About Interpretations of Genesis

  • Thread starter Thread starter TurkishCatholic
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

TurkishCatholic

Guest
I’m an ex-protestant who take catechism lessons. We started from Old Testament and Genesis.

Since I’m ex-protestant I believed all things in Genesis were real history. But my priest told these things are stories that have inner meanings and not realy history.

Is this really true? This situation makes me feel doubtful. I don’t want to betray Jesus with saying “things in scriptures are just stories”. But I’m sure if a priest teaches something, it must be true. I’m really confused.
 
TurkishCatholic said:
Since I’m ex-protestant I believed all things in Genesis were real history. But my priest told these things are stories that have inner meanings and not realy history.
Click to expand...
Read the Catechism. There, you’ll learn what the Church teaches, in unambiguous language. I can only hope that you’ve misunderstood the nuance of what your priest told you.

The Church does teach that there really were two first true human beings (we give them the names ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ in the Bible). Some of the stories in the Bible – and, in particular, in the first few chapters of Genesis – are figurative, not literal. The Church would say that Genesis 3 is an example of a figurative story. That doesn’t mean that it’s not “real”, but rather, that a real lesson is taught through the medium of a story.

So, it’s difficult to address these nuances with a single, all-encompassing, blanket statement. Some narratives in Genesis are understood by Catholics to be historical narratives; others are not. We can’t just say “they’re not really history” without addressing which story and which genre of literature they represent.

And, of course, all Bible stories have “inner meanings”! Let’s look at the story of the Israelites in the desert who were getting bitten and killed by snakes. Moses really did raise up a serpent on a pole at the request of God. But, is that the ‘meaning’ of the story? Looking at it from a New Testament perspective, we see that the “inner meaning” of that story is to foreshadow Christ being raised up on a cross in order to save us!
 
TurkishCatholic said:
I’m an ex-protestant who take catechism lessons. We started from Old Testament and Genesis.

Since I’m ex-protestant I believed all things in Genesis were real history. But my priest told these things are stories that have inner meanings and not realy history.

Is this really true? This situation makes me feel doubtful. I don’t want to betray Jesus with saying “things in scriptures are just stories”. But I’m sure if a priest teaches something, it must be true. I’m really confused.
Click to expand...
From the Catechism:

The senses of Scripture

CCC 115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

CCC 116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.”

CCC 117 The spiritual sense . Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
  1. The allegorical sense . We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.
  2. The moral sense . The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.
  3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge , “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.
CCC 118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:

The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.

CCC 119 “It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”
 
I was kind of taught the same thing as you. When you read Jesus’ reply to the religious leaders on marriage in the Gospels, He quotes Genesis 1 & 2 indicating they were real events. The apostle John does the same thing to prove Jesus’ Deity when he begins his Gospel with “In the beginning” by borrowing from Genesis 1:1. Jesus uses this same phrase (“from the beginning”) to describe the first marriage. In both the OT & NT, Adam and Eve are depicted as real people. The apostle Paul stated that through one MAN (Adam) sin transgressed. Do these real historical events in Genesis & the rest of the OT also teach life lessons? Sure. But primarily, they are just as much historical events as the life of Jesus, including a literal 24-hour 6 day Creation week. If Jesus can rise from the dead, and since God is all-powerful, God can create everything in the universe in that time to reflect the six day work week and the the seventh day Sabbath for the Jews to rest and worship Him together. No reason for you to believe otherwise.
 
Last edited:
The stories in the Old Testament are told for a wide variety of reasons. Ruth tells the story of King David’s grandmother, a rags to riches story that emphasizes her devotion to her mother in law. It tells us something about the family of David, and so about David and about his Kingdom Israel. Is it historically accuurate? To some degree. Do we tell it because the history is important? Usually we tell it to emphasize how close poverty is to even the greatest people. Or how devotion can hold a family together. Or…

Stories throughout the Old Testament are there to describe God’s relationship with the people chosen to be God’s own people. Historical accuracy is rarely as important as the point being made, that God is committed to Israel no matter how unfaithful Israel is. Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham are stories that are more important for more than just the historical accuracy.

Scholars can debate the historical accuracy, but iy is generally more profitable for us to find other meanings. Was there a flood? IDK Are there rainbows? 🌈 Yes, there are. Is God merciful? Yes. Knowing if there was a flood is not as significant to most people as knowing God is merciful. We can set aside the historical questions most of the time and focus on the message in the story.
 
TurkishCatholic said:
don’t want to betray Jesus with saying “things in scriptures are just stories”.
Click to expand...
Jesus was fond of stories. He told lots of them. Now, those stories are known as parables, and they are part of scripture. So, what’s wrong with parts of the OT being stories? Do you think Jesus wasn’t aware of this?
 
Last edited:
The short form of how we can approach the first eleven or so chapters of Genesis is that it’s real history but told through the use of some symbols. We can’t deny it’s history, but it’s not as a historian today would write.

And I could say a lot more on that, but that’s all I have time for.
 
Last edited:
TurkishCatholic said:
I’m an ex-protestant who take catechism lessons.
Click to expand...
Welcome to the Catholic Church.
We started from Old Testament and Genesis.

Since I’m ex-protestant I believed all things in Genesis were real history.
Click to expand...
What do you mean by “real history”? Do you think that, for example, God actually lost track of the whereabouts of Adam and Eve?

Genesis 3:9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

If that were literally true, then it would mean that God is not all knowing. But God is all knowing. So, how do you explain this? Is this real history, in your opinion?
But my priest told these things are stories that have inner meanings and not realy history.
Click to expand...
Well, let’s take the incident above. God says to Adam and Eve, “where are you?” We believe this is a spiritual question. God is judging them and letting them know that they have lost their way.

Thus, it is a metaphorical story, a fable, which is pregnant with inner meaning, but not literally historical.
Is this really true?
Click to expand...
Not the way you fear. It’s not as though it’s a lie. It is a means of conveying truth in stories that men can understand.
This situation makes me feel doubtful.
Click to expand...
Don’t. Put your faith in God.
I don’t want to betray Jesus with saying “things in scriptures are just stories”. But I’m sure if a priest teaches something, it must be true. I’m really confused.
Click to expand...
I hope my explanation has helped.

May God bless you,

De Maria
 
Genesis is not written as an eye-witness account of events; compare that with the gospels, which were clearly written and intended as eye-witness testimony (John 19:35), or epistles (II Peter 1:16). Consider what the author intended. Did the authors of Genesis really intend to mean that literally happened? At the same time, it may actually have happened, how do we know? We are free to believe it literally, but we don’t stake our faith on literalism for Old Testament stories.
 
Whenever these OT and Genesis books are quoted by NT persons or writers of the scriptures they are quoted as real people and events in time. Not fables of sorts.
 
jericho777 said:
Whenever these OT and Genesis books are quoted by NT persons or writers of the scriptures they are quoted as real people and events in time. Not fables of sorts.
Click to expand...
We refer to stories that are not literal as if they were all the time.
 
I don’t buy that logic for a second. The all powerful eternal God does not have to tell stories to make His point. You think He is incapable of making it happen to show who He is. You have more faith in what science or philosophy have to say than God.

In the end it’s rationalizing away God.
 
Last edited:
jericho777 said:
In the end it’s rationalizing away God.
Click to expand...
Not at all. For one, God is, whether we have faith or not. For another, faith is not the same as magical thinking. It works under, alongside, and above, reasoning. If the NT writers quote OT intentionally as literal history, then we take that into account. It’s difficult to ascertain the intention of the writer, however, and whether they are quoting literal history, or truth in a legend.
 
Last edited:
“As written” is the key though. What did the writer intend? And for example, Adam and Eve eating a literal fruit as the original sin. The “fruit” as the knowledge of good and evil, definitely seems figuratively intended.
 
If it is, then I’m wrong. I’m not a gnostic or a seeker of secret knowledge. It’s an interesting point though, if the meaning is figurative, how do we know what it really means? That is why we have the church, tradition and the magisterium, though.
 
People in the OT believed these events to be real and literal. Just read how they are quoted and used.
 
jericho777 said:
I don’t buy that logic for a second. The all powerful eternal God does not have to tell stories to make His point. You think He is incapable of making it happen to show who He is. You have more faith in what science or philosophy have to say than God.

In the end it’s rationalizing away God.
Click to expand...
On the contrary, we “rationalize” the proper understanding of God. For example:

When God asks Adam and Eve where they are (Gen 3:9), do you really think that God had lost track of Adam and Eve? Was He really searching for them because He didn’t know their whereabouts?

Of course not. If He were, then He would not be all knowing God.

Therefore, the understanding of this verse has to be harmonized with the fact that God is all knowing.

But, if you disagree, then please explain how this verse can be understood literally.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top