William Horbury, "Old Testament Interpretation in the Writings of the Church Fathers," Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 768.
The importance of types and allegories in second and third-century OT exegesis did not overwhelm more literal interpretation...[L]iteral interpretation of the promises was popular. Gen 1-3 were likewise commonly taken literally, perhaps in rebuttal of gnostic views of the cosmogony as well as in accord with the hope for the last things.
In debates about Genesis 1-3 and evolution, many Christians like to assert that the church before the nineteenth century did not take the biblical account of creation literally. I think they base their argument on the existence of non-literal interpretation (i.e., allegory) of the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament as well as patristic and rabbinic writings. I've not read all the history of interpretation with reference to Genesis 1-3, but I think it's wrong to claim that "the" church did not interpret Genesis 1-3 literally. Apparently, Horbury does too.
Friday, June 12, 2009
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There are many generalizations thrown up as part of the individual gauntlets which people use in defending their various points of view. I generally don't take such generalizations seriously, because they are very difficult to substantiate.
Recently, I was somewhat surprised to run across a generalization advanced by an atheist, who stated that before the Scopes trial, most of the American public had accepted evolution as fact. That was a total new one on me!
I happen to believe in evolution guided by God, and that tends to confuse non-believers who are accustomed to confronting the views of the young earthers.
BB
That's pretty much my position too, Byker Bob, but I'm not sure what to do with Genesis. I don't really buy the view that "the ancient Israelites weren't intending to write history when they wrote Genesis 1," since maybe they did believe they were doing that. Later interpreters treated it as history.
At the same time, there are different creation stories within the Bible. Genesis 1 and 2 appear to have a different order of creation, but there are also stories in which God defeats a sea dragon, or water. What were the biblical compilers thinking when they put all these stories together? Did they believe they were consistent, or that different stories convey an important nuance? I don't know.
I've run across one logically thought out scenario recently, presented by a physicist. It involves applying the theory of relativity to the 6 days outlined in Genesis 1. IOW, 6 24 hour days as we know them, would not be 6 days elsewhere in the cosmos. Depending on one's vantage point, 6 24 hour days elsewhere could equate to billions of years Earth time. This gives time for punctuated equillibrium style evolution from the Big Bang forward.
When YHWH breathes a "nephesh"
into the man and woman whom he has formed through billions of years of evolution from the same elements as formed the cosmos, they become the first "God conscious" beings, different from all of the animal species.
The physicist's description of photons separating from matter, and other events of the Big Bang/Creation could easily be seen as having been primitively described in Genesis 1.
Of course, all of this is speculation, but it's the most plausible explanation which I've heard to date.
BB
I read a Young Earth creationist book a while ago that said something similar. The author was Russell Humphreys, and he said God made our solar system in a white hole, whose time was different from the time on the outside. He was trying to explain how the earth can be young, when there are stars that are several light years away. He opposed the notion that God created the light already in transit.
I'm on the fence whether God created all in 6 literal days or by evolution although I was raised staunchly with the former. From my readings I believe that possibly there are 5 eons (aions) of which we are in the middle one till Christ's second coming. The second was Gen. 1 till the end of the flood. The first is ended by the chaos in Gen. 1:1, and could include a lengthy period of creation of stars with their ancient light, Jesus, Satan, angels, and sons of God mentioned in Job and Gen.6 (also Gilgamesh) who must have been close genetically to humans to mate with them. They may be involved with the UFO community. This first eon also could have included the destruction of the planet Rahab mentioned in the bible a few places, which could now be the asteroid belt and meteors, and caused semi-destruction of Mars and craters on the moon.
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