Category: Bible: Interpretation

Q. The Bible only tells us that Adam and Eve had 3 sons. Where did the women come from for the sons to marry? Where in the Bible is that explained? I’m also thinking about the inbreeding that had to happen after the rain stopped and Noah and his family populated the earth. Doesn’t that mean there has to have been some physical and mental abnormalities in subsequent generations?

The first part of your question relates to the truth of the Genesis story in terms of its coherence. That is, does this all add up? Do all the details fit together? Or are there missing pieces? People interpret and understand the Genesis accounts in various ways, but the starting point for the interpretation of any story has to be to establish its coherence. There’s no point interpreting a story that doesn’t hold together.

To address this concern, let me observe that it’s actually not the case that the Bible only tells us that Adam and Eve had three sons. While the book of Genesis only narrates the birth of their three sons Cain, Abel, and Seth, a genealogy shortly afterward says, “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.” So the implication within the story is that they married their sisters.

But there’s a reason why this information is so hard to find that you didn’t realize it was there. The law of Moses forbade marrying close relatives, including sisters, and it seems that for that reason the Genesis author is providing this detail only very discreetly. This would seem to be a different challenge to the coherence of the story. But I won’t address it here, since I discuss it in another post on this blog, and you can read about it there:

If humans originally multiplied by Adam and Eve’s children having sexual relations with each other, wasn’t that sin?

The second part of your question relates to the truth of the Genesis accounts in terms of correspondence. That is, how could this have actually happened? Wouldn’t physical and mental abnormalities due to inbreeding have kept Noah’s descendants from successfully repopulating the earth? But this is to ask a modern question of an ancient text. Personally, I don’t believe that we can find the answer to a modern question in an ancient text.

Specifically, I do not believe that God’s inspiration of the biblical authors extended to supernaturally revealing to them details of things such as genetics that were not part of the knowledge of their culture. Instead, I believe that the biblical authors wrote within their own human limitations and from the observational perspective of their ancient culture. (One good example of this is when Paul tells the Corinthians that he doesn’t remember whether he baptized any people beyond the ones he names. He seems clearly to be writing within human limitations, specifically that of memory, and not getting supernatural supplements to his knowledge.)

In the book that is linked in the right sidebar, Paradigms on Pilgrimage, my co-author and I discuss much more fully the nature and implications of the observational perspective from which the biblical authors write. We also discuss at length the relationship of religion and science, suggesting that science answers questions of what and when and how, while religion answers questions of why and who. The title of one of our chapters, “Fishing in the Middle of the Lake” comes the long Algonquin name of a lake in Massachusetts, Chaubunagungamaug, which is sometimes translated, “You fish on your side, we fish on our side, nobody fish in the middle.” Apparently this is an inaccurate translation, but we suggest that it is nevertheless a good motto for science and religion to adopt. Asking modern questions of ancient texts is an exercise in “fishing in the middle of the lake,” and since, in our analogy, nobody has a boat, it’s good to be clear about what side of the lake one is standing on.

Each post in the Paradigms on Pilgrimage blog has the book’s table of contents in the right sidebar, so you can explore various parts of it as you wish. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Q. How old do you think Jesus’ disciples were?

I would direct you to the discussion in this post, which notes that movies tend to portray the disciples as middle-aged or older, certainly older than the 30-year-old Jesus, but which then argues (convincingly, I feel) that the disciples were mostly younger than Jesus, in their 20s or even teens. My thanks to Rick Thiessen of Allen Creek Community Church for such an excellent treatment of the subject.

Q. How did John the Baptist know that Jesus was “the Lamb of God, which taketh the sin of the world” if, at that moment, the Holy Spirit hadn’t revealed to him that Jesus was the Messiah? “The next day, John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29 KJV). “And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost” (John 1:33 KJV).

These events are related out of chronological sequence in the Gospel of John for purposes of storytelling. Here they are in chronological sequence:

1. When God sends John to baptize, he tells him, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit” (verse 33). God does not tell John specifically who this man is. The descent of the Spirit is the sign that will identify him.
2. John begins to baptize people without knowing specifically who the Messiah is (verse 31, “I knew him not”).
3. John tells the Pharisees that he is not the Messiah himself, but the Messiah is coming (verses 24–27).
4. John sees Jesus coming toward him (verse 29a).
5. John sees the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on Jesus (verse 32).
6. Because of this, John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (verse 29b).
7. John tells the crowds that Jesus is the person he said was coming (verse 30) and testifies that Jesus is the Messiah (verse 34).

I hope this helps clarify the sequence of events. John knew that Jesus was the Lamb of God, and said so, because he had just seen the Spirit descend on him.

Q. If Adam and Eve were the first humans, why did Cain tell God he feared that others would kill him after killing his brother? Also, how was he then able to marry and procreate?

Cain may have said “whoever finds me will kill me” in reference to a future time at which he expected there would be more people on earth. However, since the account of Cain and Abel takes place once they have become adults, there could already have been other people around. While the book of Genesis only describes the births of three of Adam and Eve’s children—Cain, Abel, and Seth—it also says, “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.”

As for how Cain was able to marry and procreate, please see this post.

Q. Thank you for the extensive discussion in your post “Why didn’t God give Esau back the blessing that Jacob stole?” Please I want to know the reward of Rebekah, considering her dangerous role in reshaping the history of her children against the will of her husband Isaac.

I think a good case can be made from the Bible that Rebekah recognized that the future of her family depended on Jacob rather than Esau being the head of the next generation and that she worked to help Jacob at some risk to herself, since her husband Isaac favored Esau. At the end of some biblical stories, we are told what the rewards were for people who advanced God’s purposes. We are not told anything like this specifically about Rebekah. But perhaps we can come to some conclusions about it.

While Rebekah was still expecting her twin sons, “the babies jostled each other within her,” and “she went to inquire of the Lord” about why this was happening. The Lord revealed to her that her sons would be the patriarchs of “two nations” and that “the older will serve the younger.” The Bible does not say of Rebekah, as it does of Mary when God revealed things to her about the destiny of her son Jesus, that she “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” But we can certainly imagine that she did.

As the boys grew into young men, it became clear, as I say in the post you mention, that Jacob “was much better suited to assume the leadership of the Israelite family as it began growing rapidly into a group of tribes that would become a nation.” While Esau was the older of the two, “his responsibilities as the firstborn son weren’t important to him and he was likely to neglect them.” So Rebekah did, as you say, reshape the future of her descendants by helping Jacob to move into the position of leadership of the next generation.

However, she needed to overcome Isaac’s inclinations in order to do this. The Bible tells us that “Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.” In other words, Isaac seems to have favored Esau because he brought him the kind of meals that he liked, and this led Isaac to overlook the faults in Esau’s character.

As I also say in the post you mentioned, even after Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, Jacob still needed to obtain the paternal blessing that went with it. When Rebekah saw that Isaac was about to give this blessing to Esau, she told Jacob to go to Isaac and trick him into thinking that he was Esau. Jacob initially resisted. He objected that if his father realized who he was, he would curse him rather than bless him. Rebekah replied, “Let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say.” This statement can be interpreted in a number of ways, but one of them is that Rebekah was willing to risk even the curse of the family patriarch in order to promote the son she recognized would be the right leader for the next generation.

Esau became so angry when he discovered that Jacob had stolen his blessing that he vowed to kill Jacob. To save Jacob’s life, Rebekah needed to send him far away to live with her brother. He was gone for 20 years. The Bible does not mention Rebekah after Jacob’s return to his homeland, and some interpreters speculate that she died while he was away. We don’t know that for sure, however, and we should not read too much into the text where it is silent. It would be nice to think that she was still alive when he returned and that she was able to witness the reunion and reconciliation of her two sons. Hopefully she also saw her many grandchildren and realized that she had every reason to expect a bright future for the coming generations of her family. The text allows for that just as much as it allows for other possibilities, and if that was the case, then this itself would probably have been all the reward that Rebekah would have asked for.

Q. In your 3-part posting about the ‘sons of God,’ you reference Deut. 32:8 and quote it as concluding with ‘according to the number of the sons of God,’ as the ESV translates it. While I like that translation, and am intrigued with Dr. Heiser’s thoughts on the divine council, could you help me understand how the ESV translators arrived at that translation? Every resource I have traces those Hebrew words to the word ‘Israel.’ I want to agree with Heiser and the ESV’s translation and view, as it supports the divine council concept, but not being a Hebrew scholar, I don’t know how anyone arrived at ‘the sons of God.’ Thank you for any input you may have, and God bless you!

The difference is because of a textual variation. While the Masoretic Text, the traditional Hebrew text, reads “the sons of Israel,” the reading “the sons of God” is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament that predates the Masoretic Text) reads “the angels of God,” which seems to be an interpretive translation of an original reading “the sons of God.”

The ESV is not the only English version that uses the reading from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint rather than the reading from the Masoretic Text. Here are some other examples.
NET according to the number of the heavenly assembly
NIRV based on the number of the angels in his heavenly court
CEV He assigned a guardian angel to each of them
GNT He assigned to each nation a heavenly being
NABRE after the number of the divine beings
NLT according to the number in his heavenly court
NRSV according to the number of the gods

Dr. Heiser, who sadly passed away last year, addressed the textual issue in detail in an article that Liberty University, the institution where he taught, has kindly made available online. You can read it here:

Heiser, Michael, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God” (2001). LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations 279.

I hope this information is helpful.

Q. In Genesis 5, why are Cain and Abel not listed in the “Generations of Adam”?

The genealogy that the book of Genesis describes as the “Generations of Adam” is not intended to list all of his descendants. Rather, it traces one line of his descent, the one that leads to Noah, who becomes the main character in the narrative right after this genealogy. After the story of Noah, there is another genealogy, the “Generations of Shem” (Noah’s son), which traces one line of his descent, the one that leads to Abraham, who who becomes the main character in the narrative right after it. And so forth. That is how the book of Genesis is structured. I hope this explanation is helpful.

Q. I’ve been having a conversation with my daughter since this conflict between Israel and Hamas began. She says that the state of Israel and the land of Israel are not the same. She believes that is a misconception people have, and that we should not just blindly support Israel in the current war, because things are different now than when the Bible was written. I am unable to decipher a difference. Can you help me understand?

I agree that we should not equate the modern state of Israel with the Israel of the Bible. As I wrote in my previous post, the theocratic Israelite kingdom was an element of the previous phase of God’s unfolding redemptive plan. In our day, the people of God are a multinational community of believers in Jesus scattered throughout the world. God’s plan is to bring people from every nation into that community. The modern state of Israel is now one of those nations. So we should not give it an automatic preference in world affairs.

The current war between Israel and Hamas is having tragic consequences for thousands of people on both sides. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians goes back generations, and it is difficult to see how it can be resolved when both sides wish for the destruction of the other. But I believe that Christians should advocate for the principles of human rights, the rule of law, and representative government (or, failing that, at least government whose primary concern is for the welfare of the people, not its own power). We should advocate for the free flow of goods and services and for the access of all people to the basic necessities of life. We should advocate for non-violent solutions to conflicts between people. I believe that biblical principles would lead us to do all those things, and they would lead us to do that without, as I said, automatically preferring one party over another.

Thank you for your question and for your sincere concern about this conflict. Let us pray for an end to it, for mercy on all those affected, and for a lasting solution to the issues in that region. And to the extent that we are able to do things in addition to prayer towards the ends I have described, let us do them.

Q. How should we answer a non-Christian who asks, “Why don’t Christians follow the Old Testament death penalty laws such as Deuteronomy 13:6-10 and Deuteronomy 17:2-5?” Are Christians just picking and choosing what they want to follow in the Bible? How would you explain the reason why Christians don’t follow these laws and why this is not Christians being inconsistent or just picking and choosing what to follow in the Bible?

If Christians actually are just picking and choosing from the Bible, then the criticism that you describe is deserved. That is, if Christians are simply lifting the statements they agree with off the pages of Scripture without considering their original meaning or context, but they are ignoring statements that they don’t agree with, then that certainly is arbitrary and inconsistent.

However, I actually hear a more serious charge in the criticism you describe. The claim seems to be that Christians can only pick and choose; that there is no reliable way to determine what Scriptural statements apply to us today, and how they apply, and so an appeal to the Bible can only be arbitrary and the Bible is not a reliable source of moral guidance.

That is simply not true. There is a process by which we can understand the biblical writings in their original contexts and then determine how we should apply them to ourselves today. That process is called “hermeneutics.” It is complex, and it must be followed carefully and humbly, always with an openness to understanding better and learning more, but it is objective and not arbitrary.

The basic idea is that all of the biblical writings address specific situations in the community of believers in specific times and in specific places. The task is to see how these “occasional writings” (as we may call them) also have a universal applicability, since God inspired them to bring his word to all people everywhere. To determine this, we must take into account the differences in culture, and even more so the different stages in the unfolding of God’s plan of redemption. Let me use the passages you cite as an example.

Deuteronomy 13:6-10 says that if a close friend or family member of an Israelite urges him or her to join in the worship other gods, that Israelite must turn that friend or relative in to the community authorities. The community must stone the offender to death, and the Israelite who was approached about worshiping other gods must throw the first stone. This is in the Bible, so why don’t Christians today say that we should kill anyone who suggests we follow a different religion?

We need to recognize that God’s redemptive plan moves from universal (dealing with all nations) to particular (dealing with one nation) to universal again. At the time when Deuteronomy was written, it was particular. The nation of Israel was a theocracy whose purpose was to model the life-giving way of life that came from worshiping Yahweh. In some cases, offenders against that purpose were executed, not to punish them for committing a specific crime, but in order to remove them from the community and thus restore its integrity as one in which Yahweh was worshiped exclusively and in the way he had specified. Clearly these considerations do not apply to us today, when the people of God are a multinational community scattered throughout the world. But we may still derive a moral lesson from this passage: “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods,’ … do not yield to them or listen to them.” The moral lesson is that we must put our loyalty to God before our loyalty to any friend or family member, no matter how close.

The case is the same with Deuteronomy 17:2-5, which says similarly that the community must stone to death anyone who, it can be proved, has worshiped other gods or the sun, moon, or stars. Christians today do not advocate for the death penalty for followers of other religions, and that is the proper way to interpret this text for our own context. Once again the purpose of the death penalty is to remove the person from the community, rather than to punish them for committing a specific crime. We can derive from this passage an emphasis on being faithful to God’s covenant with us and not giving anyone or anything else the worship that God deserves.