Review of The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 by Mark Smith

Mark Smith has written a compelling piece on what has become the most well known and revered expression of creation faith in the Hebrew Bible, the creation account in Genesis 1 (though he is careful to point out that this is not the only creation story contained within the Hebrew Bible). Building off the scholarly consensus that Genesis 1 is a creation text of the sixth century written from a priestly perspective, Smith explores the significance that lies behind this priestly vision and how it functions as a part of the larger biblical witness to the creative activity of God. This volume is both an enlightening read and a helpful resource for the scholarly discussion on Genesis 1.

Because Genesis 1 does not exist in a vacuum but rather in a canon that  is replete with creation imagery, Smith begins his discussion on the “Three Models of Creation in the Bible.” He surveys the many creation texts of the Hebrew Bible and categorizes them by the most dominant feature he observes in the text: divine power, wisdom, or presence. It is the conclusion of this chapter in particular that I found most valuable. Beyond simply categorizing these different models and observing their distinct emphases, Smith explores the ways in which these models prove to be theologically advantageous, while also addressing their limitations or potential for abuse. This chapter serves as the background of Smith’s work, using the material here to help sharpen our focus of the  distinctiveness of the priestly vision of Genesis 1.

The discussion of the text of Genesis 1 is divided into two chapters (Part 1), the first addressing questions commonly asked or issues that typically arise concerning the first day of creation, the second focusing broadly on the whole week and highlighting the priestly features of the text. Smith asks the following questions in the first of these two chapters: “Does Genesis 1:1 begin in “the” Beginning?” (43-9); “Did God Make Creation from Nothing in Genesis 1:1-2?” (49-59); “Does Genesis 1 Explain the Origins of Good and Evil?” (59-64); “What is the Significance of Divine Speech in Genesis 1:3?” (64-71);  “Was the Light on Day One in Genesis 1:3 Created?” (71-9); “Why are Divine Sight, Separation, and Speech in Genesis 1:4-5 Important?” (79-82);  “Who is the Audience for the Divine Speech and Light in Genesis 1?” (82-5). These questions are not unfamiliar to pastors, parents, and Bible class teachers, and though Smith’s answers will not necessarily satisfy inquisitive minds, they will certainly provoke deep thought and reflection. In the second of these two chapters, Smith addresses the topics of time, space, humanity, and blessing before synthesizing this material and summarizing this “priestly vision.” In doing this, Smith manages to paint the big picture in a way that scholars often fail to do. Scholarly discussion around Genesis 1 is often aimed at deconstructing naïve readings of the text. What Smith provides is a thoroughly constructive theologically sensitive reading of this priestly vision of creation.

In Part 2 of his book, Smith explores some literary issues concerning Genesis 1. The first chapter in this section addresses the placement of Genesis 1 at the front of the book of Genesis and of the Hebrew Bible at large. After a brief discussion of scribal activity in the ancient world, he argues that Genesis 1 serves as both a prologue to the Pentateuch and commentary of Genesis 2 (though he is careful to qualify how the word “commentary” is to be understood given its connotations in our modern context). He understands Genesis 1 to extend the creation tradition in Israel and in certain places to transform it. In the second chapter of this section, Smith wrestles with the difficulties surrounding the classification of myth in general, and the classification of Genesis 1 as myth in particular. He reviews the scholarly discussion, those texts or characteristics generally recognized as myth or mythic, and proposes reasons both for and against classifying Genesis 1 as myth. He recognizes that how one defines myth is the primary factor in whether one is willing to so classify Genesis 1, and concludes that this issue “may ultimately depend on what credence readers are prepared to give to either the Bible or to ancient Near Eastern literature in their descriptions of reality” (159).

The book also contains an appendix, “A Very Brief Introduction to Modern Scholarly Approaches to Genesis 1.” This appendix contains a concentrated dose of names, methods, and general information that will likely prove too technical for the average reader. Smith does a relatively good job as relegating the technical aspects of the discussion to the endnotes in order to provide a smoother reading experience for those less familiar or interested in the technical issues that occupy the scholarly community. He aims for this book to be useful for both scholars and lay readers alike. For this reason, it is understandable why endnotes were chosen instead of footnotes. However, Smith’s book is 300 pages long, and 100 of these pages contain endnotes; those interested in the footnotes will wear themselves out constantly flipping back and forth. Another frustrating feature for some will be the absence of a bibliography. I understand the desire to cut costs and save space, but I do not understand why in our present digital age the publishers or authors of these books are not making the bibliographies available online. On a much different note, the overall quality of the book is very good. The spine is solid, the pages open wide, and they remain open when sat flat on a desk.

In conclusion, this was an enjoyable read (though I will confess to having not paid too much attention to the footnotes). If you are even remotely interested in Genesis 1, you owe it to yourself to make time in your schedule and room on your shelf for this book.

Review of The Theology of the Book of Genesis by R. W. L. Moberly

I am not the first to review R. W. L. Moberly’s Theology of the Book of Genesis, the latest contribution to Cambridge University Press’ Old Testament Theology series. I find myself overwhelmingly in agreement with Ben’s assessment over at kilbabo, so I will attempt to avoid unnecessary repetition and explore a little further the uniqueness of this interesting yet frustrating book. Those who have not read Ben’s review are encouraged to read it in concert with my own.

Moberly, by his own admission, did not write a theology of the book of Genesis.

The discussion of the biblical text will necessarily be selective. . . . I am painfully aware of what is not included; for this I ask the reader’s indulgence (and forgiveness). What follows is a guide to, rather than a comprehensive coverage of, what theological understanding and appropriation of Genesis today may involve. (20)

Indeed, what Moberly demonstrates in this book is not simply what theological understanding and appropriation of Genesis today may involve, but what theological understanding and appropriation of any biblical text should involve. For this reason, the most valuable part of Moberly’s book is the introduction (though I hesitate to say that it is “worth the price of the book”). Moberly begins by briefly exploring the various ways in which the word “theology” has been understood historically, and asserts that one must “recover a more classic sense of theology, as an attempt to understand everything in the world in relation to God” (5), in order to truly arrive at a theology of Genesis.This is precisely what the book does.

Apart from his definition of “theology,” Moberly’s refusal to focus only on the text itself reflects his conviction that studying Genesis is not like studying other ancient texts. “Genesis is not a freestanding ancient text, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, but is part of the authoritative scriptures of synagogue and church, wherein there has been an unbroken history through the centuries of living with the text in a veriety of ways” (6). This admittedly confessional approach suggests that biblical theology cannot fail to account for the reader’s own context and how that context shapes the biblical text:

It follows from this that there is something intrinsically contextual and provisional about theological use of the biblical text. Theology is not a once-for-all exercise in finding the right words and/or deeds, but rather a continuing and ever-repeated attempt to articulate what a faithful understanding and use of the biblical text might look like in the changing circumstances of life. (19)

In a recent post, I include a quote from Mark Smith’s new book, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (review forthcoming), where I believes he does just this regarding the motif of God creating through violence. Moberly accomplishes this by focusing on specific texts and entering into dialogue with modern conversation partners regarding the issues raised by the text. For example, in his chapter “Genesis 1: Picturing the World,” Moberly engages in dialogue with Jon Levenson and the views he expresses in Creation and the Persistence of Evil, as well as Richard Dawkins and the views he expresses in River out of Eden: a Darwinian View of Life and The Blind Watchmaker: Why  the Evidence of Eveolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Those interested in the intersection of faith and science will find this chapter to be a very exciting reading. As you can imagine, these encounters make Moberly’s book very relevant, but unfortunately, it does not help in shaping an overall theology of the book of Genesis.

It is worth mentioning for those interested in Genesis 12:1-3 that Moberly has proposed a reading that would challenge a long term consensus view of this passage. In summary:

The supposition that those who invoke Abraham in blessing actually receive the blessing invoked is a non sequitur that goes well beyond the meaning of the Genesis text. The textual concern is to assure Abraham that he really will be a great nation, and the measure of that greatness is that he will be invoked on the lips of others as  a model of desirability. The condition of othe rnations in their own right is not in view, beyond their having reason not to be hostile to Abraham. (155)

Overall, the book is well written, and it will certainly engage those who are interested in how the texts of Genesis treated in the book speak beyond their ancient horizon to our modern context. Moberly models an approach to Genesis, and the whole bible for that matter, that is engaging, relevant, and ultimately theological. While the book has a lot to offer, knowing that it is selective in what it addresses will help those who are interested in a comprehensive treatment of the theological message of Genesis not to get their hopes up.

Is Genesis 1 a Polemic?

Nathan MacDonald over at Early Jewish Monotheisms has a post by the same title in which he challenges the ‘polemic’ reading of Genesis and commends a recent article by Jan Gertz. What he said reminded me of something Fretheim writes in God and World:

At the same time, to conceive of the biblical account’s relationship to these other stories fundamentally in disjunctive or polemical terms can miss their genuine contribution to Israel’s own reflection about creation. Israel certainly believed that God had been active through the years in the life and thought of other cultures, including their thinking about creational issues (as well as other mattters, such as law), and they were not fearful of drawing on such reflection. Such an understanding would be witness to the activity of God the Creator, not only before Israel existed but also during the history of the chosen people. (66-7)

It sounds like Nathan sees zero polemic in Genesis 1, whereas Fretheim will allow polemic to exist, but not as the essence of what is happening in Genesis 1. Because I cannot ignore the existence of texts like Enuma Elish, I cannot help but see polemical elements to Genesis 1 (even if that is my own theologizing at work), but I appreciate the warnings of Nathan and Fretheim not to make Genesis 1 out to be a polemic.

Reference

Fretheim, Terence E. God And World In The Old Testament: A Relational Theology Of Creation. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005.

Moberly on the Avoidability and Inevidability of Disobedience

We find that the story [of Genesis 3] in fact contains two distinct points, depending upon how one reads it. If one takes the story as a whole, then the words of judgment in 3:14-19 are part of what happens when man is disobedient. If one takes the words in 3:14-19 in their own right, they show that man is disobedient. The former reading implies that disobedience is not inevitable–obedience to Torah is a real possibility for man (cf. Deut. 30:11-14). The latter implies that disobedience is in fact universal. Although there is a certain tension between these two points, their conflation in the text can be understood in the same sort of way as one of the theological paradoxes of the flood narrative. There, although man is universally sinful (Gen 6:5), Noah finds favour in the eyes of God (6:8) and is explicitly said to be righteous (6:9). Even more strikingly, God’s final pronouncement of the enduring sinfulness of man’s heart (8:21) must, in terms of the story, refer primarily to Noah himself and his family, even though Noah at the time is offering an acceptable sacrifice. Such a paradoxical assessment of man as profoundly sinful and yet also capable of true obedience to God is clear in the flood story. I propose that Gen. 2-3 should be read in a similar way. (20-21)

I am not sure that I agree that “the words in 3:14-19 in their own right . . . show that man is disobedient.” I would put it this way:

If one takes the story as a narrative about a man and his wife, then the words of judgment in 3:14-19 are part of what happens when man is disobedient. If one recognizes that this man and his wife are not a historical couple but rather the story of all humanity (“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth” Gen 2:4), they show that man is disobedient.

Recast in this light, I find Moberly’s observation about the paradox in the text to be quite profound indeed! Moberly’s entire article has been delightful and stimulating, though I disagree with his ultimate conclusion.

References

Moberly, R W L. “Did the Serpent Get It Right?.” Journal of Theological Studies 39, no. 1 (1988): 1-27.

Now the Serpent was Exceptionally Shrewd . . .

I have been using Robert Alter’s The Five Books of Moses recently in an adult Bible class I have been teaching. One of the praiseworthy aspects of his translation is the preservation of ambiguity. The Hebrew text does not always clarify meaning grammatically as we tend to prefer, and translations often cater to our preferences by removing the ambiguity. I, however, find it exciting to find ways to “translate” the ambiguity of a passage.

Recently over at Biblia Hebraica, Doug and I had a brief exchange over the description of the serpent in Genesis 3. The description of the serpent in Hebrew reads:

וְהַנָּחָשׁ֙ הָיָ֣ה עָר֔וּם מִכֹּל֙ חַיַּ֣ת הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָׂ֖ה יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהִ֑ים

Doug was basing his interpretation on the typical way English versions translate the מן, as a comparative particle. I suggested the possibility of a partitive use of the particle. Thus, rather than interpreting this as saying that the serpent was the most shrewd, he could rather be understood as the solely shrewd beast of the field.

Assuming I am right regarding the ambiguity of this text, then something Moberly said in his article “Did the Serpent Get it Right?” lends itself to capturing this ambiguity in an English translation. Moberly writes, “The story continues with the introduction of the serpent, who is said to be cunning to an exceptional degree and is one of the creatures made by God” (5, emphasis added). If one were to translate the passage, “Now the serpent was exceptionally shrewed of all the beasts of the field which YHWH God made,” then one would preserve both the comparative and partitive potentiality of the construction. Nice!

As to the use of the word “shrewd,” see here.

References

Moberly, R W L. “Did the Serpent Get It Right?.” Journal of Theological Studies 39, no. 1 (1988): 1-27.

Review of The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, Part Four

Noah’s Ark: Time, Chronology and the Fall

The story of the flood may at first seem irrelevant for a book that focuses on the garden of Eden. For Barr, however, the flood story is integral to the discussion for two reasons. First, the flood story, as it appears in ancient Near Eastern literature, concerns immortality, what Barr argues the story of the Garden of Eden is all about. While the story as it exists may have less to do with immortality than its mesopotamian parallels, even Christian writers will use the flood story to reflect on resurrection (1 Peter 3:18-20). Second, “the world in which we live is a world that had its beginning with Noah and his times” (75). As a second creation story, the flood is helpful in addressing questions about the nature of humanity, for all humanity descend from Noah in the biblical narrative.

While Barr spends a brief amount of space discussion the chronology of the early chapters of Genesis with particular emphasis on the (gradually declining) life spans of the antediluvian patriarchs, the emphasis of this chapter falls on neither time or chronology, but with the (various) concept(s) of the Fall. While Christian interpretation, fueled by its reading of Paul, has typically turned to Genesis 3 as the answer for questions concerning the entrance of sin and death into an otherwise good world (understood as perfect), Barr sees Genesis 6 as the text which explains how a good world (understood with potential for greater or lesser goodness) was tainted by violence that made death (a natural aspect of life in the world God created) occur untimely and under improper circumstances. Barr reflects on how the gospels reflect on this aspect of Jesus’ death much more than on any other aspect of his life. Barr is critical of those who make death in abstract the enemy of God. As Barr understands it, “a death by violence, and in particular by enormous injustice, [is] exactly the conditions under which the Old Testament did see death as something like an ‘enmity to God’” (86).

Barr concludes by this chapter by reflecting on the concept of the/a Fall. He uses the debate between Ludwig Köhler and Emil Brunner as a launching point for addressing how the text of Genesis 3 should be approached. Köhler saw the text as an aetiological myth, “its purpose was to explain a series of contemporary phenomena” (87). Brunner (and Barr) found Köhler’s aetiologies unpersuasive. Brunner, because this led to the conclusion that Paul was “no better than a novice in biblical interpretation” (88). Barr goes on to explain, however, what he understands of Paul in this regard: “Paul was not interpreting the story in and for itself; he was really interpreting Christ through the uses of images from this story.” And this is where Barr differs significantly from Brunner, as he continues:

If the Old Testament text is to count as having some sort of authority in and for itself, then it must be free and able to utter a message of its own which may, at least in principle, be substantially different from the use which Paul made of certain selected and very limited elements within it, read through the perceptions and assumptions of a later and very different culture. It is useless to talk of the ‘authority’ of the Old Testament if in fact it is not allowed to say anything different from what Paul, or any other particular later interpreter, supposed it to be saying. (89)

Barr is unpersuaded by Köhler’s aetiologies because he see’s something more significant at work in the text; namely, immortality. “Immortality was the issue, and humanity ended up being (or remaining) mortal: Wisdom, followed by Paul, and later followed by the main theological traditions, rephrased this so as to say that the humans had been immortal but had lost this immortality. As I have put it, they never had it, but they had the chance of it, and lost that chance” (91). Thus, Barr concludes that man was never perfect or immortal, but was much like we are today.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Review of The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, Part Three

Chapter Three: Knowledge, Sexuality and Immortality

Barr begins this chapter by returning to an evaluation of the narrative of Genesis 2 and 3. His first object of discussion is the tree of life which fades into the background of the story following its introduction in Gen 2:9, only to resurface in 3:22. For Barr, the tree of life belongs to a separate story that was added later to the Garden narrative. However, its inclusion into the Garden narrative has “altere[d] very substantially the total general direction for the story,” making it “the sole express motivation for for the expulsion from the garden” (59). This means that Barr is “taking a ‘canonical’ approach, giving full value to the ‘final text’” (59). Based on God’s comments regarding its removal, Barr feels confident from a grammatical perspective that the couple had not yet previously eaten from it.

As for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Barr finds none of the current scholarly explanations regarding its significance very satisfying. “To me, it seems most likely that the power of rational and especially ethical discrimination is meant. This is something that belongs pre-eminently to deity, and particularly so in Israel. Before their disobedience the humans had no need for any such power. Their disobedience gives to them that power, but with it the perception of their own weakness and limitations” (62). Thus, Barr transitions from knowledge to sexuality.

Barr rejects the traditional Christian reading of this story whereby the nakedness is made to express the true feeling of guilt for the commission of a serious rebellious act against God. The knowledge gained by eating from the tree of knowledge brought about it the awareness of nakedness, and as a matter of propriety they hid themselves from God. Barr goes on, much as he did with the subject of death in chapter two, to evaluate nakedness in the Hebrew Bible. Among other things, he outlines the social impropriety of nakedness outside of a few exceptional contexts (marriage, prophecy) concluding that Adam and Eve were motivated to hide due to “a coming of consciousness of lines that must not be crossed, of rules that must be obeyed, and in this sense a discernment of ‘good and evil’” (64-5).

Before transitioning from nakedness to actual sexual activity, Barr entertains a tangential and speculative explanation of the origin of Eve, relating her name to Aramaic and Arabic cognates for ’snake, suggesting that Eve herself might have, in an earlier strata of the text, been some sort of “’serpent goddess’ who was perhaps, the goddess of life.” He admits that this is “perhaps incapable of proof,” but he does find it very attractive (65).

Barr spends a relatively large amount of space exploring the question of sexual activity, since many have interpreted this text as a story about the “achievement of awareness of sexuality” (66). Barr argues that the cultural assumptions of sexuality provide the most natural reading of the text. “Just as the natural cultural assumption was that humans were innately mortal, so it was the cultural assumption that they were sexually aware and active” (66). Among other considerations, Barr reflects on the exhortation for a man to “stick like glue” to his wife and to become “one flesh” earlier in the narrative, calling it “anticlima[ctic]” should they not actually become sexually involved until much later (69). Tying this in with the larger concerns of the narrative, Barr relates the knowledge offered by the cunning (ערום) snake with the new-found knowledge of their own nakedness (עירם), a knowledge that “reacts unpleasantly upon one’s own self-understanding” (69-70)

Barr also discusses technogony, but sees it differently than the text of Genesis 4. “Unlike the descendants of Cain later on, Adam and Eve do not learn anything technological. Covering themselves with leaves indicated the absence of technological improvement. Clothes, indeed, are now necessary for the humans, but it is God who makes them, not they themselves. . . . Civilization, if it means anything, means the making of distinctions, especially of ethical distinctions, and the consequent burden of differences, limitations and regulations” (70).

Finally, Barr briefly addresses the concept of the image of God (rejecting those who argue that this image was somehow defaced by a “fall”) before concluding this chapter:

The power of knowledge endows humans with a transcendence over the absolute limitations of their physical existence. The same knowledge, however, brings with it self-knowledge, and in particular self-consciousness plus the possible awareness of fault and shame. Moreover, the fact that man fails to add immortality to his knowledge only reinstates on another level his weaknesses and limitations. Knowledge may involve contact with the eternal, but sickness, mortality and other aspects of the human condition bring about another set of tragic weaknesses.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Review of The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, Part Two

Chapter Two – The Naturalness of Death, and the Path to Immortality

Barr’s second chapter addresses the two topics highlighted in his chapter title. He summarizes his own chapter well:

I do not suppose that in this chapter I have proved the immortality of the soul; it was not my purpose to do so. Nor has it been my purpose to argue that the immortality of the soul is a good thing, or a bad thing, for people to believe in. What I think I have shown is that, for much of the Hebrew Bible, death, so long as it was in proper time and in good circumstances, was both natural and proper in God’s eyes; that the Old Testament provides thoughts and aspects out of which ideas of the immortality of the soul could naturally and easily develop; and that the world on the basis of which much of the New Testament was written was a world in which the belief in that immortality was lively and strongly represented. (56)

Having argued in his previous chapter that Paul’s interpretation of Genesis 3 shares the concerns of Hellenistic thought rather than the concerns expressed in the actual text, he moves forward with his argument that death is portrayed throughout the Bible as something that is natural, not as something unnatural and opposed to God which Adam introduced when he sinned. His first line of argument is to survey a number of passages which implicitly assume or explicitly state that God is the author of both life and death, paying careful attention to those passages which might suggest otherwise. Building off this line of thinking he discusses the circumstances in which death is viewed as natural, namely when it bring about completion and fulfillment to a life well (or even poorly) lived, when it is followed by a proper burial, and when it is followed by a good name and offspring.

Barr then goes on to discuss the rather undefined concept of Sheol in the Old Testament. While the implicit assumption is that all the dead end up in Sheol, he observes that none of the most hallowed characters in the biblical narrative are said to end up there (but what of Samuel?). Sheol may be perceived as an undesirable destination for the dead, similar in ways to the New Testament conception of Hell. While Sheol is not strictly considered life after death, it does suggest a continuance of the person, and some headed to Sheol expressed their conviction that “the God of Israel has, potentially, presence in Sheol, power to control the destiny of his own ones who are there, but, must important, ability to hear their prayers and to have some sort of communion with them” (33). And if all this is true, might he not also have the “power to keep them out of Sheol and, if need be, to remove them thence” (33)? While Barr moves forward tentatively at this point, he expresses concern between the intersection of the meaning behind the word death as it is used by these authors and death as we mean it. Those familiar with his Semantics of Biblical Language will recognize Barr’s honed ability to criticize the meaning of a word in light of its various contexts.

If it is true that this correctly represents the language of the Bible (and I am still not sure that it does), all it seems to prove is that biblical materials framed in this language are not suitable for helping us with problems of what we call death. ‘Death’ in this poetic biblical sense may be a curse, may be opposition to God, may be a force that challenges him and opposes him, but that only proves that we are talking about something other than death. (34)

Barr then moves on to discuss the topic of the soul. He discusses the view that Hebrew thought conceived of the body and soul as a singular totality (living being, nephesh, נפשׂ), much like much modern thought considers man to be, body and mind, a psychosomatic unity. Wielding his semantic lightsaber, Barr penetrates the semantic differences occurring between body and soul in Hebrew thought. 1) People speak to their soul, “which is something like a superior companion or accompaniment to that totality” (39). 2) Body and soul are sometimes cast as oppositional terms. 3) The soul is mobile, sometimes leaving the body (and even returning on occasion). Thus, Barr concludes:

I submit, then, that it seems probably that in certain contexts the nephesh is not, as much present opinion favours, a unity of body and soul, a totality of personality comprising all these elements: it is rather, in these contexts, a superior controlling centre which accompanies, expresses and directs the existence of that totality, and one which, especially, provides the life to the whole. Because it is the life giving element, it is difficult to conceive that it itself will die. . . . With the recognition of this fact the gate to immortality lies open.” (42-3)

Barr goes on to discuss a few other topics–Later Hebrew thinking, The impact of ’sceptical’ Wisdom, Variety of thought on our subject, Martyrdom, and The Wisdom of Solomon–before concluding.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Review of The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, Part One

My blogging has been down as the new semester has begun. Much of my class reading is outside my typical interests on this blog. There are a couple of short books that I want to plow through in the midst of this semester, and to keep my blogging/writing alive, I am planning to review them (although ’summarize’ might occasionally be a more appropriate verb).

Chapter One

James Barr’s The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality is based on five lectures he presented in 1990 at the Reed-Tuckwell Lectures, a lectureship dedicated to discussing “human immortality and subjects thereto related” (1). He begins with a brief review of the development of the understanding of immortality in the twentieth century, concluding “that while some traditions of theology . . . have continued to be very interested in the theme of immortality, others, and especially important trends in the use of the Bible within theology, have tended to become hostile to the entire idea of it and to disregard it as an element in biblical thought” (3).

Barr clearly disagrees with such a conclusion. Focusing on the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, he contends 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” (4). Barr’s focus on the text “taken in itself and for itself” allows him to reject the influence of Paul’s typological reading of Adam in his theological examination of the stories in Genesis. Whatever Paul was doing, “it was not an essential structure of the earliest Christian faith but was a part of the typology which one particular person or tradition found helpful for the expressing of an understanding of Christ” (5).

He takes particular pains in the first chapter to deconstruct this traditional Christian reading, illustrating how such a reading is rarely (if ever) propped up by the narrative itself. This reading, he identifies, is born from “later strata of the Old Testament, including the books that are outside the present Hebrew canon” (18). The absence of the term ’sin,’ the unwillingness of other Hebrew Bible authors to appeal to this story as the origin of sin and evil, and the lack of any true rebellious motivation on the part of Adam or Eve constitute some of the observations that lead Barr to focus on a different trajectory for the story.

“Adam and Eve were mortals, as human being normally were, but through disobedience or mischance, perhaps of a relatively minor  nature, they came near to the achieving of eternal life. The importance of this for our subject is great, for it means that in the structure of biblical ideas immortality does not come in a the margin, at the latest point, or through the intrusion of Greek philosophy. It is present, at least as an idea, at the earliest stages, and is a force that thereby has an effect on much of the thought of later times” (14-15).

Barr thus finds immortality in a prominent position in the Hebrew Bible and promises to pursue a more constructive reading of the Garden of Eden narrative in subsequent chapters.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

The Lost World of Genesis One

John Walton’s recently published The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origin Debate has brought to my mind a question that I think worth raising. What responsibility do scholars have to substantiate in the academic arena an interpretation that they intend to bring to a lay audience, especially one as idiosyncratic as Walton’s?

I am disappointed that The Lost World of Genesis One was published before Walton’s more thorough scholarly work on the same subject (Eisenbrauns; forthcoming). While I appreciated the broad overview of Walton’s interpretation, I find it problematic that the lay book came out before the academic one which contains the research that led to and fully defends Walton’s thesis. I particularly appreciated the sentiments of Alan Lenzi (who reviewed Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible) when he commented on one of John Hobbin’s posts earlier this year on Walton’s book saying:

The books in which he has discussed this new idea are either popular or student-level treatments. And they are by no means detailed lexicographical treatments. In other words, he’s presenting completely novel ideas to the most novice of audiences. This is not appropriate scholarly practice, especially when you want to redefine a very important Hebrew verb so as to read an incredibly disputed text in a thoroughly idiosyncratic manner. I think John’s been pretty generous, honestly.

It seems to me that if Walton were serious about arguing his case, he’d present the idea fully researched in a critical scholarly forum.

Lenzi, who was unaware of Walton’s forthcoming work, later tempered his views, but I think his basic criticism is still valid, and I was pleased to find someone other than me frustrated by this. Furthermore, the initial criticisms of John Hobbins (here and here) and Chris Heard (here and here) make me think that Walton’s book would have  benefited from the academic exchange that will ensue when his scholarly treatment of the subject comes out. Maybe I am naive and don’t know the ways of academia, but it seems to me that Walton/IVP should have waited to publish this book.