The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate
Written by John H. Walton and N. T. Wright
Narrated by Paul Boehmer
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
How can Christians of good faith move forward? Who were the historical Adam and Eve? What if we've been reading Genesis-and its claims regarding material origins-wrong? In what cultural context was this couple, this garden, this tree, this serpent portrayed?
Following his groundbreaking Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton explores the ancient Near Eastern context of Genesis 2-3, creating space for a faithful reading of Scripture along with full engagement with science for a new way forward in the human origins debate. As a bonus, an illuminating excursus by N. T. Wright places Adam in the implied narrative of Paul's theology.
The Lost World of Adam and Eve is a must-listen book for anyone seeking to understand this foundational text historically and theologically, and wondering how to view it alongside contemporary understandings of human origins.
John H. Walton
John H. Walton (PhD, Hebrew Union College) is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Old Testament Today, with Andrew E. Hill; volumes on Job and Genesis in the NIV Application Commentary series; the six-volume Lost World series; and Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology. He was also coeditor, with Craig Keener, of the ECPA 2017 Bible of the Year winner, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible.
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Reviews for The Lost World of Adam and Eve
90 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent! If it was up to me this book would be required reading for everyone who wishes to engage in the discussion on Genesis and human origins. This book is loaded with substance!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inspiring book that brings new and yet sound and compelling look on story of Adam and Eve!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very powerful book with a healthy new look at scripture! How easy we leave our basic assumptions unchecked and what consequences that has for how we see the world!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I wish I could give it 4,5 stars. Actually, the rating system is too simple for such a book.
This is an important book, even if one disagrees with it profoundly. Every Christian concerned about the debate on human origins, and every non-Christian wondering at all the fuss about it, should give it a chance. In a way, it is a continuation of the same author’s _The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate_. It shares that book’s deep concern about proper exegesis of ancient texts according to their original context, too often ignored even after around two hundred years of archæological discoveries God provided for our better understanding of His Word.
But on another way, the present volume goes much deeper to the core of our disagreements. If Genesis 1 raises important, fundamental issues on the origins of the Universe, Genesis 2–3 raises just as important and fundamental issues on human origins; and naturally human origins are even more immediate to us, and to Christian life, and even to human life in general, than the more remote issue of the origin of the Universe.
The book fails to get five stars on my evaluation because it goes to unnecessary lengths to unfold all its authors’ concerns stemming from the exegesis of Genesis. For instance, while NT Wright contributes interestingly on Paul’s use of Genesis, the argument is too short, and ultimately it will be counterproductive with many Christians who might be open to the book’s arguments but who are deeply distrustful of Wright’s ‘New perspective on Paul’. I do think the same arguments could be made without appeal to such a divisive figure as Wright. In my case, it did convince me I have to read something by Wright, even if I suspect I will not like him much better than, say, Ellul, even if probably much better than Girard; but many people will be lost to the argument just by sighting Wright’s name on the cover, and that is lamentable, as the books’ contextualised exegesis arguments are so much more fundamental, better founded and essential than Wright’s ‘new perspective’.
I do hope Evangelicals, and specially Reformed Christians, will give it a hearing, even if disagreeing with much. Even if I myself disagree with its conclusion at points, I do think the exegetical information is essential to any debate on Genesis 2–3, and I hope a few Christians could gain enough insight into the questions raised to abandon a sometimes too belligerent position in this fundamental debate.
Ultimately, I think others will have to follow up on the path opened by Walton but with a less divisive approach: perhaps first explore all the exegetical insights opened up by contextualisation, and leave for a second stage the working out of applications on the debate with modern science or, as Francis A Schaeffer brilliantly put it, modern modern science; as it is, disarming the militantly anti-Christian bias of much of the scientific establishment by better exegesis could be a first step in a more profound critique of the modern modern science bellicose, self-sufficient, philosophically untenable attitude, by robbing atheism of its current straw men many well-intentioned Christian lamentably insist on erecting.
But I never summed up the book’s contentions. Essentially, it goes back to what Moses and the Hebrews most probably understood when reading (and hearing) Genesis 2–3, and perhaps more to the point what they probably never understood, but is a modern eixegesis we fail too see because it is water to us, in David F Wallace’s felicitous phrase. It then gives a much better Biblical footing to what CS Lewis and others have been claiming for almost a century now: that the big challenge God lays to the modern world in Genesis 2–3 is not aimed squarely at the technical claims of even modern modern science, but at its fundamental philosophical follies, as David P Goldman puts it: that modern philosophy attitude at death is like a child putting her fingers at hear ears and shouting ‘I can’t hear you!’ That Genesis ultimately, as Lewis put it, prepares ‘The funeral of a great myth’, that of Evolutionism, by contrasting a true story, even if one considers that true story to have nothing to say on biological evolution.
Granted Walton has to deal with strong objections, such as the hypothetical presence of death in a world before the Fall that God pronounced ‘very good’; and I hope someone will express his case later even better than himself; but all things considered I do think he fought a valiant battle, and has earned the right to be heard and understood, even in disagreement. I do think it is high time many Christians who deem to hold a high view of the Bible, but who think those who disagree with them on the material origins of man do not hold such a view, give their brethren the benefit of doubt and a fair hearing. And, to be sure, it is high time too that many atheists who like to tilt their lances at straw men learn that we have in the Christian camp many who do not fit atheists’ straw man molds.
On a note for the Reformed, one impressive point Walton makes is that there is precedent to his approach, at least analogically, in John Calvin himself, not to mention the Church Fathers. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Every once in a while you read a book that forces you to shift your perspective. Walton's scholarship does precisely that. In The Lost World of Adam and Eve, he picks up and carries forward the work he did in The Lost World of Genesis One.Walton's main claim: the creation account of Genesis 1-3 is not a story about material origins—it's a temple story of functional origins. The ancient Hebrew people who first heard the creation account of Genesis would not have assumed creatio ex nihilo. Instead, they would have read the scripture as a description of God organizing his home with us. (Walton states clearly that there are other passages that support the doctrine of ex nihilo. Genesis 1, however, makes no such claim.)Walton's work is meticulously organized with each chapter arguing for a specific proposition. Here are some of the key insights that struck me:1. Genesis 2 should be read as a sequel to Genesis 1, not an expansion of the creation of humans on the sixth day. A key factor here is the insight that 'ādām in Hebrew can be read either as "humans" or as the proper name, "Adam".2. Adam and Eve were specific people chosen by God to expand his rule and reign throughout the world. Walton argues that ancient readers would have assumed there were other humans outside the garden. This explains who Cain might have fled to.3. The Serpent in the creation story would have been understood as the chaos creature of non-order. Think of the Rahab figure from Job.4. When Adam and Eve capitulated to the serpentine chaos creature, they set themselves up at the centre of creation which allowed disorder to run free in God's newly ordered world.If you just read that list and want to argue why he can't be right, I encourage you to read the book first. Walton is meticulous in his arguments. While he does believe that there is a historical Adam and Eve, he insists that the Bible does not claim that all humans descended from this couple alone.In the end, Walton notes how essential a proper reading of Genesis 1-3 is for the next generation. We can choose to understand it the way we were raised and stand boldly for our faith in the face of mounting scientific evidence. In an impassioned moment, Walton suggests a better way:"Think, then, of our children and grandchildren. When they come home from college having accepted some scientific understanding about human origins that we do not find persuasive, are we going to denounce them, disinherit them and drive them from the doors of our homes and churches? Or are we going to suggest to them that there may be a way to interpret Scripture faithfully that will allow them to hold on to both science and faith? Can we believe that such a path does not represent a compromise that dilutes the faith but rather one that opens new doors to understanding that the next generation may find essential even though we find ourselves paralyzed on the threshold" (210)?The Lost World of Adam and Eve is an important work that will challenge and inspire believers who are committed to the authority of God's Word.