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I've been reading Peter Enns's book, "Inspiration and Incarnation," which is about how the bible was written in the context of ancient Near East culture, and truly fits into that world, and Christians should not view this as a problem, as if it means the bible is not the word of God. Instead, we should view it as God speaking to people in their own culture, in ways they could understand.
In this post, I'll talk about chapter 2, "The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature."
This chapter goes through a bunch of examples of archeological discoveries from ancient Near Eastern cultures similar to ancient Israel. We see that these texts that were discovered are very similar to passages from the bible- so, what does that mean? How should we view those similarities?
This chapter brings up a lot of really fascinating ancient Near East texts that I had never heard of. I can't fit them all in this blog post, so if you're interested in this topic, you should just go buy the book.
Remember when I said that I don't necessarily care what the bible originally meant in its ancient context? Okay I was wrong, I do care. All the examples from this chapter were incredibly fascinating.
The texts are grouped into 3 categories:
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"Group 1-- Creation and the Flood: Is Genesis Myth or History?"
There is a text called "Enuma Elish" which contains a creation myth. Enns says there are similarities between Enuma Elish and Genesis 1. Probably it wasn't the case that one of them borrowed directly from the other, but they both come from the same conceptual framework.
From page 16:
One of the chief differences is that the Babylonian story depicts the creation of the world as a cosmic battle between the god Marduk and his great-great-grandmother, the goddess Tiamat. Tiamat and her husband, Apsu, were the parents of all the gods. Apsu intended to kill his divine offspring, but his grandson Ea intervened and, in an act of trickery, killed Apsu. In time Tiamat grew angry and planned to go to war against the other gods. Ea's son Marduk then fought Tiamat and killed her. From her slain body Marduk created heaven and earth, an act that won him notoriety and thus eventually the head seat at the Babylonian pantheon. (The purpose of Enuma Elish seems to be to justify the worship of Marduk as the supreme god.)
Despite these differences, however, the problem remains. However different the two stories may be, they unquestionably share a common way of speaking about the beginning of the world; both Genesis and Enuma Elish "breathe the same air." Whether or not the author of Genesis was familiar with the text known to us as Enuma Elish, he was certainly working within a similar conceptual world. So, as unwise as it is to equate the two, it is also ill advised to make such a sharp distinction between them that the clear similarities are brushed aside. The Genesis account must be understood in its ancient context, and stories like Enuma Elish help us glimpse what the context looked like.
One could suggest that the purpose of Genesis was to contrast such ancient Near Eastern stories as Enuma Elish. The God of Genesis simply speaks things into being. It is reasonable to suggest that the Genesis story is meant to be contrasted to the reigning Babylonian ideology; that is, one could argue that an important purpose of the Genesis story is to argue that the God of Israel is truly mighty and that he is solely and fully in control of the cosmos. His creation of the world is an act of his will, not the result of a power struggle within a dysfunctional divine family. Yet we must remember that such a contrast can be fully appreciated only when we first acknowledge that the Genesis story is firmly rooted in the worldview of its time. We will return to the implications of this later in the chapter after we look at the rest of our examples.
Also, there are flood stories, for example "Atrahasis" and "Gilgamesh", which are similar to the biblical story of Noah's ark.
So the question to ask here is, why do the creation and flood stories in the bible look so similar to other ancient Near Eastern stories (which we would call myths)? Note, also, that these other texts are older than the bible. Does this mean Genesis is also a book of myths?
"Inspiration and Incarnation" says that modern people think that "myth" just means some silly made-up story- but actually, myths are way more meaningful than that. These ancient people did not have access to scientific methods of studying the world around them, but they asked questions about their identity, where they came from, their purpose. They wrote myths as a way to answer these questions.
So we shouldn't think of myths as "this is not true, therefore it's just meaningless nonsense." Myths weren't intended to be actual scientifically-accurate accounts of what really happened. That's not what they were at all, and it doesn't make sense to apply that standard to them. They were about the way that people in those cultures thought about their identity and purpose.
Back when I was in high school, we learned about some creation myths in history class, and we all kind of laughed at how silly they were- wow, people back then actually believed this! I totally never heard the idea that myths weren't actually supposed to be true stories, but they were important in how a culture understood its identity- I never heard about this until reading resources like Rachel Held Evans's book "Inspired."
I'm also thinking about when I first came across young-earth creationism, which said that if you do the math based on what the bible says, you will conclude that the earth is about 6000 years old. I thought it was absurd when I first found out that people actually believed that- but eventually I believed it too, because I thought, I'm a Christian and I believe the bible, and I just couldn't come up with any reason that Genesis 1 would say that God created the world in 6 days, if it wasn't really true that God created the world in 6 days. Well, here's a reason right here- creation myths are a legit ancient genre, and when they say God did this or that to create the world, it doesn't mean that's what really happened; it means something about how we think about our place in the world and our connection to God. ("Inspiration and Incarnation" also says it doesn't make sense to debate whether the "days" in Genesis 1 were literal days or metaphorical long periods of time- this debate is missing the point- the "days" don't actually correspond to anything in reality at all!)
The point is, the creation and flood stories in Genesis *are* ancient Near Eastern myths. That's the genre they are part of. When we read and study them, we should understand them within that context. And yes, God can use myths to speak to people. That's what They used, because that's what ancient people were able to understand. (That's the point that the book is making, but I'm not really sold on it.)
A quote from page 30:
To give a hint of where this discussion is going, it is worth asking what standards we can reasonably expect of the Bible, seeing that it is an ancient Near Eastern document and not a modern one. Are the early stories in the Old Testament to be judged on the basis of standards of modern historical inquiry and scientific precision, things that ancient peoples were not at all aware of? 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 made use of 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.
Okay, so, that's the point that Enns is making in this section. But I want to ask, so then what do *we* do with this, as modern Christians?
Are the myths in the bible true and inerrant? Like, within this framework where we recognize that these are not accounts of actual things that happened, what does it mean for them to be true or inerrant?
You could say that the message that these myths are communicating is true and inerrant. But, I also think that doesn't make any sense, because what *is* the message? Well, "Inspiration and Incarnation" says that the message of the Genesis 1 creation story is that God is truly in control, creating the world on purpose, in contrast to other religions' creation myths. But we can't say that this summary of "the message" of Genesis 1 is "inerrant" because this is just our understanding of what that message is. This comes from human beings reading Genesis 1, reading other cultures' creation myths, and using their brains to give a summary of what the differences are.
It's like... how can you say the message is inerrant, when we don't actually have access to the message itself, we just have our best guesses at what that message was? And anyone's claims about what the message is, we should evaluate using the same tools we use to evaluate any argument that anyone makes about anything. There's no point at which we can say "oh, well, this is *just true* because it's straight from the bible, and the bible is inerrant." (Which is how I always understood biblical inerrancy.)
Honestly, I don't think there is one specific "inerrant" message we are supposed to get from these bible stories. I think they are told as stories because we should relate to them as stories, live in them, play with them, find whatever meaning we find, choose a character to write obsessive fan fiction about, etc. The word of God is living and active; it's not a code where each passage corresponds to one useful truth about life.
So it feels to me like these myths aren't true or inerrant at all. They're ancient myths which were written for a certain purpose, to communicate things about humanity and God, and we might agree or disagree with those things. We might like these myths or not like them. Basically, we can analyze and respond to them just like we would analyze and respond to any other text. To me, it doesn't seem like there's any point in that analysis where we should privilege them and believe that certain aspects are extra-trustworthy just because they're from the bible. (Probably Enns would not agree with me, or at least wouldn't say it the way I'm saying it here.)
There are a lot of questions we can ask here, and I don't think "Inspiration and Incarnation" is meant to answer those questions. It's meant to give us some important background information for understanding what the bible is. But "what do we do with it?" is still unanswered.
(For what it's worth, I think the idea that "these stories in the bible *are* creation myths, but they're RADICALLY DIFFERENT from all the other cultures' creation myths" is really overstating it. "Inspiration and Incarnation" points out some differences but doesn't make a big deal out of "this was RADICALLY DIFFERENT", but I've seen other sources that claim that. I think the religion taught by the Old Testament was basically within the range of religions that existed back then. Sure, maybe some adherents would make the argument that their religion is so much better and so different from other religions, just like people do today, but that wouldn't have been something that everyone agreed on.)
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"Group 2-- Customs, Laws, and Proverbs: Is Revelation Unique?"
This section of chapter 2 looks at some ancient texts related to customs, laws, and proverbs, which are very similar to passages we find the bible.
First of all, it mentions the Nuzi tablets- "legal, administrative, and economic texts" from "the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries BC." These tablets are important because they describe cultural practices of the ancient Near East, which are very similar to the cultural practices described in the book of Genesis.
From pages 19-20, here are a few examples of similarities:
1. In the story of Abraham, we read that he and his wife, Sarah, were childless. Abraham adopts Eliezer of Damascus to be his heir (Gen. 15:2-3). Later, in Genesis 16:1-4, Sarah gives her handmaiden, Hagar, to Abraham in order to bear him an heir (Ishmael). When Isaac is later born to Sarah, he becomes the heir in place of Ishmael, even though he is the younger child. The Nuzi tablets, as well as texts from later periods, record similar legal situations.
2. When Isaac married Rebekah, Rebekah's brother, Laban, handled the negotiations but asked her if she consented (Gen. 24:57-58). But when Laban arranged the marriage of his daughters to Jacob (29:15-30), his daughters were not consulted. The same situation is represented in Nuzi contracts: when a brother draws up the marriage contract, the woman is consulted; but if a father draws up the contract, she is not.
Page 31 remarks, "The moral standards by which Israel's first ancestors were expected to act seem to come not so much by God's unique command but by expectations of the surrounding cultures. The behavior of Israel's ancestors is not a matter of a unique revelation by God, but of the accepted cultural norms of the day." [italics in original]
Next, there are some examples of laws. The Code of Hammurabi has some laws about what to do if someone injures another person, with different punishments depending on if the victim was a slave or nobleman, that sort of thing- and we see very similar commands in the laws that God gave to Moses in the book of Exodus. (This is where "an eye for an eye" comes from.) There are some differences, but the basic outline is very similar.
The Code of Hammurabi is older than the book of Exodus. So... how does this make sense? The laws that God gave to Moses aren't unique, directly from God, but they're laws that other ancient cultures already had.
Also, there's the Instruction of Amenomope, an Egyptian text, which is very similar to a section from the book of Proverbs in the bible- and is older than Proverbs.
So, like, what gives? How can we say these things were "from God" when they're actually from Israel's ancient Near Eastern neighbors?
Again, "Inspiration and Incarnation" answers this by saying that God spoke to the ancient Israelites in ways that were culturally familiar to them. But, again, I want to know where this leaves us. What even is the bible, then?
One way that we could spin this is to say, the societies around ancient Israel all had their own law codes, and when God gave laws to Israel, They did it by picking out which of the already-existing laws were correct. So that's why the bible looks similar to other ancient law codes- the bible is the subset of laws, from other ancient law codes, that actually got it right.
I don't think this is it at all (and, to be clear, "Inspiration and Incarnation" doesn't suggest this- I'm just bringing this up as a possible interpretation from Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy). It's way too neat and convenient. But... if this isn't true, then doesn't that mean some of the laws in the bible are wrong? This book says God spoke to ancient people in ways they could understand, but... these laws that condoned slavery and treated women as property- what good is it for God to "speak to people in ways they could understand" if they "understood" it as telling them that slavery was okay?
I have an analogy: social media. Suppose some historian finds some document from our culture, which addresses the question "Should you let your kid have a facebook? How old should kids be before they are allowed to use facebook?" Maybe historians discover a lot of different sources (parent groups, education experts, psychologists, facebook employees) answering this question in different ways. The historians should conclude that facebook was a culturally-significant thing, and that in such a culture, it makes sense that various authorities would give advice about it. But if you're not in a culture that has social media, then ancient texts about it don't really apply to your life in any way at all.
So these law codes already existed, and the topics they address (including some that are messed-up, like slavery) are the topics that ancient people needed their law codes to address. So when "God" "gave" laws to Israel, those laws also addressed those topics, sometimes in very similar ways to the surrounding cultures.
Still, though, it doesn't feel to me like it's really from God, then. Or at least, it's impossible to pick out which parts are "from God" and which parts are "cultural" (and "Inspiration and Incarnation" says that's not the right approach to take anyway), and so we have to just evaluate the whole thing the way we would evaluate any other non-inerrant text.
So what do Christians do with the laws in the Old Testament? I would say we just read them and judge them the same way we would judge any other text. We don't have to say "well, there must be *something* to this, because it's in the bible."
I mean, the bible is special *to me* but I don't really think it's special in some general objective sense. And "Inspiration and Incarnation" talks about believing the bible is the word of God, and then figuring out what that even means later. It sounds to me like "the bible is the word of God" doesn't mean any actual thing; it just means "I have chosen to live my life under the conceptual framework where I like the bible and it's special to me" but there's not really any reason you *have* to be under that conceptual framework. I'm just here because I want to be.
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"Group 3-- Israel and Its Kings: Is Good Historiography Objective or Biased?"
In this part of chapter 2, we learn about the Mesha inscription, which is about King Mesha of Moab and how he's the best and how he fought back against King Omri of Israel. On one level, we might say this is good evidence for Christians who believe the bible is true- see, it confirms that there really was a conflict between Omri and Mesha, just like the bible says. But also, the thing is, the Mesha inscription is obviously propaganda, written for the purpose of making Mesha look good. So that raises the question, is the bible's account of Israel's kings also propaganda?
The bible tells the history of Israel's kings in the books 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings. (1-2 Chronicles also covers this same history- more on this later.) One might argue that the writer of Samuel-Kings wasn't "biased"- you can see how this writer evaluates every single king, and says that most of them were bad. See, that means it's not propaganda to make the kings look good, right? Well, not exactly... It's more like, the purpose of Samuel-Kings is to explain why the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Assyria and the southern kingdom of Judah was captured by Babylon and sent into exile. This was written for the Israelites in exile, trying to make sense of their history. So basically, the point of Samuel-Kings is that the reason the Israelites were conquered by Babylon is that they did not faithfully follow their God's laws. That's why we see so many of the kings being judged as "bad", for not worshipping God faithfully like they were supposed to.
"Inspiration and Incarnation" talks about what "historiography" is- it says that any time a writer presents an account of historical events, they are necessarily choosing which events to include, how to connect the events to each other, etc. No one is just simply saying what happened- way too many things have happened, and most of them are really boring, like "I am sitting at my desk"- obviously you shouldn't include that in your history book. You should only include the things that were, like, important. But who's to say what's "important"?
So everyone who is giving an account of historical events is "biased." This isn't necessarily a bad thing... but also we should be aware of how the writer's personal background and purpose in writing affects the way they tell the story.
The book talks about the contrast between the history of Israel's kings recorded in Samuel-Kings, and the history of Israel's kings recorded in Chronicles (ie the biblical books of 1-2 Chronicles). Both of them are covering the same period of history, but they tell the story in slightly different ways.
From page 52,
[Chronicles] tells an alternate history of Israel, one that differs from Samuel-Kings because it is told from a different perspective and for different reasons, namely, from the perspective of those who had returned from captivity in Babylon.
Chronicles was written for a society who had returned from exile and were trying to figure out who they even were now, and what their future would be. Had God abandoned them? What about God's promise that a descendant of David would sit on the throne forever?
Chronicles tells many of the same stories as Samuel-Kings, but in ways that contradict. Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy try to "harmonize" the stories- try to make them say the same thing. Argue with internet atheists about it. But Enns says this is missing the point. Chronicles is supposed to be different from Samuel-Kings. On the points where they contradict each other, what really happened, though? Well, no one knows, but that's not really the point. These weren't written to be 100% historically accurate accounts of what happened- they were written to tell the nation about their identity and their connection to God.
"Inspiration and Incarnation" also gives an example from the New Testament: In the gospel of John, Jesus clears the temple at the beginning of his ministry (John 2). But in the other 3 gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), he did it at the end of his ministry, days before he was crucified. Christians who believe in inerrancy would tell you this must mean he did it twice. However, "Inspiration and Incarnation" argues that history does not always have to be told in chronological order.
This reminds me of how sometimes, in a movie based on historical events, the movie will portray the events happening in a different order, because it makes for a better story. For example, say there's a movie about some important historical figure, and it shows some experience they had in their early life, which affected them a lot, and inspired them to go and do important things. But actually, if you look at the real timeline of history, you will see that this big inspirational event actually happened to them much later in life, and was NOT the catalyst for their drive to take action and change the world. But the movie tells it that way because it feels like a better story. Maybe whatever *actually* inspired them was something complicated or boring or hard to portray on screen in a way that will resonate with the audience.
So, that's fine for a movie, but it's shocking to suggest that the bible also does that. Isn't the bible supposed to be actually true, and not take storytelling liberties? Well, "Inspiration and Incarnation" argues that in ancient times, this is how people wrote history. They wrote it in the way that would tell a story that communicated the message they wanted to communicate. They didn't have the expectation that every single sentence should be a correct historical fact. It doesn't make sense to apply this standard to the bible.
Okay, that's all fine, but again I want to ask, so what should modern Christians do with the bible?
The point of all this is, in order to understand a bible passage, you have to understand the conventions of the ancient genre it was written in. You have to understand the writer's purpose and the original audience's understanding. Nothing just comes down to us directly from heaven, where we can say "this is *just true*."
I always understood biblical inerrancy to mean "This is *just true*. You may not understand it, but it *is*." But what we're talking about here is the necessity of understanding the bible's cultural background. Rather than being true regardless of and in opposition to our understanding, we can only find the truth of it by understanding.
In other words, it's not inerrant. It's not a window into a magical realm of absolute truth. It's subject to layers of meaning related to language and culture and genres, just like every other text.
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Posts about "Inspiration and Incarnation":
Inspiration and Incarnation: Introduction
Inspiration and Incarnation: Other Ancient Near East Literature
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