@Benjamin87 , this I can’t add value to this discussion from personal work on the question. But as a librarian, I find it hard to stop my compulsion to throw books at a question. Loren Haarsma wrote a book in the last few years that might be helpful (or add confusion), When Did Sin Begin? There is a BL podcast interview with Haarsma here: Loren Haarsma | Four Approaches to Original Sin
And a book review on it by @Jay313 linked from this discussion here CT book review: Four ways of harmonizing Genesis and evolution
These are all good questions. Have you reviewed Denis Lamoureux’ writings? He’s a PhD in both theology and evolutionary biology, as well as a doctorate in dentistry. He thinks that the entire Genesis account of creation is divine accommodation, with ancient science.
About 4 years ago, when I read about non-concordism, I felt a ton of relief.
However, of course, that leaves the question of what portions of the Bible are accurate. He does say none of the Bible is necessarily accurate, scientifically.
It sounds like you have a very good mind. I’d be interested in what you find out.
Hi,
Just to clarify my views: (1) Scripture features an ancient science throughout, (2) historicity begins roughly at Gen 12 with Abraham and continues through the rest of the Bible, especially with the historicity of Jesus Christ, his life, his miracles, and his bodily resurrection from the death, (3) Genesis 1-11 is a unique and complex literary genre with an ancient cosmogony, ancient historiography, parable-like stories, a few legendary elements (some real people in genealogies), and most importantly, Holy Spirit-inspired inerrant Spiritual Truths.
I think you are correct that most believe there is “a historic world altering event the Noahic covenant connects to,” but are all those who believe that correct?
How is a “local flood” WORLD altering? Hyperbolic language on your part? It only altered that locality. I doubt people on other continents or anywhere outside a few hundred miles cared very much or even heard of it. But we all know Genesis doesn’t describe a “this only affects 10% (I’m making up a number) of the world population” type flood even though that is what localizing the flood does. Unless you want to push the flood back many tens if not hundreds of thousands of years which makes any claim to preserved historical memory laughable.
Conservatives are correct in dismissing this liberal eisegesis. Genesis presents a flood that destroys humanity. Creation is undone. Destroying a tiny, local population is not what Genesis describes. and that is why they just become YECs and choose to trust God and the Bible over science. Once you let the nose of the camel in the tent, the rest of him is soon to follow.
The Pentateuch consists of ~4 strands of complimentary (overlapping) and contradictory traditions that were placed side by side many hundreds of years after they were written. I get that an actual promise to a patriarch and some form of an exodus seem troubling to deny because the bigger picture of scripture presumes then and casts Jesus in those terms. But at the end of the day, archaeology and Biblical criticism have done to the Pentateuch what science has done to Genesis 1-2. Evangelicals who accept science are treading water in no-man’s land.
Rather than fussing over the “days” in Genesis Christians should be focusing apologetical efforts on dealing with the recent archaeological trend of burying the biblical stories. We generally are NOT reading history when reading the vast majority of the Bible.
Everything that happens alters the course of world events including choosing when to take a dump. A localized flood only mattered to the locals who experienced it at the time. Most of the world had no idea it happened. Humans were spread out far and wide at the time. The fictionalized stories and mythology that Genesis borrowed from probably stemmed from ancient floods. These had more of an effect later on but during the actual event itself, assuming it occurred,there was very little about a local flood that could be deemed “world altering.” In fact, the flood account is one of the most popular stories in the world today, but that is only because Christianity spread far and why. There are also two different flood stories merged into one which shows how carefully most believers don’t actually read scripture.
So if by “world altering” you mean the flood story “become popular” I wouldn’t disagree. But why didn’t you just say that? I suspect most people mean more when they consider the Genesis flood “world altering.”
It was world altering in the way other world defining events are. One is well within the scope of reason (or taking a dump) to see a localized flood as something that radically altered the world of the ANE.
Aren’t there two ways, at least, of viewing the Flood? Either mankind hadn’t spread too far out when it happened, or God is already only concerned with one area of the world, that being the Middle-East? The Promised Land, the chosen people and all that stuff?
The first way is objectively wrong. The second way is possible but I don’t think Genesis describes a local flood and I doubt 2 Peter does either:
“and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly”
“They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water, 6 through which the world of that time was deluged with water and perished.”
Does 2 Peter say or support the notion that a small area on earth was flooded and a small only percentage of its population perished?
It is a simple fact that local events are frequently world altering because things invented in one place spread everywhere to alter the whole world. Isn’t the most central message of Christianity all about a local event altering the entire world!!!
To be sure many people here prefer to discard the possibility of Genesis 1-11 being historical and are quite happy to make it all some vague metaphor or theological parable. I don’t think the facts of science make this necessary but it is an option. However, one way or another, nobody adheres to a completely literal understanding of the Genesis 1-11 text not even the Bible itself. Therefore, at the very least, we have ample reason to see elements of the Genesis 1-11 text as symbolic. And the facts of science are are among the best reason for doing so. Efforts to oppose this are not even consistent with the text.
One of the reasons we wrangle over this so much is how it connects so centrally to our own identity and value as human beings, as well as to the framing the problem which the gospels are addressing. What does it mean to be human? How did things go wrong? What does God want? What is the Bible and how seriously should we take it? How does Christ make things better?
True but I don’t find it accurate to describe Genesis as “world altering” at that time, if the flood covered only a small area of the earth and affected only a small percentage of the population. Mike may agree. I don’t doubt that many thousands of years later the Biblical deluge became one of the most widely known and influential stories in the world–whether it happened or not. Whether most Biblical Christians agree or not on there being a historical core behind the story is irrelevant. We all know floods happen and people write about them. The Genesis flood would have occurred many thousands of years before any record of it survives. There is simply no way to corroborate any of its narratives details–whether they happened or not-- on historical grounds. So who cares? It is idle talk and speculation. Either we think God wrote a historical narrative or we do not. This is a theological belief, not a historical one. Some of its details are internally contradictory (there are two stories in one, its clearly based on older Mesopotamian myths and it features a 500 or 600 year old man building a giant ship and boarding it (twice) with 2 (or 7 ) each animal when he could have just migrated to avoid it. God is even presented with a bit of regret at the end. He promises to never again do what he did. If what he did was just and appropriate, why would he not do that again if the same situation arises? Because of the pleasing aroma of roasting animal flesh? God learns in this story, something modern Christians are eager to miss and/or deny. The story also loses its oomph to me if the Ark is not necessary. The whole sense of it is “there is nowhere to go, the mountains will be covered, we need an improbably large ship to survive.” A local flood doesn’t work.
When reading the flood accounts, we learn more about the theology of Jewish people and their approach to natural disasters than specific details of what actually happened in the past. Sin brings judgment and destruction. Point taken.
Yes but the chiastic structure is an exception to the rule as far as I know. Two contradictory accounts are ingeniously woven together. There are two accounts running all through Genesis 1-9. Creation, Genealogies and Flood— all show the same thing. Two different versions placed together.
Actually the editor or the Pentateuch didn’t make sense of contradictory details. That’s how we know multiple sources have been interwoven together… virtually intact in places (since when they are disassembled a coherent narrative emerges).
