The Plasticity and Flexibility of ANE Myths

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-3/excursus-on-creation-of-life-and-biological-diversity/excursus-on-creation-of-life-and-biological-diversity-part-19/

The astrodome

To revisit a pet issue of mine, there are scholars who insist that Bible writers operate with a flat-earth/three-story cosmography. They say we should interpret the Bible in the same way an ancient Near Eastern audience would understand it. And there's nothing wrong with that general principle. Ironically, I think the scholars in question lack the imagination to do justice to their own principle.

According to flat-earth cosmography, mountain ranges prop up the solid dome of the sky. So the mountain range marks the outer limits of the world. It's like the mountain ranges are flat in back. Half-mountains. Now consider some phenomena that prescientific observers  see:

1. Clouds coming over the horizon or receding over the horizon. The most natural way to explain the appearance is that clouds are coming over the hills and mountains from behind the hills and mountains. So the world continues on the other side of the mountain range. That's not where the world ends. 

But if flat-earth cosmography were true, there'd be no space between the sky and the back of the mountains. In the case of receding clouds, if flat-earth cosmography were true, drifting clouds would strike the side of the sky, spreading up and down the solid dome. 

Visualize putting red or blue dye in an aquarium. It will spread out laterally until it reaches the sides of the aquarium. Then it will spread out veridically (up and down the sides of the aquarium) because it can't go any further in a straight line. 

2. Likewise, in flat-earth cosmology, either sun, moon, and stars rise from behind the hills and mountains or in front of them. But they can't rise from behind the hills and mountains because the solid dome of the sky comes down at the highest point of the mountain range. If the sky is solid and the mountains are solid, the sky will rest on the mountain peaks. It can't go any lower. But in that case, the sky forms a vertical barrier or wall on the ridge of the mountain range. So there's nothing behind the mountain range. 

And even if sun, moon, and stars were positioned behind the sky rather than up and down the face of the sky, the solid dome would have to be transparent to see them, like clear glass. But it's blue, like colored glass. Yet the sun isn't blue. 

The alternative is for sun, moon, and stars to rise out of the earth at the foot of the mountains. If, however, they're in front of the mountains, observers would seem them block the view of the mountains as they ascend to the sky. 

So when we assume the viewpoint of an ancient Near Eastern audience, how is the flat-earth construct that some scholars posit consistent with what ground-based, naked-eye observers see? Even from a prescientific perspective, three-story cosmography doesn't make sense. And these are just two examples. I've discussed several others.  

The flood waters

John Walton makes the following remarks in The NIV Application Commentary: Genesis:

The main questions, however, concern what is demanded by the language of the text. Four textual issues contribute to the discussion and require investigation: universal scope of the language (7:21–23), covering the mountains (7:19), fifteen cubits above (7:20), and the tops of the mountains becoming visible (8:5). If an interpreter maintains the support of the authority of the text but does not believe in a global flood, how can these four issues be handled?

Universal language. It may sound strange to say, but the word "all" is not always absolute in biblical usage. Look, for instance, at Deuteronomy 2:25, where the Lord says, "This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven." This verse even uses "under heaven" in the same way that Genesis 7:19 does. Yet in context, few would contend that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. In Genesis 41:57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt and "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world." I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included.

Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. Most instructional is a text called the Sargon Geography, which names the lands of the known world one by one and concludes that "Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven."³⁴ Based on such examples, it becomes clear that it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all deceptive, to use the word "all" to encompass all those of a more regionally delineated area. Such usage does not violate biblical authority because the Bible does not intend to claim more than regional impact.

Covering the mountains. When 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of "covering" possibilities. A people or weeds can be so vast that it covers the land (Num. 22:11; Prov. 24:31); a blanket or clothing covers someone (Ex. 28:42; 1 Kings 1:1). Something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (cherubim wings covering the ark, 2 Chron. 5:8; clouds covering the sky, Ps. 147:8).

What about being covered with water? Aside from the two occurrences in 7:19–20, thirteen references have water as the explicit or implicit subject of this verb. Of those thirteen, five refer to the Red Sea covering the Egyptian army at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; Ps. 78:53; 106:11); four refer to the waters in creation and nature (Ps. 104:6, 9; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); one is metaphorical for judgment (Job 22:11). It is the remaining three that are of most significance to this discussion: Job 38:34; Jeremiah 46:8; and Malachi 2:13. In these three passages it appears that water does not cover by submerging as much as by drenching. Even today when someone walks in from a downpour we might say, "You’re covered with water!"

If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.

Fifteen cubits above. In 7:20 this phrase is difficult to decipher, largely because of the word that the NIV renders "depth." The Hebrew text says, "Fifteen cubits from above [milma'la] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered." It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose fifteen cubits higher than the mountains.³⁵

The word under discussion occurs twenty-three times in a number of different syntactical situations. Its most common use is to delineate the position of one object relative to another. In this kind of context the preposition al is consistently attached to the one noun with milma'la connected to the object that is being located.³⁶ It can also mean "above" when it is used as an adjective (Jer. 31:37, "heavens above"). When it is used as an adverb without a preposition to relate it to another noun, translations such as "upward" (Ezek. 1:11, "spread upward") or "upstream" (Josh. 3:13, 16) are better choices. It is this last category to which Genesis 7:20 belongs. As an adverb modifying the verb "rose," it suggests that the water reached fifteen cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible. This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: They have been obscured by the horizon and this represented the sighting of land,³⁷ or they have been obscured by (i.e., submerged under) water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until two and a half months later, the first day of the tenth month.

Most interpreters have inferred that the ark became lodged on the tops of one of these mountains that was still under water and that the mountains did not become visible for ten more weeks. If this were a proper inference, the observation in the text would be a matter of experience, not perception. Noah did not just assume that all the mountains were under water; he was in the mountains and they were under water.

Genesis and the ancient Near East

It's become very popular to say we should interpret the OT in light of its ancient Near Eastern background. That's true or false depending on how we develop the idea. Two of the more prominent exponents are John Walton and Peter Enns, but there are others. This is becoming influential in evangelicalism. 

But one problem with this line of thought is that scholars like Walton and Enns speak with great confidence about their interpretations, as if once you grant the ancient Near Eastern frame of reference, then there's scholarly consensus on how to interpret Genesis. But that's far from monolithic. There are scholars who agree with the frame of reference, but arrive at very different conclusions. 

It's my impression that Walton is to the right of Enns. In addition, it's my impression that Walton is a better scholar than Enns. However, David Tsumura is a more distinguished scholar than either one. And it's revealing to compare his conclusions to theirs. I'll be quoting some excerpts from David T. Tsumura, "Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East and Its Implications for Genesis 1–2," Kyle Greenwood, ed. Since the Beginning: Interpreting Genesis 1 and 2 through the Ages (Baker 2018), chapter 10.

Review of John Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology

https://www.academia.edu/14568088/_Review_of_John_H._Walton_Genesis_1_as_Ancient_Cosmology_Eisenbrauns_2011_JAOS_135.2_2015_

Cosmic waterfall

I'm going to briefly revisit an issue I often discuss. Did ancient people believe the world was flat? Did appearances indicate that the world was flat? Was prescientific observation inadequate to detect the falsity of a flat earth?

Consider a beach. The ocean extends from the shoreline to the horizon. Is the horizon the end of the world? If the world is flat, then the horizon is a waterfall, at the outer limits of the world. 

But if the horizon is a waterfall, wouldn't the ocean rapidly empty? It's not like a river with a continuous flow of water upstream. From an observer's standpoint, the ocean extends from the shoreline to the horizon. If the horizon is a waterfall, there's no source of water to resupply the ocean. 

An ocean isn't like a channel of water, narrow and long. where downstream water pouring over the waterfall is constantly replenished by more water upstream. Rather, there's a vastly wide expanse of water with nothing behind it except dry land. Yes, there may be the mouth of a river somewhere along the beach. But if the horizon is a waterfall, the pipeline is hardly equal to the waterfall. A river, however, wide and deep, is slender and shallow compared to the sea. If there's a waterfall from one end of the horizon to the other, a river won't maintain the water level. The flow rate is hopelessly inadequate to keep it from draining away. The seabed would be dry in a matter of hours, or less. 

I'm not saying every ancient observer thought this through. But it stands to reason that the ancient world had some very smart, attentive observers who noticed every detail of their natural surroundings and drew inferences from what they saw. 

Mixed nuts

I recently read The Lost World of the Flood (IVP 2018) by Tremper Longman & John Walton. It's like a can of mixed nuts. 

It's noteworthy that the two main collaborators, as well as one contributor, are all affiliated with the BioLogos Foundation, which is the flagship of theistic evolution.

1. This is part of an ongoing series: The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, The Lost World of Scripture. 

Although it's not entirely fair to judge a book by its title, since a title is simpler than the content of a book, it is, nevertheless, misleading to frame the issue in terms of a "lost world" of Scripture, as if the Bible was a complete cipher until the advent of biblical archeology. 

The Bible and the 'universal' ancient world: a critique of John Walton

http://files1.wts.edu/uploads/images/files/WTJ/WTJ%20Noel%20Weeks%2078.1.pdf

All dressed up and no place to go

http://jamesbradfordpate.blogspot.com/2017/09/book-write-up-lost-world-of-israelite.html

Common knowledge

When we interpret Scripture, or any document from the past, it can be useful to have background information. That's because writers generally leave many things unsaid. They are usually writing to or for an audience that has a common frame of reference, so they don't engage in lots of exposition. Rather, the audience is expected to bring supplementary information to the text.

Problem is, what was common knowledge for readers at a particular place and time may not be common knowledge for a modern reader. So it can be useful to have background knowledge to help a modern reader fill in the gaps. 

That, however, raises the question of what counts as suitable background knowledge. For instance, when is a parallel truly parallel? Without attempting to be exhaustive, I'll briefly mention two controls that I use:

1. The ostensible background information needs to have a foothold in the a text. It is illicit to import an interpretative paradigm wholesale from outside the text. For instance, consider ufological interpretations of Ezekiel's theophanies. That "background" information belongs to a frame of reference that's extraneous to the world of the text. Based on watching Hollywood movies about flying saucers and extraterrestrials. 

2. The ostensible background information needs to have a foothold in reality. On the issue of comparative mythology, for instance, I don't use mythology as a starting-point. Rather, I go behind mythology to ask what experience gave rise to the mythology. How did ancient people experience the natural world? What are the natural properties of snakes, mountains, rivers, and "gardens" that underlie the symbolism? That provides a more reliable transcultural basis for extrapolating from one text to another text.  

To take a stock example, the four seasons are typically used as a metaphor for the human lifecycle. That's due to the relative universality of the seasons. Of course, if you live in equatorial Africa or Latin America, that may not be an accessible metaphor. 

Another example is imagery drawn from human social life to provide theological metaphors. But because these are analogies, they require some modification. For instance, the Bible sometimes depicts heaven as a palace. The Father is the aging king. His youthful Son is the Crown Prince. There's a throne room with angelic courtiers and sentinels.

In real life, the palace guard exists to protect the royal family from hostile intruders. But, of course, God doesn't need anyone to protect him, so the function is reversed: they protect unwary intruders from stumbling into God's presence! 

Snake in the grass

i) One reason we need to be circumspect about using comparative mythology to decode Biblical symbolism is that the same items can have varied significance in world mythology. So there's the risk of sample selection bias. Of superimposing an alien gloss onto the text. 

ii) It's possible that the symbolic import of some natural elements is a cultural universal. But it's hard to make confident generalizations given the vast scope of the topic over time and place. The available evidence is unmanageably large, and even then, that's only scratching the surface. 

iii) Some natural elements, because they have different functions, inevitably give rise to different or divergent symbolic meanings. Take fire. That can be used for heating and cooking. Keeping predators at bay. Purifying ores (metallurgy). But, of course, it can also be destructive. 

Likewise, take water. Too much water may be fatal (drowning). Too little water may be fatal (dying of thirst–or dying of hunger from famine due to drought). 

Water is used for so  many different things. Washing, cooking, drinking, &c. 

That's why scholars disagree on the significance of baptism. It's often thought to represent cleansing. But some scholars think it represents amniotic fluid, while Meredith Kline thought it represents deliverance from death by drowning. 

iv) Fauna, flora, and landscape have symbolic significance in many different cultures. But, of course, different cultures often have different faun, flora, and landscapes. Had Gen 3 been revealed in a culture with different animals, the Tempter might have been named Fox rather than Snake–since the fox is a trickster animal in some folkloric traditions.

v) Moreover, the same natural elements can have variable symbolic significance. For instance, many different symbolic roles and properties are attributed to snakes. 

vi) To take another comparison, consider rivers. I suspect temperate rivers have a generally benign symbolism, but tropical rivers might well have an ambivalent or ominous connotations. For instance, the Nile has hippos and crocodiles. That makes the Nile river hazardous to humans. Likewise, many hidden dangers lurk in the Amazon river, viz., the Piranha, tiger fish, anaconda, electric eel, stingray, Bull shark, black caiman. 

vii) To take another comparison, some mythologies view fabled islands as heaven on earth (e.g. Dilmun, the Isles of the Blessed). Yet an island which appears to be a tropical paradise can be very menacing beneath the balmy surface. The sandy beach main contain deadly cone snails. The waters may contain sharks, stonefish, box jellyfish, &c. The scenic jungle may contain venomous snakes, giant pythons, or poisonous spiders. The island would have very different associations to a native than a passerby. 

vii) By the same token, mythological utopias like Dilmun and the Garden of the Hesperides are both "Edenic" or paradisiacal, yet these gardens for the gods, not humans. 

viii) Now I'd like to quote from a standard reference work to illustrate the diverse ways in which world mythology interprets "Edenic" motifs:

As the center of the world, linking heaven and earth and anchoring the cardinal directions, the mountain often functions as an axis mundi–the centerpost of the world…One of the most important such mountains is Mount Meru, or Sumeru, the mythical mountain that has "centered" the world of the majority of Asians–Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain. "Mountains," L. Jones, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2005), 9:6212a. 

Mountains are the source not only of nourishing waters but also of rains and lightning. Storm gods are often associated with mountains: Zeus, Rudra/Siva, Baal Hadad of Ugarit, Catiquilla of the Inca, and many more.  

Mountains, the source of the waters of life, are also seen as the abode of the dead…Among the Shoshoni of the Wyoming, for instance, the Teton Mountains were seen primarily as the dangerous place of the dead. The Comanche and Arapaho, who practiced hill burial, held similar beliefs. "Mountains," ibid., 9:6214b. 

Above all, the influence of the desert environment appeared in the way in which, in the West, the garden was seen as an oasis, in stark contrast to the barren wastes outside…Confusingly, there was another more puritanical tradition in which the roles were reversed, and the garden, with its luxury, was condemned as the scene of temptation, while the wilderness was celebrated as the true paradise. "Gardens: An Overview," Ibid. 5:3277a. 

In China and Japan, both the awesome mountains and the streams that issued from them were thought to be possessed by spirits, and they were considered to be alive like plants animals and human beings themselves…To the Buddhist, the garden furnished a lesson on time. The flowers opened and withered within a month. The seasons revolved. But stone decayed on a far longer time scale that turned the present into a moving infinity. The symbolism was as varied and extensible as the clouds that gathered around the mountain peaks. Ibid. 5:3277b.  

The garden contained both friendly and unfriendly spirits. But threatening spirits were not persecuted as they might have been in the West: they were either left undisturbed (for example, by not digging the ground too deeply) or frustrated (as in the case of the demons who traveled in straight lines, who were thwarted through the construction of zigzag bridges). Ibid, 5:3277b.   

Real-life peasants and laborers, on the other hand, with families to feed, know that in temperate latitudes the skills involved in planning and maintaining a subsistence garden are greater than those called for in a recreational or cosmic garden because most of the edible plants are annuals….Things are different in parts of the tropics where three crops may be harvested in a year and the division between extensive fields and intensive gardens breaks down. There, the subsistence garden may assume an idealized form. Ibid. 5:3278b.   

Dilmun [is] a place that is pure, clean, and bright, a land of the living who do not know sickness, violence, or aging…a garden with fruit trees, edible plants, and green meadows. Dilmun is a garden of the gods, not for humans, although one learns that Ziusundra, the Sumerian Noah, as exceptionally admitted to the divine paradise. "Paradise," ibid. 10:6981b. 

Crossing the river at the time of death, as part of the journey to another world, is a common part of the symbolic passage that people have seen as part of one's journey after death. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero encounters a boatman who ferries him across the waters of death, as he seeks the source of immortality. The river Styx of Greek mythology is a well-known as the chief river of Hades. 
The dry riverbed of Sainokawara is said to be the destination of dead children. In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is referred to as the "far shore". "Rivers," Ibid. 11:7862b-63a.  

To Hindus, the Ganges is the archetype of all sacred waters; she is a goddess, Mother Ganga, representative of the life-giving maternal waters of the ancient Vedic hymns…According  to Hindu belief, the Ganges purifies all she touches…Pilgrims go to these places to bathe in the Ganges, to drink her water, to worship the river, and to chant her holy name. Especially in Banaras, many come to cremate their kin, to deposit the ash of the dead in the river, or to perform religious rites for their ancestors. Some come to spend their last days on the banks for the river, to die there and thus to "cross over" the ocean of birth and death….All who come to the Ganges come in the firm belief that bathing in this river, even the mere sight of Mother Ganga, will cleanse them of their sins… "Ganges River," ibid. 5:3274. 

Clearly, it's unreliable to assume that ancient Near Eastern mythology encodes culturally universal intuitions regarding the emblematic significance of a river, mountain, or garden paradise. We can't just default to that frame of reference as the presumptive background material for decoding the symbolism of Eden. 

Bible background

1. I was asked to comment on the idea of knowing culture background to better understand the Bible. It's hard to give a general answer to that question. On the one hand, there are certainly many instances where background knowledge aids the reader in understanding the text. For instance, books like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and 1-2 Kings are full of references to the international politics of the day. Much of this is obscure or opaque to a modern reader. So it's useful to fill in the background.

Likewise, knowing about the nature of Egyptian religion can help the reader understand how the miracles in Exodus are sometimes an attack on the pretensions of Egyptian religion. The cult of Pharaoh. The sun god Ra. The role of the cobra. The "divine" Nile river, as a personification of the god Hapi. 

By the same token, knowing that ancient Israel had an agrarian economy, common property, tribal social structure, knowing about the climate and topography, can help explain the function of some of OT laws. 

In addition, this can sometimes be useful in terms of genre criticism and literary conventions. 

I'd add that the OT is often countercultural. It doesn't just mirror the ANE, but often provides a corrective. 

2. However, when scholars like John Walton, Peter Enns, Kenton Sparks, Kyle Greenwood, Bill Arnold, Charles Halton et al. talk about the need to read the OT in the original context, they have something additional in mind. They mean Bible writers rely on obsolete conceptual categories. Bible writers unwittingly posit as true what we now know to be false. Carried to a logical extreme, this leads to atheism. The view that the whole notion of external divine intervention from a God (or angels) who exists beyond the earth is part of this (allegedly) antiquated cosmography.

They think they are viewing the OT through ancient Near Eastern eyes. Up to a point, that's a good objective. We should attempt to read the OT as the original audience understood it. However, I don't think the scholars in question are actually viewing it through ANE eyes. Rather, they are viewing it through the eyes of Western high-tech urbanites who are out of touch with the experience of ancient Near Easterners.  

The exercise is potentially circular, for unless you know how ancient people viewed the world directly, you can't say how literary or pictorial depictions of the world were meant to reflect the world. Let's take a few comparisons, moving back in time. 

3. Suppose a scholar inferred from Holman Hunt's The Light of the World that Victorian Christians thought Jesus knocks on everybody's front door. Of course, that's a fallacious inference. 

4. Suppose a scholar wrote a monograph on Verne's cosmography. He cited Journey to the Center of the Earth to demonstrate what 19C Europeans thought about the earth's interior. But, of course, Verne's story is fictional. 

Perhaps someone would object that that's an equivocal comparison. We classify his work as fiction because a scientifically educated man of his era would know that's not what the earth's interior is like. By contrast, the same thing can't be said for ancient Near Easterners. 

However, I doubt that at the time of writing (1864), Europeans knew that much about the earth's interior. Not to mention that Verne wasn't even a geologist. Moreover, he's writing in a genre that had been around for a while. There were literary precedents. Consider earlier examples like Casanova's Icosaméron (1788) and Niels Klim's Underground Travels (1741). How much did 18C literati know about the earth's interior? 

5. Suppose scholars inferred from spirituals that black slaves thought that at the moment of death your soul was transported to Palestine, where you had to ford the river Jordan to enter Beulah land?  

6. Suppose a scholar wrote a monograph on Buyanesque cosmography. He cited The Pilgrim's Progress to demonstrate that 17C Englishmen thought heaven was a place on earth. Heaven lay just beyond the Delectable Mountains. You could walk to heaven on the King's Highway, although you had to ford the Thames to reach the Celestial City. The scholar produces a roadmap with landmarks and place names to document the state of 17C English cosmography. 

But, of course, that's a fallacious inference. Bunyan's work is fictional. 

7. Suppose a scholar wrote a monograph on Dantean cosmography. This seems like a more promising example. Dante's Comedy is cobbled together from Aristotelian physics, Ptolemaic astronomy, and Greco-Roman depictions of the Netherworld. Dante believed the underlying science was true. And you can certainly map out the world of the Comedy. 

That said, did Dante really think Purgatory a mountain? Moreover, even if he thought the scientific underpinnings of the story were true, he knew that he was inventing the details every step of the way. The landscape of hell, and the climate of hell, with boiling rivers of blood, sleet, brimstone, deserts of burning coals, bleeding trees, &c., is a figment of his imagination. 

Furthermore, there's a major plothole running through the entire story. The character of Dante is still alive. He has a physical body. But most of hell's denizens are discarnate spirits: ghosts and demons. If hell is physical, how can it contain and confine discarnate spirits? If hell is physical, how can the sleet, brimstone, boiling rivers, &c., have any affect on them? 

In theory, it could be like a psychological simulation. A stable, collective nightmare. But in that event, the character of Dante would be outside the dreamscape, not inside the dreamscape. 

So there's this constant paradox. If the character of Dante can interface with hell, then most of the inhabitants cannot. If most of the inhabitants can interface with hell, then his character cannot. It requires the willing suspension of disbelief. 

8. Suppose a scholar wrote a monograph on Homer's oceanography. He cited The Odyssey to demonstrate what ancient Greeks believed about the nature of their world. 

But there are problems with that inference. In The Odyssey, the action is set around the Mediterranean, Aegean sea, Ionian sea, Strait of Messina. Sicily, Ithaca, the Peloponnese, &c. The travelogue of Odysseus includes encounters with the Calypso, Circe, Sirens, Cyclops, Laestrygonians, &c.

Surely, though, ancient Greek mariners who were familiar with the harbors and islands along his route. Yet they never encountered anything like he relates. Wouldn't Greek sailors be skeptical about these tales?  

I can't give a firm answer. My point is that it doesn't even occur to scholars like John Walton, Peter Enns et al. to ask questions like that when they make assumptions about ancient Near Easterners. 

Telling omissions

Scholars like John Walton and Peter Enns stress the real or imagined parallels between the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern cultures. In that regard, it's useful to contrast their position this statement by Nahum Sarna. Although he is, himself, a fairly liberal Jew, his observation is a useful corrective:

…whereas all the diverse literary genres of the Bible are to be found in the neighboring cultures, the reverse is not the case, and the omissions are highly instructive. The huge literature belonging to the worlds of astrology and magic omens, divination, and the like, and the considerable body of mythical texts, have no counterpart in the Hebrew scriptures (although the texts preserve evidence of these customs) because they are incompatible with Israel's fundamental monotheism. Moreover, it is apparent that what was drawn from the common Near Eastern stock was thoroughly refined and reshaped to bring it into conformity with the national religious ideology. Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2nd ed., 2005), 2:884b.

Deskbound exegesis

2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times (Mt 16:2-3).

The notion that Scripture reflects a three-story cosmography has been around for generations. The main development is that more recently, this has been popularized by "evangelical" scholars like John Walton, Peter Enns, and Kyle Greenwood. 

This is what I call deskbound exegesis. It's only plausible to scholars who don't spend much time out of doors, unlike the original author and audience. Only plausible to scholars who are out of touch with the natural world, unlike the original author and audience. I'd add that there are modern people who spend time out of doors, but they are inattentive to their surroundings, unlike the original author and audience.

I've often discussed this. Let's take another example: consider fishermen. Say they live in a coastal village. Suppose these are “primitive,” prescientific fishermen.

Even so, don’t they pay attention to the weather before they set sail? Do they go fishing when the skies are full of dark lowering clouds? Or do they go fishing on a clear sunny day?

If they thought the sky was a dam that kept water back, except when sluice-gates were opened, rain would be utterly unpredictable. It could rain at any moment, on a clear sunny day. If rain was thought to come from the sky rather than the clouds, then it both could and would rain on cloudless days. A downpour could occur literally out of the blue.

But, of course, fishermen know from experience that that isn’t the case. Their life depends on it. It’s dangerous to venture miles into the open sea with stormclouds on the horizon, much less right overhead. It’s completely unrealistic to imagine that ancient people didn’t notice these things.

I grew up on the shore of a lake, in a heavily wooded area. I spent lots of time out of doors as a kid.

As a result, I became attuned to certain natural cues. I could predict when it was going to rain, before rainclouds appeared on the horizon.

I could sense an atmospheric change. A shift in the air. A light onshore breeze (as I recall), would be a precursor to a weather front.

That's not something I read in a book. That's not something I consciously observed. Rather, it's something I simply acquired by osmosis through regular exposure to the natural world. 

Is Gen 1 merely functional?

John Walton has various strategies to dissolve the conflict between Gen 1 and the scientific establishment. Indeed, he position suffers from overkill. On the one hand, he says God accommodated erroneous depictions of the world. On the other hand, he drives a wedge between functional and material origins. If Gen 1 is merely about functionality rather than materiality, then it can't conflict with mainstream science. If, however, God accommodates error, then why bother with the functional/material dichotomy? 

Be that as it may, let's consider that dichotomy on its own terms. Were ancient worshippers really concerned with the functional value of shrines rather than the material value of shrines?

Fact is, it takes very little to discharge the functional value of a shrine. Consider numerous references to impromptu shrines in the OT, many forbidden, Take the Asherah pole. That's pretty modest. Or a particular tree under which to perform human sacrifice. 

For that matter, compare the tabernacle to the temple. They were functionally equivalent. If functionality is the ultimate consideration, why the lavish outlay for the Solomonic temple? 

Moreover, pagan civilizations build physically imposing shrines. Take Mesopotamian ziggurats and Mesoamerican pyramids. Or sprawling Egyptian temples–with their forest of columns. Take the Parthenon. The Temple of Artemis. The Pantheon. Vast Hindu and Buddhist temples. 

These are designed to impress the viewer. A statement of wealth and power. If anything, functionality takes a backseat to materiality. 

Lost in Genesis

In some respects, Averbeck is sympathetic to Walton. And in a way, that makes his key disagreements all the more striking:

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-lost-world-of-adam-and-eve-a-review-essay

A waspish worldview

I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the sky, looking down and keeping record books. I live on the other side of Isaac Newton; I can no longer conceive of things that I do not understand as simply being supernatural invasions of the theistic God to do a miracle. I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication. I live on the other side of Sigmund Freud, and I can no longer use the kind of parent language of the past without being self-conscious about the passive dependency that that encourages. And I live on the other side of Albert Einstein, and I know what relativity means in all of life, and so I can no longer claim that I possess objective and revealed truth and it's infallible, or it's inherent, those become claims out of the past that are no longer relevant for 21st century people.  

http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s815368.htm

Spong is a pseudo-sophisticate who clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. But his position isn't that different from John Walton or Peter Enns regarding the obsolescent science of Scripture.

Now there are doubtless things we understand about the natural world that ancient people did not and could not. Mind you, what traditional Christian theologian ever thought that Gen 1-3 was based on what people back then could know apart from revelation?

There is, however, another aspect to this question. Scientific progress often proceeds by flights of the imagination. Take Maxwell's Demon. The technology is not available at the time to perform these experiments. It's often scientific imagination that's driving technological advances, rather than vice versa. 

Recently I was sitting at a park bench. I noticed a hornet about a yard in front of me climbing up, down, and around a concrete block. Finally, it made the mistake of walking towards me. A fatal miscalculation. As I was watching the wasp, it also reminded me of times I've seen spiders and houseflies climb a wall, then walk across the ceiling.

It made me think about the degree to which our human sense of up and down is conditioned by our sense of gravity. Because insects are virtually weightless, an insect an walk vertically as easily as horizontally. Can walk upside down as easily as right-side up. It takes no more effort for an insect to walk up and down a tree trunk or under a branch than walking on the ground. The pull of gravity is negligible. 

In that respect, an insect has a cubical perception of the world. Every surface is equivalent to ground level. A four-dimensional experience, where up, down, upside-down and right-side up range along a common continuum. 

Yet the world doesn't look the same from each orientation. In each case the view will be different.

Of course, insects lack the intelligence to appreciate difference. They don't have a viewpoint. 

But suppose an insect had human intelligence, or suppose a human had insect mobility. It would resemble that scene from Inception where the cityscape curls around like a cylinder. 

What would be "up"? What would be "down"? What would be the frame of reference?

Notice, though, that my little thought-experiment doesn't depend on modern astronomy or modern technology. It begins with me observing an insect. Mentally detaching myself from my natural viewpoint and projecting myself into the situation of an insect.

I'm certainly not the smartest man who ever lived. Surely there have been men centuries before me, millennia before me, who could practice the same detachment, assume a different viewpoint. Turn things around in their mind. 

That's an engine of science. It doesn't require modern physics or modern technology. Rather, it's those leaps of the imagination which give rise to modern physics and modern science in the first place. 

From ape to Adam

Tue April 14, 2015

(Christianity Today) - Peter Enns and John Walton recently returned from an expedition to Armenia to find out what really happened in the Garden of Eden. Their archeological excavation unearthed a cuneiform DVD. This records the very moment when Yahweh conferred the imago Dei on a hominid by process of ensoulment. 

After a private viewing, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Darrel Falk, and the Archbishop of Canterbury hailed their discovery as the long-sought reconciliation of science and religion. 

[skip ad]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1OZCHixR0

Prediluvian history

I'm going to repost some comments I left at Lydia McGrew's blog reviewing Walton's book on The Lost World of Adam and Eve. My comments are not directly in response to her review, but in response to other commenters.

Some professing Christians have an oddly compartmentalized plausibility structure. For instance, I've read things by Stanley Jaki on Genesis, Lourdes, and Fatima. Jaki rejects the traditional interpretation of Gen 1-3 on naturalistic grounds, yet he takes Lourdes and Fatima very seriously. What makes Lourdes or Fatima credible, but Gen 1-3 incredible?

Posted by steve hays | March 24, 2015 2:30 PM

MarcAnthony:

"Presumably the available evidence."

That raises a host of interesting questions:

i) Many times, we have no evidence for a historical event over and above historical accounts of the event in question. Sometimes there may be independent corroborative physical evidence, but oftentimes not.

What's our evidence for the Battle of Waterloo? Historical accounts.

Depending on one's view of Scripture, the account of Gen 2-3 is, itself, evidence for the occurrence of what it records.

ii) There are people who think Gen 2-3 is literally ridiculous, but implicitly believe that a consecrated wafer contains the entire body, blood, soul, and deity of Christ. Seems like an oddly segregated belief-system to me.

iii) Normally, humans are the product of a human male impregnating a human female. But if the Virgin Birth is true, then that's an exception–just as the creation of Adam and Eve would be exceptional.

Now, if you did a full medical workup on Jesus, I assume he'd be indistinguishable from someone conceived by procreation. If, however, God bypassed ordinary natural processes in the conception of Jesus, the available evidence will be consistent with either a natural or supernatural origin. Both interpretations are empirically adequate and empirically indistinguishable–but only one is right.

Suppose I arrive late at the feeding of the five thousand. I see a crowd eating fish and bread. I assume fishermen caught the fish in the nearby lake, while bakers produced the loaves of bread. And that's a reasonable operating assumption, given my limited evidence.

If, however, Jesus miraculously multiplied fish and bread, then my inference was wrong. It didn't take that factor into consideration.

iv) Apropos (iii), how we evaluate the evidence depends, in part, on presuppositions that we bring to the evidence. Presuppositions that lie outside the evidence proper–although there may be evidence for our presuppositions.

If the effect is the end-result of allowing nature to take its course, then that's one thing. If the effect is the immediate result of supernatural agency, that's another thing. And it may not be possible to retroengineer the cause from the effect. We may be able to retrace the process provided that it was a normal process. But what's the evidence for the proviso?

To take a comparison: in robotics it's possible to make a robot that can make other robots like itself. Most robots will be made by other robots. But the initial robot in the series must be designed and constructed by an engineer.

From a scientific standpoint, I don't believe that either heliocentrism or geocentrism is true. These are relative reference frames concerning relative motion.

Now, if you take it to the next step by asking about the underlying causes of their respective motion(s), like gravity, then the physics will be very different.

Posted by steve hays | March 21, 2015 11:12 PM

[Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question: "Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?" I replied: "I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth." "Well," he asked, "what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?" E. Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Harper & Row, rev ed.,1965), 151.

Posted by steve hays | March 22, 2015 12:30 PM

I think we need to draw some distinctions, or at least make some implicit distinctions explicit:

i) We should distinguish between what Gen 1-3 means, and whether its meaning is normative for Christians.

ii) Apropos (i), some theologians do it backwards. They begin with what they think is true, then interpret Gen 1-3 accordingly. They discount interpretations which they think are false.

Problem is, they don't let the text speak for itself. They often begin with their modern scientific understanding. That's their standard of comparison. They then use that as the interpretive grid. But, of course, that's anachronistic.

iii) Apropos (ii), exegesis typically seeks to ascertain original intent or authorial intent. The text means what the author intended to convey by his choice of words.

An exegete consciously avoids imposing his own preconceptions onto the text. Rather, he attempts, if only for the sake of argument, to assume the viewpoint of the author. For instance, a Dante commentator will view the text through the Dante's cultural lens. Not what makes sense to the commentator, but what would make sense to Dante–given Dante's time, place, and outlook.

iv) One potential objection is that, given the dual authorship of Scripture, what is normative is divine intent, not human intent. Indeed, Walton tries to salvage inerrancy by recourse to speech-act theory. For him, the narrator's locutions are errant, but the divine illocutions, behind the locutions, are inerrant.

However, an obvious problem with that dichotomy is that we can only access the illocutions via the locutions. Typically, an author uses certain locutions to express his illocutions.

God communicates truth through the instrumentality of the human author. Hence, the human intent expressed in human locutions can't be at cross-purposes with the divine intent or divine illocutions.

v) A theistic evolutionist can be a theist for philosophical reasons and an evolutionist for scientific reasons.

The problem, from a Christian perspective, is when there's an effort to make theistic evolution intersect or coordinate with Scripture. That characteristically results in hybrid interpretations. The "Adam" of theistic evolution isn't the Adam of Genesis. At best, the "Adam" of theistic evolution is a makeshift construct. Equally artificial from both an exegetical and scientific standpoint.

vi) In principle, one can bypass that stopgap compromise by sidelining Scripture altogether. However, Christianity claims to be a revealed religion. Biblical revelation can't be sidelined if the result is to remain Christian.

If, however, the correct interpretation is theologically normative, then evolution can't be permitted to leverage either the interpretation of Scripture or the content of Christian theology.

Posted by steve hays | March 21, 2015 11:45 PM

Let's provide a baseline standard of comparison–between the Adam of Genesis and the Adam of theistic evolution (of which there are various models).

In Gen 2-3:

i) Adam has no animal, human, or prehuman ancestry.

ii) Adam is directly created from inanimate raw materials.

ii) Eve is directly created from organic matter (i.e. a tissue sample supplied by Adam).

iii) All humans, past and present, are descendants of Adam and Eve.

iv) Humans die because Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, which cut them off from the tree of life.

Posted by steve hays | March 22, 2015 12:03 PM

Lost World of Adam and Eve, part deux

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/03/part_ii_review_of_john_h_walto.html