Genesis 2&3 (the possible both/and of Culture-The beast and Satan-Antichrist

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Petra

Puritan Board Freshman
Preface: (I realize the overlap between the Babylon/the state/the beast/the antichrist in the church (gay bishop)/Satan. I’m not a deist. I truly believe there are demonic things going on in the world.)

This is long, sorry.


It's funny that there are like ten views on what Yom or day means in Genesis 1, which is much older than Genesis two, for instance. We kind of get off topic by dating and such. We are consequently forgetting what it is to be male and female (Sinclair Ferguson/Tim Keller).

The way I now see the Adam and Eve narrative was borrowed from a 2nd Temple Judaism scholar. Peter Enns borrowed it from the rabbinic tradition.

The idea is that the narrative is poetic in nature. The narrative is a summary of what it is to be male and female, and how Israel is to respond as a covenant people. Israel was to eat from the tree of life, so to speak, by not living by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Jesus responded correctly by not adding to or taking away from the commands when the serpent tempts him in his 40 days in the desert or wildDerness. Satan exaggerates God's word and tempts Christ with it. "Will he not give his angels charge over thee?" " Just cast yourself down over this cliff."
Israel was to be a people of the Torah like Christ. Jesus' response was verbatim from the mouth of God. He didn't exaggerate or overemphasize.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil was Israel wanting to be their own God by doing things their own way. They often were corrected by the prophets for trying to do things their own way. Generally speaking, knowledge of good and evil is not a bad thing. It's a bad thing when Israel wants to be like God and do things her own way.

In Genesis 3:2, the serpent overemphasizes or exaggerates the command of God that none of the trees are good to eat from. The serpent, in this summary approach, represents culture. Eve responded in verse 3 with an exaggeration of her own. Eve adds that they are forbidden to not even touch the tree. Let alone eat from it. That's not what the original command was in chapter two from the mouth of Yahweh.

Deuteronomy 4:2

"Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you."

Revelation 28:18-19

"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll:If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. 19 And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll."


Matthew 15:9 (Jesus)

"In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'"



Colossians 2:21-23 (Paul)

21
(Touch not; taste not; handle not;
22
Which all are to perish with the using
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after the commandments and doctrines of men?
23
Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body: not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.

So the Pharisees with their 613 commandments created a hedge around the law in hopes to better obey the original 10 commandments.

On Eve's response in Genesis 3:3:

Keil and Delietzhe Commentary

"She was aware of the prohibition, therefore, and fully understood its meaning; but she added, "neither shall ye touch it," and proved by this very exaggeration that it appeared too stringent even to her, and therefore that her love and confidence towards God were already beginning to waver."

Matthew Henry on Genesis 3:3:

"He quoted the command wrong. He spoke in a taunting way. The devil, as he is a liar, so he is a scoffer from the beginning; and scoffers are his children. It is the craft of Satan to speak of the Divine law as uncertain or unreasonable, and so to draw people to sin; it is our wisdom to keep up a firm belief of God's command, and a high respect for it. Has God said, Ye shall not lie, nor take his name in vain, nor be drunk, &c.? Yes, I am sure he has, and it is well said; and by his grace I will abide by it."

Cambridge Bible Commentary on 3:3:

Cambridge Bible for schools commentary

" The woman speaks of only one tree, and that one is in the midst of the garden. She does not mention it by name. In
Genesis 2:9
, where two trees are mentioned, the one which is described as "in the midst of the garden" is the tree of life. Here the woman speaks of the tree, which is "in the midst of the garden," as the tree of knowledge.
neither shall ye touch it
] This is an addition to the prohibition contained in
Genesis 2:17
, either an element omitted in the previous chapter, or an exaggeration expressive of the woman's eagerness."

Lastly, Adam and Eve were exiled or excommunicated from the garden when they ate of the tree of doing things their own way. That is the worst thing for a Jew to be placed outside of the covenant community. You see that as well throughout the entire Old Testament.

Also, the curse follows in Chapter 3 for the consequences of sin. It is written that cursed is everyone who is hung by a tree. Jesus is the tree of life to us. We look back to the way things ought to be in the garden and we look forward to our return without that silly talking serpent in the garden again, so to speak. Jesus has crushed the head of the serpent.
It is an already and not yet.

Godspeed!
 
What do you mean when you say that Gen 1 is older than Gen 2? Like, that Moses wrote 1 then took a week off before writing more, or that Moses wrote them decades apart or that Moses wrote neither? If the last, you will get little sympathy on this board.
Are you saying that the historical, inspired narrative of Adam and Eve in the garden is allegorical rather than factual? If so, you will get even less sympathy around here.
Could you clarify what you're trying to say?
Thanks
 
Where did you go to seminary? Not that it makes you lesser or greater. Just trying to get a feel of your knowledge of “Our image” in Chapter 1. There is also two different names of God used in chapter one and two. There also maybe something different on day three? between chapters two and chapter one.

Godspeed.
 
Where did you go to seminary? Not that it makes you lesser or greater. Just trying to get a feel of your knowledge of “Our image” in Chapter 1. There is also two different names of God used in chapter one and two. There also maybe something different on day three? between chapters two and chapter one.

Godspeed.
Josh, I suspect the reason you have not received many responses to your initial post is that it wasn't easy to discern any question in your writing. Generally, for someone new to the Puritanboard (or any similar site) it is best to begin with the posture of a learner, seeking to ask questions and being eager to learn humbly from the insights that many of the mature Christians who post on this board can help you with. Did you have a specific question that someone here may be able to guide you into a fuller understanding of?

If your question relates to the essential Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, as Ben suggested, I suspect most here (including myself) would hold firmly to that for a variety of good reasons - most of which can be accessed in any standard conservative introduction to the OT, such as that of Gleason Archer. Indeed, little of consequence has changed since Oswald Allis' work, The Five Books of Moses, written almost a hundred years ago.

With regard to the varying references to God in Genesis 1-3, as many literary studies have pointed out (by no means all of them conservative), Moses uses the divine title elohim ("God") in Genesis 1, as is fitting for a passage that focuses on the formation of all creation, the divine personal name YHWH in Genesis 2, which zeroes in on the aspect of the creation of Adam and Eve and their placement in the garden-sanctuary of Eden (with all of its covenantal overtones), and the very unusual combination YHWH elohim in Genesis 3 to ward off the possible misunderstanding in a polytheistic culture that Genesis 1 and 2 were referring to different and distinct gods (like 'el and Baal in the Canaanite myths). Does that help?
 
Where did you go to seminary? Not that it makes you lesser or greater. Just trying to get a feel of your knowledge of “Our image” in Chapter 1. There is also two different names of God used in chapter one and two. There also maybe something different on day three? between chapters two and chapter one.

Godspeed.
I have not been to seminary, but I have access to the same Bible and historic confessions as others do. Perhaps others here who have been to seminary will confirm when I say that to deny the authorship of Moses and the literal-ness of the Genesis account is at the very least bordering on un-confessional.
I don't know if that's what you were doing--to my untrained mind it appeared so, and so I asked a couple of clarifying questions.
I join Dr. Duguid in wondering what questions you were asking in the OP.
 
How so? When Paul uses individuals in Romans chapter 9, he uses them in a unique and creative way. He has the authority to do so. Even vessels of honor and dishonor likely borrows from the apocrypha. But what happens is people get into long arguments about how Esau and Jacob reconciled. They thus will argue that Esau wasn’t a pagan. Pharaoh hardened his own heart, too. Here we go again. That the potter and the clay thing in Jeremiah means something different.

Even Peter uses “By his stripes we are healed” from Isaiah 53. But the the Jews would return to Isaiah 53 and argue that the historical interpretation is that of Israel being the suffering servant.

Then you have the Apostle Paul using Adam in a new and creative way to make his point.
 
How so? When Paul uses individuals in Romans chapter 9, he uses them in a unique and creative way. He has the authority to do so. Even vessels of honor and dishonor likely borrows from the apocrypha. But what happens is people get into long arguments about how Esau and Jacob reconciled. They thus will argue that Esau wasn’t a pagan. Pharaoh hardened his own heart, too. Here we go again. That the potter and the clay thing in Jeremiah means something different.

Even Peter uses “By his stripes we are healed” from Isaiah 53. But the the Jews would return to Isaiah 53 and argue that the historical interpretation is that of Israel being the suffering servant.

Then you have the Apostle Paul using Adam in a new and creative way to make his point.

I think what everyone is getting at is that we have no idea what point you are trying to make.
 
Josh, I suspect the reason you have not received many responses to your initial post is that it wasn't easy to discern any question in your writing. Generally, for someone new to the Puritanboard (or any similar site) it is best to begin with the posture of a learner, seeking to ask questions and being eager to learn humbly from the insights that many of the mature Christians who post on this board can help you with. Did you have a specific question that someone here may be able to guide you into a fuller understanding of?

If your question relates to the essential Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, as Ben suggested, I suspect most here (including myself) would hold firmly to that for a variety of good reasons - most of which can be accessed in any standard conservative introduction to the OT, such as that of Gleason Archer. Indeed, little of consequence has changed since Oswald Allis' work, The Five Books of Moses, written almost a hundred years ago.

With regard to the varying references to God in Genesis 1-3, as many literary studies have pointed out (by no means all of them conservative), Moses uses the divine title elohim ("God") in Genesis 1, as is fitting for a passage that focuses on the formation of all creation, the divine personal name YHWH in Genesis 2, which zeroes in on the aspect of the creation of Adam and Eve and their placement in the garden-sanctuary of Eden (with all of its covenantal overtones), and the very unusual combination YHWH elohim in Genesis 3 to ward off the possible misunderstanding in a polytheistic culture that Genesis 1 and 2 were referring to different and distinct gods (like 'el and Baal in the Canaanite myths). Does that help?
Fair enough. Was trying to capture the school of thought that I was facing. Wasn’t trying to appear arrogant because I spent a minute at the cemetery (evangelical joke). I’m getting a critique now, which is what I should have asked for at the beginning of the OP.


I hold to Moses and the editors view. That’s ok. Who wrote Joshua and Judges? What about the Chronicles and the Samuel books? Who wrote Moses’ eulogy at the end of Deuteronomy? Did Moses write that, too?
I hold to inerrancy.
 
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So Moses wrote that there was vegetarian on day three and wrote that there was no vegetarian on day three?
 
Many conservative scholars believe that the book of Job is the oldest writing in the Bible.
 
So I’m wondering why it’s a big deal for those who believe in actual providence that the author of Genesis has to be Moses alone?. I even have more faith in the oral tradition before the scriptures were written because I am reformed.
 
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So I’m wondering why it’s a big deal for those who believe in actual providence that the author of Genesis has to be Moses alone?. I even have more faith in the oral tradition before the scriptures were written because I am reformed.
Josh,
The issue is not oral tradition. Most of those who believe in Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch would affirm Moses' own dependence on oral and possibly written traditions (under the inspiration of God), since the material he recorded in Genesis comes from more than four hundred years before his birth. Some of that may have been direct revelation from God, but it would be bizarre if he grew up with no knowledge of his own ancestry and origins. Moses himself refers to a source he is quoting in Numbers 21:14, and he may have had access to all kinds of resources, just as Luke refers to using a variety of written and oral sources in composing his gospel..

Oswald Allis took a whole book to answer your question, which I would again commend to you if you really want to grasp this matter fully. But here are some preliminary reasons why people might believe in essential Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.

1) The Pentateuch presents itself as a unified work tracing the backstory and outworking of the Abrahamic calling and promise in Genesis 11-12, culminating in the fulfillment of the promise of a people and ending on the verge of fulfillment of the promise of a land. Tradition (and Scripture) identify the author of that work as Moses (see, well, the rest of the Bible).

2) In the Pentateuch itself, Moses is represented as writing things down on several occasions. In Joshua 1:7-8, there is a reference to the "Book of Instruction" written down by Moses, which is to continue to guide Israel from then on. This seems to be a complete manual to direct Joshua and the people, which Joshua is to memorize and recite daily.

3) To be sure, in the Pentateuch as we now have it, there are minor editorial updatings (under the inspiration of God). The reference to Dan in Genesis 14 postdates not only Moses but Joshua, since it isn't until the time of the Judges that the town gains that name. Most evangelicals believe that the death of Moses in Deut 34 was added by a later inspired author - probably not Joshua, since Deut 34:10 seems to suggest that some significant time has passed since the death of Moses - it would hardly be so remarkable that no "prophet like Moses" (see Deut 18) had arisen since his death, if Moses death was last Thursday, or even fifty years ago.

4) What is crucial to a Reformed doctrine of inspiration, however, is not authorship as such - we have no certainty who wrote Ruth or Chronicles, for example. It is faithful presentation of inspired truth. So when the Bible says "Moses said this", he actually said it. And when it describes the Lord as doing something or saying something, he did or said that. The gospels were not written by Jesus, but every faithful Reformed scholar would argue that the words of Jesus in the gospels are things he actually said, not things the early church thought he ought to have said. So, too, a central tenet of a Reformed understanding of the Pentateuch is that everything that is represented as being the words of Moses (which is a very large chunk of it - especially the last part of it, Deuteronomy) is faithful to what he actually said.

5) This may be contrasted with the standard critical understanding of the Pentateuch, which sees it as a patchwork of disparate and self-contradictory elements from different times and places, championed by different parties to suit their political agendas , with little or no connection to any historical personage, such as Moses, and in most cases without a genuine exodus of the whole people from Egypt. Specifically, Deuteronomy is normally alleged to have been fabricated by the priests of Josiah's day (620's BC) to further his "reformation" by centralizing worship in Jerusalem, itself an entirely new idea, without any connection to early Israel. It doesn't take long to recognize that these two accounts of the origins and nature of the Pentateuch are radically different - indeed, as Machen suggested one hundred years ago, they are the origin stories of two entirely different religions, Christianity and Liberalism.

Much more could be said, but I think there is enough here to demonstrate why maintaining the essential Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch matters.
 
I’m not trolling. That doesn’t make sense at all. The fact that the wording in Hebrew is different concerning day three just adds to the idea of two different authors.

Secondly, the farming part as an attempt to explain the differences of day three in chapter one and day three in chapter two by harmonizing the chapters together is just ridiculous to me.

That’s just not adding up.

Another thing is why would said same author of Genesis 1 go over the days of creation again for the second time in Genesis 2?

“In one account I’m going to say there is no vegetation on day 3 and on the other account...I’m going to say there was vegetation on day 3?”
“That’s because I’m referring to farming and such on day 3 before man is created on day 6?”
 
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Hello Josh,

Welcome to PB.

What are your favorite commentators (or books) on Genesis? I'd like to understand what has influenced your thinking. Thanks!
 
I’ve read here a little and there a little.

I think the way Genesis 1-3, but particularly Genesis 2 was 3, were used after Darwin has changed. Both Keller and Ferguson have said this. We’ve got into dating when that’s not how the text was used at all, traditionally speaking.
Poythress mentions that there are ten views of what yom could mean.
 
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