The genealogy in Genesis 5 has people living hundreds of years. Are these literal? Or represent a span of time between individuals who weren’t strictly parent and child? Is it a modification of the Mesopotamian kings list? Are the numbers symbolic? Lots of options have been proposed. The chart above comes from K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, vol. 1A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 302–303. Matthews points out that preserving these numbers is a difficult tasks for scribes (why I don’t know but then like most people I don’t read Hebrew). The thr ..read more

Much of the debate on Romans 5:12 is due to the translation of “eph ho”. Original sin, adamic condemnation, defiled nature all of these ideas lean heavily on a faulty translation in the Latin tradition. Moyise has an interesting new(ish) book out which touches on the passage: “In Romans 5:12, Paul says that death entered the world through Adam’s sin and so death came to all because (eph ho) all sinned. It is now commonly agreed that the Greek words eph ho mean ‘because’ (Paul also uses them in 2 Corinthians 5:4 and Philippians 3:12, 4:10) and not ‘in him’ as Origen (c. 200 CE) took it and as i ..read more

The inability of Christians to grasp the meaning and message of both Genesis and Revelation create a great divide in America. Christians struggle with both the beginning and culmination of the Scriptures — the Alpha and the Omega as they might be called. Both Genesis and Revelation bring a lot of baggage with them to the American religious scene. We have great division on end-times views stemming from misadventures into Revelation. Our confused teaching has scarred our culture and created a religious society that has wasted immense energy preparing for the end of the world. The predictions ha ..read more

“The stark reality is that beings who possess free will don’t always hew to the hopes and expectations of their creators. If this is so with us in respect to God, it is no less so with our children in respect to us…when our children disappoint us, when they make choices we don’t approve of; when they exchange the world we have carefully crafted for them for a dubious world of their own making – perhaps we too, after all the consequences have been meted out, after all the words have been said, after all the anguish has been absorbed – perhaps we, too, can provide them with clothes for the jour ..read more

“This interpretation leads to a reading of πάντες ἥμαρτον (“all sinned”) that is itself improbable. In the Augustinian interpretation, this refers to the whole human race sinning in Adam in a collective and participatory way. As Augustine himself puts it, “all have broken God’s covenant in that one man in whom all sinned.” The idea is that Paul speaks of an involuntary participation in Adam’s sin by an actual participation in Adam’s nature. Adam is not simply an individual, but the primal instantiation of human nature, and so the consequences of his fall not only affect him personally but also ..read more

People have a rose coloured view of what very good in Gen 1:30 means – thanks in no small part to Catholic father Augustine. But God’s words show the order of Genesis 1 included a forceful putting down of opposition and rule by humanity over the beasts. not only meat eating but conflict. Not what most literal creationists following a form of Augustine’s The Fall theology think. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that ..read more

I ran into an interesting article by Sterchi in JETS who argues based on the Hebrew grammar the 7 days are NOT in chronological but theological order. His argument (of which below is a very small snippet) is pretty interesting. It certainly makes more sense of the evening & morning being time markers for days 1-3 before the sun and moon are made on day 4. Not such a good read for literalists who dislike Bible scholarship. “Mark Throntveit suggests that this structural relationship with some textual hints points to the fact that the sequence of days is not chronologically ordered at all. T ..read more

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Why was Cain’s sacrifice rejected in Genesis 4 and what are we meant to learn from this event?  We are not told what was missing from the offering.  There are no explicit revealed pre-existing criteria.  All we have is the comparison to Abel’s accepted offering.  Abel’s offering was his best, Cain’s perhaps not.  What the incident revealed was an underlying issue with Cain’s pride, which led to murder. Cain and Abel are presented to us as the two offspring of Adam and Eve.  Ultimately both are “lost” and the third son Seth born after these events is presented as t ..read more

“La mortalité est sa condition, mais sa mort est cependant conditionnelle” Humbert [1] Sometimes the French say it best? [1] Van Ee, J. J. (2013). Death and the Garden : : An Examination of Original Immortality, Vegetarianism, and Animal Peace in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qm3n0mt ..read more