The second installment of my Friday series on the Logos Academic blog was posted today under the title, “Sincerity and the Supernatural.” Have a look>
Note that I won’t keep posting these here. I may do one more. If you want to follow my weekly posts (“Unfiltered Fridays”) you’ll need to subscribe to the feed at the Logos Academic blog site.
So you believe the biblical context is actually YEC? Am I understanding correctly?
I can’t make sense of this question. The biblical material doesn’t take a position on modern categories or debates – ? How could it?
Well, it seems that you are saying the biblical context, based on ANE writings, is a world that took their myths literally. The world had 4 corners or was a big circle surrounded by mountains, or rested on pillars or turtles or something like that. Is that what they literally believed? If that is so, then did they believe the earth was literally created in 7 24 hour days? Am I over simplifying?
Thanks
I’m saying that people in the 2nd millennium BC were pre-scientific. By definition they couldn’t be writing about science. Genesis isn’t about science or laying out a scientific description of origins. I can’t affirm they were doing what they weren’t doing (a thing your question asks for).
As Walton has ably summarized (Lost World of Genesis One), the creation narrative is about describing the creation as God’s temple. The “rest” (sabbath) element is part of that. So the point of Genesis (that one and other sub-points) are abstract and theological (metaphysical, if you will). The sort of cartoonish literalism to which you refer isn’t “scientific observation” so it can’t be treated as such — or judged against science. It’s not coherent to criticize an ancient text for not offering what it never intended to offer.
Not sure if any of that helps.
Thank you. It helps a lot, although I’m not exactly sure what pre-scientific means. Some might say it starts with Copernicus’ heliocentric solar system, but it was proposed in the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos.
The fact that many Babylonian star names appear in Sumerian suggests a continuity reaching into the Early Bronze Age. Astral theology, which gave planetary gods an important role in Mesopotamian mythology and religion, began in the Sumerian Age. They also used a sexagesimal (base 60) place-value number system, which simplified the task of recording very large and very small numbers. The modern practice of dividing a circle into 360 degrees, of 60 minutes each, began with the Sumerians. But I guess you already know all of this.
On the other hand, Hawking radiation will never be confirmed by direct observation.
Archaeoastronomy reaches back about 40,000 years to the caves of Europe. A mammoth tusk apparently depicts the constellation of Orion and lunar cycles. I’m just saying careful observation of nature goes back a long way.
pre-scientific means “scientific knowledge the biblical writers didn’t have because they lived and wrote before such discoveries.”
That the Sumerians had a sexigesimal system means next to nothing when we’re talking about knowing that the world was a ball, the laws of celestial mechanics, planets beyond Saturn, etc. They didn’t know any of that and a whole lot more. Neither did archaeo-astronomers. As fascinating as that field is (and I’ve read a good bit on it), it doesn’t yield modern knowledge in all sorts of respects. What it ought to do for moderns is convince them that the ancients were really smart and didn’t need aliens to know what they knew. But they aren’t astrophysicists and didn’t have modern knowledge of our solar system. There is no indication from Sumer or any other archaeo-astronomical structure or alignment that the ancients knew about planets beyond the naked eye (Saturn is the farthest referenced in any cuneiform source, for example).
If you put it in terms of the amount of knowledge about the physical universe, the people in the future may well think of us as pre-scientific today. It’s simply relative. Of course we have a lot more knowledge about the physical universe today than in the second millennium BC.
The concept of a spherical Earth can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC. But that is kind of like saying Pythagoras invented the Pythagorean theorem. Pythagoras gathered information from Mespotamia and Egypt. There is evidence his theorem was known a thousand years before Pythagoras.
We don’t who know who first discovered the earth was round, but it’s a very simple thing to discover. When you see tall clouds approaching, you see the tops before you see the bottoms. The same can hold true for the tops of tall mountains as you travel. The Sumerians had the mathematical skills to discover this.
For that matter, Pythagoreans believed the Earth, Sun, planets and stars all circled a central fire. Modern scientists didn’t discover the galaxies super massive black hole until the 1970’s.
The point isn’t the phrase (you seem to be getting lost in that). The point is that the biblical writers didn’t have the knowledge required to be writing scientific material.
I’m glad I was reading through comments, this answered a question I had for you about Walton and the lost world of Genesis one, because I found it fascinating.
That was one of my recent audio books.
How much of what biblical characters and writers believed about the supernatural world do I believe? Put negatively: How much of what biblical characters and writers believed about the supernatural world do I feel comfortable dismissing as a modern person? The answer to these questions will tell you how serious you are about biblical authority in such matters.
This is the most important question of all and I hope other people will chime in. It is also directly related to the emails you and I have had back and forth.
To simplify it here for your blog, this past saturday a very religious person asked me “Is it true that the Bible says angels had relations with humans?” I told him yes it does. But the other important thing to realize to anyone living in our day and age is this: Just because people believed that back then (and is recorded in the Bible) does not mean it actually happened.
And since many religious people believe in God and believe in the words of scripture, would you say they don’t take it seriously or the authority of it seriously if they can’t come to force themselves and believe that angels had sex with humans?
Pardon me if I misunderstand you, but this seems what you are asking is a little close to Miamonides 13 principles of faith. Principle 8 says a Jew must believe the Torah we have today is the same as was given to Moses (minus some scribal errors). And if you don’t take that on faith – and simply decide to ignore scholarship – you can be a heretic. Yes, I am oversimplifying the mishnaic origins of the principle, but the analogy will due for now.
Yes, people will have to decide whether they (at least) believe what the Bible says about the supernatural is possible. It’s sort of an odd question, because if we believe there IS a supernatural realm, then on what basis would we conclude that X is impossible (when X is beyond the purview of science)? But folks will have to decide. And I agree that people can still believe the truth of the gospel/salvation without believing X — but they must come to grips with what “biblical authority” means whenever they want to talk about that.
Fair enough, but since a lot of the ideas are in themselves “off-shoots” (for a lack of a better term at this hour) of other ANE beliefs that the Israelites took for themselves, than must people also come to grips with truths derived from other cultures? This actually is trying to answer your first question: (It’s sort of an odd question, because if we believe there IS a supernatural realm, then on what basis would we conclude that X is impossible). It’s not a question of whether it is impossible, but whether – given the ANE context – it is probable. Let’s say this: If you were to tell me that the authors somehow were zapped by divine knowledge (a concept you are against) and that no other culture had something that mirrors this, than I would stop to think about it’s probability. But if on the other hand, through hard work of deciphering ancient texts and comparing religions, scholars tell us these Israelite stories are taken from other ancient sources, and then molded for their own purposes, than we start saying “meeeeeeeh.” Again, it has nothing to do with inspiration. It simply has to do with what actually happened in history. Take the hyrax. Leviticus states the hyrax chews it’s cud. That is a claim that can be tested. We have. It’s not true. So sure, the ancients thought it chewed it’s cud due to the nature of mouth movements, but at the end of the day, what they believed in, vs. what actually is, are two different things. My reverence for the authority of the Bible doesn’t stem from that, but through Revelation, so if there are some errors of fact or history, I am not troubled for the overall purpose of the religion.
But going back to your expertise and how it connects to the Bible; it’s one thing to say the supernatural realm exists, and there are divine beings are even a hierarchy in God’s domain. That is a very broad-common sense vision that is very easily acceptable to people. It’s another thing telling people that those divine angels decided to have sex with women and some sort of giants came out of that union. And those unions led to the corruption of man which God then severed ties and passed on dominion of most of earth to other divine beings. It is one thing to understand and accept the context of the Bible. It is quite another to expect people today to believe in the same theology of nations as the ancients did. And what I fear is that more people are going to be left confused when you present it in that fashion. If you are educating people on ANE context, than I can’t imagine people coming out of it and saying “Yes, now I believe those details are historically and physically true.”
That latter point has always been my one issue with your work. And even though I am your biggest fan, I feel it is a lacuna that is not significantly addressed. We can’t all be perfect 😀
It’s addressed — but not in the sense where I make peoples’ minds up for them. I’m not a pope (or a televangelist).
Can I call you The DaRMaSH?
I think you will understand that 😛
LOL
yes, it’s funny. I don’t even want to ask you to fill out the acronym!
I’ll reserve judgment until I read the book, which I’ve had on order since March 11.