Reply To Peter Leithart

I’m grateful to Peter Leithart for his thought-provoking response to my proposal. A couple of points are worth making in counter-response.

1. The genre analysis of Genesis 1-11 as mytho-history is quite plausible in light of the evidence. In chapter 2 of In Quest of the Historical Adam I examine the folklorist’s concept of “myth” and derive ten family resemblances exhibited by paradigmatic myths. Then in chapters 3-4 I examine in considerable detail the narratives of Genesis 1-11 and show (convincingly, I trust) that the primaeval history exhibits nearly all of these family resemblances. This is the same approach that Richard Burridge employed in demonstrating to the community of New Testament scholars that the Gospels most resemble the genre of ancient biography. This approach provides firm, objective evidence that the primeval history is in some form myth.

I proceed to argue in chapter 5 on the basis of the genealogies that order the primaeval narratives into a primaeval history and that meld into genealogies of persons who are taken to be indisputably historical, such as Abraham, that Genesis 1-11 is not pure myth but has an interest in history. How then to classify this literature? The most plausible suggestion that I have seen is that of the eminent Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen that Genesis 1-11 belongs to the genre he calls mytho-history. Those who disagree with this classification need to provide an alternative explanation of the objective evidence I provide that is as plausible as Jacobsen’s.

It hardly needs to be said that the plausibility of this genre classification for Genesis 1-11 does nothing to show that other parts of the Bible—none of which exhibit the relevant family resemblances—should be classified as mytho-history. To anyone attentive to the relevant family resemblances it is quite “clear what part of the Bible isn’t ‘mytho-history.’”

Notice that the plausibility of this genre classification for Genesis 1-11 in no way depends upon our ability to tease apart which aspects of the stories are mythical and which historical. I suspect that the blend is more like coffee and cream than like colored marbles in a bag. We most emphatically do not “determine what Genesis teaches about Adam by mining the nuggets of history hidden under layers of metaphor.” That is not how literary criticism works. By way of analogy, the teachings of the parables of Jesus are pretty clear and do not depend upon the historicity of the story. A good Bible commentator will be able to tell us the message of the various primaeval narratives without assuming their historicity.

Now to his credit Leithart recognizes that “Craig warns us to avoid a simplistic antithesis between myth and history.” But, he contends, Craig still “ends up with his own antithesis, sorting bits of the creation narrative into baskets marked ‘metaphorical’ and ‘literal.’” Aha! This is not a complaint about trying to separate myth from history but rather a frustration about trying to separate figurative from literal aspects of the narratives. That leads me to our next point.

2. Mythological narratives need not be read literalistically. In chapter 6 of the book I examine in some detail Ancient Near Eastern myths and show that they are frequently figurative or metaphorical in their representations. In some cases this is perfectly clear. I am confident that when ancient Babylonians and Egyptians looked to the sky, they saw neither the desiccated corpse of the dragon goddess Tiamat nor the naked body of the goddess Nut overhead because no such things are there to be seen. Look for yourself! If this point is correct, then why should we be bound to read the narratives of Genesis 1-11 with a wooden literalness? And why must we be able to distinguish confidently which aspects are figurative and which literal? So long as my genre analysis is correct—which Leithart does not refute—, then a literal interpretation—such as Leithart seems to assume—is not compulsory for us.

In many cases, however, I think there are good reasons for seeing certain aspects of the primaeval narratives as figurative. For example, if an aspect of a story contradicts what the Pentateuchal author believed, it is unlikely to be literally intended. A prime example is the portrayal of God as a humanoid being in Genesis 2-3, which contradicts the Pentateuchal author’s Jewish belief prohibiting physical representations of God (Exodus 4.4), as well as his own description of the transcendent, incorporeal Creator of Genesis 1. To posit an actual incarnation of God is to introduce a foreign element into the story that has no basis in the literary genre. By contrast God’s being conceived as personal is not anthropomorphic, not only because personhood has nothing to do with having a human form, but more fundamentally because we know that the Jewish religion of the Pentateuchal author held that God is personal, so that this element is not merely due to the myth.

Or again, if an aspect of the story contravenes common sense and common knowledge at the time, it is less likely to be literal. For example, the Pentateuchal author would have known that the primordial waters of creation could not have drained away in 24 hours (cf. Genesis 8.3); that sunset and sunrise could not have occurred prior to the creation of the sun; that trees could not have sprouted from the earth, grown to maturity, blossomed, and borne fruit in 24 hours; that trees do not bear fruit that would, if eaten, naturally impart immortality or knowledge of good and evil; that snakes (just another “beast of the field”) are not talking, intelligent agents; that people do not naturally live 900 years or more; that the world at the time of Abraham was not less than 2,000 years old; that the Table of Nations does not list peoples by genealogical descent but by political alliances, languages, cultural similarities, and so on.   

Or again, if the stories are inconsistent with one another when read literally, that suggests that a literal interpretation is not intended. One thinks, for example, of the many inconsistencies between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 concerning the order of the creation of man, the vegetation,

and the animals, which have bedeviled literalists for years. The question is not whether harmonizing explanations can be given, but whether a narrative that has already been demonstrated to be mytho-historical should be pressed for this sort of literalism.

On the other hand, if we do have corroborating evidence that some aspect of a narrative is historical, that increases the plausibility of a literal interpretation. Unfortunately by their very nature the primaeval narratives are prehistoric and therefore difficult to corroborate. Many scholars have speculated whether there may not be a historical event at the root of the flood story, such as the catastrophic Mesopotamian flood in 2900 BC, or the filling of the Black Sea when the Mediterranean burst through the Bosporus around 5600 BC, or the inundation of the Persian Gulf by the Indian Ocean at the end of the last Ice Age. The universal flood of the Genesis account would in that case be mytho-historical.

The point is that  a figurative reading of the primaeval narratives is not only permitted by the mytho-historical genre in general but also by various clues in the narratives themselves that make such a reading plausible. By contrast Leithart neither offers nor defends any genre classification of Genesis 1-11 and makes no attempt to justify what is apparently a literal young earth creationist hermeneutic.