Lecture 07: The Book of Genesis - Dr. Bill Barrick

I promised you that as we came to the first part of this class that I'd talked to you about the worksheet and the worksheet for Genesis chapter one has three questions on it and the first question was what are the pros and cons involved in the issue of whether Genesis 1:1 - 2 3 is poetry or narrative now what I would expect on your worksheet then and I'm telling you this so that when your worksheet is due that is an assignment that you'll know how to fill it out use bullet points just like I'm using here don't be extensive don't write paragraph after paragraph don't do a lot of research on this one the the different pros and cons can history be reported in poetry canon or can it not be how accurate or details historical narrative followed by poems about same events for example judges 4 and 5 Exodus 14 and 15 does genre or kind of literature make a difference and in addition to that grammatical evidence defining poetry versus narrative remember we went through that in class talking about definite articles the way you told form of the verb relative pronouns and accusative markers being relatively infrequent in poetry as compared to narrative we've also mentioned that poetry is marked by use of parallelism and poetry is marked by use of imagery and then as you go further with that you could bring out a conclusion one thing I always look for is your own conclusion in other words don't you don't have room on these worksheets for extensive quotations of individuals so don't try to give a cut and paste type of things summarize what you get from the various commentaries and when you do that then put in line your reference just by using the surname of the author and by the way you notice our textbook author has one T and only one T and his name it's not like the Gospel of Matthew and it has an S on the end and a single T so spell it correctly and give the page reference and that's what you would do throughout wherever you're citing you have to citement you have to refer to Matthews have to use Matthews and to other commentaries when you do your worksheet and just give the last name and give the page reference and remember we don't use P or P P for identifying pages in our style so just give the number of the page and so you have a conclusion here make it your own conclusion and sometimes you need to refer to something that indicate your the reason for your conclusion and then the second question is defined respond to the gap theory and so you would define it first of all such as I have here now if you have a source that defines it for you then cite that source I didn't cite a source here in my definition and then give a response such as no firm biblical evidence for the theory such as the grammar of Genesis 1:2 does not support a gap theory for example the disjunctive clause used parenthetically the static State Eve hi-yah focused on an existing state not that something became and the phrase Tohu Ivo who refers to the yet unformed surface and the lack of living creatures there is a slight reference to that in Matthews but not with regard to the gap theory he's not responding the gap theory he's just doing exegesis of the verse and he mentions that quite clearly you could refer to him at that point or you could refer to the recommended book on Genesis 1:4 by C John Collins if that's one of the commentaries you're using for your worksheet and then the third is what is the framework hypothesis and how would you respond to it definition first of all define it you could use mccabe in his article and the reason that here i cited something other than just his surname is because he's written an article in the detroit baptist theological seminary journal and this is in our textbook coming to grips with genesis so i just abbreviate it seed CGG notice they're italicized because the acronym for the title of the book and you put book titles in italics and then the page reference and he has given you a very clean and very good definition and then if you're looking again at Collins or some other commentary you might find out that Meredith Klein holds to a certain variation of that and you can cite someone like Collins in that and again you cite Collins and cite the page reference Chris no no you need no bibliographic information you need no bibliography you need no footnotes all right for the worksheets it's just an inline reference choosing the surname and if needed to distinguish between two or three different works by the same author then some some other means of identifying it okay and when you're citing when we get to the areas where it's going to be like a word study and you're citing like theological dictionary of the Old Testament or new international dictionary of Old Testament theology next Jesus please cite not the editor but cite the author of the entry himself so if you're referring to hi-yaa hi-yaa then it's Grisanti it's it's not van Cameron van Cameron is the editor of the five volume set of not and so all we cite the author and cite the page reference and in dictionary like that we have multiple multiple volumes cite the volume number : page number okay Jeff you had a question it doesn't have to be complete sentences you'll notice some of these are complete and some of them aren't and I want to keep it basic I want to keep it simple I don't want you using hours and hours of time in fulfilling this assignment but I want you to have adequate enough information because when we discuss the worksheets in class you all are going to carry the discussion it's not going to be a lecture and therefore you have to have something there for you to refer to so that you can participate in the discussion all right and so be prepared for that and also keep in mind when we do have those discussions you're graded on your class participation so don't sit there like a bump on a log never getting engaged I'm not talking about getting engaged to a girl for those who are married I'm talking about getting engaged in the discussion here all right so I want you to to keep that in mind and then you'd have response and certain bullet points and then give your conclusion everyone clear on what I'm requiring on the worksheets yes yes I do in fact what I'll do is later today or tomorrow probably tomorrow because I'm picking up my wife the train station this afternoon after my next class and then I have an elders meeting till midnight and so I might not get it done today but I'll post the revised this is part of the larger one and I'll just repost it and update it okay yes you could you could it depends on the nature of the question the nature of the topic all right okay anyone else other questions good that'll that'll help out a lot if you're aware of that so let's continue on where we left off then last week in talking about biblical criticism and one of the things we're talking about was the documentary hypothesis and we're talking about form criticism and some of its tenants and some of its problems mark Rooker who I know personally and is a superb Old Testament scholar he did his doctoral dissertation on the study of the change in the Hebrew language classical Hebrew from the time of Moses to the time of Ezekiel a period of nearly a thousand years interestingly his conclusion was that it changed very very very little in fact he came up with only a few differences to try to explain and those differences were minor and we're not something that had any major difference or or made any impact the basic point I think is that the language has changed so little there is absolutely no need for a textual updating of the biblical text on the basis of change in language all of the students and scholars having to do with the history of Biblical Hebrew acknowledge that I could decide you four or five different histories of the biblical hebrew where they say there's no significant change in the language certainly not enough to require any sort of textual updating and of course one of the things you can note against textual updating is the fact that some of those grammatical entities that you would think would be obvious to update are not updated for example in the Hebrew text of the Torah in the five books of Moses every time you have the third feminine singular personal pronoun written it's written this way with a Wow and not this way as elsewhere throughout the biblical text Moses and the Torah is the only place where you have that form written with a while and you would think that that would be one of the very first things to update if someone were to be involved in updating the biblical text the biblical hebrew of the torah of the Pentateuch and I could give other examples like that there's at least a dozen examples that could be cited with support from Rabine saints bodies with Rooker and many others so just a side point there yes Chazz and then Daniel yes is it wrong to say yes I'm showing to make the connection between the implications of if we allow for a process well for example he starts off with an illustration of the book of Proverbs or the Book of Psalms there's no doubt whatsoever that those books went through a process over a period of perhaps a couple hundred years especially in the case the Psalms and so you do have a later composer or a later editor or a compiler involved I do not think though there's any evidence that he did anything to alter the text in any way whatsoever he was merely a compiler or a collector as we have stated specifically in the book of Proverbs and so yes there's that process for some books but to then assign that process to say the Pentateuch I think goes into more of the realm of documentary hypothesis almost without being that I mean dr. Khorsandi doesn't hold the documentary hypothesis so don't go out of here saying to him that I did that I accused him of it no he does not hold to that but and I don't see any problem with say having Joshua write Deuteronomy 34 I don't think it's necessary that he write it I believe that Moses wrote it and I've defended that in an extensive article and study but I have no problem with those who would say well I think Joshua wrote it and I think that if he did it was complete and done that was an appendage they made to it but Joshua did not go back and alter the rest of the Pentateuch in his doing that and then I think also another argument I can see very clearly throughout the Old Testament is it for example with the Torah with the Pentateuch it is cited by the prophets it's quoted by the prophets quoted by the psalmist it's quoted in wisdom literature it is already an extent existing accepted canonical work long before the time of Ezra long before the exile long before any so called textual updating can be claimed for it it is established it is firm it is solid and evidence is it is not altered okay that helped a little bit okay Daniel it's in his dissertation on the language of Ezekiel compared with that of Moses I don't remember the title of that dissertation and I think the date was in the 1990s if I remember right I'm not positive I there is a publication of his material by Mellon where part of that dissertation is published along with several other articles he's written in a separate volume of collected essays that is well worth having including some essays of his on Genesis 1:1 and his response to Walt Keyes viewpoint that it's a title on Deuteronomy 34 you can download that from my website I've got it posted there it is an ETS paper I did and we've never published it okay thank you all right here's what Rooker says about biblical criticism of the liberal theological variety and I thought if it's quite good he's kind of quoting CS Lewis in here so a part of this is you can attribute to CS Lewis who wrote about it in his crit book Christian reflections these men asked me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts the evidence is there obvious inability to read in any sense worth discussing the lines themselves they claim to see fern seed and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight I like that quote he's engaging quite adamant Lee with those and whereas if we were doing scholarly discussion in a group where we had that disagreement I would be very hesitant to speak that way but when you publish something like he has in his commentary on Leviticus time's that's nice to put in there and provide ammunition and keep in mind that sometimes how we write isn't always the same as how we would interact on a personal level and a personal level if we were interacting with sane people we might not say it quite the same we might say it a little bit less passionate a little bit less accusatory fashion but nonetheless trying to make our point and see us Lewis never made apologies for anything he ever said so it fits in now this quote is my own it was published in the Masters seminary journal a few years back in dealing with some of the issues in the Old Testament year by year evangelical scholars continue to give up valuable ground to liberal critics liberal biblical critics by adopting their methodologies evangelicals attempt to baptize such theories in evangelical waters without realizing that those methodologies have never been converted now I was guilty the same thing when I did my doctoral dissertation I used such terms as Hiles ghaseeta taken out of new orthodoxy liberal biblical criticism I defined it myself that it had to do with a reference to salvation history which is part of the way they define it but neo Orthodox scholars and theologians take some of the same terms we might use but give it totally different definitions and they're the ones who invented the German term Hiles ghaseeta and we look at it and define ghaseeta as commonly used as that which is subjective history and they do not see it that way and so they're right in accusing us when we use that term and redefine it of flying our flag under different colors and redefining the terms that they themselves invented and seeking to change it and they accuse a stand of not understanding them and their usage and they're right and if I could go back I can do it and when I when I published parts of my dissertation as in the journal I've made certain not to reuse those terms because I think that it's you know it's as I said here we're trying to baptize their terms their viewpoints and evangelical waters but it's never been converted to begin with and we believe in being converted before being baptized right and so pressured by publishers and Christian quote/unquote academia because some aren't Christian evangelicals borrow the cloak of critical terminology to clothe their work in order to be more accepted and to get works published and that is deceptive while there are valuable kernels of truth buried within contemporary critical studies we looked at a couple of them evangelicals must take great care to irradiate the material with the unadulterated Word of God so as not to become infected by the Trojan virus that saturates its thinking so that would be my conclusion as to how we relate to some of these higher critical methodologies there are good points there are often points that we can use and many of our materials that we utilize our lexicons our Bible encyclopedias our Bible dictionaries our Bible atlases have been produced by those who hold to higher critical methodologies they've done a great work and provide us with tools that no evangelical has taken the time to prepare very well until just in the last maybe 25 to 30 40 years and so we owe them a great debt in the materials they provide us but we need to be careful how we use their materials the assumptions going back to those that I've been talking about we just finished your rejection of J EDP that documentary hypothesis another assumption I have is that the ultimate author of Genesis is God Himself not Moses and that's something that I assume and I assume the independent accuracy of scripture I do not believe that we need archaeological evidence to prove the scriptures archaeological evidence can support the scriptures and it can confirm our faith in the scriptures but it does not create faith in the scriptures so we need to be careful how we utilize that and any time we get to a point where we look at archaeological evidence or we look at extra biblical evidence or extra biblical literature in the ancient Near East and we make that the foundation on which we determine what the Bible says we're on dangerous ground it's not that there can't be some similarities we'll talk about that it's not that it can't provide us with some information of use to us but we have to be careful that we don't take what seems to be the obvious statement of Scripture taken in context and as a whole and change it only because we think there's something in archaeology or extra biblical literature that is contradictory and therefore we yield the field a battle and say okay my foundation and my authority is the extra biblical material therefore I have to find some way to change the biblical text okay watch out for that one uniform hermeneutic for interpreting everything not just Genesis one but the entire Hebrew Bible how do we what's the hermeneutic we use and then the universal scope of Genesis one to eleven I assume this is not written to Israel you say but Moses wrote it he wrote it when the people were in the wilderness he wrote it after Mount Sinai it's obviously written for the for Israel no it's written for all people it's object is all people it's subject is all people that group he addresses is all people it's a history of all people it's a history of all mankind it's a history of peoples and nations before Israel even existed as a nation it's like looking at the Gospels and saying oh that's not for the church because that was written for the disciples or we look at it and and and we say well yeah the the authors the church had already begun and the authors wrote the Gospels but the content of those Gospels is obviously for the church alone not for anyone before well then what are we doing with all the messages of Christ for example the Sermon on the Mount does that apply to his disciples before the church existed or not so what is the address is it only the church no it's the church and Israel is being addressed by the Gospels it's the more the global aspect not the limited aspect even though it was Church membered writers who later write it after Pentecost so the same with Genesis although Moses wrote it after the establishment of Israel and the dispensation of law or the covenant of law there's a distinction between those two a fine distinction it is still about prior people pre Israelite people and addresses them and as much for them as anyone it's a address to the nation's as much as to Israel both the Old Testament New Testament assume a common historical human origin and Adam that's part of the Assumption part of the argument for example Malachi 2:10 do we not all have one father now there are two different interpretations of this and you can tell the differences in most translations by whether or not they capitalize the word father if the word fathers capitalized they're interpreting this is parallel to the next line and making this a reference to God the Father which is interesting if you believe that there's no such thing as the Trinity being revealed in the Old Testament those who don't believe the Trinity has revealed the Old Testament have no business taking this of God the Father all right to be consistent and I believe the Trinity is there but I believe the context of this is more likely that's a little F and his reference to Adam and this and that one Adam was created and so therefore we're created in him acts 17:26 be made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth that is another reference taking the New Testament to show this Universal testimony throughout scripture of Adam being the head of the human race they're not being other people existing at his time and that all taking our roots back to him contrasting assumptions those who disagree with the interpretations I present on Genesis 1 up to this time mainly hold to evolutionary science as their authority or uphold that as the example of saying this is what is here and therefore I have to adjust my interpretation of scripture to match that now there are some who will say wait a minute don't treat me like Peter ends because Peter ends says that because of the theory of evolution we need to reinterpret the Bible my response is no because of the Bible we need to reinterpret the theory of evolution it's the other way around what's your authority what's your what's your ground what's your base going to be but there's others like Denis lamoureux whom I debated on historical Adam issue who says don't class me with Peter ends I do not accept biological evolution and yet in our debates he kept bringing up as fact and it ultimately was the basis for his saying the earth has to be old so he denied it but on the other hand he's not reluctant to use it to support his own viewpoint and then I just did a review for Tamela so be published and Kamali off this spring of a book on whether or not the earth was created in six doubt 6,000 years ago by Antoine Brent and he argues from us he's an astrophysicist he claims to believe that the Bible is the Word of God he claims to believe that God created the heavens and the earth but then as you go through it he says however I'm going to make the Scriptures save what I believe it says and what it demands I take it scientifically and so therefore he even accuses Jesus of not taking any of Genesis literally that's all allegorical not just chapter one but all the rest so I responded to him and put that in and then there was a blog post on the gospel coalition by Justin what's last name Taylor Thank You Justin Taylor that I'm going to respond to when as soon as I get some time here in the next few weeks that needs a response and I've heard a lot about that and some of these men will say no I'm not accepting evolutionary science but then why then do you argue the way you do well because I believe the earth or the universe are older than what the Bible seems to make it why do you believe that scientific investigation what's the basis of the scientific investigation the basis of the scientific investigation for the earth assumes evolution and assumes that the rock record the geological column supports that if it weren't for the theory of evolution the scientists would not be arguing for an old earth over a young earth and then when it comes to the unit age of the universe that's a little bit different question but it is related to a different form of evolution it's related to the big bang theory etc etc and even there that is again a huge area of debate and even Stephen Hawking is still trying to rule out God in that because he believes that it's inconsistent to accept the Big Bang Theory or anything like that and to believe that there's really a God and so he's bent on disproving the existence of God and he admits with great honesty I have to admire that he admits that he has failed to do that so far although he's tried a lot read his brief history of time in which he admits that and talks about it and then his conclusion admits he's failed a contrasting assumption then is an Old Earth assumption pre and those who hold to Old Earth like John Walton and Dennis Lamar ooh they come back with the idea that hey way the biblical writers have a pre-scientific viewpoint and they accuse Paul of having it they keep accused Jesus Jesus of accepting this pre-scientific viewpoint even though he knows better just because he's adapting himself to the ignorance of human beings which I find an amazing thing to say about our Savior that he would deceptively and willingly adopt a deceptive view that's false in order just to associate with human beings and to in some way try to adopt a viewpoint that they have but what do they mean by pre-scientific they mean for example that they believed in a flat earth in the Old Testament and even in the new according to some of them they say that's the way they looked at it the earth was floating on the sea there was a solid sky it was a three-storied earth they believed in back then you turn on your la ghost tools and this is what you see in Lagos a depiction of it and it's labeled there the ancient Hebrew conception of the universe which ancient Hebrews not those who are believers not the faithful not those who are true Israel know this this could be the unbelievers among them but even the unbelievers among them did not believe this according to secular historians nowadays and even those in the ancient cultures like Sumerian Babylonian Egypt didn't believe that either that's a falsehood how pre-scientific are the people in Scripture in the Old Testament when you have metallurgy practiced in Genesis chapter 4 when you have musical instruments being made which assumes there's music which assumes they're sophisticated enough to write music to compose music to play music to enjoy music right and to create instruments that provide the musical experience how pre-scientific is that we can go on and on with that we'll look at it later we get to Genesis chapter 4 well you say what they talk about the pillars of the earth and the pillars of the sky that demonstrates they believe in that three storey earth right well you take a close look at job chapter nine verse six in chapter 26 verse 7 and 26 11 what does it say who shakes the earth out of its place and its pillars tremble and by the way this is job speaking not Elif as build a door so far its pillars tremble but later in chapter 26 job says he stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing you see he understands that the pillars are a metaphor sometimes we think we're we're so modern we're so up-to-date we're so sophisticated we don't make such mistakes we we don't we don't take our metaphors literally well neither did they they had the capacity of using metaphors gentlemen in fact I find it so fascinating that those who point this out and try to make it literal and try to say they believed it literal are the same ones that later turn around and using metaphors in the scripture accuse us who believe in literalism of ignoring the metaphors that are there well who put the metaphors in there the writers and we do recognize them that's part of interpreting a text literally is to recognize figures of speech to recognize metaphor in addition to that what about the metaphor of windows in the heaven opening so it rains and causes the flood in Genesis 7:11 you think they really believed that there were windows in the heaven and a solid sky no way first of all that's a Western implication imposed upon the text because we're assuming there's glass in the windows that can be shut or opened where is the ancient Near Eastern homes the windows were just holes in the wall they rarely even had shutters over them and so there's no way to close them and open them and go to second King seven verse two you find out that there is a israelite noble there who speaks quite negatively of those who even think there might be windows in heaven he says if Yahweh's should make windows in heaven could this thing be and the whole implication by context is everyone knows that's false he's demonstrating that he believes this is metaphor not literal so why are we trying to impose this quote/unquote pre-scientific view upon the biblical writers and their culture Paul Seeley and John Walton are the ones who ignore that type of metaphor who insists that these are flat earthers three-storied universe or earth type of people well Jeffrey Burton Russell and inventing the Flat Earth published by Prager 1991 gave adequate evidence to demonstrate that ancient peoples use that only as a metaphor not something they believed in reality Knoll weeks whom I met in Australia and Sydney who's a wonderful born-again man of God a Christian man of great scholarship teaching in a university there and has written a lot in the area of the Pentateuch and the flood he's defended a Biblical Flood and biblical creation for years and years and years he published an article on this and cosmology and historical context in the Westminster Theological journal in 2006 and that was in direct contradiction to Paul C Lee's viewpoint and in in fact Paul C Lee really never had a response to weeks's arguments and then Jeff and Henry in the Journal of dispensational theology in 2009 also talked about this in his article uniformitarianism in Old Testament studies those are three very different theologically grounded viewpoints backgrounds and different backgrounds of scholarship and nationality and everything else who agree that this concept of accusing the biblical writers of a pre scientific mentality and worldview are all WEP it's all wrong its wrongheaded it's wrong thinking it's it's chauvinistic it is hubris on our part to think that they had a different world view especially believers had a different world view than we when in reality the question is do they have a different world view than the ancient pagan peoples around them that's the real question ancient Near Eastern backgrounds is what we're talking about so there is often an overemphasis on the similarities between the Bible's account of creation and the flood versus the ancient Near Eastern legends and accounts and materials the biblical writers we have to remember because they're believers chosen by God's superintend by the Holy Spirit hold a different worldview than the other people's I mean that's the whole point of their writing you read the the book of the Torah the five books of Moses and what do you see over and over again I'm right now in the book of Deuteronomy in my daily personal reading and in Deuteronomy it comes up over and over again you are not like the other peoples you do not believe what the other peoples believe you do not act like the other peoples believe you are not to be like the other peoples you're to have a different viewpoint than the other peoples you have a different God than the other peoples you have a different understanding of salvation than other peoples you have a different understanding of the world than other peoples comes out over and over and over again and so we must realize that and here too that more than anything else and this is the point which I find lacking in men like John Walton which de-stresses me because John Walton claims to be an evangelical Christian he's a member of the evangelical theological Society I've heard him speak on the floor at times when I was impressed by him thrilled by the fact that he took a clear stand for example against the documentary hypothesis on the floor of the evangelical theological Society even challenging the entire body by saying to them gentlemen be careful you're not going down this line because instead of us trying to write a more detailed doctrinal statement for our society we need to take a clear stand against the inroads of the documentary hypothesis in our society I felt like getting up and shouting hallelujah and giving a huge round of applause he's done some amazing work he's probably produced more on the area of how to interpret ancient near-eastern materials than anyone I know of in evangelical circles there's mark cheval aside put in that camp a little bit behind him I put Harry Hoffner one of the world's renowned Hittite ologists in that camp warm born-again believer a wonderful man of God I just have finished editing his 2000 page commentaries on 1st and 2nd Samuel and have submitted them to Lagos for publication I look at these men like that and and these are all great men in that area another good friend of mine is Richard aver back at Trinity and he's done a lot of work in this area and yet I look at John Walton and I say he's done the most of all those men to lay out the principles of how we evaluate and use ancient Near Eastern materials and yet repeatedly I find John Walton violates the very principles that he establishes and defends and writes on and that's disturbing and when I ask why I don't really get a clear answer and sometimes I get a modification he says well I intent tend it to be this well I have to give him the benefit the doubt and say okay then let's clarify it the next volume you put out them well they attempted to do that with a volume he wrote with Brent's and E on the biblical world and I I'm disappointed again but I think there you have a very clear the best example that is publicly in published form of his hermeneutical methodology and it's well done and i i've known brent sandy for a long time I've had many conversation with him I know him far better than I know John Walton had far more interaction with him and Brent's and and I go way way back and he and I along with Bob Chisholm I dr. Grisanti and I have debated and have great disagreements with both sandy and Chisholm on their views of Biblical prophecy and he got involved this project from the New Testament side John Walton from the Old Testament side and one of the key things I think that they're both missing is they they're not clear enough on recognizing the biblical writers have a different world view than the world view of the ancient Near Eastern peoples around them the ancient Eurasian creation and flood stories are not uniform they have huge differences so which one are we going to adopt and say this is what they were looking at this is what they're responding to or this is what they're using or baptizing into their use in Scripture the comparative analysis and by the way Abner Chou at the at the college has done a fantastic amount of study and work on this made a presentation in the ICR conference here at Grace Church this past year and I hope he gets something published on it in the near future as well has done an amazing work in this area I'm in total agreement with him on all this conclusions he's going to be able to stand up there and I think if there's anyone that I look to as a young man coming up who could make some very viable responses to men like Walton and his work its Abner Chou he's got the brilliance he's got the solid biblical foundation he's got the convictions he's got the skills in the languages and the text I think he could do it and he's a good writer had the privilege of editing his commentary on lamentations for the evangelical exegetical commentary series and I love it it's just extremely well done but look at this ancient Near East polytheism many gods the biblical account monotheism one God ancient Near East physical images idols but iconoclasm the destruction of idols and denial of idols in the Bible ancient Near East believed an eternal matter Co eternal with God the scripture speaks only of the eternal spirit the ancient Near East has a low view of gods after all the reason they destroyed man and the flood is because men are noisy make too much noise they can't sleep the scripture has a high view of God ancient Greece has a very low view of humanity as well vs. the scriptures high view of humanity man is made in the image of God you don't find that in ancient Near Eastern literature the ancient Near East rise on everlasting conflict between good and evil between chaos and the gods there is none of that conflict in the scripture account of creation the lack of uniform standards of ethics the ancient Near East literature compared to an expectation of obedience to a uniform standard of ethics in the Bible shared memory of actually events is one way to explain the reason for similarities at least some similarities why are there flood legends all over the world because there was a flood so the shared memory why do they differ in their viewpoints be cut and by the way it could also be a shared memory of a single revelation because some of the flood stories may have been may have originated after some of these societies received the biblical revelation that's thought to be true in India where it's possible that the biblical story and text of Genesis might have already gotten to India even before the time of Christ and was being reacted to and adopted by some but the reason they differ is because fallen mankind skews their memory and so after while the accretion of our skewed views kind of hides the kernel of truth in the middle and we have to strip it all off to get back to that kernel of truth that is there we find it's a shared memory or of either an actual event or of the revelation of that event so accepting extra biblical evidence over the biblical record really ends up in denigrating the scripture whenever we do that so we ought to be very cautious about that to ask the question what is our authority what is our basis what's the foundation which should have priority which should have priority let's quickly look at biblical evidence don't take a break just running through we've done this already in class this is kind of a summary notice their orderly progression of six days in Genesis 1:1 2:25 the universal focus it's not Israel in view the feel centricity God is the focus we talked about that how it presents God as a provider a God of order he provides for his creation he doesn't create life until there's something to sustain life all the way through it's in perfect order and it's very rational and it always points to God that's who created all things he's there at the beginning he's not defended that a sheath bara Elohim the third word of the Bible Elohim God no defense for his existence no argument for what kind of God he is the text speaks loudly by itself and for itself there is no other that can do what he's done which is exactly what he addresses job with out of the whirlwind in job chapter 38 through 40 there's the preparation of earth for life the mention of seed six times at 25 versus having do with animals and having to do with plants but not with regard to man the idea of producing after one's own kind in chapter 1 verse 26 to 23 you have the first personal plural pronoun used let us make man in our image that can't be man plus angels it can't be the Angels it can't be some other deities it has to be the Trinity involved there made in the image of God the divine image showing the special position of mankind and he made them male and female and in the first account there in Chapter 1 there's no explanation of how that occurred all we know is it's day 6 occurred on the same day and the divine mandate to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth so that gets us to the next part then of with that view of the first chapter moving into chapter 2 is chapter 2 starting at verse 5 a totally different account of creation is it in disagreement with the prior account as many claim or is it really just an expansion of day six to give added detail and that everything is an agreement

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Published: Sun Sep 25 2016