Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins QUOTES

1 " The Pentateuch was not authored out of whole cloth by a second-millennium Moses but is the end product of a complex literary process—written, oral, or both—that did not come to a close until the postexilic period. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

2 " It is only to admit that what we have cannot be explained as an early (second-millennium-BC) document written essentially by one person (Moses). Rather, the Pentateuch has a diverse compositional history spanning many centuries and was brought to completion after the return from exile. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

3 " Seeing the similarities between these two stories should discourage us from expecting the Adam story to contribute to contemporary scientific debates about human origins (let alone guide those debates). Likewise, the similarities between Genesis and Atrahasis suggest that the biblical account cannot be labeled “historical,” at least not in any conventional sense of the word. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

4 " Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God’s Word requires a literal reading. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

5 " a literal reading of Genesis is not the firmly settled default position of true faith to which one can “hold firm” or from which one “strays.” Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God’s Word requires a literal reading. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

6 " The bottom line is that for Wellhausen and many other biblical scholars before and since, the Pentateuch as we know it (an important qualification) was not completed until the postexilic period (after the Israelites were allowed to return to their homeland from Babylon beginning in 539 BC). There were certainly long-standing written documents and oral traditions that the postexilic Israelites drew upon, which biblical scholars continue to discuss vigorously, but the Pentateuch as we know it was formed as a response to the Babylonian exile. The specifics of Wellhausen’s work no longer dominate the academic landscape, but the postexilic setting for the Pentateuch is the dominant view among biblical scholars today. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

7 " One cannot read Genesis literally—meaning as a literally accurate description of physical, historical reality—in view of the state of scientific knowledge today and our knowledge of ancient Near Eastern stories of origins. Those who read Genesis literally must either ignore evidence completely or present alternate “theories” in order to maintain spiritual stability. Unfortunately, advocates of alternate scientific theories sometimes keep themselves free of the burden of tainted peer review. Such professional isolation can encourage casually sweeping aside generations and even centuries of accumulated knowledge. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

8 " This is extremely significant. Knowing something of when the Pentateuch came to be, even generally, affects our understanding of why it was produced in the first place—which is the entire reason why we are dipping our toes into this otherwise esoteric pool of Old Testament studies. The final form of the creation story in Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch) reflects the concerns of the community that produced it: postexilic Israelites who had experienced God’s rejection in Babylon. The Genesis creation narrative we have in our Bibles today, although surely rooted in much older material, was shaped as a theological response to Israel’s national crisis of exile. These stories were not written to speak of “origins” as we might think of them today (in a natural-science sense). They were written to say something of God and Israel’s place in the world as God’s chosen people. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

9 " The root of the conflict for many Christians is not scientific or even theological, but group identity and fear of losing what it offers. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

10 " Adam in primordial times plays out Israel’s national life. He is proto-Israel—a preview of coming attractions. This does not mean, however, that a historical Adam was a template for Israel’s national life. Rather, Israel’s drama—its struggles over the land and failure to follow God’s law—is placed into primordial time. In doing so, Israel claims that it has been God’s special people all along, from the very beginning. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

11 " As we saw concerning Chronicles in chapter 2, the Old Testament already does in principle what Paul is doing here: reworking the past to speak to the present. That interpretive conviction is seen time and time again throughout Second Temple Jewish literature where the past needs to be rethought in view of the present. This can be counterintuitive for modern readers: it is the very act of altering the past to address present circumstances that ensures its continuation as the active and abiding Word of God, not a relic of a bygone era. That is why the Chronicler does what he does with Samuel–Kings, and it is why Paul does what he does with the Abraham story. The text is not the master: it serves a goal. For Paul, that goal is the absolute and uncompromised centrality of what God has done here and now in the crucified and risen Christ. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

12 " I feel that if we do not engage Scripture with future believers in mind, we will unwittingly erect unnecessary and tragic obstacles to belief. Part of what drives this book is my concern to help prevent that scenario. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

13 " It is now increasingly agreed that the Old Testament in its final form is a product of and response to the Babylonian Exile. This premise needs to be stated more precisely. The Torah (Pentateuch) was likely completed in response to the exile, and the subsequent formation of the prophetic corpus and the “writings” [poetic and wisdom texts] as bodies of religious literature (canon) is to be understood as a product of Second Temple Judaism [postexilic period]. This suggests that by their intention, these materials are . . . an intentional and coherent response to a particular circumstance of crisis. . . . Whatever older materials may have been utilized (and the use of old materials can hardly be doubted), the exilic and/ or postexilic location of the final form of the text suggests that the Old Testament materials, understood normatively, are to be taken [understood] precisely in an acute crisis of displacement, when old certitudes—sociopolitical as well as theological—had failed.[ "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

14 " I am not trying to offer a cheap apologetic for the resurrection of Christ; accepting the resurrection of Christ is truly a matter of faith. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

15 " Rounding out our list of early Christian writers is Augustine (354–430), especially his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, where he shows, among other things, how much intellectual effort is required to handle Genesis well, and how ill-advised it is to read the creation stories literally. It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these [cosmological] topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.[ 16] "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

16 " As Jesus, the Word, is of divine origin as well as a thoroughly human figure of first-century Palestine, so is the Bible of ultimately divine origin yet also thoroughly a product of its time. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

17 " A noncontextual reading of Scripture is not only methodologically arbitrary but also theologically problematic. It fails to grasp in its entirety a foundational principle of theology that informs not only our understanding of the Bible but of all of God’s dealing with humanity recorded there, particularly in Jesus himself: God condescends to where people are, speaks their language, and employs their ways of thinking. Without God’s condescension—seen most clearly in the incarnation—any true knowledge of God would cease to exist. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

18 " Christians should not search through the creation stories for scientific information they believe it is important to see there. They should read it, as the New Testament writers did, as ancient stories transformed in Christ. "

― Peter Enns , Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins