Bible Question:
Are the creation accounts recorded in Genesis based on other ancient myths and legends?Did the writer of the accounts simply copy/repeat/edit other myths that where common in this culture and time?Is the garden account of Adam and Eve real,or a pure mythological construction? Does not the whole salvation plan of the NT rest on these records as being completely true?The gospel either is validated or dismissed as untrue if the first few chapters of Genesis are not true. |
Bible Answer: Please allow me to quote from a source I found about twenty years ago and I wrote it in the margin of the introduction of Genesis in my Bible. From Feinberg’s “Fundamentals for Today” Fair Propositions to Postulate: 1. The book of Genesis has no doctrinal value if it is not authoritative. 2. The book of Genesis is not authoritative if it is not true. For if it is not history, it is not reliable; and if it is not revelation it is not final. 3. Genesis is not true if not from God. For if it is not from God, it is not inspired; and if it is not inspired, it possesses to us no doctrinal value whatever. 4. The book of Genesis is not direct from God if it is a heterogeneous compilation of mythological folklore by unknowable writers. 5. If the book of Genesis is a legendary narrative, anonymous, indefinitely erroneous, and the persons it described the mere mythical personifications of tribal genius, it is of course not only non-authenticated, but an insufficient basis for doctrine. The residuum of dubious truth, which might with varying degrees of consent be extracted therefrom, could never be accepted as a foundation for the superstructure of eternally trustworthy doctrine, for it is an axiom that that is only of doctrinal value which is God’s word. Mythical and legendary fiction are incompatible not only with the character of the God of all truth, but with the truthfulness, trustworthiness, and absolute authority of the Word of God. We have not taken for credentials cleverly invented myths. The primary documents (if were such) were collated and revised and rewritten by Moses under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Doctrinal roots found in the first few chapters of Genesis: subsequent developments of the Kingdom of God: root germ of all anthropology, soteriology (salvation), Christology, Satanology, to say nothing of the ancient and modern problems of mystery and culpability of sin, the unity of the race, and matrimony and family life. |