In the assigned New Testament passages, Genesis 2-3 is used when the writer is discussing the themes of gender and sexuality and etiology of death and need for new life. Attention is placed on Eve and Adam’s relationship as husband and wife and the act they did against God. For example, in 1 Corinthians 11:3-12, the author builds upon the idea that the man shall rule over the woman. He says that the husband is the head of every wife (Gen 3:16), that he is the image of the creator (Gen 1:26-27), and that woman came from man (Gen 2:21-22). In another passage, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, the author writes that death came into the world through ‘one man’. Later in the verse, it is implied that the ‘one man’ is Adam. This seems to indicate that before Adam or the ‘one man’ there was no death.
In the New Testament, there is a new interpretation of the Eden story. First of all, Genesis 1-3 is taken together as two tellings of the same story. This is indicated when the author references them both in connection to each other. For example, in Matthew 19:3-12, the author writes that Jesus references both Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24: “"Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?” It seems that at the time this was written the book of Genesis had been complied, it says “haven’t you read”. Also, the story/stories are used as the etiology of marriage. Passages like Matthew 19:3-12, 1 Corinthians 11:3-12 and Ephesians 5:21-6:9 use it in their discussions of marriage. Further, the story/stories are used to explain why there is death (1 Corinthians 15:21-22) and why Christ is the way to a life without it. In Galatians 3:27-28 the author likens being clothed in Christ to how Adam and Eve were clothed after they were exiled. Adam and Eve were ashamed of what they did and they had to be clothed with animal skin. The animal skin represents the practice of animal sacrifice in ancient Israel as the way to clean the imperfections of one’s life. In the same way, the author implied that by metaphorically clothing one’s self in Christ our imperfections are cleaned. This makes a full thread of connection from Eden to Israel to Jesus. The story changed from being literal to symbolic.
Perhaps I am reading into this too much and letting my Christian background affect how I read these passages. But I do know that in a confessional Christian setting, this passage (along with others) implies this interpretation of the Eden story: Eden is seen as the etiology of death (as well as marriage) and the ultimate reason for Jesus Christ’s life. That reason is this: Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were kicked out of Eden because they had become imperfect. Jesus paid the price for this and the rest of humanities imperfections in the same way that animals did when sacrificed in ancient Israel. Jesus' sacrifice fixed Eden and gave people a way to be perfect again and be with God. This is very different from the independent Eden story. This new interpretation is makes some sense but there are a few inconsistancies which would probably de better discussed in class rather than on this blog. But some of these would be: 1) the story never said that Adam and Eve were perfect, 2) it never said that the snake was Satan and that he 'deceived' Eve, 3) it never said that God wanted people to have eternal life again (I thought that's why the couple were kicked out of Eden), 4) it never said that Adam and Eve got 'married', although they are referred to as husband and wife. Considering there particulars, is this new interpration valid?
This is a thoughtful response. You point to the most important of Paul’s interpretations of the Garden story, setting up the antithesis between Adam and Jesus. You’ve teased out some of the implications of this connection on the interpretation of the story. What we don’t know is how much is originally Pauline, and what ideas were in circulation at the time. E.g., on the perfect Adam, see Gen Rab 24:2 and 8:10 (in Kvam, pp. 78-79).
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure what you meant by “the story changed from being literal to symbolic.” I think you’re referring to the metaphoric use of ‘clothing,’ rather than the story as a whole, which in this interpretation has to retain it’s “literal” meaning as something that actually happened (it had to in order to have real consequences, like ‘fallenness’), but it had an overlay of symbolism through the metaphor of clothing.
“Adam and Eve were ashamed of what they did and they had to be clothed with animal skin. The animal skin represents the practice of animal sacrifice in ancient Israel as the way to clean the imperfections of one’s life.” This is homiletic interpretation. We really don’t know ‘why’ God re-clothes the humans, although what could he use but animal skins, and now that you mention it, the whole verse seems strange: where did He get the skins? did he kill some of the animals He had created? In any case it has always seemed to me that this verse, along with the preceding one where Eve is named, just make no sense in the context of punishment and expulsion, except if they were added at a later time to soften the latter.
‘It seems that at the time this was written the book of Genesis had been complied, it says “haven’t you read”.” There’s no doubt that by this time the Pentateuch/Torah, was a written document, a sacred document, even more so after the destruction of the Temple in 70, where it then became the focus of the synagogue that replaced the sacrificial temple institutions. Remember the Septuagint, the translation for Greek-speaking Jews in Hellenistic Egypt, had been done three centuries earlier.