Historicity of Genesis

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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I'm Chris, and today I have with me Michael Durham, and we have a couple of questions that came in to us from the website.

We would encourage you to send in your questions, but we've got two that are related, so I'll just go ahead and read both of them.

One says, I am struggling with a massive amount of anxiety over the fact that leaders in my church reject a literal historical view of Genesis in favor of a secular view.

Any insight would be welcome. Is it extreme to wonder whether it's time to leave? They seem solid on so many other issues, so I don't know what to think about it.

Thanks. And the second one reads, would you leave a church where the pastor doesn't interpret Genesis literally, but still inconsistently wants to retain a literal

Adam? Yeah, so that's, those questions obviously they go together, perhaps they were asked by the same person, and we hear two parts to that question, concern about the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, well, in other passages as well, and then the concern about whether someone should continue with a church that does not take a, what is considered to be a literal reading of Genesis.

So these questions, I think, are very important to unpack, and we'll begin with the interpretation of the

Scriptures first. Sometimes the terms that are used to describe differing positions on Genesis 1 and 2 and 3 and so on, sometimes those terms are not very helpful in actually describing the distinctions, the differences of approach.

So when we say literal, we need to be careful with what that means. It has been infused with all kinds of meanings, given different debates that people tend to have about the meaning of the

Scriptures. But of course, literal simply means according to the literature, and I think that's the real question about Genesis 1, 2, 3 and following, is what kind of literature do we have?

And that's where the debate is. Is this to be received as history, historical literature?

Is it to be received as poetic? Is it to be received as apocryphal, full of metaphor?

What is this? And that's the real question. And I think that by any measure of comparison, reading

Genesis 1, 2 and 3 and following, and then comparing that with other passages in the

Bible, it comes off as historical literature. It is to be received as history. All the most, the clearest way of reading the text, is what

I'm trying to say, is that it's history. One of the key questions in any type of interpretation is what was the original intention of the author to the original audience?

What is he trying to communicate? The Holy Spirit inspired this text. God breathed this word out by His Spirit, ultimately to speak of His Son.

But Moses was a holy man moved by the Holy Spirit, and he wrote these words down, probably sitting under the shade of an acacia tree on the eastern side of the

Jordan River near the slopes of Mount Peor. And he's writing this down. He's writing it for his audience, which is the children of Israel.

So what is he trying to communicate? When you read the text, what you would find is this is history.

Here is the first day. The day is described, and we have a morning and evening. The next day is described.

Here is a morning and an evening. And the next day is described. Morning and evening. This is hammered home that when we're talking about a day here, these are days with mornings and evenings.

This is not a metaphorical day. This is not an expression like the day of the Lord. This is an expression of a morning and evening day.

So that's just common sense. Why would we read it differently? Important question to ask.

When we consider the ways in which the rest of Scripture looks back at Genesis 1 and 2 and 3 and following,

Jesus, the apostles, the prophets, they all treat it as history, a historical basis for living in certain ways, a historical basis for living in these particular patterns.

So clearly it's written as history. Do we find very strong thematic elements within the text?

We sure do. Do we find repetition? Do we find symmetry? Do we find beauty in the passage? Of course we do.

It's not poetry, though. It is elevated prose. It is full of meaning. It is full of theology, but it's not apocalyptic material.

And so we just have to be clear with what kind of literature we're dealing with. And then beyond just dealing with the text, we have to begin to consider what happens – this is always a good test for theology – what happens if we take something away?

That's a classic way of testing whether or not this is an essential doctrine. What happens if we take something away?

I hear in the questions that perhaps there was a follow -up conversation or a clarification at some point where in the pastor or the leadership of the church says, oh, no, no, no, we believe it's a historical

Adam. We just don't think that Genesis 1 and 2, etc. should be interpreted literally, or in other words, being received as, like, this is actually how it happened, history.

And even in the question, it says, inconsistently wants to retain a literal Adam. So you have, it's inconsistent to believe, well, this is all metaphorical, but here's an actual person.

Right. So what I think we need to do is, again, there's that word literal. We need to be very careful. That word maybe sometimes doesn't serve us well according to the literature.

That's the question. I've heard some people try to substitute the word literal for real. And even that's not super helpful.

No, because the things that poetry refers to as real and the things that the apocryphal material refers to, those things are real as well.

And so we have to think, what kind of literature is this? Is it historical? And that's why the historical

Adam is a better way of expressing that. Now, some people want to hold to an historical

Adam and not the historical account of Genesis 1, 2, and following.

So you say, no, this world in which we live was not created some 6 ,000 years ago in the space of a given week that gave the pattern of the week that we now experience because of the way that God structured the society of the

Jews. And so people say, no, no, this is myth or this is metaphor or this is apocryphal material.

This is poetry. They're going to come at it from all sorts of angles, but they don't think it's correct. They don't think it's right to receive

Genesis 1, 2, 3, and probably more as historical.

They want to say, these are important stories. They point to things that happened in history, but they themselves, these expressions aren't to be received as actual history.

And we have to ask the question, why? Why? Let's move away from Genesis for a little bit.

Let's go over to another passage wherein Joshua is in a battle and the sun stood still in the sky for several hours.

Now, that's a story that's apparently to be received as history. It's a detailed account of a battle.

Now the question is, what do you do with the sun standing still in the sky? Is that poetry? Is that metaphor?

Is it apocryphal? Is it a myth? What is that? Now, someone, a critical scholar from the

Tubacan school, for example, would look at that and scoff. Well, that's why, because that's, well, it's a miracle.

It's unscientific. It couldn't have possibly happened that way. So it's an expression of myth because of the battles of different gods.

Seems like there's a presupposition there. Yes, and that's what we're getting at with the accounts in Genesis.

You have no cause to read Genesis as anything other than history, except for something that is coming outside of the text, and that would not be exegetical, that would be eisegetical.

You're reading something into the text, and what is that? It's the Neo -Darwinian hypothesis. It's academic credibility.

It's no, the scientific community has declared truth to us, and that truth is that this universe is billions and billions of years old.

Therefore, we submit the Bible to the hermeneutical authority of science that we bow the knee to, and science will now tell us how we interpret

Genesis 1 and 2, and it doesn't stop there because the authority of the

Neo -Darwinian hypothesis, the theory of how many billions of years we've been around, you have to continue to submit the

Bible to that authority again and again and again and again. It doesn't stop with Genesis 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or 10.

It keeps going and going and going to the point where the people that start down this path and are consistent with the hermeneutic get to the point where they talk about the nation of Israel, they didn't come up out of Egypt, it was an origin myth, they simply emerged as the victors of violence within Canaan, and they came up with an origin story to help them unify and make sense of their existence.

It just keeps going on and on, and what we're failing to do is to listen to Jesus. We're just not listening to Jesus.

What did He say? What did He call the beginning? When He described the beginning, when they were asking

Him about when is it okay to divorce your wife, and He says, from the beginning it was not so, and He said the beginning, and He quotes from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and He said how it was in the beginning.

Do we trust Jesus? Right. Yeah. I mean, the Bible is just simply full of expressions and assumptions that not just that Adam was an historical figure, but that the creation account itself is historical, and those who reject historical account of Genesis 1 and 2, reject the historical account of the temptation in the garden, they reject the historical account of the worldwide flood, they reject the historical account, they reject the historical account, they reject the historical account.

Where do you cut it off? It's completely arbitrary. It's just your comfort level. How much do I have to change my interpretation before I can be credible to, what, academia, to a wider audience?

I had a professor in seminary, an adjunct professor, who was pastor of a First Baptist Church in a college town, big -time college town, an

SEC school, and he did not at all believe in the historical account of Genesis.

Of course, he would say, well, we have to have an historical Adam. It was like a concession. Well, we have to have that because of Romans 5, or whatever.

Okay. But you have no reason to hold to it, you know, other than, you know, I'm forced into this corner.

Oh, well, that's courageous. Yeah. But when he talked about Genesis, he came from an angle of talking about all the concerns of the ancient

Near East and the things that ancient Near Easterners would be interested in and how they had their own cosmology and all these different things.

So he's beginning with archaeology, sociology. He's beginning with science, so on and so forth, and he's bringing all that to bear upon the text.

And he said to me about the situation, he said, you know, the Jews, they just, you know, they weren't interested, the audience that Moses is writing to, they're not interested in how things were made.

Their main question was who made it? And that's what Genesis 1 is answering, is who made it?

And that was their concern. After all, consider their background of idolatry in Egypt. And it is true, 100 % true, that Genesis 1 and 2 and following does a great job as a polemic against, or an apologetic against, idolatry.

Those elements are very strong. I said, I don't think the question is what the Israelites were interested in knowing, it's what they could know.

Not what they wanted to understand, but what they could understand. Could they understand vast amounts of time?

Could they understand that God created all things over vast periods and eons of time?

Could they have understood that? I said, absolutely. Because when you read the ancient Near Eastern literature, like the

Epic of Gilgamesh and so on, vast eons of time are proposed in those pagan texts.

And if we're talking about anti -idolatry features in Genesis 1 and 2, one of those features would be the fact that there aren't vast eons of time full of chaos, of the gods and all sorts of terrible things happening to get to the point where we are today, which by the way is the theory of evolution.

And adding theistic to the beginning of evolution, theistic evolution, does nothing to help that.

It doesn't help at all. So it's a situation of what they could understand. And so given that, that they could have understood a different rendering of the creation account, what we end up with is this.

God is either at the best, at the best, a horrific communicator, and at the worst, he's an outright liar.

Because he gave this account to his people that says, this is how everything was created.

And that's how they would have understood it. They would have not read in that text anything that modern evangelicals read in today to say, oh, this isn't history.

The original audience would have received it as history, and they could have understood something different. But God didn't say something different. He said this.

Right. Because it's not like they didn't have other types of literature. Exactly. There are criteria for the different types of literature.

And I think like you were saying with the conversation, if you talk about what type of literature is it, you're going to be looking for certain markers.

Those markers for poetry are not there. Apocalyptic, they aren't there. So how are you defining it?

What hermeneutic are you using to say this is not historical? And then again,

I guess the question could be asked, why do you have to maintain a literal Adam?

As a theistic evolutionist, why are you holding on to that when you've jettisoned everything before on how the

Bible explains that he got there? Yeah. So why hold to a historical Adam? Because of different theological positions.

So if you have a presupposition that the world is not young but old, then you read that into the text. If you have a presupposition that you have to have an historical

Adam in order for your covenant theology to work, you're going to make sure that it stays there. But you're coming to the text from different presuppositions that are merging together to make what

I would think is really a disjointed hermeneutic, and you're putting that upon the text and I'm going to read, it's like reading the text with a pair of spectacles and there's a different prescription in each lens.

And you're going to, you know, there's an historical Adam, but this isn't history. And first of all, that doesn't sound right because, well, it just, it's not, it can't be.

So I appreciate when somebody says, I just, I can't get behind this being, you know, young earth because, you know, they have in their mind stereotypes, they have in their mind ideas of people just being ignorant and so on, or not being, you know, faithful to the text and being well -informed and they just, they kind of have a straw man in their head that they blow away, but they still want to say, well, we're still faithful to the historical truths of the faith because we still believe that there's a, there's an historical

Adam. But you can't take one aspect and that, well, we're going to keep an historical Adam, but then everything else around him is not history.

You're just kind of smuggling him in like. Yeah, that's not going to last. It's the same situation you have with the quest for the historical

Jesus, where people are like, okay, Jesus really did exist, but there's a whole lot about kind of the trappings around Jesus that weren't true, but we're going to still believe that there's a

Jesus. There really was an historical Jesus, but the history surrounding him is just too hard to believe miracles and stuff.

I mean, it's so unscientific. And so we're going to keep Jesus and then say that the stories about him were like myth, maybe instructive and helpful, but they weren't really history.

And then, you know, where those people end up, they end up without. Christ, they end up without Jesus, right?

Because things are being interpreted through what they're comfortable with and what they think gives them academic credibility and so on.

Well, I think that's a big part of it. You kind of have two ditches. So there's there's been this like a blind leap of faith.

And so you're against reason. You just, you know, whatever faith is, just believing without any reason.

And then there's kind of the enlightenment, whatever we can prove, if you can't prove it. So then you go back to presuppositions.

What is your standard? And as Christians, obviously, we believe in logic and reason.

But what is our standard? Because man can be wrong if something in the historical sciences says, well,

Israel wasn't at this place at this time. And the Bible says they were. I'm going with the Bible.

Yeah, exactly. There's a presupposition. And here's some good news. Here's some good news. Every single time this has happened over the course of like a hundred years or over the course of two or three generations.

But whenever somebody points at the Bible and said points at a text and they say that can't possibly be true, that's a terrible contradiction or this unscientific or so on and so forth, they point to something and they say that and they may convince all kinds of people about that.

And then, you know, maybe if Christians are holding their head like, oh, we have such a poorly written book full of so many mistakes and problems and no, you know, it's so embarrassing to have to try to defend this stuff.

You know, give it a hundred years, give it three or four generations. And it comes out and like, oh, wow, actually, you know, yeah, there's here's the proof of it.

Right. You know, but again, we don't what is pleasing to the Lord. We faith. We walk by faith, not by sight.

Right. Now, by faith, we understand how the worlds were made, created for nothing. And it turns out that when we walk by faith, according to what

God has said, we end up coming to all the right conclusions before the scientific evidence mounts and shows us.

And please do not be afraid of those who say, well, the science is settled about this or that, and therefore the

Bible is wrong or you have to change your interpretation of the Bible. Otherwise you're wrong. Why is that? Because all these so -called settled conclusions keep on getting upended and turned over.

Every five years, some major settled bit of science gets completely upended and everyone's like, well,

I guess we were wrong. So who are you going to believe? You know, God's world is full of wonder and we ought to use the scientific method and we should be rigorous in our study of it.

And we ought to embrace understanding more and more things. You know, Christians are not anti -intellectual, anti -science.

We're anti -capital S religion, cult science. It's what we're against. You know, where people are worshipping that and using that as their canon of scripture.

Right. So with the discussion about the theology and historical Adam, there's a lot tied to that death coming through Adam.

If Adam is not a real historical person, then what about Jesus dying for sins?

You have death in the world before sin, you know, theistic evolution. So there's all of that wrapped up in it.

If you're a member at a church where you have elders or teaching pastors who hold to a theistic evolution or a non -historical view of Genesis, what is that person to do?

You're going to have to make a careful assessment, I think, to understand what situation you're actually in.

Because I have been a part of a church where some of the leadership and probably the majority leadership didn't really believe in a historical 6 ,000 year timeline given to us in the scriptures.

I didn't know at that time because it didn't seem to have much of an impact. Right. It didn't seem to have much of an impact. Why is that?

Because they have a way of operating that the ends are not really connecting.

So when somebody says, I don't really think that Genesis 1 and 2 should be received as history, but it's more of, you know, metaphor and, you know, kind of a teaching model for the

Israelites to operate based on. But I do believe this historical Adam, that the reason why we're in the situation we're in today, because of sins, because Adam and Eve sinned, that really did happen.

But I'm just not really convinced about the historical elements of the story. But I know the story actually happened.

And I know that, you know, so if somebody is conflicted about that, OK, if they remain consistent, what begins to happen?

That's the question. If you have somebody who who is consistent in their hermeneutic, you may have a problem.

If you don't have an historical creation of Adam and Eve with all the the surrounding meaningfulness of what

God did there, that really historically actually grounds us in the image of God, then what begins to happen to someone's conception of of who we are?

What begins to happen with the understanding of the differences between men and women? If we're just stardust.

Right. I mean, say you say, well, you know, God made us in his image. Yeah, OK. But how many arguments does

Paul make on a historical basis that there's a difference between men and women and women aren't to be pastors and have authority in the church because of this historical event that happened where God made

Adam first and then Eve? Do you believe in historical Eve now or just historical Adam?

Right. Do you believe in the order of events that happened there in Genesis one on the sixth day? Or is that myth as well?

Where are you at on that? Because, you know, I don't know of any church that has women in the pulpit that didn't first question the historicity of Genesis one and two.

I don't know of any church anywhere that has women in the pulpit or women named as pastors or women having authority over men that also believe in historical

Genesis one or two. Which is interesting because in Genesis one and two, the serpent did

God really say. And she gets that wrong and it unravels.

Yeah. But if that story is not historical again, you think about it's like, well, you know, the

Genesis account we can agree to disagree on is not as critical as like, say, the the account of Jesus's death and resurrection.

Well, I would agree in somewhat. But he's called the second Adam for a reason. And why are we receiving the history about the second

Adam, which involves miracles and power and glory of greater proportion of more like the miracle of Christ's death and resurrection as the

Lamb of God and raised the third day and the ushering in of the new creation and so on is of greater importance and greater glory and greater power and requires a greater faith than the story of Adam and Eve in the creation of the world.

Genesis one and two. So why are we questioning the historicity of a lesser miracle? That's stunning to me.

Again, the slippery slope is real because then the question begins to focus on the the virgin birth of Christ.

That's very optional for people these days. Fashionable to question that. Why? Well, it's not scientific, not scientific.

You know, and anything that seems unessential for the maintenance of maintaining the gospel, it seems up for grabs.

OK, well, if if it's not essential for, you know, atonement, it's not essential for salvation, then any of those miracles can be somewhat suspect.

But you can't you can't operate that way because the hermeneutic has to prove true all the way through.

Why are you picking and choosing which ones you're comfortable with? And that's the concern. If you're a member of a church and they say, well, we know we you know, why not?

Well, I think it's a matter of conviction. You know, some people can believe in that. That's fine. Other people don't. That's fine.

We just go all get along and we're not going to make a big deal out of it. I can see that. And I can see that being patient with people who are coming out of maybe a more secular context or they weren't discipled well and they don't believe in receiving

Genesis as history. And they just you know, that's just where they're coming from. I don't think it's essential that you have to believe in the historicity of Genesis one and two to be saved.

Right. We're not saved by the purity of our doctrine or the purity of our hermeneutic. We're saved by Jesus. Right. OK.

But I would say that over time, any church that engages in that hermeneutic is on unstable ground.

And there are things that are going to begin to happen that that church is going to suffer from.

And are you there yet? I don't know. Right. I have no idea what's going on at your church. I would say to be patient with people.

I would say to be loving to people. I would say bring up questions to people. I would say, you know, ask permission from your church leadership, your elders.

Can I think more about what you said? And then come back later and talk with them and say, I have a few questions that I think are pretty important given what happens if there is no historical reception of Genesis one and two.

I've been reading this and that. Can I share this with you? See what you think about it and just try to engage them and see and test and see how that goes.

I would say that if you're in a situation where it seems to be a pretty healthy church and the leadership is very gracious and they say, you know,

I think I think maybe you bring up some good points. It's worth us thinking about those things. And, you know,

I appreciate your conviction. So and so forth. That's great. And we also should have confidence that Jesus is the one who washes his church, washes his bride with the water of his word.

And if a church does not believe in the historicity of Genesis one and two, et cetera, and has some questions about this, that and the other, where's our confidence?

Our confidence is that Jesus is going to sanctify his church. Right. And maybe a generation from now they will believe.

Yeah. Would you say that that one thing in looking at this is what is their maybe mode of hermeneutic?

Is it a hermeneutic of suspicion or moral agnosticism like we we don't know we leave it open or it's just not history because this is what has been handed to us by science and we know that it's not.

Yeah, hermeneutic of suspicion is going to be one in which there's an approach to the text that we're going to treat this like we would reading the

Epic of Gilgamesh and so on. We're going to break it down and we're going to like see how what's really going on in this text.

But it's not giving us truth, but we're going to find out the truth of it by breaking it down and deconstructing it.

There's probably not what's going on. I would say it's more akin to to a hermeneutical spiral. So where you have outside influences engaging in your reading of the text.

So we recognize that's true. But instead of interpreting our outside experiences by the text, we're interpreting the text alongside of our outside experiences and they're in conversation, as it's said.

So given the current state of capital S science.

OK, now I'm going to read the Bible and I'm going to read the Bible in light of all the different agnostics and people who have been stumbled by the word because they think it's unnecessary, you know, because they, you know, well, the

Bible is so unscientific. I can't believe in the Bible. And so they're they're pushed away from Jesus because we hold to a six day creation.

Is that really worth their souls? Those kinds of things. And it could be simply like, well, I just don't think that's what the text is about.

Why not? Because I'm in conversation with people who tell me that it can't possibly be that and still be true.

And so that hermeneutical spiral is like saying, oh, here's the text. Here's what people are saying. Here's the text. Here's what people are saying.

Here's the text. And here's what I'm experiencing. Here's the text. Here's what I'm in this hermeneutical spiral going back and forth and trying to get to the heart of the matter.

But that's fundamentally isogetical. I'm bringing things, influences, authorities from outside the text into the text and changing it up.

So that's the main concern. Since that is the main concern, that's where your assessment has to be.

First of all, of course, you know, is there love? Is there acceptance with the, are the leadership really okay with people who don't agree with them on this matter?

Do they, if they say it's a matter of conviction, do they act like it or is it more of an article of faith for them that, you know, that we shouldn't have these conversations?

We shouldn't talk about it. That means it's an article of faith where you can't question or talk about this anymore.

That means it's an article of faith. If they say, well, it's a matter of conviction and we can study together and learn more together.

Well, then that's, that's good. Yeah. You know, but you have to see where else, where else are they in the hermeneutical spiral and bringing in authorities and interpretations and stuff from the outside to the text that they're dealing with.

Yeah. And I would think there would be much prayer and care for your elders and talking to them and, and wanting the best for them.

And there'd be mutual discussion, you know, on that. Yes. Well, that about wraps up that question.

What about recommendations? My recommendation kind of goes with our topic for this episode.

And it's a book by William van Duttevaard, Dutch apparently.

But the title is The Quest for the Historical Atom. The Quest for the Historical Atom. The subtitle is

Genesis, Hermeneutics and Human Origins. He does a remarkably good job of getting to the heart of the matter.

There's so many different things that you could talk about, maybe get distracted by this rabbit trail or another. But he is able to break things down very clearly about why it is necessary for an historical atom.

And it's not merely the retention of an historical item without any historical context.

So it's a very robust approach. And so I would say if anybody's interested in engaging in where the debates are today, this is a great resource.

And he's very, very clear on the matter. What's the name of that one again? It's called The Quest for the Historical Atom. It's a play on the

Jesus seminars, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. And of course, he's not a cynic.

So, but he, he deals faithfully with the issues. Very good. I have a recommendation.

It's a small book that I read, pretty controversial. It's called Black and Tan by Douglas Wilson.

And I found it very informative. It's essays and excursion on slavery, culture war and scripture in America.

The discussions that were happening during the Civil War. Was it primarily about slavery?

What was the status of the South and the North? What were the mindsets? I know in, in certain circles, one version of history told and other circles, other.

It's good to go back and get some of the primary sources of what was happening. I learned some new things about the abolitionists and kind of their methodology.

That maybe wasn't so helpful with using scripture versus emotional arguments and things like that.

Maybe if some more pastoral input had been involved, bringing scripture to bear on the subject.

There would have been less violence and things of that nature. So it is much more complicated than I was taught in public school.

And it was interesting to see all of that. So Black and Tan by Douglas Wilson. Let's move on to what we are grateful for.

I am grateful for the opportunity for my children to have friends.

When we lived where we lived previously, there wasn't any other young families that we really got to spend time with.

And our young children didn't have friends to hang out with. And now they do. They do have friends and they're able to grow in friendship.

And then you have the trials of friendship where you have to learn how to make friends. And then what does it mean to be a friend and those kinds of things.

So I'm thankful for that dynamic in my children's lives. Yeah, it's fun to watch all of the kids running around and figuring it out and then remembering

I was a kid once. That was a difficult age. I'm grateful for my wife and all that she does.

And teaching the kids and raising them and supporting me and the work that I do.

Taking care of the home and being a support to me. And we got some news today that was, you know, some emotional news for her.

And just to be able to be with her and watch how she has grown in the Lord over the years and she gives it to him.

And I'm grateful for God giving her to me and the work that she does. And that wraps it up for today.

We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Having Not Read.