Against the Gods

John Currid's new book, Against the Gods, has been receiving some buzz. It's largely in response to recent views on the evangelical left regarding the OT and comparative mythology. In general, I think Currid's book is an excellent corrective.

I have a few reservations. Although his position on the birth of Moses is defensible, I also think it's unnecessary. But my major disappointment is with his handling of the Enuma Elish. Here I prefer John Oswalt's treatment, in The Bible Among the Myths.

Christians who take an interest in this issue would do well to read both scholars.

I'd add that Currid has covered some, but not all, of the same ground in his earlier Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament. His new book is pitched at a more popular level.

Three-story eschatology

It's become fashionable on the evangelical left to say the creation account in Gen 1 reflects a hopelessly obsolete three-story cosmography. We should just admit the narrator or redactor was mistaken, given his inevitable prescientific ignorance. That's a case of God accommodating his revelation to the primitive audience. That's culturebound. That's passé.

But one often-overlooked problem with that position is that it's terribly shortsighted. For that position doesn't conveniently terminate at the water's edge of protology or creation. Rather, it carries right over into the Gospels and NT eschatology. To the end times as well as the beginnings. After all, you could just as well say the Incarnation reflects a three-story cosmography, what with all those references to angels coming down to earth, or the Son of God coming down to earth. Likewise, what about depictions of the three-story Parousia, where Jesus comes back by coming back down to earth? 

Logically, this means members of the evangelical left should also relegate the Incarnation and the return of Christ to a mythical world picture. Why not go all the way with Bultmann?