How Literal is Genesis

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 .

Pete,I wanted to chip in, because I will address this issue from the standpoint of a believer. I believe Genesis is inspired by God, but I feel obliged to acknowledge what's true as true. For example, a Hebrew scholar in Israel published a full-page article in an Israeli newspaper saying that all competent archeologists know very well that there's no way there was an exodus of the size mentioned in the Bible. Afterwards, I read a debate between that scholar and an American scholar that took place on the radio in Arizona. The fact is, despite wanting to defend the Bible, the American scholar could not deny that archeologists have searched enough to be confident that no group of millions of people traveled from Egypt to Canaan around three millenia ago.Now what do I, as a believer who is not an archeologist, do with that?The fact is, my faith is not based on archeology, or on the literalness of Exodus. My faith is based on a powerful experience with God that happened as a result of believing in Jesus Christ. That experience didn't falter or fail, but has proven reliable over 25 years, despite the fact that I'm skeptical by nature and have questioned my faith over and over.The Bible as well has proven extraordinarily reliable and pertinent to my life, to the lives of the church I am a part of, and to the lives of real churches down through the ages. Just as surely as I see that archeologists have a good argument that there was no exodus of millions from Egypt, so I see that my forebears in the faith have a good argument that the Bible is no ordinary book, but its precepts have created power and provided timely and earth-shattering messages to its followers for centuries.So what do I do?What has helped me the most was a peek into the lives and beliefs of the churches started by the apostles themselves. If any church could give a picture of what Christ, or at least his apostles intended, it would be the ones they started and wrote to, like Ephesus, Rome, Smyrna, Antioch, and others. In fact, we have numerous writings from a very early period that circulated among those churches, giving us a lot of insight into their life and thought.That insight made reconciling my dilemma about the literalness of the Bible much, much easier to handle.Yes, people like Theophilus of Antioch, Justin of Rome, and others took the books of the Bible quite literally. Others, however, did not. Origen, for example, an extremely popular and respected teacher in his time (early 3rd century), wondered on paper how anyone could be ignorant enough to believe that a literal man could eat a literal fruit with literal teeth that could cause him to live forever or gain the knowledge of good of evil.Arachnophilia said above that there's no indication of allegory in the early parts of Genesis, but I have to disagree. A man named "Man" and a woman named "Life" lived in a garden with a "Tree of Life" and a "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." That gives no indication of allegory? Maybe Genesis 1 and it's 7 days isn't allegorical, but the garden story cries out that it's allegory.I'm no Hebrew scholar, but I've read books by Hebrew scholars saying that a question like "Is the story of Jonah and the Whale true?" would not have meant to the Hebrews what it means to us. We mean "Did it actually and historically happen?" I've read that ancient Israelites would not even have wondered about that question.While my studies in the early church writings would not make me believe they wouldn't ask the question or discuss it, my own impression is that it is obvious on the surface that the early Christians did not read the Scriptures the way we do. "A text without a context is a pretext" would have been heresy to them. If the text is inspired, then God not only could have but of course did drop statements into the text that even the writer had no idea of the meaning of. Thus, despite the fact that Isaiah was, in context, clearly speaking of a young maiden, not a virgin, giving birth to a boy name Emmanuel in the time of Ahaz as a sign to Ahaz, that didn't change the fact that God, outside Isaiah's knowledge, was also prophesying of a virgin birth to occur some 700 years later.Another example is the prophecy about the wolf and lamb lying down together. In America, we take that literally. Irenaeus, a highly-respected teacher because of his ties through Polycarp to the apostles, also took that literally. However, when he suggested it was literal, he made profuse apologies for his highly unusual interpretation of the passage. Of course, he says, it's main meaning is that men with wolf-like, devouring personalities would cease to devour and destroy those who are meek like lambs, but perhaps it might also have a literal meaning in a future reign of Christ in the flesh.Note, though, that this literal interpretation was highly out of the ordinary, causing even a man of Irenaeus' stature to apologize for suggesting it. To the church of the 2nd century, the reign of Christ had already started. The word was already going forth out of Jerusalem and changing the world. The wolf and the lamb were already lying down together. As Justin put it (paraphrased, but accurate), "We who were once of your Roman disposition, hating and killing each other, not only live peacably, but even share the same hearth together."So why do I say all that?Because, the fact is, as far as the writer of Genesis knew, his history of the world was accurate. When I look at the Scriptures through the eyes of the early church, I can think of no reason at all that God should supernaturally inspire the writer's understanding of history, explaining to him unheard of things, like whales evolving from furry, four-legged creatures. If the story of Jonah and the Great Fish seems hard to believe to us today, think of how unbelievable the story of a bird's descent from dinosaurs would seem to them!One of the leaders of our village here in Tennessee is terribly prone to getting stories wrong. He repeats stories, and while all of us can tell what story he is telling, many or even most details will be wrong. He uses these stories to illustrate the work God is doing among us, and the stories are pretty amazing. For their purpose, they are even accurate. I believe that when he's speaking, it's the word of God to the hearers, and those who believe and follow receive all the benefits of hearing the word of God. It produces life-transforming faith, and the effects are simply amazing.Are his stories false? No, they're true, and the gist of them is accurate. Even so, God did create the earth. The Israelites did conquer Canaan. God was with them. Ruth experienced the blessing of attaching herself to God's people, as did Rahab, and those who do the same will experience God as well. The effect is more powerful now, because under the New Covenant the Spirit is promised to everyone, rather than just to a few, like Moses, David or Samuel.How accurate are the stories that weren't written down until years or centuries later? We don't know. They're real stories, though, handed down to the writers by those who came before them. They are not made up. They are the only history the writers knew, and they told the story the way our leader tells his stories, as accurately as he knows to tell them. In the end, though, the purpose is not an accurate story, but the faith that leads to salvation, to fellowship with God, and to being one of the sons of God, possessed of the Spirit of God.Does that make the stories unreliable? Not in my opinion. I believe it was God who ensured that Genesis 1 would have "greater light" and "lesser light" rather than "sun" and "moon." I believe this is because God is not interested in teaching how the world was created in Genesis 1, but he is interested, in all of Scripture, in speaking to his people (never mind if those who are not his people understand, agree, or even think it's silly). The greater light that rules the day is Christ, and the lesser light that rules the night, reflecting the greater light into the darkness, is his church. Salvation is not just about having your sins forgiven and making it to heaven. Salvation is about God having a people, knit together as one, for his Son to dwell in today, so that the Word can continue to be found in flesh today, just as it could in 1st century Israel. Only today, it should be a greater Word, because there are more bodies, joined together as one body, for him to dwell in. This truth is spoken way back in Genesis one, where we can see ourselves not as individuals, but as the lesser light--the one united light--that rules the night, reflecting the light of Christ to the world. Yes, such evidence exists, just as incontrovertible evidence exists that the earth is old and that current species descended from more ancient species and that while the Exodus may well have occurred (and it seems likely to me that some sort of Exodus occurred to inspire the tale being passed down through the centuries), it did not occur with 6 million people. I personally don't believe any parts of the Bible "aren't true." I believe some aren't "historically accurate," just as I believe that some stories I tell aren't historically accurate, but I would bristle at having them called "not true." They're as accurate as I can tell them, and often what I remember is the meaning they conveyed to me more than the details. I once told someone that I learned to do the Rubik's cube in under a minute as a teenager living in Kansas. My brother later informed me that the Rubik's cube was invented when I was 20, five years after I left Kansas. Oops! However, I really did learn to do the Rubik's cube in under a minute, and I am now shocked to find out that I had time in college to waste on such a pasttime. I thought I wasted my time in college on much worse pasttimes that account for my lack of chronological memory. But the fact that to this day I don't remember where I lived when I learned the Rubik's cube doesn't make the story I told "not true." The purpose of my story, useless as it was, which was to talk about myself to someone, was not lessened or made less true by the chronological mistake.Even so, once we read the Bible as Christians, rather than as logical, western-influenced Americans, all these arguments about evolution and the size of the Exodus become meaningless. I have plenty of miraculous stories from last week. I don't need proof of miracles from David's day. I do believe, however, that the stories of David were passed down because they really happened. How accurate do we have them now? I don't know, but I never doubt that they're true, nor that they were miraculous, because that's the normal way I've seen God work with his people.

Thank you for calling it an excellent post.However, that conclusion of mine isn't based on anything I said in my post. It really was just a report, because I'd assume anyone interested in what I wrote would wonder what I thought about the historical accuracy of the events surrounding David's life.There are reasons I believe the stories about David are based on a real person, and there are reasons I believe the stories about Abraham are based on a real person that have nothing to do with history. The fact is, the stories about David are not really all that old. Maybe 300 years till we get them in the form we have them now, and it's entirely possible, even likely, that they were written down before that. Believing there was a real David who was a real king of Israel is not a very far-fetched thing to believe.Abraham, on the other hand, would have had to have his stories passed down many hundreds of years, in a situation where it would be hard to imagine them being written down. There'd be no real evidence on which to "conclude" that he was a real person or that, even if he were, that the events surrounding his life were remotely accurate.But since I'm a religious guy who believes in communication with God, the reasons for believing David and Abraham to be real characters are spiritual. Well, that may be true for a story, but for a person, whose life is reported on and handed down with multiple stories, I certainly think that those stories represent some evidence the person really existed. You may have every reason to be skeptical, but to say "doesn't indicate anything" is pretty unreasonable, in my opinion.I think we've discussed things like this before. This is probably true. I think I evaluate evidence pretty reasonably, even if that wouldn't be your opinion. I'm prone to believing other ancient stories, too, when they're reported as history, until there's some evidence they're not true. I do think that most legends got their start somewhere in some fact.I don't think my thoughts in that direction are unusual, even among historians. I like reading history, and it sure looks to me like historians lean in the direction of ancient reports being true, at least to some degree, and obtain a measure of success following up on those reports.

Ignorance is indeed bliss, Pete, but it's hard to remain ignorant in this information age. If I don't acknowledge the problems with historicity of certain stories, then it will get shoved in my face by those who don't like God, anyway. It seems better to me that you hear it from people like me rather than people like Ken Ham, who will tell you your whole faith is on the line if you doubt any of it, or from someone who is attacking the faith once for all delivered to the saints.My experience is that if you don't have a working and powerful faith, that allows you to see the hand of God on a day by day basis (which is what the Bible promises, anyway; Acts says they were awed daily), it would be awful hard to remain a believer in this present age without being a close-minded, ears-stopped type.How did Christ act while he was on the earth? Yes, he took the historical parts of Scripture pretty literally, but what about what he preached? He was very straightforward about his willingness to change what was said ("You have heard it said...but I say..."). He was willing to say, "Hey, none of that food stuff matters at all, because nothing going in your mouth can defile you. It's what comes out that defiles you."Then, what did he say? Did he say, "You should believe because I can prove myself from the Scriptures"? No, he said, "I have three witnesses: my works, my Father, who is doing the works, and John the Baptist." Jesus' message was confirmed by the fruit it bore, not by the interpretations of Scripture that he gave.Even so, if you want faith today, look for a message that bears fruit; that saves; that transforms lives and puts people in contact with God in a noticeable way. The faith Christ preached is known by the love it produces in his disciples and by their unity (Jn 14 & 17).My faith rests on a reality that is true today. My trust that there was an Abraham with experiences with God comes from our own similar experiences with God today, as well as from the stories handed down that wound up in our Bible.The problem with American Christianity today is that it is almost all words. The kingdom of God does not consist of words. That's what the Bible says.I'd like to invite you again to look at Error 404 (Not Found)!!1. When the message of Christ is taken seriously, put into practice, and lived out in abandonment to God, it produces fruit that makes faith pretty unshakeable, because that faith is seen every day.I can't defend the faith of Christ intellectually. I believe God meant it that way. It was meant to be defended by the power of God.