Adam was "Naked". Noah was "Naked"... Parallel?

[Stope]

Is there any connections to be drawn between:

creation/dominion mandate/fruit/sin/nakedness of Adam Eve
and
"re-creation" (if you will post flood)/dominion mandate/fruit (wine=sin in drunkeness)/nakedness of Noah?

 

[greenbaggins]

I think so. Noah is a new Adam in certain respects (though not in others). He is a progenitor of the entire human race after the Flood. However, his drunkenness/nakedness proves that he is not the promised seed of Genesis 3:15, and that he does not give us the ultimate rest that his name presaged. The sequence of creation/Flood/post-Flood is the sequence of creation, de-creation, re-creation. The language of the post-Flood has so many echoes of Genesis 1-2 that it seems rather plain that a new creation is going on there. Adam fell through eating, Noah fell through drinking, and both experienced the shame that sin brings. Noah, of course, is not a federal representative of the human race, and so in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, he does not come in between the first and last Adam. Noah is, therefore, an important figure in the promised line who is not the promised seed himself.

That the cultural mandate is repeated for Noah shows God's grace in retaining it even after the Flood.

 

[Stope]

I think so. Noah is a new Adam in certain respects (though not in others). He is a progenitor of the entire human race after the Flood. However, his drunkenness/nakedness proves that he is not the promised seed of Genesis 3:15, and that he does not give us the ultimate rest that his name presaged. The sequence of creation/Flood/post-Flood is the sequence of creation, de-creation, re-creation. The language of the post-Flood has so many echoes of Genesis 1-2 that it seems rather plain that a new creation is going on there. Adam fell through eating, Noah fell through drinking, and both experienced the shame that sin brings. Noah, of course, is not a federal representative of the human race, and so in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, he does not come in between the first and last Adam. Noah is, therefore, an important figure in the promised line who is not the promised seed himself.

That the cultural mandate is repeated for Noah shows God's grace in retaining it even after the Flood.

Awesome! Was this like Reformed 101 and I just never read it before hehehe?

 

[greenbaggins]

Jason, no. My comments are based on a number of sources somewhat vaguely remembered. Bruce McDowell has a fine commentary on the Noah story. Vos's Biblical Theology informed this, as well as the standard commentaries of Currid, Wenham, Hamilton, Mathews, Ross, Walton, Waltke, etc.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

You do need to pay attention to substantive parallels, versus the use of literary/verbal parallels. I think the nakedness of Noah is a good example of the latter; and yet it is "threaded" with instances of the former.

Noah's nakedness, coming at the end of his genealogy (Gen.6:9-9:29) is observable as a chiastic (X), verbal and literary parallel to the nakedness of Gen.2:25, at beginning of the Adamic genealogy. But so far from recovering the naked/unspoiled original conditions in Eden (ending up back where one began), the second nakedness revealed is a repeat of the shame of Gen.3:7ff, and another covering must take place (3:21 & 9:23).

What I'm saying is; Noah's nakedness isn't introduced as evidence the story has come full circle; but as proof of continuing sin.

 

[a mere housewife]

Just a note that both Adam's and Noah's knowledge of their nakedness is associated with shame and a curse. We see Christ naked and in shame, when he bears our curse.

 

[jomawh]

As Contra_Mundum wonderfully put it, "Noah's nakedness isn't introduced as evidence the story has come full circle; but as proof of continuing sin."

Nakedness can be seen as fundamentally related to covenant. While Adam and Eve were yet faithful to the Covenant of Works in which they were created, there was no conception of the shame of nakedness as they had no need to cover their sins as they had none. There might be an expectation of the Flood as being the end of the world in which Noah would be mistakenly seen as the promised seed, the new Adam. What Noah's nakedness and the shame associated with it signify is that he is not He who would crush the serpent- that Noah was still very much in sin and in need of covering.

That in Galatians 3:27, to take a small liberty with how the NASB renders it, we "have clothed [ourselves] with Christ," signifies that the Saints have received the covering and that we no longer stand naked before our Lord, all in highly covenantal language.