Adam as Israel

Description

The story of Adam is the story of Israel writ small. In this text-centered interpretation of Genesis 1–3, Seth Postell contends that the opening chapters of the Bible, when interpreted as a strategic literary introduction to the Torah and to the Tanakh, intentionally foreshadow Israel's failure to keep the Sinai Covenant and their exile from the Promised Land, in order to point the reader to a future work of God, whereby a king will come in "the last days" to fulfill Adam's original mandate to conquer the land (Gen 1:28). Thus Genesis 1–3, the Torah, and the Hebrew Bible as a whole have an eschatological trajectory.