Genesis Account, not literal

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Why does Genesis have to be taken literally to convey truth? Indeed. If that were the case, then the parables of Jesus would not convey truth either.
 
The more ancient way of reading, understanding the figurative language as figurative, and seeking the spiritual significance rather than the “history” has made a comeback.
Our Catechism specifically states all other senses of Scripture are based on the literal.
 
The senses of Scripture

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.
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."83
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.84
  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”.85
  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.86
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.87

"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."88

But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.89
 
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  1. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church” . According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81).
  2. Be attentive to the analogy of faith .82 By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.
 
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Literal does not mean what you think. There is a long tradition in scripture studies of seeking to understand a text in the way the author intended.

This was subverted for a period by enlightenment ideas about knowledge and history. And yes, those ideas were anti-catholic, since they involved saying we could be certain about realities that are beyond our capabilities. Catholicism has always taught the complexity of truth, deep connections within our relationships to God.
 
Thanks for posting some of the basics of scripture interpretation. Here is some more from the Catechism:
109…To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.
110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. “For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.”
111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.”
 
here is a long tradition in scripture studies of seeking to understand a text in the way the author intended.
Correct. Understanding of scripture grows organically, that is it gets fuller like a bush. Entire branches do not get cut at the root. The one’s closest in time have the best contextual understanding. Tradition preserves this across generations.

If we just figured it out, then the Holy Spirit must have been sleeping.
 
A) No “human” up to that point in time had a soul. God decided to give a soul to ONE person (or two, if you count ‘Eve’)’. No one else - parents, siblings, friends, tribesmen, etc - had souls.
B) God somehow conveyed the concept of morality to this person, either through instinct, or some other form of communication.
C) This person, the FIRST AND ONLY person on earth among thousands of other kinsmen to have a soul, decided to reject this ethics and go against the communication from God he was given.
D) All other genetic lines in existence at the time eventually died out. ONLY that genetic line exists today.
E) We do not know how long it took for the other genetic lines to die out, but it can quite plainly be stated that for hundreds if not thousands of years, the world was populated by “soulless” humans.
The short of this is that you are incorrect. The long is linked to with a post by me.
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Darwin's Theory of Evolution is not scientific Apologetics
The exact details of course have some inherent speculation, but here are some general ideas. Evolution occurred in non-human species and is the perfect explanation for them. But humans were created independently via a miracle, which is outside the scope of science to prove/disprove and therefore cannot be scientifically proven. And quite possibly looks like evolution from a scientific perspective. (Personally, I don’t subscribe to that idea, but it would be acceptable.) Throughout the man…
 
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I’m 59, and up until a couple of years ago I grudgingly accepted the conventional “wisdom” that “the Bible is not a scientific book, and should not be taken literally.” I say “grudgingly,” because not believing the creation account as told in the Bible opens the door to questioning the entire Bible. A couple of years ago I read Walt Brown’s textbook which addresses the problems with “conventional wisdom,” and provides what appear to me to be SCIENTIFICALLY FOUNDED proofs of creation as described in the Bible. Until you’ve read it yourself, don’t laugh at me. And be sure to read the endnotes!!! Go to www.creationscience.com and just read a few pages to see if it’s worth your time. For me, it was a life-changer.
 
Last Sunday 1 Billion or so Catholics heard this at Mass

GN 2:18-24

The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a suitable partner for him.”
So the LORD God formed out of the ground
various wild animals and various birds of the air,
and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them;

**whatever the man called each of them would be its name. **
The man gave names to all the cattle,
all the birds of the air, and all wild animals;
but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.
You really, really, REALLY don’t want to go there.

OK… since you went there:

If the Genesis creation narratives are historical, literal narratives… then how do you account for the fact that Genesis 1 claims that animals were created before humans were created, but Genesis 2 claims that animals were created after Adam was created? 🤔
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LateCatholic:
B) God somehow conveyed the concept of morality to this person, either through instinct, or some other form of communication.
The Church teaches in the Catechism that the moral law is present in each human person:
The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man (#1954)

The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties (#1956)
Since this belongs, properly, to human persons, it would not be present in unensouled hominins.
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LateCatholic:
C) This person, the FIRST AND ONLY person on earth among thousands of other kinsmen to have a soul, decided to reject this ethics and go against the communication from God he was given.
Not sure why this is surprising to you. All humans continue to “reject [God’s] ethics” and “go against the communication from God” that we are given.
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LateCatholic:
D) All other genetic lines in existence at the time eventually died out. ONLY that genetic line exists today.
You’re ignoring the more plausible explanation: all other genetic lines were assimilated into the human line.
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LateCatholic:
E) We do not know how long it took for the other genetic lines to die out, but it can quite plainly be stated that for hundreds if not thousands of years, the world was populated by “soulless” humans.
That would depend on when, exactly, ensoulment took place. Before the “out of Africa” event, perhaps, would be the easiest explanation.
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LateCatholic:
Sure is not satisfying though. I’m personally not convinced.
Your time with us at CAF has been replete with examples of your lack of satisfaction and conviction in Catholic teaching. 😉
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LateCatholic:
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Carmel:
Whats to stop us likewise deconstructing the rest of the Bible ?
Nothing.
No. Not even close. What prevents us is Church teaching that asserts that certain events really occurred.
 
It literally happened this way. Who was the author of the Old Testament?

John 5:46

[New International Version]
If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
Moses is seen as being the ‘author’ of the Pentateuch not by virtue of personally writing it down, but by being identified as being involved in the development of the Scriptural traditions. Source criticism in the 19th and 20th centuries identifies a variety of styles, pointing to the existence of a number of authors/editors of the Pentateuch.
Our Catechism specifically states all other senses of Scripture are based on the literal.
And, by “literal”, it means literal sense (which means “the intent of the human author”), not “the literal words on the page taken as a literal narrative.”
If we just figured it out, then the Holy Spirit must have been sleeping.
Or, perhaps, we are the ones who have just woken from our slumber… 😉
 
You really, really , REALLY don’t want to go there.

OK… since you went there:

If the Genesis creation narratives are historical, literal narratives… then how do you account for the fact that Genesis 1 claims that animals were created before humans were created, but Genesis 2 claims that animals were created after Adam was created? 🤔
For the umpteenth time - Gen1 is an account of the order of creation. Gen 2 is the importance of man. They are complementary.
 
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