Dick wrote,
<< My point is there exists too much extra-biblical information that doesn't
prove the existence of Adam conclusively, but certainly suggests it. Why
were those pyramids carved in Egypt that names "Adam" (Atum) and "Seth,"
hundreds of years before Moses or even Abraham was born? What would
motivate them to make it up?
Plus, if we assign Adam to fictional status, what about Noah or
Abraham? Phasing in the historical characters is an impossible
task. Fictional fathers don't have flesh and blood sons.
>>
As with Enoch, so with Atum and Seth in Egyptian writings. There is no
genuine linguistic connection between Atum, who was an Egyptian Creator god
and Adam who was created by God. The concepts are contrary to each other in
addition to being linguistically unconnected. Same with the Egyptian god
Seth, who killed his brother and the human biblical Seth who replaced the
brother who was killed. The concepts are not even the same, much less the
linguistic basis. In fact, the biblical Seth is a mistransliteration of the
Hebrew, which is Sheth and is proven to be Sheth by the play on the word
shath (appointed) in Gen 4:25. In addition, the Egyptian Seth was a great or
great great grandson of Atum, not a direct son as was the biblical Sheth. I
do hope you will refrain from using any more arguments like these, as they
are completely baseless.
Adam is not so much fictional as telescoped. Genealogies which go back to the
primordial beginnings and even good histories, such as Livy's can begin with
fictional characters like Romulus and Remus. The sources for more accurate
information simply do not exist at the time of the writer. But, that does not
mean that later characters where the historical sources are better are not
genuinely historical. The sources of Gen 1-11 antedate the writer by a good
1500 years and more. Of course they are not very accurate. Further, they
obviously come from Mesopotamian traditions imported probably via Abraham who
was a heathen from Babylonia before God saved him. Abraham is half that
distance to the writer and comes from at least oral sources which were
treasured within the Israelite tradition. Luke gives the most accurate
history in the Bible not because he was inspired but because he was the best
trained mind (the Hippocratic tradition is closer to modern critical thinking
than anything else in the ancient world) and he gathered his information from
eye-witnesses. It is all a matter of sources. No biblical historian claims to
get his information by divine revelation. Nearly all of them mention their
human sources. The revelation is in the theology, the faith and morals---and
even there Jesus said some of it (Deut 24:1-4) was a concession to ancient
ways of thinking. It is not the Bible that is ultimate, but the Lord. We walk
by faith in God, not in philosophical idealism.
By grace we do proceed (Wayne's great phrase),
Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 03 2002 - 03:49:56 EST