0129 Scot McKnight offers several principles for reading the Biblical text in context.  Here, “context” means “the social and historical conditions in which the text was written”.

0130 So what is going on when one reads a text?

0131 There are two actualities.

One is the text₂ itself, which emerges from (and situates) the potential of an author₁.  The author is subject to social and historical conditions, as well as other possibilities.

The other is an interpretation of the text₂.  An interpretation₂ emerges from (and situates) the possibilities inherent in a reader₁.  The reader is also subject to social and historical conditions, as well as other possibilities.

0132 To me, an interpretation₂ virtually emerges from (and situates) a text₂, resulting in a two-level interscope.

0133 Look at that empty perspective level.

What does it imply?

0134 Consider the virtual nested form in the realm of possibility.

Something on the perspective level_1c virtually brings the reader_1b into relation with the potential of an author_1a.

In doing so, this perspective-level something_2c transcends the social and historical conditions_1b of the reader_2b and the social and historical conditions_1b of the author_2a.  The reader knows what happens after the author wrote_1c.  So, the author_2a reveals something_2c that transcends his or her social and historical conditions_1a.

0135 Does that sound like “revelation”?

Or, does that sound like “wisdom”?

0136 Consider the virtual nested form in the realm of normal context.

A normal context on the perspective level_3c virtually brings reading_3b into relation with the potentials inherent in writing_3a.

0137 For Dr. McKnight, this normal context_3c is Christian faith, rather than Big Government (il)Liberalism.

If I turn the column for normal context₃ into a virtual nested form, I obtain a statement, saying, “The Christian faith_3cvirtually brings the reading believer_3b into relation with the possibilities inherent in Biblical story-telling_3a.”

0138 The stories of Genesis come into being deep in history, maybe prior to the Sumerian Dynastic Period.  The Sumerian civilization is the world’s first.  Scholars know this from archaeology.

0139 The stories of Adam and Eve and Noah survive through a living tradition.  They are passed on by voice for generations.  They are written down thousands of years after they were first formulated.

0140 In contrast, archaeologists made some incredible discoveries in the past three centuries.  They found royal libraries of ancient cities.  These royal cities had fallen so completely that no one knew that the resulting pile of dirt was formerly a city.  Clay tablets were preserved in these tells, or “hills”, in southwestern Asia.

0141 What we now call “ancient Near East literature” was not handed down through generations in a living tradition.  Instead, it sat as indentations on clay tablets buried in the remains of ancient cities, disguised as hills by their total ruin.

0142 Before archaeologists started unearthing cuneiform tablets, no one knew of the existence of this so-called “literature”.  Neither the Jews, nor the Muslims, nor the Christians had any idea.  Augustine wrote fourteen centuries before archaeologists started working in the Near East.

0143 What did archaeologists find written on these excavated clay tablets?

They found stories similar to Genesis.  They found literary styles similar to Genesis.

0144 Now, for those interested in the living Word of God, scientific discoveries have shifted the focus of inquiry to long dead civilizations.

Today, we declare, “Many Genesis stories share dramatic features with ancient Near East literature.  Even more, Genesis stories share the same literary styles as ancient Near East literature.”

Welcome to the new – modern – normal context for Biblical writing_3a.

0145 McKnight offers four principles that should inform the Christian reader of the Biblical origin narratives (with the [excavated] ancient Near East literature in mind).

0146 Clearly, all these principles apply to the two-level interscope of reading the text.

0147 Hmmm.  On top of that, they allow me to fill in the perspective level for reading Genesis.

0148 How did Augustine’s story of the historical Adam make it onto the stage?

0149 Saint Augustine did not start out as a saint.  He began as a Manichean philosopher, more or less.  He gave up that dualistic philosophy then revived it, in a strange reversal, in order to explain why babies should be baptized.

0150 The answer concerns Original Sin.  The sacrament of baptism removes Original Sin.

0151 So, what did Manicheans think about babies?

0152 The Manicheans adopted an influential Greek philosophy-laden myth to their religion of Light and Darkness.

The myth starts with a soul, sitting in bliss, in the spiritual world, above a celestial trap door.  The trap door opens.  The soul starts to fall, tumbling downwards into the material realm.  As the soul descends, matter clings to it, surrounding the soul’s immaterial beauty with crass matter, until… the baby is born.

0153 Yes, according to the Manicheans, a baby is a bundle of evil matter occluding a divine spiritual spark.  So, the goal of life is to escape the evil body and return to the source. 

0154 Does this scenario sound vaguely New Age?

0155 Anyway, to me, Augustine’s version of the Fall reminds me of this baby story.

0156 To start, in paradise, Adam was so rational (not not religious, but without passion) that he could command his… what we might call… privy parts.  Eve, I suppose, had to adjust to that.

“Rational” is bliss to philosophers.

0157 Then, came this serpent, who talked to Eve, because it already knew that Adam was perfectly rational, except for his one weak spot: Eve.  God’s command not to eat the fruit was a trap door labeled: the knowledge of good and evil.

0158 Adam and Eve fell, like the unsupported divine spark, into the evil, corrupt and altogether nutty material world.  Then, they had kids.  It went downhill from there.  Every one of us directly descends from that disaster.  That is why we are all subject to the deprivation of God’s original justice.

Oh, wait a second.

Does that last sentence make sense?

Check out Looking at Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for November 2024.

0159 Jesus came into a world full of Original Sin.  He institutes a sacrament, Baptism, that washes Original Sin away and redeems the… um… evil matter holding the divine spark.

0160 Yes, I am back to babies!

The Manichean tale of Augustine’s time left every mother nervous.  Many children never lived to adulthood.  When one died, the mother asked, “What will happen to my child’s divine spark?  Will it ever return to the source?  How can it escape the imprisoning occluding evil matter of that corpse?”

The Manicheans had no satisfying answer. 

0161 In contrast, Augustine offered a way out of this dilemma.  What to do with the evil matter that is your baby?  Good news.  Baptize the infant.  God redeems matter and saves the human spirit.

0162 The reversal is marvelous.  Jesus is fully human and fully divine.  He is the union of the visible and the invisible.  How can matter be evil? 

The waters of baptism transubstantiate evil matter (that looks like a baby) into a vessel (that still looks like a baby)bearing a soul open to God’s welcoming call.

0163 Augustine routed the Manicheans.  How could they compete?

0164 Yet, he posed a problem.  How does the nastiness of Original Sin travel from Adam to me, one of his descendants?

0165 Augustine’s answer was procreation, a biological function that humans take way too much pleasure in.  Augustine personally suffered the addiction.

So, the mode of transmission became part of the descent.  Horniness became a sign of Original Sin.

0166 So, what is the historical Adam, courtesy of Saint Augustine?

McKnight lists the attributes.

Adam and Eve were two actual persons, directly created by God.  They sinned and brought death into the world.  They have a biological relation (descent with modification) to all human beings.  Their DNA is our DNA.  So, their fallen nature is our sinful nature.

0167 The problem with direct biological descent is obvious.  Whoever claims to not be a descendant of Adam would not be in need of Baptism.  That person would not need salvation.

0168 So, Augustine solved one challenge and created another.  The new challenge must be viewed as an opportunity.  The concept of Original Sin is a powerful defense against Manichean ideologies.  The opportunity comes, not from abandoning the concept, but by re-writing the play.

0169 Venema lowers the curtain on one side of the stage of Augustine’s play.  The science of genetics rules out Adam and Eve as the first anatomically modern humans.

McKnight aims to lower the curtain on the other side of Augustine’s play.  The archaeological discovery of an ancient Near East literature rules out the stories of Adam and Eve as literal accounts.

0170 This raises a question.  If the stories of the Fall are mythic traces of actual events, then what were these events?

Indeed, I can expand the query.  If all the written origin stories of the ancient Near East trace to one traumatic unfolding, then what was this event?

0171 Venema and McKnight are not aware that an alternate script sits right off stage.

This alternate play is a scientific hypothesis, calling for a historical fairy-tale Adam and Eve.  The hypothesis of the first singularity may or may not be true (as opposed to false).  The efforts to establish or debunk the proposal should prove dramatic.

0172 The hypothesis of the first singularity addresses this question: Why is our current Lebenswelt not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

0173 A Lebenswelt is a living world.  The term was coined in order to describe the cultural bubble that we humans live in.

0174 Why do I suspect that our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

0175 The archaeological record contains a discontinuity.

0176 The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is evident in the archaeological record by 5800 B.C.  The culture forms even earlier, but this is the year that I denote 0 U0’ (Ubaid Zero Prime).

Oh, the technical details.

Zero U0′ corresponds to the start of the Ubaid, even though the Ubaid constellated over several hundred years.  I suspect that this date will be adjusted.  In 2025, zero U0′ corresponds to 7825 years ago.  In comparison, year 0 for the Byzantine Church is 7533 years ago.  Year 0 is 6265 years ago according to the Egyptian calendar.  Year 0 for the Jewish calendar is 5785 years ago.

So, expect zero Ubaid Zero Prime to change.

Maybe it will change to 6800 B.C. or 8800 years ago.

Right now, let me stay with Ubaid Zero Prime as 5800 B.C.

Simply subtract 5800 from U0′ to get the year in B.C.

0177 Now, back to the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

Around 1300 U0’, the Ubaid suddenly expands into northern Mesopotamia, taking over other Developed Neolithic sites.  This is a first.  Around 1800 U0’, the Uruk period starts as town-chiefdoms.  They invent the wheel.  They also figure out how to use donkeys for long distance transportation.  These are all firsts.  Around 2800 U0’, the Sumerian civilization starts.

0178 In the course of 2800 years, a budding village culture of the Developed Neolithic becomes the world’s first civilization.  Egypt follows the same trajectory in even less time.  The same transition occurs in the valleys of western Iran, then the Indus Valley, then along the river valleys in China.

From all appearances, something spreads from the Ubaid to the rest of Eurasia, then beyond.  Obviously, this is a cultural transition that potentiated civilization (that is, unconstrained social complexity).

0179 A graph of world-human population shows a break at 0 U0’.

0180 The first singularity?

What is this something that spread from the Ubaid to the rest of the ongoing Neolithic and late Paleolithic?

0181 It is a change in the way humans talk.

0182 Say what?

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.

0183 Language evolved in the regimen of hand talk.

Linguistic hand talk was so successful that bands could form bands of bands… er… tribes.  Tribal gatherings used the voice for rapid social synchronization.  The voice came under voluntary neural control.

0184 Then, with our own species, the voice was able to tap into the language capacity that had evolved under hand talk.  Humans are the only species that talked with both manual-brachial gestures and voice.  Both channels were fully linguistic.  I call this hand-speech talk.

For an evolutionary argument, see Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog during September 2025, along with Looking at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.  Both works compose Razie Mah’s e-book, titled Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0185 Anatomically modern humans practiced their dual-channel way of talking for tens of thousands of years.  Hand-speech talk lasted through the Paleolithic and into the Neolithic.

0186 Then, in a freak social accident, starting over 7800 years ago, two distinct village cultures meld on the shores of the infilling Persian Gulf and become one culture, the Ubaid.  In the process, they lose the hand-talk channel of their hand-speech talk.  They practice speech-alone talk.  The Sumerian language is a creole.  No wonder it is unrelated to all families of languages.

0187 The difference in semiotic (or sign-) qualities between hand (and hand-speech) talk and speech-alone talkaccounts for the potentiation of unconstrained social complexity.

0188 Here is the transition in terms of a change in the way humans talk.

0189 Yes, the semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk potentiated unconstrained complexity. 

0190 Before the first singularity, the iconic and indexal qualities of hand-speech talk grounded words in intuitive reference.

Everything we knew was couched in hand-speech talk.

0191 After the first singularity, speech-alone talk words are not grounded in pantomime and pointing.  Anyone can mint a word for anything.  This flexibility fosters labor and social specialization.  Specialization increases the wealth and the power of the Ubaid.

Here is the transition in terms of the semiotic qualities of the different ways of talking.

0192 How does speech-alone talk spread?

Any Neolithic or late Paleolithic culture can see that the Ubaid has something that they do not have.  First, the Ubaid has more wealth and power.  Second, the Ubaid people do not talk with their hands.

0193 Speech-alone talk spreads through mimicry.  It spreads like wildfire.  It potentiates unconstrained complexity everywhere it is adopted.

Then, specializations increase wealth and power. 

Then what happened?

The newly minted elites, typical of our current Lebenswelt, challenge the keepers of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0194 Everything we knew from our evolution is forgotten.

Everything we know is forged in our current Lebenswelt.

0195 Imagine the darkness and confusion that follows the adoption of speech-alone talk.

Each infected population increases in number and becomes wealthier and more divided. At the same time, each population forgets who they are.  They leave behind what they had evolved to be.  A new priesthood, attending to manifold specialized deities, murders the holistic shamans who stand in the way of change.

Does this sound vaguely familiar?

0196 Writing is invented, maybe around 3000 U0’, in order to record economic transactions for the burgeoning temples and palaces.  Fortunately, for archaeologists, the Sumerians write on clay tablets, which may crack but do not decay (like papyrus).

0197 Eventually, scribes record the public creation stories of these early civilizations on clay tablets. Some of these tablets are stored in royal libraries.

The written origin myths of the ancient Near East have one feature in common.

They cannot envision times before the trauma of the first singularity.

The same goes for the stories of Adam and Eve, surviving as fairy tales in a living tradition.

In this regard, the Creation Story of Genesis One is an anomaly.  But, Genesis One comes from a different source than the stories of Adam and Eve.  See Exercises in Artistic Concordism, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0198 And the final point?

The first singularity, a scientific hypothesis, offers something similar to Augustine’s version of Original Sin.

Christian theologians now face the task of proposing Augustine’s postmodern doctrine of Original Sin, the one that Augustine would have proposed if he had the hypothesis of the first singularity at hand.

0199 McKnight introduces the social and historical conditions in which the stories of Adam and Eve were written.

0200 (Excavated) ancient Near Eastern literature sets the scene.  This literature includes the Enuma Elish, the Gilgamesh epic, Atrahasis and a Sumerian origin account.

These stories depict the creation of humans by various gods, right around the time when real work was required.  Real work indicates a job.  The job can be tending the fields, maintaining irrigation, or attending the assembly.  Work is a marker for our current Lebenswelt.

0201 These stories differ from the timeless cosmic circles of the North American Plains Indians and the time-fluid dreamtime of the Australian Aborigines.  They also differ from ancient holistic traditions remembered in Proverbs 8:22-31.  They differ from the visionary unfolding in Genesis 1.  Mystic participation is a marker for the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0202 Here is my version of McKnight’s first thesis.

The Genesis accounts present a God that both outside of historic time and inside of historic time.

0203 The God in the first chapter of Genesis corresponds to God in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Indeed, humans appear in verses 1:26-30 with surprising precision.  Verse 1:26 announces the intention of humans, the hand-talking hominins.  Verse 1:27 goes with the first appearance of anatomically modern humans.  Verse 1:28 touches base with the Paleolithic era, when humans displaced (oh, a little more than that) all other hominin species.  Verse 1:29 reminds me of the beginnings of agriculture.  Verse 1:30 captures the essence of the Developed Neolithic, which combined agriculture and stockbreeding: Give plants as food to the animals.

0204 The God in the second creation story corresponds to God in our current Lebenswelt.

Yes, God is the same in both eras.  Humanity is the one that falls.

0205 Here is my version of McKnight’s second thesis.

Theomachy (battles among the gods) characterizes the (excavated) public origin myths, but not the Biblical origin myth.

0206 Why would this be the case?

0207 Public ancient origin myths account for a religious and political order established through conflict.

Genesis accounts for a family tradition.

0208 Here is my version of McKnight’s third thesis.

In the first Genesis story, the “temple” created by God is the entire visible world.  In the (excavated) public origin myths, the temple is created for a god, to make visible the invisible world.

0209 These origin stories share a style common to the ancient Near East.  Each origin story illuminates the mystery of what happened during the first singularity.  The first creation story in Genesis goes so far that it envisions the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Public origin myths (as well as the family stories of Adam and Eve) cannot discern times earlier than the first singularity.

0210 Here is my version of McKnight’s fourth thesis.

All humans are made in God’s image in Genesis 1.  Humans were made to do the work of the gods in the (excavated) public origin myths.

0211 Again, the first creation story glimpses through the veil of the first singularity to the condition of humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Humans are icons of the divine nature.  Imagine how wonderful that must have been.  Imagine a world talking in images and indications, just like our own hand-speech talk.

At the same time, the (excavated) public origin myths envision humans in our current Lebenswelt.  There is a shimmer of insight into what came before.  The original state is chaos.  Chaos calls to mind the cultural changes that followed the adoption of speech-alone talk.