It’s been said that evolutionary atheists and evangelical creationists alike read the Bible with a crude literal-mindedness that fails to acknowledge the literary riches embedded in the text. The creation narrative of Genesis 1 is perhaps the prototypical case. Instead of interpreting it either as the purportedly factual exposition of events as they unfolded or as a primitive legend that’s simply not true, the reader is encouraged to regard the creation narrative as a “true myth.” What could it possibly mean, this seemingly oxymoronic notion of a “true myth”? Here are some possibilities; there may be more:
1. Genesis 1 fits within a literary genre of creation myths, but only Genesis 1 gets the story right.
Many cultures have myths about gods who created the universe. These myths are types: approximations to a truth revealed in its fullness in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Tolkein and Lewis espouse True Myth interpretation 1 with respect to the Gospel, in which Jesus fulfills the widespread mythos of an incarnate God who dies and is resurrected. Presumably the reader can distinguish the True Myth from the other myths that get it only partially right. A True Myth that still contains elements that aren’t factually true presumably points toward its own future fulfillment in a “true” True Myth.
To claim that the Biblical version of the Creation myth “gets it right” would seem to require independent verification; i.e., that there is some definitive standard of truth against which myths can be evaluated and compared for accuracy. What should be the source of mythic verification? If it’s historical and empirical evidence, then the Genesis 1 story doesn’t stack up very well. So far, science has not provided empirical evidence in support of a God-created material universe. Empirical verification of God’s involvement in the origins of the universe or of life is at best debatable. It seems that only those who already see the world theistically interpret the empirical evidence as consistent with God’s participation in the origins of things.
Other Biblical texts affirm God as creator of the material world. Verification also comes through the community of believers in the Old Testament God. While Gnostics were skeptical about attributing the imperfect world to a perfect God, the Judeo-Christian mainstream has consistently affirmed God’s creatorliness. If consensus within the Judeo-Christian tradition is the arbiter, then how can we know whether the collective opinion is accurate? If God confirms the truth of Genesis 1 via what Calvin called sensus divinitatus – a kind of spiritual insight into truth bestowed by the Holy Spirit – then how are we to confirm that the source of this confirmatory insight really is God and not some other source of inspiration? So far Genesis 1 receives support as True Myth of type #1 only among those who already believe that God created the material world, and the origins of this theistic belief stem in no small part from Genesis 1 itself. There’s a kind of circularity or overdetermination at work here.
2. Genesis 1 is a myth that eventually proves to be verifiable as truth.
The writer of Genesis 1 didn’t know how the universe began; he wrote a story to serve as a placeholder for the truth. However, the author’s imagination was moved in the right direction by the Holy Spirit. When the empirical facts about the origin of the universe finally become known, they will confirm the mythic narrative. Until all the data are in, the Holy Spirit testifies to the reader’s spirit that the narrative is factually true even if empirical evidence is incomplete or seemingly conflicts with the story as written.
Interpretation 2 is probably best regarded as a subcategory of interpretation 1. It more explicitly demands empirical confirmation, which is perhaps the least persuasive argument in support of the accuracy of Genesis 1.
3. Genesis 1 is a myth whose truth is to be found in the moral and metaphysical lessons it teaches.
A myth should be interpreted as an allegory or parable. The details of an allegory are largely metaphorical; they are important to the extent that they illustrate, dramatically and poetically, the “moral of the story.”
The author may have chosen the mythic form in order to enhance the emotional and imaginative impact of the message on the reader. If the writer doesn’t explicitly distinguish the moral truth of the story from the allegorical details, then presumably it’s up to the reader to make the distinction. It also becomes necessary to interpret what the myth is a metaphor for. For example, Jesus’ parable of the sower isn’t really about sowing seeds; it’s about the Kingdom of God. If Genesis 1 is a kind of parable then maybe it isn’t really about creating the universe; it’s about, say, the power of elohim compared with other gods, or about man being similar to God. Also, if the writer doesn’t explicitly state whether a text is to be interpreted literally or mythically, then presumably it’s up to the reader to decide.
The moral of a story is what the story means; it’s the interpretive framework for making sense of the facts of the story. The events in The Lord of the Rings aren’t true of our world; the characters don’t exist here. Within the story, the characters and events fit together in a meaningful way – evil can be seductive; you can delude yourself into thinking you’re saving the world when you’re really on a power trip; and so on. These lessons might generally hold true in our world as well, but it’s necessary to evaluate whether the lesson applies to particular instances. A moral or metaphysical lesson derived from a story is true interpretively, not factually; it’s a schema for making sense of facts. But even a robust, generally-applicable moral derived from a story doesn’t make the facts of the story any truer outside of the story. Evil can be seductive, and not just in Middle Earth, but that doesn’t mean that the One Ring exists in our world.
Mythic truths are interpretations that make sense not just in the mythical world but also in our everyday world. “Frodo Baggins saved the world” isn’t a mythic truth. It’s a broad statement of fact about the mythical world of Middle Earth, but it’s not true at all in our world (as far as I’m aware). There may be interpretive truths that cross the threshold from the mythic world of Middle Earth into our world: good eventually triumphs over evil, even an insignificant individual who perseveres can accomplish heroic deeds, and so on. Similarly, if Genesis 1 is a mythic allegory, then “God created the heavens and the earth” is a broad statement of fact about the mythical world of Genesis 1, but it’s not necessarily a fact about our world. Still, there may be interpretive lessons that cross the threshold from the mythic world Genesis 1 into our world: try to create things that are “good” in and of themselves rather than just trying to please yourself or your customer; separating things from one another and naming them is a good way to organize one’s environment; etc. “‘Let there be light,’ says elohim; and there was light” – let’s say this verse from the Creation narrative illustrates the creative power of language. And it’s true: language often is powerful in our world. But just because the lesson derived from the myth is true doesn’t mean that the facts in the mythic story are true. The “real” elohim may never have said these words; light may not have come about through an act of elohimic creation; elohim might not even exist in our world. The interpretive truths derived from the creation of the mythic universe in Genesis 1 might have no implications whatever about how our particular universe came into existence.
In conclusion regarding “True Myth” version #3, the Genesis 1 story might contain lessons, morals, and interpretations that are true of actual events in our world. The task of the exegete is to identify the lessons embedded in the text; the task of the person living in the world is to evaluate life situations in light of the lessons derived from Genesis 1. But if the narrative is a True Myth of type #3, then the factual events of the mythical world of Genesis 1 shouldn’t be expected to bear any more relationship to the events of the world we live in than do the factual events of Middle Earth.
4. Genesis 1 is a myth written by God.
The Creation story isn’t meant to be taken as factually true. It’s true in the same way that a short story is true: it contains elements of character and setting and story that hang together inside the story itself, but the story has no factual reference to the “real world.” God is the storyteller of Genesis 1. The story doesn’t purport to explain how he “really” created the universe; it’s a story intended for our edification rather than our scientific enlightenment. The story is “true” in the sense that those who read it enter into a sort of literary communion with the Author who is the source of all truth. Meanwhile, what “really” happened in the beginning remains unrevealed.
Perhaps God really did write Genesis 1, either directly or through inspiration. If so it would lend weight to the lessons the story conveys. But as in #3, even a really profound and robust lesson doesn’t make the details of the story factually true. So True Myth #4 is a kind of intensified version of #3.
5. Genesis 1 is part of an all-encompassing myth created by God that includes not just the Biblical text but also the “real world.”
Genesis 1 isn’t to be interpreted in light of the real world; rather, the real world is to be interpreted in light of Genesis 1 and the rest of the revealed Canon. We live our lives inside a mythic reality outlined in the Scriptures. Our experiences can be interpreted only in light of the ongoing Judeo-Christian saga in which we too are characters. Empirical evidence is irrelevant because the divine saga and its truths are self-contained. Or, more strongly, even empirical evidence can be understood only within the interpretive context established by the mythic reality of the Bible. Karl Barth and Hans Frei espouse this position with respect to the “Jesus Myth.” There is no need to confirm the historic facts of Jesus’ life because the reality of Christ’s resurrection defines the truth of history itself. Empirical-historical reality isn’t the standard against which True Myth is evaluated; rather, the mythic reality is a standard that transcends or contains or gives shape to the material reality of facts and dates. The mythic truth receives its guarantee by the reality of the risen Christ, who in essence has absorbed the everyday world into his own mythic world.
To apply True Myth version #5 to Genesis 1 it would be necessary to assert that Christ’s mythic reality extends all the way back through the Old Testament. The historical facts and empirical data aren’t important; what’s important is to live inside the mythic reality that includes the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and so on all the way through the New Testament. Christ and the disciples seem to do just that, embedding themselves and their culture inside the Biblical reality rather than the other way around.
The challenge isn’t to verify the facts of the Genesis 1 story against the evidence. Genesis 1 is true by definition, as confirmed by the reality of the risen Christ who lives inside a Biblical reality that includes Genesis 1. The believer’s task is to understand the larger Biblical reality and to live with the risen Christ inside that overarching mythic truth. If material evidence seems to belie the textual evidence of Genesis 1, presumably the first recourse is to re-evaluate the material evidence in light of the text. True Myth #5 is a kind of holistic inerrancy position: the Bible describes a whole reality that isn’t to be picked apart and evaluated verse by verse.
I find it hard to evaluate True Myth #5. I can imagine God writing a True Myth, and then writing me in as a character who lives inside that mythic world. For me to step outside the myth is to turn myself into a fantasy. I can imagine what it might be like to live inside a mythic reality, where everything makes sense relative to the facts of the mythic world rather than those of the everyday material world, which isn’t “really” the real world at all but an illusion. Once you make this mythic plunge then truth takes care of itself, because all truths, including empirical and historical ones, are subsumed in the overarching mythic reality. If you can find yourself entering inside this whole Biblical reality, there’s no longer any point of contact with people on the outside. They think they live in the real world, whereas in fact it’s a ghost world. What’s real and true for them is entirely different from what’s real and true for you. There is no basis for an independent evaluation of version #5 from the outside. Either you accept it and live it, or you don’t.
Is this a clear and fair treatment of what a True Myth might be? Which of these interpretations makes the most sense in reading Scripture? Are there other, better interpretations of True Myth?
Re: Genesis 1 as "True Myth": 5 Possibilities
Fascinating reading. To some extent, I would like to combine all five possibilities. I take Genesis 1-3 as descriptions of how things began - but not as explanations which will satisfy the current state of modern, empirical science. To enter that particular debate seems to me to be as misconceived as it is futile. I tend to think empirical science is on the very margins of what can be called science when it makes assertions about what happened 2.5 - 4 billion years ago. It becomes just as much of a faith exercise to say that life began through self-generated causes as it is to say that life began because God created it. In the last century, many of the certainties that governed science were overturned, and I’m sure this will continue into the future.
It’s therefore, for me, a statement of faith to say that I believe in a God who created the world in an orderly fashion, and that the created world was in itself a good place, with life that was created inherently good, as opposed to a chaotic place where life was governed by inherently amoral or evil forces (as seen in other creation stories). The Genesis account is mythical as opposed to scientific in the modern sense of the word, but for me, it is myth which does have a historical basis. That isn’t a contradiction, but it is a statement of faith. Like the scientific explanation, there is a good deal of evidence to support this view - but not all the evidence will satisfy the current explanations of empirical science.
I don’t take the view that Genesis, or the Christian faith, rests within a self-contained mythical view of life disconnected from life as it may actually be - outside its own mythical world. I don’t see anywhere that we are expected to believe in such a disconnected belief system. Rather the opposite, the Christian faith arose because it contended with historical realities, on an international and personal level, and the bible sets out the history of the unique, particular and historical way in which God sought to contend with those realities - reaching their climactic conclusion in Christ.
The Christian faith does provide a belief system which understands the world in a particular way, but it’s not mythical in the sense of being disconnected from reality. Rather, it chimes very much with the way things are, and provides a satisfying way of addressing those realities from within the perspective which it brings.
And now for the seven seals and the eighth scroll?
sources of truth about the Creator-God
Peter –
These are the core truths as generally agreed within the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Genesis creation narrative affirms these truths. But where does knowledge of these truths come from in the first place? It’s not intuitively obvious that the material universe was created or designed by a supernatural force. As you observed, belief in god doesn’t by definition mean belief in a creator-God. The early Christian era was roiled by turmoil over whether God created the material universe (Jewish), whether matter and spirit are coeternal (pagan and Greek), or whether the material world was created by the devil (Gnostic). The Jewish interpretation eventually prevailed in Christian orthodoxy, with Torah and religious tradition proving decisive in resolving the dispute.
Skepticism regarding cosmological science is probably the norm among contemporary Christians. It’s conceivable – it may even be a tenet of the Christian faith – that Newton’s first law describes the process by which the Prime Mover makes things move. But it’s also possible to describe a host of phenomena without invoking God’s invisible hand. The same could be said for less firmly established areas of empirical science like evolution and cosmology. Formulating, testing and refining naturalistic hypotheses is what empirical science does. Even the most strongly supported scientific findings neither affirm nor deny supernatural involvement “behind the veil.”
So: Neither a belief in god nor an understanding of how the material universe works necessarily leads to belief in a creator-god. As you acknowledge, belief in the Creator is a matter of faith. And what is the source of this faith? Tradition within the community, Scriptural authority, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. If Genesis 1-3 is the original source of knowledge of the creator-God, then the text merely affirms its own truth. If the source is the religious tradition that produced the Genesis text, then why did the author include speculative details that aren’t essential truths? Either way, it seems that even the faithful interpreter has to account for details that don’t stand up to evidentiary scrutiny.
You invoke evidence in support of the creator-God, but you also acknowledge that the evidence won’t satisfy modern empirical science. The evidence to which you allude: does it support the Genesis narrative, not just in general but in specifics? If not, then you need to decide something about either the evidence or the Biblical text. Of course there have been attempts at reconciling the text with the data. Since you talk about a universe that’s billions rather than thousands of years old, you perhaps subscribe to Day-Age Theory or Gap Theory to justify this extended non-Biblical time horizon. Still the problems remain: fruit trees are created before the sun, and so on.
Hence the “True Myth” idea: it avoids invoking even more esoteric and complicated literal reconciliations by assigning the Biblical text to a literary genre in which details aren’t intended to be read as facts about the world. The True Myth notion has been floating around in a kind of vague fideistic haze. Hence my elaboration of how the mythic genre might be interpreted to distinguish truth from fiction. The implicit question is whether True Myth adequately reconciles truth, faith, text, and evidence. The alternatives, it seems to me, are to look harder for a literal reconciliatory reading of the text or to acknowledge that the Genesis narrative contains errors.
… and still the seven scrolls remain unread; the eighth seal, unbroken…
Re: sources of truth about the Creator-God
I may not have understood what you mean by ‘true myth’; I do have a problem if the concept encourages disconnection from the outside world - the very nature of which is a primary source of engagement of the Judeao-Christian tradition.
Where do the truths asserted by the Judaeo-Christian tradition come from? Despite your own assertions, I do believe that the existence of one God who created the universe is ‘intuitively obvious’, without recourse to tradition or texts. A comparison of the three ‘theories’ of creation which you describe appears to me to point to the reasonableness of believing in a God who created everything there is. It cannot be ‘proved’, so in the end it involves a step of faith to believe this is so. But the step of faith rests on assessment of the evidence, and comparing this belief with the alternatives. It is likewise a step of faith to look at the evidence and assert that there is no God who created everything. But such an assertion is stepping beyond the bounds of empirical science - whose task is by its very nature not to seek evidence either for or against the existence of a supernatural deity in the workings of the natural world.
The bible, OT and NT, does not seek to provide proofs of God’s existence; such an assumption is taken as a first truth. But on the basis of that assumption, there is a great deal of evidence in the natural world, and yet more evidence in the particular historical narrative of intervention which the biblical texts present. Further, the narrative is a continuum which connests with the experience of believers today.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘speculative details’ of the author of the Genesis text. But for instance, a ‘speculative assumption’ of modern science is that processes which can be observed today hold good for all time and periods of history, including the origin of things. Theism asserts that God exists, and is involved in his creation. A dimension is introduced which is not subject to empirical science, though you would expect to find its imprint there.
I don’t subscribe to any theory of dating the universe; I simply observe that a 2.5/4 billion year old universe is the assumption of modern science, based on data which assumes that currently observable processes in the natural world hold good for all time. Actually, our understanding of currently observable processes is changing all the time.
An understanding of Genesis 1-3 holds good on different levels. It tells us a great deal about God and the nature of the world - order and design rather than randomness and chaos; an origin in such order and design which held good also for moral beings; an introduction of disorder which affected both moral beings and the natural world which was subsequent to the origin of things, and which remains the case today. If science does date the world at billions of years old, it is just as much a faith assumption to assert that naturalistic forces as we presently observe them held good then as it is to assert that a supernatural deity was the source of the origin of things, and that Genesis 1-2 give some idea of how this came about.
What science does not address is the phenomenon of self-awareness, our sense of moral obligation which overrides social conditioning or any kind of origin in environmental considerations, our intuitive sense of purpose which conflicts with our observation of tendencies within us and in the world around us, our search for resolution of these conflicts, the satisfying resolution which is to be found in the figure of Christ, both as a historical person and an on-going reality in people’s lives today.
who is in the details?
When you, Peter, read the Genesis creation narrative, you’re able to recognize its correspondence with what you’ve already intuited as true. There are, of course, others who claim that the proposition “God created the universe” is not intuitively obvious. Is the God intuition granted only to some, or do the others deny or lose this intuition? The New Testament makes a case for both positions. It seems like an honest Christian response to the atheistic materialists: either you haven’t been given eyes to see, or else you’ve become futile in your speculations and so your foolish heart has been darkened.
As someone who by intuition and faith already believes in God, you find no evidence to disprove this belief – just as someone who doesn’t believe in God finds no evidence to disprove his disbelief. Fine.
Now we move beyond the broad assertion of intuited truth – God created the universe in an orderly way – to the details. Genesis 1 asserts that God created the trees before the sun and that He finished creating everything in six days. Do these Biblical details resonate with your intuition about the truth? Or, because you have faith that the Creator-God is responsible for the Biblical text, do you believe that the Biblical details are true even if they seem contrary to reason, to evidence, perhaps even to intuition? Based on your comments you seem to endorse one or both of these two positions. You have no need for True Myth, because you believe it’s possible to read Genesis 1 as a literally true historical narrative describing the origin of the universe.
Unbelievers and religious liberals are more likely to assert that the Genesis 1 details are “mythical” in the usual use of the word: primitive ideas that served a purpose at the time but that just aren’t true. Again, no need for True Myth.
There are some among the emerging post-evangelical community who wish to affirm the general truth of God as creator without having to defend the literal truth of the Genesis details either to unbelievers or to themselves. Decisions must still be made about why the details appear in the story, what they signify, and how to evaluate their truth status. Here’s where the True Myth explanation is often invoked. The purpose behind my post is to explore which versions of the True Myth idea can best achieve the desired ends.
The Reformed tradition of Biblical exegesis has been criticized by the emerging community for overemphasizing timeless propositional truths at the expense of historical narrative truths. The Biblical creation story is written as a historical narrative, and it has traditionally been read that way by exegetes schooled in the Reformed tradition. It seems to me that the True Myth approach to the creation narrative is an attempt to de-historicize the text, transforming it into a set of general propositions (God’s creatorliness, the goodness of the material world, and so on) while ignoring timelines, sequences, and other distinctly narrative features of the text. Frankly, True Myth strikes me as both disingenuous and untenable, but I wanted to give the idea a fair shake. I get the sense that you, Peter, agree. This agreement would return us to the longstanding dichotomous question, the kind of question that perhaps marks us indelibly as ham-handed modernists with no sense of literary subtlety: is the Genesis creation text a true historical narrative, or is it a false one?
Re: who is in the details?
I would take the existence of God as an a priori - perceived intuitively as true. I don’t see that the NT allows both for this and the inverse position - that God’s non-existence can also validly be perceived intuitively as true. The argument through Romans 1:18-32 seems to be that the knowledge of God is something that people train themselves out of - rather than something that is vouchsafed to some but not others.
There is plenty of evidence that challenges my belief in God - particularly the Judaeo-Christian God. I find the evidence that counterweighs this evidence to be more compelling, however. There is evidence in the natural world, but above all, the most compelling evidence is that provided by Christ, his death and resurrection, and especially the experience shared with those who become part of his renewed humanity.
There are all kinds of ways of looking at Genesis 1 - but I don’t see why the primeval conditions of the original creation should not have been different from conditions that have held sway subsequently - so that a six period creation should have been a supernatural act, or series of acts, while subsequent history settles down to conformity to more natural laws. I would add that the changes introduced by Adam’s disobedience also probably affected the natural world, but we have no detail about that in Genesis. So yes, I believe it’s possible to perceive historical truth through Genesis 1 & 2, but it is history presented in a mythical form, and with literary stylisation.
It sounds as if we agree then, in rejecting the True Myth explanation of Genesis 1-3. I wouldn’t want to spend a great deal of time and energy over explanations of Genesis 1-3, except to draw out the timeless truths, and to hold to a personal belief that somewhere in the mists of the mythical presentation, there is historical truth - that God created all that there is, including Adam, and that subsequently Adam fell through disobedience, which has affected us ever since. If God is a supernatural being, he can both override and work through natural laws.
Also, it seems to make sense, to me, to believe that something came from somewhere/someone, rather than believing that something came from nowhere - or it has always existed all by itself.
How do we find the time to indulge in all these wise cogitations?
will the mists never part?
Somewhere in the mists of mythical presentation there is historical truth, you say. If you’ve got an interpretation of historical truth presented in mythical form that’s different from the ones I’ve already proposed I wish you’d spell it out, especially since in the next sentence you reject the True Myth explanation. Does it, for example, mean “historical truth commingled with historical untruth”? If so, why not say it and be done with it? Or does it mean something like this: “Genesis 1 is true to the extent that it validates my a priori intuition, but the rest of it adds nothing of certainty to my conscious understanding of this intuition?” Or are we perpetually awaiting further light that will penetrate the mists and clarify the mystery?
I wouldn’t want to spend a great deal of time and energy over explanations of Genesis 1-3, you say. I take it, then, that you’ll not be placing a pre-order for my book. How do we find the time? We must find these cogitations either more entertaining or more important than alternative pursuits.
Re: will the mists never part?
I don’t know whether this is another possibility to add to your five, but the Genesis account of creation seems to me to have some mythic/poetic qualities - such as repetitions, patterning, hints of symbolism. My own view is that the mythic qualities are a dressing-up of actual events, in contrast with other creation myths (Norse mythology, Greek mythology, Babylonian mythology etc) which are purely poetic accounts without historic basis - attempts to provide explanations of how things are by inventions of how things began.
I don’t know whether this is trying to sound wise by being obscure, or is obscurely saying what has already been said by more clearly by many others, or is simply wrapping illogic in mystic obscurity. It makes sense to me though, and avoids getting into debate with modernist thinking, which wants to subject anything that is said about origins to modernist scientific scrutiny. I simply don’t think Genesis is written in the terms of modernist science, or deals with issues that can be thrashed out in scientific debate - simply because there is too much primeval prehistoric supernatural activity going on, presented in poetic form.
Science should respect its own limitations. Didn’t Keats speak of ‘dull philosophy’ that would ‘unweave the rainbow, clip an angel’s wings’? Science does not, I think, possess instruments that can measure God or his supernatural actions. When it comes to the primeval prehistory of origins, it is just as reasonable to believe in a 6 day creation as in life emerging from primeval sludge over a few million years (a possibility as yet unreproduced in the laboratories of investigative science). No, it’s more reasonable.
1+2=
Genesis 1-3 is an integral part of Genesis, however one reads it historico-critically. There is certainly good literary evidence that different motifs have been woven together yet it is the whole that we have as one narrative that is so fascinating!
Perhaps tantalizing would be an even better word! What has been dawning on me with more and more force is how little we really know about what these chapters do and do not assert.
For example, there has been a lot of heated discussion about what the creation narrative says about equality and relatedly hierarchy. The problem comes to a head today in the relations between men and women in the church. Paul has added his bit of exegesis at various times almost as asides and this makes the hermeneutical exercise even more interesting. Overall though, in looking at these debates, one is struck by the amount of assumption about what the creation account says. Obviously each of us has constructed a favourite scenario that we then take pretty much to be fact without bothering to consult the source itself.
With the paucity of scientific information, and the obvious lack of knowledge about what Genesis has to say, it seems to me that as uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I will have to maintain a bit of agnosticism about how the two do or do not come together.
If I had to guess, I would take a stab at a mixture of 1 & 2 but guesswork does not really get us very far when we are trying to work out the practical implications of the creation account for life in and out of the church.
Live to serve : Serve to live
theistic intuition
Thanks Peter and Sam. You seem to be in general accord: Genesis 1-3 describes God’s creation of the material universe through some process that cannot be grasped by modern empirical science. Through supernatural intervention God set creational operations in motion that may bear no resemblance to the natural physical properties of the universe as we experience it. The Genesis narrator’s mythopoetic language may reflect the fact that the creation event cannot adequately be described in human conceptual terms, that perhaps even the writer didn’t fully understand the events to which he bore witness. One day a better kind of science may arise that can accurately describe the creational environment and process, and in that day it will provide confirmatory evidence verifying the ancient Genesis creation narrative. Meanwhile our imperfect understanding is augmented by faith that Genesis 1-3 is a true story. Sam proposes that this interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative fits category 1 or 2 of the proposed taxonomy of True Myths in the original post.
Now imagine yourself in the unbeliever’s shoes. You have no a priori intuition that God created the universe, consequently nothing resonates with your intuition when you read Genesis 1. It seems like straightforward narrative prose, lacking the kind of flowery language or convoluted syntax that might suggest poetry or mysticism. The Biblical creation story conflicts not only with cutting-edge scientific arcana like string theory, not only with fairly well-established findings of normal evolutionary science, but with seemingly commonsensical knowledge about sequences and time intervals. You find it hard to grasp the believer’s commitment to the Genesis creation story as authoritatively true.
Presumably the pathway to belief leads through the a priori intuition about a creator-God. Since God makes this intuition available to everyone, its absence is evidence of a corruption in the unbeliever’s intuitive faculties. Perhaps the intuition can be restored through natural means like reason and observation of nature, but ultimately what needs to be confronted is the corruption that darkens the mind and obscures the true intuition. If the corruption can be overcome, then the true intuition about a creator-God can be restored. Once this restoration is accomplished, the essential truth of the Genesis 1-3 narrative will become evident to the reader. And once the essential truth has been grasped, so too does it become plausible that the seemingly straightforward narrative prose of the Biblical text is actually a mythopoetic recounting of supernatural phenomena that exceed normal human thought and language.
I’ll stop here. Can I get a witness?
Re: Genesis 1 as "True Myth": 5 Possibilities
The “true myth” kind of idea is attractive, but I feel that by beginning with that question, we’re skipping a better beginning point. Or perhaps I’m at the beginning point.
When the text was written/compiled (also a nice discussion in itself), what was the intent of the author(s)/compiler(s)? In the seminary I went to, folk pushed for a literalist interpretation of the text, while acknowledging that there seemed to be an apologetic against the surrounding pagan cosmologies built-in to the order of creation, set in a clear poetic structure (at least for Genesis 1). Why the apologetic, and why the poetic style?
I am trying to get back to the same kind of thinking that seems to be behind much of the approach here: asking anew what the text could have meant for the author and to the recipients within the historical context within which it was written. But I’m very rusty at this, and am wondering if any others are interested in chasing this further (maybe as a separate thread?). I find that I’m hesitant to speculate about the “true myth” interpretation of the creation story until we’ve talked about how it fit into the lives of those who first heard and read it.
Authorial Intent in the Creation Narrative
Authorial intent is indeed a good starting point. Did the author of Genesis 1 intend for the text to be read as literal truth? The idea of a “literal” reading came into use among medieval exegetes in an effort to distinguish the natural meaning of a text from its mystical or allegorical meaning. To read a text “literally,” then, is to assume that the writer uses words as normally defined, with reference to the normal world we occupy. The natural meaning of the word “light,” for example, has to do with a property of the world that makes vision possible, as opposed to a metaphorical understanding where “light” means “truth” or “moral goodness.” It’s also natural to understand that “light” refers to the “real world” – the world as jointly experienced by the writer and the reader – and not some other mystical realm or imagined world. This is how we use language most of the time. Still, the terms “normal” and “natural” can’t really be defined categorically. There’s a more-or-less quality, a gradual fade from black to gray as you move farther away from dead-on normalcy. If I say “bird” and you think “penguin,” are you normal? Do we occupy the same real world as some Near Eastern bedouin who died three thousand years ago?
I think it’s fair to assert that a “normal” reading of Genesis 1 presumes that the author intended to describe an event in which God created the heavens and the earth. There are no obvious clues in the text itself to suggest that the writer intended for words like “day” and “night,” “plants” and “trees,” “birds” and “cattle” to mean something other than what ordinarily comes to mind. We can superimpose a spiritual reading on the text, but the natural reading would still be there underneath, in the text itself.
It’s possible that the writer intended something else altogether. He might, for example, have intended to write a polemic. Other ancient Near Eastern cultures wrote creation stories prominently featuring their gods; the ancient Hebrews may have written their own variant on the creation genre in order to extol the greatness of elohim vis-à-vis rival gods. The author’s intent, then, would not have been to recount the actual creation event but rather to spin a yarn in which elohim demonstrates his omnipotence. So when elohim creates light on day one but waits until the third day to create the sun and the moon, perhaps the author is illustrating his god’s pre-eminence over the sun gods and moon gods of other tribes. In this situation the text moves into what I’ve called a Category 3 True Myth: a story written about a mythical reality, the intention of which is to demonstrate a real truth about God.
Source critics contend that Genesis 1 is the work of “P,” a very late textual source dating from perhaps the 6th century BC – after the destruction of the first temple and after the Babylonian captivity. Purportedly the P writer’s intent was to emphasize the priestly function within Judaism (as opposed, say, to the legal aspect). Accordingly, Genesis 1 is intended to illustrate the importance of the Sabbath, when the priest performs his ritualistic function. The specific creational events occurring on days one through six wouldn’t have been important to the writer except as a buildup to the climax. What really interested P was the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day that God blessed and sanctified as His own day – the day the priest does his thing. Here is another Category 3 Myth: the writer spins an imaginary yarn with the intention of demonstrating the real importance of the Sabbath.
There are problems in asserting that the writer intended that Genesis 1 be read allegorically rather than literally.
First, even if the writer’s intent was to emphasize a particular truth about God (his omnipotence, his commitment to the priesthood), even if the writer made up a tale to drive home his emphasis, how would such a tale have made it into the Pentateuch? Not only did it make it through the editorial cuts, it gets the most prominent position possible.
Second, wouldn’t the Jewish community have treated Genesis 1 as an allegory? According to the Jewish calendar this is the year 5767, which is the number of years following the Genesis 1 story if it and all subsequent genealogies are regarded as literally true. It seems the Jews took the story literally, even if they also engaged in more creative midrashic interpretations.
Third, if we persuade ourselves that the author(s) of Genesis 1-3 intended for the text to be read mythically, then these texts aren’t really about the Creation at all. Since these are the only passages that deal directly with God’s creation of the universe, the Bible is left with a rather large gap at the beginning.
Fourth, if a seemingly straightforward narrative was really intended to be read mythically, might not every other Biblical text be second-guessed in this same way? Maybe none of the Biblical writers intended for their texts to be read literally.
Genesis 1 - Any Possibilities?
I definitely prefer a literal reading where possible, certainly as the best place to start. With Genesis though one has a unique set of problems. Taking the text as it stands, as one connected and coherent narrative, the summary statement of Gen. 1:1 tells us the really important thing - everything was created by God. Thence we have a problem, language is meaningful when we know something of what is being referred to; ‘and the earth was without form’ now how would we go about understanding what that refers to?
As we go further we seem to approach more familiar ground, heavenly bodies, land separated from water, fish, birds and animals and finally man. But is this only an apparent familiarity. Did Adam and Eve resemble ‘modern’ mankind? How would we know?
It seems to me that the uncertainties involved are very great indeed…
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: Genesis 1 as "True Myth": 5 Possibilities
Johndoyle,
I agree with most of the statements in your last post. I also question whether the original author/compiler of the text would have intended the story of creation as set out in Genesis 1 & 2 to be taken “mythically”. Do we have evidence that the Jewish nation (whether in the time of Moses or later) thought mythically? Did the Babylonians believe the story that Tiamat’s literal body was used to fashion heaven and earth? Do we have enough available data to make a fair judgement?
I’m not sure that I would want to set the idea of a polemic off against a “literal” retelling of the creation story, however. Why not both? It would seem to me that part of the grandeur of the creation story for the Jews was the fact that the one true God (seen as a separate entity) created everything. It would not seem odd to me to place tags in the text (such as the place of the sun and moon in the text), to reflect the largeness of this God. But I’m guessing here, not leaning on a detailed exegesis.
The question of P is certainly interesting. However, I think the way I would like to approach the text is not simply from the pericope level, but from the larger textual context. Somebody or somebodies, put the text together (no author is named), linking stories by similar formula’s and stretching certain catch phrases not only throughout Genesis, but throughout the Pentateuch. Regardless of the “original” intent of the pericope, I think we need to look at the intent of the compilation as a whole.
The Expositor’s Bible had a note that intrigued me (it’s about the only commentary I’ve got here…). The commentator (John Sailhamer) wrote about the fascination of the author with the eres, the land. He sees a link to the concept of inheriting the “land”, and thus with the inheritance of Abraham’s descendants, worked into the text as kind of typology (is that yet another mythological framework?). He further sees this linked with a kind of eschatology (“in the beginning” is a kind of primer to ask “what about the end?”). The story is literal, but packed with heavily weighted typological terminology. By the way, I’m not saying that I follow Sailhamer’s whole pitch, just that these points strike me as very possible indeed.
That kind of idea fits very well with Wright’s model, which sees the land and the end as major typological centerpieces in the continuing revelation of God to the Jews and later to the church. Genesis as an authentic history that helps, from the onset, to tell the story of God’s interactions with the humans to whom he entrusted the place.
Whether we are bound to take the story as factual (it is biblical history, and therefore must be factual history) is another question altogether. I for one would rather look for a hermeneutic that allows us to let the Genesis story stand on it’s own terms and hear it’s meaning for the original audience, while letting us not be bound to the specific pre-scientific worldview of ancient Israel.
Samlcarr’s question of whether Adam would have resembled us seems then to me more a question of our worldview being placed upon the text, than a question about the original intent of the text itself. Would the listener’s have thought of anything else than a human like themselves when they heard that God made “Adam” male and female? Did they think of earlier forms of homo sapiens (or homo erectus)? I am not discounting the point. I simply mean that this seems more a question of our hermeneutic, than a question of authorial intent. But I’m willing to hear evidence otherwise!
an alternative Biblical reality?
Both Sam and Russ believe that the Biblical creation narratives intend to convey the general literal truth that God created the material universe. This understanding of an intended literal meaning is consistent with a priori beliefs about God. Neither seems persuaded that the writer meant for the text to be read mythically by the original readers. It isn’t transparently mythic in literary style: it uses ordinary words and ordinary syntax; it makes sense when read literally. The reason for invoking True Myth is, I suspect, the difficulty in reconciling details of the narratives with evidence (e.g., creation of trees prior to the sun). This difficulty might be resolved if we no longer read the details literally.
Sam suggests instead that our literal readings may be faulty. Exegetes have gotten themselves into trouble before by making unwarranted assumptions about the meaning of the text. For example, how often have we heard that the “firmament” of heaven in Genesis 1 refers to a solid disk above the sky – evidence of a primitive and erroneous cosmology? But then you read verse 20: “and let the birds fly above the earth in the firmament of the heavens.” The writer must have understood the heavens the same way we do: the sky itself, not something above the sky. The firmament idea was Aristotelian, not Biblical; the Medievalists were overly persuaded that Aristotle knew what he was talking about scientifically. Now the word formerly translated as “firmament” is usually rendered as “expanse,” which is a better fit with the Hebrew. Here is a case of Biblical exegesis and empirical science converging on the same understanding.
Perhaps “formless void” wasn’t a primal chaos that God systematically organized – an interpretation based on ancient pagan and Greek cosmogonies – but something else altogether. Perhaps “man” in Genesis 1 refers not to our species but to a predecessor on the evolutionary tree. Maybe the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 are the biologically modern humans, as Sam mythically speculates in his comment on the “Christmas at Sir Toby’s” post here. Perhaps all the seeming contradictions and conflicts will eventually be resolved through a convergence of better exegesis and better science; perhaps some things will retain their indeterminacy.
The implication, though, is that the author didn’t have a complete understanding of the text he was writing. That wouldn’t be surprising, inasmuch as the creation events themselves would have been overwhelming for either an eyewitness or a recipient of special revelation. However, the text just doesn’t have the mystical “feel” to it that, say, portions of Daniel and Ezekiel have. As Russ points out, when the writer uses ordinary words like “earth” and “man” in seemingly ordinary sentences, the original readers would likely have assumed that these words were meant to convey their ordinary meanings.
Russ proposes that the author may have wanted to emphasize certain metaphysical implications embedded within the creation event itself; e.g., by noting in passing that the stars are inanimate objects rather than gods. If the creation narrative was written or edited long after the events it describes took place, then the text can highlight events in the creation that would prove to have particular significance later; e.g., that the same God who created the whole earth also set aside a portion of the earth for Israel. In a similar way paleontologists go into great detail in describing the fossil record for certain subspecies of extinct primates because humans eventually descended from them. It seems plausible that the writer/editor would have intended to emphasize details within the narrative that the readers would have found particularly significant theologically. Still, the concrete sequence of the creation events remains problematic, especially if we assume that the words of the text retain their ordinary meaning as well as their symbolic significance for subsequent Jewish history.
So: did the writer assign extraordinary meanings to seemingly ordinary words and phrases, rendering the text deceptively uninterpretable to its original audience? Or was it enough for the writer to affirm God as creator, after which he was at liberty to insert whatever details best supported his theological and rhetorical agenda? We’re still stuck, I fear.
Russ observes, as did Peter W., that the creation narratives don’t just stand as isolated texts at the beginning of the Bible; they point forward to Abraham, to Israel, to the Law, to the Messiah. Genesis 1 no longer merely reaffirms an a priori belief in a creator-God; it’s also embedded in a long book and an even longer tradition. For the Christian, what the creation story meant when it was written may be less important than what it meant to Jesus and John, Paul and Peter. When, for Christians, Genesis 1 derives its fullness of meaning from texts like John 1 and Revelation, then it seems to me they’ve entered into the mythical world of Barth (as I understand him). An outsider to the Christian canon and tradition would never find in Genesis 1 a reference to the Word as someone who was with God and who also was God. To interpret Genesis 1 through the lens of John 1, to see in the creation a foreshadowing of the new creation, is to immerse oneself in an all-encompassing story that goes far beyond a naïve a priori theism into a self-contained reality. And it still doesn’t solve the problem of the inconsistent details – unless in this alternate reality the details don’t need to be reconciled any more.
higher to lower
Actually I was thinking that the original author may have felt that the original ‘humamankind’ was a ‘higher’ being especially if one takes Genesis 2 into account. One clue is that the entire creation was vegetarian and man was a fruit eater (fuititarian?). Another clue is that the original man was asymetrical, he had an extra rib. The very literal reading also precludes the male pronoun for Adam. Adam was “both male and female”.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: higher to lower
Sorry, Sam — my mistake.
Re: higher to lower
John Doyle,
As a matter of fact I had not seen your post when I wrote that, I had Russ’s response in mind and was on an interestingly parallel route to the one that you took!
With what we know of human and humanoid fossils, ancient history etc. our tendency now is to try to fit our view of archaeology into the Genesis account, and I have seen some surprisingly good ‘fits’ so created. I don’t think that that really does justice though, to the original author(s) and is hardly likely to come close to what they had in mind.
Prior to modernity, I think the universal view was that Adam was a ‘superior’ human being and that the fall has left us a lot lower than the angels. On a different tack, looking at the evidence that now exists, it can be read as a fall though that would give our paleontologists severe indigestion!
As Russ pointed out, the Babylonian and Canaanite mythologies probably do have something to contribute in helping to give us a picture of the worldview of those times, but just looking at our text it does seem to me that there is a significantly different story behind the writer(s) of Genesis and we just don’t have those sources to inform our explorations.
I think therefore that it is better to treat the Genesis account as sui generis and to keep our uncertainty uppermost when we are tempted to be most dogmatic about what Genesis does and does not mean for today.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: higher to lower
Interesting idea about Adam being a “higher” form of man. I’ve never heard it before. Where does it come from?
My reference to Babylonian mythology was only meant to ask the question of how groups interpreted their creation stories in the broad sweep of the OT framework. It’s probably too general a question to really be answered, now that I think about it again. But it does seem to me that the Genesis creation does exist in a kind of league of it’s own. It certainly isn’t surrounded by the pomp and wild goings on of the gods, as most other cosmologies of that area of the world (at least the ones I’ve read) are.
About the extraordinary meaning of words in Genesis. I would think - again I haven’t done the exegesis on this, so it’s only a thought - that different words have different kinds of weight. The reference to the “greater light” and the “lesser light” may indeed have been a polemic. Perhaps “beginning” and “land” were also key words. Certainly if the text was written/redacted from the viewpoint of the whole of Genesis and the Pentateuch, then certainly the framework for thinking about the eschatological importance of Israel and the role of the land would certainly be in place. I’m not sure if this extra weight makes the words in the history less historical, at least from the author’s point of view, but only that they are invested with another level of discourse. In my view this would not be a secret discourse, but exactly one chosen to make the original readers go “hey! That’s there already!” This, I would think, follows the kind of line that is often used for explaining eschatology on this site. Key words and images, typologies, add theological depth to the description of an event. In this case I don’t think the author had to use extraordinary terms, as was often done with eschatological prophecy, but rather that some everyday terms may have carried extra weight.
This doesn’t solve the problem of the order of creation in Genesis. I’m still trying to understand the order as it is given - is this straightforward description (handed down by generations), and if so, why this order? The order is easier to understand from a polemcial perspective, as John pointed out, but still leaves us with some difficulties. But I at least don’t (yet) want to ask what the text can “mean” for us today, until the “what it meant for them” is more clear. Unfortunately, this moves far away from (far behind) the original intent in this thread, which was to look at the options and meanings of Genesis as a “true mythology”.
Do we need to delve into some serious exegesis here? Or can you give some tips for sources?
Re: higher to lower
Russ, you mentioned being rusty, well I never got started as far as original languages are concerned (a little greek but no hebrew/aramaic). Still, serious exegesis is what is called for if we really want to get into Genesis!
I’m prepared to muddle along and be corrected whenever needed by all the real scholars who will have oversight of our discussions here at OST - and thanks to all of you, that is a great feeling!
As far as the first humans being superior, that assumption is at least as old as the targums (like Pseudo Jonathan). in fact the suppositiion is that satan was so envious of these glorious creatures that he was driven to tempt Eve.
An interesting exegesis of the creation of mankind (The Living Breath of God and the Three Steps in Fashioning Humanity)
if the link doesn’t work it can be found at
http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article9106.asp
Live to serve : Serve to live
weighty words
Sam, I found the link you posted fascinating. While I resonate with your and Russ’ enthusiasm for detailed exegesis of the Biblical creation narratives, I hope you’ll bear with me as I pursue the hermeneutical issues a bit further. After all, an exegesis that ascribes mythic status to the text might look very different from the sort of endeavor we’re accustomed to seeing and practicing.
We’ve previously discussed whether the words used in Genesis 1 were intended to convey their normal meaning. In his last comment Russ provided an elegant discussion of the “extra weight” borne by everyday terms in Genesis 1. The final redactor of the Pentateuch probably consolidated multiple already-existing Creation fragments and integrated them thematically into the longer narrative. He would have retained the essence of the earlier documents but tweaked the emphases and word choices, perhaps even eliminating bits that didn’t fit into the larger scheme – like a film editor excising unnecessary scenes from the final cut. It’s the Pentateuch as a whole that’s canonical, not necessarily the original sources from which it was compiled. Though for the reader the narrative begins at the beginning and moves forward in time, the redactor knew how the story was going to turn out and how it was going to get from here to there. Consequently the text as a whole transcends strict linearity, and every scene becomes suffused with eschatology. The beginning doesn’t just point toward a future that’s yet to unfold: the beginning includes an ending that’s already happened. This isn’t a prophetic glimpse into the future as seen from an eternal perspective; rather, it’s a normal artifact of editorial work.
The New Testament writers weren’t able to re-edit the Old Testament texts in light of subsequent events. However, they could re-interpret the older canonical texts in much the same way that the Pentateuchal redactor may have re-interpreted long-past events in light of subsequent developments. If the text of the Torah hadn’t already stabilized, Christian redactors might have incorporated terms like “the Word” into a re-edited Genesis 1, piling even more eschatological weight onto the ancient narrative.
These considerations reinforce and refine the idea of a literal rather than a mythical reading of the Creation narrative. So, for example, whereas the term “light” eventually gains additional metaphorical weight, the literal meaning persists in Genesis 1. If we were interpret “light” as a metaphor for “good,” then we’d have to concern ourselves about why elohim permitted darkness to oscillate with the light in the day-night cycle, as if good and evil were equally balanced force on the eternal cosmic wheel.
Because the Biblical editors imbued the historic narratives with metaphysical weight that transcends the sheer facticity of the events per se, it’s tempting to discount the events altogether in order to focus exclusively on the transcendent meaning, as a platonic or Gnostic exegete might do. Alternatively, the reader could decide that meaning shouldn’t be abstracted from narrative, that meaning is intrinsically narrative – sort of like life itself. This sort of reader becomes immersed in the meaningful flow of the story, perhaps even without being concerned about whether the events described are fact or fiction. This approach, it seems to me, is what Barth and Frei mean by a True Myth. But that sort of indifference to the purported historical truth of Biblical events seems like a variant on the platonic separation of reality from incarnation. The creation story that found its way into the final cut of Genesis 1 might have originated in the fevered imagination of an anonymous Semitic Bedouin, but the later redactors would have treated it with all the respect afforded by an eyewitness report of actual historical events. This certainly was Calvin’s understanding:
biig mouthfulls
I agree with you that the hermeneutical issues are very important but it also strikes me that the lack of primary data may be adding its bit to the confusion. By getting into the text itself, we may find that some of the supposed options are not convincing or we may find that there is a need for other options to be proposed…
Probably, our text was ‘literal’ as opposed to being designed to be mythological/typological/allegorical to the original author(s), but the fact is that now we almost have to treat it as myth or at least as ‘story’, perhaps based on historically true happenings, but in a literary category other than ‘chronicle’.
Apart from early redactions there is also the question of later reconstruction, during the time of rabbinic ascendancy or after the exile, but perhaps even during the division of the kingdom, when political forces may have had a vested interest in promoting one reading over another…
A related fascinating exercise will be to try to delineate what we mean by history and how history does and does not coincide with the early chapters of Genesis.
In any case the text should be our starting point, the ‘raw data’ as it were, in the light of which the various hypotheses will finally need to be judged.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: Genesis 1 as "True Myth": 5 Possibilities
Just a comment relating to john doyle’s most recent contribution: there is no evidence, is there, apart from academic speculation, of the existence or activity of JEPD redactors in the Genesis creation accounts or the Pentateuch as a whole, or of a late composition of the first creation account during the Babylonian period?
On the other hand there is evidence of the very high levels of accuracy in the transmission of oral and written tradition - the former calling on powers of memory which would be unheard of today.
I simply mention this because it is a feature of academic discussion (of which I accuse nobody on this site) that hypothesis can, almost without anyone noticing, transform itself into accepted wisdom. Somebody has pointed out, I think in relation to the JEPD compositional theory, that it depends on a very modern idea of the cutting and pasting of texts, which would have been alien and impractical to any middle eastern redactors in ancient times.
At this point, historical criticism as applied to textual critcism, which has its place, needs to work alongside some form of canon criticism or narrative criticism - which focus on ‘the final text’ (depending on whose version of canon criticism you go for).
Having said that, I don’t see how thorough exegesis (of the Genesis creation accounts, for instance) can proceed without some stab at how the texts were intended to be used - provided the hermeneutical guesswork is treated in a fairly provisional way.
Re: Genesis 1 as "True Myth": 5 Possibilities
Peter,
I agree with your assesment that the JEPD compositional theory is provisional. Even if one leaves elements of this behind, the idea that the pentateuch was put together at a much later date than is “traditionally” assumed, needs to weighed in the balance as carefully as any “traditional” interpretation of the authorship, intent and date.
I’m not sure if we can crystallize the various views into a single hermeneutical presentation, however. I think if we start by discussing the issues you and John have addressed, and including what how these views affect one’s basic hermeneutic (a discussion which has been running in the background of this discussion already), we might be able to proceed into an approach to the text that allows each to give imput from their own perspective. If we try to wear our hermeneutic on our sleaves, we’ll get farther along, I think.
Also agreement that if we talk about a redactive proces, for our purposes we have to primarily deal with the end product, however that came together. Earlier forms of the story/stories are of interest only as we can show a connection between the earlier story and the way the original audience would have heard it, and how that affected any later redactors. Whether any of this is actually possible with the creation stories, is a wild guess to me!
Sorry if I want to jump into exegesis too quickly here. The original discussion was about the nature of “True Myth”. Our hermeneutic (and it’s application) will tell much about how or if we view Genesis as a true myth.
For my part, I want to start an analysis of the creation stories with the question of what this version of the story as it’s penned was meant to communicate to it’s hearers/readers. How the original hearer/readers would have “heard” the story (and with what others stories floating around in their heads) is I think a very important question. But as you pointed out, this too is dependant on who we think that audience is, and what the intent of the author/redactor was.
I don’t yet have a set position on the point of authorship/dating/provenance. Nor do I feel like I’ve got a good grasp of the various possibilities (yet!). Maybe someone can give a sketch of various options to start the discussion moving in that direction.
Sam, I hope to check out your links tonight. Thanks for sending them through.
Welcome future mythic voyagers
Let’s assume that the redactors of the Pentateuch had access to archaic narrative fragments in either oral or written form. Let’s assume further that the redactors exercised restraint in modifying these ancient narratives while consciously integrating them into a coherent whole. The redactors would have retained the thrust of the original creation narratives, consciously employing certain “weighty” words and phrases that point forward to subsequent developments and themes in the longer story of God’s dealings with Israel and the world.
At the same time, a truly ancient creation narrative would have charted the course toward the future, would have set the trajectory for long strands of meaning, would have imbued certain words and phrases with primal potency. Steeped in the ancient oral tradition, wouldn’t the subsequent chroniclers of the ongoing Jewish saga have recognized that certain words – light, man, image and likeness – already carried more weight than others? Of course there are dangers of overinterpreting the cross-textual linkages: consider the medieval kabbalists who, observing that the first word of Genesis begins not with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet but with the second, conclude that something must have existed before the beginning.
This bidirectional interweaving of themes and keywords gives the Bible a complex unity, with each separate segment in the larger story pointing simultaneously back to the beginning and forward to the end. A good novel arrives at its coherence through a similar process: the first draft moves roughly forward in time, but the writer already has the ending clearly in mind while editing the beginning. Call me Ishmael – was this the first sentence Melville wrote when he sat down to begin Moby Dick? It’s impossible to know, but it’s almost equally impossible to imagine the book beginning otherwise. If Melville had made a different editorial move then maybe today we would regard an entirely different first sentence as inevitable.
It’s interesting that all the discussion on this topic points to a rather orthodox approach to reading Genesis 1: a divinely-bestowed intuition to guide the reader, a literal exegesis of the text, the interpretation of individual passages in the context of the whole Bible. No one participating in the discussion so far seems to support any of the Truth Myth ideas that presumably inform post-evangelical hermeneutics of these problematic texts. Perhaps the True Myth solution is itself mythical. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, some virtual traveler will arrive and will read with bemused tolerance our primitive speculations. To you, mythic voyager, we extend our welcome.
As for conducting an exegesis of the text, it sounds like a good idea but I think I’d better bow out. I’ve done my own literal exegesis of Genesis 1, disregarding the usual a priori assumptions, ignoring scriptural unity, and arriving at an entirely heterodox interpretation of the narrative. Perhaps the heretical old theologian will offer a mythic version of this exegesis to his tolerant (semi-)fictional interlocutors on the “Christmas at Sir Toby’s” post.
Re: Welcome future mythic voyagers
John Doyle,
The composition could indeed have been, and probably was, a very complex one for good story telling is a highly developed art that is always technical and so both difficult and rare. The fact that this ancient tale so fascinates speaks for itself. And there is a fallacy in assuming that we moderns and postmoderns are somehow more advanced, for in this field i suspect that we are quite backward. The ancients were certainly better versed and more sophisticated than we in the ‘simple’ art of narrative.
i would be very interested to get your personal take as a part of this conversation itself rather than having to wait for Sir Toby! For one thing, each one of us will have a slightly or even markedly different view on Genesis (that’s a bit obvious) and it is in the sharing of the interpretations that we can each broaden our perspectives on what the story could mean.
getting back to true myth, it’s quite probable that ‘the truth is in the story’ or as another put it in a more PoMo fashion “the truth is in the fiction”, but this is something that we will have to discover together as we go along. As Russ suggests, we could just try to be transparent about what hermeneutoc we are plumbing for as methodological diversity and differences of perspective are, I think, an essential requirement if we are to collectively search for that oh so elusive ‘truth’.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: Genesis 1 as "True Myth": 5 Possibilities
John - something must have happened whilst I was engaged in one of my trappist reveries. I truly hadn’t realised that you had offered your own exegesis of Genesis 1. Do you think you could summarise it - for the sake of those like me who weren’t paying attention?
You do seem to refer frequently to pentateuchal redactors, ancient fragments and words that become imbued with significant meaning. I do see some rather self-conscious repetition of words like ‘blessing’ and ‘fruitful’ which migrate from Genesis 1 and attach themselves to the likes of Noah, Abraham, and the Israelites on entering the promised land. I don’t see this necessarily as the work of redactors. Could it not have been a conscious recapitulation of and response to existing oral accounts of Genesis 1 - or even, horrors, a divinely inspired recapitulation. (The words do appear in the context of what God was purported to have said to Noah, Abraham, Israel etc.)
I don’t see that words like ‘image’ are significantly repeated, and ‘light’ is a normal metaphor for moral or intellectual clarity as well as a physical phenomenon; it’s bound up in the very nature of the thing, isn’t it?
Anyway, I’d appreciate a bit of recapitulation from yourself if you could spare the effort. I can see that you are not too keen on the ‘true myth’ concept (never realised it came from Barth/Frei; there’s always something new to learn). I couldn’t see what your own line was - unless it was to do with these mysterious redactors. I feel another chapter of Sir Toby’s coming on: enter the redactors stage left.
let them enjoy their soup
No, Peter, I didn’t slip my exegesis past you while you were otherwise occupied. We’ve discussed weighted words in the context of a literal hermeneutic, in contrast to metaphorical or mystical words which might point to a more mythic reading. Our speculations on redactive strategies for pulling the Pentateuch into a unified document seemed quite orthodox – I thought you were on board with this approach already. I accept that the redactors of the Pentateuch faithfully preserved the creation narratives as they’d been handed down through the tradition.
My reason for opening up the True Myth was that I’d seen the idea alluded to, though never explicated, in various emerging theological discussions as a way of reconciling Genesis 1-11 with modern science. The True Myth approach provides a rationale for relaxing the literal hermeneutic without relaxing Biblical inerrancy. None of us participating in this discussion seems persuaded that the True Myth hermeneutic applies to Genesis 1. Unless and until someone comes along who sees more merit in the approach, the True Myth topic seems to have run its course. I also don’t see anyone here prepared simply to acknowledge that Genesis 1 is a myth pure and simple, the product of ancient superstition and magical thinking that shouldn’t be taken seriously even by Jews and Christians. Or am I wrong about this?
And so the conundrum remains: how to reconcile Genesis 1 with modern science? There seems to be some enthusiasm for launching a new post that delves directly into the exegetical work. It seems that an acceptable “open-source” exegesis of Genesis 1 would be: (a) literal, (b) consistent with a priori intuitions about the creator-God, and (c) consistent with the rest of the Bible – in other words, a roughly orthodox evangelical exegesis. My exegesis is literal but it purposely ignores the other two criteria. I believe the resulting interpretation of Genesis 1 is internally consistent and also consistent with modern science; it does, however, deviate significantly from the usual interpretation of the passage. And so I thought it was time for me to step away from the table. Originally I hoped that my reading would be well-received in post-evangelical circles; I no longer entertain that hope. Still, I believe it has merit and I would be happy to give it an airing here. Over the next day or two I’ll try to write a concise summary and then post it here. The crowd at Sir Toby’s can continue eating their soup undisturbed while we carry on awhile longer.
Time for the next course?
Let’s get into it. I believe that our sharing of exegetical insights and individual hermeneutics will be enlightening. We may finally not enjoy a ‘new creation’ but certainly our understanding of Genesis will be a fitting main course.
I’m not entirely willing to give up on your original five categories either. Seems to me that my initial response was that there may well be some mythical element in my reading of Genesis today even though that may not have been so to the original author(s), hearers. The very fact that story telling is the most probable original route of transmission of the tale makes one wonder whether the original hearers may not also have received it so…
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: Time for the next course?
John,
On your a,b and c assumptions about the kind of exegesis that we’d probably do here, I myself don’t think I could necessarily agree with b and c, either. And as for a, while I accept “literal” as a tag, by that I would mean trying to hear the text as it was meant to be heard in it’s orginal context. This gets into the issues of authorship and dating, but also the context of the original hearers (here comes Sitz im leben around the corner again). Words that we might consider weighted could have various implications for various audiences and periods of time. But I certainly would not in the initial phase to try to make the text consistent with the rest of the Bible. That in itself calls for a huge a priori assumption about what that consistency would entail; I for one only want to deal with that after we look at Genesis “as is” within the setting of the Pentateuch. I’m not saying that the relationship of Genesis to the rest of the text of the bible is not important, but only that it’s secondary to me. That’s the point at which I see the concept of “true myth” possibly peeking around the corner again, as one of the hermeneutical devices to transport the story into other times and settings.
In a previous post about the redaction of the text you wrote this:
Let’s assume that the redactors of the Pentateuch had access to archaic narrative fragments in either oral or written form. Let’s assume further that the redactors exercised restraint in modifying these ancient narratives while consciously integrating them into a coherent whole.
This would in my view be true regardless of the dating of any redaction. As far as I understand it, even Moses would have been a redactor as regards the creation narratives (Calvin, as you pointed out, certainly seemed to think so). What greatly interests me is the stylistic difference between the first and second creation accounts in Genesis. Granted, the second account is actually an account of the creation of man. But Genesis 1:1-2:3 seem lyrical and poetic to me. The lines, even as I read them in English (only begun to grind to through the Hebrew…) are measured. The story is structured it wat strikes me as a mimetic fashion. It may be redaction, but it is a beautiful piece of redaction. It makes me wonder if this is not a fairly solid pericope of oral tradition that was passed down. If that’s the case, then what we probably have in Genesis is nothing “new” for the audience of Genesis, but rather the formalization/condensation of the community’s beliefs about how the world came to be, and what this has to say about man, his place and ultimately, the community’s place in the world. This is how I would make sense of your statement that “a truly ancient creation narrative would have charted the course toward the future, would have set the trajectory for long strands of meaning, would have imbued certain words and phrases with primal potency.”
As of yet I have no set opinion as to who wrote Genesis, or when. When you mention the redactional process, when do you see this happening? How does the time period affect the impact of Genesis and the Pentateuch for the or