As i've tried to point out in the past, simply stating that Genesis is history is an inadequate way of analysing the book.
I like the example of the continuum:
police/newspaper report--->eyewitness account--->long after the fact historical reminsences--->historical monograph--->history textbook--->popular account of events--->well researched historical novel--->historical novel with history as a major component--->historical novel that uses history
All of these examples read like history. But the real difference is in the purposes of the authors. For example, historical novels USE history to heighten the credibility (we discussed this on the phantom of the opera thread), it is not that history is necessarily important to the author of an historical novel, it is that s/he expects to manipulate the audience better or easier if they think or allow themselves to think of it as history.
Each of these subgenres, if you will, have structure and function imposed upon them by the community that produces them. Newspaper reports are an example of concise factual writing with little to no analysis or commentary. It is not the purpose of a police report to understand the underlying psychological trends in the victims nor the perpatrators. The major controlling issues are purpose and the expectations that follow from they.
This is why simply labelling Gen 1-5 as historical narrative is incomplete and misleading. All writing is in order to accomplish something, all writing has a purpose, and in history as in any other field the purposes of the writing shape and manipulate the components. You have to ask, what is the purpose of Gen 1, or Gen 2-5. What is the author trying to communicate, then how or what genre is the author using to communicate.
but like i was informed in another thread, interpretation is nothing more than looking up words in a dictionary, so i suspect that this too is not part of the YECist hermeneutical vocabulary, careful genre analysis. So i guess it is written to those who think Scripture deserves our best effort towards understanding what God has written there.
I like the example of the continuum:
police/newspaper report--->eyewitness account--->long after the fact historical reminsences--->historical monograph--->history textbook--->popular account of events--->well researched historical novel--->historical novel with history as a major component--->historical novel that uses history
All of these examples read like history. But the real difference is in the purposes of the authors. For example, historical novels USE history to heighten the credibility (we discussed this on the phantom of the opera thread), it is not that history is necessarily important to the author of an historical novel, it is that s/he expects to manipulate the audience better or easier if they think or allow themselves to think of it as history.
Each of these subgenres, if you will, have structure and function imposed upon them by the community that produces them. Newspaper reports are an example of concise factual writing with little to no analysis or commentary. It is not the purpose of a police report to understand the underlying psychological trends in the victims nor the perpatrators. The major controlling issues are purpose and the expectations that follow from they.
This is why simply labelling Gen 1-5 as historical narrative is incomplete and misleading. All writing is in order to accomplish something, all writing has a purpose, and in history as in any other field the purposes of the writing shape and manipulate the components. You have to ask, what is the purpose of Gen 1, or Gen 2-5. What is the author trying to communicate, then how or what genre is the author using to communicate.
but like i was informed in another thread, interpretation is nothing more than looking up words in a dictionary, so i suspect that this too is not part of the YECist hermeneutical vocabulary, careful genre analysis. So i guess it is written to those who think Scripture deserves our best effort towards understanding what God has written there.
