glenn morton wrote:
>
> 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.
a. Gen.1-2 was meant only as 1 illustration of the general argument that
it is not legitimate to assume as a default setting that the biblical authors had
the same goal of "history as it really happened" as 19th century European historians
& most American Evangelicals.
b. See my post of 18 August 1999 on the "Days of Proclamation" view of Gen.1.
Briefly, while this expresses an interesting theological view of creation with which
I am in significant agreement, it is quite impluaisible to present it as a "Level 1"
(original authors, redactors, & audiences) meaning of this text. As you say later, the
the "account certainly reads as history" - not history before time &c but a
beginning of time & series of events in time.
c. As I said, this is just 1 example & there are many more - the parallel
strands in the flood story, in the giving of the law on Sinai, the rises of both Saul &
Samuel, the whole Samuel/Kings - Chronicles accounts, & the differing accounts in the
gospels are just some.
d. Of course I know the response with all those - "We can harmonize them." But
in spite of the forced character & implausibility of many of these harmonizations, to
assume that they are supposed to be harmonized as historical narrative begs the original
question.
> > 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.
But as soon as it is suggested that any significant biblical text - Job,
Jonah, &c - may _not_ be historical, there will be an outcry from many concordists
(including, in the case of Jonah, Glenn Morton) to defend their character as historical
narrative. I.e., it's hard to find texts about which concordists will just cheerfully
say, "Yeah, that's inspired fiction." While concordists may not insist that all the
details in a biblical account are historically accurate, there is a strong tendency to
insist that there must be some historical facts in the text.
> > 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
I'm not terribly concerned about the Columbine example. Of course Christians
should have some integrity & not claim that things really happened if they didn't.
What I'm much more concerned about is, e.g., insisting so strongly on historically
verifiable aspects of biblical accounts that their significance is lost sight of.
> > 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.
I said "We shouldn't assume all accounts to be H." Your reply is, "We don't -
we just don't agree that they're not-H." The distinction is slight.
> 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.
You're missing the forest for the trees - or the landscape for the rivers.
I agree that there _may_ be accurate geographical information in the text, & that it's
worth exploring that possibility. In Gen.2 it's clear that there is. What I reject is
the claim that there _must_ be accurate geographical information there.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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