Examining the Assumptions of Mosaic Creationism vis-a-vis the Assumptions of Evolutionary Creationism

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Mike_Gantt

Also, in describing creation, Moses was describing a set of supernatural events, just as the Gospel writers were describing supernatural events like Jesus walking on water, calming the storm, feeding the multitudes, making the blind to see, enabling the lame to walk, and so on.

However the description of the supernatural events is completely unlike the Gospel writers in terms of its history recording, because the Gospel writers all relied on multiple human eye-witness accounts to compile their histories. This is huge and essential in my mind. Saying they are both communicating histories is one thing. Saying they are the same kind of histories is fundamentally inaccurate.

@Mike_Gantt

However, the conflict between the Bible and history that science would ultimately generate (i.e. scientifically-generated history or SGH), had not yet arisen. That conflict has since arisen and is with us today; it underlies all creationist disagreements.

If it is a conflict it is between scientifically generated history and supernaturally generated history, though, not human generated history. Human history as we generally understand it (ignoring the history we infer from archaeology and the history of the natural world uncovered by science) is always recorded by human eye-witnesses or those who carefully interviewed eye-witnesses. There were no eye-witnesses to creation. Going along for a moment with the Moses wrote Genesis idea, whatever Moses had, it was communication from God, it wasn’t a human eye-witness account. The Bible records human-generated history. Not in Genesis 1-2 though.

@Mike_Gantt

First, because I don’t think of the earth as “young.” I think of it as ancient. Thousands of years is a long, long time. The use of the term relative term “young,” while valid, can be misleading.

If you were trying to make some kind of distinction you failed. If you think the earth is thousands of years old, you don’t think it’s an ancient earth and you are only muddying the waters. We all know “young earth” is relative. What is it relative to? It’s relative to the claim that the earth is 4.3 billion years old, not relative to everyone’s personal innate sense of youngness.

@Mike_Gantt

Mosaic Creationism has no scientific component.

Which in a real way makes it most relevant to those who are ignorant of modern science (i.e. Moses and his contemporaries and many centuries of pre-scientific people) and significantly less relevant to members of a scientific society who are not ignorant of modern science. At least YEC is trying to be relevant in a scientific society by acknowledging the scientific concerns of the culture and the role expertise and learning play in our granting of authority. Furthermore, any “appearance of age” argument is a scientific component, if you ask me. It is an attempt to give the why behind a (extra-biblical) scientific observation.

@Mike_Gantt

Defining the Testimony of Moses - The testimony of Moses is considered to be the Torah - that is, the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch (namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). For the Torah to be the testimony of Moses, it is not required that he have been the scribe of every word or even of any word. It is required, however, that whatever was written, if not written by him, was written at his direction and with his approval. In that sense, He is the author of the Torah. (The account of Moses’ death in Deut 34 is considered an acceptable exception.)

I personally don’t share this assumption and don’t think it squares with things scholars know about how orality and literacy worked in the ancient world. I know you aren’t a fan of Walton, but The Lost World of Scripture delves into the scholarship on these issues.

@Mike_Gantt

If scientific conclusions trump biblical conclusions, MC fails.

You don’t seem to be acknowledging your hemeneutics here. Your “biblical conclusion” is your interpretation. Have you ever justified your interpretation of Genesis 1 as literal history somewhere? I too think yom means normal day and Genesis 1 describes a normal week. Just pointing that out does not get you anywhere near “ergo, the earth is several thousand years old.” That requires explaining why reading Genesis 1 as a historical account is justified. Saying Moses wrote it doesn’t make it history. If Genesis was a collaborative effort of multiple authors and was redacted through time, that doesn’t make it “not history.” Authorship is not genre analysis.

@Mike_Gantt

If Jesus does not affirm the reliability of Moses’ writings, MC fails.

By this do you mean “affirm Moses was writing an objective historical account?” Jesus quotes David’s poems as reliable prophesy. That doesn’t mean we should insist that all of David’s writing be re-categorized as prophesy instead of poetry. I feel like there is some kind of unjustified logical leap when we go from “Jesus quoted Moses” to “therefore Genesis 1 is a reliable objective historical account.” Maybe you could spell out what you think the missing logical steps are, because I don’t see the conclusion following from the premise at all. [quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:1, topic:36410”]
For it cannot be that anyone is an assumption-less reader of the Bible.
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Totally agree. The act of interpretation is always an act of cultural contextualization. No one has access to some pure and abstracted de-contextualized truth.