If Genesis is Metaphorical, what's the metaphor?

yes yes i know.

I didn’t want you to think I was simply ignoring the rest of what you wrote.Okay. I’ll bite. What is the difference between a writing ‘a history’ and writing ‘history’? Dates simply weren’t stressed that much when I took high school history. I suspect that dates are stressed more now, not simply because they make for better history, but because testing dates is easier then testing other aspects of history. Not all lessons or benefits of history are dependant on dates. Don’t get me wrong, dates certainly can be useful in many ways, the least not being to help put things in context. Indication, perhaps, but not an absolute, which I believe was one of Brian’s points. Further, we’re back to the idea that something has to be a primary goal of something to contain that. That just simply isn’t supportable.What about accidental accuracy or accuracy in spite of other motives?My exception of your stance is that I don’t agree that any number of errors or anachronisms permits someone to throw out the entirety of a piece. Each individual aspect of a history needs to stand and fall on its own merits.I would however, fully support your stance as being valid if the presumption is of Genesis being a literal account.-----------------------------------------------------------------------On your comments about King Arthur, I concluded watching the preview that there was little chance of the movie being the story of the Real King Arthur the moment they showed Lancelot. How exactly would you show that le Morte d’Arthur had ‘absolutely no basis’ in the real history. What exactly were all the sources Malory used? As of the last time I looked, there was a strong argument that the Arthurian Mythos has some historical roots, though derivative of multiple historic and legendary myths.Without knowing all the sources which comprised Genesis we can only go so far in testing its validity. For all we know, one of the writers had access to some source and made up the parts that they didn’t have. I would agree, that so far that does seem to be the case.

yes, i'm well aware of what "american pie" is really about. here's another tidbit to ponder:one the night kurt cobain shot himself, tori amos was playing a concert. when she was informed of the news, she played two songs: american pie by "don mcclean," and "smells like teen spirit" by nirvana.she didn't change the words to american pie. but here it's clearly a tribute to a completely different musician. tell me, is it still historical of the life and untimely death of buddy holly? if it can be about something totally different, because it really has not technical details, is it really historical at all?similar argument with elton john and "candel in the wind." no. i do not. if the primary intention of the work is to entertain an audience, then treating it as a factual history will give you entirely the wrong impression. true, but genesis does NOT tell us anything about the people in the story, only the people who wrote it. it does convey history in that aspect. but it is incorrect to think of it as historically accurate. and *I* am saying that it doesn't matter at all, because aspects of the writing indicate that recording historical events was not the goal of genesis AT ALL. rather, it was to record the history traditions of the people. reading it as some window on what really happened with abraham and isaac is silly.invalid? heck, i don't know. but that's NOT THE POINT.

the first is an attempt at recording something (beit events or traditions) and is obviously subject to error. the second implies events that actually happened.when people ask if genesis is history, that's what they mean. i'm trying to rectify the problem we've been having of colloquial uses here. take a college class. high school classes simply don't cover the neccessary material in ANY area. dates (or at least a way to keep track of time) is an integral part of the study of history.there are books similar to genesis that keep track of date, btw. jubilees is a good example. but the date-keeping is very obviously artificial. it's an attempt by later hebrew authors to make the events of genesis into a history. every lesson in history is dependent on dates, location, and culture/people involved. separate yourself from this idea that it's THE BIBLE for a second here. we have a collection of stories that involve things like talking snakes, god confusing people because they built a sky scraper, a big boat with two of EVERYTHING, and someone dying because they pulled out. is this a history? just read it and ask yourself objectively.are you sitting on the couch watching "troy" and thinking it's a history? do you read beowulf, and think it's a history? you wanna talk unsupportable, try supporting the logic that says these things are. what about it?it's not written to be accurate. it's not written to record events. it's written to record traditions. maybe these people really existed. maybe they didn't. who knows? no, that's not what i'm doing at all. i'm not looking at going "was there a tower of babel? yes, ok, moving on. was there a flood? no? ok, that rules the whole book out."i'm looking it and saying "this section contradicts this section. these were written by two different people. whoever put them together didn't care about which was right, because being right didn't matter."see the difference? genesis *IS* literal. it's just historically unsound. i believe the goal of this thread is to challenge the notion that genesis is anything BUT literal. if arthur was a real person, which he probably was, he lived about 400 ad. this is well before castles and suits of armor. the depiction of arthur in the movie "king arthur" is actually pretty close to everyone's best guess.sure, malory used some old stories. and sure they had some historical roots. but look at the words you used: legend. myth. not an accurate portrayal by any means. maybe some of the themes are even there, but in and of itself, le morte d'arthur is a work of LITERATURE and not SCHOLARSHIP. and this is the difference i'm trying to present with genesis.(btw: i am fully willing to admit the p sections of genesis should probably be considered a history, although the whole book is not) but we do know the sources that comprised genesis. know how? because whoever compiled genesis simply copied the sources. that's why there are contradictions. they mere obviously more concerned with the integrity of the source than the accuracy to real life.

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just cause his name wasn't ever spelled the same

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It wasn't? Obviously I'm not a Shakespeare fan.Since I learned that the Torah was not written by Moses, but various authors, I don't have a problem getting my head around the inconsistencies or fictional parts and the ancient "typos" are worth worrying about.My specialty in writing is mixing facts with fiction. In 1979, I was assigned to write an informative piece about the administrative section of our Marine Corps district. They wanted me to cover what each persons job entailed. The purpose of the piece was to make the recruiters familiar with who does what in Admin, so they would know the appropriate person to contact.Personally I don't like boring facts only pieces. I took my readers on a tour of Admin. The tour guide was a mouse (talking of course). Obviously all the people and their duties were fact and the mouse, quite obviously, was not.When each author wrote their piece, they weren't necessarily trying to support the other authors. They wrote their take on the issue and what information they wanted the audience to understand.IMO, the fictional parts were probably understood at the time. Genesis: talking snake (not real), tree giving us knowledge (not real), man understanding good and bad (real), male and female come together to procreate (real), women give birth (real), people wear clothes (real), men think they rule the family (real ) etc.I read the novellas by Francine Rivers concerning the women in the line of Jesus or lineage of grace. (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary) They are excellent, they are based on what little bit the original authors stated about them in the Bible. Rivers takes that information as her base facts and the rest is fiction as she brings out what she thinks they thought or would have done.So I'm not sure why people today feel that the ancient writers should have written any differently than we do today.

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"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which lasts forever." --Anatole France

I have no faith in a god who exist that resembles any that Christians here have described.There may be a god but I see no evidence for this.

Well, that as I see it is the crux of the problem between interpretations that we see on this thread. Without a certain ammount of faith in God, a person can only interpret the bible according to his knowledge and that of the society he comes from. This perspective as applied here automatically excludes all possibilities other than that which is accepted by that person and his society.Namely a supernatural perspective, which is grounded in ones faith.A person who doesn't believe in God is as naturally biased as one who believes in the existence of God. That perspective and that bias is almost impossible to overcome naturally. For those who believe in the metaphorical genisis, there is a natural tendency to dismiss the whole book as fictional as pertaining to the accounts therin, for those who have faith and a belief in God the opposite is just as natural.There can really never be an understanding between the two viewpoints nor a middleground.

What about those who have faith and a belief in GOD that also believe that all of Genesis is fictional?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

According to current christian belief, the bible is the word of God. Through it He reveals himself to to all people who are willing to open their hearts, so that they may come to know him and his purpose for mankind.The basic argument that Genesis may be nothing but a metaphor and a collection of folktales, cheapens the message in my opinion. There may be others who disagree on this point, but to do so eventually leads to doubt and even more questions that cannot be truly answered by anyone.Many who have done just that eventually are left with nothing, not even faith.If the basic purpose of scripture is to give us hope in the eternal, and then we in turn rationalize the message because we cannot comprehend the complexities of the eternal, we corrrupt the essence and purpose of the message. We eventually remove that final hope that keeps our civilization in balance.I say this because if there is really no God then what is left?
There is no hope, no desire to become better than that which we are.We can do away with guilt and concience because in the end there is really no right and wrong, no good and evil. The philosophers' dream becomes real. All things are relative.When we start reducing scripture to fictionalized accounts and trying to poke holes in all the foundations that make the messge that God is giving us to be nothing more than a discredited and romanticized tale, then we might as well throw the book away and go watch a good movie. I personally would have no interest in reading and studying the bible if it were anything but what it is, the word of God.Western civilization is based on the premise of christian principles, and has been for the last 2000 years. Take away that premise and what have you got left?Like I said, this is a personal opinion and in many christian circles is not even accepted or practiced.

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We are the sum of all that is, and has been. We will be the sum of our choices.

No offense, but you're totally wrong. Most atheists come to the conclusion that the lack of an all-powerful moral authority means that we have a duty to be more moral, not less. If we're the pinnacle of moral authority, if we're the only "gods", if you will, then our duty to each other is magnified, because there's simply no one else to fulfill that duty. Exactly what you started with - the morals that a society needs to serve itself. You've just eliminated the fairy tales you've used to manipulate people into following them, and convinced them to follow them on their own merits. Nobody wants to live in a crumbling society; thus, people will be moral because they understand the benefits of doing so.You act like civilization must be Christian, or fail - yet, Western civilization is not the only civilization. It's neither the oldest, nor the most successful. You might stop by Japan if you wanted to see how a society could be non-Christian and yet preserve the way of life that you're familiar with.

just because most christians (or more specifically you) believe that the bible is "truth" from the mouth of god, doesn't mean that all do.arrogance does not become you. humility is your directive. use it.

History is a bunch of things that happened.Myth discusses fundamental truths about abstract principles.I think it "reduces" the scriptures to insist they're just a list of things that happened.This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 03-06-2005 23:25 AM

I wrote a page and a half before this, but frankly, hashing out types of histories that don’t require dates, points on communication being inherently error-prone, assumptions about what people mean when they say history, examples of college level history classes which do not focus on date keeping, etc., wouldn’t seem to bring us back to point any quicker than the points below. If there are any specific questions you want an answer for let me know. Understood. Still, eventually you begin to trip over assumptions made. For instance in assigning the sections to individuals rather than groups. Understand that even if you are correct about whomever put them together, let’s call them/him redactor(R), you can’t simply assign the motives of redactor(R) to the previous source(J).How many people contributed to J and how can we be certain the work was by a single individual?What were the source materials and influences available to J?How can we be absolutely certain of J’s source materials contained no historical information?Was J altered prior to the redactor? Alternatively, how can we be certain that the redactor even had a primary source of J’s writing?Why must it be the case that anyone can definitively state the purpose of J from recactor? The ‘simply copied the sources’ is problematic inasmuch failure to correct one type of material does not equate to no changes being made of any sort. We don’t even know if they saw those things as errors. It very well may be the case that they did make changes where they felt they could determine which source was more accurate.We don’t know all the sources that comprised Genesis, we mostly have what has wound up in Genesis. We have, if you will, the leftovers.

j being a single person and j being a group of people makes no difference in my mind. personally, i think j probably was plural. i'm pretty certain p was. (if anything sounds like it was written by committee, it's p) no. you can't really. but what does that have to do with my point? maybe j really thought he was recording real events. but i suspect not. j and e in particular are told like folk tales, not history, even apart from the book as a whole. dunno. look to the surrounding people to find out the context. ugarit in particular. you won't find actual sources, but you'll get an idea. does j itself contain any historical material? no. e might, and p does. does it matter if the source j was reading thought it was telling actual events, if j did not? does it matter? isolate j, and tell me honestly what you think it's doing. j's the one with all the cool stuff like talking snakes and whatnot. the vastness of inconsistency is a good indicator that no effective changes were made. you'd think the first thing they'd do is rectify the name of god problem. however, keep in mind that texts treated as holy to the jews may not be altered in any fashion, even by a single letter. the only modifications to biblical texts in the last 2200 years have been the additions of vowels, and emmendations/footnotes. no change to the text, even where they believe it is in error.the most probably explanation for the inconsistencies in this light is that the source texts were regarded as holy, and thus not changed at all, or as minimaly as possible. that's nice. stock question: "according to the book of genesis, whic hwas made first, animals or man?" yes, but take this in light of the holiness point, and point that inconsistencies were not fixed. and think about it for a second. they had to have been copied wholesale into the book. a good model for genesis is actually the modern bible. follow my reasoning for a second.christians today treat the bible as a single book. but even cursory examination shows that it's more than one book. what do we know about the bible's sources? well, they're pretty much in there, aren't they? the source for psalms is a book called psalms, proverbs came from proverbs, etc. these sources came to thought of as holy, and were included, copied into the book, verbatim. inconsistencies between epistle and gospel and torah were not rectified because each book was holy individually.this is nothing new. i'm just arguing that this process started long before 200bc. psalms for instance is actually a collection of five books of psalms. and they overlap a little too. and these five books of the psalms are obviously collections within themselves. five separate redactors gathered them together, and then a later 6th redactor collected the collections. and then a 7th included that collection into the entire bible. or some variation on that order.genesis is a collection too, of at least three sources: j, e, and p. keep in mind that book headings and chapter headings and verse numbers are a new invention. they just rammed the entire text together in the old days. no spaces, no vowels, no breaks. just solid text. no little headings like "a psalm david" etc. those are all later additions.now why is it such a foriegn idea that genesis is just a collection of relatively complete sources, like everything else in the bible?

quite. i think that one deserves a nomination.