I hereby repent in sackcloth and ashes for saying “YES!”
Yesterday I linked to a post by Pete Enns entitled, “Adam is Israel,” and simply said, “YES!”
The beauty of a blog is that it’s a work in progress, and I can perpetuate my posting by disagreeing not only with the rest of the world but also myself.
Ok, so, maybe I’m not totally disagreeing with myself. But I think I’d nuance the issue a bit differently than Pete does over there.
My primary concern is to say that the creation stories are written for the purpose of prequelling the story of Israel. That is to say, they are not written to be allegories of Israel’s creation (as some seem to be taking Pete’s post, though I don’t think that’s what he’d say); and I don’t think they’re even written to be metaphors of Israel’s life before God.
I’d say that they are written to tell the story of the world in such a way that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and possibly even the Davidic Kings, would be seen as fulfilling God’s purposes for His human creations.
So yes, they are stories of everything, but stories of everything for the purpose of privileging the subsequent Israelite narratives as being the continuation of the creational purposes of YHWH.
So I think I’d rather say, “Israel is Adam,” than, “Adam is Israel,” eschewing all notions that the transitive property is relevant to theological articulation. Such a fine distinction also enables one to make some important caveats that I think are essential (that creation and covenant are two different ways of being related to God, for one thing).
That is all. For now. Until I get Pete my post on Adam and Jesus to put up at Biologos…
I definitely agree. I was very excited to read Enns’ post and felt generally good about it, but I had this nagging feeling that something of the universal character of the text was lost in the interpretation. By reversing the direction of influence, from Israel-Adam to Adam-Israel thus rooting Israel’s story in YHWH’s creational purposes, I think you achieve essentially the same result, only in a more theologically satisfying way.
From a canonical perspective, there’s really no other way to take it other than Israel is Adam. Even if the creation stories were added in the exilic or post-exilic period (which, let’s be honest, nobody really knows & just speculates over), the final form has Adam before Israel, and the narrative reads in that light. From a narrative-critical lens, I just fail to see how Pete’s take works.
I don’t have my mind closed yet. I’m anxious to see where this takes him. Perhaps he’ll make things clearer in future posts. It is a good way to validate a stronger belief in the evolution of man & make the text cohere with it, but I hate to see my belief in the latter drive my interpretation of Genesis 1-11. I’d feel more comfortable just saying it was wrong, myth, etc.
I suspect that Enns is not ignorant of all the issues you and the commenters here, on the BioLogos post, and throughout various blogs, have raised. Could just be that he’s being deliberately provocative with his “Adam is Israel,” formulation, trying to shake up our calcified thinking about those passages. Could be, I don’t know. It will indeed be interesting to see how this all works out as he moves into Romans 5, the biggest “yeah but” hanging out there for those who feel a theological necessity in holding on to a literal Adam.