Q.I don’t really find the distinction between a literary Adam and Eve and an historical one all that helpful in dealing with the NT writers and speakers themselves.  Jesus, Paul, and others were dealing with stories they assumed were true in some sense and had some historical foundation or core.  More helpful is the distinction between the more literal and figurative/metaphorical dimensions of an ancient saga.  I appreciated your listing of things you found fantastical in some of these ancient... Read more

Q. One of the things that absolutely shocked the anthropologists about Gobeckli Tepe in Turkey is that here was evidence of religion at a high place, which dated possibly even to 10,000 B.C. and preceded village life and sustained agriculture. The German book on the site is called ‘The First Temple’. The usual secular anthropology theory was that religion came along after village life and sedentary existence due to agriculture having begun. This site suggests the reverse. That human beings... Read more

Q. I like your suggestion on p. 232 that humans have a natural biological tendency towards survival (in fact so do many higher order creatures), and hence a self-protect, even selfish orientation, when connected to a morally corrupt environment is all that is required to explain why all have sinned. I think for example of infants— it’s all about me, feed me, hold me, change me etc. They are inherently narcissistic, and one has to ask whether narcissism, ‘the heart... Read more

Q. I must confess that one of the things that has always bothered me is the absolute confidence many scientists and anthropologists, including Christian ones, place in their methods of dating. Even carbon 14 dating has a plus or minus that can be considerable, and furthermore, dating of stone objects is very iffy, especially if it is decided on the basis of: 1) the technology used to produce say a spear head (a technology which could have developed much sooner... Read more

I am a long time fan of James Bond.  Shoot, I even read various of Ian Fleming’s short thriller novels about spying  50+ years ago.  And of the various actors playing James Bond, other than Sean Connery, Daniel Craig has clearly been the very best. He brought a toughness to the role that actors like Pierce Brosnan could never achieve.  Not to mention that Craig is really in shape and can do some of his own stunts.  This particular movie... Read more

Q. We need to discuss this whole business of ‘soul’ or rational soul which at least in the Greco-Roman sense is not a Biblical concept. It’s a philosophical concept which unfortunately entered Christian theology through the Greek and Latin fathers, and not through Jewish theology. Yes, early Jews including Jesus and Paul believed that humans had a non-material spirit (e.g. Jesus on the cross says ‘Father into thy hands I commend my spirit’) a spirit that could survive death and... Read more

Q. For my money, I think it is probable that Gen. 1 is the generic universal account, and Gen. 2 is not just a further unpacking of the human part of Gen. 1, though that’s possible.  Let us suppose for a moment that Gen. 2 is the quite specific origin story about where God’s people came from in the ANE (hence the mention of 2 well known ANE rivers).  We don’t need to ponder who Cain and Abel married if... Read more

Q. Let’s talk about the two creation accounts in Gen. 1 and Gen. 2. The former is more universal in scope and on the face of it suggests a creation of male and female at the same time whenever and wherever. Gen. 2 is focused just on human creation, and I emphasize the word creation. The verb bara is only predicated of God’s activity in any case and cannot easily be read as comporting with evolutionary theory. Interestingly, in the... Read more

  Q. Let’s deal with a related subject, namely what constitutes a human being, being human? The answer in Genesis is that we are uniquely created ‘in the image of God and after his likeness’. This is a theological statement, not a statement about brain capacity, ability to reason as a personal agent etc.  It may presuppose all that sort of thing, both in terms of ontology and function, but as Mike Heiser has demonstrated to my satisfaction, the tselm... Read more

  Q. Let’s deal with the issue of the social ethos of the stories in Gen. 2-3. They seem to speak of a time when: 1) there was agriculture, and 2) animal sacrifice. As for the former, the anthropologists are pretty clear that cultivation of crops does not pre-date about 10,000 B.C. or so (i.e. a post hunter-gatherer period) nor do the genealogies in Genesis suggest some sort of date from hoary antiquity like the one you pick for Adam—... Read more