teaching as “custom” (I cor 11:16). NIV “practice”; “habit.” which does not mean tradition.

Paul’s use of this word brings the point into focus. Three terms can be applied:
(1) The tradition may be the relationship of husbands and wives, specifically, in this passage, that the wife should not shame her husband. It may also be the exercise of spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. (2) Woman’s ministry in a first-century church is the circumstance in which the principle or tradition is to be applied.
(3) The covering of women’s heads is simply a custom by which the Corinthians were to apply the tradition in that particular circumstance.

I won’t go on but I do note there are still popular misapprehensions that believe traditions whereas the texts counter traditions about restricting women. People don’t study the Bible

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Clearly. One shaped by centuries of sexism in the church.

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For some background, Paul, the current prime minister of my homeland is openly “feminist”. There’s obviously “good feminism” and “bad feminism”, do you agree? If so, how do you tell the difference?

“There should be no distinction between women and men.”

That reminds me of a song that I don’t like: “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try.”

First, the signifiers that you refer to are not spelled the same. That’s a fair distinction, isn’t it?

Please forgive me if I’m misunderstanding, but are you trying to de-gender the Scriptures? What to do, e.g. with Ephesians 5:25 where gendered language is used?

“Harmony should be further ensured by the knowledge that every believer has equal standing in Christ.”

Yes. Please don’t let bad feminism distract you from that understanding. There’s a lot of bad feminism out there nowadays, surely you’ll agree. Bad masculinism too, of course, but bad feminism is a serious problem in “our culture” of 21st century North America. Do you agree?

“The covering of women’s heads is simply a custom by which the Corinthians were to apply the tradition in that particular circumstance.”

Have you ever been to an Orthodox monastery with women, Paul? There was an Orthodox women’s monastery a few hundred meters from where I used to study (outside of N. America). It might help if you’re blaming culture, to start admitting the problems with yours openly and up front, otherwise it comes across as a superiority complex condescending to “uncivilized” others.

The problem in this case is that you & I both will get wrongly accused of “sexism” by “bad feminism”, which is mostly what the “ancient church” is accused of by “modern radical feminists”. So, we need to understand and acknowledge how bad, radical feminism is intentionally iconoclastic, indeed having a harshly negative impact on the Church. Otherwise, it’s just a slaughter won by relativism.

Eve is certainly not absent in Orthodox churches or liturgy, Paul. That should be known to you before you start accusing “church” of “sexism” along with Christy, if that’s your angle here at BioLogos.

In my experience it’s not so much that “the texts counter traditions about restricting women” and men, or that “People don’t study the Bible”, but rather that “protestantism has sold-out to ‘the world’ in adopting its morality”, including ideological feminism. However, in contrast to these “liberal evangelicals”, the Church teaches the “equality” that you value, even if not in the way that most N. American protestants are taught about it today. There’s “evolutionary christianity” to face before that can be dealt with, apparently, right?

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This might help calm people from trendy postmodern accusations of ideology against the Holy Church.

It’s a wonderful wife-husband musical duo. Sarcastic critic hat: Perhaps he sings a bit too loud, or doesn’t let her sing in the right places? No self-reflection or personal responsibility? Believing something’s gotta be wrong before it’s right marks bad feminism.

I hope people enjoy the music, instead of pointing their fingers at one or the other and accusing them/us of bias by birth. Inheritance - YouTube