Excellent introductory work to the ANE context of Genesis. A few weak points, but overall fantastic. I would recommend reading Heiser’s Unseen Realm as a primer to the concepts explored here. This book mostly cannibalizes Lost World of Genesis One, so, get this one instead of both.

4.2 / 5.0 ( )

I was both enthusiastic and anxious when I was given this book, because I respect and appreciate John Walton's scholarship and, on the other hand, the historicity of Adam and Eve wasn't a topic that, for theological reasons, I was particularly interested in reconsidering. It's difficult to rethink tenets long accepted in the Christian culture in which I've lived and tenets upon which I have based other conclusions.

However, some of this worry was unfounded, because Walton actually affirms a historical Adam and Eve, while also reconsidering their nature and role.

The gist of Walton's conclusions are as follows: per his previous book about Genesis 1 (see my earlier review), the creation account is about creation of order and functions in the world rather than material origins of the world. Eden is a center of sacred space, where Adam and Eve are established as priests. They are not the first people, but they serve as archetypes for all of humanity--the Genesis 2 narrative of their forming is true of all people, not just the two of them (for example, as Abraham and Job affirm, we are all made of dust). In their unique priestly role in the garden, they are given rules and accountability that the rest of humanity hadn't received and thus serve as representatives of humanity. And so sin truly enters the world via their disobedience.(or, restated, they let disorder into the order of creation)

I'll briefly reiterate part of his argument for why it's appropriate to reconsider whether they were the first humans:
-Theologically it isn't necessary to consider A&E to be the first humans (unless one holds the view that all are born with sin because they were seminally present in Adam, which I believe is a minority view). As representatives of humanity, they can still be the first ones aware of and accountable for sin.
-The Genesis 2 creation narrative of Adam and Eve is archetypal, intended to convey truths about the creation of each person, not just the two of them.
-In Genesis 4, Cain is driven away from his homeland, and presumably from his family, but he is afraid of the people who will find him in his exile. He later founds a city, so there seems to be a significant number of people on the earth at that time.
-If the Genesis account and theological conclusions made in the Bible do not necessitate that A&E are the progenitors of humanity, we're free to consider scientific conclusions on the topic, which do not indicate that all people are descended from a single human couple.

What I appreciated most about this book is Walton's reverence for the text: bringing the best understanding of the texts, culture, and original audience to bear on his propositions on the subject. His concern for the freedom of God and the authority and integrity of Scripture is impressive. I found that looking at Adam and Eve through Walton's insights made them seem much more historical to me, rather than less.

One weakness of the book is Walton's conclusions about the order/disorder/ordering dynamic in the narrative. As most OT scholars would agree, there is no question that bringing order to disorder is a significant theme in the creation account, as it is in all ancient near east creation stories. Walton sees sin as disorder, which is not untrue as an aspect of sin, but it doesn't seem necessary to systematize the order/disorder theme such that disorder is the primary descriptor of sin. Further, in his discussion about the first man (Adam) and the second man (Christ), Walton recounts the effect's of Christ's work as God's plan to get the cosmos back on track toward a state of perfect order. Though the effects of the incarnation aren't contradictory with order, I don't think we actually see this theme in the New Testament and so I don't agree with Walton's implication that disorder and order should be seen as the primary controlling motif of God's plan for the world.N.T Wright, author of one of the 21 chapters in the book, doesn't seem to see it as central either, as he doesn't make use of this theme in his examination of Paul's use of Adam. However, as part of the truth and as one metaphor among others, I agree that it's a helpful set of categories.

The Lost World of Adam and Eve is a very insightful, challenging book which is irenic and doxological in tone. I would recommend it to any Christian reader interested in human origins, hamartiology, and ANE backgrounds. The Answers in Genesis view of creation is driving so many young people away from faith that it has become an issue of pastoral urgency to be open to investigating what comprises the most informed, biblical understanding of cosmic and human origins.

Also, John Walton happened to walk by as I was reading this book (!) (It was at SBL, so this wasn't as unlikely as it would usually be). I told him that I had skipped the first few chapters since they appeared to be summarizing his argument from LWO Genesis One. He said this was legitimate, so feel free to do the same with the author's blessing if you have already read the previous book. I wish I had been further along in the book when I saw him so I could have asked him more about the order/chaos theme. ( )

I wish I could give it 4,5 stars. Actually, the rating system is too simple for such a book.

This is an important book, even if one disagrees with it profoundly. Every Christian concerned about the debate on human origins, and every non-Christian wondering at all the fuss about it, should give it a chance. In a way, it is a continuation of the same author’s _The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate_. It shares that book’s deep concern about proper exegesis of ancient texts according to their original context, too often ignored even after around two hundred years of archæological discoveries God provided for our better understanding of His Word.

But on another way, the present volume goes much deeper to the core of our disagreements. If Genesis 1 raises important, fundamental issues on the origins of the Universe, Genesis 2–3 raises just as important and fundamental issues on human origins; and naturally human origins are even more immediate to us, and to Christian life, and even to human life in general, than the more remote issue of the origin of the Universe.

The book fails to get five stars on my evaluation because it goes to unnecessary lengths to unfold all its authors’ concerns stemming from the exegesis of Genesis. For instance, while NT Wright contributes interestingly on Paul’s use of Genesis, the argument is too short, and ultimately it will be counterproductive with many Christians who might be open to the book’s arguments but who are deeply distrustful of Wright’s ‘New perspective on Paul’. I do think the same arguments could be made without appeal to such a divisive figure as Wright. In my case, it did convince me I have to read something by Wright, even if I suspect I will not like him much better than, say, Ellul, even if probably much better than Girard; but many people will be lost to the argument just by sighting Wright’s name on the cover, and that is lamentable, as the books’ contextualised exegesis arguments are so much more fundamental, better founded and essential than Wright’s ‘new perspective’.

I do hope Evangelicals, and specially Reformed Christians, will give it a hearing, even if disagreeing with much. Even if I myself disagree with its conclusion at points, I do think the exegetical information is essential to any debate on Genesis 2–3, and I hope a few Christians could gain enough insight into the questions raised to abandon a sometimes too belligerent position in this fundamental debate.

Ultimately, I think others will have to follow up on the path opened by Walton but with a less divisive approach: perhaps first explore all the exegetical insights opened up by contextualisation, and leave for a second stage the working out of applications on the debate with modern science or, as Francis A Schaeffer brilliantly put it, modern modern science; as it is, disarming the militantly anti-Christian bias of much of the scientific establishment by better exegesis could be a first step in a more profound critique of the modern modern science bellicose, self-sufficient, philosophically untenable attitude, by robbing atheism of its current straw men many well-intentioned Christian lamentably insist on erecting.

But I never summed up the book’s contentions. Essentially, it goes back to what Moses and the Hebrews most probably understood when reading (and hearing) Genesis 2–3, and perhaps more to the point what they probably never understood, but is a modern eixegesis we fail too see because it is water to us, in David F Wallace’s felicitous phrase. It then gives a much better Biblical footing to what CS Lewis and others have been claiming for almost a century now: that the big challenge God lays to the modern world in Genesis 2–3 is not aimed squarely at the technical claims of even modern modern science, but at its fundamental philosophical follies, as David P Goldman puts it: that modern philosophy attitude at death is like a child putting her fingers at hear ears and shouting ‘I can’t hear you!’ That Genesis ultimately, as Lewis put it, prepares ‘The funeral of a great myth’, that of Evolutionism, by contrasting a true story, even if one considers that true story to have nothing to say on biological evolution.

Granted Walton has to deal with strong objections, such as the hypothetical presence of death in a world before the Fall that God pronounced ‘very good’; and I hope someone will express his case later even better than himself; but all things considered I do think he fought a valiant battle, and has earned the right to be heard and understood, even in disagreement. I do think it is high time many Christians who deem to hold a high view of the Bible, but who think those who disagree with them on the material origins of man do not hold such a view, give their brethren the benefit of doubt and a fair hearing. And, to be sure, it is high time too that many atheists who like to tilt their lances at straw men learn that we have in the Christian camp many who do not fit atheists’ straw man molds.

On a note for the Reformed, one impressive point Walton makes is that there is precedent to his approach, at least analogically, in John Calvin himself, not to mention the Church Fathers. ( )

I first became aware of John Walton my first year in seminary. My Old Testament prof gave a lecture on creation, setting the Genesis 1 account within the context of other Ancient Near East (ANE) literature. The lecture was indebted to Walton and the professor highly recommended Walton's Genesis commentary (in the NIVAC series). When our class break hit, I sprinted the bookstore and bought the commentary before anyone else had a chance. It remains a favorite. I also gobbled up other books from Walton on Ancient Near East cosmology, including The Lost World of Genesis One.

The Lost World of Adam and Eve picks up where that volume left off (the first five chapters are a bit of review). As with his earlier book, the chapters are propositions on how to read Genesis sensitively to its ANE context, so a glance at the table of contents gives a detailed summary of the ground that Walton covers here. Walton focuses especially on Genesis 2-3, but also pays attention to the wider context of Genesis 1-5 (and how the hebrew ‘adam functions and the text). He also shows how his reading of the text functions within the rest of the canon of scripture. N.T. Wright provides a brief excursus in relationship to Proposition 19 ("Paul's Use of Adam Is More Interested in the Effects of Sin on the Cosmos Than in the Effect of Sin on Humanity and Has Nothing to Say About Human Origins").

If you are familiar with Walton's work, you will not be surprised by many of his claims here. Walton's project is to get us to read Genesis without expecting it to answer our modern questions. For example, the question of the material origins of the universe are not of particular interest to the Ancient world. Instead Genesis 1 is about the ordering of the world (i.e. the Spirit hovering over the chaos in Genesis 1:2) rather than creating ex nihilo. The text has more to do with functionality than materiality.

Walton claims that Adam and Eve's story casts them in the role of archetypes and federal representatives instead of untangling the riddle of human origins (see propositions 6, 8. 9). However this is not meant to imply that Adam and Eve were not also real, historical people. Walton eschews the term myth or mythological because the popular use of the term implies this unreality. He prefers the term imagistic (137) and sees the Hebrew writers using the 'shared symbolic vocabulary' and questions that other Ancient Near East people did (139).

In Walton's view, humans were created as male and female with mortal bodies (not ones that became mortal later because of 'the fall'), were provided for by God and given a role of serving in God's sacred space (200).Because 'creation in Genesis' is about bringing order to world, the serpent is a 'chaos creature' who promoted disorder by convincing Adam and Eve to place themselves at the center of the order. Sin and Death now affects all humanity because of disorder in the cosmos. Jesus is God's plan to restore order to the dis-ordered world (Romans 5).

Walton is not a theological liberal (he teaches at Wheaton). He is an evangelical who seeks to read the Bible well. His reading of Genesis is not at enmity with scientific explanations for global and human origins. He reads the text well while trying to unravel the questions and conceptual world of its author and original audience. Where evangelical/secular discussions often devolve into creation versus evolution debates, it is refreshing to have an approach to the text that is more interested in what the Bible communicated to the people it was originally written for. This gives space for some variety within the church on questions of cosmology and removes a potential stumbling block for those who find difficulty reconciling their reading of scripture with science (different sorts of texts, asking different questions).

There are implications in Walton's account which will be challenging to those of us with a traditional theological bent (i.e. Walton provides no grounding for creation ex nihilo in Genesis, pre-fall death in humans and nature, etc). Walton gives a careful, biblically sensitive and ANE aware case for his reading. He rolls out N.T. Wright, the world's foremost Pauline scholar, to prove that his reading makes sense of the New Testament usage of Adam and Eve as well. Still there is a significant challenge here for us to work through if we are to remain biblical rooted.

Regardless of your stance on the mode of creation (which is not the point), this book will challenge you and get you to dig into the text of Genesis. Walton is a good teacher and brings his readers into the realm of Ancient Near Eastern thought. I give this five stars and recommend it for anyone who wants to go back to Genesis.

Notice of material connection: I received this book from IVP in exchange for my honest review.
( )

Every once in a while you read a book that forces you to shift your perspective. Walton's scholarship does precisely that. In The Lost World of Adam and Eve, he picks up and carries forward the work he did in The Lost World of Genesis One.

Walton's main claim: the creation account of Genesis 1-3 is not a story about material origins—it's a temple story of functional origins. The ancient Hebrew people who first heard the creation account of Genesis would not have assumed creatio ex nihilo. Instead, they would have read the scripture as a description of God organizing his home with us. (Walton states clearly that there are other passages that support the doctrine of ex nihilo. Genesis 1, however, makes no such claim.)

Walton's work is meticulously organized with each chapter arguing for a specific proposition. Here are some of the key insights that struck me:

1. Genesis 2 should be read as a sequel to Genesis 1, not an expansion of the creation of humans on the sixth day. A key factor here is the insight that 'ādām in Hebrew can be read either as "humans" or as the proper name, "Adam".

2. Adam and Eve were specific people chosen by God to expand his rule and reign throughout the world. Walton argues that ancient readers would have assumed there were other humans outside the garden. This explains who Cain might have fled to.

3. The Serpent in the creation story would have been understood as the chaos creature of non-order. Think of the Rahab figure from Job.

4. When Adam and Eve capitulated to the serpentine chaos creature, they set themselves up at the centre of creation which allowed disorder to run free in God's newly ordered world.

If you just read that list and want to argue why he can't be right, I encourage you to read the book first. Walton is meticulous in his arguments. While he does believe that there is a historical Adam and Eve, he insists that the Bible does not claim that all humans descended from this couple alone.

In the end, Walton notes how essential a proper reading of Genesis 1-3 is for the next generation. We can choose to understand it the way we were raised and stand boldly for our faith in the face of mounting scientific evidence. In an impassioned moment, Walton suggests a better way:

"Think, then, of our children and grandchildren. When they come home from college having accepted some scientific understanding about human origins that we do not find persuasive, are we going to denounce them, disinherit them and drive them from the doors of our homes and churches? Or are we going to suggest to them that there may be a way to interpret Scripture faithfully that will allow them to hold on to both science and faith? Can we believe that such a path does not represent a compromise that dilutes the faith but rather one that opens new doors to understanding that the next generation may find essential even though we find ourselves paralyzed on the threshold" (210)?

The Lost World of Adam and Eve is an important work that will challenge and inspire believers who are committed to the authority of God's Word. ( )