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Should Genesis be taken literally?
- Thread starter Big Drew
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I've been wondering something this evening, while doing my household chores - if Genesis is not literal history then the Ten Commandments must be just a story too, since they refer back to the Genesis creation event. So does that mean we don't have a definition of what constitutes murder? Am I committing murder if I spray weedkiller on a plant? If not, why not? What about the worker in the abattoir who ends the life of chickens so they can adorn our dinner plates? Who defines what murder is (or other sins for that matter) if not God? Indeed, who defines sin at all? If I were to go out and kill someone just because the random processes caused by the chemicals in my brain compelled me to do so, would that be my fault? After all, if the Bible can't be relied on to give me the truth, the absolute truth and nothing but the truth, why should I trust any of it? I might just as well follow Richard Dawkins because I'm just the product of a series of random events spanning millions of years according to him. Now if, as I believe, Genesis/the Bible is true (and there is good circumstantial evidence to conclude that it is of course) then the Ten Commandments also make sense and I know exactly where we all stand with God (totally lost in our sins unless we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour).
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Natural law, the essence of the Ten Commandments, is revealed to every human being, as explained in Romans chapter 1. This is why so many religions have the same basic ethical teachings. But it is a mistake to confuse Christianity with the purely ethical.
As a Lutheran I do not believe in the authority of the Bible a priori, so it doesn't really bother me. My faith is based on the revelation of God in Christ, which the Bible merely testifies to. But the Word of God in the true sense is not confined to the Bible, as the Word was preached even before there was a Bible.
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Interesting. So what do you make of these words of Christ in view of that...
John 5:46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
John 5:47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"
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That was my question. If Abraham was real, is the narrative about him also real and factual or is it not? Are the stories of his life true or made up?
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That is not really accurate. Yes it was preached before we had the canon of the Bible we have today. But it was preached using the OT as the Bible of the day. And the churches preached using Paul and the apostles letters as Scripture equal to the OT scriptures. So even back then Scripture was THE authority. The gospel was the fulfillment of the OT. There is NO evidence that Christ or the apostles ever taught out of any other writing.
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The early Church had oral traditions and probably sayings Gospels about Jesus that would have been taught, most likely be the apostles themselves or those closest to them.
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Well we do know that the gospels were not written until later. The earliest church would have to have relied on the apostles for the teachings of Christ. That is true. But it is also true that the apostles were eye witnesses to Jesus and walked with him so I would consider them reliable. Then they wrote the letters to the churches which became the churches Scripture. The apostles taught from the OT and write their own. You over sell oral tradition. Oral tradition is NOT Scripture. The letters and OT are. When Jesus taught he taught out of the OT. His authority on the matter was recognized. He also had the ability to add to the OT as he was God. But he never took away from the Law and Prophets. He never once said the Law and Prophets were wrong about anything.
Scripture is the ONLY true authority. There is nothing else, for nothing else is inspired.
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Well that sure doesn't answer my question. Please try. Was Abraham a real person or not? If so are the tales of his life real true factual events or were they not?
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Are you saying then that this verse is a deliberate falsehood inserted in the very midst of one of God's most important announcements to mankind? By Moses, the author of the book or someone else? If so, why would God allow that to happen to his inspired scriptures as he would have realised that this would eventually lead to people wondering what else in his scriptures was at best unreliable information and at worst, outright deceit? Surely, an omnipotent God would protect his inspired works from such contamination. Also, if the six-day creation story were just a made up story, what other explanation could there be for the 7-day week including the Sabbath? Now no-one can prove that the account in Genesis is correct or not, but circumstantial evidence from the Bible and from the lack of any coherent alternative scientific theory for how everything came to be means that to believe the Genesis creation account is not an unreasonable position to adopt. Those who wish to deny it and follow man's alternative theories are of course welcome to do so, which is fine for the atheists and their religion of naturalism, but as ably-demonstrated in this thread alone, causes huge theological problems for Christians.
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Speedwell
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No, you are. I just said it was a parenthetical insertion by the transcriber, one who obviously believed in a six day creation. You are the one who needs it to be a lie if it is not 100% accurate literal history.
You're not paying attention. I oppose YECism for theological reasons which have nothing to do with evolution.
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I don't actually need it to be anything, but since it agrees with the rest of scripture, then I accept it as referring to real events. If it's merely a "transcriber, one who obviously believed in a six day creation" he could have said something like "and many of us believe that in six days..." but he didn't, he said "For in six days..." (no room for doubt or interpretation there I would suggest).
How can six-day creation be a theological problem - it's theme runs throughout the Bible and even Jesus referred to the creation event...
Mar 10:6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'
Mar 10:7 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,...
Then there are the references to Adam and Eve in other parts of the New Testament (see uploaded images), so I'm left wondering, how much of the Bible do you have to tear out to agree with your version of events? Why would you want to do that?
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Plenty of room for interpretation. And you are, of course, entitled to your interpretation.
And if it is an allegory, which is how I read the Genesis creation accounts, I would expect that Jesus would refer to it.
No, you don't have to tear any pages out of the Bible if you read the Genesis creation accounts as an allegory.
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I'm curious - what is it about the creation account that makes you read it as a allegory? To me, God couldn't have made it clearer that he was referring to normal 24-hour days and it's clear that at least one of the Gospel writers was talking about a relatively recent creation too...
Luk 3:23 Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,
Luk 3:24 the son of........Luk 3:38 the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
How many years does that span? Even if we concede that a few generations were left out, it's still only going to stretch back a few thousand years at most.
So we have a direct line from Jesus back to Adam and since this was written by someone who has been called one of the finest historians that ever lived, I think we can be pretty confident that it is accurate. So I think your sentence ought to be amended to read "And if it is an allegory, which of course is not how a plain reading of the text would imply, I would not expect Jesus would refer to it."
Sure you do, it makes the whole point of Jesus' death on the cross for our sins pointless if we can't be sure how or when we came to start sinning in the first place. And once you start with Genesis, why stop there? Was there a worldwide flood that wiped out all mankind and other creatures too or is that made up as well? What about Jesus walking on water or turning water into wine - there's no non-supernatural explanations for those events, so are they allegories too? I think you have a serious problem when you go down that road.
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