In other words, many of us think that to read the Adam and Eve story as a simple record of events displays woeful insensitivity to the literary character of the text, and worse, it makes the story a sitting duck””any schoolboy (or schoolgirl) can prove the story absurd by using basic science. (And they are doing so in droves as they wave “so long” to evangelical churches.)
But despite this disaster, millions of Christians persist in taking the story of Adam and Eve as a literal record of events. Why? Why do preachers and college presidents passionately proclaim from the rooftops that unless we take the story as a literal history the Bible is discredited, faith is undermined, and all is lost?
Why they do so is a bit complicated, a matter of “hermeneutics,” the rules of biblical interpretation that they employ.
This is good and helpful, in a cautionary way. Pointing out fundamentalist errors is like shooting fish in a barrel. I much prefer Bonhoeffer and Woytjla’s exposition of these chapters – who read them not just against its ANE background, with an awareness of how the Bible employs various literary types and tropes, but also against its Christological foreground. In important ways, the early church fathers are still are teachers in reading these chapters.
So much depends on how we read these foundational texts.