BOOK SUMMARY

Book Summary

Book Summary

Introduction

We live in an era of reductionism. This becomes especially evident by the common use of the word “only.” The reductionist says, “The human mind is just complex matter” or “morality is just a byproduct of evolution for the group's survival.” When it comes to Bible study, reductionism usually takes the following form “The narratives of Genesis are just another myth of the Ancient Near East.” The book defines the concept with reference to the bible and describe the mythologies associated with it in an artistically manner.

Summary

The post evangelicals today regularly use these arguments. On a popular level, writers like Rachel Held Evans commented on the “remarkably similar” accounts of creation and the flood of the Ancient Near East in relation to those found in Genesis. Understanding Genesis as unhistorical, unscientific myth, which contains the same “human resources literary” and “cosmological assumptions” that the Ancient Near East would have been, according to herself, “liberating”. Peter Enns is the post evangelical scholar most often associated with this view. In his book Inspiration and Incarnation (Inspiration and Incarnation), Enns sought to show that God has set to the cultures of the Ancient Near East, using historical and literary forms not unscientific in Genesis (and other writings) to communicate its message. Many followed his lead, especially those seeking resolution of the perceived discord between faith and science.

In the context of secular academia, such views are unquestioned. The dominant paradigm originated in School History of Religions. This perspective of the 19th century believed that religion was monotheistic originating from the lower classes of primitive society, the creation of tribal shamanism as a means of asserting power over the most powerful physically or socially. These shamanistic beliefs have evolved to polytheism, then to henotheism and eventually to monotheism. The school based its religious vision in the likeness of ancient cultures and sought to fit all the data in a linear paradigm, evolutionary. Within this paradigm, the Genesis narratives become “just” a myth alongside the myths of other ancient cultures. In the early 20th century, scholars began to criticize how exactly certain beliefs fit within that paradigm. Eventually, the prevailing academic view has deviated from the linear model, although the interpretation of the Genesis narrative “only” as another creation myth continues to prevail.

The reason

There are obvious similarities between Genesis and other ancient and modern stories of origins. Scholars who hold this view have shown similarities as the most essential features of Genesis, and the differences as secondary and non essential narratives. But what if this is a mistake? What if the differences are essential aspects in Genesis and the worldview of the Old Testament?

John Oswalt, professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary recently made this defense in his book “The Bible among the myths” (The Bible among the Myths). It builds on earlier work of GE Wright, of Harvard University, to present his thesis, claiming that Wright's work still stands as a critique of the prevailing view ...