http://agentintellect.blogspot.com/2011/02/bible-and-age-of-universe-part-1.html
The second is a friend of a friend. She is an evangelical who is seriously engaging her doubts about the particular Christian worldview in which she was raised. She and many of her commentators, are no longer at 'home' in their old view. They wonder what it means. She writes here.
http://thinkandwonderwonderandthink.blogspot.com/
The last one I recently ran across. I think he is part of a movement trying to get back to a purer understanding of Jesus. He is responding to Al Mohler on Adam and Eve here:
http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/08/25/the-beginning-of-the-gospel-rjs/
I am a priest (preacher/teacher) who has studied the Bible for thirty five years. I am not, however, a Biblical scholar. I have not read all the religious texts written in the Ancient Near East prior to 500BC. I also do not have complete dexterity with the Hebrew text. But I have read books by people who have this knowledge. And I have read, studied and prayed about it for years. The issue of Adam and Eve is a difficult one. So many people equate their faith in God with a particular way of approaching Scripture. If you mess with anything their entire faith structure collapses. This is unfortuate, unnecessary and, to be blunt, our own fault. Let me start with the fault issue first.
Since I was a teenager, I have heard many Christians make the claim, "If a single word of the Bible is incorrect, then the entire book cannot be trusted." That is a powerful statement. It conveys, very strongly, a sense of how important inerrancy is. But there is a problem, it assumes that the only thing we can trust is something which cannot make even a single mistake. That is simply not true. Errors in detail do not negate the entire communication in any other area of life, so why would it with the Bible. Does the message: "God made us. God saved us. God wants us to be in faithful, loving, obedient relationship with us" really depend on an accurate count of dead and wounded in a battle between Caananites and Israelites? REALLY? The central message of the Bible is false if it turns out that the census numbers are not accurate? Why would any Christian create that sort of problem for faith for another Christian?
And that is the growing problem, especially for Evangelicals. It does not take very long to find things in the Bible which might be considered "errors." In fact, by Genesis 2 there is already one big, fat, glaring contradiction:
- Genesis 1:9-13 "Then God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation...And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation." This is from day three. On the sixth day God made humans. Very clear.
- Genesis 2:4-7 "In the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up---then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground.
So what then do I recommend? Well, to begin with, get rid of the idea that to be trustworthy the Bible must be "inerrant". OR, if you want to hold inerrancy, then define it (This goes back to a post a couple days ago about the meaning of words). The problem is "inerrant" means "no mistakes". But what is an inerrant text? The Bible is literature, not math. Literature is, in part, art. There are a wide variety of literary forms, each with its own rules. For example, ever notice how often in movies it is raining? Rain is a literary image. So the appearance of rain in a movie or book has more than meterological significance. It symbolizes. In the Bible (especially in an ancient, pre-scientific culture) the straightforward meaning of a text is understood in the straightforward way of thinking of those times. And we need to get clear, literal is not more true than symbolic. To say "it is 93 degrees" is not more true than saying "it is hotter than hell today." In fact, the latter conveys a subjective experience that the mere measure of temperature doesn't. That is why the words, "it is only symbolic" are fighting words for me (and I use the term fighting symbolically. I will not actually hit someone. I may not even argue with them. But I do think that it is silly and ignorant and that is what I mean by "fighting words"!)
I think that we need to seriously look at the word 'inerrant.' We also need to stop setting our kids up for a fall. We need to ask what we think the Bible is. How did it get written? Where and by whom? What was the process of composition? What was it reacting against? What was its audience? What is the author trying to tell us?????
Well, there a thousand questions but you get the point.
So to begin. Did the ancient authors of Genesis not notice the difference in order (vegetation & man)? In other words, was this an error? Did some later copyist make a mistake and rearrange things? (and if he did, how does that impact the claim of inerrancy? Does it matter that the originals are inerrant when we do not have the originals?) Is this a mistake? OR....
Were there originally two different stories which circulated in different times and communities? Were the two stories only written down after years and years of the oral story being passed around by people who live, not with books, but with spoken words? People who wander around deserts with tents and flocks. People who want to know: "why am I here?" and "what does it mean?" Is it possible that the stories, hundreds of years later, were edited and composed as written stories? Written down at a time when Israel actually had cities and resources to compose books (a very costly adventure in time and money). Maybe the first of the stories was written by a priest, composed to explain the importance of the Sabbath (hence seven days) and to emphasize we live in a world of order (hence the sterotyped language and neat divisions), under threat by chaos, but sustained and protected by God. And perhaps those priests were using the creation texts of their neighbors (who are also their racial relatives, Abraham was an Aramean!) as a foil. Maybe they were correcting the errors of pagan belief and that is why we see the similarities and differences. Perhaps the first account ends with the creation of man as the summit of creation. It tells us that this was God's final act. It makes clear to us 'who we are' and 'what are relationship with Him is' (image and likeness, to rule the earth). It makes clear that He creates by speaking a word because He is not like the gods of the pagan neighbors. He is not one among many. He is different from the gods they worship. His creation is not a cosmic battle of gods but a creative word spoken by a singular, all powerful God.
Perhaps in Genesis 2 man is created first because that author is making the same point. This time man is fashioned from dirt to remind us of our destiny (dead bodies disintegrate). The intimacy of God is emphasized here by using the image of a potter (rather than the distant God who "speaks and it is") Man is made first because the ultimate purpose of creation is man, and everything follows from that. Maybe it isn't about revealling the order of creation (vegetation or man). Maybe first (ultimate cause) or last (final goal), in this case, actually mean the same thing. Maybe each author tells us that "man is IMPORTANT to God." In that case, there is no contradiction. The two stories are telling us the same thing (i.e. the point of the story) using different images... Maybe we can let our kids read what the Bible is actually telling us (not make the Bible say what we want it to say). Maybe we can stop telling our kids that if they ever run across something that does not fit "perfectly" then the Bible must not be true. Maybe we can find a way. More on the 'first couple' in the days ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment