Genesis 1-11: Literal history, or mytho-history? (1)

Some comments on William Lane Craig's book IN QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL ADAM

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

Introduction

There is a new potential problem for biblical Christianity in our time that has not yet been sufficiently recognized. For lack of a better term, I will call it Evangelical Scholasticism. It can be compared to the Medieval Scholasticism that dominated Roman Catholic theology in the centuries preceding the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Part of this Evangelical Scholasticism includes interpreting Genesis 1-11 according to the principles not of Aristotle, but of modern secular knowledge. This part of the Bible is first declared to be mythological in character and never meant to be taken literally, after which science is turned to as the source of real knowledge.

This is a very bad mistake. The first 11 chapters of Genesis, especially the first three, contain many profound and beautiful truths which should not be sacrificed on the altar of human so-called rationalism. They reveal to us our place in the cosmos, and explain both the wonders of human consciousness and the depravity of which we are all capable of at our worst.

The fact that such things are unacceptable to the wisdom of the world is irrelevant, except insofar as we have to patiently listen to the objections and concerns of unbelievers and answer as the Spirit leads.

Too few people consider the very real limitations and of secular human wisdom when it comes to these things. For example, we read in chapter 1 verse 3 that God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” What does independent human intelligence unaided by revelation have to say about this?

God spoke the entire universe into being by his word alone, an event completely outside the range of science, and above and beyond any paltry scientific criticisms.

I understand that people have problems with the age of the earth, the fossils, and the dinosaurs. We cannot just present them with Bible verses and tell them to “Have faith.” We need to have answers, but we do not need to abandon biblical truth to find those answers.

In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, his divine origins and real nature were completely concealed behind an appearance of natural origins. When people responded to Christ’s mighty works by saying “Don’t we know his parents, his brothers and his sisters?” Christ did not explain to them. His supernatural origins were unknown, and unknowable, hidden and concealed from them.

The reasons for this concealment are not hard to guess. God was not playing any tricks on anyone, or deceiving anyone. If Christ had come floating down from heaven with legions of angels and blaring trumpets, and walked around in the form described in Revelation chapter 1, people would have been too terrified to respond. So, God concealed his true nature to give room for real faith and unbelief.

Christ’s miracles attested to who he was, and if people refused to believe because they relied more on outward appearances, they are without excuse.

Similarly, the spiritual origins of the created universe may have thus been concealed, in order to allow room for the possibility of unbelief, without which faith would have had no meaning.

If all of the scientists could undeniably see that the earth had suddenly appeared out of nothing, and that very recently, it would be impossible to deny the existence of God. For people to have real faith, they must also have the option of unbelief. Thus, if God deliberately shrouded the origins of earth in mystery, he has the right to do that.

At this point, we need to have faith. We need to have reverence for the mystery of God’s almighty power which is far beyond anything that we can conceive. To dismiss divinely revealed truth when it seems to conflict with science shows a profound lack of faith, and a deep conformity to the world.

And what if the universe was created in 6 distinct phases? I prefer 24 hour days, and it is incredibly foolish to say that God, who invented all of the laws of physics and of science, who designed and created the sun, would not be able to tell when 24 hours had passed until the sun was created. Someone else may prefer six eons. As long as the precise order described in Genesis is preserved in six distinct phases, I don’t think it matters.

So what if it would take millions of years for starlight to reach earth from the vast reaches of space? Is God able to create myriads of stars, but unable to create light rays extending from those stars? Scientific laws do not extend thus far. This is not a scientific topic and cannot be weighed in a scale or dissected and viewed under a microscope.

And what if, in the formation of the earth and the seas, all of the geological processes that seem to prove great antiquity actually all occurred, in their proper sequence? What if mountain ranges rose and glaciers advanced and retreated and canyons were carved out by rivers and the continents drifted apart, all in natural sequence, but in a split second of time, or at incredibly high rates of speed in a few hours?

Who can say what happened in those first days and hours of creation? Certainly not any secular thinkers who are blind and dead in sin.

We have to have faith in the Word of God, and trust him that in due time all secrets will be made known.

Scholasticism

That Christians should place too much confidence in worldly wisdom is not a new thing. In the Middle Ages, there was Scholasticism, a philosophical and theological movement that sought to harmonize and integrate the truths of divine revelation as presented in the Bible with the truths of classical philosophy. Since all truth was from God, it was felt that these two different bodies of truth could be used in combination to arrive at deeper understanding of life’s mysteries and problems.

This system of philosophical theology, or theological philosophy, was worked out largely within a Roman Catholic context. It was particularly focused on the thought of Aristotle and relied heavily on his system of logic and his methods of analysis to shed light on various issues, including theological and biblical ones.

For example, the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, by which the communion elements came to be seen as the literal body and blood of Christ, while retaining the outward appearance of bread and wine, was explained in terms of Aristotelian concepts such as substance (the essential reality) and accident (the outward appearance) or something.

This approach led to highly complex and intellectually sophisticated explorations of Christian teaching within a framework of human philosophy - the truths given to us by God via revelation in tandem with the truths accessible to human intelligence without such revelation.

Revelation, being divine, was supposed to be primary, and human knowledge secondary - but such is the wickedness of the human heart and the deceitfulness of reason that revelation became inextricably intertwined with philosophy over time, and biblical teachings were often interpreted and explained - without sufficient reverence and humility - according to the thought processes of human reason.

The Protestant Reformation as well as the secular Renaissance contributed to the demise of Scholasticism. Detailed studies of minor questions seemed increasingly irrelevant to those seeking deeper biblical truths directly from Scripture itself. Those with more secular interests came more and more to see the dead hand of Aristotle as an obstacle to human progress in the study of nature.

Nowadays Medieval Scholasticism is viewed primarily as a subject of interest to historians of Western thought, academic theologians, and philosophers. It is of no interest to most Christians - although the writings of Thomas Aquinas are still read, and he is regarded as the Doctor Angelicus (“Angelic Teacher”) of the Church of Rome.

The big mistake of the Scholastics was to assume a unity of truth uniting the divinely inspired revelations of Scripture and the truths accessible to human reason apart from God. Once again, revelation came first in theory. It was recognized that some truths could not be reached by reason and were knowable only through revelation, and human reason was supposed to be subordinate to divinely revealed truth - but this set in motion a process whereby reason assumed an ever increasing role, and the authority of revelation was diminished.

It was not long before biblical understanding became ensnared in webs of human philosophical concepts, including extremely detailed rules of definition, reasoning and argumentation.

There is in fact a huge gulf between the spiritual truths presented in the 66 books of the Holy Bible and revealed only by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and the natural wisdom that any intelligent person might attain to, given the proper amount of study.

This is not to despise human reason which, in its proper sphere, has great significance and value. We as human beings have it solely because we are created in the image of God, and by its light we can do many things. We can design, build, plant, invent, discover and find many ways to improve our lives and contribute to human flourishing.

When, however, the truths of revelation become ensnared and entangled with the false and deceptive wisdom of the world - the false and deceptive wisdom that seeks to explain deeper things without due regard for our Creator - then we begin to go astray. The simplicity of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:3) becomes obscured, and people who are vainly puffed up by their fleshly minds (Colossians 2:18) can divert people from the very truths that they claim to be upholding.

In the end, those who fail to maintain a proper balance between reason and revelation may even forsake “the fountain of living waters” and make for themselves “broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

Evangelical Scholasticism

In the last few years, I have started to wonder about the emergence of what might be called Evangelical Scholasticism. The truths of divine revelation presented to us in the teachings and in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the books of the Old and the New Testaments, are being increasingly obscured by admixtures of worldly wisdom.

This is particularly true when it comes to the fields of modern science, philosophy and psychology. The perceived truths of secular wisdom begin to unduly influence Christian apologetics and even evangelism as we go too far in attempting to make scriptural Christianity more relevant and more comprehensible to the denizens of the contemporary world.

Now, making Christianity relevant and comprehensible are worthy goals in and of themselves. We as Christians need to understand the world we live in. It does not do simply to repeat Bible verses, or baldly assert biblical authority without any concern for the understandings of those to whom we are speaking. But in trying so hard to make Christianity intelligible and acceptable to the world, we may lose our balance. We may lose our perspective, to the extent that our message is now being altered to fit the demands of the world.

This is a more common problem than we might think. In the end, we might be more influenced by the world than the world is by us - and our desire to make Christianity intellectually respectable in the eyes of the world may cause us to end up in a much different location than we originally intended.

In the church at large, there is much evidence of the at first gradual, but now intensifying surrender to worldly influences in various areas. When it comes to Evangelical Scholasticism, the growing tendency to conform to the lost and unbelieving world on an intellectual level is manifested in different ways.

For one thing, there are elaborate philosophical and theological treatises written on highly academic levels that are spiritually lifeless and cold, with little or no practical relevance.

Far be it from me to disparage all academic writing and scholarship - “For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity” (Ecclesiastes). It does seem at times, however, as if some people are trying to prove that Christians can be intelligent too, and are capable of meeting the best minds of the secularists on equal terms. In order to do so, however, they must allow themselves to be increasingly drawn into secular intellectual frameworks and terminology (including even postmodernism) that are very far removed from the Spirit of Christ.

A second sign of Evangelical Scholasticism is evident in the academic, theological and intellectual justifications for homosexuality and feminism. It is not just the unbiblical positions taken, but also the depth and the erudition of these attempts to defend such positions. Learning and scholarship are now being used in clever ways to justify unbiblical and immoral practices - and clever semantic juggling was also a hallmark of the old Scholasticism at its worst.

This is such a difficult passage. What does the Greek really mean?

When it says that ‘the husband is head of the wife,’ what does ‘head’ mean?

Was Paul condemning all homosexuality, or only unloving and promiscuous homosexual relationships?

You have to be careful not to take these verses out of context. You see, in the culture of that day, they had certain ideas, but things are different now.”

I contend that profound and sophisticated intellectual conformity to the world is also evident in approaches to the book of Genesis - so much so, that Genesis chapters 1-11 is being increasingly submerged beneath rising flood tides of modern rationalism and skepticism even within the churches.

This has been going on since the nineteenth century, but the once clear boundaries between belief and unbelief are being obscured. What was once considered as nothing more than a denial of biblical authority is increasingly being sanctioned by scholars, experts and theologians who believe that the truths of God’s revelation need to be harmonized to a growing extent with the truths and the logic and the wisdom of the lost and fallen world.

To put it another way, whereas once denial of the historicity of Genesis was considered to part and parcel of rejecting the Bible as a whole, it is now becoming increasingly plausible for people to maintain belief in the Bible in general, while maintaining that the opening chapters are mythology.

For example, not long ago I was engaged with a conversation on this subject in the Comments section of a Substack article. My opponent maintained that he believed in the Bible, except for some of the miracles in the Old Testament, especially in Genesis.

I asked how he could avoid applying that same logic to the New Testament. If the miraculous is impossible in one part of the Bible, why not the rest of it? His response was that the New Testament was different in character from the mythological parts of the Old; that the New Testament was written much more recently, in the full light of history, where as the subject matter of such writings as Genesis was lost in the mists of time and hence inherently more mythological.

The miracles of Christ are to be believed, because we know that Christ as the Son of God had the power to do those things, there were many eyewitnesses, and the Four Gospels are historical narratives are meant to be read as straightforward descriptions of fact - unlike the opening chapters of Genesis, which are of a very different character.

To me, this is a very unsound approach to the interpretation of Scripture.

In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration

This differentiation between historical and mythological parts of the Bible is explained in depth and with sophisticated scholarship by William Lane Craig in his book, In Quest of the Historical Adam.

I would like to focus more closely on this book, because I believe it makes the best possible case that can be made for the idea of some parts of the Bible being historical narrative, and other parts being “mytho-historical” - that is, containing historical truth, but expressed in a mythological manner.

That, by the way, was C. S. Lewis’ position. He believed that the opening chapters of Genesis were the Word of God, but that in them God was speaking to us through myths, myths that expressed truths of creation, but not in a literally historical way.

Thus, Dr. Craig would not say that “The Bible needs to be subordinated to the demands of secular materialism.” On the contrary, when it comes to the New Testament, if any rationalist skeptic wants to assert that miracles are impossible, and that the miraculous elements in the Gospel narratives of the life of Christ never occurred, Dr. Craig would assert that the miracles did in fact happen. He would argue that Christ as the Son of God had the power to do such things, and scientific knowledge has no power to deny the reality of things beyond the reach of its authority.

It is Dr. Craig’s contention - and that of many others as well - that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are a very different sort of writing. They convey the profound truths that God created the heavens and the earth, and that a historical Adam and Eve were our first parents. However, at the same time it is claimed that those chapters were written in a different literary genre, in a different type of writing, than the straightforward historical writings that we find in the four Gospels.

Genesis 1-11 (and other parts of the Old Testament as well I suppose) are described as belonging to a type of literature Craig calls “mytho-history,” and hence were never meant to be taken literally.

Thus, we see Genesis 1-11 described as containing profound truths, but truths expressed in a way that should not be taken literally. Among the elements which Dr. Craig defines as being not meant to be taken literally, we find:

• the creation of the world in six literal days

• the existence of day and night prior to the creation of the sun

• vegetarian beasts of prey prior to the Fall

• the fashioning of Adam from the dust of the ground

• the talking snake

• the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

• the incredible ages of the men before the flood

• Noah’s flood

• the Tower of Babel

• and some other lesser points.

I have been told that I am misrepresenting WLC’s concept of mytho-history by a Craig supporter, but he did not explain how, or what I needed to correct.

As to the list of items declared to be fantastic by Dr. Craig given above, this is discussed in chapter 4: “Are the Primeval Narratives of Genesis 1-11 Myth? Part 2)” in the online source listed at the end of the article. Unfortunately, changing the font size alters the pagination, so giving page numbers has no meaning. I have ordered a hard copy of the book and hope to be able to rectify this. The electronic version on Hoopla does have a search function.

In the meantime, Section 10 of that chapter is called “Fantastic and Inconsistent Elements,” and is easily located. It has an italicized subheading called Fantastic Elements. These Craig defines, in the second sentence opening the subsection, thusly:

I take it that fantastic elements are those which, if taken literally, are so extraordinary as to be palpably false.

This is followed by sub-subheadings, also italicized, listing such fantastic and unbelievable elements as: Six-Day Creation . . . Vegetarianism . . . The Snake . . . The Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil . . . The Rivers of Eden . . . The Cherubim (and the flaming sword guarding the way to the tree of life) . . . The Antediluvians’ Life Spans . . . Noah’s Flood . . . The Table of Nations . . . The Tower of Babel . . . The Age of the Earth.

Because - according to Craig’s understanding - the biblical author (authors?) never intended such things to be taken literally, we are free to turn to scientific knowledge for more detailed explanations of what might have occurred, in a way that would not be possible or necessary with the New Testament.

Before going further, it might be beneficial to elaborate briefly on these three different genres of writing: mythology, narrative history, and mytho-history (other genres being biography and autobiography, poetry, mystery, science-fiction, and so on).

An example of mythology would be a story that no one believes to be factually true, yet one that still presents some sort of truth anyway. For example, if one of the Greek gods were walking along disguised as a human, saw some form of injustice, punished it, and then turned to a bird and flew away in the sight of an astonished audience, no one today would believe that to be true. It does, however, present important lessons: (1) that there are higher spiritual that sometimes intervene in our affairs, and (2) you shouldn’t do bad things because those powers might punish you if you do.

Historical narrative requires no explanation. It is a straightforward relation of events that actually occurred, as truthfully as possible (allowing for human subjectivity and error). Thus, when we read that George Washington defeated General Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, with the help of Admiral de Grasse and the French fleet, we understand that as meant to be factual.

Mytho-history, however, is a combination of the two. Thus, if we were to say that Washington won the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 with the help of some ancient Indian warrior spirits who were rewarding Washington because he respected an Indian burial site on his estate, we would have mytho-history: a real historical event explained in an unhistorical way.

Again, since my understanding of Craig’s concept of “mytho-history” has been challenged by a Craig supporter, here is what Craig says about it. In chapter 5, “Is Genesis 1-11 Mytho-History,” Craig says:

A good example of the mytho-historical genre more familiar to Western reader (sic) would seem to be Homer’s account of the Trojan War in the Iliad. According to classicist G. S. Kirk, ‘much of the Iliad is obviously historicizing in content….Even those least confident in the existence of a Trojan War concede that some attack took place and that some Achaeans were among the attackers….’ The prime exception is the role of the gods in the history.

This is not rocket science. “Mytho-history” is a mixture of the historical (events which did take place) and the mythological (Greek gods).

I do not see any other way to interpret this.

It is my assertion, and my belief, that this is not the right way to read Genesis. I maintain that the book should be read as literal history, and that the events described therein actually occurred (it being clear that they are not explained in detail, just as the factual statement “Washington defeated Cornwallis” does not tell us what strategy Washington used or what errors Cornwallis might have made).

What do I know?

Someone might logically ask, who am I to disagree with one of America’s foremost living Christian apologists, a man of fantastic erudition and deep scholarship? And C.S. Lewis! One of the biggest guns in the arsenal of 21st century Evangelicalism! Surely his beliefs must hold more weight than mine.

That is a fair question, and I will try to answer it in the next part of this essay (I expect it will have three parts). I will explain why I believe the Bible, including Genesis 1-11, like the rest of the Bible, to be the divinely inspired and holy Word of God, and in a category completely apart from and far beyond any merely human mythology.

I will try to the best of my limited ability to defend the literal truthfulness of the book not by appeals to Creation science, which I have not studied, but by arguing the limitations of conventional science, which has no authority outside of its proper sphere - and a universe created out of nothing by the spoken word of God alone is infinitely beyond the reach of human criticism.

“God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” What does science have to say about this? Nothing. Here, science must be silent before the majesty of God. And, we must not confuse empirical science proper with the philosophical speculations of scientists that go far beyond any evidence and have no real weight at all.

I will further argue, that reducing the miraculous elements in Genesis to the level of mythology so that we might subordinate them to corrupt and fallible human wisdom is a bad mistake, that unnecessarily concedes too much to the forces of human rationalism.

Also, I will look more closely at Dr. Craig’s book, God willing, and point out what I consider to be some errors contained therein. In this context, it will be necessary to look more closely at the details of Adam and Eve’s fall, including the talking snake, which Genesis 3:15 directly links to Satan.

This is also linked to Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, when Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, successfully withstood the temptations of Satan as the first Adam failed to do.

For those who might want to have a look at it, Dr. Craig’s book is available online at https://www.hoopladigital.com/ebook/in-quest-of-the-historical-adam-william-lane-craig/14590233

Here is the summary of the book from the same source:

Was Adam a real historical person? And if so, who was he and when did he live?
William Lane Craig sets out to answer these questions through a biblical and scientific investigation. He begins with an inquiry into the genre of Genesis 1—11, determining that it can most plausibly be classified as mytho-history-a narrative with both literary and historical value. He then moves into the New Testament, where he examines references to Adam in the words of Jesus and the writings of Paul, ultimately concluding that the entire Bible considers Adam the historical progenitor of the human race-a position that must therefore be accepted as a premise for Christians who take seriously the inspired truth of Scripture.
Working from that foundation of biblical truth, Craig embarks upon an interdisciplinary survey of scientific evidence to determine where Adam could be most plausibly located in the evolutionary history of humankind, ultimately determining that Adam lived between 750,000 and 1,000,000 years ago as a member of the archaic human species Homo heidelbergensis. He concludes by reflecting theologically on his findings and asking what all this might mean for us as human beings created in the image of God, literally descended from a common ancestor-albeit one who lived in the remote past.