How long did Adam dwell in paradise?
• The Dialogue of
Solomon and Saturn.
• The Joca
Monachorum.
How did medieval exegetes
read Genesis 3?
• Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica (c. 1167)
• Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Les Très Riches Heures
du Duc de Berry
How did medieval exegetes
read Genesis 3?
• Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica (c. 1167)
• Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
• What really happened …
What does Genesis 3 really tell us?
• James Kugel, The Bible As It Was.
• The four hermeneutical assumptions of
reading sacred texts:
– All parts of the Bible are of divine origin.
– The Bible contains no contradictions or mistakes.
– The Bible is written for our instruction.
– The Bible is a cryptic text, a “great code”.
Second-Temple Judaism
interpretations of Genesis 3.
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The Book of Wisdom.
The Book of Jubilees.
IV Ezra.
The Life of Adam and Eve.
The Book of Enoch.
The Letters of Paul.
Christian and Gnostic readings.
• The Letter and
the Spirit.
• The Apocryphon
of John.
Augustine’s reading of the text.
• De Genesi ad litteram
• De Genesi contra
Manicheos
The revival of the Augustinian
“literal sense”.
• The Glossa ordinaria.
• Hugh of Saint Victor.
• The School of
Chartres: Bernardus
Silvestris’
Cosmographia
The modern split: moral/doctrinal
reading vs. literary/historical reading.
• Baruch de Spinosa.
• The Book of Nature and the
Book of Scripture.
The Bible still the Word of God?
Some reading suggestions.
• Hendrikus Berkhof.
• Karl Barth.
• Henri de Lubac.