Genesis: is it to be taken literally?

What needs to be dropped is the attempt to make Genesis into a scientific model.It is a creation myth; and like any creation myth in any culture, the primary aim is to establish a kind of cosmological framework for making sense of the current existing relationships and conditions for humanity, the world, and the gods.The basic purpose of the first chapter of Genesis is most likely to defend monotheism in the face of surrounding polythesitic cultures. The carefully structured arrangement of events has noticable parallels with other creation accounts of the time. For example, parallels with the Balylonian Enuma Elish have been noted by a number of scholars. The distinctions are stark; and this is the key to understanding why the account exists. In the first chapter of Genesis, what appear as gods in other cultures are listed and subordinated to the one great God of Hebrew theology.Ancient readers, prior to the rise of science, did tend to take these accounts as "true", but this was basically a consequence of the fact that there were no alternatives, and no concept of a distinct and independent scientific investigation of events in the past. The application has always been for the sake of theological parallels and lessons which remain untouched by the development of scientific modes of investigation.The second and third chapter of Genesis (the second creation story) has a quite different focus. Here the focus is on the problems of evil, and pain, and moral responsibility; again expressed as a creation story.Discarding Genesis because it fails to match science is simply a failure to see what Genesis is about. It is expressing theological principles, expressed using the device of creation stories, using (of course!) the cosmology known at the time to the readers and the writers. The cosmology is the background; not the focus or the intended lesson.Cheers -- Sylas

I realize that "myth" does not mean wrong or inaccurate.The question you have to ask is: What was Genesis explaining?If Genesis was attempting to explain the physical origins of the universe, then whether we say it was pretty good, or pretty bad, it is certainly superceded and should be discarded since we have far better explainations available now.Creationists object to that; they consider that science is all wet, and that in fact the physical origins of the universe remain better explained in Genesis than in the conflicting conclusions of science. That debate focuses on looking at the empirical evidence, and seeing which account is consistent with the empirical evidence; or else it throws its hands up in the air and dismisses the scientific account as incorrect by fiat; even if we can't be sure how or why scientists got lead so badly astray.But if Genesis is focused on explaining the nature of God and the relationships between humanity and the world and the gods, through the vehicle of a creation story, then worrying about which explains the physical origins of the universe better misses the point. Even if the physical cosmology of Genesis is out of date, we still cannot simply discard it in favour of science, since the scientific stories have a different focus entirely. We rather need to step into the cosmological context of Genesis, and then see what it is explaining about God.The second step, by the way, is not a justification of Genesis. It is merely a matter how to give a reasonable critique or consideration of a creation myth, from any culture. They are always told for reasons beyond the surface level of physical explanation. Scientific models are not; they are always for the reason of developing physical explanation, no matter what philosophical inferences might be drawn subsequently.The appropriate handling of Genesis as creation myth is not saying it is wrong. It is not saying it is right either. It is just the recognition of the nature of the literary form, prior to any evaluation.Cheers -- Sylas