Genesis creation story

Gilgamesh

I have been asked to give my views on Genesis: "Jesse:" says  "I would be more than happy to see you spell out in an article how you make sense of the Genesis text." I am not going to go verse by verse and explicate or do close reading and exegesis. I'l;  limit my remarks to the creation story and just deal with it in general terms. 

First I think it is important to discuss my view of Biblical inspiration. I have long and thought out discussion on that topic one might care to read it: "The Nature of Biblical Revelation."[1]  I highly recommend a book which we red in seminary this has been a major influence upon my view of the nature of Biblical revelation, Models of Revelation by Avery Dulles[2] To briefly summarize, I  don't  believe in Inerrancy. I don't feel duty bound to take the Genesis creation story as a literal historical account, I use to think if I take it symbolically I could both respect the divine revelation aspect and include scientific fact. In  studying the nature of ancient world mythology it became apparent to me that reading the story as a highly symbolic allegory is an unnecessary step. If you really compare ancient world creation myths to Genesis, the latter is very different in some respects but it's really just another version of the same thing. 

Now that statement could be misleading, I can hear some people  asking "hey it is in the Bible, why would God include a myth in his word?" The Bible is diverse. There is more than one method of inspiration used. In cases where God tells people directly "say this..." those people usually say "thus says the Lord." When it doesn't say that I assume it's a more subtle form of inspiration,Since God did not give the ancient authors a scientific understanding of creation I assume he used their own impetus to write and guided then into truths but did not reform their total understanding  of the world. So those truths are encoded in myth,  

The ancient world as a whole thought in mythological terms, Hebrews were no exception. True they knew God and they had first hand insights of God they were being groomed to function as the lunch pad for the Messianic ministry of Christ, in the days of Moses when Gensis was written  they thought mythological and represented God within a framework of mythological concepts. I am going to post here selections from that essay I link to above I can't do better than that at expelling my view, I urge the reader to read the entire essay. In those sections I talk about the Genesis creation story.

 The major reasons for understanding the Genesis account as mythological include: 

(1) They follow the same outline in story development,.

That point is documented by Gaalyah Cornfeld [3]

(2) There's a firmmamemt in both sotires

Firmamanet was the ancient word idea of the structure of the world It;s a dead giveaway that the Genesis story is borrowed from the ancient story. It as a dome over the world with water on both sides. Trape doors in it allowed rain and snow.

(3)Animals talk, snakes walk

Ear marks of mythology

A lot of fellow Christians will assume I'm not a real believer, but the innumeracy position is really form the 19th century it was not the view of the Church fathers


from my essay on Biblical revelation:

The most radical view will be that of mythology in the Bible. This is a difficult concept for most Christians to grasp, because most of us are taught that "myth" means a lie, that it's a dirty word, an insult, and that it is really debunking the Bible or rejecting it as God's word. The problem is in our understanding of myth. "Myth" does not mean lie; it does not mean something that is necessarily untrue. It is a literary genre—a way of telling a story. In Genesis, for example, the creation story and the story of the Garden are mythological. They are based on Babylonian and Sumerian myths that contain the same elements and follow the same outlines. But three things must be noted: 1) Myth is not a dirty word, not a lie. Myth is a very healthy thing. 2) The point of the myth is the point the story is making--not the literal historical events of the story. So the point of mythologizing creation is not to transmit historical events but to make a point. We will look more closely at these two points. 3) I don't assume mythology in the Bible out of any tendency to doubt miracles or the supernatural, I believe in them. I base this purely on the way the text is written.

The purpose of myth is often assumed to be the attempt of unscientific or superstitious people to explain scientific facts of nature in an unscientific way. That is not the purpose of myth. A whole new discipline has developed over the past 60 years called "history of religions." Its two major figures are C.G. Jung and Marcea Eliade. In addition to these two, another great scholarly figure arises in Carl Kerenyi. In addition to these three, the scholarly popularizer Joseph Champbell is important. Champell is best known for his work The Hero with A Thousand Faces. This is a great book and I urge everyone to read it. Champbell, and Elliade both disliked Christianity intensely, but their views can be pressed into service for an understanding of the nature of myth. Myth is, according to Champbell a cultural transmission of symbols for the purpose of providing the members of the tribe with a sense of guidance through life. They are psychological, not explanatory of the physical world. This is easily seen in their elaborate natures. Why develop a whole story with so many elements when it will suffice as an explanation to say "we have fire because Prometheus stole it form the gods?" For example, Champell demonstrates in The Hero that heroic myths chart the journey of the individual through life. They are not explanatory, but clinical and healing. They prepare the individual for the journey of life; that's why in so many cultures we meet the same hero over and over again; because people have much the same experiences as they journey though life, gaining adulthood, talking their place in the group, marriage, children, old age and death. The hero goes out, he experiences adventures, he proves himself, he returns, and he prepares the next hero for his journey. We meet this over and over in mythology.

In Kerenyi's essays on a Science of Mythology we find the two figures of the maiden and the Krone. These are standard figures repeated throughout myths of every culture. They serve different functions, but are symbolic of the same woman at different times in her life. The Krone is the enlightener, the guide, the old wise woman who guides the younger into maidenhood. In Genesis we find something different. Here the Pagan myths follow the same outline and contain many of the same characters (Adam and Adapa—see, Cornfeld Archaeology of the Bible 1976). But in Genesis we find something different. The chaotic creation story of Babylon is ordered and the source of creation is different. Rather than being emerging out of Tiamot (chaos) we find "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Order is imposed. We have a logical and orderly progression (as opposed to the Pagan primordial chaos). The seven days of creation represent perfection and it is another aspect of order, seven periods, the seventh being rest. Moreover, the point of the story changes. In the Babylonian myth the primordial chaos is the ages of creation, and there is no moral overtone, the story revolves around other things. This is a common element in mythology, a world in which the myths happen, mythological time and place. All of these elements taken together are called Myths, and every mythos has a cosmogony, an explanation of creation and being (I didn't say there were no explanations in myth.). We find these elements in the Genesis story, Cosmogony included. But, the point of the story becomes moral: it becomes a story about man rebelling against God, the entrance of sin into the world. So the Genesis account is a literary rendering of pagan myth, but it stands that myth on its head. It is saying God is the true source of creation and the true point is that life is about knowing God.

We do not need a history book of God's creation, Science when it tells us about evolution is telling us of God's creation,From Genesis we lean theological truth God created all there is Rebellion against God brings death We are fallen we are given redemption promised to Eve. See Romans 5. I believe in the historicity of Jesus and in his saving grace,


Sources
[1] Joeseph Hinman, "The nature of Biblical Revelation," The religious A prtiori, (2011)
http://religiousapriorijesus-bible.blogspot.com/2010/07/nature-of-biblical-revelation.html

the view I hold to is called dialectical retrieval.


[2] Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation, New York: Double Day, 1985.

[3] Gaalyah Cornfeld and  David N. Freedman, Archaeology of the Bible: Book by Book. Ne York:HarperCollinsm 1976