OT scriptures, starting from the Torah, form a book of covenant, rather than a book of history. The focus of the writing seems to be in the events and teachings that were most relevant for the covenant. What was written was described from that viewpoint, so the purpose was never to write such descriptive reports that we would call neutral or comprehensive history writing.
Exactly. So the detailed specifics about judges, how they ruled, Exodus events, etc. etc. are very likely to be fictionalized stories written for the explication of religion and morality.
Depends on what you mean by ‘fictionalized’. I assume that in most cases, what is told is based on something that happened in history. The historical events may be told in a one-sided, purposeful way to stress the theological teaching. There may be hyperbolic expressions and the events are interpreted through the ancient worldview, but that does not make the stories ‘fiction’. The texts are just not written to fit to the modern worldview or our genres of literature.
This is just my approach to the OT scriptures, you may have other assumptions. I am aware of my assumption and how it may affect my interpretations. I hope that you are also aware of how your assumptions affect your interpretations. We have all our assumptions and they do affect our interpretations - nobody can read the scriptures without that bias.
There is also the matter of culturally accepted ways to speak and tell. I have been reading translations of ancient Egyptian stories and the way how people express matters is different than our ‘normal’ modern ways. Some ancient stories seem to be just propaganda (‘alternate truths’ = lies with a purpose) but others reflect the way how people interpreted their observations through their ancient worldview.
I noticed that after reading too many ancient stories in a short time, I needed to reorientate my thinking and writing to follow the cultural ways of this Forum. If the ancients told stories in a different way, that does not necessarily mean that they intended to tell fictional stories.
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Why would you suppose this? You have already claimed that much history was eliminated, and everything connected to it, by ignoring the realities of Egyptian hegemony?
An example of “something that happened in history” would be Sargon II’s story of Sargon I being hidden in a basket. That something would be later translated from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and Moses would be substituted.
That claim is based on the assumption that the story of Sargon was told to the person who told the story of Moses and that the story of Sargon was so impressive that the person telling the story of Moses wanted to ‘copy-paste’ it into the story of Moses.
It also assumes that all stories with an ‘Sargon-like’ element are borrowed from the ‘Sargon story’.
A general comment is that you seem to have several assumptions behind your claim. I have not yet studied the story of Sargon, so I cannot give detailed comments about it now.
While reading about the ancient Egyptian stories, I stumbled to a story that resembled some parts of the story of Josef in Egypt (Genesis 41). It was told in the book ‘Egyptian mythology’ by Matt Clayton. The story was presented as happening to Imhotep, ‘the 27th Century Polymath’. The book gave the impression that the story described what happened during the reign of pharaoh Djeser, several centuries before the story of Josef. That was interesting information because it seemed to be a story that might have somehow affected the story of Josef. The book did not give much details, so I wanted to know more.
Glancing through the wikipedia article about Imhotep gave a completely different picture of the story. For all the relevant details, you can read the wikipedia text (with references). Imhotep seemed to be a real person but the few mentions from the century when he lived listed him just as an important administrator. After that, nothing was written about him during the next 1200 years. Thereafter, there seemed to start a cult that lifted Imhotep as a demigod. Stories about healings and inventions that Imhotep made started to accumulate. After contacts with the Greek culture, the Greek associated Imhotep with the god Asclepius. From the late period, somewhere between 300-30 BC, there comes a steele that includes the Josef-like story. Clearly, Imhotep did not affect the story of Josef but the story of Josef probably influenced the mythologized story of Imhotep.
The story of Imhotep shows that it is not enough to read claims about ancient persons and stories, there is a need to check at least the basic details behind the claims.
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Your position is no less built on assumptions!
You assume that Exodus was written BEFORE Sargon II (or even Sargon I). Or that Sargon II read Exodus and used it as the inspiration for a story about his ancestor, Sargon I.
The story of Samson and his magical hair assumes that it is a mere coincidence that the ancient motif of solar light artistically represented as the sun god’s hair…. with temporary blindness representing an eclipse of the sun. Thus rather than see the story as a Hebrew version of a solar god interpreted as a Heracles-like human, people literally think there was a man with magical hair … and that he killed thousands by bringing down an impossibly huge temple?
I am aware of my assumption and how it affects my interpretations. That makes it possible to be self-critical. I start with the assumption but after reading all the relevant details, I can estimate if the preliminary approach was the most credible one or if the data points to another explanation. I go where the data points.
I did not make any specific claims about the story of Sargon because I have not yet studied it. I just told an example of how the claims may give a false impression.
Your explanation about the story of Samson is quite wild speculation. It is based on many assumptions that do not sound credible.
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Which part of my Samson speculation do you reject?
- Do you not believe that later cultures either deified or humanized mythical figures as seen necessary?
- Do you not believe that the Sun’s rays was sometimes rendered as god’s hair?
- Do you BELIEVE that there was ever a human with magical hair?
Or is there some other element you are rejecting?
The assumption that the story of Samson is a cultural transfer from the sun worship to the Hebrew culture does not sound credible without more detailed justification.
The story of Samson does not have such elements that were typical to Egyptian stories about Ra or the other deities associated with sun. Samson or his hair are not pictured as sun-like.
Was there a man called Samson? I think that it is possible.
The story may include some hyperbolic expressions but that would not make the whole story fiction.
In addition, there is always the possibility that God interferes, if the assumption about an active God is true. If God is involved, even miraculous acts become possible. It does not mean that everything happened just as described but miraculous events cannot be judged to be false simply because they were miraculous.
The point of the hair in the story of Samson is not that the hair was magical. Uncut hair was a sign of a special covenant with God and the covenant was the reason why Samson got the incredible strength. What can be seen as special in the story is how badly Samson neglected the covenant and managed to live like he did for so long before losing the power.
From that viewpoint, the story can be seen as a lesson of how important it is to keep the commandments of God and not live like Samson did.
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From what I learned in grad school, Egypt ruled foreign entities as client states. So long as Egypt itself wasn’t bothered, those client states could squabble among themselves pretty freely. If a group refused to provide labor when ordered to do so that would have prompted a response, or if caravans had been disrupted, or if royal mines had been interfered with, it would have gotten notice, but squabbles involving a few thousand foreign subjects would have been ignored.
And by the time of the judges Egyptian control was gone.
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You think Judges started around 1130 BCE?
Google AI summarizes contrary viewpoints (which are easy to find if the timeline of the O.T. is fictionalized):
The timeline for the events of Judges spans roughly 350-400 years, from the death of Joshua around 1350 B.C. to the rise of King Saul around 1050 B.C.. This period is characterized by a cycle of Israelite disobedience, foreign oppression, and deliverance by judges. Key judges and events include Othniel (approx. 1350-1310 B.C.), Ehud (approx. 1310-1230 B.C.), Deborah and Barak (approx. 1235 B.C.), Gideon (approx. 1184-1144 B.C.), and Samson (approx. 1098-1078 B.C.).
I think it is easier to see a mosaic of events from different regions being telescoped into a fictional SEQUENCE …. if not outrightly invented from the get go (like the talking Donkey).
A fair summary.
Not quite. Catholicism doesn’t insist upon a literal Adam & Eve, and neither does Orthodoxy. On your latter question, here’s something I wrote a few years ago:
Nah. It’s impossible to explain how sin is physically (or genealogically) inherited from Adam. On the other hand, it’s easy to explain why every human who’s ever lived (with the exception of Jesus) has eventually chosen selfishness. Self-preservation is an evolutionary trait that is inherited, but we don’t call it “sin” among animals. Why is that?
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Excellent point being made here!
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Doesn’t insist? What is the purpose of infant baptism then for Catholics? To remove the stain of metaphorical original sin? To remove the stain of archetypal sin? Or to remove the stain of inherited evolutionary traits? The latter might be a greater miracle! The article below gives the view, I suppose, of most Catholics.
Though it’s hard to reconcile, at least polygensism has not been officially ruled out by the Church and another of Catholic theologians have gone that route recently. But while the largest Christian organization on Earth is fine with evolution, Adam and Eve are far more complicated. Catholics also are 100% adamant on God specially creating the soul for each person. Somehow we ave to tie in the first sin(s) with the first ensouled human or humans.
As Hans Madueme concluded in his review of Enn’s book on Adam:
I recognize the force of the mainstream evolutionary consensus, and I know that it raises tough questions for the viability of a historical Adam and the doctrine of the fall. But I am constrained by Scripture, tradition, and weighty theological considerations. I am a son of Adam. That is why I am a sinner. And it is why I need Christ.
That is where a lot of us find ourselves.
It is impossible to explain a lot of things in Christianity, especially things that go beyond the material realm. This is irrelevant. If we have revelation and authoritative Church teaching, we don’t need to be able to explain it. I honestly don’t think you could explain the trinity, or how Jesus could be 100% human and 100% divine, or how he walked on water or rose from the dead. I’m eager to be pleasantly surprised but Im not holding my breath. I am okay with there being tension between science and faith. I don’t have to know or be able to explain everything.
But I would say the biggest problem I think your view has it you treat everything from a material perspective. In my view, sin goes beyond just the material realm:
Barr: We have spiritual souls. One either has an immortal spiritual soul or one does not. There are not degrees of having one. Thus, the transition from creatures that did not have spiritual souls to those who did was necessarily a sudden one. One can imagine that on the physical and biological level there was a long slow process of speciation, and that in the fullness of time, when some proto-human creatures had attained a level where they were capable of receiving spiritual souls, i.e., the powers of reason and free will, God conferred them on one pair out of a population of thousands. Or, if polygenism is true, God could have conferred this gift on many or all of them. This gift would not have destroyed their animal nature but raised it to a higher level.
One can think of this as one of a series of such transformative supernatural gifts. First, with the first humans, there was the gift of rationality and freedom that made them spiritual beings. (And this gift is repeated with every human child who is conceived. For, remember, that according to Catholic teaching the spiritual soul does not come through biological reproduction but is conferred directly on each person by God.) Second, there is the gift of the supernatural life of grace conferred in baptism. And finally, there is the gift of glorification and the beatific vision that the blessed enjoy in heaven. None of these gifts destroys what preceded it, but raises it to a new level that it could not have attained naturally.
So I would question whether we should even expect a full understanding of the fall from physical considerations alone.
Yes, I have long tinkered with the notion of tying the fallen nature of humanity into evolution. It is neat and tidy in some ways but it doesn’t remove what is found in scripture, some important Church doctrines and it has the difficulty of viewing sin strictly as biological as many critics of a “Adam as archetype” have pointed out. Jesus saved us from inherited biological traits?
My answer? They lack souls and are not created in God’s image. But Barr probably gives a more cogent answer than me:
Some have also asked how lust and violence can be a consequence of the Fall if they are part of our animal inheritance and bred into us by evolution. The very question is premised on a basic misunderstanding of Catholic teaching. The sin of lust is not to be identified with the sexual instinct and sexual attraction, which are not in themselves morally evil and which we undoubtedly have in common with animals. Otherwise, animals would be guilty of the sin of lust. Nor is anger, which animals also exhibit, in itself morally evil. Rather, sin comes from the failure to subject these passions to the control of reason. “Concupiscence,” i.e., the inclination toward sin coming from inordinate desires, which the Church teaches to be the consequence of the Fall, is the disorder within each human being whereby the control of reason over these passions is weakened, so that the passions often control us, rather than we controlling them. So, it is quite consistent to say that the passions themselves had a biological, evolutionary origin, whereas their subjection to reason (like reason itself) was a gift from above, a gift partly lost through sin.
Vinnie
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So… am I correct in understanding you to fall under the category of “God-Guided Evolutionist”?
If you have a preferred label, share it and I’ll be happy to use it.
If you accept the possibility of a Pre-Adamite population that evolved PRIOR to God creating/choosing 2 humans to be divine “image bearers”…. doesn’t that resolve the problem for you?
To a significant extent but I think Jay has raised some difficulties against this view in some of his writings:
For me the question becomes, did just their offspring receive souls from God? We of course have the issue of bestiality for their children and does the offspring of Adam and Eve include all 7-8 billion people alive today?
I don’t pretend to know how much God supernaturally guided evolution or if He even needed to that much but I would accept the label of God guided or God involved evolution (which is redundant from my Thomist perspective). He fine-tuned the constants and set it all up from nothing and continues to uphold nature from nothing at every instant.
Vinnie
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No, I am talking about facts, such as the speed of light and the distance to other galaxies. I am talking about the observable ratios of isotopes in rocks, and the observable rate of decay of isotopes. I am talking about the facts of DNA sequences in genomes of different species. I am talking about the correlation of isotope ratios in rocks with fossil species, something I have never seen you explain. I am talking about whole hosts of observable facts.
Which of the above are made up?
We have pictures of Joseph Smith. Does this mean everything in the Mormon bible is true?
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These are objections are almost always from someone who hasn’t read G.A.E.
Computer simulations show that it would be expected that in the intrusion into the pre-Adamite population of 2 genomes (Adam & Eve or their proxies) would reach every human population (aided by land-based and ocean-based travelers losing their way) by the time of the birth of Jesus.
From Jay’s article:
William Lane Craig’s recent book, In Quest of the Historical Adam, places the first human couple about 750,000 years ago, while Joshua Swamidass’s Genealogical Adam & Eve attempts to locate them within the 6,000-year timeframe acceptable to Young Earth Creationists (YEC). Craig is within range of the origins of speech and symbolism, but otherwise his first pair is so removed from what we would recognize as “modern” humans that he resorts to special pleading and miraculous intervention – God gave Adam and Eve a supernatural leap forward in brain and language development to make them “human” with a soul. As noted in a Science magazine review, “biologists are likely to be highly skeptical of the idea that humanness is a binary condition that can be induced by a change in a single pair of ancestors.”
Swamidass’s solution is no better. By the time he locates the origin of sin, humanity already has invented agriculture, built temples, and established city-states that traded with one another and struggled for supremacy. Saying that humanity just prior to 4000 B.C. was somehow free from sin creates more problems than it solves.
Thoughts?
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