Day 564 of 1000

One of the silliest statements made about the first chapters of Genesis is that it is just a creation myth.  A blog that I read regularly reviewed a book titled The Bible Among the Myths that (pun intended) dispels that myth.  The review is worth a read and I plan to order the book.  Here is the section of the article that hooked me:

The Bible Among the Myths extends the question: how could they have been so utterly different from every other culture in history? For the contrasts are great. Oswalt identifies these common (if not universal) features of myth, in contrast to the biblical view of

  • Cyclical time: there is a lack of definite beginning and no clear direction to reality (with no one to give it direction). The Bible speaks of history with a beginning, with progress, and with a destination.
  • Nature symbolizing the divine. The Bible specifically rejects this.
  • The significance of magic, specifically the use of ritual and/or manipulations of matter to cause predictable results in the realm of deity. This, too, is nowhere to be found in biblical religion.
  • Obsession with fertility and potency, often expressed in religious (temple-based, even) prostitution of every base description. God is not sexual, nor is the religion he revealed.
  • Polytheism: obviously not the case for biblical theism.
  • The use of images in worship: expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments.
  • Eternity of chaotic matter: see above; not so in the Bible.
  • Low view of the gods, who are more powerful than humans but no better ethically; the Bible depicts God as perfectly holy, just, loving, and righteous.

There is considerably more: I would rather leave you wanting to know more than thinking you had the gist of it covered here. These differences in substance obtain in spite of certain similarities of form between the Bible’s account and others.

I have heard the myth goofiness a number of times, but I really never had a good response.

It was pretty painful when I had a close, non-Christian relative dismissively tell me, “Everyone knows the first chapters of Genesis are myth.  They fit the category.  Scholarship is clear on that.”

I did not have an answer then, but even in this short blog post, it is very clear the first chapters of Genesis do NOT fall into any reasonable definition of the category of myth.  I highly recommend the book review and plan to review the book itself here when I finish reading it.