Another contribution from Anne Askey, enjoy:
The sages speak of the Torah as a gem to be turned and turned and turned again. Through devoted study, they are ever looking for clarity in the gemstone that is God’s word. This afternoon, I would like to lead us in turning a well-known passage. I would like to challenge us to consider an interpretation of Scripture that may differ from our own. I am not asking you to agree with every point I make. But I am asking you to be willing to engage with the insights others have discovered.
Last time I was up here, I suggested that we needed to change our paradigm with respect to how we understand the word “law”. In the Hebraic understanding, the word "law” refers to the teaching or instruction of a gracious Father. Augustine, Luther, and many who have followed them, imposed a Roman understanding of law, onto the Biblical word. As a result, traditional Christianity began to view God’s justice as being equivalent to the retributive justice of Roman law. We began to look at the problem of the broken world we live in, as a legal problem. We began to view the lawgiver, like that of the powerful tyranny of Rome: a conquering power that had imposed its will on us. We lost the restorative, relational understanding of justice extended by a gracious Father who reveals himself as the one who is not willing that any should perish. (2 Peter 3:9) It takes study, practice, and intention to renew our minds. But we are not alone. The Spirit of God guides us into truth (John 16:13. This afternoon, we will look at Genesis 1-3 from a Hebraic point of view. We will begin with 1:26
Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
What does it mean to be created in the image of God? Both Christian and Jewish scholars agree that man is endowed with the ability to think, to act and to make choices. He is relational. He can know and love his fellow man. He can know and love God and can hold communion with Him.[i]
Chapter 1 of Genesis is written in a carefully crafted and formal poetic style. The transition to the next movement is marked in the original Hebrew by an obvious change in tone. The narrative of Chapters 2 and 3 is written in a style that we might employ in telling stories around a campfire. In the Hebraic worldview truth is often revealed in agadah or story. Jesus is the certainly a master of agadah. Definitions, creeds, and doctines convey meaning, but stories evoke images that expand our understanding. Let’s look at how the story of Gen 2 and 3 expands our understanding of God.
In our traditional interpretation of the Creation Story, Adam and Eve are considered to have been created perfect. This interpretation leaves us with an unanswerable question. How come these perfect people sinned? Is it a sufficient ‘answer’ to say that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts? It is true that many things are inexplicable but I don’t think this is one of them. What does the text itself tell us? Gen 1:31 And God saw all that he had made and it was very good. Do the words ‘very good’ and ‘perfect’ mean the same thing? If not, then where did the concept of perfection come from?
We need to look back into history. The past affects who we are today. Plato, one of the most well known of Greek philosophers, had a profound effect on the early church’s view of spirituality. In the 2nd Century AD, Justin Martyr an early apologist, called Plato the “Christian before Christ”.[ii] Portraying Christ, the Jewish Messiah, as a ‘Christian’ illustrates the rift that was already forming between early Christianity and its Jewish roots.
Others who followed in the 3rd and 4th centuries placed an even greater emphasis on Plato’s ideas in their interpretations of Scripture. This emphasis is alive and well in the 21st century. In the Platonic view of the world, reality is made up of two parts—the physical realm and the spiritual realm. Plato defined the physical realm as the realm of the transitory, of the imperfect and full of shadows. The spiritual realm is the realm of permanence, of the perfect and of the ideal. For Plato, the spiritual realm is superior to the physical realm. Under the influence of Platonic thought, early traditional interpretations understood Eden as representing this spiritual realm. Adam and Eve in the garden were a state of perfection. When they were banished from the garden, they ‘fell’ to the inferiority of the material realm. But Eden is not a place of static permanence or perfection as defined by Plato. Adam and Eve were instructed to rule over creation, to be fruitful and to multiply and fill the earth. Eden is a realm of dynamic process. It is a place that will experience change as Adam and Eve engage with God’s instruction.
Furthermore, this platonic separation between the lower, inferior physical realm and the higher, superior spiritual realm is not Biblical. The spiritual and physical are always intertwined. We join Judaism in declaring the Schema that God is one. In so doing we put all of life (physical and spiritual) under his rule. As Christians, we declare that God is Spirit (John 4:24), and we and we also declare that God became a physical human being (Phil 2:7). The incarnation situates the spiritual right in the midst of the physical. Paul teaches us that our physical bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). There is no dichotomy between the physical and spiritual in the Bible. Hence I believe that the concept of Adam and Eve being perfect (as understood in the platonic view) and having fallen from the superior spiritual realm to the inferior physical realm is a concept that is questionable and is open to debate.
What does the Scripture tell us about Adam and Eve? We already know from chapter one that the creation of man in God’s image was very good. In the second telling of the story, in Chapter 2, we know that humankind was produced from physical dust and became a living being through God’s spiritual breath. (v 7) The Hebrew word adam, as well as being the name of the first man, can also mean humankind. In 2:7, because Eve has not yet been created, adam refers to humankind. We see then that human kind was originally androgynous. Androgynous is an adjective that describes something that is made up of both sexes. Androgynous adam or humankind, was given freedom to eat from the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (2:15-17) We also know that it was not good for androgynous humankind to be alone. (2:18) Once again, we are able to question the Platonic concept of perfection.
I love God’s beautiful teaching style in chapter 2. The Father respects the rational ability of this one created in His image. In the naming of the animals, adam discovers that there is no counterpart for androgynous humankind. All the created creatures have helpers except adam (2:19-20) Having alerted mankind to that need, God graciously met that need. What was once one, now becomes two: Male and Female.(2:21-22) Then we are told that because they were once one, and are now two, they will become one again. (2:24) The Hebraic thinker asks: Why did God create humankind as one, then break it apart into male and female, and then teach that male and female are meant to become one again?[iii] One answer, (and I say ‘one’ because Hebraic thinking is multi-dimensional and there are often many, overlapping and even contradictory answers to questions) one answer is that God wanted mankind to learn to love. This is not a surprising answer for to love one another is to fulfill the Torah (Rom 13:8, Matt 22:36-40.) Learning to love requires an other, who is distinct and different from oneself. Otherness can be defined at many levels. We differ from one another ethnically. One of the strengths of this congregation is the wide range of ethnicities that gather together here. In our ethnic differences we are called to love God and to love one another. Otherness in the business world may be based on hierarchy or position. What a different world we would see in business if managers, labourers, secretaries, janitors, etc loved one another Biblically. We are to love others who are distinct and different from us religiously. In this fellowship we have a great love for Jews. Are we as ready to extend that love to Muslims, to those in liberal denominations, to atheists, etc? The distinction between Adam and Eve is of course gender. In the garden they were to learn to love and in so doing, become one (The Hebrew word is echad which means unity). It is the same word used of God when we say the schema. The Lord God is echad. Becoming echad, is also part of bearing the image of God. Those of us who are married know that becoming echad is a process. The process for Adam and Eve was meant to be happening in Eden. God came down into the garden in the cool of the day to talk with his children.(3:8) In these intimate times with God, Adam and Eve would grow and become what they were meant to be. Again we must question the platonic label of “perfection”. In a sense, they were not ‘finished’ yet. So rather than seeing Adam and Eve as perfect, I believe it is more true to the Biblical passage to see them as innocent and a work in progress.
These two innocents have been given ‘law’, instruction taught by their Father, for life in the garden. They were to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the living creatures(1:28), they were to become one flesh (2:24), and they were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16,17). Only one of these ‘laws’ is negative. How then is this injunction not to eat from one tree a loving instruction?
The Hebraic worldview recognizes the existence of evil. It does not get hung up on questions as to where it came from. Evil exists. But it is not the equal opposite to good. (That would lead to the heresy of dualism-the view of the universe in which there is a good god and an evil god perpetually at war with each other.) In the Biblical revelation evil is subordinate to good. Think of all the stories where this is true. The resurrection of Jesus is arguably the most significant event so far that declares the triumph of good over evil. But God’s story is not over yet. We know that in the end, evil will be destroyed. Paul teaches us that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor 15:26).
This reality of the existence of evil is embedded in the loving instruction the Father gave to Adam and Eve. God the sovereign creator has knowledge about the world that Adam and Eve do not have. He is able to identify the consequence of eating. “Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or you will die.” In Hebraic thinking the word knowledge, implies experience. In our King James Version we read variants of the verb “to know”.
When Adam “knew his wife” the word knew describes the experience of sexual intimacy (Gen 4:1). By the same token, to know God is to experience God. To eat, to take in from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is to experience good and evil. This is something that Adam and Eve are not ready for. The dire consequence is indeed meant to keep them away. It is possible to read this consequence either as prescription or description.[iv] The prescriptive reading reinforces the paradigm of Roman Law. This is the law: don’t eat. This is the punishment: you will surely die. We infer, from the legal analogy, that the lawmaker is also the executioner. A descriptive reading reinforces the paradigm of God as the loving Father giving instructions. Don’t do this, because I know you will die. It is like a parent saying to a young child, don’t touch the hot stove; because I know you will burn yourself.
But Adam and Eve, not yet fully grown into the creatures they were meant to be, did eat from the tree. And they did die. The minute they had to hide from God, who is the source of life, they died. Ephesians 2:1 tells us that ‘we are dead in our trespasses and sins’. In addition to death through alienation from God, they became subject to physical death. Some Jewish commentators think that had they not sinned, their ever-growing holiness would have kept them alive forever. [v]God is the source of life, not death. To have intimacy with Him is life. To be estranged from him is Death. Death can be understood not as punishment but rather as the natural consequence of turning away from God. The wages of sin (turning away from God) is death. (Rom 6:23)
When we understand law as loving instruction, our view of the lawgiver changes. When we remain influenced by the legal Roman view, we focus on deserved punishment. Jewish scholarship celebrates the grace of God. I love the insights Judaism has given into this next section of the story. Look at God’s response to this sin. Firstly, God caused the sound of his presence to be heard before he faced his wayward children (3:8). Jewish commentary[vi] says that God didn’t want to surprise them and catch them off guard in their shame. God waited until they had sewn fig leaves together. He gave them time to see how inadequate their own solution to the problem was. Then God asked the question: Where are you (3:9)? Didn’t God already know where they were? Asking questions is fundamental to Hebraic thinking. God asks the question in order to initiate dialogue. Come let us reason together, says the Lord. (Isaiah 1:18) In the ensuing verses of 3:10-14 God listens to all the sides of the story and then begins to set things in order. Don’t these actions look a lot like those of a loving parent who has discovered that his child has failed?
What kind of feelings would such a parent have? David Pawson notes7 that scripture uses a poetic style to record God’s expression of feelings. There are three such poetic clusters in chapter three, as God speaks to the serpent, Eve and then to Adam. Traditionally, we have viewed God as expressing anger because his holiness or justice has been affronted. Could he be expressing his disappointment that relationship has been broken and shalom has been shattered? Already Adam and Eve are hiding from God. Already, the echad/unity between this first couple is breaking down. Adam remonstrates, that it was all Eve’s fault (3:12). God, the disappointed Father, outlines the consequences that his children will have to bear because of their choice.
The conversation of 3:10-14 brings in a complicating factor. This choice to eat was not Adam and Eve’s doing alone. The serpent has lured the couple into disobedience (3:1 &4). We are not given the identity of the serpent in this passage, but a later scripture tells us that the serpent is Satan, the evil one (Rev 12:9). And so evil makes its mark on God’s created order. The story introduces us to a conflict that will repeat itself until the end of the story when Satan will be overthrown. I am sure you can think of countless examples throughout God’s revelation that identify this conflict. In the story that we call the temptation of Christ, Jesus’ ministry started in conflict with Evil. And we see that Jesus used his father’s Torah/teaching to win that particular conflict.
Does this acknowledgement of the existence of evil excuse Adam and Eve? In her response to God’s question, Eve tries to blame Satan. “The devil made me do it.” (3:13) But the excuse is not good enough. God, the loving parent will discipline Adam and Eve because the Lord disciplines his sons (and daughters). (Deut 8:5, Heb 12:6,7) God’s first action however, is to curse the serpent and promise his eventual destruction (Gen 3:14,15). And God keeps his promises!
Then he turns to Eve. Where once there was the joyous instruction to be fruitful and multiply, obedience to that commandment is now going to be filled with pain. Where once, echad was to be learned in the beautiful intimacy of the garden, it will now be tainted with power struggles between male and female.
Next God curses the ground itself and creation begins groaning in its bondage to decay. We have only to read this week’s newspaper to see creation groaning. Paul tells us that this cursed creation waits for the sons of God to be revealed. (Rom 8:19-26)
Now God turns to Adam. Where once there was the satisfaction of work within the created order that was good, now that created order has been corrupted and Adam will toil and struggle (3:18) Where once food was a guaranteed commodity, now food must be gathered through hard work and the sweat of his brow. (3:19) Where once Adam and Eve lived with the source of life itself, they will be subject to physical death. (3:19)
What does God do next? God sees their nakedness. He sees their failed attempts to cover it. In compassionate loving kindness, God provided for that need Himself. The God of Israel is a providing God. God made garments of skin for his children. This act of God clothing his children, reverberates in a story Jesus tells centuries later. In the parable of the prodigal son the loving father clothed his wayward son in fine robes. (Luke 15:22) Both the Genesis narrative of chapter 3 and the parable of the prodigal are stories of sons who were ‘dead’. Both are stories of the compassionate father.
Adam and Eve will continue to experience the disorder of evil in the world. They must not eat of the tree of life (3:21) for the fruit of this tree is reserved for those who will overcome. (Rev 2:7) God puts them into exile. But exile too is an act of grace. God has not abandoned his creatures. Psalm 139 assures us that we are never out of his presence. Where can I go from your presence? If I ascend to the heavens you are there. If I descend to the depths you are there. Exile is a repeated theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Walter Brueggemann points out that the most remarkable fact about Exile is that in Exile, the prophetic voice of hope is the most intense. He sites Isaiah 40-55, Jer 30-31 and Ezekiel 33-48 as examples. [vii] The God who willed the exile is also the God who will faithfully exact restoration to shalom. With Adam and Eve’s exile, the story of restoration begins and a climactic peak, though not the final climax, is the resurrection of Jesus. John tells us “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the Devil’s work”. (1 John 3:8)
The actions of these innocent, but unfinished creatures were catastrophically significant. Creation, which Adam and Eve were meant to rule over has become corrupted. This story tells us why we live in a corrupt world. We have inherited it. We also learn from this story that our own actions are significant. Man in the image of God, acts and those actions matter.
Nowhere in these three chapters do we read that the image of God in Adam and Eve was destroyed. The phrase, ‘image of God’ celebrates and enhances the dignity and authority of human persons who are a “little lower than the angels”( Ps 86:5) Adam’s sin did not eliminate this mark of God’s likeness. Not even the flood eliminated the mark of God’s likeness. God’s instruction to Noah after the flood affirms the high value and worth of human persons who bear His image. Because humankind bears the image of God, they are not to be killed Gen 9:6[viii].
And nowhere in these passages do we see the concept of sinfulness being inherited by the next generation. We tend to impose this reading on the passage, through our interpretation (or misinterpretation?) of Paul in Romans. We do not have time to go into that now, but it worth noting that Judaism rejects this concept of inherited sin on the basis that it contradicts the Torah of God.[ix]
Deut 24:16 Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.
The prophetic voices of Ezekiel (18:1-4) and Jeremiah (31:29-30) also resist the concept of putting one generation to death for the sins of another. But wait! We all know that phrase from Exodus 34: 7 “the sins of the father are visited on the sons to the third and fourth generation.” Surely that verse proves that sin is inherited! Or does it? Jewish readers look at this passage as referring to the effects of sin. A child reared in a home where sinfulness abounds, is prone to repeat the actions learned from his father. But this is not saying that a child cannot make different choices. Indeed the effects of sinful choices will be felt across the generations. We learn from Genesis that the effects of Adam’s sin resulting in the corruption of the created world, have been, are and will be felt until all is restored.
Jewish worshippers understand from Genesis 1-3 that man is born innocent and bears the image of God and that image is good. This understanding puts all mankind on the same footing as that of Adam and Eve. We too are born innocent and are bearers of the image of God. The difference between Adam and Eve and ourselves, is that our first actions occur, not in the beauty of the Garden of Eden, but in a world that is corrupt. The story teaches us that, what we do inherit from Adam and Eve is death and corruption. The default position in a corrupt world is selfishness, looking after self interests first. 10 Our innocence is soon lost as we choose manipulation and self-centeredness. (We are not told at what age, innocence is lost.) Indeed, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). Man’s every inclination is evil. (Gen 6:5). But God is not absent. We may be alienated from Him, but he is already acting on our behalf. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8)
Genesis 1-3 tells us how death entered the world. It also shows us our gracious Father at work setting the world right. By one man’s sin, death reigns, by one man’s righteousness life reigns. (Rom 5:17) The most incisive act to date in the setting of things right is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Jesus lived life as a human being in the power of the Holy Spirit. He chose obedience to God’s instructions in a corrupt world. Jesus was the Torah made flesh and lived the Torah perfectly. But even prior to the incarnation, Scripture reveals others who lived lives of obedience. Enoch walked with God and was not. (Gen 5:24) God says to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him in all the earth, a blameless and upright man.” (Job 1:8) The Torah affirms the idea of choice. In Cain’s story we read that the Lord said to Cain, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Gen 4:6-7) God assumes that Cain has a choice to master the sin that crouches at his door. Moses exhorts the children of Israel to choose life, (Deut 30:19). Joshua says, “Choose you this day whom you will serve”. (Josh 24:15). When we try to grapple with the concepts of sovereignty and free will, we sometimes get caught up in arguments over whether or not man has any choice at all. The Hebraic thinker understands God as choosing to self-limit his sovereignty in order to give man, made in his image, the ability to choose. 11 Hebraic thinkers understand faith as action, where choices actually do matter.
Jesus’s death is the ultimate atoning sacrifice whereby sin is removed/or covered. Though his sacrifice, we draw near in restored relationship to God in repentance, confession, thanksgiving, and fellowship. The death of Christ is not sacrificial appeasement. Again we are products of our past. Early Christianity, emerging from a Greco-Roman context, and already losing touch with its Hebraic roots interpreted Biblical sacrifice in the same categories as Greco-Roman sacrifice. Pagan deities are angry gods that had to be appeased and whose wrath had to be propitiated. The God of Israel abounds in grace (Ex 34:6,7). He is for us! (Rom 8:31)The whole sacrificial system addresses relationship. Israel’s God provided mankind with the sacrificial system as a means of entering relationship with the Father through drawing near. That system comes into its greatest fullness in Messiah’s atoning sacrifice. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, …” (Heb 10:19-22).
Jesus’s resurrection is the most decisive act in the story so far. God raised Jesus from the dead. (Rom 10:9) and with that act, God destroyed the power of death and the one who holds the power of death.(Heb 2:14) And now as CS Lewis puts it ‘death begins to work backward. 12 Creation was made corrupt by Adam’s choice. But it waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. (Roman 8:19) We are, in Messiah’s resurrected life, a new creation ( 2 Cor 5:17). We are sons and daughters of God. (2 Cor 6:18). We are in the process of conforming to the image of God’s son. (Rom 8:29) This is gospel.
When we read Gen 1-3 through the paradigm that God’s law is like Roman law, sin is understood as a legal problem. I believe that to view sin primarily as a legal problem does a disservice to God. Reading Gen 1-3 through the paradigm that God’s law is the teaching of a loving Father sharpens our focus on the relationship between God and man as well as the relationship between man and man. We are reminded that all human beings, (ourselves, our neighbours and even our enemies), have tremendous value as bearers of God’s image and because of that are to be loved. Jesus reminds us that the focal point of the Torah is relationship. We are to love the Lord our God and our neighbour as ourselves (Matt 22:36-40.)
In reading Gen 1-3 Hebraically, we are challenged to reconsider the standard excuse for our own disobedience. For deep down in our psyche, when we believe we have inherited sin, we can easily think that we were and continue to be hopeless sinners, albeit saved by grace. This can lead to the dis-ease of ‘cheap grace’ where obedience doesn’t really matter because thankfully Jesus has paid the price for my sin. But God teaches us that our choices do matter. We are exhorted to choose life. By Christ’s resurrection we have been set free from the power of sin in this corrupted world. This is our Passover story.
Last, but not least, when we understand Genesis 1-3 through the Hebraic paradigm, we are humbled by the recognition that this passage is more about God than it is about a self-centered focus on our sin. God gives us instruction for living outside Eden, where shalom has been shattered. God has redeemed us for obedience to that instruction, and in this way shalom is being restored.
Blessed be the Lord God King of The Universe who restores shalom!
