On Allegory and Accommodation: Adam and the gods of the Nations

What if our fixation on metaphysical precision is missing the point?  The Bible affirms real spiritual realities and uses typology, allegory, and accommodation not to obscure truth, but to reveal it.  Adam and the gods of the nations may not fit neatly into modern categories, but that doesn't make them less real—it just layers reality in a way we’re not used to considering.

A Tangled Thread Worth Following

Okay, so I've had some more thoughts.  Picking up from my last post on the historicity of Adam, I can’t help but chase another theological rabbit down a familiar hole—and bumping into Heiser, Walton, the Divine Council, and the question of accommodation and how the people of the biblical world thought about things.  This may seem like a strange mix at first, but don’t worry, it’ll eventually make sense–I think... 

The thread we’re tying goes back to Adam, and loops in how divine reality, typology, and accommodation help us examine the question.  This could be its own book, but sadly it’s only a blog post so far, so I hope that my thoughts come across…and if they don’t, please let me know, this is a growing trail of thought I’m working on, and part of blogging is building that.

So here’s my question to consider today:

Some people insist that anything less than full metaphysical literalism is theological compromise.  But is that how the Bible actually operates, or are we importing expectations the biblical authors never held?

Divine Council 101: Heiser, Walton, and What They Actually Agree On

For those newer to the discussion, here’s a quick overview:

• Michael Heiser championed the "Deuteronomy 32 worldview," in which the gods of the nations are real, rebellious elohim placed over the nations after Babel.
  
  
• John Walton agrees that the biblical authors believed in the divine council and the Deuteronomy 32 picture—but argues that some of what they described was God's accommodation to ancient cosmological beliefs. He doesn't deny the biblical worldview but hesitates to affirm the metaphysical reality behind every element.

My position is that Heiser is more correct, and for a very important reason.  An accommodation doesn’t tie into the work of the Messiah as this material does, directly.   A major thread running through Scripture is God's confrontation with (but always full sovereignty over) these rebellious powers.  That thread doesn’t feel like mere accommodation.  But I also think Walton's concern has weight.  We need to be cautious about systematizing realities the Bible itself leaves murky.

The Problem of Spiritual Taxonomy: Not an RPG Monster Manual

People often discover the divine council worldview and immediately want to name and categorize the elohim.  Who's in charge of what region? What about local gods?  What about gods who aren’t strictly territorial?  Who is Allah?  Why doesn’t the Bible bring up the gods of South America??

Those questions are understandable.  But they may miss the point.  Heiser was clear:  the Bible affirms a real spiritual world, but it doesn't give us a full taxonomy.  The biblical authors didn’t even know about that wider world that includes South America and crazy things like penguins.  We don’t get a divine directory.  We get story, symbol, and glimpses behind the curtain.  The stories aren’t “made up;” they’re a way to explain that reality.  Story, however, is inherently not a list of propositions.  

The result, I argue, is an affirmation of a particular reality.  But it's messy, like a good story should be–guiding us to meditation and reflection on the cosmos we’re living in rather than giving us the Monster Book of Monsters.

A Case Study: Asherah and Cross-Border Deities

We might look at an example of a specifically-named deity, such as the goddess Asherah.  She's mentioned explicitly in the Bible and she’s also been linked to counterparts counterparts and analogues in the ancient Near East, including Athirat (Ugarit), Ašertu (Hittite), Asratum (Akkadian), and possibly Qudshu (Egyptian).

That raises the question: if the gods are assigned to nations (ala Genesis 11 and Deut 32:8), how does a deity get cross-border worship?  Did one elohim reveal herself in multiple regions?  Or were people developing overlapping cultic ideas that rebellious spirits exploited?  

The point isn’t to solve that mystery.  Surprise:  the Bible doesn’t give us that much explicit detail.  I think we need to recognize that even within the biblical worldview, things aren't so clean.  Walton is right to press us on the metaphysics, but Heiser reminds us to stick with what the text affirms.  Both are aiming for faithfulness.

As Dr. Heiser constantly tried to get us to do, we need to get our minds into the head of the ancient person.  We need to think their thoughts after them.  And they simply were not looking at the whole thing from the perspective that we are doing today.  

From gods to Adam: Allegory Is Not a Downgrade

So how does this connect back to Adam?  I think a similar mistake happens when people panic over typological or allegorical readings.  “If Adam isn’t literal, then Christ isn’t either!”  But, as I said last time, that’s a false equation.

When Jesus references the creation account in Matthew 19, he doesn’t mention Adam by name.  Jesus’ point is about people coming together in marriage, not biology or genetics.  And when Paul talks about Adam in Romans 5, it’s deeply typological.  The comparison only works because Adam is a theological type.  The comparison would totally break down if it were about biology.

Let me be clear:  allegory doesn’t mean fiction.  Typology doesn’t mean myth.  The Bible uses symbolic language to point to things more real, not less.

Allegory, Accommodation, and the Reality Behind the Story

Allegory is not a means to accommodation.  Allegory is how the people of the biblical world (and the early church!) actually thought, which is a deep part of revelation and theology for us today.

To bring that out in specifics:  

• Accommodation is God meeting people where they are. 
  
  
• Allegory is a mode of story/history-telling that reveals deep theological meaning.
  
  
• Typology is a type of allegory–a divinely patterned echo through history.  

None of these are cop-outs.  They are how the Bible and salvation history present themselves.

Adam was the "first man" in whatever way that phrase needs to be true.  The worship of other gods was real in a way that required/led to divine confrontation, even if we can't precisely map the metaphysical geography like we record types of mushrooms or dog breeds.

The problem comes when we demand that the Bible conform to modern categories of precision.  And frankly, our precision doesn’t work very well with allegory and typology.  We leap to things like accommodation when that’s not even part of the picture.

What Does the Story Do?

So maybe the real issue isn’t whether Adam, Baal, or Asherah existed in the exact metaphysical form we imagine.  (Sorry Jonathan Cahn.)  The issue is:  what does the biblical story do with them?  How does it explain those sharp, jagged realities in a world where God is sovereign?

Sorry, there’s no metaphysical spreadsheet.  The Bible points to a reality deeper than what we can catalog.  When God confronts the gods of the nations, when Paul calls Christ the last Adam, when Jesus references creation in a conversation about divorce—they're not giving us the footnotes as proof.  They're proclaiming the pattern.

Typology, allegory, and accommodation don’t weaken Scripture’s truth—they’re how it tells the truth.  God steps into our chaos—whether it’s the garden, Babel, Egypt, or Rome—and declares, through image, symbol, and incarnation:  “I am the Lord, and there is no other.”

That’s not less real.  

That’s the most real thing there is.

Thanks for reading my ongoing theological processing. If you have thoughts or critiques, send them my way. This is a conversation in motion.

Note: the post image is from Ms Fr 247 f.3 The Creation, God Introducing Adam and Eve, from 'Antiquites Judaiques', c.1470-76, Jean Fouquet, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France

EDIT:  Next blog episode in the series can be found here:  What is 'Literal'? PaRDeS and the Art of Reading Scripture