myth and allegorical applied to biblical text needs to be done so with wisdom. To blanket the whole bible in allegory is not in good judgment and each book needs to be taken in context. Sometimes even portions of books have different context.
With Genesis these are not written accounts based on eyewitness so they shouldnt be read as such. Its generally assumed Moses wrote the book and he certainly wasn't around during any of the events that take place in Genesis.
When you look further into the context of Genesis there are accounts that apply more broadly to a wider audience and accounts that narrow a lot more to a more specific audience all of which would have been kept through oral tradition. Broader texts can be generalized as Pre-Abraham/Pre-Flood and more narrow texts are after Post Flood/Post Abraham.
If you read Genesis you will find there is a vast more detail written about Abraham and his descendants than there is about before Abraham. This is because this text is for the Hebrews and obviously they would have a specific interest in keeping the detailed accounts about their Patriarch and how Israel became a people group. There is no reason to think why these accounts would be corrupted because no other culture would have interests in robbing these figures. The Hebrews kept the details because it would have been important to them.
As for account before Abraham these details would be only be important to the degree that God is glorified through them as the creator and ruler over all things. From the time these things happened until they were written down the details would have been somewhat fluid influenced by surrounding cultures and those times cultures would have expressed themselves a lot through myth. Moses came into the picture and probably had to redeem the stories floating around to ensure worship of the one true God.
The myth of these accounts are not as important as how the myth is put together and how God is glorified. When a story is 1000 years old what matters is the broad strokes and this is where Moses would have found himself. It was important to cleanse these accounts of paganism (such as rampant egyptian influence) and point to God as the only creator and ruler of all things. But it was probably also important to keep the accounts as they probably had strong connection and identity to those who told it.
So when all things that we know are created in 6 days and then rest on the 7th what is important is why these details were revealed this way and that God did it. What isn't important is the question of how can everything we know be created in 144 hours. So how do we explain the 13.8 billion years? We don't because the these details are not important in the texts we have nor do they answer the question. Let science work out science and let scripture work out scripture.
With Genesis these are not written accounts based on eyewitness so they shouldnt be read as such. Its generally assumed Moses wrote the book and he certainly wasn't around during any of the events that take place in Genesis.
When you look further into the context of Genesis there are accounts that apply more broadly to a wider audience and accounts that narrow a lot more to a more specific audience all of which would have been kept through oral tradition. Broader texts can be generalized as Pre-Abraham/Pre-Flood and more narrow texts are after Post Flood/Post Abraham.
If you read Genesis you will find there is a vast more detail written about Abraham and his descendants than there is about before Abraham. This is because this text is for the Hebrews and obviously they would have a specific interest in keeping the detailed accounts about their Patriarch and how Israel became a people group. There is no reason to think why these accounts would be corrupted because no other culture would have interests in robbing these figures. The Hebrews kept the details because it would have been important to them.
As for account before Abraham these details would be only be important to the degree that God is glorified through them as the creator and ruler over all things. From the time these things happened until they were written down the details would have been somewhat fluid influenced by surrounding cultures and those times cultures would have expressed themselves a lot through myth. Moses came into the picture and probably had to redeem the stories floating around to ensure worship of the one true God.
The myth of these accounts are not as important as how the myth is put together and how God is glorified. When a story is 1000 years old what matters is the broad strokes and this is where Moses would have found himself. It was important to cleanse these accounts of paganism (such as rampant egyptian influence) and point to God as the only creator and ruler of all things. But it was probably also important to keep the accounts as they probably had strong connection and identity to those who told it.
So when all things that we know are created in 6 days and then rest on the 7th what is important is why these details were revealed this way and that God did it. What isn't important is the question of how can everything we know be created in 144 hours. So how do we explain the 13.8 billion years? We don't because the these details are not important in the texts we have nor do they answer the question. Let science work out science and let scripture work out scripture.
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