Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin

Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives

Reeves, Michael R. E., Madueme, Hans

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781441246417
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

The Christian doctrines of original sin and the historical fall of Adam have been in retreat since the rise of modernity. Here leading scholars present a theological, biblical, and scientific case for the necessity of belief in original sin and the historicity of Adam and Eve in response to contemporary challenges. Representing various Christian traditions, the contributors shed light on recent debates as they present the traditional doctrine of original sin as orthodox, evangelical, and the most theologically mature and cogent synthesis of the biblical witness. This fresh look at a heated topic in evangelical circles will appeal to professors, students, and readers interested in the creation-evolution debate.

Part 1
Adam in the Bible and Science

1
Adam and Eve in the Old Testament

C. John Collins

Traditionally Christians, like the Jews from whom they arose, have read the story of Adam and Eve in the opening chapters of the Bible as describing the first human beings, from whom all other humans descend. They have also taken the account of the “disobedience” in Genesis 3 as narrating the origin of all human sin: that is, these readers have supposed that God first made humans morally innocent and that the events of Genesis 3 transformed the moral condition of Adam and Eve, and thus of all humankind after them.1

Many contemporary scholars have cast doubt on this traditional understanding of the origins both of humans and of sin. For example, James Barr (1924–2006), a biblical scholar of considerable influence in the twentieth century, asserted that the conventional way of reading Genesis “derives essentially from St Paul,” while a close reading of Genesis on its own terms will lead to different conclusions.2 Further, Claus Westermann (1909–2002), another influential scholar, insisted that Genesis 3 (taken as a “fall” story) is of minimal importance in the entire Old Testament: “It is nowhere cited or presumed in the Old Testament; its significance is limited to primeval events.”3 And Peter Enns, an Old Testament scholar with an evangelical background, has carried forward this notion that the Old Testament (as distinct from Paul) does not attribute human sinfulness to Adam’s primal disobedience; indeed, it is a mistake to take Adam in Genesis as the actual first human being: “Paul’s Adam is not a result of a ‘straight’ reading of the Old Testament.”4

Several factors in the modern climate of thought make it attractive to reduce the importance of Adam and Eve. First, there is the perennial question of just how deeds done by someone else so long ago—even if that someone is my ancestor—can have such a major impact on life here and now.5 Second, there are parallels between the stories in Genesis and the tales that come from other parts of the ancient Near East (most notably from Mesopotamia); perhaps Genesis is doing something similar to what these other tales do, and if we do not accord “historicity” to the other tales, why should we suppose that it matters for Genesis?6 And third, many take current biological theories to imply that humans arose by way of an evolutionary, natural process rather than by the special action of God; these theories make it difficult to speak of the first members of a new species. I will address these climatic factors only in a very cursory way here and defer the larger discussion to another venue.

At first glance, it may seem that “Adam and Eve” do in fact play only a very small role in the whole Hebrew Bible (as distinct from the Apocrypha and New Testament). Victor Hamilton observed,

Apart from its uses in Gen. 1–5, the only other unambiguous occurrence of the proper name “Adam” in the OT is 1 Chron. 1:1. It may occur in Deut. 32:8; Job 31:33; Hos. 6:7. This is surprising, given the fact that OT literature does not hesitate to recall early heroes of Israel’s past such as Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and thus link the past with the present in one corporate continuum. . . . Unlike the OT, intertestamental literature and the NT have numerous references to Adam. For the former, compare Sir. 17:1; 49:16; Tob. 8:6; Wis. 2:23; 9:2. For the latter, compare Luke 3:38; Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 11:12; 15:22, 45–49; 1 Tim. 2:13–14.7

If the citational statistics were all that there is to the discussion, it would indeed be hard to warrant the traditional Christian emphasis on Adam and Eve. But, as I hope to show, these statistics are potentially misleading, and should not control our discussion.

Here is what I intend to accomplish in this essay. Since the explicit references to Adam and Eve occur primarily in Genesis 1–5, I will first show how chapters 1–11 of Genesis have a clear literary unity in their current form (regardless of their compositional history). If the rest of the Bible treats this material as a whole, then echoes of one part may well be evoking the whole. Second, I will examine specific issues within Genesis 1–5 to see how the text portrays Adam and Eve and their significance. Third, I will consider how the rest of the Old Testament refers to, evokes, or presupposes the story of Adam and Eve. Finally, I will briefly sample Jewish writings from the Second Temple period (outside of the New Testament) that show that these authors, from the mainstream of Judaism, saw Adam and Eve in much the same way as I do. Throughout my discussion I will draw attention to how the whole Old Testament story presupposes the historical significance of Adam and Eve as the fountainhead of humanity and as the doorway by which sin came into God’s world.

The Unity of Genesis 1–11

Scholars commonly assign the different pericopes in Genesis 1–11 to separate sources. In particular, we often read that Genesis 1–2 presents two different creation accounts (1:1–2:3 and 2:4–25), which may even be difficult to reconcile with each other.8

If we can establish that the current form of Genesis invites us to read Genesis 1–11 as a coherent whole, then we can say that any reading that fails to incorporate such coherence is inadequate—and that this is so regardless of what we think about the prehistory of the individual pericopes.

Its Setting in the Book of Genesis

The first line of argument is the fact that Genesis 1–11 is now part of the whole structure of Genesis. The organizing function of the toledot (“generations”) in Genesis is well known: see Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1, 32; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2. According to the toledot, Genesis 1 (really 1:1–2:3) stands as a kind of preface to the whole book, while Genesis 2–4 (2:4–4:26) is the next section, and so on.9

I shall argue that Genesis 1–11 (1:1–11:26) has its own coherence, and we can see that it stretches over several sections marked by the toledot. At the same time, as R. W. L. Moberly has noted, there is no real grammatical break from Genesis 11 to Genesis 12.10 The story as a whole progresses smoothly.

Now consider how Genesis 1:28 records God’s “blessing” on the human couple, urging them to “be fruitful and multiply.” These themes run throughout Genesis and beyond. In Genesis 9:1, Noah is a kind of “new Adam”:11 “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” In Genesis 12:2–3, the Lord will bless Abram and make him a channel of blessing for his own descendants, and for the rest of the world. These promises are repeated to Abraham’s heirs: to Ishmael (17:20), Isaac (26:3–4), and Jacob (28:3; 48:3–4). The book of Exodus opens by telling us, “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” Deuteronomy promises that the people of Israel, when they are faithful, will continue to enjoy this blessing (30:16; see also 7:13):

If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

All of this allows us to see that Genesis focuses on the ways in which God has made new starts after Adam and Eve—with Noah, and then with Abram and his offspring. Hence Noah, Abram, and Israel are “new Adams,” which shows how fully Genesis 1–2 is integrated into the whole Pentateuch.

God’s calling of Abraham is not simply for his own benefit but also for the rest of the world.12 One of the chief themes of Old Testament messianic hope is the expectation that under the leadership of the Messiah, the people of God will succeed in bringing God’s light to the gentile world. The shape of this biblical story assumes that all human beings have a common origin, a common predicament, and a common need to know God and have God’s image restored in them; this assumption comes from including Genesis 1–11 in the story, with some version of the conventional reading of the “fall” of the whole human family.

Parallels between Genesis 1–11 and Ancient Near Eastern “Myths”

A second avenue for establishing that we should read Genesis 1–11 together comes from the parallels with materials from other ancient Near Eastern peoples, particularly from the Mesopotamians.13

I noted that we intuitively see a transition between Genesis 1–11 and the rest of Genesis. Even though there is no grammatical shift, nevertheless our intuition finds support in how the narrator slows down in the Abraham story: he has been covering large stretches of time in brief narratives, whereas now he is taking more narration time to cover less elapsed time in more detail.

These other stories from the ancient Near East further confirm our intuition. I see no reason to quarrel with the way in which specialists on the ancient Near East find the chief parallels with Genesis 1–11 to include the Sumerian King List, the Atrahasis Epic, and the Eridu Genesis/Sumerian Flood Tale.14 (Another story, Enuma Elish, or the Babylonian Epic of Creation, once seemed a promising source for comparisons as well, and some biblical scholars still turn to it; Assyriologists, however, seem less willing than formerly to endorse much of a comparison.15)

There is much to say about the connections, and about the ways in which Genesis 1–11 is both similar and dissimilar to these other sources, which space forbids me to do here. The point of interest for now is that this overarching pattern from Mesopotamia provides a literary and ideological context into which Genesis 1–11 speaks: it is reasonable to conclude that Genesis 1–11 does so as a whole.

What does this parallel tell us about the function of Genesis 1–11? The Mesopotamian sources provide what Assyriologist William Hallo calls “prehistory”—the period of human existence before there are any secure written records—and “protohistory”—the earliest stages for which there are records.16 Another way to put this is to recognize that these materials provide what we can call the front end of the official Mesopotamian worldview story. Further, it appears that the Mesopotamians aimed to accomplish their purpose by founding their stories on what they thought were actual events, albeit told with a great deal of imagery and symbolism. This means that t...