Pats said:
Glaudys, I fully understand your comparison of Genesis to mythology in post #6, and I would agree. However, it doesn't tell me that special creation didn't take place.
No, of course it doesn't. It's not intended to do that. Special creation vs. evolution is
our question. It is not the question that Genesis 1 was written to answer.
The question Gen. 1 was written to answer related to "who created?" (the gods of the nations or the God of Israel), not to "how did God create?" That was a question of particular importance to the Jews experiencing defeat and exile (for it was at this time that Gen. 1 was written). It was a common assumption at the time that the strength of a nation's gods was measured by the political, economic and military strength of the nation. War on earth was seen to be due to a war between the gods, and the victory of one nation over another was seen to be the result of the victory of that nation's gods over the gods of the defeated nation. You can see how the defeat of Judah would be seen, by Jews as well as Babylonians, as the defeat of Yahweh and all he stood for. Should the Jews continue to serve a weak and defeated God?
This is where the Gen. 1 story of creation comes in, with its ringing endorsement of the God of Israel as the one and only Creator. Piece by piece it takes the creation story of the conquerer and retells it in a way that denies the conquerors gods.
And the connection with the Sabbath is important too, for the contention of this author as of other prophets, is not that God failed Israel, but that Israel failed God by failing to keep the Covenant, of which the Sabbath is a sign.
It is important to remember for any section of the bible, that it was written to answer the questions the people of God were asking at the time it was written. It was not written to answer questions that had not yet occurred to anyone.
So it doesn't answer the question of special creation vs. evolution. But it does tell us something even more important. No matter how we came to be we are the work of God. And the universe we live in is the work of God. Nothing science has ever or will ever discover about the origins of the world or of ourselves can ever change that.
There are many places in the Bible where the allegorical is also a picture of the literal. Right down to Salvation, Christ died (physical) so we don't have to (spiritual.)
The Bible seems to be full of places where allegorical representations were also literal. King Nebekanezzer's dreams... there are multiple examples. So, while your insight was fascinating, I don't see how it clears anything up.
In fact, behind every figurative, allegorical, apocalyptical, metaphorical text there is a reference to something that is literally true. That is why identifying these literary forms is not a dismissal of the truths they teach. It is simply identifying the form in which they are presented.
I do ask that question, yes. I'm open to hearing the answers from all sides of origin theology on this. How does a literal vs. an allegorical Adam effect the message of Salvation?
It doesn't. Sin, the fall, salvation are all literally true if Adam is a type-figure or representative head of humanity, just as they are if Adam is a literal individual with a historical existence. And the historicity of Adam is not even a dividing line between creationist and TE, for some TEs believe that Adam was indeed a literal, historical person. Not my position, but it is not something I take issue with.
Following on with what I said above, about all allegory, etc. having a literal reference, the literal reference in this case is our alienation from God. We are alienated from God by our sinful nature. We are reconciled to God by Christ who has overcome our sinful nature in his life, death and resurrection.
This is all literal. And in Gen. 2 we have a story that tells us about how we become alienated from God. Whether we understand that story as a report of a historical event or as a pictorial presentation of the broken relationship between humanity and God makes no difference to the literal reality of our sinful nature and need for salvation.
Emphasis added by me. Would you mind expanding on that, please?
Many of the books of the bible have gone through a complicated history of oral and written authorship and editing. Many are actually compilations of the works of several previous authors. The book of Isaiah, for example, is actually a compilation of the oracles of three different prophets: Isaiah, son of Amoz, who lived in Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah, an anonymous prophet known as Isaiah of Babylon who was a Jewish exile and preached the return from exile, and another anonymous prophet who lived in Jerusalem after the return.
Genesis is also a composite book with three principal authors and two principal editors. Scholars have laboured for three centuries to work out who wrote what and when it was written. The genealogies appear to have been added either by the person who wrote Gen. 1 (and who is not the same person who wrote the Adam & Eve story) or by the final editor who brought all the earlier works together.
For more on the origin of the Torah see:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap3.html
http://www.cresourcei.org/jedp.html
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/139/story_13986_1.html
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/jepd.html
So, do you believe that God intended to create through evolutionary means a creation containing pain, toil, and death. He initiated the evolution of our world with the idea that sin would naturally occur and He would have to send His son to His death?
According to Revelation, Christ is the Lamb slain "from the foundation of the world". This implies that God knew we would sin and what the consequences would be, including the consequences for his son. Yet he created anyway.
I am sure God also knew that creating biological life creates biological suffering and death---whether or not species evolve. It is simply impossible for biological life not to be mortal, even if it is specially created.
So, yes, I believe God created a world in which living things die and that he called it "very good".
I believe God created a world into which he knew sin would be introduced with the ultimate price to be paid in the death of Jesus on the cross, and that he called this world "very good".
Neither of these aspects of creation requires evolution. They would be true whether or not species evolved. So evolution cannot be dismissed on these grounds.
Doesn't that alter the Biblical picture of God Himself?
No, it may alter how some people view the biblical picture of God, though. I would suggest that some people have not probed the biblical picture of God in depth but have adopted a view that pleases them.
I'm not saying God's Word doesn't contain allegories, I just need to take great care in examining it before I call part of it an allegory, especially when it contains similar language to the literal portion. I'd rather make an error on the side of caution.
As I see it, there is nothing special about a text being "literal". There is no reason to elevate a "literal" text as having greater truth value than an allegorical or mythological or any other sort of text which is not plainly historical. And we also have to remember that our notion of history is a recent invention of Euro-American philosophy. So applying our standards of "literal" to an ancient text is really anachronistic.
Is it possible that the flood was neither global nor mythologized? It would seem there was a time when you could have told a Roman something occured all over the world, and they would have took it to mean all over Rome.
That is probably the best way to understand the biblical references to the "whole earth" and the "highest mountains" in the flood text. Just as in the NT, the Roman emperor's decree that "all the world" should register for the tax obviously means all the Roman empire, not the whole globe.
However, the literary form of the story is still that of a myth. It is important to remember that "myth" refers to the way the story is told, not to the reality or unreality of the events. The story can be told mythically even if the event is history. And since ancient peoples did not differentiate much between history and myth, history was often told mythically or in sagas and legends rather than in objective journalistic reports as in a newspaper.
The Bible contains facts, actions, examples, and the like that are both allegorical and literal.
