A final reblog for today, posted automatically in anticipation of a lack of ability to blog today.
I was talking to someone recently about the evolution ‘debate’. He got very troubled when I spoke of the first chapter of Genesis as a myth. “If Genesis 1 isn’t true, how can we trust anything the Bible says?” he asked.
Imagine yourself in one of those photobooths that takes passport pictures. When you collect the pictures, are you happy with them? Will you be showing them proudly to friends? I strongly doubt it! The photograph may be an accurate image of a specific moment, but it is unlikely to be a “good” picture. On the other hand, an artist with a few simple materials may produce a portrait of you that is less “accurate” than the photobooth, but more truthful in the insight it provides. “Painting the soul” is the way I believe the arty types put it. You can see this even in children’s drawings. They may not be draughtsmen, but you can learn a lot about a child’s family (for example) by the way that they draw them. There is truth there for those with eyes to see. That’s why painters did not go out of business with the advent of photography. In some mysterious way they are able to present truth which goes beyond the merely representational.
Changing my metaphor, another way to think of this is in terms of maps. A map may be true or false, just as a myth may be. But even a good map can be useless or even dangerous if it is used for the wrong purpose. Any visitor to London who tries to navigate the streets using only the iconic ‘underground’ map is going to learn the truth of this very quickly. Similarly, a world atlas may well be accurate — but don’t try to use it to round Cape Horn.
When I say that - for example - Genesis 1 is a myth, I do not mean it isn’t true or that I am rejecting it. I mean that it conveys a truth about God, creation and human beings which goes beyond the merely
representational “photograph” which is offered to us by cosmology and the rest. Neither am I denigrating the truth which these sciences offer. Just as a photograph is not “contradicted” by a painting, the myth of Genesis is not contradicted by science. The whole notion is absurd! A photograph can be compared to a painting, and it is sometimes instructive to do so. But they are in no sense competitors.
Of course, a problem would arise if you present a painting and claim that it is a photograph. Do that, and you shift the ‘truth claims’ of your picture from one category into another and you will inevitably judge it unfairly, using the wrong criteria. Taking Genesis as science or history is to do exactly this: taking a sophisticated work of art and talking about it as though it were a photograph. Not even one of those artful photographs that the really gifted are able to take, but a crude photobooth snapshot.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
dh 10.29.10 at 8:29 pm
I believe that taking Genesis 1 which was a literal event like a photograph which is way more sophisticated than a painting and attempt to diminish it as being just a painting and then state that it was only a “crude photobooth snapshot”.
The fact Genesis is not a myth. I look at science as the painting of the literal photograph not the other way around. However many times scientist “paint outside the lines”.
Tony Buglass 10.29.10 at 9:46 pm
DH, you use words like myth with no understanding of what they mean. Gen.1 is mythological. So is a lot of the Bible. Some of the stuff which is mythological is historical, some of it isn’t. I know anything tat looks as if it is challenging your favourite literalist views of the Bible acts as an automatic button-push to get you going, but actually, you’ve missed the point. The fact is Gen.1 IS a myth. Now, try to work out how that works, and we might be getting somewhere beyond the usual kneejerk literalism.
dh 10.29.10 at 10:29 pm
Tony, I have looked at how that works and it is not myth. How about you also getting somewhere beyond the kneejerk idea that science is always correct in their analysis of Genesis.
I haven’t missed the point and it is a fact that Genesis is not myth and I don’t believe that much of the Bible is myth either. The main definition of the term refers to synonym’s parables and allegory. I’m sorry but much of the Bible is not either of these unless Scripture states it as in the case of Jesus and the parables or in the case that the literary construct is clearly those as in the case of Song of Songs, Proverbs, Psalms and the like.
Paul F. 10.29.10 at 11:17 pm
“it is a fact that Genesis is not myth”
Okay, prove it. In particular, show me how Genesis 1:6 works when taken literally:
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
So that’s water we’re looking at when we look up at the sky, and it’s just not hitting us because there’s an invisible canopy God put there that’s holding it up?
If there’s one thing I have low tolerance for, it’s creationism. It almost caused me to lose my faith a few years ago, after an upbringing where science textbook chapters that included phrases like “20 million years ago” were off-limits at my Christian school.
You can only hide from the truth so long, “so long” being until the first or second year of college. Which is where a lot of Evangelical Christians have this crisis and come out the far end of the experience as agnostics.
dh 10.29.10 at 11:36 pm
Paul F., what I have a low tolerance for are atheistic Evolutionists who present the situation where people have a crisis unecessarily by thinking they have to reject the truth of Creationism. I’m sorry your college prophesors put you into a point where you had this crisis unecessarily.
Seperation of the waters from the waters is from the understanding of the forms of water. clouds are water and lakes are water and we all know they are seperate. Before this point in time there wasn’t any water outside of mist. To me it really makes sense and I’m not hiding from anything. I have had many many years of college and have read many many books and just because you almost had a crisis of belief doesn’t mean that what you had a crisis from was not true.
When one reads Lee Stroble, Josh McDowell, Dr. Morris (expert on Mt St. Helens), etc. just because a majority of scientists believe one way doesn’t make it true.
Richard 10.30.10 at 12:30 am
I’m a bit sorry I reblogged this now.
PamBG 10.30.10 at 2:22 am
Yeah, me too.
Paul F. 10.30.10 at 2:59 am
I went to a conservative Christian college, DH. No evolutionist profs.
My crisis came from a hopeless and untenable understanding of Scripture’s inspiration that I had been told all my life (inerrant, scientifically accurate, you know the drill) colliding with hard evidence that I was being lied to, which in turn caused me to wonder what else my pastors and teachers had lied to me about.
I think it was books by Alister McGrath and John Polkinghorne that helped me hang on and gradually go back to church. (Both British, of course. I can’t think of a single popular American Christian author that deals sensibly with the intersection of science and Christianity) Barth and Kierkegaard sealed it and helped me understand that Christianity doesn’t stand or fall on the reliability of the Bible.
We’re obviously not going to get anywhere with this conversation. Don’t think I haven’t read those authors you mentioned, either, only to find their arguments wanting and their foundationalist apologetics tiresome.
Creationists wouldn’t bother me so much if it weren’t for the way they make Christianity look anti-science, and that they aren’t “believe and let believe.” They want all American schoolchildren to get indoctrinated with this crap.
Pam 10.30.10 at 3:49 am
dh, you’ve got it all sorted. Lucky you.
But I’m not letting you anywhere near my Kindergarten scripture class.
Kim 10.30.10 at 6:11 am
Except as a pupil.
Pam 10.30.10 at 9:16 am
Only if he can dance and sing, Kim. And follow instructions.
Tony Buglass 10.30.10 at 9:39 am
“Tony, I have looked at how that works and it is not myth. How about you also getting somewhere beyond the kneejerk idea that science is always correct in their analysis of Genesis. I haven’t missed the point and it is a fact that Genesis is not myth and I don’t believe that much of the Bible is myth either.”
First, I don’t give a stuff how scientists evaluate Genesis. Scientists can evaluate the cosmos and its phenomena, that’s their playground; Genesis is a theological and literary construction, and that’s my professional area of study.
Second, simply reiterating your conviction that neither Genesis nor the rest of the Bible is myth simply begs the original question: you do not understand the nature of myth. You’re not alone - it has a popular usage, which generally means ‘fairy tale’ or something like that, and is assumed to mean ‘not true’. That is not the proper function of mythology. Let me give you modern example: 1940 was a hugely significant year for British people. The events of the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the beginning of the Blitz, all had a profound effect upon the national psyche: we stood alone against the Nazis, and the nation stood together. That has been part of our national self-understanding ever since, part of what it means to be British. Now, the events in question are absolutely historical, but the popular memory isn’t absolutely correct; it has been reshaped to reinforce the self-understanding. For example, there were more Hurricanes than Spitfires, we didn’t win the Battle of Britain as such, the Germans lost it, and we didn’t stand alone - without the strength of the Commonwealth/Empire, and the economic support of Lend-Lease, we’d have been bankrupt and suing for peace before the end of the year. But hat doesn’t affect the underlying meaning of the events - and that is a mythological function.
In the same, the Exodus from Egypt is a foundation myth of Israel - that’s why the youngest child asks the key questions in every year’s Passover seder. The death and resurrection of Jesus are foundation myths for Christians - they give us our meaning and our identity. Now, in each case, I have no doubt as to the historicity of the underlying event. The way the events have been narrated is always shaped according to the meaning, rather than according to the historical details, but the underlying event is still there. In the same way, the different creation traditions in Genesis and Isa.40-55 (and they ARE different) are narrated to say something about God and his people. That is mythology. It isn’t science, and it isn’t history. It’s narrative theology. Trying to filter a text through the wrong lens misses so much - the attempts to make Genesis a modern scientific account is not only a waste of effort, it actually obscures the colour and texture of the original. If someone gave you a Leonardo or a Monet, you wouldn’t retouch or varnish it to make it look more like a colour photo. You’d let the Old Master be seen in its own colour and texture. So why do you persist in retouching the Oldest Master of all?
Tim Chesterton 10.30.10 at 7:31 pm
Tony, that is absolutely the best and most succinct explanation of myth that I have read in a long time. Thank you very much!
Richard 10.31.10 at 12:54 am
I’ll add my thanks to Tim’s, Tony.
It’s instructive that for dh the photograph is the most truthful of pictures. I’ve a feeling that may go to the heart of the issue. It’s well known that I’m a bit of a philistine when it comes to art and stuff, but even I can recognize that there can be more truth in a painted portrait or landscape than can be captured with a compact digital camera.
griffiths 10.31.10 at 7:39 pm
Even Christians ignore the vegetarian/vegan command early on
Wood 11.01.10 at 12:09 pm
I don’t.