Gordon Cheng - 29 June 2008 12:50 AM

Bob Cameron - 28 June 2008 01:53 AM

Gordon
If you don’t want to read any pagan creation myths, fair enough.  But why the exhortation to the rest of us not to do so?

It flows out of my doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Aahh . . . so I take it you no longer read The Briefing then? -:)

Seriously though, I think many writers on these fora, and on this thread, would hold a strong view of the sufficiency of Scripture.  But that doctrine tells me where authority resides, not that other literature cannot illumine my understanding of those same authoritative scriptures.  Am I missing something?

Bob

Oh well, I suppose other stuff might be useful.

I’m just going through life testing my theory that the EE isn’t. I’m at roughly the half-way mark now, God willing, and I’ve managed OK. And for some of my friends who have read the EE, it seems to have set them back. At least temporarily. At least in my humble opinion. ;-)

I was saddened by Gordon’s determination never to enlighten himself by reading the Enuma Elish.  I thought the final comment on the page we were linked to was the most important.

“Genesis 1 at least is not a ‘literal’ history, but a symbolic spanking of the Enuma, correcting the Enuma where it was in error about fundamental relationships between God and mankind and our creation. God speaks, and creation obeys. God fixes the waters — they’re just water, not the threatening remains of a vanquished terror goddess! God makes the stars our servants, we are not to serve them!

We should not be surprised or dismayed. God uses all manner of literary device in the bible, from biography to history to poetry to apocalyptic symbolism. Genesis seems to start with a strong inter-textual reference to the Enuma Elish, and turns the pagan fundamentals upside down!”

When you keep on reading you discover that the purpose of the page was not to undermine the Scriptures but, in fact, to demonstrate the superiority of the Biblical text.

There are numerous other places in the OT in particular where stories seem somewhat dependent on other legends from the Ancient Near East, and where the Biblical writers are asserting new understandings of them.

Not much different from St Paul on Mars Hill, really.

Gordon Cheng - 29 June 2008 12:50 AM

Bob Cameron - 28 June 2008 01:53 AM

Gordon
If you don’t want to read any pagan creation myths, fair enough.  But why the exhortation to the rest of us not to do so?

It flows out of my doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Does that make it an insufficient doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture?

Good on you Gordon for making us think. I guess I grew up as a Christian in contexts where we were told it was important to know the cultural background of the text so we could understand it properly. But increasingly I have come to see the problem of that, if we have to get that cultural context from other sources outside the Bible.
I have no problem saying that something like Enuma Eilish can illuminate the text, and John Dickson’s article points us in good directions there. But isn’t the most important context for understanding the Bible the Bible itself? So to take Paul’s epistles, for example- I am all for reading the epistles against the context of their composition where we can see it from the book of Acts. I reckon that is probably one of the reasons (not the only one) that we have Acts. But to go outside Acts and to start speculating on the context of Paul’s letters where the NT doesn’t give us the information can lead us down an uncontrolled path where we “read down” what Paul seems to be saying by supposed background information which really ends up supporting a view of the text we have come to for others reasons.
It strikes me, then, that if it is essential for understanding something written in the Bible to have a context, then the Bible will provide the context. And so, while one can perhaps be sparked to fresh lines of thought by reading the extra-Biblical material, in the end if we can’t support a view by finding it somewhere else in the Bible we ought to be very tentative. And we humans always seem to have a tendency to give a higher priority than we ought to something new, rather than pursuing what we already have in the Bible.

Genesis 1 at least is not a ‘literal’ history, but a symbolic spanking of the Enuma, correcting the Enuma where it was in error about fundamental relationships between God and mankind and our creation. God speaks, and creation obeys. God fixes the waters — they’re just water, not the threatening remains of a vanquished terror goddess! God makes the stars our servants, we are not to serve them!

I don’t know what is meant here by ‘literal’, but I am absolutely sure that Gen 1 is some form of history. If God didn’t speak and creation didn’t obey, then Enuma isn’t corrected. If God doesn’t fix the waters then who knows whose remains they are. If God doesn’t make the stars to serve the earth, then why not serve them?

One myth cannot trump another. The only successful polemic is truth.

We may have trouble understanding what Genesis really says, but if it didn’t happen in a literal historical way, then Genesis has nothing on Enuma Elish.

Enkers you cheeky man.

What Neil said. Bible interprets Bible.

Dannii, myths, parables, anecdotes and stories are told and retold all the time. We can easily evaluate new meanings attributed to old parables and stories. How many times has Romeo and Juliet been performed? How many different reviews discuss the different emphasis and meaning in the play?

At what point did Romeo and Juliet become ‘real history’ to justify the new meaning put into the play?

The Narnia books are being retold in the movie format. Hasn’t there been a spate of Sydney Anglican articles analysing the emphasis in the Narnia movies? At what point do the Narnia movies have to become true history to reinterpret the Narnia books?

I agree with Gordo and others that the bible can stand alone and give us clear guidance and everything we need for salvation. I just think the EE is a good hermeneutic reference point when ‘hard corps’ creationists (over at Sydney Anglican Heretics blog) start suggesting that my obedience to God and salvation itself almost rest on understanding those 1 or 2 early chapters of Genesis their way. The EE becomes an important historically contemporary cultural correction to the temptation today, which is to thrust today’s scientific concerns onto the passage. The EE had been written something like 200 years before Genesis and was read out loud once a year in a formal celebration almost like mixing Anzac day and Christmas together (— according to John Dickson).

What is more relevant — the EE culture of the day that Genesis was rebuking, or a scientific question of 3000 years later?

Dave, I wasn’t even think of modern science. But I think my point applies just as much today as it did 3000 years ago. If the Genesis story doesn’t reflect what really happened, then it’s of no real use, and it’s no better than EE. I don’t mean it has to be literalistically interpreted. I’m sure you know what I mean: if it doesn’t reflect what really happened, if it’s not a description of reality, then it’s just another pagan origins myth.

There’s lots of value in origin myths - they tell us about people and the societies they lived in, and they can even tell us about ourselves. But only a story that accurately and truthfully reflects reality can tell us anything about the God of reality.

Hello Neil,
[quote author="Neil Foster"]It strikes me, then, that if it is essential for understanding something written in the Bible to have a context, then the Bible will provide the context. And so, while one can perhaps be sparked to fresh lines of thought by reading the extra-Biblical material, in the end if we can’t support a view by finding it somewhere else in the Bible we ought to be very tentative. And we humans always seem to have a tendency to give a higher priority than we ought to something new, rather than pursuing what we already have in the Bible.

We (principally Gordon and I) have had this discussion before (and elsewhere). The problem with the assertion that the Bible is sufficient for its own interpretation is that it fails to reflect on a number of factors: first, the point you make is in danger of forgetting that our very understanding of the languages in which Scripture was written is heavily dependent upon extra-biblical material. There’s simply no way to understand the Bible without recourse to external information! Second, language and cultural context are inextricably related in such a way that good translation cannot focus on one and ignore the other.

All this means that the assertion that the Bible is sufficient in and of itself is somewhat arbitrary. It is certainly true that some parts of the Bible are more transparent in meaning for us than others (but they still need translation!), but I don’t think this applies uniformly to the entire Bible. When it comes to passages like Gen 1, I think this information is particularly helpful. OTOH, I’d be a little wary of focussing exclusively on EE: there is a wealth of other pertinent literature from the ancient Near East which also has a significant bearing on our understanding of Genesis.

Thanks Enkers

Some solid sense in this debate.

Dannii, you’ve just repeated your original assertion without responding to my points at all, or demonstrating why your assertion actually still makes any sense in the light of my arguments.

Hi guys

The events in Genesis 2 are history, and they are arranged to follow the pattern of Creation in chapter 1. So, they are history, but like much of the Bible, are arranged chiastically so that the central point or ‘thesis’ is at the centre. The construction of the Tabernacle follows the same pattern. The NT follows the pattern, and the entire Bible follows the pattern. Without getting into the Creation debate again, any non-historical view of early Genesis is plain old gnosticism. And we wonder why we have to fight the “de-historicisation” of the resurrection? We’ve sold out to pop-science and pop-history and made ourselves the arbiters of what’s true in Scripture. We should be ashamed. It makes Christianity a joke. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read some of the fluffy arguments above. Pure sophistry. “God wrote a better fairy-tale.” The Hebrew doesn’t give us the option. Humble yourselves and submit to Scripture.

I’ve posted this quote (below) before. Someone’s immediate response last time was (from memory) to question this scholar’s credentials and motivation. Of course the labcoat priests are beyond such questioning.

“Oxford Hebrew scholar, Professor James Barr, on the meaning of Genesis

‘… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:

- creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience

- the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story

- Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.’

Reference

James Barr, Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford University, England, in a letter to David C.C. Watson, 23 April 1984. Barr, consistent with his neo-orthodox views, does not believe Genesis, but he understood what the Hebrew so clearly taught. It was only the perceived need to harmonise with the alleged age of the earth which led people to think anything different—it was nothing to do with the text itself.”

Basically, using the literary structure as an excuse to compromise with contemporary philosophy disregards the opinion of many experts. The entire Gospel of Matthew is structured chiastically, and contains many smaller similar structures. Does that make it non-history? There are plenty of external writings about Christ from the first and second centuries. Are they the key to interpreting the gospels?

Hey, you guys are crazy enough to believe someone rose from the dead! Be consistent.

With respect,
Mike Bull

So your argument appears to be that because I believe Jesus rose from the dead, therefore I have to ignore important historical and literary conversations about what appears to me to be a highly symbolic part of the bible?

Please Michael, we were having a fairly calm conversation here. Let’s keep it that way OK?

Dave, I’m not sure what your points are, except that if they’re anything about modern science you must have misunderstood my point too.