(no subject)
QUODLIBET # 11
answers to annotations found in a "communal Bible"
Genesis 5
Gen. 5:1
The word "likeness" is underlined and the annotation is "metaphorical?"
I am assuming that this notation is to question how "literally" we are to suppose that the human being "looks" like God? This question could have been raised for Chapter 1:26 and 27 also. Since God is "Spirit" and any later references to his having hands or physical definition, (apart from the Person of Jesus) is understood to be anthropomorphic or a "poetical" sense where humans attribute these to God, then to suggest that God making man in "his image" or "likeness" would have to do with physical appearance, would be on shaky ground. (Notice the contrast in Genesis 5:3 where it says "Adam became the father of another son, IN HIS LIKENESS AND IMAGE"). Therefore, we come to understand that the "likeness" is NOT physical, but applies to those aspects that make man different than the animals. We are back to the reference of 2:7 where God "breathed" into man and he became a "living person" or "spirit" or "human being". Man's likeness then has to do with his abilities to think, (have knowledge), to be creative, to communicate, to have "feelings", AND to make moral decisions, to have "righteousness and holiness", to be "conformed to the image (likeness) of Christ and someday be like him" (Romans 8:29), At this point, (of creation) man is capable of, but had not yet "gained", the knowledge of good and evil. (chapter 3).That he could was the argument which "the serpent" used to say that when they did gain this knowledge , then they "would be 'like God'."
Would we have to conclude therefore that the term "likeness" was NOT metaphorical, but literal, but not pertaining to the physical, and probably the physical aspect of man is the "least" applicable to the "image" rather that the most, as we usually interpret it? (That animals seem to be able to communicate, or display a level of "intelligence" would not imply that they too are "in God's image" but only that God, as the same creator, has imparted to them these qualities as were necessary for them to function, but they ARE gifts from Him because He is the Ultimate Source of all things.
Gen.5:22
"Enoch walked with God" is underlined, and the question appended is: "Why only him?"
First, we need to note that in chapter 4:26 it says that when Seth, the son of Adam and Eve that came after Abel had been killed, had a son named Enosh, "At that time people began to pray to the Lord." This suggests that although Adam and Eve had had close communion with God, and that a knowledge of God must have been present, nevertheless there must have been a general "falling away". Now chapter 5 is going to pick up specifically the "Family Tree" of Seth from whom all the rest of the Old Testament story is built around. (Not noticeable from this translation but from others, is the word "account"(or story, or history, or generations) used 10 times in Genesis to introduce each main section. In this translation it says only "this is the family history" (vs. 1).
The importance of the phrase is not that Enoch was the ONLY one who walked with God, but that his relationship was different than just "living" as is used to describe all the others, and reminiscent of being with God in the Garden of Eden and of God "walking in the garden" (Gen. 3:8-10). Some have tried to contrive that Enoch did NOT walk with God until AFTER, Methuselah was born, but there is no reason to suppose he was not walking with God before that as well. And the additional comment that at some point "God took him"is elaborated upon in Hebrews 11:5 when it is observed that he did not experience death and that he had been "commended as one who 'pleased' God."
General question on chapter 5
"How did these people manage to live for hundreds of years before things like medicines which keep us alive past 40 or 50 were around?"
The first answer could be that they had a different way of reckoning a year but I don't think there is any reason to assume that. Another aspect might be to point out that it is not so much "medicines that keep us alive" so much as it is "disease and degeneration that kills us". We have to consider the implications in God's declaration that in the "day that man would eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die" and yet physically they did not. But the most obvious answer has to do with the environmental conditions, and what this is leading up to in chapter 6.
In Genesis 2:4-6 it says "when the LORD God first made the earth and the sky... no rain, ... but a mist". Then in chapter 7:11-12 & 17 read of the cataclysmic upheaval and downpour. Consider what this meant in changing the atmosphere of the earth and the rays that would now touch the earth that before the flood were not affecting the human body. Some scientists speculate that a meteorite crashing to earth caused enough climactic change to wipe out dinosaurs. How much more would this "flood" phenomena explain a change in life expectancy?
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