|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
EvC Forum active members: 65 (9164 total) |
| |
ChatGPT | |
Total: 916,913 Year: 4,170/9,624 Month: 1,041/974 Week: 0/368 Day: 0/11 Hour: 0/0 |
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: How Literal is Genesis | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
well, i think jar beat me to the punch here, but here goes.
How Literal is Genesis very.
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. 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.
Was Adam ever a real person? 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.
Was Adam the first man with a soul? 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.
Was there a fall? 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.
when does Genesis start becoming historical? 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.
But I do have hang-ups to declaring parts of the Bible “aren't true”, or are myths. 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.
I have problems not believing Adam was a real person given his role in Romans 5. 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.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
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. 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.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
All twelve tribes exist, by name, in Asir today. (The Bible comes from Arabia--Salibi) i'm not sure i buy that. if you're really interested in the topic, start a thread with more information.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
aw heck, if i had time. i work three jobs, go to school, and generally waste time on the internet. i didn't even get through the first book on my reading list for LAST summer.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
First off, if you are seeking to scrutinize the creation account with a bible such as the KJV you are going to fall flat on your face. Not because the bible is bad(per say) but rather because of the nature of transcriptions and literary translations. The KJV suffers from some would call timeframe translation issues. some people find the language more difficult, yes. one gets a better picture reading, say, the nJPS. the conversational tone of the hebrew is (ironically) better translated -- the KJV reads like brick-laying becuase it is so scrutinizingly literal.
In the older Greek and Hebraic texts the implications and weight of the creation account is vastly different from the English translations we have today. Why? because biblical translators had to interpret the meaning of the scriptures in order to communicate the context given from the older writings. This meant that we are in many ways, limited to the translators ability to understanding the meaning of the texts. actually, this is not especially true for the KJV. the KJV sought to translate in the most literal manner possible. nearly all idiomatic expressions are preserved, and very little interpretative "guesswork" has been applied. the only MAJOR quibble is that KJV translators took the qere readings over the kethiv ones -- basically, the emendations and marginal notes where ancient scribes thought "this doesn't make sense, maybe it should say this." but much, much more interpretation is used in a translation like the nJPS (good, informed opinion here) or the NLT (not so good). but what i mean to say is that if you are attempting apologetics between the bible and reality, and using "don't look at the KJV" as your argument, it's not a very good one. don't make a case for the implications of the hebrew or greek, unless you can read hebrew and greek, or aware of what they actually are. because the implications of the hebrew more or less demolish any "day-age" or "gap" hypothesis, and any hope of reconciliation with the reality of an old earth.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Gen 5:20 -- And all the days of Ja'-red were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died. Reduce that by a factor of ten and we get 96.2. A rather odd way to measure a lifespan. Besides, I do not believe that people in that area in those times wrote numbers using positional notation and 'tens.' actually, numbers in hebrew can be a little weird. let's look:
quote: they do break it into tens places, weirdly. but even MORE weirdly, all the 100's places seem to have an extra division. somebody please feel free find some sort of meaning in this. i don't know what to make of it -- it's not standard practice, as far as i'm aware. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024