Because we are not told that it was a vision. We are told when a prophecy is given by a vision.
Or the Spirit inspired a author to use a man made story because it fit the theological message that was intended.
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I think this is a dangerous approach to the inspired Word of God. You just open wide a window where anything could happen in the OT. The Torah Law could be just man made law used by Moses as he was inspired by the Spirit because it fitted the theological message or it was a direct revelation from God.
Thus the assumption
Bad example because we are told how Moses received the Law.
An assumption needs to be based on something. Otherwise it just leads to creative fiction.
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Please explain how you arrive to this assumption?
True, but once you opened that door, even this watertight revelation would be in doubt.
If I may step in here… The inspired writers of the Bible clearly used earlier pagan stories to tell their own stories. Examples include the two creation stories and the two flood stories (yes, there are two flood stories pieced together).
You are correct, but there is more. When read in the Hebrew the kind of fruit tree that God wanted the earth to produce is quite different from the what the earth is able to produce. In verse 11 He wants fruit trees bearing fruit. In verse 12, the earth was only able to produce trees bearing fruit.
The resolution of this difference is that the author wanted to demythologize the religions of the surrounding cultures who believed in a pantheon of “nature” gods. In these two verses, the author demonstrates the nature is subordinate to God, but moreover nature does not have the creative power of God.
Blessings,
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I believe this is also an assumption, correct? I am just wondering where in the text we can accept one such assumption while we reject the assumption to see Gen 1 as a vision.
There are multiple ANE creation myths that are similar to Genesis but the important part is where they are different. The different parts are basically the theological message of Genesis.
Wrong. There is a difference in basically adding something, a undocumented vision, and ignoring the clear indication of where Moses received the law.
No it is based on a study of the ANE texts which BTW are a fairly recent addition to our knowledge base.
You mean it is a proven fact based on the study of the ANE texts and the bible?
It is based on scholarship. Don’t know if I would call it a “fact”.
An example
Bill, I don’t any intention to force my assumption to you or to any other persons for that matter. I am just saying that in this matter, while your assumption might be valid based on scholarship available, I am also reading some studies that disagree with that assumption. I am not saying that it’s wrong, but it’s not considered as factual. More toward assumption. The same can be said about my assumption. It might not be correct though I might have a valid reason for it.
Genesis 1 probably solo author. But the very next chapter (Adam and Eve) is very different from a literary viewpoint. (Then further similar changes occur through the book we now have.)
Search for “Documentary Hypothesis”. Don’t worry too much about the details (different people have different ideas about those) but get the general consensus that there are different styles from different sources being edited together. Sometimes this might be on the big scale; sometimes it might be more subtle interleaving of different sources.
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It’s a valid assumption because we have earlier pagan myths that bear striking resemblance to the creation and flood stories in Genesis. It’s also the conclusion of most scholars. Looking for similarities is how we investigate alleged copyright infringement.
No scholar that I know of thinks these stories are visions.
As discussed early in the thread, even if it’s a vision, that’s no reason to expect video footage of history. Visions actually point away from that: they use visual images to convey a message in ways that are quite different from eyewitness testimony.
When God gave Nebuchadnezzar a vision of a tree so tall (not wide) it could be seen anywhere on earth (Daniel 4), we shouldn’t press that to mean the earth is flat. The vision wasn’t given to communicate scientific facts about the earth.
But the other problem is that Genesis 1 isn’t presented as a vision. The anonymous human author doesn’t mention seeing things. Unlike John in the part of Revelation that recounts the vision, there’s no mention of “And I saw…”. Instead, we have a third-person omniscient narrator. This means the narrator isn’t a person in the story, and they can see anything and know anything, even what’s inside someone’s head. That’s why we not only get statements of what happens and what God says, but also what God thinks: “And God saw that it was good.” If this was a vision, we’d expect to be told that God spoke “It is good,” not that the narrator knew God’s thoughts about what God saw.
The third-person omniscient perspective is extremely common in stories. It gives the writer the most flexibility, able to see anything and know anything. The majority of children’s stories use it, but it’s also common in adult fiction as well as ancient writing. There’s nothing surprising about this point of view being used in Genesis 1, but it does help us see that the author is not simply recording a vision, nor even trying to present the story as a vision.
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That is interesting view point Marshall. Can you perhaps explain how this anonymous human author got his story? From God Himself or from man made stories that were available back then or he wrote it?
I’ve seen this kind of thought many times but I’ve never understood it. By refusing to ‘open the door’ (in this case, to the possibility that God would use a man-made story to convey a theological message), you’re not eliminating the possibility – you’re just refusing to think about it. Refusing to think about things doesn’t change reality. All it does is limit our ability to determine what is real.
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my question is this. Why would God use a man-made story to convey His truth? If that is so, then how would we know what is inspired and what is not?
Why would he use humans at all? Why would he use the decidedly imperfect disciples to start the church?
My point is that simply deciding not to think about that question doesn’t constitute a helpful way of dealing with it.
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