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Adam and Eve: Did They Really Exist? |
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BILL HOLDRIDGE: Each of you have a microphone, so go ahead and use those kind of as an exchange. This is your time now to banter back and forth. JOHN RANKIN: Let me begin, Carl, just by asking you a very simple question. Does Genesis 1 through 3 view itself as history or as mythology? Or something else? CARL HANSEN: Well, I can't answer how Genesis views itself, and I don't think you can either. JOHN: Well, in terms of its own language. In other words, when it situates Adam and Eve in a garden that has historical and geographical reference, is that not a very testimony that the garden in which Adam and Eve were made is known to the readers? CARL: These kinds of questions are unanswerable, John. The reason is this. We live in a scientific age. What John is asking me to do is to answer the question from a scientific basis. In other words, we think in terms of things having actually happened historically the way they were written. That's not a question that was asked of biblical authors. That's not the way they thought. The way they thought was this. That the meaning of history is the truth of history that we need to record. We take an event, we have some idea, for example, let's say that the origins of man and woman came from a certain part of the world or whatever. They would build around whatever history was known and they would put into that their understandings of God built into the story, that would explain the relationship between God and humanity. Now for us to go back and say, did they believe it was really history or didn't they? We can't answer that question. In their minds the way they thought, they probably thought that this is history. But again, it would be bogus history by our standards today from a scientific point of view, because they didn't ask scientific questions. The same thing is true in Jesus's time. They took the events of Jesus's life and as they retold it, told it in such a way that it reflected their faith experience as well as the historical event as we would see it. But the same thing happens today in history. You can have an accident out here on the corner and have ten people observing, you're going to have ten different stories. Some of them are going to be different because they are tweaked by the mindset and maybe even the values of the person who witnesses the event. It's not far-fetched, even in our historical age, to recognize there are errors in the way history is told. And if you go back to the biblical authors, particularly where they didn't even have the accuracy concerns as we understand them today, there's even going to be more of that. JOHN: I'll follow through with two brief questions and then you can question me after your response. I find it remarkable for you to say that they didn't have that concern, when unique in the face of all religious origin texts, they express an utter concern for time, place and eyewitness. That's what I was referring to in Genesis chapter 2. They had that concern. And there's no other source in all human anthropology for us even of being concerned today for history and science apart from the Bible. It doesn't come from any other religious origin text. So the question I want to follow through with is, if they didn't have the same understanding that we have about history, science, and eyewitness, why then did they trace the genealogies all the way from Adam to Jesus, naming every person all the way through? CARL: Well, I think the simple answer to that is that there is a desire to show this as being history. This is how we got here. This is where we came from. This is where we're going. Any story is going to include those basic elements. But where is the history, where is the science, where is the eyewitness apart from the biblical story itself? These stories were written thou..., if you take the Genesis account literally, then these stories have to have been written tens of thousands of years after the event itself actually happened. I'm not into creation history, creation science, so I don't have those figures on the tip of my tongue. But in actuality from a scientific point of view, if you compared the length of time that even the earth has been in existence, not to mention the rest of the universe, which is after all part of God's creation, the amount of time that humanity has been on the earth, would be about as long as a flashbulb going off. There is a minuscule amount of time that we have been a part of creation, to the best that we can tell. So these stories are intended not to give us scientific history, but to give us what's really important, and that is spiritual knowledge, to give us our identity, to help us to understand where we came from, who we are, what God is like and what our meaning in life is, why we're here and where we're going. JOHN: You can ask me a question. CARL: Gee, John. I'm sorry, but I really don't have any questions. I don't mean that in a derogatory way at all. I guess I'd want to press you further on explaining how, I mean, in your mind the genocide that I spoke of, which is one of many passages in Scripture, that because it's in the Bible you justify it? Is that what you're saying to us? JOHN: Well, I'll tell you what I'm saying. Taking the Bible historically and literally through its own literal expressions, it says that the serpent came in and deceived Eve and Adam. In the conclusion of Revelation it says that ancient serpent is the devil of hell himself. And it prophesies in Genesis 3:15 a war between the seed of the woman, who is then traced all the way to the Messiah, and the seed of the devil. And the devil as a fallen angel can not procreate, therefore he kidnaps. And as I trace this in my book, you have the war against the Redeemer, against the Messiah all the way through. And you have the attempt to extinguish the messianic line. And you have this in many levels. And when Abraham was promised the Promised Land, and Abraham and his father Terah were called out of Urvah Chaldeze, the ancient Babylon, they were the only people left on the face of the planet, like Noah before them, who believed in Yahweh. And the whole world was governed by the Babylonian view of the triad of sorcery, sacred prostitution and human sacrifice. And God called Abraham and Terah out of that. And when he did, he said, you will receive the Promised Land, Canaan, but only after 430 years when the sin of the Amorites reach their full measure. In Genesis 2, it says that if we sin, in dying we will die. We will reap the fruit of our sins. And if we choose alienation from God, God will not force us into heaven. He will not force good on us because goodness is a gift, not a compulsion. And therefore people are free to follow false gods if they want to, if they understand the consequences of that. Now what happens is, that 430 years, the Amorites reach the full measure where they are so full of child sacrifice, which is the most heinous sin of all, which is no different than human abortion today, and finally when they have so completely repudiated God, and it says in Psalm 106, that because the Jews bought into the Canaanite ways, they bought into child sacrifice. And so God was saying they've had their chance, 430 years, in which Israel is in slavery. They're being persecuted for no sin of their own. Joseph rescued Egypt from the famine. And so God brings them out and says, you're humbled, you're broken enough, you will now be my divine instrument against those for whom child sacrifice is their idol. And the very Amalekites that circled around behind them, the moment they came out and attacked in the rear, attacking their weakness, God said, because you did this, Amalek, I will wipe you out from the face of the earth. Now, it's not human opinion judging to attack anyone. In fact, Israel never was in an offensive war, except to take over Canaan away from the human sacrifice culture at God's divine command. Now this is the Bible's view of itself. Nowhere else in the rest of the Bible is Israel on an offensive war, and never do they seek to take land. They simply seek to receive what God has given them, to have justice, the only culture in ancient society against human sacrifice. And God said, OK, for human sacrifice not to affect your culture, I command you to wipe out this culture, and if you don't, it's like a cancer that has not been completely removed. It will metastasize. And that's what Psalm 106 says. So here's the perspective. These cultures were so completely demonized, and had so completely chosen to be servants of Satan, as symbolized by the reality of human sacrifice, that God said unless you extinguish them at my command, they will extinguish you and extinguish the messianic line. And so this is the understanding. There is never after the conquest of Canaan an offensive war on the part of Israel. And so that's the basic understanding, that if we choose evil then we will get evil. And God can use his people, in this case Israel, to be executors of his judgment. But it's not their judgment. In fact he said you're just as sinful as the rest. But I've reached out to you because you are the lineage of those who chose faith against all odds. [applause] CARL: I never thought I'd hear applause for genocide. JOHN: Well well well but but but but... CARL: There are many places in Scripture. You can justify it any way you want. JOHN: No no no no... CARL: That's not the only example. JOHN: You're right. All the other examples -- there's only about two or three -- are in exactly the same context: the conquest of Canaan. CARL: So these people were less than human. Is that what you're saying? JOHN: No. They chose to believe in the doctrines of demons: sorcery, sacred prostitution, and child sacrifice. That is Babylon. That is Babylon the Great that falls at the very end. They chose to be the foul haunt of every demonic spirit. And you see, this goes back to the ethics of choice in Genesis 2:16. What God says to Adam, is he says, you are free to eat. The Hebrew is "akol tokel". In feasting you shall feast from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is a metaphor for the knowledge of everything, that only God can possess. And only God can know evil and not be tempted and polluted by it. But if you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then in "buhyom," in the moment you eat of it, "moth tamouth," in dying you will die. And so death is not the physical termination of life. That's the fruit of death. Death is alienation from God. But here is the powerful reality of God. All the pagan deities in their sub-universe size, they're smaller than the universe, use a limited power to beat up on people, to destroy. God who's bigger than the universe, uses all his power to give us life. But the act of giving itself, if it forced itself, would be evil. And God loves us enough to let us choose what is wrong. And therefore he says, this is life, this is death, choose life. If you don't choose life, I'll die on the cross, rise from the grave, and give you another chance. But if, in the final analysis, Ezekiel 23, if you love the Assyrians and their gods after whom you've doted, I will give you into the hands of your lovers. As it says in John 3, the very words of Jesus Christ, who said, "for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son." He then said a few verses later, but men love darkness instead of light. And therefore, God gives us what and whom we have loved. So the ethics of choice says in Scripture that the only people who are ever dehumanized are people who chose to be dehumanized against God's nature. And God will give them humanity right up into the end until they have totally enmeshed themselves in the demonic. And what we have in the Old Testament is the historical portrayal of the New Testament's true spiritual reality. The Amalekites at this point, as well as Jericho, were the proxy agents of the devil to destroy the Messiah's line. And God loves the enemies, and he loves us when we're enemies, and that's the height of the Sermon on the Mount. But he loves us enough not to force us into eternal life. And so my book goes into detail in tracing this all the way through. The utter consistency with the ethics of choice. If you look at every religious origin text on the face of the planet apart from Genesis, no informed choice is given whatsoever. They force us into hell without a choice. God gives us the choice between heaven and hell but doesn't force us into heaven, because if he forced us into heaven, heaven for us would then be hell. BILL: We are at the time for our break already. It's amazing how quickly this time goes by. |