How Literal is Genesis

I would like to have a discussion among Christian believers who also accept the reality of evolution. In this thread I would like to assume evolution is true and leave debating its reality to other threads. I would also like only Christian believers to respond; loosely defined here as believing in Jesus: His deity, incarnation, death, resurrection, and into Him for salvation.Moving from an old earth position who otherwise accepts everything in Genesis as literal to one who (while still unsure) is moderately convinced that evolution indeed took place, I am finding myself struggling with Genesis. I would like to talk through this with some other believers who have already taken this path. Here would be some of my questions:Was Adam ever a real person? If he did exist, how many others were alive at the same time? Did someone named Cain ever kill someone named Abel? Was Adam the first man with a soul? Did all his contemporaries have souls? Was there a fall? Is the entire story just made up?Was Noah a real person? If the flood was only local, did it kill off all of mankind? (and from a science perspective: do we have evidence that it is impossible that the whole human race hit an 8 person bottle neck just 5k years ago or so).Was Abraham a real person? If the first 11 chapters or so are entirely mythical, when does Genesis start becoming historical? Did people really live into their 800s? If not, why is this written into Genesis? Is that part of the myth, or some translation mistake? (I know Dr. Meyers at Institute of Bible and Science suggests that the Hebrew is a translation of a mistranslation of another language where one little jot or tittle changes the number by a factor of ten, and if you decrease by a factor of ten you have very realistic ages for childbearing and death. I am not yet comfortable with this explanation though.I think that is enough for now. As you can see, I am just getting started on dealing with these issues. I have absolutely no philosophical hang-ups to the reality of evolution. If God wanted to evolve me from slime, so be it. He can do whatever He pleases. But I do have hang-ups to declaring parts of the Bible “aren't true”, or are myths. I have problems not believing Adam was a real person given his role in Romans 5.Edited by Pete OS, : No reason given.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Took out some extra line breaks. When doing a message, one should not use the "enter" key at the sentence end, unless it is also a paragraph end.Edited by AdminPD, : Title Typo Correction

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

In fact, just simple honesty will confirm that. The fact is that a literal reading of the two creation tales found in Genesis would show that they are mutually exclusive. The self-proclaimed Literalists get around those contradiction by literally making up interpretations one how to literally read them. It is too funny for words.Was Adam a real person? No. Nor was Eve. At the time that Adam was supposed to have lived, say 6000 years ago, every continent of the world was inhabited by modern man and they had been there for tens of thousands of years. It's entirely possible that the flood myth revolves around some real individual, but there hasn't been a world-wide flood all the history of the earth so far. No, a local flood did not kill off all or even most of mankind. Your question about a bottle neck is also one of the most important ones to ask. Let me try to explain why.If there had been a world-wide flood as described in the Bible, we would not see just the 5K genetic bottleneck in humans, we would see that in every single living species of animals on earth. This would not just be an indicator, it would be a big red flag on a neon sign with fireworks in the background and a brass band marching in the foreground.The Biblical Flood would have left a marker that is far easier to see, far more obvious, than the KT boundary deposits.There is simply no evidence of there ever being a world-wide flood. It is very unlikely that Abraham was a real person and Genesis is not a history as we think of histories today. Rather it is a collection of the folk tales of a peoples and an era. It is valuable because it gives us insight into the way people saw themselves and their world.No, all the evidence is that the folk from 6000 years ago lived about as long as the average person today. The idea though of attributing long life spans to folk was a pretty common one though, and if you read the Epic of Gilgamesh, you will find that the authors of the various Bible stories actually toned things down. The much earlier Epic has folk living even longer than the Bible tales.In the earlier thread I gave you a link to the Catechism of Creation. It may help you in your journey. You don't get much that we would really consider as history until, perhaps, around Judges. The Exodus never happened as described; the Conquest of Canaan never happened as described in Joshua.Even then, the history in the Bible is not history as we understand it.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Hi, Pete! In a nutshell, my take on Genesis is that it was a compilation of legends, oral traditions, and later writings of men from a long time ago.Is it literal? Well, I believe that In The Beginning, God created the (Universe). Beyond that, I have no idea whether the folks mentioned in Genesis actually existed or not.When asking myself the questions you brought up, I would ask myself what the intentions of these early human authors were. Among my questions to myself are these:

Is there a living Spirit of God that imparts a living truth and revelation into man?(human authors) If so, would not these early authors have had a better view of how reality actually operates? Could not God have imparted enough revelation into them to explain Genesis in terms that are comprehend-able to us today?

Is it important for Genesis to be literal? Ken Ham emphatically says yes but I do not agree with him. After all, according to your O.P. we are assuming that evolution is rational and valid. I see and have no problems with this.

Would the message of the Bible be any less true if none of these people actually existed? Thats a whole topic unto itself, though!

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Edited by Phat, : spelling

The question should be: Does it matter?Is Genesis just a dry newspaper account of "dog bites man"?
Or does it have some meaning?To me, the greatest tragedy of literalism is not just that it's plain wrong - it's that literalism deflects people from the lessons of the Bible.Instead of asking, "Did it happen?", we should be asking, "What can I learn from the story?"

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WOW! I must admit, I was never expecting an answer that literalism of any sort didn't start until Judges. I thought we would all agree that Abraham at least was a real person (whether or not every miracle described in his life is accurate). I must admit that I am completely ignorant of the evidence for or against an exodus happening as described in the Bible, so I won't comment there.To answer the question, "does it matter" I must admit that in some ways it still continues to matter to me. It does matter to me that Jesus actually was a human, also God, who died, and was actually physically resurrected form the dead three days later. My trust is in the atonement that he provided and if it is just a story I don't know where else to turn for forgiveness. In a similar vein, though admittedly not identical, Abraham is used as an example of what it means to be made right with God through faith (Romans 4) and indeed, is a example of what that faith looks like. For this reason, it does matter to me that he really was a man that had this faith!Jar brings up a good point that not only should genetic evidence suggest there was a 8 person bottle neck among all humans 6000 years ago, but that there should be a two animal (or 7) bottleneck of ALL animals around that time. Now, I will confess complete ignorance of genetics, genetic evidence, or even what that bottleneck would look like. But I trust genetic researchers would notice this. I am comfortable with accepting a local flood that doesn't kill of all (or even most) animals in the world (such as Australian animals) but must admit a hangup in not concluding that all humans died. I need to research the evidence the people populated North America and Australia predated flood times. Edited by AdminPD, : Edit Box

Actually, there were advanced civilizations all over the world by the time of the flood. Look at Egypt. The flood was about the time of some of there biggest construction projects, yet they never noticed an unusual flood, something they watched carefully.But there is also the Jomon Culture in Japan, they have a continuous culture that is reflected in pottery styles that existed long before the flood and long afterwards as well.In thread Message 1 we explored some of the civilizations that were flourishing around the world at around the time of the flood and even back around the time of Creation.And don't think that the history from Judges on is really what we would consider history today, it simply wasn't. It was far more Folk Tales than "History".

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

it is my assertion that it's more than possible that the whole pentateuch was created in the babylonian exile as a false history to demonstrate that god would get them out of their plight. otherwise, it's well demonstrated to be an edit of a collection of cultural stories... and the most political and base volume ever, really.

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That's just it, though - an example doesn't have to be "real" to be valid or useful. An example "looks like" the real thing, but it doesn't have to be the real thing.Look at Aesop's fables. The talking animals should be a clue that the events never happened. Yet every fable has a moral - a lesson to be learned.The talking snake in Genesis should give us a similar clue.

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Hi, Pete. Man, do I remember asking all those same questions. I'd like to take a shot at addressing some of yours, but tomorrow, not today. I'm mainly posting this to say hi, to say I understand the questions, and to make it easy for me to find this thread tomorrow .

Truthlover: I appreciate your concern, and look forward to your replies.For everyone else: I agree with you that historicity is not necessarily for it to teach us something. And yet I still admit I am a little disheartened by your responses. I suppose I am still holding on to some inerrancy which I will loosely define at the moment as that it was written by or intended to be written by God himself. Adam and Eve, and maybe Noah could be God's work to explain principles to us, but to assume the entire Israel history up through Judges or worst is simply fable is a little much for me.

well, i think jar beat me to the punch here, but here goes. very. you are operating under a false dichotomy here. that the text is either literally true, or it is metaphorically true. there is a third possibility. that it is literal, and false.given the circumstances, i think is this actually the only rational view point. nothing in the text particularly points to lengthy allegory (though many symbols from the stories are later used allegorically). rather, most of the meaning, etiologically and culturally, derives from the literal events of the stories. for instance, in genesis 1, the literal structure of 6 days of work and 1 of rest is the basis for the hebrew work week.genesis, fundamentally, is a text that was written to explain things as they were in the author's world. it is a folk history, a collected narrative about how things came to be. it is really after the fact, and projected backwards. we should not expect it to be accurate, not even in the slightest.but it is an interesting read. and it does reveal alot about the culture that was responsible for it. and there is meaning that can be derived from it, good and bad, without it being literally or even metaphorically true. the commentary about the human condition can be quite true to life and profound. that we get married because "it is not good for man to be alone" is still a salient moral today. no. he is the eponymous ancestor for all mankind. he represents all that is archetypal about every human, and especially every human male. his faults (he's kind of a sucker, likes to place blame) are common human foibles. his susceptibility to sin. i am unconvinced of the presence of a soul in the torah. it is highly debatable, but the text might simply mean "life," and all it means to indicate is that there is some part of god inside us. this does not exist in judaism, which uses the same text. that's artifact of christian interpretation. but if you mean by that, "was mankind exiled from a garden into a desert," well, we also see a similar story when abraham leaves ur for canaan. leaving comfort and blessing for wandering in the wilderness is a common theme in judaism, and probably with good reasons. it doesn't. the entire torah is actually several documents, and they are not split up the way we divide them. J and E run from genesis to numbers, often duplicating each other. D is a separate source, P is largely redaction and genealogies. L may or may not be a separate source. joshua should probably be included with deuteronomy in D.jar stated that the history doesn't start until judges, but i think it goes further than that. the first bits that i know we can start trusting as almost accurate is the book of kings. i'd have to re-read samuel to make a call on it, but most of the archaeological evidence we have from that period is pretty shabby. we don't know whether king david was a real person or not. it's quite hotly debated.J and E were great epics of the origins of the hebrew people, written sometime in the first temple period of judah. some say E might be from israel (as opposed to judah). they seem to have been written before exile, and reworked by the priests (ezra?) shortly after to help maintain jewish identity. this means, basically, that the events of genesis and exodus are largely folk stories and tradition.some MAY have shreds of truth buried deep inside them, and have been heavily reworked to fit the jewish narrative, almost certainly by the original authors. there was something like the exodus, but the hyksos were rulers of egypt, who were literally driven back to palestine by the egyptians. they were not the jews, but their story might have influenced the jewish story by becoming part of the background cultural narrative. similarly, there really was a jericho, but no joshua to knock it down. etc. well, this is simply the kind of position that comes with more study. the harder you look at the text, the more apparent it becomes. the text is a certain thing, and one has to take it for what it is. it's not a history, it doesn't read like a history. it doesn't read like the jewish histories of the time (like the book of kings). it reads like and epic folk narrative. so that's probably what it is.the trick is to be able to detach from the western cultural bias we have, and forget all the things we have been told to believe about the book, and just read it for what's there on the page. compare it to other ancient literature. study the language and the grammar. think about its role in society, and the function it serves in the library of texts that is the bible. similarly, we can look at romans, and determine that it is one man's commentary on doctrine and scripture. it is interpretation, not the words of god himself.

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you stole that argument from me. and also somewhat inaccurately.deuteronomy is older. we know it's older because the pre-exile texts that we have mention it. i also believe our oldest document of it antedates the exile, but i might be mistake about that.J and E appear to be just slightly older, dating by anachronisms. it's possible that the exodus was USED as a metaphor for the babylonian exile, but i'm not actually sure that position is defensible. E is also, by most accounts, written in israel, which simply never existed again after their assyrian exile (around the time of judah's babylonian exile). those ten tribes went permanently missing, to this day.the texts were definitely collected and reformated and redacted shortly after the exile, supposedly having been lost for some time. i don't buy that argument either. and parts of it were indeed integral to maintaining jewish identity in exile -- circumcision, shabat, the rampant xenophobia, etc. that's what kept the tribes of judah together.

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All twelve tribes exist, by name, in Asir today. (The Bible comes from Arabia--Salibi)