Is Creationism Founded On The Bible?

[srd]

OK, easy answer -- NOT at all!

 

I'm a biblical scholar who has dropped in and out of this site, but I wanted to share with you all, and perhaps get some feedback, on a current project I'm working on. Contrary to scientist who have fought the good fight in trying to get Creationist to see reality, as a biblical scholar I'm more interested in demonstrating what the Bible claims and does not. And if the Bible calims something, I'm not advocating that we follow these 3,000-2,000 year old texts. That's absurd; we no longer live in the worldview and the belief system in which much of this ancient literature was written. I'm more or less just calling for an honesty about these ancient texts and a realization that the beliefs of these ancient authors in no way are the same, nor similar, to our beliefs. In short, Creationism is not romotely founded on the Bible. It is modern dogma that one attempts to legitimate by having recoure to a text that has become, for better or worse, authoritative.

 

Anyway, I've started a lengthy analysis of Genesis 1 and 2 at my website, http://contradictionsinthebible.com. Here's the begining:

 

Genesis 1:1–2:3 on Its Own Terms and in Its Own Historical and Literary Context

 

Genesis 1:1-2:3’s depiction of the creation of the world was shaped by ancient Near Eastern cosmological perspectives and beliefs about the origins of the world and the nature of the cosmos. This fact the text itself bears witness to, regardless of the opinions and beliefs of readers living millennia after this text was written. In other words, a thorough, honest, and objective analysis of the text of Genesis 1:1-2:3 on its own terms and as a product of its own cultural and literary world reveals rather convincingly that its creation narrative was shaped by cultural and subjective perspectives, biases, and beliefs about the nature of the world that were unique to the cultures and peoples of the ancient Near East. It is not, in other words, a description of creation from the perspective of a supernatural deity residing outside of the cosmos, nor is it inspired by such a deity or point of reference. This is not a subjective claim that I am making about the text; rather, these are the claims that the text itself advances when one reads and understands it from within its own cultural and literary context. It’s a shame that in today’s day and age it has to be argued that ancient texts represent the views and beliefs of ancient peoples and cultures.

 

Genesis 1:1-2

Despite strong traditional and often authoritative interpretative claims that were formed centuries after this ancient text was written and devoid of knowledge about its historical and literary context, the opening of Genesis 1 does not depict a creatio ex nihilo, that is a creation out of nothing. The Hebrew text is clear on this point, and recognized by all biblical scholars. Rather, what the text informs us is that when God began to create, earth in some manner of speaking already existed as a desolate, formless, empty waste (tohû wabohû) in the midst of a dark surging watery abyss (tehôm). This is the initial primordial state of creation that the creator deity inherits so to speak, and it is a prominent cultural feature in other ancient Near Eastern creation myths from Egypt to Mesopotamia, especially the Babylonian creation account, the Enuma Elish, which most likely served as a template for our Israelite scribe.

Both creation accounts in the book of Genesis not only belong to the larger historical world of the ancient Near East that produced them, but they are also part and parcel to a specific literary genre that was widely disseminated throughout this ancient landscape. In other words, the creation accounts of Genesis 1:1-2:3 and 2:4b-3:24 display the influences of older Near Eastern literary traditions, beliefs, and perspectives about the origins of the cosmos, earth, and mankind. This knowledge was revealed to us in part through the archaeological discoveries of the late 19^th century.

 

In the latter half of the 19^th century, archaeologists digging around the ancient site of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, which dominated much of the geopolitical world of the ancient Near East in the 9^th through the 7^th centuries BCE, found the literary remains of Ashurbanipal’s library. The Assyrian king, who reigned from 669 to 627 BCE, was somewhat of an antiquarian; he had his scribes collect and copy all existing texts that could be found. The tablets discovered at Nineveh in the later half of the 19^th century were the remains of Ashurbanipal’s library and contained copies of much earlier Babylonian texts, going as far back as 2000 BCE! What startled linguists working on these cuneiform tablets in the 1870s was the mention of a great flood, a creation, and other similar themes and stories that were present in the narratives of Genesis 1-11. For the first time, scholars and theologians alike realized that stories such as the flood, creation, an original mythic paradise with a primordial pair and a tree of life were not unique to the Bible, but were in fact part and parcel to a larger literary and cultural matrix, from which the biblical authors freely drew.¹

 

Up until this discovery, in other words, it was commonplace among theologians to regard the creation account(s) of Genesis as unique, divinely inspired, and in more fundamentalist circles even historical. With the discovery of other creation myths, however, informed readers were now able to see that the creation accounts in the book of Genesis belonged to a larger literary matrix, whose ideas and perspectives about the nature of the world and its origins were shared throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.

 

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/genesis-1-not-a-creatio-ex-nihilo/

[♦ ficino ♦]

Looks great so far, Steve! Fascinating material. I don't "work on" Semitics so I can only cheer you on from afar.

 

I can also chip in with things you may want to consider or ignore:

 

1. non-fundy Christians may be fine with much of, or even most of, what you wrote, as perhaps would many Jews. The view that says, "yes, those are all stories, you can't take them literally" often slides into "they were never meant to be literal," which slides into "so they're still part of God's word and convey lots of wisdom, and they don't really err, since they are closer to wisdom lit than to science or history." Do you have a take on this approach?

 

For later on--

 

2. When you get into later parts of Genesis, are you going to discuss the genealogies? Over on talkfreethought, someone argued that they should be stumbling blocks for liberals:

 

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?595-The-Absurdity-of-Non-Literalism

 

 

3. Someone over on earlywritings linked a post in which someone has done a lot of digging to try to prove that later parts of Genesis are historical. The link takes one to raptureforums:

 

http://www.raptureforums.com/forum/apologetics/87528-biblical-numbers-pathway-mankinds-actual-history.html

 

I'm not suggesting you take part in discussions on those forums, just noting the questions that have been posed.

 

Cheers, ficino

[♦ Fuego ♦]

Good work Steve! Of course, fundies will say it is obvious that these other cultures knew about the "real" creation story, but that it became bastardized by their cultures. Religion has always been a viral concept, and people stubbornly cling to the hope of the big payout waiting them after death.

[DoubtingNate]

I guess you could say 'Biblical Creationism' is founded on a very specific and literal interpretation of Genesis 1, which is just one of several ways to interpret it.  But there must be Zeus creationists or Brahma creationists or Allah creationists too... right?

[srd]

I guess you could say 'Biblical Creationism' is founded on a very specific and literal interpretation of Genesis 1, which is just one of several ways to interpret it.  But there must be Zeus creationists or Brahma creationists or Allah creationists too... right?

No it's not. That's my point. A careful, honest, reading of Genesis 1 reveals that none, or maybe 1 or 2 our of literally dozens, of the belifs modern Creationist hold are supported or shared by the biblical text. Or vice versa, the beliefs of the author of this text, and his culture, are grossly at odds with the belifs Creationist say come from the Bible. 

[DoubtingNate]

srd, I reread your OP a little more closely and am bookmarking your website to read more. I think I was agreeing with you, or at least I meant to.

 

Seems to me that nobody even thought it was necessary to take a literal reading of Genesis until the time of Darwin , when fundamentalists started seeing it as a threat to their worldview.

 

Anyway, thank you for sharing. I may have more questions later!

[srd]

Looks great so far, Steve! Fascinating material. I don't "work on" Semitics so I can only cheer you on from afar.

 

I can also chip in with things you may want to consider or ignore:

 

1. non-fundy Christians may be fine with much of, or even most of, what you wrote, as perhaps would many Jews. The view that says, "yes, those are all stories, you can't take them literally" often slides into "they were never meant to be literal," which slides into "so they're still part of God's word and convey lots of wisdom, and they don't really err, since they are closer to wisdom lit than to science or history." Do you have a take on this approach?

Ficino,

 

Thanks! THere is much more on the website; this was merely the beginning to a very long, too long of a, post.

In response to #1, I have moved away from what I now perceive as a misdirected, misconstrued, dichotomy (although I recognize its merits) between literal or figurative readings. This whole debate saturates every part of our culture now, often pinning liberal and fundamentalist Christians against each other. I say that this is misguided because I think it grossly still misses the point, and still misses everything about what these ancient documents are, and conversely are not, and how we as modern individuals, culture, ought to perceive them and interact with them — or not.

 

More correctly the issue is, to put it in the form of a dichotomy, between reading and understanding these ancient texts from within the perspectives, cultures, and literary genres that produced them OR reading and understanding them through our modern cultural or theological lenses and perspectives. I certainly don’t advocate the latter, as you’re well aware. And the issue is more complex because in the camp of this latter abusive hermeneutic I would include how NT writers read and understood these ancient documents, and even how these ancient documents are read and understood through the implied interpretive framework inherit in the title “the Bible” not to mention the “holy Bible.” These are all abusive to the actual texts. They distract from examining and understanding the texts individually, and prescribe rather authoritatively how they ought to be read through a centuries later interpretive framework. Likewise, the whole modern debate about figurative and literal reading falls into this latter camp too.

 

The dichotomy also, as you hint, rests on a faulty underlying premise — a premise that might have actually created the dichotomy itself Should moderners read the Bible as the literal or figurative word of God — Neither! I’d say. We should read them as products of their cultural and literary worlds, i.e., in their proper historical contexts. And the interpretive, theological, claim that the Bible is the word of God was created centuries after many of these texts were composed!

 

So, to get back to my original point, I am currently working through Genesis 1 and doing, what appears to me to be a literal reading of the text! But this word in modern usage implies that I therefore understand this text as a literal, i.e., accurate and truthful, depiction of creation. No, not at all! As a biblical historian I read these ancient documents as products of their own world, so in this regard, yes it’s a literal reading of how the ancient Israelites, or perhaps an elite guild, perceived and understood their cosmos. So just to pick a couple of examples:

        – the moon is represented as a light-producing—not reflecting (our perspective)—luminary (1:15). This was how the ancients literally perceived their world.

        – “earth” literally refers to the dry ground (1:10). Earth as the planet did not exist as a concept

        – the sky is literally a firmament, vault, that holds back the waters above them, half of the original primordial waters – I read this literally as an accurate depiction of how the ancients viewed their world!

        

Again, the dichotomy between literal and figurative as it is normally articulated is misguided because it rests on erroneous premises themselves — namely, the text is the inerrant word of god, we just have to figure our if that word is literal or figurative. I call BS on this whole endeavor and conception. And it furthermore rests on another faulty premise, that the Bible, when one manipulates its texts, literally, figuratively, etc, would then reveal truth claims about the world that we can then verify with modern science. BS too. The “truth” claims that these ancient texts reveal is how the ancients perceived, believed, and understood the nature of their world and its origins. These in themselves became “truths” of their culture and were then transferred to the culture’s national deity in composing the text, so that the God of the text also shared in, and legitimated, these “truths.”

 

These subjective and literary processes is what I feel we as a culture should be discussing — and it would be a fantastic discussion. But we will never get there I fear because there is too much ignorance and hypocrisy about these ancient texts.

[Wololo]

Hmm...this is interesting. I don't really have objections to raise here at all. I've always said we need to use the historical-critical method to read the Bible. It doesn't make any sense to me why we would try to read the Bible from a modern point of view, and the fundies are so far from reality that I wonder what world they live in. The difference is that while the views of the ancients were certainly flawed, I believe they spoke to a greater truth. They may have been ignorant of science, but they were not ignorant of philosophy and such things.

 

I may have a look at your site just because I'd like to a bit more digging into this sort of thing (among countless other things I want to study.) You seem to have a level head. While I may not agree with everything, your arguments could help me down the road.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hello srd, I don't know how interested you are in refuting fundies, but when you get around to the Flood, you may at least be amused by this attempt to argue that the Bible presents Noah's Flood as local:

 

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html

 

This article then has to claim as well that all the earth's population at the time of the flood lived in the present Middle East and was not dispersed over the whole globe.