Maybe when the dust settles on the “Should anyone read Genesis 1-11 literally?”, folks will be interested and ready to take on the literal reading of
Matthew 27:
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
and
Mark 15:
38 The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
When reading the Bible we indeed need a good hermeneutical framework.
My own framework is based on three pillars:
We should let Scripture explain Scripture.
E.g. Psalm 8 and 104 are other creation accounts.
The Book of Creation improves our understanding of the Book that we call the Bible.
E.g. what biology and geology tell us, should change the way most people read Genesis 1-11.
We should try to figure out how the original audience would have understood the text. For us that is easier than for past generations (same with scientific knowledge).
E.g. now we have access to many ancient Near Eastern literary parallels.
I myself don’t think Genesis 1-11 is historical. (Although if new evidence emerges that there is a historical core to these stories, I would accept that. Such as a local flood or God selecting two early Homo Sapiens to serve as priests.) But I regard the theology it conveys as true.
For example, in the Mesopotamian flood myths the gods kill the humans because they become too noisy. But in the Bible’s flood story, God destroys humans because of their evil. That’s a very different theology.
ANE vs Biblical worldview
But what we see happening in Genesis 1-11 is something different: it starts by looking a lot like other ANE mythological literature, in that it uses that literary genre. But it ends up subverting the ANE worldview and revealing a radically different vision of God, creation, and mankind. Part of that radically different vision is the teaching that mankind is made in God’s image, and therefore has inherent dignity and worth. And therefore, because human beings have inherent dignity and worth, that means that human history is worth telling.
And so, very subtly, in the course of those eleven chapters, Genesis 1-11 takes the reader from that world of myth, and proceeds to “set the stage,” so to speak, for something that had never been done before: the telling of human history. Beginning in Genesis 12, we are ushered into that human history, namely the life of Abraham and his descendants, and from that point on, the Bible bears witness to the fact that the one Creator God has entered into a covenant with humanity within history. That history is played out on the stage that Genesis 1-11 has constructed regarding the nature of God, creation, and humanity itself.
Not really, they just proclaim God as the creator.
All the arguments are not about who, but how (and how long) the psalms are no help there.
there are great dangers in this. People claim that quoting scripture somehow ratifies the literal usage when often it is only using the meaning that does not rely on historical accuracy. Quoting Jonah’s time in the whale does not confirm that he actually sat there, only drawing the meaning from it.
Referring to the effect of the flood does not confirm the historical accuracy. But, people understand the meaning.
The Psalms mention everything God does in Genesis 1. Yet they don’t mention the seven days. So to me that suggests that for an ancient Israelite what happened on every single day wasn’t that important.
Exodus gives the seventh day as a rationale for the Sabbath. For Deuteronomy it is the Exodus. Both events are reminders that Yahweh brings order out of chaos. By resting on the Sabbath, we accept God’s rule.
But I get your point!
Yeah, thanks for pointing out that caveat.
Exactly! Everytime the flood is mentioned, the author tries to make clear God judges evil. So God will also judge us if we continue doing evil.
That reminds me of a question someone brought up in one OT class: assuming that Moses wrote the core of the Torah, and someone in the southern kingdom edited and organized it, and someone else under Hezekiah added to it and edited it, and then someone during the Exile put it in its final form (these being the presumed stages in that class), did the intended meaning by Moses remain the same for all the subsequent editors/redactors? If not, then what are the implications?
We never really answered the question.
The first time I encountered the Orthodox term – “Ancestral sin” – was kind of an “Aha!” moment; it fit so much cleanly with how the Garden story is treated throughout the rest of the scriptures. It suggests initial sin as opposed to sin of origin which lends itself to the notion that procreation itself is sinful.
delighted to read someone capable of abstraction of text and getting away from the self centred interpretation of the bible. The fascinating thing of a great myth - or perhaps one should call it “a philosophy of life” is that it gives you a worldview that is coherent and allows one to form a meaningful relationship with reality. the disaster of having lost this meaningful relationship is apparent in the current generation and its meaning crisis.
Considering that the story was read mainly to the illiterate the literal interpretation served them well as a child can understand the stories in a meaningful way to them. If we question the textual meaning with faith in God we have no problem to find agreement with modern scientific explanations and theories. However, if our faith is based on out self instead we are having a problem with sin, e.g. that no God has the authority over the meaning but that we have.
Would be interesting to see how you interpret the story of the fall. I look at is as a poetic description of puberty, the psychoanalysis of the conflict of the separation of the authority of the self from the authority of the parents, thus isolating ones self from the eternal chain of authority and becoming mortal / perishable. One can read this as the fathers warning not to touch the high voltage cable or one will die - or as a test of obedience and if you do not listen I will kill you. It might be an unconscious revelation of ones parenting style / attitude towards others. After all, it is your ability to define your “self” in the eternal, e.g. God, that makes you eternal or as I say
To live forever
is the art
to learn to live
in Jesus heart.
and for that the resurrection of Jesus does not take part in some ancient place in the middle east but in our heart so that he can live in us as we learn to live in him. Wanting to be an eternal self by being recognisable as a distinct unit from God should make one wonder by what feature one would want to be distinguishable from Jesus and why
I’m with you on that one. If someone tells me, “Remember, the tortoise beat the hare so be slow and steady, you will get there,” I don’t interpret this as them believing there was a literal race between a tortoise and a hare.
To take Genesis 2 literally you need to believe mankind began with golems of dust and bone created by necromancy.
To take Genesis 3 literally you need to believe in talking animals like Walt Disney’s “Robin Hood.”
To take Genesis 2-3 literally you need to believe in magical fruit that can give knowledge and/or eternal life.
Incorrect. It says nothing of the sort in Genesis 5. But to take Genesis 3 literally you need to believe that Eve is the mother of all living things.
Furthermore this disagrees with Genesis 4 which has the earth filled with people whom Cain is afraid will kill him if he wanders about.
Absolute nonsense. There are plenty of people who take Genesis 2 literally who are not male chauvinist. This reminds me of all the most ignorant things people have said like “to be a Democrat you have to be a communist” – completely willing to ignore all evidence and definitions of words to spout an bunch of prejudice. It is like the atheists who say to be a Christian one has to be genocidal. Get real!
Interestingly, a rabbi I knew insisted that it is only in taking Genesis 2 literally that one has a basis for not being a male chauvinist. He referenced this:
Yes, and it’s even better if you go behind Matthew Henry (who inserts “of a rib”) to Peter Lombard (12th century):
She was formed not from just any part of his body but from his side, so that it should be shown that she was created for the partnership of love, lest, if perhaps she had been made from his head, she should be perceived as set over man in domination; or if from his feet, as if subject to him in servitude. Therefore, since she was made neither to dominate, nor to serve the man, but as his partner, she had to be produced neither from his head, nor from his feet, but from his side, so that he would know that she was to be placed beside himself. (Sentences, book 2, distinction 18, chapter 2)
The metaphor works much better when stripped of the modern reduction to a rib.
Many theistic evolutionists believe that Jesus and Paul were speaking metaphorically about Genesis to accomodate their believers into accepting the Christian faith. I think Scott P. Buchanans blog is pretty interesting, but he seems a bit conflicted on the issue of rejecting most of the Old Testament but accepting the New Testament miracles.
Pleasure! I really enjoy their podcast. We need more scholars such as them who brigde the divide between academia and the general public.
Same! haha
Yes. Dr. Wellhausen also believed religions develop from very free and simple to more rigid and ritualistic. Combine that with the anti-semitism of his day (“Was the Documentary Hypothesis Tainted by Wellhausen’s Antisemitism?”), and the Priestly source has to be (post-)exilic.
Dr. Benjamin Kilchör has also made very good arguments why Deuteronomy is probably based on both the Covenant Code (in Exodus) and the Priestly laws (Leviticus-Numbers). For his work, see his academia page, “Benjamin Kilchör”.
I agree to a certain extent. Moses was the authority figure associated with the Torah (Acts 7:35-26). Although that does not mean he wrote every single thing in the Pentateuch of course. But perhaps that is what you are trying to say.
I have to disagree on this.
Dr. David Carr on Gen 5:1a
The term translated here as “book,” … generally refers to a text written on freestanding media, usually a scroll in the ancient Levant, but occasionally a tablet (Isa 30:8) or potsherd (e.g., Lachish 3:5, 9-11; 6:3-4, 14). As such, the label in Gen 5:1a implies that the material it introduces originated in a separate book, whether on a scroll or on other media, that was focused on Adam’s Toledot … , that is, his “descendants.” …
Though some have noted that the reference to a [book] at this locus need not refer to a separate document … , this chapter will gather data that Gen 5:1a does, in fact, refer to an earlier document. In doing so, it builds on a host of earlier studies positing such a “Toledot book” behind some or all of the Toledot labels spanning Genesis; see, e.g., Johann S. Vater … ; Gerhard Von Rad … ; Peter Weimar … .
David Carr, The Formation of Genesis 1-11: Biblical and Other Precursors (New York: Oxford, 2020), 85, 85n4.
Yes, and also the main human character, and beyond that, Moses’ name was the widely accepted label for the author. If the Pentateuch really did have a number of authors and editors, would anyone expect Jesus or Luke or Paul to list them all? That would only confuse. I don’t have strong views either way on whether Mark wrote Mark, but that doesn’t keep me from saying that “Mark says” such and such. It’s a normal shorthand. So when Paul says “Moses writes…” in Romans 10:5, I don’t take it as anything beyond using the understood way to refer to the writer.
If God can attribute our thoughts and feelings to our heart and kidneys (e.g. Jeremiah 17:10), Paul can attribute the Pentateuch to Moses. Using the understood label for the source of those things doesn’t need to be made into a stronger claim about the reality underneath. It’s not ruling out that we think with our brain or that the Pentateuch has multiple sources.
That imposes modern categories on ancient literature. They were citing Genesis as authoritative. We consider something authoritative if it has its facts correct; they considered something authoritative because it came from God. We want to know “Did it really happen?” but to ancient people the question was “Who is the source?”
This is especially true when the source is a creator-deity: something a creator deity spoke was considered as real as something you could see and touch (that’s a rather clumsy way of saying it but I can’t think of how to do it better).
This was shifting by the time of Paul but is still applicable.
Reading that brought to mind just how pervasive Wellhausen’s views were for so long.
I love the linguistic arguments, in part because that was how one of my professors argued that P (“if there was such a person”) was no later than Hezekiah at the absolute latest.
Without being able to read at least the pertinent chapter I can’t really assess the argument. From reviews I perused it seems to hinge on the word סֵ֔פֶר (sey-fare), “book” (though more accurately it refers to writing on a portable medium, e.g. scroll, tablet, etc.) and how it modifies the term תוֹלְד֧וֹת (tow-le-dote), “generations” (again, more accurately “orderly progression of [beginning with]”). This occurrence of the two together is unique, though, which is a point in his favor (though I would be happier if it said “from the book”).
