Fleeing the Garden
Reading Genesis 2–3
The papers collected in this book are the product of a Mormon Theology Seminar dedicated to generating close, theologically informed readings of the second and third chapters of Genesis. Though participants in the seminar employed a wide variety of methodological approaches, the results clearly show a common core of understanding won through months of close collaborative effort. Essays explore the nature of appetite, the role of community, the necessity of ecology, and the persistence of paradox in one of the Bible’s most human stories.
"Fleeing the Garden is fun to read (easy to hold, appealingly produced), its purposes full of delight. I propose that we all open our scriptural lives–or at least our Sunday School study–outward and upward through this and the other books in the Mormon Theology Seminar series."
"Unafraid to critically examine theological items of hermeneutic tension, the various authors each examine a sub-topic within...Genesis 2-3."
"Read this book. It will change how you read Genesis. "Fleeing the Garden" is not only generative readings of scripture, it is a first-rate demonstration of how the thoughtful analysis of just two chapters of scripture can reveal significant and surprising insights into the pressing conditions of every person this side of the garden: gender, poetry, stewardship, technology, and even poop. If this slender volume is any indication, the future of the Mormon interpretation of scripture is bright and full of possibilities not obvious."
About the Editor
Adam S. Miller
Adam S. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. He earned a BA in comparative literature from Brigham Young University and an MA and PhD in philosophy from Villanova University. He is the author of nine books, including Speculative Grace, The Gospel according to David Foster Wallace, Letters to a Young Mormon, and An Early Resurrection. He also directs the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar.
Table of Contents
Introduction: On Biblical Literalism
Paradoxes in Paradise
“Adam, Where Art Thou?” Onomastics, Etymology, and Translation in Genesis 2–3
Chaos and Order, Order and Chaos: The Creation Story as the Story of Human Community
Creation, Localism, and Appetite in the Garden World of Wendell Berry
Theoscatology: On Dirt, Dung, and Digestion in God’s Garden
“And It Came to Pass”: A Response to Adam Miller’s “Theoscatology”
Partaking of the Fruit of Ecological Wisdom: A Reading of Genesis 2–3 Applied to Environmental Education in Zion
Contributors
Publication Information
ISBN 13: 978-0-8425-3009-5
Page Count: 120
Price: $ 15.95