Who Is Adam in Genesis | Bill Arnold

Lecture Title - Adam in Canonical Perspective: The Old Testament Where has Adam gone? The central figure in Genesis 1–5 is missing in the rest of the Old Testament. It is surprising that the personal name “Adam” occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament except the single reference in the genealogical list in 1 Chronicles 1:1, “Adam, Seth, Enosh.” In order to hold Adam in canonical perspective, therefore, we must return to Genesis 1–5 to ask what the text demands of us as twenty-first century readers. This paper returns briefly to the question of the ancient Near Eastern location of the text, proposing that we ask only as much of Genesis 1–5 as that location will allow. The result is an exploration of the fundamental questions of genre and worldview in the opening chapters of the Bible as a means of establishing what is and is not reasonable in our reading of Adam, concluding with a few implications for our current dialogue. Bill T. Arnold (PhD Hebrew Union College) is the Paul S. Amos Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1995. He has written or edited over a dozen books, including Who Were the Babylonians? (SBL Press, 2004) and Introduction to the Old Testament (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world. Visit the HCTU website: https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/  Subscribe to the HCTU Newsletter: https://bit.ly/326pRL5 Watch the HCTU on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HenryCenter Connect with us! https://twitter.com/henry_center https://www.facebook.com/henrycenter/ https://www.instagram.com/thehenrycenter/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/thehenrycenter