Ultimately the only thing I'm after is did this happen?
That's fine, and you're entitled to this line of questioning. My point, however, is that if the writers of Genesis weren't interesting in the same "ultimate" thing that you're "after", then you're probably not going to find the answers you are looking for from them. So until you can establish that their assumptions about history and their motivations in writing Genesis correspond directly with your assumptions about the criteria for determining whether the writing relates in a modernist's "historical" way to the events that transpired, you may have a fruitless search ahead of you.
Did Genesis happen as it's written?
Again, it depends on "how it's written." Until you can establish the motivations and intentions behind how it was written, you'll never get to the phenomenological conclusion you're after. After all, if this is mythos, the event (from a modernist POV) may have not "happened", but to the writers of the Scriptures, it may have "happened". Ultimately, you will need to reconcile yourself to the fact that the ancient writers of the Scriptures don't think about the world, history, or even God in the same way that you do.
You are correct if you say I don't understand the genre of myth. A myth doesn't haven't to be a tale, it could be true. Yet all I care about is if it's true. On a favorite show of mine, a man told a group of travelers an old tale. One of the travelers asked him if the story he told was true, or just a legend. The man's response was, "Oh, it's a true legend!"
But you still misunderstand the role of mythos within ancient cultures. By saying that it "could be true", you are still defaulting to the modernist prejudice for particular evaluations of historicity. For the ancient mind, it's entirely possible that a myth "never happened" (from a modernist POV), and yet it is still "true".
I don't care what the genre is concerning Genesis.
If you don't care about the genre of Genesis, and the place that this type of literature had within the ancient political/religious/sociological world, then you must not care about Genesis at all, as the meanings and messages communicated by the text are not able to be bifurcated from the genre. By trying to abstract and assimilate the text of Genesis into a modernist framework of meaning, you erode and distort the Scriptures from what they were originally intended to be.
All I care about is if it truly happened.
I would argue that you should shift your focus, then. Rather than being obsessed with knowing whether or not your modern prejudice for the adjudication of historicity can be sated within your investigation of Genesis, perhaps you should attempt to suspend these same prejudices and allow the ancient voices within the text to say what they say, no matter how strange and alien they may sound.
I argue that Christianity is dependant on Genesis being literal.
I would argue that you are making a terrible mistake in making this argument. Not only is this argument without historical precedent, it is also entirely incapable of substantiation.
Because if it's not literal, then what scientists tell us about the history of the earth wouldn't jive at all with who God is.
That's your opinion, of course. Personally, I find what scientists tell us about the history of the earth to be entirely in keeping with who God is.
Have any of you watched any nature shows? Have you seen for instance, a male lion killing another's lions cubs? Have you seen hyenas eating a wilderbeest alive, with it's eyes rolling in the back of it's head from the lost of blood? This would be the world that God created
There is nothing "wrong" or "broken" with the cessation of biological processes within a finite universe. Death is a requisite for life, as the very biological makeup of who we are as embodied persons is predicated upon cells dying, new cells replacing them, multiplying, dying, and on and on.
The "brokeness" in the world, therefore, is not the physical phenomenon which occur, but rather humanity's broken relationship toward God, creation, and self. We see within creation violence and pain and fear because we have detached ourselves from the life God in our rebellion. Therefore, even in the goodness of God's creation, we find horror and terror because these perfectly natural occurrences remind us of our alienation from the life of God and the doom which awaits us as we drift farther and farther into death and unbecoming.
And man came up in this world, where sickness and disease is the norm. The God I know sent Jesus to heal us and to set us free. The God referred to in NT Scripture, have God purifying this world and making a new one, where the lion and the lamb would hang out together. So Christianity is very dependant on Genesis being literal.
And none of these conclusions change. Indeed, Christ did come to heal us, to reconcile humanity back to God. In the restoration of the divine/human relationship, we also find the reconciliation of humanity to its place within the cosmos. Rather than a terrifying world filled with violence and death, the reunified mind is able to see the creation for what it is, the "good" that God intended from the very beginning.
Did the people of Israel see Genesis as literal? I would figure they would. They wouldn't have any reason not to.
Well, except for the small, pesky point that what is "literal" to you may have meant something entirely different to them. In which case, a mythological reading of Genesis, from the perspective of the ancient mind, may in fact be the "literal" reading.
Yet the biggest thing is if these events didn't happen, Christianity falls apart altogether. The Bible is not a science book, but it must be correct on it's points concerning origins and history.
False premise. First of all, you have yet to define how one is to actually determine whether "these events" did or didn't happen. Second, by making this claim, you have ultimately declared that the modernist/scientific viewpoint is the ultimate arbiter of truth, that even the Scriptures (which you claim "must be correct" in its relation to science) are subject to them.
I could not disagree more. The Scriptures are a part of the cornerstone of Christian faith and life, not because they are scientifically and historically accurate (however these are defined...), but because they are within the historical tradition and practice of the Church, all the way to the very beginning. Christians should not need to defend the Scriptures against scientific/historical methodology, for the Scriptures are not cut from the same cloth as that to which these methods would be applied.
However, when naive Christians feel threatened by these methodologies and go out of their way to illegitimately subject the Scriptures to this scrutiny, it creates nothing but harm. Yes, it may be done with good intentions; but it is not done in a thoughtful way and betrays a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Scriptures and the place which they occupy within the historical tradition and practice of the Christian church.
