I can’t really answer that because it’s based on assumptions I don’t share. I believe God used human authors using human modes of expression. The diversity shows that Scripture isn’t bound by our literary preferences. What holds the Bible together is that all these texts reveal God and how God meets us. The Spirit inspired people to compose in a whole range of genres to do that, not just the ones we’re most comfortable with.
I think it’s great that you’re trying to show that Genesis 1 is inspired Scripture. But I disagree that doing so requires proving that it is eyewitness or visionary testimony of actual historical events. Even if you could show that Genesis 1 passed this bar and fit your definition of Scripture, you’d still end up with a thin Bible.
Our Bible is full of commands, wisdom and teaching about how to live a good life as God’s people (Leviticus, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and most New Testament letters). Large portions are poetic depictions of how God acts in history (many psalms as well as chunks of Isaiah, Daniel, Revelation). Even within historical accounts, creative stories aren’t swept to the margins as uninspired human extras. Jesus led with parables. Nathan used a made-up story to confront David. Jotham told a story about trees choosing a king for themselves. A different story of creation depicts it as God slaying the sea dragon to make land and cutting up the corpse to form streams to make the land fertile.
I believe all these stories, and all the other genres within the Bible, are inspired. God isn’t limited to inspiring eyewitness or visionary testimony. God can inspire literature too.
We English-language western modernists see the word “story” and automatically associate the idea “not real” or even “not true”.
But almost all societies recognise and enjoy that stories can reveal deep truths. Think of Shakespeare. Go way back and think of ancient Greek plays and Aesop’s Fables.
Then think of Jesus telling stories. Were Jesus’s stories “truth”? Or not? Surely they are not “untruths”, are they? Stories can reveal deep truths.
Then think of how God can reveal, like Jesus, his truths to the world. Sometimes, as with what Jesus often told, so-called stories (parables, tales) can be the best way to do it.
Put yourself back in the times of ancient Israel when scripture was being assembled and edited together. What would you expect an account of creation to look like? What knowledge would they, as writers and readers, have? And to which they could relate? Begin to think through those issues, from those perspectives, in those cultures and in those times.
Whether something is story or TV-like documentary is totally and completely separate from being “inspired”, isn’t it? Why would inspiration be limited to documentary? Was Jesus “un-inspired” when he was telling stories?
Thank you for all the replies. This discussion do make me question my own view whether it is valid or not. Some of the points about Gen 1 being not a vision seems to carry weight for me as I don’t want to propose something without solid reason behind it. there is one lingering thought in my mind because I could not see anything in the book of Moses that resembled a vision or such, and I went back to the bible.
Num 12:6-8 And he said, “Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the LORD.
Perhaps Gen 1 is not a vision after all since God did not show a vision to Moses. If Moses wrote the book of Genesis 1, it was what God had told Moses. As simple as that.
Jesus did not need to be inspired. He was and is God. When Jesus told His disciples about the future, He did not use vision or even allegory. Jesus just told them plainly what would happen.
Yes and no. When he spoke about the cross is was relatively plain (John contains some vagueness in places, eg. John 6:25-71). But when Jesus spoke about the end times he used the expected genre of his day, apocalyptic. A genre that is impressionist and poetic rather than factual and precise (cf. Matthew 24-25 and parallels).