Death in Genesis 2-3

by Angus Harley

It is becoming more and more common for Evangelical scholars to say that there was death before the Fall of Adam and Eve. There are numerous reasons for this position, but the two main arguments that drive their interpretation are, 1) Genesis is an ANE document and has a mixture of myth and history; 2) therefore, there is no need to dismiss modern science’s view of the origins of this world. This hermeneutic is held by arguably the majority of modern Evangelical academics

I have already critiqued this hermeneutic in regard to Genesis 1’s creation days, and to the existence of the historical Adam of Genesis 2.¹ The days are literal twenty-four hour days, and Adam is described as the real and historical head of the whole of humanity. Here I wish to critique modern Evangelical scholarship’s understanding of death in Genesis 2-3. In doing so, I will develop my argument using the mode of literary criticism.

Literary criticism

‘Literary criticism’ can mean various things, but is generally a catchall term to for any kind of study and evaluation of literature. I’m using it differently to refer to the practice of treating writings as holistic, as a literary unit or whole. For example, it is commonly recognized by the general theological community (Evangelical or otherwise) that Genesis 1-11 is a unit and should be read as such. It is a whole text, to be read as such, not a series of parts, or bits and bobs. Of course, we can apply the same holistic label to any book of the bible, to any section, and so forth.

The modern scholar using literary criticism is therefore going to take very seriously any whole text ‘as is’, as it stands as a unit. The scholar will not mess around with its genre as a whole text, with its message as a whole text, nor with the purposes and plots the whole text itself conveys. The scholar doesn’t feel the need to tamper with the holistic text to make it say anything other than what it says as a whole document or text.

Things have come a long way within general theological scholarship. When the rationalist Enlightenment burst into Europe, an immediate effect was that theologians, philosophers, and scholars began to trash the supernatural nature of the bible. The bible was torn to shreds, broken up, and every conceivable critical attempt was made to find all the supposed sources behind the bible’s text. The result was that the bible as a text, as whole, was shattered into a million pieces, so that it had no common story, morality, or message. This was the rise of Liberal theology. Fast forward a few centuries into the present, modern ‘Liberal theologians’ are happy to endorse literary criticism’s central tenet that the text must be kept as a whole and must be allowed to speak for itself. The bible as a holistic form of literature is allowed to speak.²

This change in Liberal attitudes is exemplified in the divergent attitudes toward the bible’s message about Jesus’ resurrection. Back in the day, the early Liberals denounced the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and for two reasons: science and reason made it impossible, and, the biblical text was a primitive text for a pre-rational, pre-scientific people who didn’t understand things that modern man, through science and reason, comprehends. Although the modern Liberal scholar retains these same, older, presuppositions (the priorities of science plus ANE myth), he is, nonetheless, quite content to read the text of 1 Corinthians 15, or the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, and take them at face value. He doesn’t feel any need to say that the text is not teaching a real, bodily resurrection of Jesus, even though the Liberal’s own personal beliefs prevent him believing in a literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, or of anyone else.

To illustrate this new mindset of Liberalism, it is the equivalent of reading a Marvel comic and allowing its story and ‘history’ to stand without trying to make its unified text say something that it does not say. We know that, Marvel comics are not true history; nevertheless, their own ‘internal’ textual content and history must be allowed to stand as part of the whole comic, even if that content and history are sheer fantasy and faux history. That is the modern Liberal’s attitude to the bible.

Genesis and literary criticism

Although this movement in Liberalism is closer to our era, it was already at work in Liberalism in the 1970s. James Barr, a leading Liberal theologian of his day, wrote the following in 1978 of Genesis 1-11:

“In fact the only natural exegesis is a literal one, in the sense that this is what the author meant. As we know from other parts of Genesis, he was deeply interested in chronology and calendar, and he depicted the story of creation in a carefully and deliberately arranged scheme of one week chronology and calendar, and he depicted the story of creation in a carefully and deliberately arranged scheme of one week, As Kevan, cited above, rightly sees, the ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ phraseology clearly indicates that he thought of a day such as we understand a day to be; but that is only one of the multitudinous details of the story which show that the seven-day scheme is essential to his way of describing the creation. About the actual processes of the origin of the world as we know them he knew, of course, nothing, and set against our knowledge of these processes his account is certainly ‘wrong’. Since, on the other hand, the processes and sequences which are known to us through modern science were certainly totally unknown to him, this ‘wrongness’ is quite irrelevant in our understanding the story.”³

See how Barr accepts the text ‘as is’, as to how it wants to be read. He does not force the text to conform to a preconceived idea of Genesis 1-3, nor does he ignore its genre. It is plain, says Barr, that the text of Genesis 1-3 is conveyed by its writer as true and real history. The reader should be made aware that Barr was Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford University (1978-1989).

A few years later, in 1984, Barr elaborates on Genesis 1-11 as a text:

“ “Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the days of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.” ”⁴

Around the same time, in 1987, Barr goes on to extend the same principle of a ‘literal’ chronological/historical reading to the whole of the Old Testament:

“And this leads us on to our next major point: namely that this powerful and durable tradition, under which the biblical figures were understood to be chronologically precise and to furnish a basis for calculation from creation down to later events, was quite correct. It interpreted the Bible’s intention rightly. This is what these biblical figures were intended to do, or some of them at any rate.

From the genealogies of Genesis the reader could reckon the time down to the flood; from the flood he could reckon on to the exodus, and from there to the building of Solomon’s temple. The figures were meant to be exact and to be taken literally. They do not mean anything at all unless they mean actual numbers of years. Thus to say that Abraham was 75 years old when he migrated from Haran into Canaan (Gen. 12.4) means exactly that, namely that he was 75 years old at that point, and to say that Israel’s stay in Egypt lasted 430 years (Exodus 12.40) means exactly that, that there were 430 years from the time they went in until the time when they came out again. But we have to be aware of the difference between intention and historical truth.”⁵

The point being conveyed by Barr is that, when Genesis 1-11 is taken as a literary unit, indeed, the bible as a whole, it reads in one way alone: it is to be taken as real history. We might say, ‘The text wants to be read that way.’ There are not various ways of reading it, therefore.

Bernard Ramm on death in Genesis 2-3

This brings us to the theme of death in Genesis 2-3. Modern Evangelical scholars have for decades now argued that Genesis 2-3 is not teaching that death resulted exclusively from Adam’s sin. An earlier version of this view comes from Bernard Ramm, an Evangelical scholar. He was an expert on hermeneutics and exegesis, and was well-known as an Evangelical scholar for his book, Protestant Biblical Interpretation: a Textbook of Hermeneutics. His views are stark:

“Part of man’s judgment was that he was turned out of that park and into the conditions prevalent in the rest of the creation… Ideal conditions existed only in the Garden….Outside of the Garden of Eden were death, disease, weeds, thistles, thorns, carnivores, deadly serpents, and intemperate weather. To think otherwise is to run counter to an immense avalanche of fact. Part of the blessedness of man was that he was spared all of these things in Paradise, and part of the judgment of man was that he had to forsake such a Paradise and enter the world as it was outside of the Garden, where thistles grew and weeds were abundant and where wild animals roamed and where life was only possible by the sweat of man’s brow.”⁶

We cannot call Ramm’s offering ‘exegesis’, since it does not bear any resemblance to the text of Genesis 1-3. There is not an iota of evidence in context that Genesis 1-3 implies the presence of death before the Fall. For example, to suggest that before man’s Fall, there were thorns and thistles outside of the Garden of Eden is gratuitous eisegesis. Genesis tells us that Adam was kicked out of the Garden, and God cursed the ground, so that it would produce a constant supply of thorns and thistles working against Adam (Gen.3:17-19). This is set in contrast to Adam, before his Fall, having an open access to a ‘buffet’ of food from the trees in the Garden. Man’s relationship to the animals changes radically, too, for rather than merely subduing them as their lord, he has now to fight off the serpent (who is really Satan in an animal) (see Gen.9:4-5). Moreover, God himself killed an animal to provide Adam with its skin to cover his nakedness. All this resulted after Adam’s sin, and the implication is that this state of affairs had no roots in the pre-Fall days. Adam (Heb., adam) is patently set forth as the head of humanity, for ‘man’ (adam) is named after him. It is only after Adam and Eve sin that mankind experiences death.

On the level of mere exegesis, it is infuriating that Evangelical scholarship permits such reckless interpretation without holding Ramm, or those like him, to task. Scholarship is built to prevent one scholar from wrecking another, but it is permissible to destroy the biblical text. Quite shameful!

To be fair to Ramm, although he was an Evangelical expert on ‘hermeneutics’ in his day, the concept of a ‘hermeneutic’ (a controlling interpretive model) was not in vogue in the 1950s. Nor was the literary study of ANE sources the big deal that it is today. To Ramm, a broader scientific approach to the bible, based on exegetical principles and actual science, controlled interpretation. Patently, Ramm was not aware of how exceeding presuppositional his views were. His biases scream out, however, when he exegetes Genesis’ text.

Having said this, even without knowledge of modern literary criticism or a hermeneutic, a 10 year old Evangelical girl could interpret Genesis 1-3 as a text more accurately than Ramm! How so? Because the girl will read the text ‘as is’, as it wants to be read- the fundamental holistic concept of literary criticism.

Modern Evangelicals

Unlike Ramm, modern Evangelical scholars are far more in tune with the concept of literary criticism and are sensitive to the idea of presuppositions. It is typical in reading these scholars to find them qualifying any belief in science and evolution to say something like, ‘Genesis 1-3 as a text is pre-scientific, so that we ought not to turn it into a book on science.’ This is commendable as a principle of interpretation, and Ramm would have benefited enormously from it.

Nonetheless, one would expect from this modern sensitivity in scholarship, and due to literary criticism, that in exegeting the text of Genesis 1-3, the first step, before anything else, would be to accept the text as is, as to how it wishes to be read. Like the 10 year old, we must engage in the simplistic form of reading back the text, almost paraphrasing it, without any attempt to integrate info from ANE sources, or trying to accommodate the passage to science. Just let the text speak for itself.

However, I find such a practice a rarity in modern Evangelical scholarship. We get the obligatory fare, ‘We must not read the text as science’; ‘The text is not to be read literally’; ‘The text does not make evolution, or death before the Fall, impossible. Adam might have been just one human among millions’; ‘We can’t ignore modern science’. Various interpretations then ensue according to the personal preferences of each theologian.

I teach world religions in a uni. I always give to the students an assignment that reads sources- ancient or otherwise- and to basically repeat back to me what the text is saying at face value, to stress what the text itself stresses. I do this because ‘the’ most basic mistake in reading a text is to read in what the writer does not say! To mind mind, the greatest academic error is not plagiarism, it is eisegesis!

The text of Genesis 1-3 screams out a very clear dichotomy, and is a very simple drama, as it were. There is the pre-Fall scene of peace, life, order, divinely appointed hierarchy and roles, and the bright and glorious future that mankind has ahead of him. Then there is the Titanic disaster of the Fall and all the demonic things that this brings with it. The world and mankind- not just part of the world or portion of mankind- is cursed, and feels, for the first time, the volcanic wrath of Yahweh. Yahweh ‘breaks’ the pre-Fall order of this world (see Eccl.1:15; 7:13). Now, sin and death are now lodged like a tick in the resultant brokenness. To play around with this ‘drama’ (it was real history!) is to undermine entirely the direction the text is taking us in. For, the text wants to convey that the old order is irreversibly broken. Even so, in pushing man out of the Garden, God is putting man on the path of a quest of reconciliation through, what turns out to be, a new and heavenly garden. At the heart of this new way is the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 that conveys that this reconciliation will require both the death of Eve’s ‘seed’ (‘the’ Man) and the death of the serpent (aka, Satan).

Motivations and ironies

Before, I did not give the full quote of Barr. He stated that the reason why ‘Fundamentalists’ of his day were abandoning the plain reading of the Genesis text was because they did not wish to jeopardize the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture in the light of the irrefutable conclusions of science:

“What has happened is that the scientific evidence for the long duration of the beginnings of the world has become too strong to withstand. A literal interpretation would mean pitting the Bible against scientific truths which fundamentalist intellectuals now themselves accept; this would in turn force the admission that the Bible in this respect had been wrong. In order to avoid this, the conservative interpreter moves over into a non-literal exegesis; only this will save the inerrancy of the Bible.”⁷

Fundamentalism, which loved to play the divine-Scripture card, was forced to set aside the text’s teaching to defend a doctrine of Scripture, says Barr. Such irony!

This Evangelical defense of inerrancy may have been the motivation back in Barr’s day, and it might be a factor today, but a central concern in our day, it seems to me, is academic prestige and relevance. I recently read a book looking at four Evangelical views on the theme of the continuity of Scripture. It was edited by two Progressive Covenantalists. In the introduction, both editors state that the book was not covering either the Reformed Baptist position or that of New Covenant Theology because they lacked any academic clout as doctrinal positions.⁸ This is the world that all Evangelical scholars work in. It is evident to me that Evangelical scholarship in general does not consider the traditional perspective on Genesis 1-3 to be academically relevant.

Yet, ironically, the same academic world- considered in its broadest form- is willing to let the holistic text of Genesis 1-11 to speak for itself, and in exegeting it, allows its details to flow. Nor am I speaking about Evangelicals, but of Liberal exegetes!

Modern Evangelical scholarship (the majority view) will accuse me of misrepresenting their position, and of ignoring my own camp’s blatant errors. Perhaps I am. Then, dear brother, help me see my textual mistake by at least ‘reading back to me’, as it were, the text of Genesis 1-3. For, on the level of the mere text, I cannot get beyond first base with you because you keep injecting into that basic reading your pro-science attitude and your pro-ANE paradigm. I am willing to discuss the possibility of the various things you promote, but not until you can clearly and unequivocally relate a simple statement of the text as ‘story’. As to my own ‘camp’, I have said before that I do not hold to the position of sheer literalism. I am not a traditional Dispensationalist. I, too, can read Genesis and appreciate its genre and that it is an ANE text. However, I will say that on a popular level, such as on Facebook and its forums, and even in some academic writings,Young Earth Creationists are as guilty as Old Earth Creationists of allowing scientific debate to dominate as a paradigm. In this, where lies sola Scripture and the sufficiency of Scipture?

1Angus Harley, “A Critique of Four Views on the Historical Adam,” All Things New Covenant, March 9, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/03/09/1842/; “Genesis 1, its history, and its days,” All Things New Covenant, January 28, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/01/28/genesis-1-its-history-and-its-days/.

2See, for example, James Barr’s discussion in the chapter “The New Profile of Discussion about the Bible” in his book History and Ideology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 16-31. There is also John Barton’s body of work on the canon of Scripture.

3 James Barr, Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 42.

4 James Barr, The Bible and Interpretation. The Collected Essays of James Barr, Volume 2: Biblical Studies, ed. John Barton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 408.

5 James Barr, The Bible and Interpretation. The Collected Essays of James Barr, Volume 2: Biblical Studies, ed. John Barton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 408.

6 Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1954), 334.

7Barr, Fundamentalism, 42.

8Brent E. Parker, Richard I. Lucas, “Introduction to Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuuity of Scripture,” in Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture, eds. Brent E. Parker, Richard I. Lucas (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2021): Kindle.