The important thing when reading Genesis is to remember the human authors and the culture within which it was written. While timeless in its message, it is definitely time and culture specific in its literary form. That form is NOT strict historical narrative, which is a genre that was unknown at the time and would not have been expected or even thought desirable, even if all the facts of a story about their past was readily available (whether by good records or divine inspiration). Their focus was on the essential message of the tale rather than the factual accuracy.
There are a couple of really good lectures on these subjects from The Teaching Company, and they all concur with this understanding of the past, and what I recall way back when I got my degree in ancient history. One of these is Ancient Near East Mythology by Shalom S. Goldman. In those lectures he said:
"Now, the gods in those creation stories [speaking here of the Egyptian creation stories] appear in multiple and conflicting accounts. There is no attempt at consistency either within any given account or across accounts."
He then goes on to compare this with the similar contradiction between the two Hebrew creation accounts. Then, later:
"Among the Hittites and among the Canaanites, in those cultures, there are multiple and sometimes conflicting accounts [of creation]. There is no attempt at consistency and no claim to consistency."
And, yet, these ancients still believed these stories, and told them all even though they conflicted. They were still "real" in a very important sense even though they realized these various accounts could not all be strictly historically accurate. Those factual inconsistencies didn't seem to bother them in the least.
Another of these professors, Robert Oden, from Harvard, now President of Carelton College, wrote me back from an email on this very issue. After agreeing entirely with the description of ancient thought I described above, he said.
"I do think that the kind of facticity we seek to find in history was not what many ancients were after. The parade examples come from ancient Egypt, and I was standing before one such example deep beneath a pyramid only last week * where several "historical" events, all triumphant, were attributed to a certain pharaoh, and where the same events were also attributed to other pharaoh both centuries earlier and centuries later. Either a remarkable number of Egypt's enemies died in remarkably identical fashion during remarkably identical battles, or they conceived of history as being and doing something other than what it does and is for us. And I also completely, agree, as it happens, with your reading of Genesis."
And from a discussion on Maimonides and the view of Jewish community regarding literalism:
"The feverish concern of the "scientific creationists" to protect a literal reading of the story in Genesis 1 reflects a conviction that devotion to the Bible requires one to interpret it -- particularly Genesis 1 -- literally and accept it in its literal sense. But, as Steven Katz notes in his "Afterword" to Jastrow (p. 159), "In Jewish religious thought Genesis is not regarded as meant for a literal reading, and Jewish tradition has not usually read it so." In fact, as we shall argue below, even the compilers of the Bible do not seem to have been concerned with a literal reading of the text. They were prepared to have at least parts of it read non-literally.
In the Middle Ages, Saadia Gaon argued that a Biblical passage should not be interpreted literally if that made a passage mean something contrary to the senses or reason (or, as we would say, science; Emunot ve-Deot, chap. 7). Maimonides applied this principle to theories about the creation. He held that if the eternity of the universe (what we would call the Steady State theory) could be proven by logic (science) then the Biblical passages speaking about creation at a point in time could and should be interpreted figuratively in a way that is compatible with the eternity of the universe. It is only because the eternity of the universe has not been proven that he interpreted the verses about creation at a point in time literally (Guide, II, 25), but he still insisted that the creation story as a whole was written metaphorically (Book I, Introduction).
And, in a book I am currently reading, entitled "The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man", which covers the ANE cultures specifically. Here are a few quotes:
"Now, the primitive mind cannot withdraw to that extent from perceptual reality. Moreover, it would not be satisfied with our ideas [scientific explanations of causality]. It looks, not for the "how", but for the "who", when it looks for a cause."
Thus, their descriptions will naturally be a celebration of the WHO and not the HOW.
"We have seen that they are likely to present various descriptions of identical phenomenon side by side even though they are mutually exclusive."
And, when discussing the inconsistencies of facts and details within their sacred texts, including their creation accounts:
"Modern scholars have reproached the Egyptians for their apparent inconsistencies and have doubted their ability to think clearly. Such an attitude is sheer presumption. Once one recognizes the processes of ancient thought, the justification is apparent. After all, religious values are not reducible to rationalistic formulas."
Lastly, here is a link to the article on this very subject, and the author seems to disagree with evolution, for what that is worth. While I don't agree with everything he says, it is still very useful:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Bible-Science/6-02Watts.html
The ASA article happens to give some of the analysis of the ANE texts I have been referring to. In fact, he did such a better job on the various Egyptian and Akkadian variations, that I will refer you to that article for them. I will cover the Sumerian here.
The early Sumerian cultures had two simultaneous creation myths, the Nippur texts and the Eridu texts.
The Nippur texts describe a "cosmic" union of heaven and earth, in a sort of sacred marriage, from which all of life emerges. Heaven was personified as the god An and the earth was the goddes Ki. They gave birth to the air god Enli, who then separated heaven from earth and brought the universe into being in the form of heaven and earth separated by air. These stories are based on six different texts, all of different literary genres (I have not read all of them, though), and were recited at different occassions. The Eridu texts (up to five different versions and, again, I have not read all of them) have the water beneath the earth (the goddes Nammu) as the major source of life. The god Enki then makes humans out of clay (another concept borrowed by the Hebrews who descended from the culture?). These accounts, all from the same culture, are conflicting.
I see that Mr. Watts has also provided the details of the Enuma Elish, which was developed in Mesopotamia in later times, so I would refer you to his coverage. There is still some question as to whether this account was told alongside the earlier Sumerian creation stories.
I will have to dig out my sources for the Canaanite texts if you are particularly interested. But you can see with just the Egytpian and the Mesopotamian cultures, there were multiple and conflicting accounts.
What I will say about the Egyptian texts is that I have always found interesting the fact that the various creation myths often center around the idea that life is first brought forth from the action of the sun on the slime left behind after the receding of the Nile. This seems oddly "scientific" in light of the modern theories of abiogenesis. Regardless, the conflicts come in with the details of these accounts, but in particular the source of Atum-ra (the sun god) himself. In one version, he is seen being created out of Nun, the water goddess. In another, Atum is created by the Ogdoad, a combination of creatures representing chaos. Again, I would refer you to the ASA article for a more detailed treatment.
There are a couple of really good lectures on these subjects from The Teaching Company, and they all concur with this understanding of the past, and what I recall way back when I got my degree in ancient history. One of these is Ancient Near East Mythology by Shalom S. Goldman. In those lectures he said:
"Now, the gods in those creation stories [speaking here of the Egyptian creation stories] appear in multiple and conflicting accounts. There is no attempt at consistency either within any given account or across accounts."
He then goes on to compare this with the similar contradiction between the two Hebrew creation accounts. Then, later:
"Among the Hittites and among the Canaanites, in those cultures, there are multiple and sometimes conflicting accounts [of creation]. There is no attempt at consistency and no claim to consistency."
And, yet, these ancients still believed these stories, and told them all even though they conflicted. They were still "real" in a very important sense even though they realized these various accounts could not all be strictly historically accurate. Those factual inconsistencies didn't seem to bother them in the least.
Another of these professors, Robert Oden, from Harvard, now President of Carelton College, wrote me back from an email on this very issue. After agreeing entirely with the description of ancient thought I described above, he said.
"I do think that the kind of facticity we seek to find in history was not what many ancients were after. The parade examples come from ancient Egypt, and I was standing before one such example deep beneath a pyramid only last week * where several "historical" events, all triumphant, were attributed to a certain pharaoh, and where the same events were also attributed to other pharaoh both centuries earlier and centuries later. Either a remarkable number of Egypt's enemies died in remarkably identical fashion during remarkably identical battles, or they conceived of history as being and doing something other than what it does and is for us. And I also completely, agree, as it happens, with your reading of Genesis."
And from a discussion on Maimonides and the view of Jewish community regarding literalism:
"The feverish concern of the "scientific creationists" to protect a literal reading of the story in Genesis 1 reflects a conviction that devotion to the Bible requires one to interpret it -- particularly Genesis 1 -- literally and accept it in its literal sense. But, as Steven Katz notes in his "Afterword" to Jastrow (p. 159), "In Jewish religious thought Genesis is not regarded as meant for a literal reading, and Jewish tradition has not usually read it so." In fact, as we shall argue below, even the compilers of the Bible do not seem to have been concerned with a literal reading of the text. They were prepared to have at least parts of it read non-literally.
In the Middle Ages, Saadia Gaon argued that a Biblical passage should not be interpreted literally if that made a passage mean something contrary to the senses or reason (or, as we would say, science; Emunot ve-Deot, chap. 7). Maimonides applied this principle to theories about the creation. He held that if the eternity of the universe (what we would call the Steady State theory) could be proven by logic (science) then the Biblical passages speaking about creation at a point in time could and should be interpreted figuratively in a way that is compatible with the eternity of the universe. It is only because the eternity of the universe has not been proven that he interpreted the verses about creation at a point in time literally (Guide, II, 25), but he still insisted that the creation story as a whole was written metaphorically (Book I, Introduction).
And, in a book I am currently reading, entitled "The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man", which covers the ANE cultures specifically. Here are a few quotes:
"Now, the primitive mind cannot withdraw to that extent from perceptual reality. Moreover, it would not be satisfied with our ideas [scientific explanations of causality]. It looks, not for the "how", but for the "who", when it looks for a cause."
Thus, their descriptions will naturally be a celebration of the WHO and not the HOW.
"We have seen that they are likely to present various descriptions of identical phenomenon side by side even though they are mutually exclusive."
And, when discussing the inconsistencies of facts and details within their sacred texts, including their creation accounts:
"Modern scholars have reproached the Egyptians for their apparent inconsistencies and have doubted their ability to think clearly. Such an attitude is sheer presumption. Once one recognizes the processes of ancient thought, the justification is apparent. After all, religious values are not reducible to rationalistic formulas."
Lastly, here is a link to the article on this very subject, and the author seems to disagree with evolution, for what that is worth. While I don't agree with everything he says, it is still very useful:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Bible-Science/6-02Watts.html
The ASA article happens to give some of the analysis of the ANE texts I have been referring to. In fact, he did such a better job on the various Egyptian and Akkadian variations, that I will refer you to that article for them. I will cover the Sumerian here.
The early Sumerian cultures had two simultaneous creation myths, the Nippur texts and the Eridu texts.
The Nippur texts describe a "cosmic" union of heaven and earth, in a sort of sacred marriage, from which all of life emerges. Heaven was personified as the god An and the earth was the goddes Ki. They gave birth to the air god Enli, who then separated heaven from earth and brought the universe into being in the form of heaven and earth separated by air. These stories are based on six different texts, all of different literary genres (I have not read all of them, though), and were recited at different occassions. The Eridu texts (up to five different versions and, again, I have not read all of them) have the water beneath the earth (the goddes Nammu) as the major source of life. The god Enki then makes humans out of clay (another concept borrowed by the Hebrews who descended from the culture?). These accounts, all from the same culture, are conflicting.
I see that Mr. Watts has also provided the details of the Enuma Elish, which was developed in Mesopotamia in later times, so I would refer you to his coverage. There is still some question as to whether this account was told alongside the earlier Sumerian creation stories.
I will have to dig out my sources for the Canaanite texts if you are particularly interested. But you can see with just the Egytpian and the Mesopotamian cultures, there were multiple and conflicting accounts.
What I will say about the Egyptian texts is that I have always found interesting the fact that the various creation myths often center around the idea that life is first brought forth from the action of the sun on the slime left behind after the receding of the Nile. This seems oddly "scientific" in light of the modern theories of abiogenesis. Regardless, the conflicts come in with the details of these accounts, but in particular the source of Atum-ra (the sun god) himself. In one version, he is seen being created out of Nun, the water goddess. In another, Atum is created by the Ogdoad, a combination of creatures representing chaos. Again, I would refer you to the ASA article for a more detailed treatment.
