On Fri, 11 Jul 1997 12:31:58 +0200, Kurt Pedersen wrote:
KP>I have followed this discussion-list with great interest.
>
>As a consequense of the threads about Flood, where OEC, YEC and
>evolutionist disagree about the age of the earth, I would like ask:
>
>At what point does Christians agree about the historicity in bible
>(especially about the age of the earth)?
The "historicity in bible" has got very little to do with "the age of
the earth". The Bible makes no statement about the age of the earth.
Christians are therefore able to disagree "about the age of the
earth" while still believing in "the historicity in bible".
There is another point that real "history" (in the the modern sense)
in the Bible begins at Genesis 12. Before that (Genesis 1-11) is
strictly speaking pre-history, or "primeval history":
"Genesis tells the beginnings of all things connected with biblical
faith. On the basis of content the book divides into two clearly
separable sections: chs. 1- 11, the primeval history, and chs. 12-
50, the patriarchal history. (Technically the two sections are
1:1-11:26 and 11:27-50:26.) Gen. 1-11 is an introduction to
salvation history, setting forth the origin of the world humanity,
and sin; 12-50 sets forth the origins of redemptive history in God's
election of the patriarchs and his covenantal promise of land and
posterity. (Lasor W.S., et al., "Old Testament Survey", 1987, p68)
That is not to say that it is not in some sense historical, but it
has symbolic elements and it is not fully historical in the modern
sense. Many, if not most, Christian scholars would today regard
Genesis 1- 11 as incorporating primeval legends or sagas:
"Karl Barth also viewed myth negatively, but he insisted that real
myth is alien to the thought-world of the Bible. For him myths are
stories of the gods induced by humanity's attempt to explain the
phenomena of nature for the purpose of finding meaning and identity
in life. The focus of myth is on the universal, not the particular;
on the rhythm of nature, not the Contingency of history. "Genuine
myth," he said, "never means a genuinely pre-historical emergence, a
beginning of the reality of man and his cosmos in encounter with
distinct divine reality." Barth preferred the term saga to describe
the wondrous events in Scripture that, though inaccessible to
historical investigation, are related to real history. Because these
events do not arise out of history but concern a divine intervention
in history, they are superhistorical, not simply historical. They
occur in history but they are not of history. Barth held that "saga
as a form of historical narration is a genre apart." Avery Dulles,
who follows Barth at this point, understands saga as "a poetic and
divinatory elaboration on history." Barth had long argued that the
biblical saga has a historical core, though this does not mean that
saga yields precise history. The renowned Old Testament scholar
Gerhard von Rad also favored the term saga rather than myth to
describe the panorama of events in the sacred history of Holy
Scripture. For him a saga has a historical setting but a theological
focus. Its concern is not with historical accuracy but with
theological significance." (Bloesch D.G., "Holy Scripture", 1994,
p256)
KP>If one follow the genealogical tree in the Old Testament, the
>earth cannot be very old. I suppose, that most would agree, that
>Jesus lived about 2.000 years ago. But what about Moses, Noah,
>David etc?
The "genealogical tree in the Old Testament" can at best only tell
about how "old" *man* is. It would be necessary to make the
assumption that the days of Genesis 1 were literal 24-hour days in
order to make conclude that "the earth cannot be very old".
Indeed this assumes that there is a complete "genealogical tree in
the Old Testament", when there isn't, as Gould points out:
"The textbook detractors assume that Ussher's effort involved little
more than adding up ages and dates given directly in the Old
Testament- thus implying that his work was only an accountant's act
of simple, thoughtless piety. Another textbook-we are now up to
seven-states that Ussher's 4004 was "a date reconstructed from adding
up the ages of people named in the lineages of the scripture." But
even a cursory look at the Bible clearly shows that no such easy
solution is available, even under the assumption of inerrancy. You
can add the early times, from creation up to the reign of Solomon-for
the requisite information is provided by an unbroken male lineage
supplying the key datum of father's age at the birth of a first son
[this is a false assumption-SJ]. But this easy route cannot be
carried forward into the several hundred years of the kingdom, from
Solomon's reign to the destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian
captivity-for here we are only given the lengths of rule for kings,
and several frustrating ambiguities (including overlaps or
co-regencies of a king and his successor) were widely acknowledged
but not easily resolved. Finally, how can you use the Old Testament
to reach the crucial birthday of Christ and thus connect the older
narrative to the present? For the Old Testament stops in the period
of Ezra and Nehemiah, the fifth century B.C. in Ussher's
Chronology." (Gould S.J., "Fall in the House of Ussher", in "Eight
Little Piggies", 1993, pp187-188)
KP>Does OEC and evolutionist suppose, that there is a timegap in the
>genealogical tree at some point in OT?
Yes. There are gaps in the OT genealogies:
"It was William Henry Green of Princeton Theological Seminary who
demonstrated for certainty to Biblical scholars that the genealogies
of Genesis were not strict father-son relationships (Green W.H.,
"Primeval Chronology," Bibliotheca Sacra, 1890, 47:285-303). He has
been followed by such men as Orr, Warfield, and Allis. How much time
we can wedge into the genealogies is another matter. But it is now
conceded that we cannot determine the precise age of man from the
genealogies of Genesis." (Ramm B.L. "The Christian View of Science
and Scripture", 1955, pp219-220)
In addition, some of the numbers in the genealogies may be rounded or
have symbolic significance, as the marginal notes to Genesis 5:5
in the New International Version of the Bible, indicates:
"5:5 930 years. See notes on v. 27; 6:3. Whether the large numbers
describing human longevity in the early chapters of Genesis are
literal or have a conventional literary function-or both-is
uncertain. Some believe that several of the numbers have symbolic
significance, such as Enoch's 365 (v. 23) years (365 being the
number of days in a year, thus a full life) and Lamech's 777 (v. 31)
years (777 being an expansion and multiple of seven, the number of
completeness, cf. the "seventy-seven times" of Lamech's namesake in
4:24). The fact that there are exactly ten names in the Ge 5 list
(as in the genealogy of 11:10-26) makes it likely that it includes
gaps, the lengths of which may be summarized in the large numbers.
Other ancient genealogies outside the Bible exhibit similarly large
figures. For example, three kings in a Sumerian list (which also
contains exactly ten names) are said to have reigned 72,000 years
each-obviously exaggerated time spans." (Barker K. ed, "The NIV
Study Bible", 1985, p13)
KP>Can you advise places at the Internet, where I can read about how
>OEC and evolutionist thinks their theories are in agreement with the
>Bible and Christianity?
Yes. Right here!
Regards.
Steve
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