{"id":9808,"date":"2025-11-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=9808"},"modified":"2025-05-24T17:23:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T17:23:48","slug":"looking-at-dennis-venema-and-scot-mcknights-book-2017-adam-and-the-genome-part-21-of-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=9808","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight\u2019s Book (2017) &#8220;Adam and the Genome&#8221; (Part 21 of 22)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>0230 In two chapters, McKnight discusses how various Jewish writers and Saint Paul treated Adam and Eve.&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam and Eve are real characters located in the mythic past.&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam and Eve are literary, archetypal and bear the image of God.&nbsp;&nbsp;They founded the Jewish people, as well as other peoples in the Near East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0231 In chapter 5 of Romans, Paul comes eerily close to articulating the historical trajectory of the first singularity.&nbsp;&nbsp;McKnight covers the passage in detail. Razie Mah&#8217;s e-article,&nbsp;<em>Comments on Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19,<\/em>&nbsp;examines a similar analysis by Tom Schreiner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0232 What does this imply?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saint Paul senses, but does not grasp,&nbsp;<em>what could possibly have generated the Adam and Eve stories<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0233 At 5800 U0\u2019 (or 0 A.D.), no one imagined that the&nbsp;<em>stories of Adam and Eve<\/em>&nbsp;associate to&nbsp;<em>a fantastic traumatic event in recent human prehistory<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;No one imagined that&nbsp;<em>those occasional funny hills deep in the deserts of the Near East<\/em>&nbsp;could contain&nbsp;<em>the ruins of the royal libraries of long-forgotten cities<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0234 At 6200 U0\u2019, Augustine did not know that, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Augustine had the imagination to re-stage the stories as&nbsp;<em>a play on the Manichean version of the descent of the soul<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Original Sin<\/em>&nbsp;later became&nbsp;<em>Christian doctrine<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>God\u2019s hand<\/em>&nbsp;is in that&nbsp;<em>designation<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0235 Then, the modern age of science arrived, digging up the hills of southwest Asia and fashioning classical Darwinism, then Neo-Darwinism.&nbsp;&nbsp;The first shows that&nbsp;<em>the early chapters of Genesis<\/em>&nbsp;exhibit&nbsp;<em>the literary style<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>some of the same themes<\/em>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<em>ancient (excavated) Near East literature<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;The second shows that Adam and Eve could not be the biological ancestral parents of all humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0236 These two facts rule out&nbsp;<em>the story of the Fall<\/em>&nbsp;staged by Augustine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0237 At the same time, the ruling raises the question: What is&nbsp;<em>Original Sin?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0238 On one hand, modern theologians, such as Piet Schoonenberg, diligently worked in order to demonstrate that&nbsp;<em>Original Sin<\/em>&nbsp;corresponds to&nbsp;<em>a combination of social conditions and personal sin<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, Original Sin belongs to&nbsp;<em>our current living world (Lebenswelt)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0239 On the other hand, someone had to wonder, \u201cWhy is&nbsp;<em>our current Lebenswelt<\/em>&nbsp;not the same as&nbsp;<em>the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0240 The genetic data shows that&nbsp;<em>our current Lebenswelt<\/em>&nbsp;is not due to a speciation event (as unwittingly predicted by Augustine).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0241 The data from&nbsp;<em>excavations of ancient Near East sites<\/em>&nbsp;shows that&nbsp;<em>the public written origin stories<\/em>&nbsp;point to&nbsp;<em>a recent event occurring less than ten thousand years ago<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That event had to be cultural.&nbsp;&nbsp;It gave rise to&nbsp;<em>our current Lebenswelt<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;It eclipsed and occluded&nbsp;<em>the Lebenswelt that we evolved in<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0242&nbsp;<em>The hypothesis of the first singularity<\/em>&nbsp;is introduced in&nbsp;<em>plain form<\/em>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<em>The First Singularity and its Fairy Tale Trace<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;The hypothesis is presented in&nbsp;<em>dramatic form<\/em>&nbsp;in the masterwork:&nbsp;<em>An Archaeology of the Fall<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;These works, by Razie Mah, are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>0230 In two chapters, McKnight discusses how various Jewish writers and Saint Paul treated Adam and Eve.&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam and Eve are real characters located in the mythic past.&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam and Eve are literary, archetypal and bear the image of God.&nbsp;&nbsp;They founded the Jewish people, as well as other peoples in the Near East. 0231 In chapter 5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[417],"tags":[581],"class_list":["post-9808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-historical-adam"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Looking at Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight\u2019s Book (2017) &quot;Adam and the Genome&quot; (Part 21 of 22) - An Archaeology of the Fall<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=9808\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking at Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight\u2019s Book (2017) &quot;Adam and the Genome&quot; (Part 21 of 22) - An Archaeology of the Fall\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"0230 In two chapters, McKnight discusses how various Jewish writers and Saint Paul treated Adam and Eve.&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam and Eve are real characters located in the mythic past.&nbsp;&nbsp;Adam and Eve are literary, archetypal and bear the image of God.&nbsp;&nbsp;They founded the Jewish people, as well as other peoples in the Near East. 0231 In chapter 5 [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=9808\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"An Archaeology of the Fall\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-11-04T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=9808#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/?p=9808\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.raziemah.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ad695f570ebd1b2a6f85c4ac5badcd04\"},\"headline\":\"Looking at Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight\u2019s Book (2017) &#8220;Adam and the Genome&#8221; 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