@TRiG "Oreopithecus which sounds delicious." ROFL.

Someone might be interested that I am currently studying evolution in my bio course.

Only a few pages into the chapter.

It is actually more accurate that I am studying it but the class has already studied it.

@fredsbend lol

I learned yesterday that seven different vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage and brussel sprouts (all I can remember right now)) were bred from a single wild cabbage starting about 4000 years ago and are all actually considered the same species. A good example of Artificial Selection.

Still surprised me because they are all such different vegies.

But I thought modern selective breeding started with Mendel. I wounder if the few lines of text accurately portray it as something that was done intentionally?

I wonder if that is on-topic at the gardening site.

I wonder if all seven of those vegies can interbreed.

I wonder if I will run out of questions about this.

I wonder if we might breed more vegies out of this single species in the future.

@fredsbend I guess not.

@Jas3.1 I agree with this--just because the Bible is not primarily about history, does not mean that the information in it is not historical.

I've read a number of secular historians who accept the empty tomb (a historical claim)...but deny the resurrection (a faith claim).

@Jas3.1 However, I think the early chapters of Genesis have several clues to indicate they are not meant to be understood as history.

The poetic style of Genesis 1, the first few days with no sun or moon, the generic names for the first man and woman. In the second creation story, the God who comes down from heaven and walks in the garden, the talking serpent, the magic trees at the center of the garden. The centuries-long lifespans of everyone through Noah.

The building of a gigantic box, the gathering of animals from every corner, the flood covering the entire earth, the olive tree that survived the flood. The attempt to build a tower all the way to heaven. All these things seem like artistic license rather than a historical description of the real world.

@fredsbend Selective breeding predates Mendel by centuries. It's even mentioned in Genesis. But it wasn't until Mendel that we understood the true mechanism behind it.

@Jas3.1 I don't think it's a denial of inspiration to recognize that the Bible was nevertheless written by fallible human beings who didn't have perfect knowledge or understanding of some of the things they wrote about.

@BruceAlderman By and large, academia has dropped the idea that Gen. 1 is "poetry" (although some are now claiming it is a new genre called "Creation Myth" or something like that)

@BruceAlderman Why would the first few days with no sun or moon indicate it's not meant to be understood as history?

@BruceAlderman Regarding the names, if Adam and Eve were the first, either (A) the "generic" nature could be based on their names, or (B) God could have named them and used their names generically to refer to all of their offspring

@BruceAlderman ...yet you believe that Jesus is God, and came down to earth, and often walked in the Garden of Gesthemane

(actually there is strong exegetical evidence for many Christophanies prior to the incarnation)

@BruceAlderman Balaam's donkey also spoke... do you believe that story?

@BruceAlderman Why do you call them "magic trees"? I don't think there was anything magical about them. (See here.)

@BruceAlderman What is your opinion of Abraham's age, then? (Even the NT affirms his age.)

@BruceAlderman Why would the building of a big box at God's command lead you to believe Genesis is unhistorical? (I don't follow.)

@BruceAlderman "every corner" is obviously a figure of speech. No doubt there were plenty of animals near Adam to preclude the need to bring them from "America"... that's just a literary device

@BruceAlderman And yet you (presumably) believe God will one day bring judgment on the entire earth, correct?

@BruceAlderman When it floods, lots of stuff floats. Why is it strange that an olive tree "survived"? It probably was washed out of its soil, floated around, and landed in some soft mud.

@BruceAlderman RE: the tower... there were lots of dumb attempts recorded throughout Scripture. I'm not sure why that would make it seem "unhistorical" (the text doesn't say the tower actually did reach to heaven, right?)

@BruceAlderman Regarding "artistic license" I don't think the author's "license" was a license to mislead the reader or misrepresent reality... (I'll assume you would agree)

@BruceAlderman Actually I'm glad we're on this topic though, because the only reason anyone believes in YEC is because of the text. If the text teaches YEC, you should believe it. And if it does not, I have no reason to believe it. But what we should not do is claim that the text can't possibly be teaching YEC because science has disproven it. (Because science cannot disprove it, as we already agreed -- I think.) Would you agree with that?

@BruceAlderman It is not a denial of inspiration to recognize that the Bible was written by fallible human beings with incomplete knowledge. The doctrine of inspiration does not teach that the authors were perfect or omniscient. (Quite the contrary.) What it claims is that because the Scriptures were "breathed out by God" that they are error-free, and that the final product was not flawed.

@BruceAlderman But it is important to note that the YEC reading of Gen. 1 does not come solely from Gen. 1. The entire canon treats Gen. 1 as history. My best example is God writing with His own finger in tablets of stone atop Mount Sinai that He created the heavens and the earth in 6 days. (And before you claim that this is too "unreal" to believe, consider that He did similar things elsewhere in Scripture.)

@BruceAlderman So, I ask you (tongue in cheek), "How do you respond to... God?"

@BruceAlderman I'll give you a chance to respond to that stuff before I type any more...

@Jas3.1 Funny. How plausible is it for a tree to be washed away and to land with its roots in soft mud? And if it happens, how plausible is it to be the only tree? Why believe that, but discard other impossibilities as 'figure of speech'?

What is yec?

@Jas3.1 I'm sure you have been asked this before...but who was Cain refering to when he said, "...anyone who finds me..." If, according to the literal info we have in Gen...Adam and Eve fell...had Cain and Able...then Cain was cursed for killing Able. Was Cain referring to his parents as "all those 'ones' that could be anyone?"

I'm not an Old Test. Expert or creation account expert...so I may be overlooking or missing something.

@Jas3.1 please overlook all those "Ables" my autocorrect sometimes makes me look illiterate lol...should be Abel!

@parvus "What the yec?" Lol...

@Jas3.1 That's a lot of questions. I'll try to respond to as many as I can, but I may not give detailed answers to all of them.

@Jas3.1 Yes, I agree that we shouldn't claim that the text doesn't teach YEC because "science has disproven it".

It is not within the scope of science to tell us what the Bible means (unless you count textual analysis as a science).

@Jas3.1 You make a good point about the generic nature of Adam and Eve's names. It could be simply because they were first.

@Jas3.1 Sorry about my irreverent use of "magic trees". I don't actually think Genesis teaches that they were magic. I just couldn't think of a more accurate descriptive word while I was typing, and I didn't want to type out the full names of both trees.

So in answer to your other questions, I think Balaam's donkey is another example like the talking serpent, a signpost that the story is not meant to be taken literally. (Same thing with the big fish and the magic vine in Jonah, FWIW.)

(No, I don't believe the vine was actually magic.)

Abraham's age may be an exaggeration. (Or it may be God's grace and provision; I'm not ruling out either possibility.) Either way, 175 years is a lot closer to a normal lifespan than the ~900 years we see in Genesis 1-9.

@Jas3.1 Jesus walking in Gethsemene is very different from the accounts of God walking in Eden. Jesus lived a full human life (despite its short length). He was born, grew up and learned the Torah, worked as a carpenter, then became an itinerant preacher. He did go into the garden (and other places) to get alone to pray, but when he left he still walked the earth.

God, in most of the Bible, is represented as being able to communicate with humans wherever we are, through whatever means are available (the still, small voice on the mountain; the burning bush; visions and dreams; even Balaam's donkey, historical or not).

And yet, in the early chapters of Genesis we see a God who almost seems unsure about these creatures he has made. So he has to come down from heaven to check in on Adam and Eve. He has to come up with a punishment for Cain after the fact. In Noah's day he is grieved at what humans have become. After seeing the Tower of Babel, God is fearful of what humans will be able to achieve.

@parvus YEC = Young Earth Creationism.

OEC = Old Earth Creationism

TE = Theistic Evolution

TOE = Theory of Evolution (In this room anyway)

The portrayal of God in Genesis 1-11 is very different from what we see in later scripture (although we do see echoes of some of these characteristics later).

These stories really seem to come from an earlier time when God's people were just beginning to understand who he really is.

@BruceAlderman I guess I kind of always new that. Dog breeds being a good example, though it is true that about 75% of today's dog breeds were only bred recently (like 150 years or earlier).

Just wasn't thinking quite clearly. I had this weird energy shot just before logging on yesterday.

@fredsbend Yeah, and even 150 years ago was pre-Mendel. (At least, before his work was known).

By like a decade.

According to my bio textbook, his work was largely unknown until the early 20th century.

@BruceAlderman Now this in itself is not a reason not to take these stories as history. I'm building up to something.

@Jas3.1 While I don't believe the Bible writers were misleading or misrepresenting reality, they were bound in some ways by the limits of their cultures. For example, Matthew 4:8 says the devil took Jesus up on a "very high mountain" to show him "all the kingdoms of the world". This reflects a flat-earth perspective. On a globe, you can't possibly see all the kingdoms of the world from any mountain.

(Probably this is supposed to represent a vision rather than a physical view, because even on a flat disc of an earth, there's no mountain tall enough to see everything.) But just the mere fact of going up to see the vision makes sense to people who believe in a flat earth.

(I might add that the other gospel writers don't mention a mountain here.) Matthew is not misleading readers by claiming that Jesus could see all the kingdoms of the earth from the top of the mountain, but at the same time it should be clear that this not a literal representation of reality.

In a culture that understood earth as a flat disc, seeing all the earth from a high mountain is understandable imagery; to us today, not so much.

For another example, consider the divorce laws in Deuteronomy 24. It would be hard for Christians to say these laws are God's will. Jesus said the divorce laws were culturally conditioned "because you were hard-hearted" (and prior to Jesus, the prophet Malachi said God hates divorce).

So if even sections of the law were culturally bound, I don't think we can say that all the physical descriptions found in the Bible are not.

That's not to say that their perspective was wrong and ours is right, or that we know better than the Bible writers because we're more advanced. We need to be able to recognize our own limitations too.

But when we read about (for example) Jacob's sheep breeding strategies, we shouldn't expect the detail of the striped sticks to reflect an accurate description of how selective breeding works.

In the story of Jesus' ascension (" he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight"), the early Christians could have easily imagined the cloud simply lifting Jesus to heaven somewhere above it. Today we don't picture heaven as a physical place, so the story loses some of its impact. But that doesn't mean the imagery is misleading.

We read in Joshua that the sun stopped in the sky and waited for a battle to finish. Today we don't believe that the sun travels across the sky; we believe this is an illusion caused by the earth's rotation. To say "the sun stopped" is not a misrepresentation but a perspective bound to a different culture.

(And that's independent of the question of whether it's a historical event.)

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@Jas3.1 OK, so all this is leading up to my point: I agree that "artistic license" does not mean license to mislead or misrepresent. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that we have to accept their perspective in order to properly understand the world. They were fallible human beings who were charged with delivering God's message to the world.

If I say that part of what appears in the Bible comes from the culture in which it was written and not directly from God, I'm not denying the truth of God's word. And I hope I've given enough examples to prove that some of what appears in the Bible is derived from the culture and not directly from God.

My next step will be to explain why I think the "history" in Genesis 1-11 belongs to the cultural category. But first I'll let you tell me whether I've made any sense up to this point.

@parvus (A) If every tree on the planet were washed out of its soil in a flood, and then the flood subsided, and the ground were covered in soft mud, it is very plausible that a tree could settle into the mud. (B) I didn't say it was the only tree... where did you get that from? (C) I didn't follow your question about figures of speech. (D) YEC = "Young Earth Creationism" / "Young Earth Creationist"

@CharlesAlsobrook Good question. The text actually doesn't say that Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel were the only people on the planet. Probably there were other descendants of Adam & Eve (I would guess the daughters, grandchildren, etc. ...but there could have been other sons as well, which would take me a bit more time to explain.)

@BruceAlderman Howdy

(I'm reading your stuff now)

@BruceAlderman How do you decide whether something is an historical miracle or a "signpost that the story is not meant to be taken literally"?

@Jas3.1 I don't know if any of it makes sense. It did while I was typing, but I have something of a stream-of-consciousness thought process when I'm tying.

@BruceAlderman no problem

@BruceAlderman But we do observe the ages gradually declining to modern ages after the flood... so it doesn't seem like there's a period of "symbolic ages" and then a period of "plausible ages", and I think Abraham is a good example of that.

@BruceAlderman Fair enough.

@BruceAlderman I won't argue with any of this because I respect the literary aspect of Scripture.

My point, though, is that God often walks with man on earth (e.g. Daniel's friends in the furnace) -- especially if you take the Angel of the Lord as a Christophany (which I have become convinced of) -- and that is even after sin, so it should not be counted unhistorical simply because God walked with man. (I suspect it was the Son of God in the Garden as well.)

@Jas3.1 OK, I may not fully agree, but that makes sense.

@BruceAlderman Of course I would agree that the stories were older, and you would probably agree that Genesis was written long after the events of Gen 1-11 occurred. I would argue that Moses, who wrote Gen 1-11 was not "just beginning to understand God" though, and he is the one narrating the story.

And I was using "God walks in the garden" as shorthand for the whole set of things I mentioned above about the portrayal of God in Genesis 1-11.

@Jas3.1 I would argue that these stories existed long before they were written down, and that the narrator was someone who lived many generations before Moses.

@BruceAlderman Ok, I would agree with that.

@BruceAlderman This is something I want to come back to. We should talk through this a bit more. (I see the Pentateuch as a single work by Moses in the wilderness to the Israelites who were about to enter the Promised Land.)

@BruceAlderman I suspect there is something linguistic going on here, and that it is not so much related to a flat-earth view. I can elaborate in a moment...

...but that is one possible explanation.

@BruceAlderman I'm not sure that's how we should understand Jesus' statement... I'll come back to this

@BruceAlderman Ok, I think I can agree with this (to some extent.)

@BruceAlderman On the other hand, that's not what the text is claiming.

@BruceAlderman That has more to do with early misinterpretations than authorial intent

@BruceAlderman It depends on your frame of reference. The frame of reference chosen for most of the Bible stories is the perspective from earth.

@BruceAlderman My position is that we have to appreciate their perspective to appreciate their teachings, and that we have to embrace their teachings to properly understand the world. That is slightly different than what you were arguing against.

@Jas3.1 Well yes, but it's also true that ancient humans literally believed that the sun circled the earth every day.

@Jas3.1 OK, I think I agree with this.

@BruceAlderman We should talk through this more... God always uses the language of the culture to express truth. It's not an either-or.

I need to go to lunch. I'll be back later to discuss this more. I'm interested in hearing your elaborations on these points.

How do you reference your own chat entry?

@Jas3.1 test

@Jas3.1 sweet!

@Jas3.1 What are your initial impressions of this perspective?

@Jas3.1 (A) it is possible that he showed him "all these kingdoms of the world" without actually physically showing Him all of them. Imagine King David standing atop his house, looking over the crowds of people and asking God what He had planned for "all these Israelites". In that scenario David doesn't mean "the specific Israelites I can see right now"... he means all of them, though he is only looking at a few. (B) "a very high mountain" could be a figure of speech

@Jas3.1 The Law did not teach that you should divorce because of the culture. What it taught is that if you have determined to divorce, here's how you can do it in a loving way. Love is the value, not divorce, and not regulations. But the Pharisees took it as permission (which was bad exegesis), and so Jesus turned their focus back to what it really was: a law demanding love despite the brokenness of the world. Hence the "hard heart" statement. Let me know if that makes sense.

@Jas3.1 The text does not claim "this is how selective breeding works", it is a narrative describing what happened historically. In other words, it is not science, it is history -- and it is clearly implied in the text that there was something supernatural (i.e. extra-ordinary) going on, so it actually could be argued that the text is claiming that this is not how selective breeding works (scientifically) -- but rather, how it played out (historically and supernaturally) in that case

@BruceAlderman The text simply claims that a cloud received Him out of their sight... in other words, that as the cloud came more into the foreground from their perspective, they could no longer see Him. That says nothing about a flat earth or any other scientific inaccuracy. It's just a way of speaking that describes what they observed (and there is nothing unscientific about accurately recorded observation.)

@BruceAlderman The sun does circle the earth every day. The idea that the geocentric model was wrong and the heliocentric model was right is a very unfortunate modern misconception. By that logic one could argue that the heliocentric model is wrong because the earth is actually rotating around the center of the galaxy in a sort of sinusoidal motion.

(...don't misunderstand me though, I'm not claiming the geocentric model should be taught in science class or anything like that. the heliocentric model is much simpler and easier to grasp and should be taught in the science classroom.)

@BruceAlderman So my claim is that after we appreciate their perspective and understand their teachings, one of the many things we learn is that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days about 6,000 years ago.

@BruceAlderman Keep in mind that I have absolutely no reason to believe in YEC unless that's what the text teaches when properly interpreted. My loyalty is to sound Bible interpretation, not to YEC (and certainly not to the speculations of the enemies of God.) But as I apply sound hermeneutics to the text, I come back with YEC, and so that is why I believe it.

@BruceAlderman Earlier I used the "empty tomb" as an example, but after your response I realized it was a bad example, because an empty tomb in and of itself does not require anything supernatural. So I want to use a different example: the resurrection of Christ.

@BruceAlderman It could be claimed that science has disproven the resurrection of Christ because "people don't raise from the dead." It could be claimed that this was merely a flawed, limited understanding of an eyewitness... or that by believing in the resurrection as an historical fact we are flattening the text, overlooking the theological significance. But at the end of the day, when properly interpreted, the text actually does teach us about this historical, miraculous event.

@Jas3.1 ...but besides exegesis, I have also dug into all the scientific evidence I could get my hands on, and I have literally only heard a handful of reasonable arguments from TOE advocates, none of which favor TOE over YEC. The vast majority of the actual evidence aligns perfectly with YEC. (Although I am more than aware that this is not the popular impression.)

@Jas3.1 Please respond to this one too when you get time.

@Jas3.1 ...and this one

@Jas3.1 ...and this one.

ok I better go eat lunch and give you a chance to respond

I was very surprised that this question had not been asked yet on H.SE

@Jas3.1 Regarding "all the kingdoms of the world" I think you and I are in agreement. There are a lot of ways to make sense out of this that don't require the devil to have literally shown Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world".

My point is this: The text does not explicitly say it is not meant to be read as a description of a historical event. "The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor." And yet I wouldd argue that even in ancient times most readers probably did not believe that Jesus and the devil could physically see every kingdom in the world from the top of the mountain. (And I think you agree.)

@Jas3.1 Regarding selective breeding: Again, I think we are in agreement. The text states that Jacob tried to manipulate the flock's breeding habits, but it was God's favor and not Jacob's efforts that yielded results.

Here again, the original readers would have reached the same conclusion. Although Jacob may have believed in magic breeding sticks, he still acknowledged that he succeeded only through God's favor‌​.

My point in these two examples is that, sometimes passages may look on the surface to be a straighforward historical account, but on closer inspection there's more to it than that.

Another example of this type would be Daniel 1:11-15. I've heard "Christian vegetarians" use this to argue that vegetables are better than meat for building muscle mass. But the text is really saying the opposite. Even though meat is better for building muscle mass, Daniel and his friends were strengthened by God despite not eating the "royal rations".

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@Jas3.1 Regarding the sun stopping in the sky and Jesus being carried up in a cloud: These are a different category. I'm not saying these verses claim the earth is flat. I'm saying the ancient Israelites (including the early Christians) believed in a flat earth with heaven located above the clouds, and that belief would have colored how they read these passages.

The verse that most explicitly proclaims this cosmology is Isaiah 40:22 "It is he who sits above the circle [not sphere] of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in." The Psalms repeatedly state that the earth cannot be moved (93:1, 96:10, 104:5). The Bible contains many references to the ends of the earth.

These are statements that the original readers (and writers) of the Bible would have taken literally, but that most people today would not.

The original readers of Joshua would have pictured a sun standing still above an immovable earth. The original readers of Acts would have pictured Jesus being lifted up into the cloud, and from there to heaven.

And these passages contain no explicit hints that they should not be read in any way other than that. Yet most people today do. And I don't think we're wrong for doing so. (Just as I don't think the original readers were wrong for reading it the way they did.) We are all, to some extent, products of our culture, and we're going to understand the Bible in a way that dovetails with our previous experience.

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@Jas3.1 And finally, regarding divorce laws, I see nothing in the entirety of the Torah suggesting that it be done in a loving way. The only passage where divorce is permitted at all is Deuteronomy 24, which just forbids a man from remarrying a woman whom he has previously divorced, if she has been married to someone else in the meantime. The fact that he was able to issue a decree of divorce in the first place is only mentioned in passing.

So I'm not saying "the law taught you should divorce because of the culture". I'm saying divorce was part of the culture, and the law did not completely forbid it because (in Jesus' words) of their "hardened hearts".

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But leaving aside the divorce example (because it's of an entirely different class than the others)...

All of these passages are written as straightforward historical narrative. The text doesn't say (except in the case of Jacob) that what's really happening is something other than what it looks like on the surface.

And yet, I'd argue that most Christians today would not read these as flat historical narrative. And in the first set, I think even ancient readers wouldn't.

My claim is that the early chapters of Genesis are this sort of text. Genesis 1, I put in the first set (ancient readers didn't take it literally), and Genesis 6-11 I'd put in the second (they did, but we don't need to). Genesis 2-5 probably in the second set as well, although Origen of Alexandria didn't believe the Garden of Eden was a real place, and couldn't imagine anyone believing it was.

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@Jas3.1 Would you agree that to speculate about the Genesis account of Cain's curse is somewhat like speculating how much "time" lapses between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:3. The text doesnt actually say how long God waited after "...the beginning" to say "let there be light."

@Jas3.1 As far we know (or as far as we can speculate) the time-lapse between "In the beginning" and "Then God said" (which officially marks the beginning of the 1rst day) could be anything from "as long as it takes to read the sentence" to "18 billion light years" and/or anything else the human mind can speculate.

@Jas3.1 OK, yes we see a gradual decrease in lifespan from Abraham on. But from Adam to Noah we see lifespans of about 900 years (give or take, with rare exceptions), then for some generations we see no ages given, then we get to Abraham at 175 years--long by today's standards, but not too much longer than the oldest living people today--but a huge gap, down from 900 years.

So yeah, I do see a period of "symbolic ages" and then a period of more or less "plausible ages". And I think Abraham makes a fine dividing line.

@Jas3.1 So, regarding how to decide if something is a historical miracle or a signpost that the story should not be taken literally, I'm building toward this. But ultimately it's a matter of interpretation, and no interpreter is infallible.

@BruceAlderman Genesis 5 should be grouped with 6-11, not 2-4.