>The test. Can anyone show that a sizeable minority of commentators prior to
>the year 500 A.D. viewed Genesis 1-2 as non-historical? I would propose the
>sizeable minority as being 15% of the commentators. I suggest this value for
>a reason. It is big enough to avoid the
>single crackpot and big enough to say
>that if 15% of the people read the original languages in 33-500 A.D. and read
>everything as non-historical then it is clear that it is the LANGUAGE and not
>the SCIENCE which is driving their interpretation.
I'm not sure what you meant by patristic commentators reading "the
original languages", but I thought I'd point out that as far I know
only two of the Fathers (Origen and Jerome) knew enough Hebrew to
actually read Genesis in the original language.
Steve Schaffner
sschaff@slac.stanford.edu