Genesis 1 - Literal or not??

Actually, I am currently a Senior Software Engineer, both mainframe "big iron" business systems and real time processors.

HankD

 

"And the Lord said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.' Let us make Hewlitt and Packard, and let them beget the 11C, that it may be an help meet for him'"

-Pluvivs

 

..."But only if he is reversed, and in a Polish notation..."

 

Is Genesis 1 literal? Yes.
nuff said.
Jim

 

Does Genesis contain metaphors and similies?
-- Like yes. :D

 

Well, in that case, Eddy Edwards---its simple! You find out what the metaphors and similies mean and then you believe it literally!

Blackbird

 

My pastor says the KJV is the best
translation because the translators of
the KJV had a better grip on the
retorical divices used: like metaphor
and simile.

What about all those "and"s starting
sentences and verses in chapter 1 on Genesis?
That is the retorical device of the
polysendenton. Are polysendentons to be
taken literally?

 

It's good to be back. (Those who remember me know that I can't be far away when threads like this pop up...) :D

Gen 1 (thru 2:4) is theologically true, but not historically true or scientifically true. IMHO, the earliest candidates for historicity are the patriarchs.

The account does not come from the Enuma Elish, but was written under the same worldview sometime in the 400s BC. All of Genesis 12-50 is a historization of individual pre-Mosaic traditions designed to introduce and justify the conquest, and Gen 1-11 is a further introduction to the whole Genesis-Kings corpus as further explanation of Israel's relationship with the other nations, especially Babylon.

The version of Gen 1-2:4 that we have now is probably a "priestly" rewrite of Psalm 104 under the influence of Babylonian creation/flood cosmology as a preferred alternative to the portrait of God painted in the "royal Judean" Adam and Eve creation account, (which has its roots in Canaanite mythology that date to the time when Israel was worshipping Asherah alongside Yahweh).

Some elements of the Mesopotamian worldviews are revealed in the concepts for (1) cosmic chaos-water (tehom) that is overcome by (2) the wind of God, (3) the separation of higher and lower waters by the hard "firmament" (raqiya), that (4) contains the lights of the heavens, which imply a geocentric universe (either round or flat earth, but definitely the center of the universe).

Its literary structure includes a 3-realm creation, 3-populations, and day of rest. The separations of the second (heaven from earth) and third (sea from land) days are understandable as constituting increasing progression to the creation of man, but the author has set the creation of time/light as the primary distinction of creation, which segues into the long scheme of the periodization of history that runs down through the exile.

Did the writers of the account believe that they were writing actual history? Absolutely, because the Jewish leaders had a different concept of what constituted "history", as evidenced in their later Midrashim. History could be inherited from eyewitnesses, but it could also be "reconstructed" through an understanding of theological truth (like the Pythagoreans were doing with numbers during the same time period). Based on their understanding of the nature of Israel's God and the Creation around them, the Gen 1 account is the way that the world had to have been created, as far as they were concerned, and their election as Judea's priests gave them the divine right to make that decision.

As for those who claim that "If Genesis is not history, why pay attention to the rest of the book?", what if (a) Genesis is not literal history, but (b) God really did raise Jesus from the grave, who claimed to be the fulfillment of the OT? Wouldn't that demand a third option: that the book cannot be "thrown out", but neither can it be accepted as necessarily providing a divine oracle to historical and scientific truth? Rather, the problem lies with those who try to elevate the messenger (i.e. the Bible) to divine status?

 

So are you a follower of German Higher Criticism? It sounds like it. Most of those guys have been refuted as their theories rested on understandings before the disovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other more modern discoveries.

Gen 1 differs vastly from pagan myths of creation. There is one God, there is orderly creation, there are no mythic elements (imo), and their is Adam and Eve being created in the image of God, language different from pagan myths.

Either God inspired Gen 1 or He did not. I guess you don't think he did?

 

In what way did the Dead Sea Scrolls change any view of Gen 1?

The biggest differences between the Gen 1 account and all the other pagan accounts are twofold: (1) the concern with understanding Creation as the act of a single God, rather than the product of struggle between gods in a pantheon, and (2) a concern with the unity and uniformity of history, and how it ties in with the present day. Those differences stem from the uniqueness of the Jewish theology and not from an inherent higher content of objective truth.

In other words, if you take any of the major pagan creation/flood myths, remove all conflict between gods and change them to acts from a single God, and add specific dates to the events that tie it into the present day, that account would look very much like our Gen 1 account.

Also, do the "deep" and the "firmament" (not to mention the serpent and the trees of life and knowledge) not count as mythic elements?

Of course he did! (Depending on the definition of inspired, of course.)

He also inspired the parables, which are not historically or scientifically true.

Gen 1 is God's way of telling us our place in His Creation. But if we want to know the history and mechanism of our Creation, we have to turn to [BLAST SHIELDS UP] hominid research. [\BLAST SHIELDS UP]

 

BWSmith, thanks for our reply.

Much of the theories of how the OT was written, including Gen., were based on theories from historians and archeologists in the 18th and 19th centuries who did not believe that the OT has any divine direction. One of the theories rested on the use of different names for God in Gen. and proposed that this showed at least 2 sets of documents for Gen. They were assuming that men just wrote this stuff down after oral stories being passed on, and that later people put this stuff together. Below is part of a paper I wrote on this issue for a seminary course(I did get an A on it) last year:

 

That's a lot of changes to make them similar! That to me is like saying if you take some sugar and chocolate and cook it, it's just like cake except you leave out the eggs and flour and butter. After all, there are only so many ways one can come up with how the world started, so there are bound to be similarities -- a deity or deities, water, creating man, etc. -- these similarities do not make Gen. 1 a myth. Especially when it is told in such a different fashion from the pagan myths.

Not at all. This is not mythic but literal. I believe that Satan either inhabited a serpent or spoke through one, and that the trees were really there. The way God gives the info in Gen 1 is ver straightforward. He tells us that the serpent was craftier "than any other beast of the field," showing that the serpent was just another creature, not some special mythical creature. I realize it seems odd to people now to imagine a serpent speaking, but there are lots of things in the Bible that seem odd or hard to imagine, such as Balaam's donkey speaking, a pre-incarnate Jesus coming down to visit Abraham and sitting with him in the tent, two angels going to Sodom to rescue Lot, Lot's wife turning to salt (Jesus referred to this as though it were a literal event), Jonah swallowed by the whale (also referred to by Jesus), and God wrestling with Jacob. These are presented as literal events and I believe them as such.

 

Or rather, that the OT has a substantial human component that can be understood in human terms.

It doesn't rest on divine names or doublets. Those are easier-to-understand symptoms of the larger problem of stylistic shifts. The modern view of Astruc's clue is that the divine name scheme of Elohim-El Shaddai-Yahweh matters only to P, but don't matter much to the older layers.

While P is separable from JED on a stylistic basis, the older layers are nowadays considered too interwoven for any reconstruction to occur, so "P" and "non-P" is a better description for what used to be known as "P" and "JED".

Again, divine names alone are not the primary justification for composite authorship. If divine names in the Koran accompanied narrative doublets and abrupt shifts in style and emphasis, then such a division might be warranted.

The suggestion that the DH and its derivatives rise and fall on the divine name criterion is an attempt to reduce the theories to a straw man.

 

Well, obviously I could not post my whole paper and address all the issues. I picked the divine names argument just as a sample because I cannot post my whole paper here.

There is no evidence for P or J or any of the others. My paper also addresses the P, Q, J document theories as well. These were merely theories about how the Bible was written, coming from men who did not believe in a divinely inspired Bible.

Of course, the footnotes do not come out when pasted here. I have 18 pages on this. Doing this paper required a lot of work but I was so glad I had to do it because it showed me the puffs of air behind the theories that originally sounded so erudite.

 

Sure there is. The conflation of the two flood accounts is the most obvious example.

The 2 Floods

Stated in positive form, it was based on clues in the text itself that indicated a specific historical context for the author and original audience.

 

BWSmith, there is no documentary evidence for P, J, Q, etc. at all. That is what I meant. They are mere theories born in the minds of those who, for the most part, rejected the supernatural and who rejected the divine inspiration of scripture as God's word. More from my paper:

It goes on and on, until the theories split into more and more hypothetical documents ad infinitum.

 

These theories did not come out of the blue, but a fertile soil had been prepared for them by earlier philosophers who rejected the Bible's divine inspiration and authority. To wit:

Not one shred of P, J, Q, etc exist and they will never be found. When I first heard of these, I was a brand new beleiver in a church that taught this stuff (a So. Baptist church that has now left the So. Baptist fold -- but I left before that even happened). I kept wondering why we were talking about the Q document instead of the Bible but didn't know any better then. But it sure hit me wrong. Finally, due to being in a good, Bible-believing church and going to seminary, I was able to uncover the source of the Q hypothesis and its flimsy claims. These are men's theories built on shifting sand. In fact, the sand has shifted as these theories have been refuted although they are still taught (in "liberal" seminaries and secular schools).

 

Does your paper cover the modern modifications to the DH by scholars like Van Seters or Blenkensopp?

Also, does the documentary evidence from the two David and Goliath stories count as evidence suggesting a similar process for the Pentateuch?

The 2 David and Goliath Accounts

 

Answer to #1: No, it does not. Of course, modifications to false theories with no evidence still does not give them any substance.

#2: Will try to look at link. I have not studied this and would probably want to look at several sources to answer the question, something I do not have time for now. I have a writing assignment due Oct. 1st that involves me reading several books, 3 out of town speaking engagements, and will be going on a badly needed mini-vacation next week. Nevertheless, thanks for the link.

I will also say this: any theory that tries to demote the Bible as merely another set of documents by man is false. I was saved out of astrology, the New Age, and the occult by reading the Bible when I hated Christianity and did not even want to be a Christian(after a process God started several months earlier that involved his intervention)! So far, nothing and no one has been able to show the Bible is not the word of God.

 

"Finally, due to being in a good, Bible-believing church and going to seminary, I was able to uncover the source of the Q hypothesis and its flimsy claims. These are men's theories built on shifting sand. In fact, the sand has shifted as these theories have been refuted although they are still taught (in "liberal" seminaries and secular schools)."

"Q" is new testament! I think you're referring to "E" (Elohist - documentary hypothesis). In what ways have both of these been refuted?