Barring False Dichotomies: Adam and Eve's Disobedience and Death

James Barr's interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve has become a staple of modern biblical studies. Often it is assumed that he has successfully shown that Genesis 2-3 does not narrate the origin of death in the act of disobedience (in Barr's parlance: "evil") of the primal couple. Here's his own summary:

"So let me put forward at once my basic thesis about that story. My argument is that, taken in itself and for itself, this narrative is not, as it has commonly been understood in our tradition, basically a story of the origins of sin and evil, still less a depiction of absolute evil or total depravity: it is a story of how human immortality was almost gained, but in fact was lost. This was, I need hardly remind you, the reason, and the only reason, why Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden: not because there were unworthy to stay there, or because they were hopelessly alienated from God, but because, if they stayed there, they would soon gain access to the tree of life, and eat of its fruit, and gain immortality: they would 'live for ever' (Genesis 3.22). Immortality was what they had practically achieved." The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, p 4

This argument only works because Barr has introduced a dichotomy: Either the narrative is about immortality or it is about the origin of human evil. Note Barr: "the only reason[,] why Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden: not because they were unworthy . . . but because . . . they would soon gain access to the tree of life." However, the presence of the two trees in the garden joins the question of obedience/'evil' ("you shall not eat") to the question of life/death ("in that day, you shall die"). If God were only concerned to prevent the couple from attaining immortality, then the tree of life would have (also) been the subject of divine prohibition.

But it was not.

In my view, therefore, the narrative does in fact support the linkage of law and life, or disobedience and death.

What do you think?

* I believe the depiction of Adam and Eve is from a third century fresco, in the catacomb of St. Piretro and St. Marcellino, Rome.

Quote of the Month: LTJ on Historical Critical Method

In the classic historical critical method . . . once one has done an historical Jesus, or an history of the early church, there's really no reason to read the writings anymore. For me, I learn history in order  better to read these writings.

Luke Timothy Johnson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ac7nGM1qGc

"Faith" Obscuring Understanding

"Israel conceived even Jahweh himself as having human form. But the way of putting it which we use runs in precisely the wrong direction according to Old Testament ideas, for, according to the ideas of Jahwism, it cannot be said that Israel regarded God anthropomorphically, but the reverse, that she considered man as theomorphic." G. von Rad, OTtheo, 1:145

This statement of Gerhard von Rad's nicely summarizes an emphasis James Kugel has often made.  Traditionally theology has tended to view the human-like attributes of God as distractions which need to be explained (away). This has the paradoxical results of a) decontextualizing and dehumanzing the biblical texts, that is, making it easier to understand them as divinely inspired, and b) of imposing on them, unwittingly of course, our (human) will to domesticate or exult them (depending on your perspective). If we take the lead of texts like Gen 1:26-27 we should be much less struck by the humanness of YHWH than by the divine quality of humanity. With the psalmist we might exclaim, "You have made him a little less than elohim!" (Ps 8:6).

A similar impulse to subject the text to a hermeneutical straight-jacket of symbolism is to divest the Gen 1 account of scientific implications, insisting, as Evangelical interpreters are want to do, that the text only communicates theological, not scientific knowledge. As von Rad notes, this too is a mistake: "This account of Creation is, of course, completely bound to the cosmological knowledge of its time" (ibid., 1:148). The Fundamentalist tries to take the high road by holding its scientific and theological implications together, but, because (s)he cannot allow that the text could be wrong, can only do so by badly misreading either or both the text and contemporary science.

I think that the only way to proceed is to admit that the text ties theological claims to defunct science, and then to ask whether the theology remains compatible or adaptable to our contemporary state of knowledge about the world. The answer to that may be yes or no: the fact that Gen 1 ties the two together does not mean that its theological claims are automatically false. (We shouldn't take from this that theology can ignore science; to the contrary, like the text of Gen 1, it must run the risk of engaging scientific knowledge dialogically.)

In complete contrast to the dictum that one must share the faith of the biblical texts in order to understand them, it is often the case that those who claim to possess such faith in fact misread the text, forcing it to conform to rather than challenge their convictions. This is faith obscuring understanding.

Quote of the Day

"Innocent suffering is a hippopotamus."

D. Clines, Job WBC, 1:xlvi

A Bizarre Dream about Christian Hermeneutics

Last night, I had a bizarre dream in which the fittingness of New Testament anti-types from Israel's history was allegorically tested by the ability of an archer to lodge arrows in my back. I managed to elude his offenses, running madly and throwing obstacles in the way.
 
True Story.

"What is Man?" CSBS Abstract

Come the end of May I will be reading a paper for the following abstract at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies:

“What is Man?” Creation and Anthropology in the Hebrew Bible to the Hodayot

A prominent form critical element of the Hodayot found among the Dead Sea Scrolls has been termed “Doxologies of Lowliness”, after the so-called “Doxologies of Righteousness” of the Hebrew Bible. These Qumran texts share with their biblical counterparts an emphasis on the righteousness of God, but along with amplifying the emphasis on human sinfulness they ground human lowliness and sin in humanity’s very creatureliness rather than simply its behaviour. This paper will investigate select Hebrew Bible texts which combine the themes of creation and anthropology, including the P and J sources in the primordial history of Genesis, Psalms 8 and 139, and a selection of texts from the Book of Job, in order to compare their own formulations of the tension between human creatureliness and sinfulness and to uncover any tradition-historical connections which may illuminate the Doxologies of Lowliness.

I invite any suggestions regarding bibliography, especially in the Hebrew Bible material.

Creation, Theodicy, and the Divine: A Biblical Scholar Talks LOST?

Reading Jon D. Levenson's Sinai and Zion I was struck by how well his discussion of the problem of monotheism in the Bible via the flood narratives parallels what is going on in the television series LOST (I've italicized the most relevant part):

But there are reasons to doubt whether the religion of Israel was really monotheistic. Consider an illustration: Once there were two gods. One held high hopes for creation and would not tolerate evil in it; the other was more a realist and was prepared to bear with man, even though the latter's impulses were evil from his youth on. The first god brought a flood to destroy the world with the exception of one family of righteous people, for he regretted having created the world. But, after a while, he was overcome by the second god, who caused the flood to subside and swore that he would never allow such a thing to occur, even though man is still evil. Now this story is surely polytheistic; there are two gods. But is it essentially different from the story of Noah in Genesis 6-9? In the latter, God determines to destroy the whole world, except for Noah and his family, because of its corruption (6:13),but then he promises that he will not bring a flood again, even though man has not reformed. "The inclinations of man's mind are [still] evil from his youth" (8:31). In other words, God changes his mind twice in the story of Noah. First he regrets having created the world (6:7), and then he decides that he will not bring another flood even though man's evil, the cause of the flood, continues. My question is this: Is this one God or more than one? . . . Wherein lies the continuity of identity? (Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. New York: Harper, 1985. p. 57)

Of course, the parallel is not exact, but substitute "the island" for "creation" and you get a fairly good description of the kind of conflict portrayed between Jacob and his nemesis on LOST. Just to be clear: I'm not suggesting LOST wrestles with the philosophical problem of monotheism, only that its dualism has a parallel in the biblical traditions' struggle to reconcile a-sort-of-monotheism and human evil.