Why? The incident was reported by eye witnesses. Clearly intended to be a historical event related and reported as such in the scripture. I wrote: "Readers who insist on just interpreting Genesis 2-3 literally have not ever yet understood what they have read only with their eyes but not with their minds and certainly not with any enlightenment by the Holy Spirit." This clearly states, in the King's English, that those who interpret it as literal history have never yet understood Genesis chapters 2-3 properly. 'Not ever', refers to the fact that so far they contine to interpret it wrongly by insisting it is literally only historic. 'Yet' refers to the fact that if they used their mind properly and allowed the Holy Spirit to enlighten it, they would then begin to understand its meaning at last. Jesus did not state anything which might actually indicate that he regarded Genesis 2-3 as anything other than a legendary story, simply by making reference to the characters contained in the story. Jesus also refered to Jonah and the fish but that does not imply that they are anything more than the characters in an ancient story, which his audience were obviously well aware existed, even as characters in a story Jesus was using as an illustration of his future resurrection. The Bible's many books do not all only record history. Many also contain poetry, prophesy and fiction and apocalyptic. Knowing the difference requires intelligence and learning. .
It does when people insist that the whole of it is HISTORICAL with not a single iota of fiction anywhere in it. .
Good. Then you agree that it is possible for God to walk with people. You're right, I misread it. If it was understood as a legendary story then the Pharisees would not have been stumped for a reply; they would have simply said it was legend and not real. It was a strong argument BECAUSE the Pharisees acccepted it as true.
The historical-critical method is overwhelmingly preferred to the HGM in academic circles, including, as I understand it, most established and respected seminaries. There are other ways of reading the Bible besides the strictly literalist.
It is possible that the Angel of The Lord who spoke to Joshua was God, and even the three 'angels' who spoke to Abram were God and the God that walked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus was God, (in the form of Jesus of Nazareth), who they didn't recognise. The Emmaus incident was after the incarnation though, when God actually HAD a body to appear to anyone in. The other OT manifestations are less definitely stated as being God. I think it much less likely that the reference to God 'walking and talking' with Adam and Eve in a story is literally true. Much more likely that it is figurative. What actually do you think is the spiritual meaning of the story that 'they hid among the trees' from God, 'fearfully', when He walked in the garden? Should we interpret the meaning of that statement in the story as simply an irrelevant detail in a historic account, or should we understand something about the spiritual condition of every member of the human race, from their 'water' birth onwards, today? I.E. something spiritually wrong with US in our supposedly 'natural' condition. The Pharisees accepted MANY things as TRUE and Jesus substatially disagreed with their understanding of them. .
I'm glad you qualified your statement to let us know that it's your opinion and that one cannot be dogmatic about it. Personally, I think the opposite because Genesis says what it says and it's a good hermeneutic practice to take a Biblical statement at face value unless the context fairly clearly shows us we shouldn't take it that way. Besides, if God didn't literally walk in the Garden, why would Adam literally hide his naked butt?
Even from the HGM perspective, the difference between the primeval history in Genesis and resurrection story is clear. As Tiffy pointed out, the gospels purport to relay eye-witness accounts of the events of Jesus' earthly ministry. On the other hand, according to Tradition, Moses authored Genesis along with the other books of the Pentateuch. While most of what is contained in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronony, could have conceivably been personally witnessed by Moses; that is not the case with Genesis. The conclusion of the events relayed in Genesis occured at least 300 years prior to Moses's birth. Some argue that God inspired Moses to write the Genesis stories through direct revelation or that Moses knew the events from his education in Egypt as part of Pharoah's household. The latter seems exceedingly unlikely since Genesis does not align with any of the Egyptian sources that deal with Creation or primeval history. The former, if true, means that Genesis, at least its early parts, were prophetic writings, not historical. And like all prophetic writings are largely symbolic and allegorical, illustrating spiritual truths not factual ones.
There was an eyewitness to the events in the Garden, and that eyewitness is God. Do you deny that God is capable of having told Moses what happened? So it might have happened in the way it is written, correct?
Adam MEANS mankind in the Hebrew language? That means you and me and everyone else. This is what the text implies and which it intends that we the readers, infer. The text is not the least bit interested in convincing you that Adam hid his arse from God in a garden at the beginning of time. How on earth would THAT historical fact, affect us. Stories are supposed to have MEANING, not just satisfy a curiousity for what might have happened historically at the dawn of time in a garden which no longer exists. It is the MEANING of the story we are meant to understand. Not just believe the story itself. Whether a man called Adam actually hid his naked arse from God, and God had to ask him where he was hiding, (incidentally an impossiblity, since God is omniscient), is an utter irrelevance if just treated as a factual occurrance. What we might glean from the meaning of that in a story could be of profound importance to us - 'Adams' and 'Eves', in our currently spiritually 'fallen' condition though. .
I suppose one could argue that, but none of us are required to believe it. "What God COULD do" is not the accurate measure of "what God DID do". In the HGM, one looks to other texts in the Bible to try to decode what the author's intent was in his writing. Every other prophetic writing and account in the scriptures of a prophet declaring a revelation from the Lord, or at least an overwhelming number of them, is done using highly symbolic, allegorical, and even poetic language. In the story of Joseph, also in Genesis,we see how God would use symbolic imagery in dreams to deliver prophetic messages. It was on the intended receiver, in this case Joseph, to take those images and decode the meaning in them. Joseph dreams of his sheaf of grain standing upright while his brothers' sheaves of grain bowed down to it. Later he dreams of the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him. We are told that God used these visual metaphors to foretell Joseph's destined place in his family. Had someone insisted to Joseph that these were eye-witness style messages that must be interpreted literally, they would be seen as silly. But more to the point, they would have been wrong, because neither his brothers' sheaves of grain nor any planetary bodies literally bowed down to him. But his brothers and father eventually did bow to him when he became the governor of Egypt. God speaks in metaphor, in symbol, in allegory, in poetry. Could God give an eye witness account even though we are told by scripture that He is pure spirit and therefore has no physical eyes; and even though we are told in scripture that He does not see as man sees; and even though He is telling the story of how the universe was created to a primitive man with no frame of reference to understand the quantum events, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology taking place; and which the primitive man, with speech impediment, must then relay to an entire nation of primitive people in the Bromze Age in an understandable and meaningful way? I'm sure, inspite of all that, He could. But that does not mean that He did. Real faith does not require us to turn our brains off and believe absurdities.
A fair point. But I didn't do that. Saying Genesis shouldn't be read literally does not take away the miraculous or the supernatural events it discusses, but it does free us from having to read it in an overly-simplistic manner that ignores clear absurdities and contradictions. It also means that we read it in the same way we read other prophetic works and not the way 19th and 20th century fundamentalists would demand we interpret it.
I have seen no reason why the first 12 chapters of Genesis should not be understood with the constricts of the literary genre of 'Stories of Origin'. Most if not all cultures have stories of origin and they have a purpose (or many purposes) in the context in which they came to be. The difficulty I have is that if you are to read it as literal historical truth in the understanding of cosmology, anthropology, and all that is on earth, you run the serious risk of missing the point. You also run the risk of undermining the whole story and essentially raising a new chasm between faith and contemporary society, while the whole nature of the mission and purpose of Jesus, and the mission and purpose of the Church is to provide the great bridge between heaven and earth.
My greatest concern is that reading the first few chapters of Genesis as if it must only be a historical account misses the whole point of it's inspired position in the scriptures and inflicts upon the reader a fundamental misunderstanding of the truth the text is trying to convey. Such a literal interpretation deliberately misconstues it's intended meaning. Just as a literal interpretation of the dreams of Joseph and the Pharoah would entirely miscomprehend the meaning of those dreams. A dream of birds eating bread from baskets, would by literal historical interpretation just be a dream of birds eating bread from baskets on a bakers head. the dream meant MORE than just that though, so scripture records the extended meaning in explanation to the reader of the story, and so do the first few chapters of Genesis, and also many more following, in one way or another, but the reader is expected to discover the meaning for themselves. A literal meaning is not always a true meaning or even the meaning the text intended to convey to the reader in the first place. Many such biblical texts when interpreted literally actually become denuded of their intended meaning, so the reader therefore gains NOTHING from the reading of them. Their ignorance of God's ways is actually ironically increased, their understanding diminished. Just as nobody in the King's court could literally understand this: Just to prove that not understanding what you've been reading can have unforeseen consquences. It did for Belshaz′zar. .
Is it somehow something new or different? Posting videos can be a bit disrespectful of the value of other forum member's time. I only watch a few, and certainly not all.
Yes! But, just saying it's history does not make it all so, nor does it need to be so to be TRUTH. Saying it is only so, actually obscures TRUTH. He didn't even mention the insights into human pschology and the prevailing spiritual condition of the human race engendered by 'the fall' which is indicated by the story in ch. Genesis 2-4, just skipped to the spiritual explanation of the boasting of murder theme echoing the introduction into the narrative of the continuation of the spiritual breakdown of the human psyche in the murder of Able by Cain. There is so much information missing when a truly historical view of the meaning of the stories is imposed upon them. It's like believing the sower was a real farmer but thinking "so what" about some seed growning and maturing and some not. That always happens when you broadcast, surely. We fail to see the point. There is a lot more to be understood in those stories in Genesis than JUST that it all happened. The danger is that we can go away from the story thinking we understand why it was told, yet completely ignorant of the truth it conveys, like those who went away not understanding the parable of the sower but satisfied they knew all about planting corn. .