letters to surfers

How can you take Genesis as a historical document?  Everybody knows it is mainly myth.
by Robert Brow  (www.brow.on.ca)


I certainly allow the right of historians to study Genesis to see if any material might turn out to be factual by historical  standards.  That is a perfectly respectable university discipline.  There is also a huge university discipline that focuses on myth and its meaning.  I view the form of life of life in Genesis as Moses' (or some other writer's) introduction to the story of  the origins of the Arab and Jewish people (e.g. in my Ishmael the Arab).

I then make the assumption that God chose that introduction (no doubt with corrections and emendations) for the first book of the Bible.  I have no proof for that.  But that is the beginning of the Bible I use every day.  If God predestined it for my use (and for the whole church) I assume he wanted it there, and I should take it seriously.  I have to work at the language games for words such a God, Created, Covenant, Flood, LORD, and for the metaphors and allusions that are used.  That means that exegesis is within a commitment to a certain view of the Bible. But in any case without Genesis it would be impossible for me to make sense of the New Testament.


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