There is nothing fantastic about a person named Eve living 6000+ years ago.
Nor is the idea that the universe we can see not being the totality of reality all that fantastic since many atheist scientists have suggested the same thing.
The idea of non-human beings capable of interacting with people is one you will find in every culture and period on the planet, which is taken even more seriously now we know how vast the universe is. And people claim communication with such beings all the time. No… not so fantastic.
But a golem of bone created by necromancy? Considerably more fantastic.
Talking animals? Definitely more fantastic.
magical fruit giving people life or knowledge? Total fantasy.
The vast vast majority of people on the planet would definitely treat stories with things like these as something fabricated for the sole purpose of entertainment.
Modern standards? Are you talking about the same period of history in which I live? …one saturated with tales of aliens, supernatural beings, and other worlds much more than any other time period in our history? No I think you must be talking about some kind of “modern fantasy” like an alternate history where most people in the world are Vinnie clones believing according to what you dictate.
No… this is just the typical ideological rhetoric I often heard from people which says that their decisions on what to believe is some kind of default and everybody has to believe that unless they can prove something else to be the case. Pure nonsense which is also quite dishonest.
Since “Modern” Christians haven’t been around for 2,000 years this doesn’t make sense. Did you mean all Christians, starting with Peter, James, and John, have been changing the OT for 2,000 years?
Yes, people existed and probably had names 6000+ years ago. Your dating is certainly not arbitrary and underscores how deep the absurdity of the Garden story and a literal Old Testament is in the mind of modern believers. Anatomically modern humans go back significantly further than archbishop Ussher’s calculations using genealogies in the Old Testament under the assumption they are accurate and complete. This practice assumes the historicity of the garden story to begin with. Once you dispense with that, you should also dispense with the silly date of 6,000 years ago.
No one is suggesting otherwise but many of the atheist scientists have suggested this because the implication of a beginning suggested a Beginner.
What can I say though, sure, lots of people believe in a spiritual realm and communication with God. Nothing necessarily fantastic about that but it depends on the person and specific beliefs. Do you believe God is crying when it rains or angry when it thunders? Unless you think primitive beliefs in the tree, sea, sun, sky, rock and water gods are intellectually on par with monotheistic beliefs? I don’t dispute the spirituality behind the belief but the intellectually framing of many experiences are quite fantastical.
All nonsense.
The number of people who believe in these things, the saturation of which you have only asserted, could be attributed to the ease at which information is transmitted nowadays, or simply population growth. But I would suggest the statistics would show that education level reduces a person’s propensity to believe in nonsense. That is not to say its a cure and can’t produce its own fantasy.
Nonsense is nonsense, whether it is from a fellow Christian about talking snakes and magic fruit in an idyllic garden, a young earth creationist talking about evolution and radiometric dating or a flat farther going on about the conspiracies of NASA. A literal Genesis is nonsense. Modern science makes it so. All mistaken beliefs are not equal. Trying to find a historical core in the garden story is like looking for one in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The genre is creation myth. It can still be inspired. Treat it accordingly.
Yes. Poor phrasing on my part. Modern and ancient Christians have been doing this since the birth of Christianity. I don’t have any writings of James, Peter and John to assess them. I can only assess those authors we have writings from.
14 Then Joseph[h] got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
Gotta love Matthew’s treatment of Hosea 11:1. Is this a “pattern” or a prediction? “This was to fulfill”… Matthew would be laughed out of seminary for this exegesis. There are plenty of examples where Jesus is read into things he shouldn’t have been, not to mention the caricature of Jews and the Law.
The only thing more absurd is the mindlessly black and white claim that just because a fanciful story is told about someone that the person didn’t exist and all things said about them have no basis in reality.
Huh? There was no mention of the origin of anatomically modern homo sapiens in what I said. Ok… I can play that sort of stupid game too.
Your belief in prince charming and fairies that make glass slippers with magic is very amusing.
Once you dispense with fairies making glass slippers with magic then, you should also dispense with your obsession with Cinderella’s missing glass slipper.
Or… we could both stick to things actually said instead of inserting things convenient for a such an overblown personal soapbox, leaving these ludicrous anti-Ussher and anti-Rodger&Hammerstein weaponry out of it to engage in a more rational discussion.
As long as you are willing to bow to the dictates of rationality, you can add intellectual adjustments and justifications for just about any belief system, and thus the labeling of some as more primitive than others is not reasonably justified. All subjective beliefs whether concerning fairies, animism, UFOs, psychics, shamanism, ghosts, or healing with crystals are on par with the equally subjective monotheistic theological claims. There is no objective evidence for any of it and thus no reasonable basis for expecting other people to agree with such beliefs. …but to think that you can live your life purely according to the dictates of objective observation alone is the runaway massive delusion of modern times.
Nothing is more nonsensical that this claim.
That might be true of people with just enough education to inflate their delusions of knowing everything. But higher education tends expand ones awareness of just how much is not known or understood and thus decreasing the likelihood of dismissing the beliefs of others as just nonsense.
Incorrect. Just because you cannot get any sense out of a statement in the language of Ongota doesn’t mean the statement doesn’t make any sense to anybody. Your ability to get meaning out things is not the limit of sensibility.
No it is not. Even if it not meaningful to me, that doesn’t make it meaningless to anyone else. You go too far. And it is not this black and white choice between literal and nothing but a vague metaphor. There are all manners of gradation between these extremes.
To be sure, I think that an understanding of Genesis which is more connected and true to reality as we experience it, is generally going to be more meaningful to more people. And I certainly have a tendency to seek the greatest meaning in these texts. But that doesn’t mean a different understanding of the text is simply nonsense. An understanding of the text contrary to the findings of science will certainly detract from its meaning for me, but so does a dismissal of the stories as purely fictional, unless there are good reasons for doing so (like in the case of Job and 50% in the case of Jonah).
No it certainly does not. Modern science is not the source, limit, or definition of meaningfulness. The most you can say is that modern science, with its written procedures giving the same result no matter what you want or believe, gives the basis for a reasonable expectation that others should agree with its findings. And thus going against those findings is not reasonable. But to say that it is not even meaningful is just as blind and willfully ignorant.
I’m not sure what you are saying. What are you referring to as “firmament?” Are you referring to the Hebrew word rāqîaʿ, translated in the KJV as “firmament?” If so, how do you define that? Are you assuming that the Hebrews and Paul believed the same cosmology as their ancient pagan neighbors?
In other non KJV English translations, this same word is translated (by Hebrew scholars) as: “Atmosphere and space”; vault; expanse: a space, etc.
Was Paul interpreting Genesis literally here? I’d love some EC Bible scholars to weigh in on this.
“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:3 ESV (
To this verse, we need to add a few more verses from Paul that mention what seems to be an historical Adam and Eve: 1 Corinthians 11:8, 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 1 Timothy 2:13–14).
In context, we must remember that Paul was well educated in the Jewish scriptures before he became a believer in Jesus (See Acts 22:3 among other verses). So he does not write from a position of ignorance about Jewish understandings of the Torah.
It seems that there are four ways (at least) for Bible believers to answer the question of how Paul interpreted Genesis. Of course, skeptics and others can also weigh in and have eagerly jumped in, and we can easily predict what those folks will say, but the questioner specified “EC Bible scholars.” So you aren’t asking for my take on it, but I will take the opportunity anyway.
A. If Paul was interpreting Genesis literally (as history), and he was correct in doing so, then Eve and the serpent were real and the account is of an event that really took place in history.
B. If Paul was interpreting Genesis literally, and he was incorrect in doing so, then Paul was in error, and Eve and the serpent may not have been real.
C. If Paul was not interpreting Genesis literally, but he wanted his readers to believe that Eve and the serpent were real, then he was intentionally deceiving his readers.
D. If Paul was not interpreting Genesis literally, and did not want or expect his readers to believe that Eve and the serpent were real, then we should not interpret Genesis literally either. He was just using that story/myth as an illustration.
So let’s look at these four options:
Option A—Well, all is good with the Bible and with Paul. But not for BioLogos, because for them Genesis 1 is not history. For Biologos, Genesis must become history later on, about Genesis 12.
Option B—If Paul was in error, then the Bible is not reliable, so is there any reason to believe any of it is true? So I would think that BioLogos would not be too good with this option, except that they don’t necessarily believe the Bible is inerrant. The Biologos “What We Believe” states:
“We believe the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. By the Holy Spirit it is the “living and active” means through which God speaks to the church today, bearing witness to God’s Son, Jesus, as the divine Logos, or Word of God.”
Note that this statement does not say “inerrant.” So the Bible could contain error, but yet it is inspired and authoritative. But hopefully not much of it is in error, and hopefully EC Bible scholars can tell us where that is. But let’s be honest; at that point it’s anyone’s guess. I’ll keep what I like, and you keep what you like, and we will be talking past each other. BioLogos keeps the resurrection, but other church folks don’t.
I have real difficulty understanding how the Bible can be trustworthy, but not inerrant. That creates cognitive dissonance for me. But maybe not for some EC folks. But now we will need some “EC Bible scholars” to explain that one too—inerrant but trustworthy—Paul was simply using the story/myth in Genesis 2 as an illustration.
Option C—If Paul was deceiving his readers, how disgusting and disingenuous would that be? He doesn’t want his readers to be deceived, but he is intentionally deceiving them in the illustration he uses. Can Bible believers agree to scrap this option?
Option D—Option A and C are out of consideration for EC scholars, and for many but maybe not all, Option B is out as well. So now we are down to Option D, that Paul was using the Genesis 2 story/myth only as an illustration, and we would assume that Paul’s original readers would easily understand this, (just as John Walton states that the original readers of Genesis 1 would immediately understand that it was only about the cosmic temple inauguration.) But is that a reasonable assumption? I think not for the following reasons:
• Although some of the believers in the Corinthian church were undoubtedly Jewish and may have had some previous teaching in the Torah, many were not. Would all understand that Genesis was simply myth? Likely not.
• Paul speaks against teaching from myths (1 Timothy 1:3-5; 2 Timothy 4:3-5; Titus 1:13-15.)
• And then EC scholars need to explain 1 Corinthians 11:8, 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, and 1 Timothy 2:13–14 from Paul as well as other NT passages that treat Genesis as history.
I’m sure some EC oriented scholars have explained all of these passages and addressed the theological implications—you can read these in other part of the BL site. But we can be sure that as explanation piles on explanation, the whole thing turns into a serious tangle that raises more questions than it answers.
So I would recommend that you forego EC scholarship, and embrace option A.
My personal journey in brief—As I grew up 55 to 60 years ago, I was taught evolutionary theory. But as I realized that almost everything I was taught about evolution was false, by the time I reached college age, I started looking into these issues for myself. I returned to biblical creation. When I read old earth creation literature about 15 years ago, that was enough for me to abandon that position as well. So don’t abandon the evidence from science, but put the Bible first. If you interpret the Bible using consensus science, you will be in trouble because the consensus keeps changing. So start with scripture.
No position has all the answers wrapped up neatly. But young earth creationism does as well and even better than the others. And as for science being self correcting—not so much, particularly when there is so much at stake for so many in academia when abandoning consensus science. Check out some young earth creation websites (which Wikipedia mendaciously labels as “pseudo science”) and make up your mind for yourself. You don’t have to “check your brain at the door to science” while believing that Genesis is history. Nor do you have to “check your brain at the door” to biblical theology.
Your options A and B are already on shaky ground (when you assume that ‘literally’ can only mean what you mean by it). But at least you still insert conditionals there to allow for some fleeting humility to your position at least that far.
But then your option C makes a subtle but significant switch. Suddenly there Paul is no longer allowed to be speaking/thinking anything apart from your position lest he be found an intentional deceiver.
You are smuggling in an assumption there which is being kept from the light: that the modern concern for scientific historicity above all else is the default starting point for all biblical hermeneutic except maybe a few odd parables or visions - and only those explicitly labeled as such. You ask others to uncritically accept that your ways of understanding scripture be smuggled in among the things considered infallible. But what ends up happening is that the foundation you so badly want to see strengthened is instead corrupted with demonstrably false assumptions which everyone else not committed to your tribe can easily see. So when you insist with regard to scriptures that it must essentially be: “my way or the highway” … many honest people are then compelled to see what the highway has to offer. Because they can see that your way leads to places that are contradictory. And the irony of it all is that it was already not working within scriptures themselves. You want Jesus and Paul to be confined to your small camp. But it turns out that prophetic, apostolic, much less messianic wisdom simply does not recognize such confinement. There is a wider world of truth and reality out there for you and all of us to explore. And what a delight to discover that scriptures too - already inhabit and describe that human world quite well in its own larger terms, when we remove more of the flimsy shackles that attempt to confine the scriptural teachings to one partisan camp.
The Hebrews believed in a dome over the earth. They believed that inside that dome was lights fixed inside it. They also believed that the sun was small and moved around the earth. The word means hammered out. Like metal beaten thin.
People often mention, well Jesus mentioned this or that person and so he must have believed in them historically. But that’s simply not true. Even to this day people routinely refer to fictional things as real when making comparisons or making points. Such as “ he’s as strong as Hercules “, and ect…
We can tell Jesus did this also because he mentions Jonah inside a big fish for three days. However, they would have been completely aware thst the story of Jonah was fiction. It was satire. Jonah was a real man and a real prophet and he was picked to be a character in a fictional story. Much like the story, “‘Abraham Lincoln the Vampire Slayer”‘or all the ways Houdini has been used in lovecraftian stories or the podcast, “Seven Daughter”. There is even a older film called “‘Hercules versus Sampson”. So this style of historical fictions and “ the man, the myth and the legend” is very old, not new and has been around for a long time.
So Jesus would have known that the story of Jonah was clearly a historical fiction with a heavy satire streak. Yet he still referenced Jonah and the big fish. Jesus heavily used parables and other non literal ways of teasing out a story full of wisdom.
edited in *
This morning when I went to listen to the latest episode of Tim Mackie’s The Bible Project is about this subject of ancient cosmology and biblical interpretation. It seems their next series is on genesis 1-2 at least. Not the science and religion debate, but about what it meant to ancient Hebrews and possibly Mesopotamians as a whole.
I’m not a Bible scholar, but this seems quite similar to the raqia issue that came up. If Genesis 1 uses words and descriptions that fit the common cultural understanding of a physical barrier between heavenly and earthly oceans, does that mean we have to read it as endorsing that view? Does a reference to Eve force us to take Paul as reading the Eden story historically just like a reference to raqia forces us to take Genesis as endorsing ANE cosmology?
To some degree, I can see how it’s an uphill battle to say otherwise. If Genesis or Paul wanted to convey something else, why use language that would be understood according to their cultural understanding? Of course we can see an indistinct atmosphere in raqia or indistinct womanhood in Eve, but would they? It’s hard to argue that a biblical writer knew better, but wrote in a way that was bound to be misunderstood.
But I think it’s possible to say that whether or not the biblical author held a certain view, they didn’t teach it. Paul refers to Eve matter-of-factly in 2 Cor. 11, yet in 1 Tim. 2:15 he matter-of-factly moves from Eve to women in general (“Yet she [the woman he just was talking about, Eve] will be saved through childbearing, provided they [women?] continue…”). And in speaking of Adam, Paul seems more concerned about whether we’re in Adam, following the pattern of Adam, than whether we descend from him. Paul didn’t speak against a literal understanding, but he also didn’t focus on it. Whether he saw the characters as literal or not, he was more interested in how these characters reflect us than how they are genealogically connected to us.
That argument cuts both ways, since in the same breath Paul speaks against teaching from genealogies (I’d add Titus 3:9 to the list). We’re all agreed there are genealogies in Scripture. Maybe Paul is not stating that we have to rip the myths (and parables?) and genealogies from our Bibles.
Consider how an English Bible translation may be trustworthy, but not inerrant. Or a spouse. Or a pastor. It’s a distinction we deal with all the time, since we only have direct access to sources that are at best trustworthy but not inerrant – and even those sources have to pass through our fallible faculties.
That shouldn’t lead to thinking we just get to pick which of our spouse’s statements we like and dismiss the rest as false. Even with our limits and the limits of our sources, we can practice better discernment than that!
Yes, you cannot live life purely by it. Well you could but it would suck in my opinion. However, objective observations do rule out or render suspect/unlikely many of the nonsensical things you listed above. The Garden story is one. But I agree, notions like the Trinity are just as indefensible as healing with crystals. Maybe even more so since the doctrine of the Trinity appears to violate the Law of non-contradiction.
You are confusing something being intellectual nonsense with getting or not getting meaning out of it. Nonsense also means foolish and I think the context should have been obvious. You can get tremendous meaning out of intellectually foolish beliefs. Many people do find a literal garden story to be very meaningful. It doesn’t change the fact that a literal garden story is nonsense on the par with belief in a flat earth.
You are interpreting nonsense as indicating people can’t find meaning in it. That is not at all what I meant. Seeking a historical core to the Garden story is silly. It is a mythological narrative. Seeking a historical core to some of the Gospel stories about Jesus is not silly. They are not creation myths. Science has rendered a literal reading of Genesis as intellectually bankrupt. Trying to find a historical core in such a story is like trying to find Cinderella’s slipper. The proper question for Christians who find this story in their divinely accomodated sacred scripture is what meaning can we glean from it? But if you want to go after Cinderella’s slipper, happy hunting!
And to all that I say…, nonsense! Life and the world are full of the unlikely. In the end this is cultural imperialism and plain blind self-important arrogance – the ugly American and entitled European white man all over again. Your understanding is not the measure of intelligence and your experiences are not the measure of reality – any more than mine are.
You are confusing your understanding with intelligence and your experience with the totality of reality. And I see as much foolishness in that as I see in the creationists.
Even if a literal garden story were completely fictional, as a writer of science fiction I take this equating of fiction with nonsense as offensive. You remind me of the character in the movie “Ink” who says storytellers are just liars. Literature is also an intellectual pursuit and fictional stories are not just nonsense. They are an exploration of the many many aspect of life which are not visible, measurable, or even definable. I refute the naturalist equation of the measurable with reality itself.
Your decisions about what to think about is not a measure of what is worth thinking about. Mythological does not equal fictional. Myth has all the character of a story told by oral tradition from before the specialization of human activities into such things as science, law, philosophy, history, and entertainment. Many do have an historical core to them. Just because we cannot prove what the actual events at the origin of some stories are, doesn’t mean they are pure fiction or that there are no such events.
AND that includes beliefs that such things do not exist, because there is no proof of that either. It is demonstrable that people can know things which are not provable in any way. Thus insisting that we equate reality with what is measurable and provable is nearly as unrealistic as it is to insist on things contrary to what can established by science.
Wow, we can’t even talk to each other. You are arguing the meaning of words–see 2 Timothy 2:14. Let’s try the meaning of literal, the meaning that I am “smuggling” in. How about taking what I say at face value–“as history.” That should be about as clear as it can be. Or how about the dictionary: “taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory.” I’ll stick with that.
“Shaky ground,” “subtle switch,” “smuggling,” “kept from the light,” “false assumptions,” “tribe,” “small camp,” “my way or the highway,” “partisan,” ad naseum.
You seem to have your knickers in a knot. Why not discuss ideas instead of excelling at labeling and pigeonholing?
I think you have almost made my argument for me. You are right–the English Bible is trustworthy but not inerrant. No one (almost except for some KJV only folks) would argue that. Inerrancy applies only to the original manuscripts.
And a pastor and my spouse and myself are all humans and can be trustworthy in general but sometimes in error. Even Paul commends the Bereans for checking out what he preached with the scriptures–because Paul’s preaching needed to be checked against scripture. Why? Because Paul could be in error, but scripture is not.
So the difference is: Paul wrote scripture when the Holy Spirit was guiding and superintending him. When that occurs, it becomes God’s Word, not just Paul’s. And God does not communicate error to us.
So where do you know when the scripture is in error and when it is not? And what about when someone draws a different line than you do? Why, for example, does BioLogos conclude that the Resurrection happened, but not the direct creation of Adam and Eve? The Jesus Seminar participants, for example, wanted to determine which words in the gospels attributed to Jesus were actually spoken by him. How did they decide? By voting with different colored marbles. A group decision! How do you decide what in scripture is error and what is not?
Of course. And that’s why it’s a red herring. We’re agreed that what we have isn’t inerrant. Even if we did have something without error, our understanding of it wouldn’t be. What we have is something less than perfect, but hopefully that won’t lead us to approach Scripture with a red pen. Our job isn’t to mark it.
For one, when Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1:16 that what he wrote under inspiration in 1:14–15 was in error, I believe him. And that helps me not to expect inspiration to reveal inconsequential details to a writer that they don’t already know. It’s not about looking for errors, but focusing on the purpose Scripture was given to us for.
Good luck with all that. Everybody else has to work to reach accurate comprehension - even comprehension of each other after we already share substantial common culture and times. You don’t have any “plain meaning” of scripture. What you have is an understanding filtered through substantial amounts of common modern baggage and a fair dose of your own tribal baggage and likely even personal baggage too. That doesn’t make all of your understandings wrong. But it does make them yours. Some we will share in common and some not. That’s why we are obliged to both talk and listen.
Wow. Inerrancy has been taught by orthodox Christians including the church fathers from Clement of Rome and Augustine and in many of the creedal statements. And now, per Marshall, inerrancy is “a red herring.” Well, you may not believe in biblical inerrancy, but it seems a step too far to call what has been believed and taught for millennia as a “red herring.”
Now what did Paul say in 1 Corinthians chapter 1?
13 “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.)”
What does Paul say here that isn’t true? Nothing. Unless you say that if you take more than one sentence to complete a thought, you are wrong.
I think the problem with inerrancy is how it is defined. And those definitions have morphed and have so much cultural baggage as to make it functionally meaningless. Even the Chicago Statement, which tried to back evangelicals in a corner on the subject, has so much wiggle room as allow a wide spectrum of views to affirm it.
In those verses, while benign, it sounds like Paul gives himself an out with his “I don’t remember” phrase make it sound like a Congressional hearing.
