artybloke
Well-Known Member
The Lady Kate said:
Exactly. What was the normal, everyday reading of the story of creation in Genesis 1 the day after it was written?
Did they think in terms of scientific methodology and naturalistic ways of thinking that did not come to prominence in the West until the 15-16th century at the earliest?
Or were they - as seems likely from what we know of surrounding cultures - steeped in mythology from birth to death, from the stories told on their mothers' knees to the stories they heard in the temples, marketplaces, houses they frequented? If you were trying to communicate profound spiritual truth to these people, how would you do it? Would you say "in the beginning God created the singularity, which contained all the matter and energy and time of the universe in one small place, and which has the formula...." or would you say "In the beginning God created the world etc etc..."?
In other words, would you communicate truth in terms that people could understand, or would you just leave people staring blankly at you, not understanding a word you've said because you might as well have been speaking Venusian?
That's not saying that the people of the time were any thicker or less inteligent than we are now. It just means that their whole way of thinking of the world was different from ours. It's difficult to imagine now what it would be like to live in a world without science in the modern sense; but that's the world they lived in.
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