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Adam as Israel: Genesis 1-3 as the Introduction to the Torah and Tanakh Paperback – Illustrated, March 14, 2011

by Seth D. Postell (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 42 ratings
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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 foreshadows 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.

Postell highlights numerous intentional links between the story of Adam and the story of Israel and, in the process, explains numerous otherwise perplexing features of the Eden story.
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  1. Print length
    216 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Pickwick Publications
  4. Publication date
    March 14, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.49 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1610971760
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1610971768
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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""Dr. Postell has written a brilliant treatise arguing that Genesis 1-3 serves as the literary introduction to the Pentateuch, and, indeed, the entire Tanakh. He is clearly conversant with all the relevant literature and he makes a persuasive case. This is a work that needs to be read carefully and taken seriously."" --David M. Howard Jr. Professor of Old Testament Bethel University ""In a stimulating study of the first three chapters of Genesis, Dr. Postell has argued convincingly that they were written as fitting prelude to and portent of the ensuing narrative. Instead of looking to presumed parallel or contrasting ancient creation accounts for its meaning, this study confirms that the opening narratives of the Pentateuch exhibit language and themes coherent with the entire narrative that follows. The persuasive argument expressed here points to the necessity of further studies of similar approach to the Hebrew Bible."" --Robert Cole Associate Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary ""To anyone who suspects that there is a divine order behind the compilation of the Hebrew Scriptures, this excellent work by Seth Postell will confirm that suspicion. Not only has he carefully described the methodology used in evangelical canonical research of the text, he has built upon the existing evidence to further substantiate the approach. Fresh new insights are always pleasing to the theological senses! Research professors and students alike will be strengthened in their devotion to the sacred text and spurred on to answer the research questions that naturally arise from this work."" --Gregory Hagg Professor of Bible Exposition/Director The Feinberg Center for Messianic Jewish Studies Talbot School of Theology

About the Author

Seth D. Postell, formerly Assistant Professor of Old Testament at the Charles L. Feinberg Center for Messianic Jewish Studies (in partnership with Talbot School of Theology), is currently Lecturer in Biblical Studies at Israel College of the Bible in Netanya, Israel.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pickwick Publications; Illustrated edition (March 14, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 216 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1610971760
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1610971768
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.49 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 42 ratings

About the author

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Seth D. Postell

Seth D. Postell

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Seth Postell (PhD in Hebrew Bible) serves as the academic dean of ONE FOR ISRAEL Bible College in Netanya Israel. His interests are in the literary approach to Scripture, Scripture's use of Scripture, narrative analogy, biblical theology, and the New Testament's use of the Tanakh. He has authored a number of publications including Adam as Israel (2011), Reading Moses, Seeing Jesus (2017) and essays in The Moody Handbook of Messianic Prophecy (2020), The Handbook of the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (2021), The Handbook of the Jewish Roots of the Gospels (2021), and in Reading the Psalms Theologically (2022). He has also published many academic articles and translated the Book of Genesis for the Tree of Life Version of the Bible (2019).

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4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
42 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

R. N. Wilkin
5.0 out of 5 stars this one is fairly easy to read and understand
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2014
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Rarely does a book come around that is truly revolutionary. This book is one of the rare ones.
Postell, a Professor at Israel College of the Bible in Netanya, Israel, evidences a high regard for Scripture and for the Lord who gave it to us.
This book may intimidate many readers because the author uses many words and expressions which are unfamiliar to them (e.g., Tanakh, text-centered analysis, inclusio, Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis, canon, canonical, typology, inner-textuality, intertextuality, theophanic, compositional analysis, canonical seams). However, readers should not shy away from this book. As scholarly books go, this one is fairly easy to read and understand.
Postell’s thesis is that Genesis 1-3 introduces key themes which resonate throughout the rest of the Pentateuch and indeed the entire Old Testament (which Postell calls the Tanakh, which stands for “the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings,” p. 155). In his view both the human and the Divine authors (Moses and the Holy Spirit) intended the history reported in Genesis 1-3 to serve as types of Israel’s future. Some of those prophetic elements include: a “longing expectation for the coming of the conquering king [the Messiah]” (p. 166), “a new work of God in the last days” (p. 4), “Even a cursory reading of Gen 1:1–2:3 reveals the author’s predominate focus on the eretz (“land”)…[which] occurs twenty-one times [in 1:1–2:3]” (p. 83), “The Pentateuch, therefore, opens (Genesis 1) and closes (Deuteronomy 34) with a focus on the unconquered land” (p. 147), “Jacob and Moses exemplify the eschatological hope in the coming of the conquering king (Gen 3:15) from the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:8-12; Deut 33:7) who will one day gather the people of Israel from exile (Deut 33:5; see also 30:12-13); namely, a king who will fulfill Adam’s mandate” (pp. 147-48), “Adam and Eve’s cowering in fear [Gen 3:8] foreshadows Israel’s fearful (faithless) retreat from the theophanic appearance of the Lord on Mount Sinai” (p. 128). This leads Postell to agree with Schmitt who argues that “faith is a primary theological concern in the Pentateuch” (pp. 126-27).
Postell argues that Old Testament saints believed in bodily resurrection, the Promised Land as the eternal home for Israel, the coming Messiah as king and conqueror, and, though he does not say this directly, he implies that they believed in eternal security by faith alone, apart from works (e.g., “The ideal readers must trust God to fulfill his purposes through the coming-conquering king whom God will raise up in ‘the last days,’” p. 148).
Some readers will be disappointed if they expect to find in this book a defense of justification by faith alone. That is not Postell’s purpose, though as just mentioned he implies he sees that teaching in the Old Testament.
Some readers may reject Postell’s views since later Scripture does not specifically identify as types most of that which he says are types. However, if there can be types which are not specifically called types in Scripture—and I believe there can be, then Postell’s thesis makes Genesis 1-3 and the Pentateuch come alive.
This is the sort of book that is so full of interesting statements that it well worth reading more than once. I highly recommend this book.
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Keith Adams
5.0 out of 5 stars The fruits of a text centered approach
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2018
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This book is written like a research paper or a dissertation and is done with a high level of scholarship, so be warned. (I read this book for fun so I skipped most of the second and third chapters which analyze the history of interpretation). The conclusions Postell comes to are deeply and refreshing rooted in the text of Scripture itself. I am fully on board with his methodology and he has shown the huge pay offs of this “text-centered” approach. Postell is a top rate Pentateuch scholar and the insights he brings in the last chapter as it relates to the whole Tanak is the best treatment of its kind. I really hope there is more of this kind of analysis done by scholars like Postell.
5 people found this helpful
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Thomas C. Hamilton
4.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable for Understanding Biblical Theology
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2014
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This book was foundational in developing how I read the Old Testament. Postell notes how Adam typology provides the overarching structure for Israel's story as told in the Hebrew Bible, and provides several fascinating observations on the canon of the Old Testament as a whole. In short, he argues that Adam's story is a prototype of Israel's. Adam is told to subdue the Earth, sins in listening to the voice of his wife, and is exiled from the land. Likewise, Israel is told to subdue the land (this very word is used in Joshua 18 to describe the conquest), but takes foreign wives, is corrupted by them, and is exiled. Along the way, Postell argues that the canon of the Hebrew Bible was arranged into Torah-Prophets-Writings at the time of Ezra, and that Ezra provided literary seams at the beginning and end of each section in order to draw Israel's focus to the eschatological king coming from the tribe of Judah. The strength of this case depends not so much on external evidence for this threefold division, but on the explanatory power of the internal evidence. Once Postell brings these connections to light, it is difficult to unsee them. I do, unfortunately, have a few significant criticisms.

1. Postell unfortunately adheres to John Sailhamer's bizarre view that Genesis 1 describes the preparation of the Garden of Eden rather than the creation of the world. This throws a wrench in biblical theology as a whole. Genesis 1 describes the creation of the world as a Temple, and Genesis 2-3 provides an image of the Garden of Eden as a Sanctuary, guarded and cultivated by Adam as High Priest. But Adam is meant to actualize the whole creation's destiny as a Temple by expanding the boundaries of the Garden. That is why he is told to "subdue" the beasts of the field in Genesis 1. The beasts were outside the Sanctuary, and Adam would extend the dominion of the Edenic Temple and bring the beasts under his rule, turning them into cattle (which means domestic animals) as he grew in communion with God. Understanding this makes it clear how the Church is moving towards its eschatological Sabbath as she brings all nations under the feet of Christ. Postell's subscription to Sailhamer's theory means that he misses a number of important biblical-theological insights which result from the identity of the land of Israel as a miniature Earth.

2. A better title for the book would have been "Israel as Adam." The Adam typology which emerges from Israel's history is written into it- later biblical authors did not have to mold their telling of the story to make things fit. God called Israel as Adam, Israel recapitulated Adam's exile, and Jesus, in whom Israel's destiny is focused, dies and is resurrected- thus bringing about the return from exile. This brings Postell's thesis into profound connection with N.T. Wright's work on the return from exile.

3. Postell is a Messianic Jew, and thus never identifies the Church as Israel or exposits biblical theology along these lines. But his thesis seems to destroy the premise of Messianic Judaism, namely, that Israel and the Church are distinct entities. If Israel is Adam, and Jesus is the New Adam, then it seems obvious that Jesus is the one-person-Israel. Consequently, since since the Church is, in the New Testament, the new humanity in virtue of its union with Christ, it seems almost absurd to then deny that the Church is the renewed Israel under the new covenant.

Despite the length of my criticisms, my impression of the book was enormously positive. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to understand the theology of the Hebrew Bible in light of Christ. All of my criticisms are reducible to the fact that Postell simply fails to extend his insights as far as they should be extended.
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Abba's Amanda
5.0 out of 5 stars Hebraic scholar research book
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2015
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This is a difficult read, if you don't have a good vocabulary, bc it is a dissertation. but if you're willing to look up some words, it is such a good book. I learned a lot
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Justin Sproles
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Opening!
Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2016
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The most revealing treatment of Genesis 1-3 available. Adam's story is Israel's story writ small.
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Top reviews from other countries

Marshall Janzen
4.0 out of 5 stars A meaty dissection of a pivotal connection
Reviewed in Canada on March 11, 2022
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God creates Adam as male and female and gives them paradise and a law – but they follow one of the inhabitants into rebellion and end up exiled. That recap is enough to convince most Bible readers that in some sense Adam’s story is another telling of Israel’s story. But Postell’s book doesn’t just gesture at a blurry intuition. He dissects the connection, leaking paragraphs of ink on the slightest parts. The true surprise, after all that, is finding he still feels the pulse of Adam’s story.

After forty pages on the wildness of historical exegesis, chapter 4 commends a “text-centered approach” that pays attention both to the words of Genesis 1–3 and how they’re positioned to frame the Pentateuch and whole First Testament. This approach centres the text’s meaning and purpose for existing. Reconstructions of what really happened become peripheral, but not ruled out. He accepts that many voices composed the text and deepened it through canonical echoes, but expects they all sung in unison. In particular, though he grants different origins for the seven-day and Eden accounts, he reads them as unified and sequential. This first half of the book throws pie in the face of critical scholarship and eats it too.

In the second half, Postell shows how his reading explains the presence of otherwise odd details, such as how Adam is formed elsewhere before being dropped in the garden. He also exposes subtle connections. For instance, humans disobey in Eden because of both a deceiver and taking what looks good in their own eyes; Israelites fail in Joshua’s conquest because Achan takes what looks good and the Gibeonites trick them. The book also moves beyond Adam, showing how the exiled ends of both Jacob and Moses’ lives reverberate with Israel’s story. It also moves beyond Genesis, showing the careful intros and conclusions to the Law, Prophets, and Writings which the Christian reshuffling of the canon obscures.

In the final sections, Postell becomes more clear about why Adam is portrayed as Israel. It isn’t to claim Adam as the first Israelite. It isn’t to preview the dangers of disobedience in order to warn Israel off that path. Rather than a warning, Genesis 1–3 serves, like the rest of the Hebrew Bible, as a testament to the certainty of human failure – and God’s stubborn drive to still see us home. Just as our evil inclination that precipitated the flood can’t be cured by a flood (Genesis 6:5 and 8:21), so also God knew it couldn’t be righted by the covenant with Israel (Deuteronomy 31:21). Eden ends with humans exiled. Israel’s canonical scriptures also end in exile, but a future hope remains. For Christians, its form takes on flesh with the turn of a page.

That move may smack of cultural appropriation, yet Postell reveals how the very shape of the Jewish canon invites outside appropriation. Through Adam, all humanity finds itself in Israel’s story. Their attested failures reflect our shared evil inclination. Just as Paul saw all nations in Abraham’s progeny because God recognized his faith before he made the Jewish cut, so also Israel’s scriptures are for us all because Adamity starts the melody that Israel later crescendos.

I’ll end with two points of disagreement, but even as I swerve away from Postell, I’m running with ideas lifted from him. First, he argues that the serpent prefigures the Canaanites as the dangerous present occupant of the land. This seems to miss that both day six and the Eden story list many occupants. All those animals occupy the land but aren’t fit to be Adam’s partner. What sets the serpent apart is that this beast has lofty pretensions – like the kings of old who claimed to come from gods, or the divine-human Nephilim a few pages on. Rather than smearing all Canaanites, the serpent makes a fitting prototype for these larger-than-life figures (especially since such giants also appear in the description of Canaan’s occupants).

Second, in some cases Postell’s insightful approach to the text seems to meet resistance he will not cross. For instance, his recognition of the framing purpose of Genesis 1–3 for the wider canon, when combined with the clear division between the seven-day and Eden accounts, leads naturally to the conclusion that the introduction of Adam on day six should frame our understanding of Adam in Eden. But Postell instead reverses direction, using the individual character of Genesis 2’s Adam to deflate the humanity-wide Adam of Genesis 1 to mainly a prototypical king. Much later he does the same thing with the Psalter, using the ruler of Psalm 2 to shift the measure of Psalm 1’s everyman to a portrait of the coming king. These moves preserve an individual Adam and point the Psalter more explicitly towards Jesus, but they seem to betray his central insight that beginnings – not secondlings – are crafted to guide our understanding of the wider text they introduce.

This book continues to provoke my thinking in good ways. I highly recommend it. And to save someone else buying the book twice, I’ll point out that there are both Kindle (of middling quality) and print versions available, but they aren’t linked to each other.
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