Hi all
I have a hard time reconciling the Adam and Eve stories with scientific discovery. I also have a hard time with the “literal” truth of Adam and Eve, when the creation stores in the Bible contradict one another.
OK, so the thing is, I know I am supposed to believe these stories.
I had sort of made up my mind that I will just accept them as truth in a way that I can not currently comprehend. Not to try to MAKE them make sense to me. Let them remain a mystery that I may someday understand in this life, but definitely will understand in the next life.
Do you think this is enough?
No biblical scholar today would hold that Genesis presents history in the modern sense of that term.
The founding sacred biblical authors’ conception of history as a linear movement of events determined by divine intervention
and tending to a divinely conceived goal militates against such a presentation. They were interested in the “facts” of history
only inasmuch as they illustrated the divine plan behind Genesis. This interest was the overriding factor in their choice of material.
With regard to the patriarchal history, the basic “facts” included such items as the movements of the patriarchs,
their occupations, their relations with their neighbors and their marriages and deaths.
Their is every reason for the scientific biblical historian to accept the basic family history in Genesis, which served as the foundation
for the authors religious history. The sciences of ancient Near East history and especially of archaeology have shown the the underlying
social, juridical, political, geographical, and religious conditions in Genesis are precisely those of the 2nd millennium and could not have been
invented by an author living in a much later time period. Consequently; strictly on historical grounds, historians admit the existence of these
semi nomadic shepherds who originated, at least proximately, in Upper Mesopotamia, migrated to Canaan, lived out their lives much as
described in Genesis, and at least some whom descended into Egypt.
These “facts,” however; were primitively recorded and preserved in a popular form. Personal names were given etymological explanations to stress
the character either of the person or of his descendants. Family incidents were “dressed up” to serve as material for ballads and sagas sung
or recounted for the entertainment and edification of the local inhabitants. Some events could be given a framework based on local cult legends
or cultic practices to illustrate their religious significance.
This is the type of material passed down through the ages to give account of the preservation of history in Genesis, in individual units,
or in some cases, in cycles of traditions, to the sacred historians of later Israel. They in turn made their own literary contributions to clarify
their own purpose, which was, above all, religious.
Sacred historians through the ages wished to show the (“divine plan”) successively revealed in the events of history, and they therefore
stressed the divine initiative throughout.
Abraham’s migration to the land of Canaan is not a haphazard incident conditioned solely by the circumstances of the time period, but primarily
a divine call he could not ignore. The patriarch’s adventures in Canaan, his successful transactions with others, his escapes from harm,
his once said to be barren wife Sarah, the birth of his children, all are introduced and explained in the light of God’s
“divine plan” to form Himself a people who would ultimately possess the land and worship Him alone.
This divine plan is concretized in the form of a promise made to Abraham and in those of his descendants (“Isaac and Jacob”).
This unifying divine plan, expressed in the successive promises, similarly explains the adventures of these descendants.
The patriarchal history, therefore along with the Story of Adam and Eve, has an absolute unity by absolute reason of the “divine purpose”.
Because it is Supernatural, the purpose is beyond the effective control of modern scientific history.
Therefore; the ultimate meaning of Genesis like other books in the Bible, will always elude all human relativism,
and the historian who works outside its religious postulates.
Peace
Chris
