Outline:
1. Myths (The Nature of). Return to Outline.
C. S. Lewis:
If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time, as Plato’s Socrates or Boswell’s Johnson (ten times more so than Eckermann’s Goethe or Lockhart’s Scott), yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god—we are no longer polytheists—then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not “a religion,” nor “a philosophy.” It is the summing up and actuality of them all.
(C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, [New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1955], p. 228.)
Michael J. Christensen:
Myths are only shadows of the light of God. We walk in the light by faith, not by sight or exhaustive understanding.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 63.)
Michael J. Christensen:
Myth, it must be remembered, does not mean lie, error, illusion or misunderstood history. The term has little to do with fact or history but transcends both. Properly understood, myth is a medium of divine revelation bringing a level of understanding superseding that which can be known through facts and history.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], pp. 76-77.)
E. M. W. Tillyard:
…when I use myth, mythical, . . . I refer to the universal instinct of any human group, large or small, to invest, almost always unconsciously, certain stories or events or places or persons, real or fictional, with an uncommon significance; to turn them into instinctive centres of reference; to make among stories A, B, C, D, all roughly having the same theme or moral, one, and one only, the type. Made thus typical, the story becomes a communal possession, the agreed and classic embodiment of some way of thinking or feeling.
(E. M. W. Tillyard, Some Mythical Elements in English Literature, [London: Chatto & Windus, 1961], p. 10.)
Cf. G. B. Caird:
…myth has a complexity which defies all attempts of the foolhardy to reduce it to a single origin or function.
(G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, [London: Duckworth, 2002], p. 223.)
Brevard S. Childs:
The myth is an expression of man’s understanding of reality. It stems from a thought pattern which differs in decisive points from the modern critical one. This is especially true in regard to the manner in which the world is conceived. Whereas the man of critical mind thinks of the world about him as passive and impersonal, the primitive man conceives of his surroundings as active and living, with powers which influence every area of his life.
(Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 27, [Naperville: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1960], p. 17.)
Brevard S. Childs:
In order to be a myth, such a story must bear a ‘truth’, that is, myth must relate to the basic structure of being within the world order.
(Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 27, [Naperville: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1960], p. 20.)
Bronislaw Malinowski:
Myth . . . is not merely a story told but a reality lived. It is not of the nature of fiction, such as we read today in a novel, but it is a living reality…
(Bronislaw Malinowsk, “Myth in Primitive Psychology;” In: Bronislaw Malinowsk, Magic, Science and Religion: and Other Essays, [Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954], p. 100.)
G. B. Caird:
Plato used myths to convey universal truths which could not otherwise be so readily or so vividly expressed; and it has been a widely held view that this is the function of all mythology.
(G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, [London: Duckworth, 2002], p. 222.)
J. R. R. Tolkien:
You call a tree a tree . . . and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a ‘tree’ until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.
(J. R. R. Tolkien; In: Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography, [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977], p. 147.)
Michael J. Christensen:
When divine truth falls on human imagination, myth is born. It is like seeing a glimpse of reality without the hindrance of concrete facts or abstract data. Myth is the father of abstraction and concrete particulars. Far from being less than true or factual, myth puts us in touch with Reality in a more intimate way than by knowing what is merely true or factual.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 61.)
Michael J. Christensen:
Myth Can Be Distinguished from Allegory… In traditional allegory, there is a rough one-to-one correspondence between the symbol and that which is signified. Cupid represents erotic love, for example, and Bunyan’s Giant, despair. When you begin with an immaterial concept (e.g., despair) and create a material personification to make its meaning clear, you are using allegory. But if you reverse this process and begin with the material (e.g., a lion) to symbolize what is immaterial, you employ metaphor or myth. In allegory, the images stand for concepts; in myth, they symbolize an imagined something which cannot be reduced to a concept. Allegory can always be translated back into meaningful concepts; mythical meaning cannot be stated in conceptual terms. Allegory is clear and unambiguous; myth is more complex: it creates a world of its own where reality is free to reveal itself in terms of that particular world and applies to many levels of meaning.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 61.)
Michael J. Christensen:
Only in a limited sense is myth an expanded metaphor. Fundamentally, myth does not exist in words at all, and can be distinguished from the language structures in which it is expressed.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 62.)
Cf. C. S. Lewis:
There was a man who sang and played the harp so well that even beasts and trees crowded to hear him. And when his wife died he went down alive into the land of the dead and made music before the King of the Dead till even he had compassion and gave him back his wife, on condition that he led her up out of that land without once looking back to see her until they came out into the light. But when they were nearly out, one moment too soon, the man looked back, and she vanished from him forever.
…There is, then, a particular kind of story which has a value in itself—a value independent of its embodiment in any literary work. The story of Orpheus strikes and strikes deep, of itself; the fact that Virgil and others have told it in good poetry is irrelevant. To think about it and be moved by it is not necessarily to think about those poets or to be moved by them. It is true that such a story can hardly reach us except in words. But this is logically accidental. If some perfected art of mime or silent film or serial pictures could make it clear with no words at all, it would still affect us in the same way.
(C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, [Cambridge: At the University Press, 1961], pp. 40, 41.)
C. S. Lewis:
In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction. At this moment, for example, I am trying to understand something very abstract indeed — the fading, vanishing of tasted reality as we try to grasp it with the discursive reason. Probably I have made heavy weather of it. But if I remind you, instead, of Orpheus and Eurydice, how he was suffered to lead her by the hand but, when he turned round to look at her, she disappeared, what was merely a principle becomes imaginable. You may reply that you never till this moment attached that ‘meaning’ to that myth. Of course not. You are not looking for an abstract ‘meaning’ at all. If that was what you were doing the myth would be for you no true myth but a mere allegory. You were not knowing, but tasting; but what you were tasting turns out to be a universal principle. The moment we state this principle, we are admittedly back in the world of abstraction. It is only while receiving the myth as a story that you experience the principle concretely.
(C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact;” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 66.)
Cf. Michael J. Christensen:
The human predicament, on the deepest level, is man trying rationally to understand or consume a Reality which can only be imaginatively envisioned or spiritually tasted. We experience transcendent Reality only in precious moments of mystical encounter. Reality quickly vanishes when “we try to grasp it with discursive reason,” . . . If the function of imaginative literature is to embody in its use of language some reflection of transcendent Reality, then this same function can also be applied to biblical literature, its purpose being to convey religious Reality by pointing through language to divine revelation.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 56.)
C. S. Lewis:
Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.
(C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact;” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], pp. 66-67.)
Cf. Michael J. Christensen:
The images evoked through myth register beneath the surface of the mind, allowing us to actually experience Reality and grasp eternal truths which might baffle the intellect and confuse the mind.
Through the mythic qualities of the historical story of Joseph and his brothers, for example, we are able to feel (or intuit) the unifying truth of both fate and free will. “What you intended for evil, God meant for good,” Joseph told his brothers who betrayed him. Thus God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are not mutually exclusive ideas. Myth enables us to synthesize what discursive reason would show to be contradictory.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 64.)
C. S. Lewis:
‘Child, if you will, it is mythology. It is but truth, not fact: an image, not the very real. But then it is My mythology. The words of Wisdom are also myth and metaphor: but since they do not know themselves for what they are, in them the hidden myth is master, here it should be servant: and it is but of man’s inventing. This is My inventing, this is the veil under which I have chosen to appear even from the first until now. For this end I made your senses and for this end your imagination, that you might see My face and live. What would you have? Have you not heard among the pagans the story of Semele? Or was there any age in any land when men did not know that corn and wine were the blood and body of a dying and yet living God?’
(C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism, [New York: Sheed & Ward Inc., 1944], pp. 219-220.)
David C. Downing:
Tolkien and Dyson, who shared Lewis’s reverence for myth, romance and fairy tale, showed him that mythology reveals its own kind of truth and that Christianity is true mythology. Lewis had insisted that myths were nothing more than “lies breathed through silver,” but Tolkien and Dyson answered that myth was better understood as “a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination.” They argued that one of the great and universal myths, that of the dying God who sacrifices himself for the people, shows an innate awareness of the need for redemption not by one’s own works, but as a gift from some higher realm. For them, the incarnation was the pivotal point at which myth became history. The life, death and resurrection of Christ not only fulfilled Old Testament types but also embodied—literally—central motifs found in all the world’s mythologies.
(David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002], p. 147.)
David C. Downing:
Tolkien and Dyson’s view of myth offered Lewis a way to justify his lifelong love of mythology and to cross the threshold into the household of Christian faith. No more were his beloved Greek myths, Nordic sagas and Irish legends mere escapist tripe unworthy of a thinking person. They became reservoirs of transrational truths, they provided insights, admittedly partial and distorted, about realities beyond the reach of logical inquiry. In Christianity, the true myth to which all the others were pointing, Lewis found a worldview that he could defend as both good and real. It was a faith grounded in history and one that satisfied even his formidable intellect.
(David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002], p. 148.)
C. S. Lewis:
This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolical illusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment thought) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination.
(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Touchstone, 1996], XV: Miracles of the Old Creation, p. 176 fn. 1.)
Paul F. Ford:
The proliferation of mythological themes and figures in the Chronicles reflects C. S. Lewis’s lifelong immersion in the wonders of mythology. In fact, he recovered his Christian faith through his love of mythology. He felt that Christianity was founded on the great myth of the dying and rising god who has somehow communicated a new life to humanity, with the distinction that this myth had become fact in the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. And although modern biblical scholars have done much to uncover the mythical elements in the Bible, Lewis was distressed both at their aversion to myth (they wish to strip the scriptures of all myth and leave only the facts) and also at the consequent mythopathy of many Christians who want to rescue the scriptures from the efforts of such scholars. Lewis believed that faith is based both on the facts and also on the mythic elements that give meaning to those facts. Just as Ramandu explains to Eustace that a star is not what it is made of but what it is, Lewis felt that myths are a “real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling upon human imagination,” the distilled essence of a story that communicates entire truths to a reader that could otherwise not be expressed by mere abstractions.
(Paul F. Ford, Companion to Narnia: A Complete Guide to the Magical World of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], “Mythology, Mythological,” p. 314.)
Jonathan Rogers:
According to Lewis, myth at its best is “a real though unfocused gleam of divinity on the human imagination.” Myth speaks to those human yearnings for something beyond what the earth has to offer. Myth offers up truth as it is tasted and felt, not as it is reasoned out and memorized. It sits halfway between the abstraction of, say, philosophy and the concrete particularity of lived experience. So then, “in the enjoyment of a great myth, we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be experienced only as an abstraction.” Good myths—even the ones that aren’t literally true—are a window onto the reality that we cannot see.
Myths may speak truth, but they are not typically factual, in the way that historical records or multiplication tables are factual. Not typically. The incarnation of Christ is that unique instance in which myth became fact. “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences.” Plenty of myths awaken the heart’s desire for transcendence. One myth fulfills it.
…Fairyland, according to Lewis, arouses in a reader “a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his lifelong enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it new dimension and depth.”
(Jonathan Rogers, The World According to Narnia: Christian Meaning in C. S. Lewis’s Beloved Chronicles, [Nashville: Rabbit Room Press, 2014], pp. 25-26, 26.)
C. S. Lewis:
Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself (cf. the quotation opposite the title page of Dymer) I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.
Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculty.
(C. S. Lewis, Letter, “To Arthur Greeves,” The Kilns, Oct. 18th 1931; In: They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963), ed. Walter Hooper, [London: Collins, 1979], pp. 427-428.)
C. S. Lewis:
Do fairy tales teach children to retreat into a world of wish-fulfilment—‘fantasy’ in the technical psychological sense of the word—instead of facing the problems of the real world? Now it is here that the problem becomes subtle. Let us again lay the fairy tale side by side with the school story or any other story which is labelled a ‘Boy’s Book’ or a ‘Girl’s Book’, as distinct from a ‘Children’s Book’. There is no doubt that both arouse, and imaginatively satisfy, wishes. We long to go through the looking glass, to reach fairy land. We also long to be the immensely popular and successful schoolboy or schoolgirl, or the lucky boy or girl who discovers the spy’s plot or rides the horse that none of the cowboys can manage. But the two longings are very different. The second, especially when directed on something so close as school life, is ravenous and deadly serious. Its fulfilment on the level of imagination is in very truth compensatory: we run to it from the disappointments and humiliations of the real world: it sends us back to the real world undivinely discontented. For it is all flattery to the ego. The pleasure consists in picturing oneself the object of admiration. The other longing, that for fairy land, is very different. In a sense a child does not long for fairy land as a boy longs to be the hero of the first eleven. Does anyone suppose that he really and prosaically longs for all the dangers and discomforts of a fairy tale?—really wants dragons in contemporary England? It is not so. It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing. The boy reading the school story of the type I have in mind desires success and is unhappy (once the book is over) because he can’t get it: the boy reading the fairy tale desires and is happy in the very fact of desiring. For his mind has not been concentrated on himself, as it often is in the more realistic story.
(C. S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children;” In: C. S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, [San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1994], pp. 29-30.)
I. Howard Marshall:
…the question of truth may be answered in different ways at different levels of understanding. It is generally agreed that when Jesus told the story which begins, ‘A certain man had two sons . . .’, he was probably telling an invented story. If the question is asked, ‘Is the story true?’ the answer probably has to be ‘No, it didn’t happen like that’. But in fact the story is a parable, and the appropriate question to ask about a parable is not whether the events described actually happened, but whether the point made by the story is ‘true’ in the sense of being valid: is it true that God will treat us in the way that the father in the story treated his sons?
This is so obvious and so generally accepted that there is no need to labour it. But it does need to be extended. If it is recognised that the Bible contains parables which do not need to be literally and historically ‘true’ in order to be ‘true’ on the level of the message which they teach, then the same may be also the case with other non-factual ways of teaching. We find no difficulty with the use of metaphor and analogy and similar forms of language in this regard. When we read that a sharp two-edged sword proceeded from the mouth of the Lord (Rev. 1:16), we know not to take the description literally; it is true in another kind of way. Perhaps, then, we ought to find no difficulty with the use of myth and legend. There is no reason in principle why God should not be able to make use of such literary forms.
(I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983], p. 55.)
Cf. Michael J. Christensen:
Lewis’s tales of Narnia for example, have meaning not to those who insist on literal truth but to those who have spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear the truth conveyed through myth.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 63.)Cf. N. T. Wright:
If we asked, “Is it true that Jesus died on a cross?” we normally would mean, “Did it really happen?” But if we asked, “Is the parable of the Prodigal Son true?” we would quickly dismiss the idea that “it really happened”; that is simply not the sort of thing parables are. We would insist that, in quite another sense, the parable is indeed “true” in that we discover within the narrative a picture of God and his love, and of multiple layers of human folly, which rings true at all kinds of levels of human knowledge and experience.
(N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, [New York: HarperOne, 2011], p. 5.)
2. History (Genesis 1-11). Return to Outline.
Tremper Longman III, John H. Walton:
Discussions about the early chapters of Genesis often focus on whether the accounts are mythology or history. It is an important question, but framing it this way may not be the best approach. Today, we often consider the label mythology to imply that what is reported is “not real.” But in the ancient world, they did not consider what we call their mythology to be not real. To the contrary, they believed their mythology to represent the most important reality—deep reality, which transcends what could be reported in terms of events that have transpired in the strictly human realm. Indeed, they further considered that even the events in the human realm, which we might label history, found their greatest significance in aspects of the event that human eyewitnesses could not see—the involvement of the divine hand.
Consequently, we should be hesitant to set a dichotomy between history (equaling “real”) and mythology (equaling “not real”). Such thinking is too overburdened with our modern categories to do justice to ancient literature, biblical or otherwise. The deepest reality, that which is most true, must not be constrained by what eyewitnesses can attest or demonstrate to have “actually happened.” The accounts in Genesis 1-11 can be affirmed as having real events as their referents, but the events themselves (yes, they happened) find their significance in the interpretation that they are given in the biblical text. That significance is not founded in their historicity but in their theology; not in what happened (or even that something did happen) but in why it happened. What was God doing? That is where the significance is to be found.
Our defenses of historicity can become reductionistic if we become too focused on proving the reality of events rather than on embracing the interpretation of the theological significance being traced by the author. The text has no interest in trying to prove the events took place. They assume they did, as do we. Instead they are offering an interpretation that constitutes the divine-human message that carries the authority of the text. Events are not authoritative; the interpretation of the narrator is.
(Tremper Longman III, John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018], pp. 17-18.) Preview.
Tremper Longman III, John H. Walton: (Genesis 1-11)
…the genre of Genesis is theological history… The narrative speaks of events that actually happened in space and time. All history is selective and interpreted according to the intention of the author as the author communicates with the audience. The focus of the author of Genesis is theological in that he is interested in describing God and his relationship with his human creatures. …However, these chapters concern the deep past with a focus on God’s relationship with the whole world, rather than with a single family. And they cover an incredibly long period of time, from the creation to the period just before Abraham. Accordingly, Genesis 1-11, though theological history, has a significantly different feel to it, particularly in the use of figurative language to describe the past as well as the similarities and differences it displays with other ANE literature. In other words, the events that stand behind the stories of Genesis 1-11 (creation, fall, Cain and Abel, flood, Tower of Babel) are real, but the narratives are rhetorically shaped in order to present a theological message The events are not inspired but rather their presentation and interpretation in the biblical text are.
(Tremper Longman III, John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018], pp. 91-92.) Preview.
C. John Collins: (Genesis 1-11)
…it appears that the Mesopotamians aimed to accomplish their purpose by founding their stories on what they thought were actual persons and events, albeit told with a great deal of imagery and symbolism.
…it has an historical basis, and that this basis is presented with various rhetorical purposes in mind that go beyond the simple conveyance of information—even if we do not know all the devices to achieve those rhetorical purposes. The communicative conventions (which we must infer) require that we be careful in discerning what the historical referents are.
…When it comes to whether we should compare the materials we find in the Bible to the materials we find from the surrounding cultures, it seems almost obvious that we should. The Bible writers spoke into a specific context and regularly warned their audiences against the blandishments of the competing worldviews. Whether it be an Old Testament prophet inveighing against idolatry and syncretism or a New Testament apostle reminding people about Greco-Roman depravity, these warnings are common to the literature. Surely a sane interpreter will do what he or she can to discover what these dangers were. For example, how did idol worship and temple building function in the ancient Near East? Were they different in Egypt, the western Levant and Mesopotamia? Or, many researchers on 1 John have resorted to Irenaeus’s descriptions of the heretic Cerinthus as the likely occasion for the letter (1 John 2:18-19). We may decide that this is a helpful identification, or unhelpful but the idea of such a resort was certainly worth a try. We always have the danger that some will misuse the comparisons; but surely the right stance is to bend every effort to make a good and wise use of this extra material.
(C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2018], pp. 116, 117, 120.) Preview.
K. A. Kitchen:
…the ancient Near East did not historicize myth (i.e., read it as an imaginary “history”). In fact, exactly the reverse is true — there was, rather, a trend to “mythologize” history, to celebrate actual historical events and people in mythological terms. Compare the growth of legends about “Sesostris” or about the Hyksos kings in Egypt; the growth of traditions about Sargon of Akkad; or the divinization of Dumuzi in Mesopotamia, among others.
(K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2003], p. 262.)
Cf. C. John Collins:
…we must insist that “history” is not a literary form; it is rather a way of referring to persons and events with a proper moral orientation.
(C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2018], p. 141.) Preview.Cf. Benjamin Farrington:
The old Hebrew writers have no vocabulary in which to deal with the laws of nature. The very concept of nature, which we have borrowed from the Greeks, was unfamiliar to them. They were concerned with something different, but certainly not less real. We may call it wisdom rather than science. In their view the ultimate reality was moral, a moral being who could only be understood by those who were trying to do his will.
(Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said, [New York: Schocken Books, 1973], p. 96.)
C. S. Lewis:
It is an equally gross error to suppose that the ritual or myth from which some ingredient in a romance or poem originated necessarily throws any light on its meaning and function in that romance or poem.
(C. S. Lewis, “De Audiendis Poetis;” In: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Walter Hooper, [Cambridge: At the University Press, 1966], p. 9.)
Leland Ryken, Marjorie Lamp Mead:
…rather than communicating “facts” or history, myths convey “truth”—and even more significantly, what we would term universal truth. Being a primitive form of literature, myths are stories in which we can see archetypal patterns in their most simplified form. All great myths appeal primarily to the imagination rather than to the intellect.
(Leland Ryken, Marjorie Lamp Mead, A Reader’s Guide Through the Wardrobe, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005], p. 106.)
Cf. Michael J. Christensen:
Lewis’s tales of Narnia, for example, have meaning not to those who insist on literal truth but to those who have spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear the truth conveyed through myth.
(Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy, [Waco: Word Books, 1979], p. 63.)
John H. Walton:
Mythology in the ancient world was like science in our modern world—it was their explanation of how the world came into being and how it worked. The gods had purposes, and their activities were the causes of what humans experienced as effects. In contrast, our modern scientific approach attempts to understand cause and effect based on natural laws.
(John H. Walton, The NIV Application Commentary: Genesis, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001], p. 27.) Preview.
Cf. John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas:
Mythology in the ancient world was like science in our modern world—it was their explanation of how the world came into being and how it worked. The mythological approach attempted to identify function as a consequence of purpose. The gods had purposes, and their activities were the causes of what humans experienced as effects. In contrast, our modern scientific approach identifies function as a consequence of structure and attempts to understand cause and effect based on natural laws that are linked to the struc- ture, the composite parts, of a phenomenon. Because our scientific worldview is keenly interested in structure, we often go to the biblical account looking for information on structure. In this area, however, the biblical worldview is much more like its ancient Near Eastern counterparts in that it views function as a consequence of purpose. That is what Genesis I is all about—it has very little interest in structures. This is only one of many areas where understanding ancient Near Eastern culture, literature and worldview can help us understand the Bible.
Many parallels can be identified between ancient Near Eastern mythology and Old Testament passages and concepts. This is not to suggest that the Old Testament is to be considered simply as another example of ancient mythology or as being dependent on that literature. Mythology is a window to culture. It reflects the worldview and values of the culture that forged it. Many of the writings we find in the Old Testament performed the same function for ancient Israelite culture that mythology did for other cultures—they provided a literary mechanism for preserving and transmitting their worldview and values. Israel was part of a larger cultural complex that existed across the ancient Near East. There are many aspects of that cultural complex that it shared with its neighbors, though each individual culture had its distinguishing features. When we seek to understand the culture and literature of Israel, we rightly expect to find help in the larger cultural arena, from mythology, wisdom writ- ings, legal documents and royal inscriptions.
The community of faith need not fear the use of such methods to inform us of the common cultural heritage of the Near East. Neither the theological message of the text nor its status as God’s Word is jeopardized by these comparative studies. In fact, since revelation involves effective communication, we would expect that whenever possible God would use known and familiar elements to communicate to his people. Identification of similarities as well as differences can provide important background for a proper understanding of the text.
(John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, [Downers Grove InterVarsity Press, 2000], pp. 30-31.) Preview.
C. John Collins:
The first thing we must do is nail down what meaning we intend to use for that troublesome word “history.” If you and I do not mean the same thing by the words we use, we will be talking past each other; and then we will have Inigo Montoya (in The Princess Bride) chiding us, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
That happens with this word: a text might be “historical” by one person’s meaning, and “not historical” by someone else’s. For example, some scholars say that an account is historical only if we tell it in its proper sequence and leave out imaginative elements. Some say that “history” applies only to the kind of thing that trained historians write. Others limit the word “history” to accounts that leave out all reference to actions of God or the gods. Now, this last group does not necessarily deny that God or the gods took part in the story — and this means they could end up saying, “This narrative is not historical, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen”! This is confusing, and we should do better than that.
I have mentioned that some think that “history” leaves out the imaginative elements; that is, if a story is historical, it invites a literalistic approach to interpretation. In fact, this is a point of agreement between many strict young-earth creationists and many who reject historicity as a proper category at all for Genesis. … But there is nothing in the meaning of the word “history,” nor in the principles of human behavior, that requires this tight connection between historicity and literalism of interpretation. Language is a means of social interaction, and we typically gear our level of expected literalism to the communication event we are engaged in. When a word or sentence is about something in the actual world, linguists call this referring. A careful speaker or writer chooses how to describe the person, thing, or event, with an eye toward conveying a dispositional stance toward it: e.g., to enable the audience to admire, or despise, or mourn over the referent.
In ordinary English a story is “historical” if the author wants his audience to believe the events really happened. That is, “history” is not really a kind of literature (or genre); it is a way of referring, of talking about events in the real world. This means that a variety of literary types can recount “history,” and each type uses its own conventions for doing so. Indeed, a poem can be historical. For example, Psalm 105 recounts some of the events in Exodus, mentioning only eight of the ten plagues and with a slightly different order. But that hardly nullifies the historicity of Psalm 105.
Further, some literalistic critical scholars have found tension between the ways in which Judges 4:17-24 and 5:24-30 describe the death of the Canaanite general Sisera. Surely, when we recognize that Judges 5 is a song, whose purpose is to celebrate Israel’s victory as an expression of God’s favor to his people, we can see that Judges 5:25-27 portrays the killing of Sisera as if it were a great triumph, a humiliation of a great warrior as he dies at the hands of a tent-dwelling woman. The imaginative description does not compete with the prose telling in Judges 4, and to fail to see this is clumsy. In the same vein, Matthew 21:33-46 (cf. Mark 12:1-9; Luke 20:9-19) is a “parable” that presents a highly idealized telling of Israel’s story, highlighting their repeated rejection of the divinely appointed representatives (which sets the pattern for their rejection of Jesus, the “son”). The idealization does not obscure the audience’s ability to recognize the story and get the point (vv. 45-46).
Thus we can say that an author is making “historical” claims when he purports to refer to persons and events. An account has “historical” value if the persons and events are real and the intended dispositional stance is appropriate.
(C. John Collins, “A Historical Adam: Old Earth Creation View;” In: Four Views on the Historical Adam, gen. eds. Matthew Barrett, Ardel B. Caneday, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2013], pp. 146-148.) Here.
Note (regarding the importance of defining terms): On the one hand we have Douglas Kelly—a young-earth (fiat) creationist who believes in a historical Adam—who writes: “the text of Genesis is clearly meant to be taken in a literal, historical sense” (Douglas F. Kelly, Creation and Change: Genesis 1.1-2.4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms, [Fearn: Mentor, 2004], p. 51.). On the other hand we have Peter Enns—an old-earth (evolutionary) creationist who does not believe in a historical Adam—who insists that we must have “a strictly literal/historical reading of Genesis” (Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins, [Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012], p. xv.). Both men clearly have very different understandings of the term historical and in my opinion both are somewhat incorrect in that understanding. On the one hand, I believe it is incorrect to understand the term historical such that “Historical representation maintains a very close relationship between the narrative and actual events.” (Kenton Sparks, “Genesis 1-11 as Ancient Historiography;” In: Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither? Three Views on the Bible’s Earliest Chapters, gen. ed. Charles Halton, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2015], p. 114.) However, I believe it is equally incorrect to posit no connection whatsoever (i.e. between narrative and event). I would assert that K. A. Kitchen is correct in stating that ‘the ancient Near East did not historicize myth (i.e., read it as an imaginary “history”). In fact, exactly the reverse is true — there was, rather, a trend to “mythologize” history, to celebrate actual historical events and people in mythological terms.’ (K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2003], p. 262.) Therefore, ‘we must insist that “history” is not a literary form; it is rather a way of referring to persons and events with a proper moral orientation.’ (C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2018], p. 141.) “The words of Scripture are to be taken in their plain historical sense. That is, they must be taken in the sense attached to them in the age and by the people to whom they were addressed.” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1874], p. 187.)
Cf. C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2018].
Michael S. Heiser:
Metaphorical meaning isn’t “less real” than literal meaning (however that’s defined). Whether we like it or not, the biblical writers weren’t obsessed with literalism the way we seem to be. Frankly, I’ve come to believe that every seminary and graduate school program in biblical studies ought to require a course on the hermeneutical methods of the biblical writers and first-century Judaism. It would be a wake-up call. Biblical writers regularly employ conceptual metaphor in their writing and thinking. That’s because they were human. Conceptual metaphor refers to the way we use a concrete term or idea to communicate abstract ideas. If we marry ourselves to the concrete (“literal”) meaning of words, we’re going to miss the point the writer was angling for in many cases. If I use the word “Vegas” and all you think of is latitude and longitude, you’re not following my meaning. Biblical words can carry a lot of freight that transcends their concrete sense. Inspiration didn’t immunize language from doing what it does.
(Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, [Bellingham: Lexham Press 2015], “Epilogue,” p. 387.)
Cf. C. S. Lewis:
Some people when they say that a thing is meant ‘metaphorically’ conclude from this that it is hardly meant at all. They rightly think that Christ spoke metaphorically when he told us to carry the cross: they wrongly conclude that carrying the cross means nothing more than leading a respectable life and subscribing moderately to charities. They reasonably think that hell ‘fire’ is a metaphor—and unwisely conclude that it means nothing more serious than remorse. They say that the story of the Fall in Genesis is not literal; and then go on to say (I have heard them myself) that it was really a fall upwards—which is like saying that because ‘My heart is broken’ contains a metaphor, it therefore means ‘I feel very cheerful’. This mode of interpretation I regard, frankly, as nonsense. For me the Christian doctrines which are ‘metaphorical’— or which have become metaphorical with the increase of abstract thought—mean something which is just as ‘supernatural’ or shocking after we have removed the ancient imagery as it was before.
(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2002], pp. 124-125.)
Moisés Silva:
We need to appreciate the fundamental difference between (1) the view that a biblical narrative, while intended as historical, should be more or less dehistoricized in favor of an allegorical interpretation, and (2) the view that the original point itself of a biblical passage is not historical.
(Moisés Silva, Has the Church Misread the Bible? The History of Interpretation in the Light of Current Issues, [Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1987], p. 72.)
Cf. J. B. Lightfoot:
The power of allegory has been differently felt in different ages, as it is differently felt at any one time by diverse nations. Analogy, allegory, metaphor—by what boundaries are these separated the one from the other? What is true or false, correct or incorrect, as an analogy or an allegory? What argumentative force must be assigned to either? We should at least be prepared with an answer to these questions, before we venture to sit in judgment on any individual case.
(J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, [Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1870], p. 371.)Peter Enns:
It is important to understand, however, that not all historians of the ancient Near East use the word myth simply as shorthand for “untrue,” “made-up,” “storybook.” It may include these ideas for some, but many who use the term are trying to get at something deeper. A more generous way of defining myth is that it is an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories: Who are we? Where do we come from?
Ancient peoples were not concerned to describe the universe in scientific terms. In fact, to put the matter more strongly: scientific investigation was not at the disposal of ancient Near Eastern peoples.
…Is it not likely that God would have allowed his word to come to the ancient Israelites according to standards they understood, or are modern standards of truth and error so universal that we should expect premodern cultures to have understood them? The former position is, I feel, better suited for solving the problem. The latter is often an implicit assumption of modern thinkers, both conservative and liberal Christians, but it is somewhat myopic and should be called into question. What the Bible is must be understood in light of the cultural context in which it was given.
(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], pp. 40, 41.)
Cf. Peter Enns:
Taking the extrabiblical evidence into account, I question how much value there is in posing the choice of Genesis as either myth or history. This distinction seems to be a modern invention. It presupposes—without stating explicitly—that what is historical, in a modern sense of the word, is more real, of more value, more like something God would do, than myth. So, the argument goes, if Genesis is myth, then it is not “of God.” Conversely, if Genesis is history, only then is it something worthy of the name “Bible.” Again, it is interesting to me that both sides of the liberal/conservative debate share at least to a certain extent these kinds of assumptions. The liberal might answer, “Yes, it is myth, and this proves it is not inspired, and who cares anyway?” The conservative might answer, “Well since we know that the Bible is God’s word, we know it can’t be myth.” And so great effort is expended to drive as much distance as possible between the Bible and any ancient Near Eastern literature that poses problems.
…Keeping in the forefront of our minds the biblical portrait of Israel’s first father as an ancient Mesopotamian man may be a helpful starting point from which to understand the origin of Israel’s creation story. As God entered into a relationship with Abraham, he “met” him where he was—an ancient Mesopotamian man who breathed the air of the ancient Near East. We must surely assume that Abraham, as such a man, shared the worldview of those whose world he shared and not a modern, scientific one. The reason the opening chapters of Genesis look so much like the literature of ancient Mesopotamia is that the worldview categories of the ancient Near East were ubiquitous and normative at the time. Of course, different cultures had different myths, but the point is that they all had them.
…I am assiduously avoiding any suggestion that Genesis borrows from the Babylonian stories in any direct way. As I mentioned earlier, the degree to which Genesis might have been dependent on the Babylonian material has always been a matter of debate, and there is no need to commit ourselves to one view or another. Some scholars argue, quite persuasively in fact, that the differences between Genesis and Enuma Elish are so great that one cannot speak of any direct relationship. I feel this is essentially correct (although the stronger similarities regarding the flood story may suggest some level of dependence). But again, the point here is not one of textual dependence but of conceptual similarity. The differences notwithstanding, the opening chapters of Genesis participate in a worldview that the earliest Israelites shared with their Mesopotamian neighbors. To put it this way is not to concede ground to liberalism or unbelief, but to understand the simple fact that the stories in Genesis had a context within which they were first understood. And that context was not a modern scientific one but an ancient mythic one.
…Therefore, the question is not the degree to which Genesis conforms to what we would think is a proper description of origins. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of Genesis to expect it to answer questions generated by a modern worldview, such as whether the days were literal or figurative or whether the days of creation can be lined up with modern science, or whether the flood was local or universal. The question that Genesis is prepared to answer is whether Yahweh, the God of Israel, is worthy of worship. And that point is made not by allowing ancient Israelites to catch a glimpse of a spherical earth or a heliocentric universe. It is wholly incomprehensible to think that thousands of years ago God would have felt constrained to speak in a way that would be meaningful only to Westerners several thousand years later. To do so borders on modern, Western arrogance. Rather, Genesis makes its case in a way that ancient men and women would have readily understood—indeed, the only way.
…This is what it means for God to speak at a certain time and place—he enters their world. He speaks and acts in ways that make sense to them. This is surely what it means for God to reveal himself to people—he accommodates, condescends, meets them where they are. The phrase word of God does not imply disconnectedness to its environment. In fact, if we can learn a lesson from the incarnation of God in Christ, it demands the exact opposite. And if God was willing and ready to adopt an ancient way of thinking, we truly hold a very low view of Scripture indeed if we make that into a point of embarrassment. We will not understand the Bible if we push aside or explain away its cultural setting, even if that setting disturbs us. We should, rather, learn to be thankful that God came to them just as he did more fully in Bethlehem many, many centuries later. We must resist the notion that for God to enculturate himself is somehow beneath him. This is precisely how he shows his love to the world he made.
(Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], pp. 49, 53, 55, 55, 56.)
Peter Enns:
But to insist that, in order to convey truth, Israel’s Scripture must be isolated from the world in which it was written is a violation of basic interpretive practice. It is routinely understood, even by conservative interpreters, that the cultural context of Scripture informs our understanding of Scripture. Responsible biblical interpreters ask themselves, “How would this text have been understood at the time in which it was written?” This principle holds whether we are interpreting Paul, the Gospels, the Prophets, the Psalms, or the Pentateuch—including the creation and flood stories of Genesis. To insist that these stories must be read in isolation from what we know of the ancient world is, ironically, an argument for a noncontextual reading of Genesis, which is something few would tolerate when interpreting other portions of the Bible.
A noncontextual reading of Scripture is not only methodologically arbitrary but also theologically problematic. It fails to grasp in its entirety a foundational principle of theology that informs not only our understanding of the Bible but of all of God’s dealing with humanity recorded there, particularly in Jesus himself: God condescends to where people are, speaks their language, and employs their ways of thinking. Without God’s condescension—seen most clearly in the incarnation any true knowledge of God would cease to exist.
It is not beneath God to condescend to culturally conditioned human modes of communication. Having such a condescending God is crucial to the very heart of Christianity. True, such a God will allow ancient Israelites to produce a description of human origins that reflects the ancient ideas and so will not satisfy scientific questions. But if we are going to talk about the Christian God, then this is something we are going to have to get used to. What sets this God apart is his habit of coming down to our level. As Christians confess, God even became one of us.
(Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins, [Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012], pp. 58-59.)
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They speak different languages and use different powers of the brain. We sometimes fail to see this because of the way the religion of Abraham entered the mainstream consciousness of the West, not in its own language but in the language of the culture that gave birth to science. Once we recognise their difference we can move on, no longer thinking of science and religion as friends who became enemies, but as our unique, bicameral, twin perspective on the difference between things and people, objects and subjects, enabling us to create within a world of blind forces a home for a humanity that is neither blind nor deaf to the beauty of the other as the living trace of the living God.
(Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, [New York: Schocken Books, 2011], p. 77.)
Cf. N. T. Wright:
The book of Genesis offers us, then, a picture of the world as a temple and of humans as the statue, the image of the god, within that temple. Both of these pictures challenge the split-level world that has been assumed in post-Enlightenment society and culture. But there is a third thing as well. Genesis offers us, right up front, not one creation story but two. Genesis 1 and 2 are not strictly compatible—at least, not if you try to take them as left-brain, rationalistic narratives about what happened. They are not, and are not intended to be, what we would call scientific accounts. Part of the point of there being two of them is to alert the reader—and sadly many readers in the last two centuries have not taken the hint!—to the fact that they are poetic images, narratives replete with metaphor, stories designed to help us grasp with our right brains what creation is for. …often the process of putting things together involves that quintessentially right-brain activity of telling and grasping stories, not so much to know what happened as what it’s all about.
(N. T. Wright, Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues, [New York: HarperOne, 2014], p. 142.)
Note: See further: Inspiration and Inerrancy.
καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria
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