At 02:33 PM 1/9/00 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
> Certainly claims that certain accounts are historically accurate should be
>supportable with historical evidence. In addition, it should be clear
that the Bible
>contains a good deal of historical material. It is quite another matter,
however, to
>argue that all biblical texts which have the superficial appearance of
historical
>narrative must either be historically accurate or at least contain some
minimum of
>historically accurate material. There are at least 3 basic errors of this
type of
>concordism.
> 1) It flies in the face of the internal evidence of Scripture itself with
its
> differing accounts of the same phenomena (of which Gen.1 & 2
are only the
> most prominent) which shows that the goals and standards of the
biblical
> writers were in many cases very different from those of 19th
century
> European historians.
This argument can only be applied to the usual interpretation of Genesis.
It does not apply to the Days of Proclamation interpretation which I
advocate. Why? Because Genesis 1 and 2 are not recountings of the same
event in that intepretation. Genesis 1 is the pre-planning of the universe
and Genesis 2 is the actual creation of man many billions of years after
the pre-planing stage which actually occurred before time. So, in my
opinion, this argument is ineffectual against the views I advocate but
quite effective against the 2 accounts theory.
> 2) It assumes that "history as it really happened" is the only way
in which
> truth - & especially theological truth - can be conveyed, an
assumption
> which can be reductio ad absurdumed with numerous examples.
Actually it doesn't imply that all. I know of almost no one who advocates
this position anyway so it is probably a bit of a red herring. Almost all
christians agree that theological truth can be proffered by other means.
The question is: Is early Genesis meant to be one of these other means or
is it history? One can't use your number 2 to determine the answer to that
question because no one holds to the global application of it anyway.
> 3) By focussing so strongly on finding some historical events to
which texts
> might refer, it can fail to call attention to the real message
of the text.
This is where I would apply the Columbine example. We shouldn't pay any
attention to whether or not Bernall actually said what was reported or not
because we might miss the 'real' message of the story.????? WHich is what
those people in the story were saying. To me, this is untenable and a bit
unethical to not care whethere or not something purported to be history is
really history. Admittedly it isn't quite so clear cut in the case of
Genesis as far as whether or not it was meant to be history, but the
account certainly reads as history
> Biblical texts need to be studied without the a priori assumption that
they are
>all historical narrative.
Once again you are using the global 'all'. That is not what concordists do
with Genesis. They don't look for ways to make something nonhistorical just
because it conflicts a bit with modern knowledge. A concordist tries to
make accounts that appear and read as history be historical. I know of only
one Christian who says that Genesis 1:1 is not real history. If God created
the heavens and the earth, then this is a historical statement. If not,
then its not.
Some, of course, are. & even in those which aren't, there
>may be embedded some historical referents. I don't consider it
"concordism" in this
>sense to point out that Gen.2:10-14 refers to at least a couple of real
rivers, or even
>to argue that thus all 4 are probably real. It would be another matter to
have four
>names of rivers which couldn't easily be identified but to assume that
they _must_ refer
>to rivers which can be identified in present-day geography.
Why? Rivers change course. The Ohio River used to flow far north of where
it does now. I forget the name of the paleo channel but it was a very big
river. When the glaciers came, it filled the riverbed with till and forced
the Ohio to its present location. When the glaciers melted, the old river
was buried and the new is what we have today. This wasn't discovered until
this century. It was a real river which if someone had written of it in the
1700s, everyone would have doubted its existence. Indeed, this is how many
archaeological sites were found--Troy comes to mind. The hittites were
previously thought to be fantasy peoples spoken of in the Bible. So just
because we can't identify everything doesn't warrant the assumption that
they didn't exist.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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