To understand Adam biblically, we must understand that he was created to be God’s representative on earth. As God’s vice-regent Adam was charged with keeping the order God established and expanding his garden-temple to the ends of the earth.
“Adam who?” you might ask.
Then you remember this is a biblical studies blog… “Oh yes, Adam of the Bible. Sure I know him. The garden, the fruit, the fall…yada yada yada.”
The next post will be my attempt to deepen that understanding.
It’s interesting because a correct understanding of Adam is important for a proper biblical theology, however Adam is mentioned very little in the Bible. However I believe there are 4 keys to understanding Adam from a biblical-theological perspective.
If any of the above 4 categories are unfamiliar to you, stay tuned. The next post will explore the above categories in more detail and provide us a better understanding of not only Adam but also our present and future roles.
I should probably do one more post on the evidence of chaos in v 2 however this
series is dragging on much longer than I planned. Because a chaos interpretation of v 2 is pretty widely accepted in biblical scholarship, I don’t feel I need to prove it out in great detail. We will therefore move on to how v 1 should be translated.
A proper translation of v 1 requires an in-depth look into how it relates to vv 2-3. While this post will discuss topics that may make your eyes glaze over (syntax, morphology, etc) I encourage you to stay strong because this is where we will reap our rewards.
My family and I were visiting a different church on Sunday and they happened to be observing the Lord’s Supper. At the front of the church sat baskets of bread and six cups. As the congregation was getting ready to go forward to partake, I looked at my wife and said “we’re not going up there.” I said it because I assumed (incorrectly as it turned out) that they used a common cup – a lot of people drinking out of the same cup. Now admittedly I am a bit of a germ-a-phobe but there is NO WAY I am drinking out of the same cup that a couple hundred other people have drunk out of. As it turns out we did go up because they were only dipping the bread in the cup…no drinking. This made me think how I have never been to a church that practices Communion biblically. Click on the link to read what I think biblical Communion looks like.
Well tomorrow is Easter Sunday. To some that means Easter egg hunts and lots of sweets (my kids hunted for Easter eggs today at Mama and Papaw’s house – if I had realized ahead of time that there was money in the eggs I would have been hunting too). To others it means sitting through a church service for the first time since Christmas. However to many of us, Easter marks the triumphant victory of God over the forces of evil through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is this resurrection that those who are united with Christ hang every hope and belief. I cannot run a biblical studies blog without posting about the most joyous day on the calender.
After discussing the biblical support for chaos, we must now go to Genesis 1:2 in order to determine how it should be understood. A few aspects of Gen 1:2 communicate to the reader the negative state of the primordial matter before God’s redemptive activities begin in v 3 (oops…I’m revealing my hand). We shall look at one such aspect in this post.
The purpose of the previous three posts was to show that Genesis 1 is not alone in depicting God’s victory over chaos. The victory of God over the forces of evil and chaos is in fact an important biblical theme.
The OT had little to no knowledge of a chief demonic being by the name of Satan. In fact in the entire OT Satan only appears to be mentioned by name once (1 Chron 21:1). However the NT picks up on God’s conflict with these ANE mythological chaos monsters and interprets them in light of a later developed theology of Satan. John in his Apocalypse states, a great red dragon with seven heads…that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan (Rev 12:3,9). John is providing his readers with OT imagery of the ANE chaos monster Leviathan.
Given this example, how are we to interpret the Leviathan texts in the OT? From a biblical theology standpoint I think we have to interpret Leviathan as Satan even though this would have been a foreign concept to the original author of the OT texts.
I’ve heard it through the grapevine that my posts on this series have been difficult to understand. I know the readers and they are intelligent people, so I must not be explaining myself well. If you desire to understand but don’t, please post questions in the comment section and I will attempt to answer them to the best of my ability. In an attempt to maximize understanding, here is an example (albeit imperfect) to get across my point.
My son answers to numerous names that I (and my daughter Claire) call him, such as “stinker-man” and “buddy-boy.” However the most frequent names associated with my son are Kevin (his actual name) and “Jabber-baby-wocky.” The new twist on Jabberwocky comes from the new Alice and Wonderland movie and when I first heard it I thought it was perfect for my son. Since then it’s kind of stuck. Now if an alien had a video camera in the Zetterberg household (and only the Zetterberg household) in order to observe human behavior and social customs it would probably be pretty confused. It might think Kevin has numerous official names or it might think all children are called “Jabber-baby-wocky.” In fact the reason why I call Kevin “Jabber-baby-wocky” is because he is at times a force of chaos and destruction in the Zetterberg household.
In a somewhat similar manner, the OT authors use these ANE mythological chaos monsters (Yam, Rahab, Leviathan, Behemoth) to depict an opposing force to God. Please don’t get me wrong…I love my son and am in no way comparing him to Satan. The example clearly falls short which is why I referred to it as “somewhat similar.”
The following is the list of texts I promised for further reading. I am not guaranteeing this list is complete but I think it is enough support.
Ps 29: 3-4, 10; 74:12-17; 77:16-19; 89:9-10; 93:3-4
Prov 8:27-29
Job 3:8; 7:12; 9:8,13; 26:12-13; 38:8-11; 40:15-24; 41
Isa 17:12-13; 27:1; 51:9-11
Jer 51:34, 55
Hab 3:8-15
Now that we have shown God’s victory over chaos is an important biblical theme, the next post will move on to Gen 1:2 in order to understand how it fits in that theme.
