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Defenders 3: Excursus on Creation of Life and Biological Diversity (Part 18): Is the Biblical Primeval History To Be Understood as Literally True?
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A
Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today the Creation of Life and biological diversity, Part 18. For more information and resources from Dr.
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Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org Last week I promised Brad that I would address the Million Dollar Question today. If Genesis 1 to 11 belongs to the genre of mytho history, as I've argued, then the question arises, is the primeval history to be understood as literally true? Although the genealogies show a historical interest on the author's part, we've already seen reason to think that the genealogies should not be interpreted literalistically. Moreover, insofar as these chapters share the genre of myth, the question arises as to whether societies which embrace a myth understand that myth to be literally true. Now, certainly they understand it to be true, but do they take it to be literally true? It's so important to understand that figurative discourse can be true even if it is false when interpreted literalistically. So, for example, if I come in from the outside and I am drenched with water, and I tell you it's raining cats and dogs outside, that can be true even if there are not animals that falling from the sky. And the literalistic interpretation of figurative language is often the source of jokes. I saw a television program once where there's a knock at the door and a man tells his robot, robot, go answer the door. And the robot dutifully approaches the door and said, yes, door, what was it that you asked? Obviously something can be figuratively true and yet literally false. So were the myths of the ancient near east intended to be taken as literally true? Well, this question is not easily answered because we don't have direct access to the adherence of ancient myths so as to probe their attitudes toward the myths that they embraced. As in the case of genealogies, we must instead turn to comparative anthropological studies and to comparative ancient Near Eastern literature in order to try to find an answer. So let's first look at comparative anthropological data concerning societies which pass on myth. In distinguishing between myths and folk tales, the folklorist William Bascom points out that quite a number of primitive societies clearly recognize the distinction between what he calls factual fictional narratives. Factual and fictional narratives are clearly recognized, he says, as separate categories in many primitive societies. But it's not in dispute that myths are not taken to be fictitious by members of the society in which they're embraced, or that they're different from from folktales. In an oft cited article by the anthropologist Raffaele Patazzoni, he draws upon anthropological data similar to those adduced by Bascom to show that North American Indian tribes, and I quote, differentiate true stories from false stories. In the true stories, we have to deal with the holy and the supernatural, while the false ones, on the other hand, are of profane content. For example, the false ones would include stories about the antics of the trickster and accomplished rogue Coyote, a figure who in Indian tales is very much like Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons. Sometimes these false stories are differentiated from, quote, true tales as funny stories, that is, mere inventions having no substance. Well, I think it goes without saying that the members of a society which embrace foundational myths would never regard such sacred stories as profane or merely funny. Of course, myth is not pure fiction. It is a true story and not a false one. But it's a non sequitur to infer that it is therefore history, because truth comprises much more than history and so cannot simply be equated with it. The deeper question raised by these anthropologists is what conception or conceptions of truth is held by these various tribal peoples? The predicate true has a wide range of meanings, as is evident in such expressions as true gold, or a true friend, or a true yardstick, or the true path or a true statement. All of these use the truth predicate differently in their meaning. Why should we think that these tribal societies conception of truth is the philosopher's conception of truth as correspondence with reality? The anthropologist Theodor Gaster says that Petazzoni makes the mistake of conflating truth with efficacy. He confuses truth with efficacy. Gaster cautions, and I quote, before any general deductions can be drawn, it would seem necessary to determine exactly the meaning and frame of reference of the native terms rendered true and false. Does true mean, in this context, accurate or historical or real or valid or authenticated? Conversely, does false mean untrustworthy or unhistorical or unreal, fictitious or futile or spurious? A story might, for example, be valid functionally, that is, fully serve a ritual purpose, yet be invalid historically. Or it might be valid historically, yet futile and inefficacious as a cultic recitation. Again, it might be a genuine tradition, yet in itself fictitious. Or conversely, it might relate an actual historical fact, yet be a modern product, and so no genuinely traditional composition. Obviously, then, Gaster concludes, until we know precisely what words the primitive employs and in what sense he employs them, it is precarious to deduce from his distinction between true and false stories anything concerning the fundamental truth of myth. So the dichotomy drawn by tribal peoples between true stories and false stories is not sufficient to prove that members of those societies are expected to believe that the myths are literally true. The fact that myths, while accepted as true and authoritative, are not necessarily to be taken to be literally true is evident from examples of myths which seem to be clearly metaphorical or figurative. For example, the anthropologist William Doughty relates a myth from the Chukchi people of northeastern Siberia. And let me read you a paraphrase of this myth which I think is surely metaphorical. See if you don't agree. As I read it, here's how it goes. The self created Raven, his wife live together where there are no humans nor any other living creature. The wife says to Raven that he should try to create the earth. When he protests that he cannot create the earth, she says that she will try to create some companions for them. She falls to sleep and her black feathers become human and her talons turn into fingers. Her abdomen enlarges, and before she awakes from sleep, she has created three human children. Raven says, there, you have created humans. Now I shall go and try to create the earth. He flies away and asks all of the benevolent beings such as the dawn, may, midday and sunset for advice, but no one gives it. At last he comes to the place where the sky meets the horizon and sees a tent full of men. Raven learns that they have been created from the dust resulting from the friction of the sky meeting the ground. They are to multiply and become the first seed of all the peoples of of the earth. They ask Raven to create the earth for them, and he agrees to try. As he flies, he defecates, and every piece of excrement falls on. The water grows quickly and becomes land. Then he begins to urinate, and when a drop falls, it becomes a lake. And where a jet urine falls, it becomes a river. Then he defecates a very hard substance which becomes the mountains and the hills. When the men complain that they need food, Raven flies off and finds many different kinds of trees. He takes his hatchet and begins to chop, throwing the chips into the water which carries them into the sea. The various wood chips become walruses, seals, whales, polar bears, reindeer, every kind of sea and land creature. He says, now you have food. But the men still could not multiply, for there were no women yet. However, a spider woman comes and gives birth to four daughters who grow fast and become women. One of the men takes one woman as a companion. The next day, Raven goes to visit them and finds them sleeping separately in opposite corners of the room. Realizing that they will not thus multiply Raven calls a woman to him and treats her to sexual intercourse, which she finds rather pleasant. So she soon teaches the man how to multiply. And that is why girls understand earlier than boys how to copulate. End of story. Well now, the avian or bird like and human features and activities ascribed to raven seem to require that this myth was not taken literally. Gods and goddesses are frequently represented in myths as animals. And as we shall see, ancient Near Eastern myths also exhibit this kind of metaphoricalness. Let me ask if there's any comment or discussion at this time before we move ahead. So what we've discussed so far is the metaphoricalness, if you will. I wish there were a better word than that. I look to see if there's a word called metaphoricity, but apparently there isn't. So metaphoricalness was in the dictionary and that's what we're talking about is this metaphorical nature of some myths. Yes.
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Dr. Craig, you made the comment earlier that we don't have the ancient sources to ask how they took the.
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The ancient people.
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Right, the ancient people to ask how they took the myths literally. But given that there have been sources between the time the ancient people lived and today, do we not. Is there no sources much closer to that point in time that we can rely on to gauge their level of belief?
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Yes, I think that's quite correct. And that would be the literary evidence which will be what we'll look at next. First we we'll look at anthropological evidence from current contemporary peoples that are tribal societies that pass on myths, and then we'll look at the literary evidence. And if one wanted to, you could look at how other ancient peoples interpreted these stories. That's right.
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Talking about Jewish writings specifically.
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Right. The dating of these is difficult, of course, knowing when to date the oral traditions that lie behind Genesis 1:11 compared to extra canonical Jewish pseudepigrapha and apocryphal writings that arose during the intertestamental period. And certainly in those writings you do have reflections on these Old Testament personages, but those are hundreds of years later and that needs to be taken into account as well. I think. Yes. Some other comment? Yeah, Ben, I think everybody would agree that the Bible contains clearly metaphorical or symbolic language in certain places, but I just don't see it in Genesis 1 through 11. Can you give an example where you think, well, let's wait, I mean, we'll look at that later on. Right now I'm looking at the backgrounds to see how are myths understood by societies which embrace them as true, and we'll make application later on. So I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Let me share then, two additional anthropological data that suggest that something other than literal truth may be attributed to a society's myths. And this would be the plasticity and the flexibility of myths. The plasticity and flexibility of myths Plasticity has to do with the degree of variability of a myth at one time. Flexibility has to do with the degree of variability over time. So plasticity would be a kind of synchronic variability, whereas flexibility will be a diachronic variability. The plasticity of a myth is demonstrated by the variability of contemporaneous oral tellings of it, since that shows that the very tellers of the stories did not take them to have a rigidly fixed form. By contrast, amidst flexibility is demonstrated by its evolution over time, its mutability and adaptability to new situations and challenges. So plasticity has to do with the different versions of the story that can be told at the same time. Flexibility is the adaptability of the myth over time to changing circumstances. Now, the social anthropologist Raymond Firth gives a wonderful example of both the plasticity and flexibility of meth from the Tekopian people, which is an island in the Solomon Islands. The example concerns two versions of a remarkably flexible myth about the building of their sacred temple. The actual temple was built around 1700, and it was supposed to be modeled on the heavenly temple which is built by God. Now, in the contemporary version of the myth, God calls upon men to pass up to him the nails of to build the heavenly temple, but they refused to do so and pass up only coconut husks and fibers and cord. So in one version of the story, God, disgusted with them, departs with the nails to the land of the white men, leaving the Tekopians to make do with their inferior construction materials. In another version of the same myth, the model temple is actually being built by God in England, and he calls down to the Tecopians in English for the nails. But failing to understand English, the Tecopians keep handing up these coconut materials to him until God in disgust banishes them to the island of Tecopia to keeping the iron nails in the land of the white man. Now, Firth reflects that this is clearly an etiological myth designed to explain why the Tekopians have the poor construction materials that they do, whereas the white men have iron nails. Now here's the interesting part. The knowledge of these iron implements did not come to Tecopia before the arrival of the white man around 1800. And you remember the myth goes back to 1700. So this feature of the story of handing the nails, or God's requesting the nails to be handed up and the people refusing to do so must have been a later adaptation of the myth of the construction of the heavenly temple. So we see herein not only the flexibility of the original myth which was able to adapt to the arrival of the white man with his superior construction implements, but we also see its plasticity in the permitted variability in the telling of the story. In either version, despite the different locations and the different explanations, it is essentially the same story and both are acceptable in Tecopian society. Theodor von Baren cautions that if we ask members of the society whether their myths have changed, they will typically deny it. He says, and I quote, if asked, the answer of the informants as a rule will be that things are as they used to be since immemorial times. Times this is self evident because within their cultural frame, this is the only fitting answer. End quote. As a result, he says, Westerners sometimes form a misleading view of primitive cultures as static and stagnant. And I think for exactly the same reason, we have to be cautious of about native claims that their myths are absolutely or completely true. What else could they say? The plasticity and flexibility of myths lend support to the notion that what is at stake in believing a myth is not belief in its literal truth. The different versions of the myth that are believed by contemporaneous members of the society may be logically incompatible with one another. Nevertheless, a fundamental religious truth is communicated by the various versions of the myth. So it doesn't matter which version one relates. One doesn't bother to correct someone telling a different version of the myth, for it too expresses that same fundamental truth. Truth. If these myths were understood to be literally true, then they could not be changed in response to new challenges in ways that are incompatible with the earlier versions. But if both versions continue to express the same fundamental truth, then they can both be regarded as absolutely true, despite their differences. Any comment or question then on this feature of plasticity and flexibility of myths? Well, let's now turn then to look at the ancient Near Eastern literary evidence. As I already mentioned in our discussion of the function of genealogies, contemporary anthropological data will always be of uncertainty applicability to the stories told by ancient Israel. Rather, literary evidence from ancient Near Eastern mythology will be much more relevant. And when we examine the myths of Mesopotamia and Egypt, we find the same use of figurative language, plasticity and flexibility that is disclosed by the anthropological data that we've just surveyed. First, it's evident that ancient Near Eastern myths are often highly metaphorical rather than literal. Consider, for example, the story of Marduk's creation of the world in the epic poem the Enuma Elisheva, which we've examined already in this class. The classicist F.M. cornford has written with respect to the creation story in the Enuma Elish, and I quote, no one but a lunatic under the influence of hashish could ever arrive at the theory that the heaven or that the earth and the sky were originally formed by splitting the body of a dragon in half. No ancient Babylonian, looking up to the sky expected to see the desiccated body of Tiamat overhead. Nor did he expect to find the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers originating in Tiamat's eyeballs. As the Enuma Elish states, these are figurative images, acts of imagination and fantasy. As the classicist George Kirk puts it, acts are rather expressions of imagination and fantasy. They're not to be taken literally. Similarly, in the story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's killing the Bull of Heaven, which is the constellation Taurus, that story could not possibly be literal. In the story, the Bull of Heaven comes down to the city of Uruk and rampages through the city. But Gilgamesh and Quito kill the bull by grabbing it by its tail and stabbing it, and then butchering it and distributing the meat to the poor people. This is impossible to interpret literally. Not only can a stellar constellation not come down and rampage through the town and be slaughtered and eaten, but if it were, if it did literally happen, then Taurus should no longer be observable shining in the night sky. So the story is clearly, I think, to be interpreted metaphorically. Similarly, in Egyptian mythology, the sky could be depicted variously, for example, as the goddess Nut. N u T the goddess Nut is depicted as arched over the earth with her hands and feet touching the ground. But again, no Egyptian looking to the sky expected to see the body of a naked woman arched over him. Nor, I think we can hazard to say, did any caravan ever think that it might come upon newt's great legs and arms stretching up to the heavens. Again, although Egyptian myths often portray the sun God Re as sailing in a boat across the heavens, this boat, chock full of other gods and animate tools, nobody looking at the sun, thought that he would see such an entourage sailing across the sky. When the sun journeys into the underworld at night and reverts to its pre creation state. This cannot be intended literally. Did no soldiers on night watch or farmers rising before dawn ever notice that the world failed to return to a primordial state? See, sometimes the sun is depicted as undergoing rebirth at night. At sunset it enters into newt's mouth and then at sunrise it is birthed through her vagina and rises then in the sky. This is clearly metaphorical. Equally and obviously metaphorical is the depiction of the sun as a scarab or as a falcon. Since a rolling dung beetle or a falcon were thought to be appropriate images of the sun, the depiction of Egyptian gods and goddesses as having human bodies with animal heads should not be taken as literal pictures of them. Erich Hornung, who is an Egyptologist
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and
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has written a fine book on the gods of Egypt, affirms that Egyptian religion lived on the fact that the gods really do exist. But he says in order to describe this reality, it had to speak in metaphorical and representational images of the gods. He says, and I quote, these images serve to express a content that can perhaps be appropriately expressed only in this way. End quote. Not only does the metaphorical and figurative language of ancient Eastern myths support a non literal reading of these myths, but also their plasticity and flexibility indicate that, that they are not best interpreted literally. Now before I say something about that, let me ask if there's any comment or discussion of the metaphoricalness of ancient Near Eastern myths. Yes, Jonathan, I'm just curious because Islam came to mind when I was thinking about this.
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You know, it talks about, you know, the sun setting in a mud puddle and things like that. Have you done any thought about how stories like this should be understood in terms of Islam?
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I haven't. With respect to Islam, I know that Muhammad was deeply offended at the polytheism of pagan Arabia that he was raised in and so wanted to have a conception of God that was much, much higher and more exalted than that of these pagan polytheistic religions. But I'm not familiar with images of God that are used in Islam. So sorry, I can't speak to that.
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Yes. So Dr. Craig, I recall you mentioned about this a long time ago, but isn't the way we interpret any text by looking into the, the situation of the scientific knowledge at that time is a form of concordism or asychesis, like you mentioned, nobody look up in the sky is expecting a boat, for example. But that's because there is no boat in the sky. Isn't it a form of. Because there is.
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No, I don't think that's why? I'm not saying that because there is no Tiamat in the sky. That that's why Babylonians didn't think this Babylonians, looking up at the sky, saw the same thing that you and I do. The stars and Babylonian astronomy charts in meticulous detail the movement of the stars. They did not see the skeleton and desiccated flesh of a dragon overhead. And similarly, with regard to Newt, these images of the sky goddess or other pictures of gods, these weren't interpreted literally. And as we'll see, the plasticity of these is just one more indication of this, because the sky can be pictured or imaged in many, many different ways which are incompatible with each other. So in no sense is this a concordist critique of trying to impose modern science on these texts, because it's not modern.
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Because back then they already know that there is no boat in the sky.
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Right, right, right. What I'm trying to do is to look at these texts and put myself within the horizon of the original audience, put myself in their shoes, so to speak, and say, did they really think that the way the sky and the earth were created was by splitting the body of a dragon in half? And I think the answer is pretty clearly no. Or similar. Did Egyptians really believe that there is this naked woman hanging over us with her palms and the soles of her feet resting on the ground? And again, I think the answer is clearly no. They didn't understand these images in that literalistic fashion. Yes.
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Brad, I like this. The idea that other societies had myths that are clearly metaphorical. I don't think you're suggesting we can impute that to Genesis. So I really like this new standard that says, is it clearly metaphorical? Is it something we know that is metaphorical? Or are we reading into the text because we don't like it, that it is indeed metaphorical? I like this new standard.
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All right. What I'm trying to do. Well, I'll just reserve comment on that and we'll ask only $200,000 for the next question. Just don't put too much emphasis on the word clearly, as though we have to have certainty about these things. What we're asking is, what's the most plausible way understanding these stories?
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Oh, no, no. I heard you say it. I wrote it down. It's got to be clearly metaphorical because it is presented to us as God's word, and God had a role in writing it. So if we're going to determine that it's mythological or historical myth or whatever it is, then it better darn sure. Be very clear that that is true.
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It's important to understand that Scripture employs a variety of genres, literature. And it's instructive in this regard to compare the first book of the Bible with the last book of the Bible. The book of Revelation is also God's word, and yet no one interprets that literalistically. Everybody recognizes that this is Jewish apocalyptic literature where multi headed monsters crawling out of the sea and trying to take over the earth are not similar to Japanese grade C horror movies. Rather, these are symbols for nations and alliances of nation states that will be combating each other. And so God's word can use metaphor, figurative language and so forth. So we mustn't take that as our default take as our default position literal interpretation. That could really be misleading. We have to ask ourselves, what is the genre of the Bible book that we're reading? And that will help us then to discern how to interpret it.
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That sounds good.
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Okay, one more, I think, and then we need to close.
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Yes, Mark, sure, Dr. Craig. Appreciate the details on the ancient myths. Okay, so here's my question today. Living in this age of fake news and where fiction dominates nonfiction. My question, and this is a broad question, I hope I don't want to take it off track from our focus today, but is there really any time in history where we can't find a genre where people are making up myths to convey their truths?
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This is one of the most interesting things that these modern folklorists and mythographers emphasize is that contrary to the sort of arrogant attitude of 19th century scientistic thinkers that we as moderns have graduated from beyond the level of myth which was characteristic of primitive man, you often hear these people referred to as primitives and savages. Now, mythographers say every culture, every age has its myths, including us, but so often we just don't recognize them.
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Right. So where is this literalistic genre out there?
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Well, I think, for example, when someone writes a historical work, he is intending to give an actual account of what happened. Yeah.
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And then there's still debates on that, you know, the assassination of jfk. People have still ideas on the way they think that modern story rolled out. And again, I don't want to detract from our focus on Genesis. I'm just skeptical that there is really any genre by this standard where we can say, oh, this is a literalistic genre.
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Yeah, I think that that's just unrealistic, Mark. I mean, clearly we can use figures of speech all the time, but history, scientific reports, the Mueller report, these things are intended to be taken literally. They're not life stories that we are intended.
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I understand. Again, I don't want to take off the track, but, you know, science and biology is dominated by an evolutionary framework. So, again, I am very skeptical. I'm not saying I wouldn't believe it, but this goes to the heart of us.
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You have been in the class here for a while and you seem. I think you're interpreting the word myth incorrectly here. We're talking about the folklorist understanding of myth, correct? Where this is a traditional sacred narrative that attempts to establish realities that are present for the author and his audience in the primordial past. And so things like stories about JFK and the other shooter on the grassy knoll, those aren't myths in the sense that we're talking about it. Okay, okay, let me wrap it up then. And we will next time. Then look at two of these further factors of ancient new Eastern myths. Their plasticity and flexibility, as well as their metaphoricalness. So let's end with a benediction. And now may the God of creation, the source of all reality outside himself, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, sins to reconcile us to God and the Holy Spirit, who brings about new birth and power to live holy lives, fill our lives this week so that we might live pleasing in his sight. Amen.
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The copyright for the preceding material is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.