Mythmakers or photorealists?

Ed Babinski is an apostate backwoodsy fundamentalist. Not “fundamentalist” in the sophisticated, academic sense that you’d find among the current faculty at, say, Dallas Theological Seminary. But of the Hal Lindsey/Tim LaHaye variety. Although he lost his faith, he reads the Bible the same way he did in his backwoodsy days.

So, for him, it’s just “obvious” that the Bible teaches a geocentric, flat-earth cosmography.

On the other hand, you have Babinski’s cohorts. His fellow contributors to TCD. In stark contrast to Babinski’s photorealism, Carriers takes a diametrically opposing position. He assures us that “the Gospel according to Mark…was not even written as history, but as a deliberate myth…Matthew did the same thing, radically refictionalizing the resurrection narrative…thus communicating the ‘true meaning’ of the Gospel without any evident interest in historical fact. And Luke appears to have fabricated his Emmaus narrative…Even John added stories never before heard (like John 2) that seem more symbolic than true. Scholars have documented countless other examples of mythmaking in the Gospels,” TCD, 304.

Likewise, Robert Price regards the entire Christ-event as just another iteration of the dying-and-rising-savior-god monomyth.

So while Babinski makes his case against the Bible on the assumption that Bible writers earnestly meant their depictions to be taken with utmost literality, Babinski’s cocontributors to TCD make their case against the Bible on the assumption that Bible writers were calculated mythmakers who camouflaged religious symbols under the guise of refictionalized “history.”