Was Adam really the first man, according to the Bible?

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JakobVirgil
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26 Feb 2011, 7:37 pm

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

in my opinion assuming the purpose of a text writen by commitee is a joke.
we don't (can't) know why it was writen we only know how it is used.
and how it is used differs with the goals of the folks using it.
anyway I am not arguing for a allegorical reading I am asking does it literaly say what you think it says?
there are multiple valid literal readings.
kxmode idiotchief help me out here.
-Jake

Compare Genesis 1/2 to any mythological stories to do with the origin of mankind (almost all, if not all, claim that there was a first man and a first woman through which the human race sprang forth). Why should Genesis be treated differently?

And Eve is called the mother of all living for a reason. You're being misled(1) by those Christians who've been trying to make Genesis compatible with science.

what is the reason that Adam was named men or reds?
Josesphus held the view that the eden story was allegory.
(1) you are assuming bad faith that I am stupid or lieing to you.

I make the agnostic claim -you do not know what the intent of the passage was-
because you can't know.

MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 7:51 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

Why you would appeal to someone like Josephus is beyond me. He wasn't alive until a few thousands of years after Genesis was written.

And you can ask ruveyn why the name Adam and mankind are linked. I'd say it's because Adam was the origin of mankind.

And we can't just keep acting agnostic in everything. We have to assume the most likely things. Otherwise, you might as well say that we can't know whether or not Homer meant that Odysseus actually had the Greeks build a literal big wooden horse.

simon_says
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26 Feb 2011, 7:58 pm

And of course a literal Adam doesnt jibe with genetics. We can't have the variety of genes we see today descend from two individuals in just the past few thousand years. It would require extremely rapid evolution that we just don't see evidence for.

And it's strange that the Jews would place the home of the first men in the wrong geographical location. It's Africa, not the Tigres and Euphrates. What they were doing is pointing to the area where an ancient and greater (than theirs) civilization had developed. A place from which they had also appropriated mythology for their new religion.

MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 8:00 pm

simon_says wrote:

And it's strange that the Jews would place the home of the first men in the wrong geographical location. It's Africa, not the Tigres and Euphrates. What they were doing is pointing to the area where an ancient and greater (than theirs) civilization had developed. A place from which they had also appropriated mythology for their new religion.

A mythology which they literally believed initially before all the allegorical crap started emerging.

JakobVirgil
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26 Feb 2011, 8:22 pm

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

it is bizzare to me that reject theism as illogical but except their exegisis.
if they are so dumb they believe in God then how are they smart enough to read things everything correctly.
read some higher critisism you are allowed it won't hurt the faith you no longer have.
if you believe it is a fable read it as a fable.
Ḥawwāh can be read as living one.
Adam as men
these look to me like allegorical names

in gen 1 which I think has a diferent author then gen 2 and 3 adam is not a person but mankind.

so think that gen one is meant literally and gen 2 3 are meant as allegory for the same reason
you believe the whole thing is literal. I pulled it out of may A**. I don't Know it I think it.

I cite Josephus to show this reading has adherants that are not dupes of modern liberal christians in a conspiracy against you. and to show the reading has some age to it.

as for Odysseus -Hater- is a strange name for a greek mama to give a son.
but I do not claim to a have a theory of mind for Homer if he existed at all.
we have the texts we don't have the minds of the authors we have to guess.

ruveyn are you a biblical literalist? a Karaite? please.

ruveyn wrote:

The biblical Adam was an individual. The biblical Adam was also mythical. We know more about how humans came about than the bronze age dudes who gathered the bible myths into a transmissible corpus. The bronze age dudes thought the sun and stars moved around the Earth.

-Jake

MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 8:34 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:

You're overestimating the minds of primitive [relatively] uneducated people. Have you ever thought that ... maybe ... just maybe ... the person Adam was called Adam because he was (Biblically) the origin of Adam (mankind)?

I don't really care for what later Jews with better education believed. It's irrelevant.

JakobVirgil
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26 Feb 2011, 9:24 pm

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

You're overestimating the minds of primitive [relatively] uneducated people. Have you ever thought that ... maybe ... just maybe ... the person Adam was called Adam because he was (Biblically) the origin of Adam (mankind)?

I don't really care for what later Jews with better education believed. It's irrelevant.

Is your claim allegory is a late invention? <--this could be a paper.

in the evolutionary time scale the writers of the genesis are no more primative than us.
(prolly more sophisticated the did not have t.v.)
read "the book of J" by Bloom and Rosenburg take it with a grain of salt but it will give you
insight the things can be read different ways and it sheds some light into the mileu genesis was composed in.

for christian scripture I recomend the Orthodox corruption of scripture
by Bart Erhman

-Jake

simon_says
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26 Feb 2011, 9:26 pm

I think there is often a break between the higher form and the lower form of religious expression.

But I also think that once upon a time people could more easily swallow literal mythological views simply because there were no other alternatives and they were steeped in a certain mindset. There would be some atheists, skeptics and those who thought the message was allegorical, but they would be the exceptions. Possibly the rare exceptions.

JakobVirgil
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26 Feb 2011, 9:34 pm

simon_says wrote:

who is to know, the ancient greeks do not seem to be all that pious but the later romans were.
I will have to say we can not make definative statements.
-Jake

MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 10:32 pm

Oh, well. I'm sure they had evolution in mind when they were penning down Genesis 1 and 2 thanks to being inspired by the godly Yahweh.

JakobVirgil
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26 Feb 2011, 10:42 pm

MCalavera wrote:

Oh, well. I'm sure they had evolution in mind when they were penning down Genesis 1 and 2 thanks to being inspired by the godly Yahweh.

well thats a hell of a strawman. did I at any point say I though gen 1 taught evolution?
argue against what I say not what you wish I would have said.
using a flip tone and logical fallacies is a sign of a weak agrument not a strong one.

It would be just as anachronistic to think they had modern protestant creationism in mind.
I think gen 2 and gen 2 contradict each ther don't you?

-Jake

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26 Feb 2011, 10:59 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:

MCalavera wrote:

Oh, well. I'm sure they had evolution in mind when they were penning down Genesis 1 and 2 thanks to being inspired by the godly Yahweh.

This is why I cut him off.

Don't like people telling me I said what I emphatically did not.

Actually, the real writers of Genesis were two teenage Irish geniusses, Pat and Mike, who in 1912 invented a time machine in their bicycle repair shop and sent back in time a thing they cobbled out of Gunwinggu, Bororo and Sea Dayak creation myths.

Of course once they pushed the button their timeline ceased to exist, though some maintain that on still July nights you can still hear them laughing.

MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 11:12 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:

It's called the use of irony, dear literalist. An exaggeration made to "prove" a point.

And this has nothing to do with Protestantism. You don't need Protestant eyes in order to see that Adam is the first man according to the cosmological mythologies of the Bible.

As for the alleged contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, possibly. But so what?

JakobVirgil
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26 Feb 2011, 11:26 pm

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

if in gen 1 adam means men and in gen 2 it means a man called men we have two different stories.
this ( because I am stupid ) is facinating to me.
if they are writen by the same author in becomes even more facinating because it could
mean that the second story was intended* to be taken as allegory.

* notice I qualify this with a could.

gen 2 as allegory is not my view I tend towards the multiple source text theory.

but on the Idea of Allegory in hebrew scripture
Psalm 80 could be seen as a good example of "primatives" (what a horrible word) using allegory .
the compisition of genesis is reckoned between 1000 - 500 b.c.
and the psalms within that time period mostly in the first part.

-Jake

Last edited by JakobVirgil on 26 Feb 2011, 11:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 11:31 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:

MCalavera wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

Adam was named Adam because of the general meaning of the word Adam (which is mankind). Why be called Adam if he's not considered the father of all mankind?

Yes, I agree with the multiple source text theory, too. Doesn't change my argument one bit.

Psalm 80 is also meant to be taken literally ... but as a poem.

simon_says
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27 Feb 2011, 12:04 am

Quote:

who is to know, the ancient greeks do not seem to be all that pious but the later romans were.
I will have to say we can not make definative statements.
-Jake

Well, I know that polls today show that views on biblical literalism are influenced by educational level. As there were few educated (and none by modern standards) in the bronze age, I believe you'll get more literalists. That's not much of a stretch.

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