The Genesis story: myth or history?

THE SECOND IN A SERIES OF FOUR ARTICLES BY PIERRE GILBERT

BASED ON CHAPTER TWO OF GOD NEVER MEANT FOR US TO DIE: THE EMERGENCE OF EVIL IN THE LIGHT OF THE CREATION ACCOUNT (EUGENE, OR: WIPF & STOCK, 2020), 28-46.

In my previous article, we saw that evil is viewed as either something that is intrinsic to human existence or purely as an illusion. There is almost a universal resignation (a capitulation?) to the idea that evil is an unavoidable and necessary component of human existence.

To a great extent, Christian tradition has failed to offer a truly distinct perspective on evil. Augustine (354-430) postulated that all instances of evil have purpose and will eventually be woven into a greater whole that will attribute significance even to the most revolting acts of human cruelty. The second-century bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons, posited that God designed the world as a “sphere of soul-making” in which evil plays a quasi-tutoring role.1 Most theologians, philosophers, pastors, and ordinary Christians comfortably live between these two poles. I disagree with the view that evil is either a necessary part of human existence or an illusion. At the core of the thesis I offer in my recent book, God Never Meant for Us to Die, is the conviction that God never intended for humans to experience suffering and death, and that evil was never to be an inevitable component of God’s original plan for humanity.

I am sure many of you are saying: “What a crazy idea! Is it not self-evident that pain, suffering, and adversity are fundamental to the human condition? Surely there must be a purpose for all the evil that human beings have experienced throughout history.”

On the surface, the notion that there is purpose to evil makes sense and feels right. And yet, I categorically reject it, not on account of any personal feelings I may have about evil, but because of what the Genesis creation, by far the most revolutionary text ever to emerge in human history, tells us about evil and its emergence.

For most of its history, Christians have relied on the creation story to explain the presence of evil in the world: it was all about Adam and Eve choosing to eat a forbidden fruit and being cast out of the Garden of Eden. Every Christian knew that evil was somehow linked to the exercise of human free will.

But this consensus no longer exists. A significant number of theologians and philosophers have sharply veered away from a historical fall to account for the presence of evil in the world. The world-renowned philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, suggests that the significance of the creation story can only be understood if “we completely renounce projecting the Adamic figure into history.”2 Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, agrees. He contends that the Old Testament “is not concerned with origins but with faithful responses and effective coping.3

1  John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1966), 372.

2  Paul Ricoeur, “‘Original Sin’: A Study in Meaning,” in Paul Ricoeur: The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 284.

3  Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 41.

In fact, except for a few conservative scholars, the creation story seems to have altogether been put If there was a time to on the back burner as a legitimate explanation for the presence of evil resist the urge to subsume in the world. The most significant indictment the interpretation of a against the text derives in great part from the theory of evolution, biblical text to a scientific which offers an explanation for the emergence of the human race theory, this would be it. that is viewed as entirely inconsistent with an original pair of parents from which descended the rest of humanity.

Current scientific opinion also strenuously argues against The stakes could not be higher. the representation of humanity as a species that has “fallen” Despite the bad press the creation from a previously better position. To speak of the devolution of account receives these days, I maintain the human race rather than its evolution is an assault on some that Genesis 1–3 is essential to proof the most preciously held scientific assumptions regarding vide a response that neither negates the humanity’s history. reality of evil nor radically alters the

Another important factor that leads many to reject the biblical portrait of God as perfect, absocreation story derives from a serious misuderstanding about lutely good, and all-powerful. I would the nature of the text itself. Scholars generally define the cre- even go so far as to suggest that without ation narrative as myth, i.e., a story focusing on the gods and a careful consideration of the creation intended to explain the origin of humanity and the world. story, the presence of evil in human While such stories may contain insights into the human con- history must remain an inexplicable dition, such accounts have no historical value. The suggestion, and unsettling mystery. therefore, that the Genesis creation narrative may have some Is the creation narrative simply a grounding in history is viewed as the height of fundamental- myth? ist naïveté. While Genesis 1–3 functions in a

Case closed! Or is it? way that is similar to myth in terms of

Notwithstanding the quasi-religious assent the theory of offering a basic understanding of God evolution happens to enjoy, it is in the end just that: a the- and the world, there are elements that ory, or perhaps more accurately, a hypothesis. I don’t wish strongly argue against reading this text to sound overly Neanderthal about all this, but I find it dis- exclusively as myth. concerting that one hundred and fifty some years after the First, as many Old Testament scholpublication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the fossil evi- ars observe, the text exhibits a stylistic dence supporting the notion of interspecies evolution remains soberness that contrasts sharply with embarrassingly underwhelming.4 myth. In other words, it just does not

If there was a time to resist the urge to subsume the inter- feel like we are reading a myth. Second, pretation of a biblical text to a scientific theory, this would be unlike myth, the creation account does it. As for the contention that Genesis 1-3 is myth and cannot, not depict a universe populated with a therefore, offer a perspective that is anchored in history, we multiplicity of deities expressing themneed to carefully listen to how the text presents itself before selves through nature. Genesis 1 states arriving at any conclusion about what the text says and its that there is only one God, and that this implications with regard to the reality of evil. God created the world. This chapter proclaims the absolute sovereignty of 4  Philosopher of science and author of Signature of the Cell (New York, NY: God over creation and distinguishes the HarperOne, 2009), Stephen C. Meyer, offers a very insightful and carefully person of God from the created order. researched investigation of one of the greatest challenges to neo-Darwinism, The narrative creates a link between i.e., the rapid emergence during the Cambrian period of numerous animal forms the events outlined in Genesis 1–3 and without evolutionary precursors. For more details, see also Darwin’s Doubt (New patriarchal history. This “organic” conYork, NY: HarperOne, 2013) and Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York, nection is confirmed by the Genesis NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

Why did such a seemingly innocuous act as eating from a fruit tree have such dire and farreaching consequences for Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity?

narrative in the lineage found in 5:1–32 and later continued in the Table of Nations in 10:1–32, where there is an explicit articulation between Shem and Abraham in 10:1, 21 and 11:10, 26–32, and 12:1. As Old Testament scholar, Gordon Wenham observes, “The ensuing story of Cain and Abel and especially the genealogy of Chapter 5 linking Adam with Noah shows that the author understood the earliest stories to be about real people.”5

The historical anchoring of Genesis 1–3, especially as it relates to Adam and Eve, is also echoed in the New Testament. Most prominent in this regard is Paul’s own assessment of Adam as a historical character. In Romans 5:12-21, Paul unreservedly affirms the historicity of Adam. In 5:12, the apostle associates the emergence of sin to one man’s act of disobedience. Paul clarifies the fact that sin is not just some abstract principle that has always been part and parcel of human existence. Sin is something that has a distinct point of origin: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man.” Paul explicitly links the root cause of the human condition to a historical event.

If the Fall narrative is simply symbolic of every person’s sinful impulse, then Paul’s entire argument is no better than a house of cards in an earthquake. Without a historical fall, Paul has no case whatsoever, and the epistle’s argument collapses.

5  Gordon, Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 91. My own position with respect to the problem of evil is entirely contingent on the notion of a historical fall. Without such an event to anchor the intrusion of sin into human history, it is impossible to provide a coherent response to the presence of evil in the world. If most contemporary solutions to the problem of evil involve either a challenge to God’s omnipotence and goodness, or, alternatively, a banalization of evil, it is most likely because of a basic unwillingness to take into account the possibility of a historical act of disobedience at the pinpoint origin of human history.

Contrary to what some might believe, tracing the emergence of evil to human free will is not quite as straightforward as it may appear. Why did such a seemingly innocuous act as eating from a fruit tree have such dire and far-reaching consequences for Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity? Couldn’t God just forgive and forget? Why would God set up a test that most readers say Adam and Eve were condemned to fail?

This will be the subject of my next article.

PIERRE GILBERT, PH.D. is associate professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at Canadian Mennonite University and MB Seminary.

›› Purchase God Never Meant for Us to Die and Pierre Gilbert’s first book, Demons, Lies and Shadows at KindredProductions.com