You wrote:
>>Wo de how much? And Wo de Jianada (is that Canada???) pengyou Glenn,<<
"Wo de" is "my". "Jianada" is "Canada" Pengyou (pronounced pungyo) is
friend. The plural of "I" is "Women", I kid you not.
I wrote:
> I would respectfully suggest that if you asked the ANE writer if Genesis
1:1
> was merely a mythic story of heroic proportion, he would have given you the
> same answer, "Huh?"
You replied:
>>Yes, I agree. Do you think I think the literary genre is "mythic"? <<
Thank you for your candor here. I see it this way. If Genesis 1 isn't
history, which you have clearly stated, then the only other category I can
think of is "mythic" I certainly do not want to misrepresent your position,
but this is what I am getting from it. Maybe I am just slow.
As you can gather, I do not like subjective things. I like to test ideas
against hard observation. Here is what I find problematical with the modern
hermeneutic.
1. What kind of literature is this thing? If you say a given piece of
literature (like Matthew, Mark, Luke or John) is a piece of history and
should be interpreted accordingly, and I say it is a piece of religious
propaganda with no historical value whatsoever, how are we to decide who is
correct? The issue comes down to one of subjectivism. I view the literature
as propaganda and bring to my exegesis the concept that the miracles are
false. You bring to your exegesis the concept that the miracles are
historical. I can not prove you wrong and you can not prove me wrong. A
standoff.
You can not claim that there is no religious propaganda in the world and I
can't say that there are no historical documents in the world. Each of us
has a possible interpretive scheme but both cannot be correct and both may be
wrong. A third person may come in and say these documents are neither, they
are fiction with some deep type of symbolism and allegory about the
corruption of the Roman Empire. That person would interpret the documents
different from either one of us. Once again, there is no OBJECTIVE way to
determine what kind of document this is. Even style would not help. The
propaganda piece would be written in a historical style so as to convince
people of its truth. The fiction could be written in the style history is
written just as many science fiction stories today are written that way.
In short, I find subjectivism all over the literary style type of
hermeneutic.
2. If the record is not historic then how can I possibly know it is
inspired? Only the Creator could possibly tell ancient humanity what
actually happened, even if it was in a simplified form. So as one looks
around the world at creation stories how are we to determine which one is
true? The Blackfoot creation story has an Old Man walking around dropping
geographic features and species like candy wrappers. (see James R. Shreeve,
The Neandertal Enigma, 1995, p. 26) Their story is not history (at least we
don't think so) but neither do we believe it is inspired. How do I tell the
difference between the Hebrew and Blackfoot creation story? Each has the
world being created; both have animals being created Both are non-historic.
I simply can't tell them apart.
3. I still contend that the rejection of concordism is not due to the lack of
need for a concordistic theory but due to discouragement at ever finding one.
I agree with you and Jim that most theologians reject concordism. But this
places Christianity into the position of believing things which can not
possibly be verified on issues which normally should be verifiable! Obviously
the resurrection is not verifiable, but the flood should be. A correct
creation account should be. One of my complaints to my wife over the years
about the YEC's is that they will believe any science so long as it is not
true. But anti-concordism places Christianity in precisely the same
position--believing things which are not true or at least are so unverifiable
as to be meaningless. While I will agree with you that one might get away
with anti-concordism in the case of Genesis 1, it is much more difficult to
get away with that in the case of Genesis 6-9. The flood IS an event which
should have left SCIENTIFIC evidence (I know you think God removed it
Stephen).
Contrary to what the non-geologists of the YEC camp state the geologic data
does not support a global flood. Thus if the story of Noah is to have any
reality it must represent some type of local flood. But put Noah on a boat
in a river valley, let him float for a year and he will be in the ocean NOT
on top of a mountain. This story NEEDS concordism or it is patently false!
Stephen does avoid the problem of where the evidence of the Flood is by
having God hide it, but that once again is nothing more than a retreat from
verifiability--a retreat into subjectivism. I can't prove it to be true
(there is no objective evidence), but I do believe it to be true
(subjectivism). Having no evidence makes it difficult to convince others of
the reality of something. If worshipping the Creator of the Universe
requires me to avoid the difficult issues of how Science and Scripture fit
together by either ignoring science as the YEC's do or avoiding verifiability
as the modern hermeneutic does, then I would contend that something is
seriously wrong with our religion.
Sorry. I do get passionate about what I see as Christianty making a huge
effort to avoid any contact with nature or verifiability.
I wrote:
> I would suggest that they (at least the majority of
> them) believed it's veracity (i.e., that God actually did create the
> universe) and thus for us today to view it differently really is an
> eisegesis.
You replied:
>>That word again. But again, yes. They would say God created, and not
only that but in six days, just like a YEC.<<
If this is how they would have viewed it then I would suggest that that is
how they intended us to understand it. Now, I would not necessarily grant
that their understanding of what God meant is complete. A case in point is
the prophecies which the Jews missed concerning the advent of Jesus. They
generally focused on the conquering hero prophecies and missed the suffering
servant ones. We also can not claim that our understanding is either
complete or completely correct. So, I would give someone latitude to see
another meaning in the text that the ANE people didn't.
You wrote
>>Yes, again. And Glenn if we went in a time machine to meet Jesus and we
asked Him, "Lord, does the sun go around the earth, or does the earth go
around the sun?" what do you think he would tell us?????? Do answer this
one.<<
Kinda surprized you with this one, eh (sorry I'm Canadian)?<<
Oh, this is a GOOD question! Thanks for poking me with this one. :-)
In point of fact, I don't know what he would respond. :-( He might tell me
it doesn't matter and to clean up my life!!! But being the impetuous person
I am, I ... I actually can't decide what I think he would say. I know what
I hope he would say... "Both--they go around each other." But I don't know
for sure that that is what he would say. If he said that the sun went around
the earth, then his statement would be false and could be used as evidence
that he was not God. You can not account for stellar parallax in an earth
centered universe. It is actually parallax which proves that it is the earth
which is making the largest movement rather than the sun. And parallax was
not observed until 1838(?). Thus at the time of Christ, only God could have
known the true answer. The greek astronomer who advocated heliocentricity
really guessed. He had no proof.
A very stimulating set of questions. I must admit to not really liking my
answer to your last question. But it is a tough, hypothetical question.
May the Lord bless you and keep you thinking of tough questions like these.
glenn