Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   If Genesis is Metaphorical, what's the metaphor?
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 9 of 168 (187453)
02-22-2005 8:28 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by arachnophilia
02-22-2005 6:07 AM


Of course there are parts of The Book of Genesis that are historically plausible, it isn't entirely unhistorical.
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by arachnophilia, posted 02-22-2005 6:07 AM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 47 by arachnophilia, posted 02-23-2005 2:33 AM Brian has not replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 52 of 168 (187802)
02-23-2005 2:09 PM
Reply to: Message 48 by arachnophilia
02-23-2005 2:40 AM


Uh?
Hi Arach,
i would beg to differ.
I don’t think that even the greatest sceptic in the world would dismiss the entire Book of Genesis as unhistorical, there are too many *plausible* events for that to be the case.
We have no good reason to reject the possibility that Abraham, Jacob, or Joseph were real people.
Certainly the idea of a foreign group settling in Egypt during times of famine is supported from a plethora of sources. For example in the Hebrew Bible we are told that there were various occasions when the patriarchs entered Egypt during times of famine. Abraham moved to Egypt during a severe famine (Gen. 12:10) and Jacob’s entire family moved there during a particularly prolonged famine (Gen. 41:50). This is entirely compatible with the information we have from Egyptian sources such as Papyrus Anastasi VI, where a report from a frontier official talks of permitting:
the Bedouin tribes of Edom (to) pass the Fortress of Mer-ne-ptah. which is in Tjeku..to the pools of Per-Atumwhere are (in) Tjeku, to keep them alive and to keep their cattle alive. (ANET: 258)
There is a significant event in Gen.14, the war described between the allied forces of the five Cities of the Plain and the four king alliance led by king Chedorlaomer, which is entirely plausible and finds possible support in external sources. For imstance, there is an 18th century BCE letter from Mari that mentions alliances of ten, fifteen and twenty kings, and there are five or more Mesopotamian colaitions known from the 19/18th centuries BCE (Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament, Tyndale Press,London, 1966, p45).
The social customs and legal practices alluded to in the patriarchal narratives are not historically implausible either. For instance, in regard to an apparent legal practice, in Gen. 16:1-4, Abraham’s wife, Sarah, gave her slave Hagar to him as a concubine. This tradition is reflected in the texts from MBA Nuzi, Babylonia and Assyria, where a marriage contract compelled a childless wife to supply a surrogate for her husband to try and reproduce with. If a son is forthcoming, it was then forbidden for the surrogate and her child to be sent away from the household, which also parallels the information in Gen. 21:10 that tells us of Abraham’s unwillingness to send Hagar and Ishmael away (Bright: History of Israel, SCM Press, London 1972. p.78).
There is no way I would claim that the selling of Joseph into slavery, where he ends up in Egypt, is entirely unhistorical, the entire scenario is completely plausible. It doesn’t mean that it happened, but it is *possible* so therefore it could be historical.
I also see no reason for rejecting the historicity of Abraham being a wandering Aramean. Granted, there are huge problems with accepting everything written abut Abraham as being historically accurate, but there are parts of his life story that are plausible.
There are dozens of pieces of information in Genesis that are entirely *plausible*, I really cannot think of any scholar, even a minimalist one, who would reject the entire book as fictional, and historically impossible.
it's not written as a history at all. there is no form of date-keeping of any sort.
I would disagree with this 100%.
You have to remember that history writing has changed dramatically over the centuries, and no one was writing any critical histories at that time.
But, *ALL* that history is, is a written record of a past event, whether that event happened or not is irrelevant, it is still history. Essentially, history is not what actually happened in the past, it is what a historian reports that happened in the past, and as such, a history can be entirely false. Oppressive regimes for instance often invent histories that portray them in a better light than the truth would.
My own definition of history is ‘a narrative about the past that is created in the historian’s mind and presented as a written record.’
You know how much I am against the historical accuracy of the Exodus and Conquest, but these are historical narratives, they are just false historical narratives.
it is not told has a history, it's told as tradition.
What’s the difference and are they unrelated?
Why can’t there be a traditional tale about an historical event.
even the "histories" of the bible aren't very historical.
This would depend on how you define history, which is a difficult thing to do, as there is no universally accepted definition thus far.
What type of history would you expect to find written 2500-3000 years ago?
In your very next post you write that:
I dunno how many are largely true, but the stories of genesis are often based on real places and events
How does this differ from that I claimed earlier:
Of course there are parts of The Book of Genesis that are historically plausible, it isn't entirely unhistorical.
This is essentially the same as what you have written!
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 48 by arachnophilia, posted 02-23-2005 2:40 AM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 57 by arachnophilia, posted 02-23-2005 2:55 PM Brian has replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 58 of 168 (187838)
02-23-2005 3:44 PM
Reply to: Message 57 by arachnophilia
02-23-2005 2:55 PM


Re: Uh?
The point that I was making is that there are parts of Genesis that *COULD* be historical. How can you say that Abraham did not exist, or that there was no such thing as a wandering Aramean? You really cannot say that this is unhistorical.
yes, they ARE unrelated. the difference is that one is tradition, and one is history. george washington cutting down the cherry tree -- traditional or historical?
So you are saying that a tradition *CAN* contain accurate historical information, and you even explicitly say this here:
george washington was a real person. he really was the first president of the united states. and his father probably owned at least one cherry tree. yet this story is still fictitious. it's tradition.
The traditon contains historical elements does it not, if not, then you would have to say that Washington and his dad's cherry trees didn't exist?
and that's the heart of the matter. tradition is fictional.
But not entirely, because Washington WAS real, and the Cherry Tree was real, this is the point I was making. Whether Abraham ever conned pharaoh is extremely unlikely, but that doesnt mean that there is nothing historical in Abraham's narratives.
we fictionalize things, and often use real historical events and places and sometimes people to do it. because human being are storytellers.
And how is this different from what I am saying, that parts of Genesis *COULD* be historically accurate?
In historical enquiry, you never discard all the information in a text if you find a discrepency or two, you evaluate ALL the information and keep what is plausible.
and genesis is stories, NOT an accurate recording of the reigns of kings, or the events in their lives.
How can you possibly know this? What is there about Genesis 14 for example, that is impossible?
it's all isolated stories from different sourced, loosely connected in a framework of chronology. emphasis on loosely.
I know about the construction of the Old testament, but we cannot say there was never a man called Joseph who was sold into slavery almost 4000 years ago because Noah's Flood is demonstrably untrue.
In biblical studies especially, you need to evaluate each and every text on its own merit, there is clearly fairy tales in there, but there is also a lot of information that *MAY* be true, it *MAY NOT* be true, but if there is nothing that makes the scenario impossible then it has to be considered.
Perhaps Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt and traditions/exaggerations have been added on to the story (which is likely because the Joseph narratives have been revised at least three times), that doesn't mean that some parts of the story are unhistorical. That Joseph interpreted dreams could be complete trash, but it doesn't mean he didn't exist.
Traditions invariably contain historical elements, how many myths have at least some basis in fact?
Many people have too narrow an understanding of what history is, especially what the ancients thought that history was. Van Seters wrote an excellent outline for recognising history in ancient writings:
1. History writing is a specific form of tradition in its own right. Any explanation of the genre as merely the accidental accumulation of traditional material is inadequate.
2. History writing is not primarily the accurate reporting of past events. It also considers the reason for recalling the past and the significance given to past events.
3. History writing examines the causes of present conditions and circumstances. In antiquity these causes were primarily moral — who is responsible for a certain state of affairs? (It goes without saying, of course, that modern scientific theories about causation or laws of evidence cannot be applied to the ancient writer.
4. History writing is national or corporate in character. Therefore, merely reporting the deeds of the king may be only biographical unless they are viewed as part of the national history.
5. History writing is part of the literary tradition and plays a significant role in the corporate tradition of the people.
(Van Seters, (1983) In search of history: historiography in the ancient world and the origins of Biblical history Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. London 4-5)
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 57 by arachnophilia, posted 02-23-2005 2:55 PM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 60 by arachnophilia, posted 02-24-2005 1:46 AM Brian has replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 62 of 168 (188085)
02-24-2005 10:21 AM
Reply to: Message 60 by arachnophilia
02-24-2005 1:46 AM


Re: Uh?
hi Arach, thanks for the reply.
sure, but genesis is NOT a history. i'm talking literature here, not archaelogy. there are parts of it that are CLEARLY based on real people or places or events: bab-el is a real place.
If you go back to what I said at the beginning:
Of course there are parts of The Book of Genesis that are historically plausible, it isn't entirely unhistorical.
How is this different to what you are saying??????????
You are agreeing that parts of Genesis are clearly historical, that’s exactly what I am saying.
Sure there are many fairy tales in it, but there’s history there too. Just because it doesn’t conform to the modern day definitions of the word doesn’t mean it isn’t historical.
Abraham could well have been a wandering Aramean, and any narratives about him and events concerning him ARE historical narratives, they may be largely false but they are still historical narratives.
but what genesis does not do is accurately record the histories, events, genealogies, of the stories described.
I really don’t know how you can say this!!
How do you know that Abraham did not go to Egypt during a famine, it is entirely possible.
How do you know that the war in Genesis 14 is unhistorical? It reads like history to me.
it tells tales, and usually tall ones.
Yes, it USUALLY tells tall tales, but not the entire book, which is what I am saying.
how is this hard to understand?
It isn’t hard to understand, I just don’t think you fully understand what history is.
george washington was a real person. but he probably did not cut down a cherry, and tell his father that he couldn't tell a lie.
But he is a historical character, PART of the tradition is true, which is what I am saying about Genesis. How can we say that there was no Abraham or Jacob, of Joseph? We can’t, and if a narrative about them concerns a past event then that is an historical account, because you and I don’t believe the tales doesn’t mean that everyone thinks it is unhistorical, a few billion people would disagree with us.
that story is not historical, but a biography of him would be. see the difference yet? these aren't hard concepts.
I know the difference, I just think you have a narrow view of what history is. If someone claimed that the story was true, would you say the ENTIRE tradition is false? Of course you wouldn’t, this is a tradition involving a real historical person. Genesis has many tales similar, but we cannot sweep the entire corpus aside as unhistorical, it isn’t possible.
you're mistaking my point. my point is not that abraham didn't exist. it's that the stories told about him are fiction.
My point is that there is no way you can dismiss everything about Abraham as fiction.
For example: Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar.
How can we say that this is fiction?
i don't know whether or not he was a real person, but any one skilled in reading any sort of literature notices immediately that genesis is written as fiction: traditional stories.
NO, no, no.
We are saying it was written as fiction. It was written in the style of the time, it was believed to be historical, and still is by a great many people. You are mistakenly applying a post renaissance view of literature onto a text that was written about 2000 years previous. It wasn’t originally written to be taken as fiction, it was written to be a history.
Would you say that Herodotus wrote history, because his ‘history’ books are rife with anachronisms, flights of fancy and wild, unsupported claims. It’s simply the way ancient’s recorded history. Thucydides was the same, and even Polybius did not achieve his own recommended standards.
sure, maybe abraham existed. maybe he was really the father of the jews and the muslims. but stories about him are most likely made up.
Yes, MOST LIKELY, there is no way to tell if they are entirely untrue!
Could Abraham have been a wandering Aramean? YES
Could he have been married to Sarah? YES
Are there unlikely events associated with his life. YES
Does this mean the narratives are unhistorical? NO
They are historical narratives, but most of them are likely to be FALSE history.
because it is very unlikely that part of genesis are historical accurate.
But you have just said that parts of Genesis are based on real people and real events.
a story based on history, a history, and historically accurate story are three different things.
And they are all open to the interpretation of the investigator. That’s why I define history as a narrative about the past that is created in the historian’s mind and presented as a written record. Every history is a creation of the historian’s mind, it is his interpretation of the data.
How many different histories have been written about Jesus based on the NT texts? They do not all agree. Some ‘prove’ that he was the Son of God, some ‘prove’ he was a revolutionary’ and they all use near enough the same sources for their conclusions.
Because you and I think that Genesis is unhistorical doesn’t mean that all historians would, it is just down to what you and I, or any other historian accept as historically plausible, that’s all history is.
Say we agree that all Abraham’s tales are fictional but based on history, that doesn’t mean that every historian will agree. Some will completely reject it, some will completely accept it, it is how they interpret the data.
besides, genesis is full of anachronism, which is pretty much the opposite of "historically accurate."
But, this doesn’t mean that the narrative is not a historical narrative! The authors may very well have believed that they were recording accurate history, no one was critically analysing the sources to see if they were accurate or not.
But, again, before the Renaissance anachronisms were not a problem at all for people who were writing and reading history. The historians probably never even considered whether anything they wrote was anachronistic or not.
Look how long that the Donation of Constantine was considered historically accurate, how long did it take before anyone’s curiosity was aroused?
It wasn’t until the rise of Documentary Criticism during the renaissance that anachronisms were considered to be problematic.
Even although evidence of documentary criticism can be found as early as 1355 when, in a letter to Charles IV, Petrarch provided evidence that a document exempting Austria from imperial jurisdiction was clearly a forgery. The full value wasn’t really realised until 1439 when Lorenzo Valla famously exposed the Donation of Constantine as a very poor forgery.
So, yes, anachronisms can indicate inaccuracy, but, it doesn’t follow that ancient historians were not writing history because of anachronisms. They weren’t even aware of them but they were aware that they were trying to record past events.
Even the Joseph stories undoubtedly belong to post monarchy, most likely the Saite period, it doesn’t mean they never happened.
But, you read some pre-renaissance books that claim to be history and you will be shocked to learn that most contain anachronisms.
There was no critical history writing being done in Israel.
It is well-known that the rise of Christianity was a tragedy for history writing, they suffocated the discipline for about 1500 years.
parts could have really happened, sure.
But this is what I said in the first post.
just like dracula could have really trapsed around romania sucking on necks. dracula is, after all, based on a real person.
Yes, parts of Dracula could well be historical. There was a Vlad the impaler as you say.
it has nothing to do with impossibility. it has to do with style of writing.
It has to do with style of writing NOW, but what histories written 700 year before Christ were written in what we would call a historical style?
you picked a good chapter, btw. genesis does appear to have been based on some kind of history, as the opening section reads like one. for the most part, this is NOT what genesis does.
I know it’s a good chapter, that’s why I picked it, because it is plausible.
But I am actually agreeing with you, I am saying that PARTS of Genesis could be historical, that’s all I claimed.
I honestly think that you are making the mistake of applying modern day literary definitions on to an ancient text. I have done this myself many times before.
(and don't start on genealogies, as they appear to be rigged)
I would argue that every genealogy in the Bible is artificial.
i'm not saying that genesis is not historically set, or not based on historical events in some parts, i'm saying that genesis itself is NOT a history.
That’s exactly what I said in the first post about this:
Of course there are parts of The Book of Genesis that are historically plausible, it isn't entirely unhistorical.
This is exactly the same as what you are saying.
I know that Genesis is not completely historical, very little in it is historically plausible. I agree it isn’t what you and I would call history, but you can guarantee that people will disagree with us.
how do i know this? i've read genesis. i've read kings and chronicles. i know the historical difficulties with kings and chronicles, and why they're not really even considered ture histories.
They aren’t considered true histories by people like us. But there are people who think that they are.
maybe joseph did exist. maybe he didn't. but the story is at the very least heavily fictionalized.
Yes, it is heavily fictionalised, but there is possible history there too, which is my point. Even if a history is clearly exaggerated, it is still history, it is just inaccurate.
sure, and what i'm saying is that for the most part, there is no real historical information designed to keep records in the book of genesis. it's not terribly difficult to look around and found which stories have an element of truth in them and were based on something in the real world.
Yes, I agree 100%, but this is the thing. What you and I find easy to identify as inaccuracies can be deemed legit by certain people, they have a different criteria fromus for accepting evidence.
Look at this gem from Mitt on another thread:
kenneth kitchen found price of slaves in josephs time so jososeph was real bible is true you are a real loser like a idiot.
You and I both know that this is a ludicrous approach to history, and biblical studies, but there are people out there who have different level of acceptance of evidence. I know this is an extreme example it was just an easy one to find.
i'm not saying he didn't. i'm saying the story is a traditional one, not a historical record.
It isn’t a historical record to our eyes, that doesn’t mean that the ancients never viewed them as history. This was the way that they recorded history.
now look at the two contradictory creation accounts. the two halves of the noah story. the three instances on abraham telling a foreign king sarah is his sister. see the similarity?
I think it was two instances of Abraham and one instance of Isaac and the three tales may be based on one event. Which one came first is anyone’s guess.
the redactor didn't even care to consolidate his sources, change them a little to streamline it and make it all agree nicely. why? to preserve the integrety of the tradition.
But no one at the time would see this as a problem!
We both know that the Bible is rife with contradictions, it is obvious, but to the ancient historian or reader this was not a problem, they did not view history as we do.
The first person that we know of who sifted through his sources and attempted to reject what he thought was impossible was Hecataeus (550-475 BCE). When he wrote:
What I write here is the account which I considered to be true: for the stories of the Greeks are numerous, and in my opinion ridiculous’
This was the first example we have of a critical approach to history writing.
The ancients simply recorded history in a different way from us.
history is to some degree the telling of stories, yes. but explaining a history in context is different than spinning yarns.
Yes it is different for us.
does it? find me morality in genesis.
What about the three wife/sister motif tales?
Esau and Jacob, Lot, there’s an abundance of moral stories there.
when god says "don't eat from that tree" he doesn't say "because it would be wrong to do so, and i care that you do the right things." he says "if you eat it, you'll die." sounds distinctly like cause and effect.
But how is this the same as Van Seter’s ‘Modern scientific theories’? It isn’t, it is a cause and effect caused by something that is outside scientific enquiry, namely God.
genesis does not record national history. because there is no nation of israel or judah during the time it is set. rather it tells fictionalized biographies.
It was written AFTER Israel became a nation, and it does allegedly record how that Nation came into being, it is that nations ‘pre-history’. It was written to give that nation a history of how it came into being.
What about the conquest narratives? We know that they are completely inaccurate but what other claim to the land does Israel have? The State if Israel makes its claim to the land based on these texts and they were concerning Israel before she was a nation.
It is actually quite difficult to pinpoint when Israel actually did become a nation!
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 60 by arachnophilia, posted 02-24-2005 1:46 AM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 63 by macaroniandcheese, posted 02-24-2005 3:35 PM Brian has replied
 Message 66 by arachnophilia, posted 02-25-2005 12:09 AM Brian has replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 64 of 168 (188185)
02-24-2005 3:51 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by macaroniandcheese
02-24-2005 3:35 PM


Re: Uh?
I am not assuming that anything in Genesis happened, I am assuming that certain parts of Genesis *COULD* be historical.
I am assuming that Gen 14 for example, is not historically impossible, and neither Arach nor myself would reject Gen 14 as impossible.
You cannot reject something that was said to be historical just because you cannot find external support for it, why would we expect to find evidence of Abraham for example? When no single person or event in the Book of Genesis is visible in what we know from near eastern history and archaeology, we have to go on plausibility, and there are certain parts that are plausible.
Also, for a narrative to be historical does not mean that the events described in it are true.
I am not assuming that they happened, but I am not assuming that they didn't, but some are plausible.
You will have to go far to find a bigger Bible sceptic than I Brennkimi, but even I would play fair with the Bible and give it the same treatment as any other ancient text.
Cheers.
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 63 by macaroniandcheese, posted 02-24-2005 3:35 PM macaroniandcheese has not replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 68 of 168 (188393)
02-25-2005 5:47 AM
Reply to: Message 66 by arachnophilia
02-25-2005 12:09 AM


Re: Uh?
I think I may have narrowed the problem down (or maybe not).
I think what you may be doing is to make a fairly common mistake in regards to what history is.
Too many people simply equate the word 'history' with the word 'past'. But, history is NOT what happened in the past, it is what the historian reports that happened in the past. The past has gone, we can never recover it, but historians write histories to try and preserve *a* past.
All history is created in the human mind, it is never identical with the past.
I think you may be looking at history as being something that has to be verified in order to qualify as history, but it isn't. History is simply a narrative about the past, it doesnt have to be true.
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by arachnophilia, posted 02-25-2005 12:09 AM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 71 by arachnophilia, posted 02-25-2005 9:18 AM Brian has replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 80 of 168 (188676)
02-26-2005 9:02 AM
Reply to: Message 71 by arachnophilia
02-25-2005 9:18 AM


Re: Uh?
Hi,
no, this seems to be your error. you're making the following jump: past + plausible = history. and it's not true.
It isn’t an error, and it doesn’t even have to be plausible for it to be history. History is a written account of a past event; it doesn’t have to be accurate.
ANY narrative about the past that has been presented as an historical account is history. Oppressive regimes have invented histories to make themselves look better.
I could write a history of Jericho and the experts could tear it to shreds and show that it was false, but I have still written a history of Jericho, even if it is crap. LOL
Look at the conquest narratives in Joshua, they are completely inaccurate, but they are historical narratives albeit false. They were most probably invented to give Israel a legitimate claim to the land, the conquest is false history, but the NARRATIVE is a historical narrative.
but it is not a history in and of itself, in the respect of being an accurate recording the real-world events of that culture.
Ah, you are coming close to the near abandoned stance of positivist history. If you cannot verify it then it didn’t happen. This is not what history is, it is much more complex than this.
A history does not need to be accurate.
so the movie titanic is a history? braveheart? gladiator?
Is anyone claiming that they are history, did their authors write it to be taken as historical? Did the 4 authors of Genesis believe that they were presenting a history of the past? I believe that they did, and because they didn’t record it in the modern sense doesn’t mean that it isn’t history. They wrote history the way that it was written 2700 years ago. No one at that time was writing history in the sense of sifting through sources and rejecting what was obviously untrue, and then explaining the causes and effects of an event. This didn’t happened for about another 2000 years.
i'm not talking at ALL about outside verification of events. i'm talking AGAIN about writing style and goal of the text.
Yes, the writing style is seen NOW as mythical, theological, didactic etc. But billions of people believe that Genesis is historical. Some of it is a historical narrative, the events are plausible, some of these things MAY have happened, which was the point I was making.
the writing style is a collection of tales with designed purposes.
I know, and a history can do exactly this as well! All histories are written with a designed purpose, the author’s beliefs shape what history is presented in their written record.
Look at these two histories of Jesus death. One states that Jesus was dead when he was taken down from the cross and was resurrected three days later. The other claims that he was drugged and then revived in his tomb, three days later he appeared to some of his followers.
Which one is history in your opinion, or are both, or none?
Would you be interested in contributing to a thread on 'What is History' if I started one off, or do you have a lot on?
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 71 by arachnophilia, posted 02-25-2005 9:18 AM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 82 by Jor-el, posted 02-26-2005 12:42 PM Brian has not replied
 Message 84 by arachnophilia, posted 02-27-2005 1:34 AM Brian has replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 88 of 168 (189124)
02-28-2005 7:30 AM
Reply to: Message 84 by arachnophilia
02-27-2005 1:34 AM


Re: Uh?
Hi Arach,
and the POINT of this entire debate is that genesis is NOT presented as a historical account. it's presented as a collection of folk tales.
But the point I made was that we cannot dismiss everything in Genesis as being unhistorical as there are things mentioned that could be historical. However, even the recording of these texts has historical value, it provides evidence to the historian about the society in which these tales were constructed.
no, it does not. but i was attempting to describe what a history should be, or what a history usually tries to be.
But this is what YOU think history should be and it is not the same as what the ancients thought it should be. Huizinga says that every culture creates its own form of history, and the Hebrew Bible has more than one way of recording history.
The ancients recorded history in songs and sagas, poems and psalms, you cannot dismiss them as historically worthless because they do not fulfil our modern day criteria of history writing.
what i'm saying is that genesis is not saying "this stuff happened" but rather "these are the stories we've told for a thousand years." i don't care whether or not the stuff actually happened, and it has nothing to do with that. it's strictly the style and goals of the writing.
What they are saying is that these are stories that we’ve told for a thousand years about how God interacted throughout history with our ancestors. The Israelites believed that they were saved from Egypt by God, a God who interacts in history. They did not think that they were preserving fairytales.
no. AND THAT IS THE POINT.
The point is that many people do take these narratives a historically accurate and their authors did not present them as a historical novel, they presented them in the way that they saw fit, no ne critically analysed them.
no, and they could not have.
Okay, so how could the four authors not have believed that they were presenting a history of the past?
except for the books of kings and chronicles, which some believe pre-date genesis. see, this is the problem with your argument. genesis is not an archaic style of history written by a culture that was not familiar with history-writing. there are contemporary histories of the culture, and we have two variants on them. samuel, kings and chronicles appear to have been written based largely on a single historical document, and then slightly manipulated in favor of various political and religious ideas. this document the three books used as source seems to have contained purely historical records.
This is incorrect again. The Hebrew Bible has different ways of recording history, it depends on who the writer was. Every historian uses their own method of writing to suit their purpose. The author of Kings selected the material that he wanted to present, the material that suited his purpose. But the author (s) of kings also used figurative and symbolic language, (e.g. 2 Kings 14:9), which was an accepted way of writing history in ancient Israel.
Genesis HAD to use figurative/symbolic language, how else could they describe something events that they didn’t fully understand?
We have different approaches to history writing in modern history writing. Look at the range of history genres we have, positivist, humanist, capitalist, idealist etc. If we have different approaches to writing history, then why couldn’t the ancient Israelites?
the process by which kings and chronicles were copied indicates that redactor(s) were not interested specifically in recording history correctly, but putting a certain spin on things. so they are not fully considered to be "true" histories in the sense we use the word today.
Yes, they are not true historians in the modern sense, but they weren’t writing history in modern days, they were writing 2500 or so years ago! So their history was shaped by the society and context of their day, not ours. History writing has changed dramatically in 2000 years, we cannot dismiss their claims because they wrote in a different way from us.
But, just as you say, we have ‘true’ histories, and the thing you should realise is that we have ‘false’ histories too, but they are all still history.
they omit important facts contrary to their political positions. (ever wonder where the fundis got it?) what they also show is consistency. they were interested in one consistent story of the history of a people.
But even modern day historians do this. No history is free from bias, but it is still history. You just have to decide for yourself if it is credible history or not.
now bounce back over to genesis. inconsistencies all over the place. they very obviously used different sources, and copied them exactly. they didn't even make god have one consistent name. in some places, he's called "elohym" and in others "yahweh elohym" and in yet thers "el shaddai" or variants thereof. they are used in consistently the same in blocks of text. this means that the redactors of genesis were not interested in the slightest if the stories agreed and told a realistic and unified tale. rather, it shows that they were interested in preserving the stories themselves, independent of one another.
so the goal was not historical, it was the preservation of tradition.
But traditions invariably preserve history within their texts. There is the tradition that Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt. Is there any reason to reject this as historical? Even if we prove it didn’t happen Joseph being sold into slavery is still history, it is just false history.
I know what you are getting at, and I am not saying that the Book of Genesis is historically accurate, I am saying that as a narrative of past events it qualifies as history. Now, if you want to say that Genesis is a history book that is full of myths, aetiologies, propaganda and impossibilities, then I wouldn’t disagree. It is still history though, even if it is nonsense.
and they are wrong. billions of children believe in santa claus. that doesn't make him real.
HISTORY HASN’T GOT TO BE REAL! How many times do I have to say this?
Genesis says there was a man called Noah who built a boat and saved all the animals. This is a historical narrative, it is history, but it is false history.
and that DOES NOT make it a history.
Yes it does. If a text is a narrative about the past it is history.
History IS NOT what happened in the past, it is the record written about that past. It is the piece of paper that the words are on, not the past event itself.
yes. see kings and chronicles.
And Joshua — Judges.
neither, both are strictly propaganda. history is not genre, and rarely records the lifes and deaths of homeless men.
Both are history because they both contain a narrative about a past event. They both cannot be right, but they are both valid histories, you just need to decide which one is the most plausible for you.
if you can't see how a gospel is not a history, i can't help you and we should end this debate now.
I don’t need any help LOL.
A gospel is a history of the good news.
The book of Luke even interviews eyewitnesses and contains details of background events. Whether we believe that any of these events happened is immaterial, the gospels are history, they may just be false history.
I gave you my definition of history, a conclusion reached after months of reading scores of books, so why don’t you give us your definition of history and we can perhaps see where the problem is?
see, i just thought it was common sense.
It is common sense, but you need to know what history is first.
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by arachnophilia, posted 02-27-2005 1:34 AM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 89 by Jor-el, posted 02-28-2005 2:15 PM Brian has not replied
 Message 92 by arachnophilia, posted 02-28-2005 5:55 PM Brian has replied

  
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 97 of 168 (189412)
03-01-2005 6:47 AM
Reply to: Message 92 by arachnophilia
02-28-2005 5:55 PM


Re: Uh?
i quit. someone else?
Me too! LOL, I have my sanity to think of.
Thanks for the discussion.
Brian.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 92 by arachnophilia, posted 02-28-2005 5:55 PM arachnophilia has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 99 by Nighttrain, posted 03-04-2005 12:22 AM Brian has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024