"Although Dr. Alexander rejects the idea of an historical Adam and Eve, he believes that the Bible can be rescued by a figurative understanding of the Genesis narrative. He claims that this figurative understanding of Genesis goes back 2,000 years, in both the Jewish and Christian traditions:
"The tradition of interpreting the early chapters of Genesis
The first mention of Adam in the Bible is clearly referring to humankind (Genesis 1:26-27) and the definite article in front of Adam in chapters 2 and 3 – “the man” – suggests a representative man, because in Hebrew the definite article is not used for personal names, with Eve being the representative woman."
Dr. Alexander chose his authorities well: Philo and Origen are about as allegorical as you can possibly get. If you’re looking for Jewish and Christian authorities from antiquity who favor a figurative interpretation of Genesis, then you won’t find any better friends than these two learned men.
Dr. Alexander is certainly right in claiming that both Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. – 50 A.D.) and Origen (c. 185-254 A.D.) interpreted the book of Genesis quite figuratively. For example, both of them held that the description of Paradise in Genesis 2 was a figurative one.
What’s more, the Jewish philosopher Philo pointedly rejects a literal interpretation of the Biblical account of Eve’s formation in his work, The Second Book of the Treatise on The Allegories of the Sacred Laws, after the Work of the Six Days of Creation:
"VII. (19) “And God cast a deep trance upon Adam, and sent him to sleep; and he took one of his ribs,” and so on. The literal statement conveyed in these words is a fabulous one; for how can any one believe that a woman was made of a rib of a man, or, in short, that any human being was made out of another? And what hindered God, as he had made man out of the earth, from making woman in the same manner? For the Creator was the same, and the material was almost interminable, from which every distinctive quality whatever was made. And why, when there were so many parts of a man, did not God make the woman out of some other part rather than out of one of his ribs? Again, of which rib did he make her? And this question would hold even if we were to say, that he had only spoken of two ribs; but in truth he has not specified their number. Was it then the right rib, or the left rib? (Italics mine – VJT.)"
Likewise, the Christian theologian Origen, in Contra Celsum, Book IV, chapter 38, argues that the words of the Genesis narrative describing the formation of Eve from Adam’s side “are spoken with a figurative meaning.” In Contra Celsum, Book IV, chapter 40, he adds that “in the Hebrew language Adam signifies man; and that in those parts of the narrative which appear to refer to Adam as an individual, Moses is discoursing upon the nature of man in general.”
UncommnDescent
