Index post : Rebecca McLaughlin Wrote a Book
It's a funny question really.
We take both fact and fiction literally. Obviously, we do not take fiction as literally true, but we tend, while enjoying it, to take it literally, not to dissect it into elaborate schemes of what it is metaphoric of. With fact, we usually do not take into account a real fact would be able to also be a real metaphor about some other real fact.
The non-literal taking of a thing means the metaphorical or otherwise figurative taking of it. And the Bible does not come in its entirety with markers for non-literality comparable to "are you pulling my leg?"
The proper question is "how can you take the Bible as literally true?" ...
Before I can answer that, I'd like to ask in return "about what respect?"
A) How can I take the laws of the Old Covenant as literally just laws?
When it comes to slavery, I already observed, though the question has a later number, no motive for slavery is mere power greed given free reins, and it is always less bad than the slavery of other people. Enslaving Canaaneans who had worshipped evil false gods and committed evil sexual acts is not comparable to enslaving Thracians because they speak another language, build another architecture, and are useful when extracting silver. Allowing an owner to go unpunished if the beaten slave survives the third day is not comparable to allowing an owner to be unpunished for feeding a slave to murenas. Allowing an indebted Israelite seven years of servitude (probably means maximally seven years, as it would be interrupted by the Sabbatical year) is not comparable to allowing an indebted Roman permanent enslavement for the rest of his life and for the life of descendants. Allowing an indented servant to chose to stay if marrying is not comparable to allowing all slaves promiscuity, requiring their promiscuity when master asks, and requiring them to stay whether promiscuous or not, but certainly allowing them no marriage. Finally, it is Christianity which in wide swathes of the world abolishes the most typical features of slavery.
When it comes to Old Testament heavy penalties for breaking certain kashrut, I can that because I think the kashrut were metaphorical about Christian justice. Obviously I don't consider the ban on sodomy as one of the kashrut.
When it comes to laws for menstruation — these were kind of a health insurance, since one of the things that has improved since not just antiquity but even the Middle Ages seems to be intimate hygiene for women.
B) How can I take the stories with miracles as literally true and factual?
Because I do not share an antimiraculous bias.
C) How can I take the claims about God as literally true, rather than as an elaborate metaphor for an esoteric message claimed to be behind "all religions" about us being sparks of God, or God being many of us reunited in the original unity or similar?
Because, when some have worked miracles like rasing the dead or parting the Red Sea, I would rather take their words about God than the words of some wannabe freemason with a wannabe position of my future mentor (a situation that is not upcoming).
D) How can I take prophecy literally as foreknowledge?
Partly by not taking all in prophetic utterances literally. Some things are coded. For instance, I would consider the four beasts as having both an Old Testament realisation, and an end times realisation, which nationally speaking is different.
Some things are telescoped between two planes of fulfilment. Matthew 24 is a discourse both foretelling the fall of Jerusalem and the end of times.
Some words are also used in non-obvious ways, or rather ways that are non-obvious outside a certain context. "This generation" refers to some cohorts living both at the prophecy and when the fulfilment came in year 70 — but also to the Church being "one generation" ... still extant in the end times.
E) And what about the men who say they are Christians and you shouldn't?
Quoting William Lane Craig from CMI:
“My greatest fear is that the young-earth creationist might be right in his hermeneutical claim that Genesis does teach those things that I described earlier. And I say that would be a nightmare because if that’s what the Bible teaches, it puts the Bible into massive, I think, irredeemable conflict with modern science, history, and linguistics, and I don’t want that to happen.”
The Conundrum of Compromise (And the damage of not taking the Scriptures at face value)
by Joel Tay, First published in CMI-USA Prayer News, July 2022.
https://creation.com/conundrum-of-compromise
fotnoting to:
A Quest for the Historical Adam: A Conversation with William Lane Craig, youtu.be/8TQ8w_9qN4Q .
a) "I don't want this to happen"
This is one reason why Jesus founded a Church with a magisterium. This way, we are not bogged down with what someone wants or doesn't want to happen and how he wants to interpret the Bible accordingly : since it already has obliging interpretations, what we want for the present situation is totally irrelevant.
b) irredeemable conflict with modern science,
Answered in 7 Hasn't Science Disproved Christianity?
c) irredeemable conflict with ... history,
I suppose William Lane Craig considers it history that the city-state of Ur began in 4000 BC, or that Egypt was unified in 3000 BC. If that were the case, yes, it would irremediably be in conflict with the Flood in 2400 BC and Tower of Babel at the earliest in 2299 BC, as some interpretations of the Masoretic timeline go. It would also be in irremediable conflict with the Flood in 2958 BC and Tower of Babel ending in 2556 BC, timeline of the Roman Martyrology. It would also be in conflict with the Flood in 3258 or 3266 BC and Peleg born 2729 BC. In fact, any version of Biblical chronology that did not add swathes of time would be in conflict with the city-state of Ur beginning in 4000 BC, or that Egypt being unified in 3000 BC.
The good news is, first, it's not history, it's arcaheology, and second, my carbon 14 Biblical recalibration takes care of it.
We do not have any "annals ab Ur condita" which state Alexander died as King of Babylon in (4000 - 323 =) 3677 after the founding of Ur. Or that Nebuchadnezzar II became king of Babylon (4000 - 605 =) 3395 after the founding of Ur. The "4000 BC" date is not historically derived, it's archaeologically derived, by carbon dating objects from back the early layers of Ur (which by the way have been redated to 3800 BC). This brings us to my next point.
Second, take my newest version:
Creation vs. Evolution : What Project?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-project.html
Now, if you go to New Tables you will find that ...
- 2019 B. Chr.
- 0.778962 pmC/100, so dated as 4069 B. Chr.
4069 BC in carbon dates equals 2019 BC in real dates.
The real problem would actually be having a pharao of all Egypt available for Abraham in what's carbon dated to 3500 BC. The fact of the matter is, the pharao probably lived a few decades more, which is why the archaeology of royal tombs start with 3100 rather than 3500 BC.
d) irredeemable conflict with ... linguistics
I suppose that Mr Craig refers to the idea that the Tower of Babel event immediately resulted in all languages now spoken, or that languages diverge only miraculously, not by the known processes which made Italian and French two different languages, after Latin of the Paris region and Latin of the Florence region had been the same one (if we went to other regions of France or Italy, we would not be dealing with standard varieties of French and Italian). No. For the Genesis 3 story to be accurately transmitted from Adam to Abraham, we do not need the language to have stayed absolutely the same, nor do we need that between Abraham and Moses, when the Genesis account was formulated into one book, nor do we even need that after Moses. Orally transmitted history can adapt to changes in language pretty fluidly. The 19th C. or early 20th C. collectors of a story from Dürnstein region, about Richard the Lion-Heart having been held captive there did not find the story in the Mittelhochdeutsch spoken at the time of Richard the Lion-Heart — or of his captors, the duke Leopold V of Austria and his squire. And written texts can be updated linguistically also, this is indeed how I explain some of the terminology in the book of Exodus, which Moses wrote before the Ramesside pharaos.
The point is not that there could have been no language differences in Abraham's time without the Tower of Babel, but that Old Egyptian and Sumerian would have been no more different 1000 years after the Flood (a date reached when Abraham was 58, before his calling) than for instance Icelandic and Swedish, or perhaps Scottish and Irish Gaelic. This is not the case. There is no way of getting Sumerian and Old Egyptian from a common parent language in 1000 years. Perhaps in 20 000 or 40 000 years, but definitely not in 1000 years. Which brings me to the next point ....
e) Are you aware of what you want to happen, Mr. Craig?
I place Adam as created in 5200 BC, and consequently dead in 4270 BC. Suppose one agrees with Fuz Rana, who considers Adam lived 150 000 years ago. This would mean, there is no way that the content of Genesis 3 could have been accurately transmitted to the time of Moses. Here is Father George Leo Haydock, 1859, a facing comments Bible way before Scofield, just not a Protestant one:
Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. (Haydock)
I differ in detail, partly by taking a somewhat longer chronology than Ussher's (which Father Haydock was OK with), and on the other hand to compensate that, considering a written transmission could have taken on in the days of Abraham. But the principle remains the same. If Adam lived 146 000 years before Abraham, obviously this becomes impossible, inachievable. If you disagree with Fuz Rana, sorry, your interview with Josh Dowell is long, and it was quicker to jump to his interview with Rana and Swamidass. His 150 000 BP date is obtained from dating methods even worse than carbon 14, like K-Ar.
It seems Swamidass is coauthoring a book with you. He believes the bottleneck was "20 to 30 people" ... but this would clash with Romans 5, and the idea of God punishing justly. A collective sin qua collective is not free-willed, since collectives unlike individuals are not endowed with free-will. On the other hand, if two of the 20 — 30 were sinning, and then immediately punished, why would not the other 18 to 28 take heed and refrain from becoming accomplices? Or if they started out innocent and immortal, what made them mate with fallen mankind?
“I myself don’t hold to that classical doctrine of original sin … What was that first sin? I don’t think we have any idea. I certainly don’t think that it was eating a piece of fruit on a tree. I think that would have been a figurative and metaphorical way of telling the story of man’s fall.”
Yeah, total dark ignorance becomes the consequence of rejecting the light of truth ...
That's one problem. But another one is, accepting carbon dates, you don't just have to take the chapters 1 - 11 as "mytho-history" (a very ill-defined concept, I would say, and I say that precisely because I am aware that much of Greek "mythology" involves what was taken — and what I take — as history). No. Genesis 14 involves Mesopotamians attacking the Amorrhaeans in Asason-Tamar. This can be tied in very precisely with archaeology, as, according to uniformitarian dates, happening in 3500 BC. See the evacuation of a temple treasure from Chalcolithic En-Geddi (which we know is Asason-Tamar), with reed mats carbon dated. But if you wanted to argue Abraham actually lived 3500 BC, apart from the problems this would cause in genealogies and other history, unaccounted for time gaps, this would put Abraham before there was an Egypt, before there was a pharao, since archaeologists date 1st Dynasty as c. 3100 BC — c. 2900 BC, meaning there was no pharao for Abraham to visit in 3500 BC.
On the other hand, if 1935 BC is carbon dated to 3500 BC, and carbon 14 is rising, it makes sense the carbon date 3100 BC would be 1801 BC, or 3200 BC would be between 1845 and 1823 as per my tables (a reason why Abraham's pharao would be the Narmer not found in the first dynasty tombs).
And if you mythologise Abraham too, why believe God's promises to Abraham (Genesis 12) any more than the Proto-Gospel of Genesis 3:15?
Those are just some of the nightmareish problems YOU run into, by your preference for rather learning from fallible scientists than from Moses.
PS, started taking the video with yourself and Sean McDowell, fortunately it didn't take all of it, just to 2:34 to get your timeline, and kudos for allowing Neanderthals, Denisovans, Heidelbergians to descend from Adam, that is a good move. However 750 000 years = transmission problem for Genesis 3. PLUS 100's of 1000's of years in which people were apparently getting saved without Jesus just fine, alternatively were all lost. The traditional view is, people in Peleg's or Abraham's time were saved insofar as they believed God's promise of the upcoming Messiah. And on the traditional view, Peleg was born maximally 2771 years after Adam sinned, the story was perfectly transmittable, especially as the lifespans allowed generations to overlap several ones into the posterity or ancestry beyond what's now possible.
PPS - what the Bible considers as confusion may not be what you consider as such, it doesn't mean agrammatical linguistics in any individual, it simply means social confusion due to the unexpected phenomenon of major language differences. Also, I have no use for casting Babylonian Ziggurat's as the project in Genesis 11, first pericope. Göbekli Tepe, which really is reached by going from the landing place from the East, which is really adjacent to a plain inside the two-river area, rather than in the middle of one surrounding it, and "a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven" not referring to an architectonic structure, but to what was way later seen at Cape Canaveral, when Armstrong went to the Moon.
PPPS - at 14:41 in the video, Sean McDowell confirms you mean "mytho-history" only about chapters 1 to 11. In other words, to you, chapter 12, 13, 14 should already be history. But this is impossible with uniformitarian use of carbon dates.
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