To many people the Hebrew Bible is fact beginning with the first verse, with God the Creator not only of the natural world, but morality, too. Yet cultures around the globe have their own myths to explain the world around us, life, and morality. How is Genesis any better? In contrast is the empiricism behind biological and cultural evolution, where even molecules tell the story of their history as well as words on a page.
I once decided which verse in Genesis was the first one certainly to be wrong, within the assumptions of empiricism. I settled on Gen 1:11. Paleontology is clear that not all plants preceded all animals. Flowers are quite recent.
One could even quibble with Gen 1:1, since the heavens weren’t formed with the earth, but maybe that’s too picky about how long “the beginning” was.
Look at it another way. Where’s the first verse in the Bible where I can have data alongside the verse so I can say, “Yes, this is true”? There are such verses. I have data that confirms Romans 7:15, but how about in the Hebrew Bible?
Is Abraham all myth? Is Moses? Archeology provides a few names that match the Bible from David to Ahaz, but where are the stories that match more than that? There was a rebuilding of the temple, but did any of that match Ezra and Nehemiah?
The Psalms are not history.
Ah, but now I come to somebody writing under the name Isaiah who describes having visions. What kind of visions, psychotic visions, daydreams? Who can say? But I have data that people have visions and sometimes they’re important to religion. Some found Isaiah’s visions to be important to their religion. There’s something non-fiction in that.
But there’s something non-fiction about creation myths, too. They are a piece of cultural evolution where humans repeatedly came up with something to explain the world and everything in it. Genesis is just one example for both nature and the people of Israel. If only more people saw it that way …
Somewhere between Genesis and Isaiah, the Bible is true, in some way. I accept that as data. For cultural evolution.
LOL. I have never thought of this issue. I guess I will have to go with, ‘In the beginning’. Space/Time as we know it may not be the only thing that exists. Oh, I just realized the topic was when does it become ‘nonfiction’. I will have to go with everything after ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.’
To start seeing the Bible as part of cultural evolution, where would it fit in context to evolution?
The Bible lingers large in my mind since it was taught to me as a child. Even now as an adult, putting my understanding of the Bible in a more reasonable perspective/context has kept my fascination.
It seems to me that this isn’t really a question that has a pat answer. The textual history of the Hebrew Bible is very complex. Much of the material is stuff that can’t be readily sorted into “fiction” or “nonfiction” — for example, Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs. Leviticus and Deuteronomy — these are sets of laws with minimal history per se. Clearly these are laws that someone thought people should follow at one time or another because there they are written down.
I don’t know to what extent some of the stories in the Bible were meant to be histories versus stories told for other purposes. Job, for example — was it ever intended to be history as opposed to a story meditating on the idea of why good people suffer? In that case it would be “fiction” but that that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with that.. I mean, Hamlet is fiction, it isn’t “true” in the sense that there really was a Hamlet and these things really happened, but that’s not really the point.
Of the histories I gather they seem to vary in terms of how accurate they’re considered and how well they correspond to extra-Biblical evidence, with the histories getting more accurate and better-supported as we get closer and closer to the exile. (Not surprising, as this was also closer and closer to the time many of the books of the Bible are thought to have been put in their current form — easier to be accurate about something that happened 20 years ago than 100 years ago, and 100 years ago than 500 years ago.)
Even things that are not considered historical may not have been made up of whole cloth. For example, the walls of Jericho definitely fell and it’s quite plausible that the Jordan stopped flowing briefly at the same time, but is generally dated to at least a century before the time of Joshua (depending on what you take to be what would have been the time of Joshua, had there been a Joshua). So it’s not historical, but it’s not made up from whole cloth but instead seems likely to be based on stories that were passed down about the city whose walls fell and was destroyed on a single day.
As I said, I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that one.
The king list has Ahab. I might start there. He is mentioned in Assyrian texts when they conquered Samaria. Assyria, Babylonia, Persians, Egyptians all had king lists. A few even contradict or have gaps. That may be the earliest mention of anything that occurred in the Bible by an outside source.
drdavid600 said
To many people the Hebrew Bible is fact beginning with the first verse, with God the Creator not only of the natural world, but morality, too. Yet cultures around the globe have their own myths to explain the world around us, life, and morality. How is Genesis any better? In contrast is the empiricism behind biological and cultural evolution, where even molecules tell the story of their history as well as words on a page.I once decided which verse in Genesis was the first one certainly to be wrong, within the assumptions of empiricism. I settled on Gen 1:11. Paleontology is clear that not all plants preceded all animals. Flowers are quite recent.
One could even quibble with Gen 1:1, since the heavens weren’t formed with the earth, but maybe that’s too picky about how long “the beginning” was.
Look at it another way. Where’s the first verse in the Bible where I can have data alongside the verse so I can say, “Yes, this is true”? There are such verses. I have data that confirms Romans 7:15, but how about in the Hebrew Bible?
Is Abraham all myth? Is Moses? Archeology provides a few names that match the Bible from David to Ahaz, but where are the stories that match more than that? There was a rebuilding of the temple, but did any of that match Ezra and Nehemiah?
The Psalms are not history.
Ah, but now I come to somebody writing under the name Isaiah who describes having visions. What kind of visions, psychotic visions, daydreams? Who can say? But I have data that people have visions and sometimes they’re important to religion. Some found Isaiah’s visions to be important to their religion. There’s something non-fiction in that.
But there’s something non-fiction about creation myths, too. They are a piece of cultural evolution where humans repeatedly came up with something to explain the world and everything in it. Genesis is just one example for both nature and the people of Israel. If only more people saw it that way …
Somewhere between Genesis and Isaiah, the Bible is true, in some way. I accept that as data. For cultural evolution.
The broad sweep of the first Genesis account, written in symbolic language (ie seven days) and with repeats (three times the sun appears)
God created the heaven and the earth.
You are now ON THE EARTH – it is an oceanic and cloud planet at the time.
The earth is sterile, dark and there’s no land.
The skies opened
The continents rose
Life appeared on land (fresh water)
Life appeared in the ocean
Man appeared.
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