Metaphor vs. Literal

false dichotomy. there is a third choice.but no, it does not read like history. if someone argued that kings and chronicles are history books, i might have only MINOR arguments. but genesis? it doesn't even read like the historical accounts within the bible. it reads more like folktales.

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אָרַח

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The WAY IT IS WRITTEN is what leads me to to read it as fact.

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What do you mean the way it is written? Sorry to be so dense, but that doesn't tell me anything. What way?

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NOT ITS CONTENT

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The content is what makes is historical or factual. How can it be otherwise.

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A believer comes to it without judgments, and accepts it as presented, according to how it is written.

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Not sure how you read a story without making judgments and deciding what it is saying. We make judgments on what a word means and how it is used.

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If you read it as it presents itself, you learn from it, but if you impose your preconceptions on it you can't learn from it.

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You're making the assumption that I can't learn from the story if I don't take it as historical or factual. That is a misconception on your part.

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"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which lasts forever." --Anatole France

it's a bit of a subjective thing, like tone, or voice, or mode. style is hard to quantify. but i think in comparison to the stuff that's arguably history we can ascertain that genesis is not. one wonders how to read a parable. did it happen or didn't it?

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אָרַח

But this is all too convoluted. I am a believer BECAUSE I believe it; I don't believe it because I am a believer. When you read a book of history or biography don't you just read it as written, assuming it to be factual? Don't you recognize poetry when you see it, or fables? What's the problem with believing the Bible then {reading the Bible the same way}? Only your preconceptions. You COULD get to know Him by simply believing the Bible as you read it just as you would read a biography of somebody you otherwise know nothing about. This would MAKE you a believer. OR you could simply believe a preacher who tells you about Him, or a tract somebody hands you, or a Christian friend. Or you could believe a book about Him by a believer, or a book about one or many of His believers' lives. Nothing mysterious about it. The Bible is to be read as written, simply believing it as written. Of course, except where science contradicts the God who made it all.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-30-2005 06:49 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 09-30-2005 06:50 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 09-30-2005 09:19 PM

It reads like history. There is NO difference between the manner of the writing of Genesis 1-11 and the chapters that follow where the history of the calling of Abraham and the Israelites is told. It is all tied together by genealogies and other points of factual detail. To say it reads more like folktales is nonsense. You are simply imposing your preconceptions about the CONTENT of folktales on it, and not reading it as written, which is as STRAIGHT NARRATIVE HISTORY.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-30-2005 06:54 PM

C.S. Lewis, a Professor of Literature, disagrees with you.

If you are steeped in, say, Deconstructionism, we will never be able to find common ground here. No, I don't have some Bible-based view of language, just what I like to think of as common sense, (although the fact that the Son of God is called the Word of God is pregnant with implications for language as something far more fundamental than a mere learned skill. Of course language is full of pitfalls, ambiguities, cultural assumptions, as you say, and therefore caution is required. But CAUTION, not the suspension of ordinary expectations about communication.This message has been edited by Faith, 10-01-2005 02:16 AM

J.R.R. Tolkien, also a professor of literature and ancient languages and a close friend of C.S. Lewis, disagrees with him.

i'm not saying there is. i'm saying that genesis AS A WHOLE does not read like history when compared to other biblical books. here's a verse used in another thread:

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1Ki 6:1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which [is] the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.

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those are time-keeping devices. kings is pretty full of them. traditionally, in ancient literature from the nearest, time is told according to dynasties:

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1Ki 14:25 And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam,

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1Ki 15:1 Now in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam

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these reigns are established in a kind of circular basis. everybody knows what they are because they know the length of the reigns. they are confirmed against other historical books:

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1Ki 14:29 Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, and all that he did, [are] they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

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see that? it's citing a source. ie: it's a scholarly work. again, kings is filled with these reference. and we don't always HAVE the book it cites, either.sometimes, these dates line up against other time keeping:

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2Ki 18:9 And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which [was] the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel,

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but the particularly useful ones are when it's another culture entirely.

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2Ki 25:2 And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah.
2Ki 25:8 And in the fifth month, on the seventh [day] of the month, which [is] the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,

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now we check calendars against not just other hebrew books, but babylonian as well.to be fair, there *IS* one such reference in genesis.

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Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

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...and that's it. the next closest thing we have is a genealogy, which is not a history. it's a RECORD, and charts time. genesis seems to have been assembled from multiple sources, and the genealogies have been added in to give the stories a pseudo-historical context. but stories do not read like history. kings, for that matter, barely reads like history. do you know what a folktale is? it's a traditional story common to a society. saying "genesis reads like folktales" is a very passive wording. genesis *IS* folktales. while we're on topic, psalms are folk songs.it's not nonsense, or meant to offend. but let's call spades spades here. where did i discuss the content of the stories? i made now mention of obvious folk themes -- as they pop up even in the stuff that reads like history. i didn't point out talking animals, or permutations of other traditional folktales we know about.no, i talked about the style. stylistically, it's not written like a history. it's assemble to give a sense of one, but the elements do not sound like hebrew history. i'm sorry, it's not a preconception. it's judgement of style, and one i have quantified above. maybe you're the one with a preconceptions: narrative history = folktale.

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אָרַח

It reads like history.Yes, the timing of events by Noah's age and the genealogies is just one hint that it is intended as factual history.As I keep saying, there is unfortunately no objective standard to determine any of this, but the traditional church reads it straight, as history. That's really all there is to say.

Some sects read it as a history. Others as a Folktale.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

i just gave you one: an integrated system of dates. genealogies are not dates, but when the stories take place relative to the reigns of kings ARE. genesis has exactly one date in it, compared kings which tends to have one or two every chapter.you have not shown me WHY you think it reads like history.

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אָרַח

The genealogies in Genesis are quite accurate and do function as dates, so that it is possible to date Abraham, the Flood and the Creation from them.Otherwise, I refer you to my Message 3 where I say: This message has been edited by Faith, 10-01-2005 02:40 AM

I hope not but maybe that's all I managed to get said. It is believing it that makes you a believer, not that being a believer makes you believe it, and calling someone a "believer" who doesn't believe Genesis is begging a few questions. As I said in my Message 3 pinning this down is probably a lost cause but that inerrantists don't have any trouble distinguishing history from metaphor and other literary forms. However, perhaps I could say that the character of God and the character of the holy men puts it utterly beyond the category of a fable. Or perhaps it is just that the Bible historically has come down to us as a revelation and not a fable. In any case it demeans it to argue about it like this and I am stopping now.This message has been edited by Faith, 10-01-2005 02:37 AM

You have never said a truer word.Brian.