We dare not destroy the Scriptures in our passion to understand them.

We are often told that the Holy Word of God “speaks to us.”  In this context, it is the Holy Spirit Who works in our hearts to guide us and inform us as to how to interpret Scripture.  We are further told that, for those of us who pursue scientific disciplines, where perceived conflict between science the Bible arises, our theological interpretations should always trump our “human” understanding of science.  But what if that Scriptural guidance is not always clear? 

In a previous post, I presented biological and palaeontological evidence that modern humans have been on this earth for over one hundred thousand years and that, during the time that Adam and Eve were supposed to have lived, there were numerous populations alive all over the known world.  Is there also scriptural support for such a position?

Joshua Moritz has written an article for the journal Theology and Science titled “The Search for Adam Revisited: Evolution, Biblical Literalism, and the Question of Human Uniqueness” (Moritz, 2011) in which he tackles not so much the science behind the search for the historical Adam but why such a search may not have valid historical antecedents. 

At the heart of the issue for Moritz and several other writers is that the modern understanding of biblical “literalism” is not what traditional Christian writers understood to be literalism at all.  In this day and age it is common to associate biblical literalism with fundamentalist word-for-word interpretations of the scriptures practiced by those linking such interpretations to a young-earth scientific model.  Implicit and explicit in this model is the idea of an idealized paradise in which Adam and Eve lived by themselves.   As Ken Ham has argued recently,

From a biblical perspective, all humans are descendants of one man and one woman—Adam and Eve (1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 3:20). Thus, if the Bible’s history is accurate, biologically, only one race of human beings exists.

Other passages clearly link Jesus with the historical Adam (Romans 5, Acts 17) and one is certainly left with the impression that at the beginning of time, scripture points to exactly one man and one woman.  But is this so?  As Moritz points out:

…through a literal reading of the narrative we are made aware that Adam, Eve, and their family are not the only humans around. From the account of Cain we find out that there are other people or beings besides Cain’s immediate family who might kill him (that live in the land of Nod, East of Eden). We are also confronted with the age-old question of where Cain’s wife came from—a question which, from a narrative-literal approach, implies that other people besides Adam Eve and Cain existed at this time. Moreover, we read in Genesis 4:17 ff. that Cain and his wife (who is never identified in the narrative as Cain’s sister) leave numerous descendants—a detail which literally implies that not all human beings who have ever existed can trace their entire pedigree solely to Adam and Eve.

This is only one of many such examples in the first six chapters of Genesis for which a “literal” reading does not accord with the modern evangelical understanding of the creation and Adam and Eve accounts.   Moritz, for example also points out that if one reads the account word-for-word, sin and death also existed in the world before the creation of Adam, with the prior creation of the serpent. 

            Another consideration of a strictly literal interpretation of the Scriptures is that such an outlook forces one to accept a very peculiar understanding of the world into which Adam was created.  Daniel Harlow (2007) writes:

If we were to insist that the Bible gives an accurate picture of the physical cosmos, then to do so with integrity, we would have to believe that the earth is flat, immobile, and resting on pillars; that the sky is solid and has windows in it; that the sun, moon, and stars are set in the sky and move along it like light bulbs along a track; that the sun literally rises, moves, and sets; that there is an ocean of water surrounding the earth; and that beyond the waters above the sky is the very heaven of God. That’s what the Bible says.

As Denis Lamoreux (2008) notes, in our zeal to transport the creation narratives into the 21^st century, we forget that it was written with an ancient understanding of the world.  Further, we have to remember that it was written to a different culture with a different grasp of genealogy, and how stories should be passed down.  It is, therefore, no small wonder that we disagree on how they should be interpreted. 

            This, by no means, even scratches the surface of this multi-faceted topic.  My purpose here is to set up the possibility that, given what we know of the genetic evidence that I presented in the last essay, and given that the creation narratives lend themselves to complex interpretations, is it quite possible that we do ourselves an injustice by interpreting the Bible as if it simply dropped out of the sky into our hands—in English, no less.  The Word of God spans thousands of years, was written to many different people and comprises narrative, pedagogy, poetry and many other literary styles.  It, above all of the known works of literature, has been studied by thousands of scholars who have passed on this knowledge. Dare we ignore this received wisdom in favor of our modern, limited understanding of scripture?  Does a straight word-for-word understanding of Scripture not render it flat and colorless, full of seeming contradictions and non-sequiturs and without any mysticism or grandeur?  Does it not diminish the awesome qualities of God and his wondrous creation?  Conor Cunningham (2010) writes:

If the first two chapters of Genesis are about the very creation of existence and all that partakes of it, about how everything that is relates to its Creator, then a literal approach would do the scriptural account a great disservice. The literal would kill and not reveal, destroy and not disclose.

In our practice of Christianity and our walk with God, we dare not destroy the Scriptures in our passion to understand them. 

Cunningham, C. (2010). What Genesis doesn't say. Christian Century, 127(23), 22-25.

Harlow, D. C. (2007). Creation according to Genesis: literary genre, cultural context, theological truth. Christian Scholars Review, 37(2), 163.

Lamoureux, D. O. (2008). Evolutionary creation: A Christian approach to evolution.   Retrieved June 30, 2011, from http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Lamoureux_Scholarly_Essay.pdf

Moritz, J. M. (2011). The Search for Adam Revisited: Evolution, Biblical Literalism, and the Question of Human Uniqueness. Theology and Science, 9(4), 367-377.