No. 203
Years ago, in a conversation, R. J. Rushdoony pointed out to me that theologians and exegetes have a tendency to read the stories in the Bible as if they were slightly unreal. He said, remember that these people really lived and lived in societies and contexts. Think as concretely as possible about what you are reading.
This is good advice. The Bible exists not only to give us theology and typology, but also to reveal the history of the world as God developed the human race toward the coming of Messiah. That history is very concrete, being fixed onto a very precise chronology, though 20th century evangelicals have been embarrassed by that chronology and have thinned out the Bible to get rid of it.
In this essay I take up three “reality” questions and attempt to answer them.
1. Who taught Adam to speak?
This is actually the title of a paper by Christian anthropologist Arthur Custance originally published in the 1960s and now available online. Custance pointed out that feral children do not learn to speak, and that human beings do not learn to speak unless spoken to. This is a problem for evolution¨ary biology, because groups of “early humans” still would not have learned to speak unless spoken to. Custance points out that in Genesis 1 and 2, God speaks to Adam, and to Adam and Eve, and thereafter they speak.
This is fine as far as it goes, but we don’t see Adam and Eve living for several years and gradually learning vocabulary and getting better and better at speaking. It is clear from the text that Adam fell into sin on the seventh day of creation, the first sabbath, before God came to fellowship with him in the garden sanctuary. This emerges from the fact that if Adam and Eve had even once‘ bypassed the Tree of Knowledge and eaten of the Tree of Life, they would have entered into a path of positive maturity and the Tree of Knowledge would never have tempted them again. Hence, the fall happened the very first time they came to the two trees.
What emerges from this is that Adam and Eve, being created as mature human beings, must have been created with an inbuilt language. It may have, and probably did, require God’s speaking first in order to “kick start” human language, but once released, Adam and Eve already knew the first lan¨guage. This was the language God spoke to them, and once they heard one sentence of it, they found they knew it and could use it.
We shall return to the most embarrassing question about this language in part 4 below.
2. What did Adam and Eve eat?
Well, in the garden they had access to fruit. Fruit requires no labor. It requires neither [] for harvesting nor for preparation. Adam and Eve, however, enjoyed this situation for less than 24 hours. Then they were cast out into the ¿ area outside the garden, and kept from the fruit of the garden by the knife & fire of the cherubim.
At this point it would be tempting to point out that by circumcision Abram entered covenant by Knife and that he worshipped God by fire. Indeed, all animal offerings approached God through this.
In this essay, however, we are wanting to “get real” about how Adam and Eve lived.
We are told clearly in Genesis 2:5 that none of the grain plants of the field had yet sprouted on the day God made Adam. We can doubt if they had yet sprouted by the next day, when Adam was sent out into the [] So, what did Adam and Eve eat? How long was it before grain was ready for harvest? Who taught them how to harvest, winnow, grind, prepare, and cook grain? The Bible answers none of these questions directly, but if we are to “get real” with Genesis, it’s worth thinking about them.
I submit we are constrained to believe that there were fruit trees around the entrance to the garden that fed Adam and Eve for a while until they learned how to make other foods. No other scenario seems possible.
I submit further that angels taught Adam and Eve about knife and fire. They are presented in
Genesis 3:24 as lords of knife and flaming sword), and we know from numerous passages that angels were humanity’s tutors in the time before Jesus came (Acts 7:53, Galatians 3:19, Hebrews 1-2, Daniel 8-12, Zechariah 1-6, etc.). The Angel of Yahweh was the supreme Tutor, giving special Instruction (Hebrew:). We have also heard from missionaries and anthropologists that when asked how a tribe learned which plants were good for medicine, and similar questions, the answer often is that back in the ur-time the gods or spirits came and taught the people. From a Biblical perspective this is just what we should expect to hear: As people moved out from Babel into new and strange and dangerous places, angels met them and showed them some necessary things.
Once angels got Adam and Eve going, eventually people learned new things and made new applications of the basic wisdom, as we see in Genesis 4:20-22, expertise in livestock husbandry, in music, and in metallurgy.
3. Who helped Cain build his city?
After killing Abel, Cain went out and built a city, naming it after his firstborn son, Enoch (Genesis 4:17). It seems odd that a man would build a city all by himself.
We can “get real” about this situation if we pay attention to Genesis 5:3 and 4:25. These sentences tell us that Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old, and that he was born after the death of Abel and as a replacement for Abel. What we learn from this, thinking ¿ really and concretely, is that Cain slew Abel about 128 years after the creation, when Cain was, say 128 years old and Abel was, say 126 years old.
Now, think about this. Adam and Eve had obviously had many sons and daughters by the time of this murder. Cain and Abel had married one of those daughters, had had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren at least of their own by the time of the murder.
Getting real, I suggest that Abel, as keeper of flocks and as second-born, was the priestly worship leader under Adam, while Cain, as firstborn, was the kingly clan leader, the prince under Adam. God had killed an animal to clothe Adam and Eve and had rejected their fig-leaf vegetable garments. Hence it was clearly known that one approaches God first and foremost through animal offerings, not through vegetable ones. Vegetables might be added, but on top of the animals (compare Leviticus 1 and 2). This means that in some sense Abel was worship leader.
Getting real, I suggest that annually at the turn of the year, Adam and then Abel as his deacon led the entire human race in worship. This had been going on for 128 years. By this time there were thousands of human beings in attendance.
Then one fateful year, Cain decided to bring his own vegetable offering separate from Abel.
Some kind of revolutionary spirit is manifest here. Indeed, what we see here is the “taking over” the church and the liturgy of the church, something that has happened loads of times in history. Cain was not content to be clan leader. He wanted to be “high priest” as well.
In this event, Cain was rejected in front of thousands of people, in front of the entire human race. This was not some private disgrace, but a public humiliation. He was embarrassed in front of his own entire extended family. It is because this humiliation was so public and so intense that in his rage he slew Abel.
Then Cain went out and built a city. We can see now that he did not go alone. There were doubtless other men who had joined with Cain in his revolutionary act. There were doubtless sons and grandsons and others of his extended family who went with him. I’m not going to bother to try and do the math. I’ll just say that probably a thousand of more people went with Cain. That’s how he could build a city.