The TE Creation Story

[HypnoToad]

Well the Hebrew, Assyrian and Egyptian cultures (which heavily influenced each other) certainly didn't seem to think that recording accurate ages was important when using symbolic ages could tell so much more about a person and his life. Throughout ANE literature there is an emphesis on meaning over facts. The real question should be, why would you assume that they valued facts when there's not a single mention of the importance of factual accuracy in any period literature!

That they didn't value scientific newspaper-like reporting the way we do thousands of years later is far from an assumption, it's a conclusion that most period scholars have come to through years of study.

I still don't see how that precludes the use of a literal account.

The way a YEC sees it now, it's a literal account, and no one needs a PhD to understand it. So why would we expect a literal account describing evolution to be impossible to understand? Just because it's literal doesn't require using strictly pure scientific terms.

 

[Melethiel]

Because a literal account would have no significant meaning to the ANE Hebrews?

 

[Scotishfury09]

I still don't see how that precludes the use of a literal account.

The way a YEC sees it now, it's a literal account, and no one needs a PhD to understand it. So why would we expect a literal account describing evolution to be impossible to understand? Just because it's literal doesn't require using strictly pure scientific terms.

It wouldn't be impossible to us, but it would to them... Especially because they didn't value the details and specifics as much as the meaning itself.

 

[shernren]

A recap:

I certainly would not expect it to be the same.

I'd expect not to see light before the stars.

I'd expect not to see the earth before stars.

I'd expect not to see plants before the sun.

I'd expect not to see birds before land animals.

I'd expect not to see certain plants not growing until people show up.

I'd expect there to be rain.

I'd expect animals be given for food to other animals, not restricted to just plants.

That's just what I can think of at the moment.

Would any of those points have had any theological or doctrinal significance for the Jews?

Who knows?

But that's not the question of the thread.

The question is how would I expect the creation account to be different if TE were correct. I'd expect all those account details I mentioned, which would all then be incorrect, to be different.

The reason I ask is because we are trying to figure out what the intent of Genesis 1 is. Is it about scientific theories? Or is it about doctrinal truths? If the purpose of Genesis 1 is to teach theology and doctrine, then none of the details you mentioned have theological or doctrinal significance, so I wouldn't see any reason why God would change those details just to make His story more scientifically accurate.

You have to always remember who God was talking to here. You said:

I still don't see how that precludes the use of a literal account.

The way a YEC sees it now, it's a literal account, and no one needs a PhD to understand it. So why would we expect a literal account describing evolution to be impossible to understand? Just because it's literal doesn't require using strictly pure scientific terms.

I think it's fairly obvious that a literal account describing evolution is very difficult to understand; one only needs to look at how many creationists there are in the United States for proof of that.

But start considering how your state of knowledge would look to the ancients.

The "fact" that the earth goes around the sun has been "common knowledge" for less than 10% of our history as sentient species.
The "fact" of plate tectonics, for less than 1% of our history.

Relative to the way ancients perceived the universe, we are all pretty much scientific PhDs in how we read Genesis 1. We read "God created the heavens and the earth" and think about outer space; we all forget that no less than 200 years ago many people still weren't convinced that vacua exist at all. We read that God set the stars in the sky and immediately think of galaxies in the vacuum of outer space; we all forget how much ink was spilled over whether the heavens are incorruptible or not, and the geocentrists of the 16th century would have been abhorred to learn that we believe that the heavens change at all!

Whatever cosmogony you think you can see in Genesis 1, it definitely isn't our cosmogony. It doesn't incorporate vacua, or the fact that celestial physics are equivalent to terrestrial physics, or even that the earth goes around the sun. Why should anyone be surprised that it doesn't include evolution either?

 

[gluadys]

I still don't see how that precludes the use of a literal account.

The way a YEC sees it now, it's a literal account, and no one needs a PhD to understand it. So why would we expect a literal account describing evolution to be impossible to understand? Just because it's literal doesn't require using strictly pure scientific terms.

And the story was written precisely so it could be understood by those without PhDs. Making it easy to understand, and remember, so that it could be part of oral culture, is also a reason for organizing the creation in categories and assigning each category to a single day: plants to day 3, stars to day 4, sea and air creatures to day 5 and terrestrial creatures to day 6.

Even a very simplified account that is scientifically accurate would be much more complicated than that.

Take stars. Our sun is about 5 billion years old. But the universe is more than twice that age and many stars are much older than the sun. In fact, many stars that existed in the early universe no longer exist. They have burned out. As shernren notes, that is a fact that would totally shock our forebears of only a few centuries ago who believed the heavens were incorruptible and changeless.

Or plants. Plants are terrestrial. They grow in soil. All the plants named in Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 are terrestrial. But animal life existed in the sea before plants existed at all. Yet birds did not exist until well after plants came into existence. Ditto with whales who are creatures that descended from terrestrial ancestors.

And in no case did the whole category of plants, sea creatures, flying creatures and terrestrial creatures come into existence all at once. You get a complicated dance of different sorts of species in each category coming into existence and going extinct.

How much easier and simpler and more memorable to convey God's creative sovereignty over all forms of existence through organizing their creation into broad categories rather than by the actual very complex chronology.

I don't really see why it is so difficult to grasp the idea that God, in inspiring stories of creation, would accommodate those stories to the culture in which they were told. That God accommodates his revelation to the state of human knowledge was well understood by Calvin and by Augustine before him long before the idea of evolution came on the scene.

Perhaps they were more open to this idea because they too lived in cultures where most people were illiterate and uneducated, so they were more sympathetic to the problem of keeping ideas simple enough for the unlettered masses to grasp. With our system of universal education, we take for granted a level of general knowledge that is much more sophisticated than anything that prevailed even just 2-3 centuries ago.

 

[plainswolf]

To YECs: SUPPOSE the Earth and Universe really are billions of years old. Suppose that God were to explain to humans for the first time how the universe was created. What would that account be like? What would he say to his creation about how they were created?

I think if I asked God to explain all the details of creation, beyond what is written in Genesis, that His answer would be, "Mark, keep your attention on yourself, and the righteousness of your own conduct. These things you are asking about are according to the judgement of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them."

 

[artybloke]

So how, exactly, does all that preclude using a literal account?

Where exactly would they get this literal account from? There were no literal accounts of creation in the cultures surrounding them (compare the Sumerian creation myths, or the Egyptian, for instance.) There was no way they could do the kind of scientific research that would make it a checkable scientific account, partly through technology, and also because of the fact that it would never have occured to them to do so.

Unless the account was miraculously dictated from on high directly by God himself, it had to come from and be couched in the language of the culture the writers came from, not in post-Enlightenment concepts that would have been totally unknown to them. They lived in a culture that took its meanings from stories, legends and myths and wasn't in the least concerned with factuality.

 

[jeffweeder]

Well if I were God and I wanted you to believe that I poosibly meant millions of years, i would not have added these things to the text of Genesis;



And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and[1][Lit to make ] made.





3 When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became[2][Lit begot, and so throughout the ch] the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
4 Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters.
5 So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
6 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and became the father of Enosh.
7 Then Seth lived eight hundred and seven years after he became the father of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters.
8 So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.
9 Enosh lived ninety years, and became the father of Kenan.
10 Then Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years after he became the father of Kenan, and he had other sons and daughters.
11 So all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years, and he died.
Etc etc etc etc

 

[artybloke]

Well if I were God and I wanted you to believe that I poosibly meant millions of years, i would not have added these things to the text of Genesis;

a) it's a darn good thing you weren't then.

b) why would God want to tell an ancient people, most of whom were functionally illiterate, about a scientific theory that would have no direct bearing on their lives, and certainly wouldn't help them to be more ethical (no more or less ethical than knowing the theory of gravity, that is)?

c) why do creationists persist in this materialist worship of facts?

 

[HypnoToad]

The reason I ask is because we are trying to figure out what the intent of Genesis 1 is. Is it about scientific theories? Or is it about doctrinal truths? If the purpose of Genesis 1 is to teach theology and doctrine, then none of the details you mentioned have theological or doctrinal significance, so I wouldn't see any reason why God would change those details just to make His story more scientifically accurate.

Now, remember - the OP asks for the YEC view.

You ask the purpose of Genesis. I believe it is for doctrinal AND historical purposes.

So, if TE were correct, I would STILL expect Genesis to be doctrinal AND historical. That is why I would expect (if Gen. was about TE) all those erroneous details to be changed.

I think it's fairly obvious that a literal account describing evolution is very difficult to understand; one only needs to look at how many creationists there are in the United States for proof of that.

But this starts with the TE view that Genesis is allegorical. This is not the YEC view asked for by the OP.

But start considering how your state of knowledge would look to the ancients.

The "fact" that the earth goes around the sun has been "common knowledge" for less than 10% of our history as sentient species.
The "fact" of plate tectonics, for less than 1% of our history.

Relative to the way ancients perceived the universe, we are all pretty much scientific PhDs in how we read Genesis 1. We read "God created the heavens and the earth" and think about outer space; we all forget that no less than 200 years ago many people still weren't convinced that vacua exist at all. We read that God set the stars in the sky and immediately think of galaxies in the vacuum of outer space; we all forget how much ink was spilled over whether the heavens are incorruptible or not, and the geocentrists of the 16th century would have been abhorred to learn that we believe that the heavens change at all!

Whatever cosmogony you think you can see in Genesis 1, it definitely isn't our cosmogony. It doesn't incorporate vacua, or the fact that celestial physics are equivalent to terrestrial physics, or even that the earth goes around the sun. Why should anyone be surprised that it doesn't include evolution either?

It may not MENTION things we talk about in modern cosmology, but I don't see anything contradictory to it.

Further, it was ancient man who built the pyramids. Modern science only recently began to understand how they were built. I don't accept that ancient man is as stupid as you make them out to be.

Where exactly would they get this literal account from?

It's called "divine inspiration".

why do creationists persist in this materialist worship of facts?

Are you for real?? TE's dismiss YEC because the "scientific facts" supposedly say so.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Are you for real?? TE's dismiss YEC because the "scientific facts" supposedly say so.

Yes but creationists refuse to accept that something that isn't scientifically factual could nonetheless be absolutely true.

 

[HypnoToad]

Yes but creationists refuse to accept that something that isn't scientifically factual could nonetheless be absolutely true.

I've got no idea what you're talking about.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I've got no idea what you're talking about.

I mean to say that creationists think that when we TEs say that Genesis 1 isn't scientifically accurate, you presume we don't pay due respect to Scripture- because in ya'lls mind facts and truth are somehow conflated.

 

[busterdog]

It wouldn't be impossible to us, but it would to them... Especially because they didn't value the details and specifics as much as the meaning itself.

what makes you think He didn't write it for us?

There were any number of ways to describe aeons of time. What did God say of Abraham's descendents? They would be numbered as the stars or grains of sands. That's what I would have said about the interventing years between big bang and Moses or whomever.

Do your concordance search on "spirit". Ancient Hebrews knew the difference between spiritual qualities and physical life. Genesis says God breathed physical life into Adam. So limiting the entrance of death into creation as spiritual death is completely unnecessary given the understanding of the immeidate audience of the five books of Moses. I would state very plainly that a new type of spirit was entering man, not that physical death represented a changed circumstance.

The Israelites also understood nationhood and characteristics of groups of people. It was again completely unnecessary to make Adam emblematic of all man and of the nature of the fall itself. If Adam represented a stage in evolution, it would be stage shared by a nation.

Joseph also showed comprehension of symbology in his dream of the sheaves of wheat and cows coming out of the Nile. Both symbols were readily translateable adn explainable. The figure of Adam is nothing but trouble for the idea that he simply represents a stage in evolution.

I would use something clearly intended to be a symbol of man if evolution were true.

Obviously the idea of a regional flood would be simple to describe as well. I would just say it that way.

 

[Deamiter]

Do your concordance search on "spirit". Ancient Hebrews knew the difference between spiritual qualities and physical life. Genesis says God breathed physical life into Adam. So limiting the entrance of death into creation as spiritual death is completely unnecessary given the understanding of the immeidate audience of the five books of Moses.

In both Greek and Hebrew, there are clear words for death and clear ways to indicate physical and spiritual death. Would you similarly claim that every place where the Bible discusses 'death' they're talking about physical death (or similarly 'unnecessarily limiting the mention of death to spiritual death')?

I also don't really understand what specifically in an understanding of the immediate audience of the Torah suggests to you that it could not be talking about a spiritual death only. I know you said that you found it 'completely unnecessary' so perhaps you meant that it's not the only legitimate way to read the passage (though I think that context makes it clear). Either way, whatever your exact point I'd honestly be very interested to know what in your understanding of the Torah's initial audience leads you to the conclusion that they weren't talking about only spiritual death.

 

[gluadys]

what makes you think He didn't write it for us?

The fact that throughout it uses the concepts current at the time it was written.

This isn't to say there are not timeless truths in scripture which (to use the words of scripture itself) make it profitable and useful to all generations. But no, it was not written for us. Isn't that a rather arrogant assumption?

Do your concordance search on "spirit". Ancient Hebrews knew the difference between spiritual qualities and physical life.

The Israelites also understood nationhood and characteristics of groups of people. It was again completely unnecessary to make Adam emblematic of all man and of the nature of the fall itself. If Adam represented a stage in evolution, it would be stage shared by a nation.

Joseph also showed comprehension of symbology in his dream of the sheaves of wheat and cows coming out of the Nile. Both symbols were readily translateable adn explainable. The figure of Adam is nothing but trouble for the idea that he simply represents a stage in evolution.

I would use something clearly intended to be a symbol of man if evolution were true.

Obviously the idea of a regional flood would be simple to describe as well. I would just say it that way.

I don't think the comprehension of the ancients is limited by their intelligence or sensitivity in matters of the spirit. In many matters, both mundane and spiritual, the sophistication and subtlety of their thought is very profound and we have in no way surpassed them.

Nevertheless, it is simple fact that some information was not available to them. Some information requires advances in technology before it can be known. So all we have learned in astronomy (dependent on the telescope) and in micro-biology (dependent on the microscope) and all we are learning through space probes, and all that has been learned through the exploration of areas of the earth and civilizations unknown to the ancient Near East and Mediterranean civilizations was simply not available to the authors of scripture.

I think the question is whether any of this additional information, including geological, paleontological and biological information that only became available within the last three centuries, has any major implications for God's relationship to humanity or our relationship to creation and to each other.

There is a huge amount of scientific information that we have acquired since the Enlightenment, but in a real sense it is all spiritually peripheral. None of it, for example, makes the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule outmoded ethical standards. None of it invalidates scriptural teaching on God's power and glory, mercy and justice. The concern of Isaiah and Amos for justice for the poor, the Sermon on the Mount and Paul's paean to love are all just as valid today as when they were first written.

It seems to me that asking for the spiritually peripheral information science has given us to be part of the scriptures is asking for the chief and urgent message to be delayed until everyone has caught up with the tutorials on modern science.

The lack of modern science in scripture has nothing to do with lack of intelligence or theological sophistication on the part of the ancients. It has to do with spiritual priorities and the necessity of setting out God's judgment of sin and expectations of righteousness without having to wait for the technology necessary to the acquistion of modern scientific knowledge.

Consider the analogy of a missionary doctor taking medicine to a remote Papuan tribe that believes all illness is caused by demons. In the midst of an influenza outbreak, does the doctor take time to explain germ theory before administering inoculations, or does he say he has brought them a new way to combat the demon that causes the flu? If the need of immunization is urgent, would the doctor not explain it in terms the tribe understands and get on with education on the causes and transmission of disease when the urgency has passed?

 

[shernren]

So, if TE were correct, I would STILL expect Genesis to be doctrinal AND historical. That is why I would expect (if Gen. was about TE) all those erroneous details to be changed.

So in other words, if God used evolution to create man, then God was beholden to describe it in some way to the Israelites?

 

[artybloke]

It's called "divine inspiration".

That would be more akin to "divine dictation."

You ask the purpose of Genesis. I believe it is for doctrinal AND historical purposes.

What ARE those historical purposes? WHY does the Genesis story have to be both true spiritually and theologically, and true historically? The parables are not both spiritually and historically true, so why does Genesis have to be? Does it affect any theological truth in Genesis to say that it's non-historical? If so, what?

Do you really believe it has to be historical to be true, like a good old-fashioned materialist?

 

[busterdog]

So in other words, if God used evolution to create man, then God was beholden to describe it in some way to the Israelites?

Actually, this is really a response to the anti-inerrant position, which seems at times to place the context above the content. For some, the context of the supposed audience is about the only hermeneutic employed. Why does a YEC get busted for indulging a little in what is routinely accepted?

 

[busterdog]

In both Greek and Hebrew, there are clear words for death and clear ways to indicate physical and spiritual death. Would you similarly claim that every place where the Bible discusses 'death' they're talking about physical death (or similarly 'unnecessarily limiting the mention of death to spiritual death')?

I also don't really understand what specifically in an understanding of the immediate audience of the Torah suggests to you that it could not be talking about a spiritual death only. I know you said that you found it 'completely unnecessary' so perhaps you meant that it's not the only legitimate way to read the passage (though I think that context makes it clear). Either way, whatever your exact point I'd honestly be very interested to know what in your understanding of the Torah's initial audience leads you to the conclusion that they weren't talking about only spiritual death.

I am not understanding. Must the use of a single word be used only one way consistently? Actually, I am not aware of any place in the Moses where death is simply "spiritual death." That doesn't mean it isn't there. But, if that is the premise for the argument, let's see where death is used is such.