> Let's get to the issue that really bothers me: the flood. Do you view it as
> poetry, history, exaggerated history, fiction or theological reflection?
I wouldn't separate "exaggerated history" & "theological
reflection" - the exaggeration (relative to historical events) is
theologically motivated. This is what seems to happen with Sam/Kings &
Chronicles, where the huge figures for money & army sizes in the latter
helps to transform the historic kingdom of Judah into the ideal
Messianic realm.
Probably the same is true of the Flood. Certainly there were
huge floods in Mesopotamia (as at Ur) & other flood stories (e.g.
Gilgamesh). Gen.6-9 has expanded this tradition to speak of God's
cosmic judgment on evil.
> Can one find evidence of the flood in the geologic strata? One might find evidence of the historic precursors of the Flood.
>And why do you
> feel it falls into the category that it does? For one thing, there was no flood in historic terms which
literally covered the whole earth.
> How about Joshua which seems to have similar problems with observational
> data as does Genesis 6-9. Can one find objective evidence of the Exodus?
> What category does it fall into? And what happens to Judaism and
> Christianity if the Exodus wasn't real?
There were Hebrew slaves who escaped from Egypt, though the huge
numbers (2-3 x 10^6 with women & children) seem exaggerated. In
principle one should be able to find evidence of camps in the Sinai &c,
but whether this is possible in practice I don't know.
Joshua pictures what follows as a straight & pretty thorough
conquest, a picture that doesn't square with, among other things,
Judges. There is some archaeological support for Joshua - e.g.,
destruction layer at Hazor (N.B. I'm working from memory here), but also
good reason to believe that invaders joined with indigenous people of
Canaan, perhaps Hebrews who never left there. & careful reading of
Joshua (e.g., Rahab & the Gibeonites) indicates that too. So again, I
think we have "theologized history".
In fact, all the history in the Bible is theologized - to a
greater or lesser degree. The historical character of God's action
which culminates in Jesus is crucial to Christianity, but that doesn't
mean it must be recorded entirely in accounts of "history as it really
happened"
George