Reading the Church Fathers discussion
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City of God
Augustine of Hippo: City of God
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Bk. XV - Creating the City
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It seems to me that Cain's children would have all died in the flood? He wasn't an ancestor of Noah.
If someone asked me a question about the historicity of the Flood, I would be stumped. If the Flood was a historical event, when and where did it actually happen? If it wasn’t, how could Jesus genealogy be traced to Noah, and He also seemed to think it was historical?
Yes, that's very well put. I tend to think that those really old stories are like metaphors, very crystallized stories from common human experience (I've been watching Jordan Peterson). I can imagine that Jesus would speak about them as real, because in a sense they are, even if not literally.Just as my own answer above just took the story for granted and drew some conclusions from that, to stay within context.
But the genealogy is a bit of a problem, because it mixes very old times with now. How did that come about? Did someone make it up, that seems unlikely. But how then?
Just pondering this, I wonder if there are currently people claiming to be descendants of king Arthur?
Most of the flood/Cain questions stem from Genesis 4:11-16, in which God punishes Cain, Cain complains he will become a target. So God put a mark on Cain with a warning: “whoever kills Cain will suffer seven fold vengeance.” Most have asked me why God did that if the flood was going to wipe everyone out anyway? So, I usually respond that this is a place where God shows mercy within justice. However, there is a traditional rendering that the line of Cain would continue in forever. The flood dismissed that claim. As far as the actual flood as a historical event, there is significant archeological evidence at multiple sites through the Levant region supporting a flood of most of the modern Middle East region. That being said, there is also significant cultural writings of flood narratives from other regions and cultures (Egyptian and Mitanni), so Jewish culture may have been expanding that.
I usually speak of the beginning of Genesis from a philosophical perspective, I.e. the beginning of sin, the fall, and God attempting to “reset” humanity, all without success.
I remember one OT scholar by the name of John Walton argued to the effect that the Genesis creation account was not to be taken literally, and he quoted the following passage as an example:
Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
Genesis 4:13-14 ESV
If Adam and Eve were the first and only family on earth, Walton asked, how could Cain be killed by people who found him? "Mom and Dad, is that you?"
I suppose it is possible that Cain expected to live long enough to meet other descendants of Adam, and so feared that they might not show him the same mercy that God had shown him.
John Angerer wrote: "I usually speak of the beginning of Genesis from a philosophical perspective, I.e. the beginning of sin, the fall, and God attempting to “reset” humanity, all without success."Hmm, I would question your last sentence, "all without success". Whose success were you referring to? For what purpose?
Thinking about the genealogies, it occurred to me that these form another type of "incarnation". God coming from proto-history into the here and now.Of course the devil is in the details and I don't know what the implications are of this idea.
Anyway, all this talk made me curious about what Augustin actually said, and I will pick up the book again shortly :-)
Ruth wrote: "Yes, that's very well put. I tend to think that those really old stories are like metaphors, very crystallized stories from common human experience (I've been watching Jordan Peterson).."I didn’t know that Jordan Peterson’s influence reached as far as the Netherlands.
Augustine would not reject metaphorical interpretations of the OT, in fact, he made plenty of them himself, like many other Church Fathers of a Platonic bent. However, he always emphasized the literal foundation of these metaphors, i.e. the historicity of the OT narratives. In other words, metaphors are built upon historical human experiences, and without the latter, the former cannot exist.
There seems to be a general tendency today, especially among scholars, to metaphorize the Biblical accounts. I have to admit I’m not convinced. One of the problems with this approach is that there is nothing to keep them from metaphorizing our own lives using the same approach, such that we ourselves become nothing more than a collection of metaphors.
Jordan Peterson makes the news quite regularly, because he is so popular among the populist, anti-foreigner, political parties. He has been speaking here, and that triggered protests. I watched a couple of his YouTube videos, recommended by the parish priest, he made me think, especially on the topic of what to make of Genesis. But I cannot watch him for long, I think he has a bit of a scary, harsh, way of speaking.
Besides, I used to think precisely as what you just mentioned about Augustine, that the metaphorical is only valid if the historical was true earlier. This new way of thinking is quite a stretch for my faith, almost to the point of breaking.
Currently, I think that perhaps the metaphorical can be true if the historical was true in bits and pieces. (e.g. the concise story is made up of different historical parts, each of them making up a part of the total) Just as a writer could write a believable story, based on several different experiences.
Funny. A real complot theory in chapter 11, on why the Jewish and Greek versions of Genesis differ in the ages of the people : "They insist, rather, that the Jews, in their resentment at having the law and the prophets transmitted to us in translation, altered certain things in their own texts in order to diminish the authority of ours."
Hey, but isn't this a little weird? In chapter 14, Augustin suggests that the Greek translators might have changed the numbers in their "prophetic freedom".But doesn't that completely dismiss the need for factual truth? Is he not immensely contradicting himself here?
I wonder if it ever occurred to Augustin that God might have created other, unmentioned, people beside Adam and Eve.I mean, you could argue that with similar reasoning as the idea that there were many more unmentioned children.
To answer the question that started this topic : somewhere in the middle of chapter 20 Augustin answers the question why Cain and his children are mentioned at all, since they have no place in the genealogy of Jesus.Paraphrasing, I think he says they are listed to show they end in destruction. No post-flood line of Cain.
"for all Cain's progeny was destroyed by the flood".
So that's what I found that Augustin said about this.
Hilarious! Of all the questions one might ask, I never thought of this one : weren't there too many lice and fleas in the ark?"People also *often* ask, in an overly scrupulous way, about the tiniest creatures-not just those like mice and lizards but also such insects as locusts, bees, and even flies and fleas. They wonder whether these were not present in the ark in greater number than was set by God's command."
Ruth wrote: "I wonder if it ever occurred to Augustin that God might have created other, unmentioned, people beside Adam and Eve..."If I remember correctly, quite a few Church Fathers have written about it, and they rejected the idea because they believed that God created Adam, and Eve from Adam, instead of creating them (and perhaps other people) separately, so that there might be unity and harmony among the human race, descending from one common head, so to speak, as the Church is from Christ.
Ruth wrote: "Hey, but isn't this a little weird? In chapter 14, Augustin suggests that the Greek translators might have changed the numbers in their "prophetic freedom"...."I think Augustine says the difference in numbers between the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts was caused not by translators but copyists' errors or the design of one copyist, as he explained in detail in chapter 13. It is a very interesting exercise in what is now known as "textual criticism": If two versions of texts disagree, how can we judge which one is more likely to be true?
In chapter 14, he says that there are other differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts, but differences in rendering the Scripture doesn't necessarily affect its factual truth.
For this difference has not been reckoned a falsification; and for my own part I am persuaded it ought not to be reckoned so. But where the difference is not a mere copyist’s error, and where the sense is agreeable to truth and illustrative of truth, we must believe that the divine Spirit prompted them to give a varying version, not in their function of translators, but in the liberty of prophesying. And therefore we find that the apostles justly sanction the Septuagint, by quoting it as well as the Hebrew when they adduce proofs from the Scriptures.
O, okay, thanks. He speaks about other cases here. I thought he said even if it weren't a copyist error, it would still be all right.But on second reading, indeed he didn't say that.
20 years ago, when I learned I was going to attend seminary, I asked my mentor and priest if he were to read one book to prepare for seminary, which would he read. His response was, "City of God" because most of Western Christian theology came from Augustine, and City of God is his magnum opus. So I read it. I have to admit, I did not remember too much of it when we started reading in January.
However, the most memorable chapter for me the the whole book is Bk. XV, Ch. 26, in which Augustine lays the groundwork for Noah's Ark as a symbol of the body of Christ. It seems simple to me now, but when I was in my 20's, that was truly mind blowing.
However, I have a question if anyone caught it, because I missed it. Does Augustine in Chapter XV ever address what happened to Cain's line AFTER the flood? Augustine dwells a good deal on Seth and Enoch, but after addressing Cain's sin and dismissal from the Garden, I don't remember him addressing Cain's line Post-Flood.
Believe it or not, i actually get questions about this from time to time.