There are no answers in Genesis

[Belacqua]

if it's claiming to be a historical record, which I believe is most probable for the Eden story, then that's how I think it needs to be judged.

Yeah, I don't think we're going to agree on this.

I see no reason to believe the Eden story was ever intended as journalism or history. 

Affective, suggestive, spiritual literature, including scripture, just isn't meant to be read as a straight accounting of facts. That would be like reading Swann's Way as a factual listing of events. It would be like trying to make oneself autistic. Not to read it as spiritual just seems bizarre to me. 

I think that modern ways of reading have damaged our abilities. Somehow people think that every book should be read as if it were a physics textbook, and books which can't be read this way are failures. It narrows down the possibilities of human experience.

[Jehanne]

if it's claiming to be a historical record, which I believe is most probable for the Eden story, then that's how I think it needs to be judged.

Yeah, I don't think we're going to agree on this.

I see no reason to believe the Eden story was ever intended as journalism or history. 

Affective, suggestive, spiritual literature, including scripture, just isn't meant to be read as a straight accounting of facts. That would be like reading Swann's Way as a factual listing of events. It would be like trying to make oneself autistic. Not to read it as spiritual just seems bizarre to me. 

I think that modern ways of reading have damaged our abilities. Somehow people think that every book should be read as if it were a physics textbook, and books which can't be read this way are failures. It narrows down the possibilities of human experience.

Why did theologians, for centuries, take the Genesis account literally?

[Anomalocaris]

if it's claiming to be a historical record, which I believe is most probable for the Eden story, then that's how I think it needs to be judged.

Yeah, I don't think we're going to agree on this.

I see no reason to believe the Eden story was ever intended as journalism or history. 

Affective, suggestive, spiritual literature, including scripture, just isn't meant to be read as a straight accounting of facts. That would be like reading Swann's Way as a factual listing of events. It would be like trying to make oneself autistic. Not to read it as spiritual just seems bizarre to me. 

I think that modern ways of reading have damaged our abilities. Somehow people think that every book should be read as if it were a physics textbook, and books which can't be read this way are failures. It narrows down the possibilities of human experience.

No, people just became less accepting of, or resigned to submitting to, make belief moral authority built on pure, and let’s not beat around the bush, purposed bullshit.

I see no reason to think any of the original ancient “spiritual” literature were ever meant to be taken less than literally, so as to create the illusion of great knowledge and wisdom on the part of the bullshitters and thus to advance their own personal and social agendas using faked credentials. 

The allegoric crap is nothing more than ex-post rationalization by those who seek to perpetuate the influence of the bullshit long after it has become clear just how bullshitty the supposed “allegories” really were.

[emjay]

if it's claiming to be a historical record, which I believe is most probable for the Eden story, then that's how I think it needs to be judged.

Yeah, I don't think we're going to agree on this.

I see no reason to believe the Eden story was ever intended as journalism or history.

And as I said, for me it's the inclusion of mundane, factual details, such as the river names and locations, that suggests it was indeed intended as a factual/historical record of some sort. If it were not for that I would have little difficulty in seeing the story as, or at least potentially as, allegorical (notwithstanding my Christian upbringing which was basically YEC and the term allegory was rarely, if ever used).

Affective, suggestive, spiritual literature, including scripture, just isn't meant to be read as a straight accounting of facts. That would be like reading Swann's Way as a factual listing of events. It would be like trying to make oneself autistic. Not to read it as spiritual just seems bizarre to me. 

I think that modern ways of reading have damaged our abilities. Somehow people think that every book should be read as if it were a physics textbook, and books which can't be read this way are failures. It narrows down the possibilities of human experience.

It's not the case that I think everything, or the Bible in particular, should be read as a physics textbook, but where something is or appears to be making a factual claim, which as I said, I think those instances in the Eden story are doing so, then I think it should be treated as such. So I disagree with your last sentence there; it's not that I can't enjoy literature, on an emotional and psychological level, what you may or may not be referring to as spiritual, but as I said when something appears to be making a claim, then I'll treat it as a claim. For instance indeed, I enjoyed reading Dante a long time ago... and it was indeed strangely transcendent in weird ways - made me feel all sorts of things - but I never had any issues with it like I'm describing here for Genesis, because there are none of these apparent historical/factual claims. It's something you can just accept as either the result of a vivid imagination (my view), or 'inspired [by God]' (presumably yours), but either way it doesn't affect the value of it as interesting and thought provoking literature.

[emjay]

How does original intent, essentially unknowable except through dubious deduction, matter more than how it is manifestly, customarily, practically and Influentially applied?   Especially when how it has been practically applied carries great momentum and governs to a far greater extent how it will continue to be applied than the dubious “original intent”?

I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you're saying. If you're saying that there are far reaching consequences from the views that have built up around those original texts, some allegorical, some not... basically all the different schisms of Christianity and all their negative affects on the world... then I don't dispute that and in that sense agree with you and Belacqua that that is indeed important, practically if nothing else. I just meant that what's most important to me to evaluate as a claim to truth, for the sake of my own beliefs, is only the author's original intent.

[Angrboda]

Yeah, after due consideration, I've come to conclude that Bel supplements his diet with lead paint.

[Belacqua]

I just meant that what's most important to me to evaluate as a claim to truth, for the sake of my own beliefs, is only the author's original intent.

I certainly don't mean to criticize, if this is what most interests you about the texts. It's a fascinating question. 

I'm sure you know how difficult it is, since we can't really know the answer. Ancient writers didn't operate under the current academic rules about sticking to one's own genre, and properly attributing sources, what's original, etc. After Plato died lots of people wrote "dialogues of Plato" containing what they thought he would have said if he'd had more time, and signed Plato's name to them. It took centuries to work out which ones are by the man himself, and there is still disagreement. 

One source I read suggested that the Genesis creation stories were written quite late, during the time of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and were intended as founding myths to solidify religious coherence in the face of competing myths from nearby competition. As you know from the OT, Hebrews were continually tempted away to nearby faiths due to more popular festivals, less strict commandments, etc. So it's quite likely that the 6-day creation and Adam and Eve were relatively late and intended as national foundation myths, like the tall tales Americans tell about their Founding Fathers. (I don't think this has been proven; it's one theory among others.) 

So there are a large number of interlocking problems: was it written when they claim it was written? Was it re-edited to get a different meaning later on? 

Did the original author even intend it as a claim to truth, or as something more like a "speech act"; an act which, by speaking something, something is made to change? Such acts may not be evaluable in terms of truth or falsehood. 

Anyway, you could have a good long career working on these issues, and I'm sure people have. It's not irrelevant by any means. 

If you're saying that there are far reaching consequences from the views that have built up around those original texts, some allegorical, some not... basically all the different schisms of Christianity and all their negative affects on the world... then I don't dispute that and in that sense agree with you and Belacqua that that is indeed important, practically if nothing else. 

Yeah, I don't think we're fighting at all. More a question of which part interests us. 

To me, the Book of Job, for example, can be analyzed textually to try to figure out when exactly it was written, and in what context, so we can make educated guesses about what its original authors may have meant. 

But the significance of the Book of Job for history, for the development of Judaism, Christianity, and Western thought in general, doesn't rely on that original intent. Like it or not, the Book of Job now consists of the original text plus all of the influential interpretations which have come since, including those of Blake and Jung. It's impossible for 21st century people to read it as ancient people did. 

Maybe we could compare it to those guys who dress up and do Civil War reenactments on weekends. They can learn a lot about what really happened, and can refine the accuracy of their uniforms, placements on the battlefield, etc. But there is no possible way they can experience what those soldiers experienced. What the modern guys do is a different thing. Likewise, 21st century readers can't experience a text the way the old guys did.

This is not just my crazy idea, either. Mostly I am thinking here of Roland Barthes and what he said about the "death of the author," which (like so many ideas in literary hermeneutics) is taken into the secular from Bible hermeneutics. The idea is just that once the text is "out there," and becomes the property of its readers, it is no longer limited to what the original author had in mind. This is not to say that every interpretation is equally good -- just that the text becomes an open-ended source of dialectic and debate, not an authoritative list of facts.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yeah, I don't think we're going to agree on this.

I see no reason to believe the Eden story was ever intended as journalism or history. 

Affective, suggestive, spiritual literature, including scripture, just isn't meant to be read as a straight accounting of facts. That would be like reading Swann's Way as a factual listing of events. It would be like trying to make oneself autistic. Not to read it as spiritual just seems bizarre to me. 

I think that modern ways of reading have damaged our abilities. Somehow people think that every book should be read as if it were a physics textbook, and books which can't be read this way are failures. It narrows down the possibilities of human experience.

Why did theologians, for centuries, take the Genesis account literally?

Because the literal was, and still is, the least important way to approach scripture.

[Belacqua]

Why did theologians, for centuries, take the Genesis account literally?

Some did. Some didn't. 

I've already listed some who didn't. It wouldn't be possible to type out a complete list. 

Have you read any of the Cappadocian Fathers? Their knowledge of Greek philosophy tended to make them less interested in literal interpretations. 

Have you read any of the Jewish theologians who followed the Pardes system? They also felt that the literal reading was the least important. 

There are a lot of different Christians, so I'm sure if you look around you can find somebody who took it literally early on. I haven't read any.

[Anomalocaris]

If they truly understood literal reading was the least important, they would also understood nothing more important could be gained by reading it, except for academic curiosity.     Because everything true they scribe to it, they had doggedly ascribed to it despite it, not because of it.

What they had is a cognative dissonance between understanding that it’s words are false, and the unwillingness to part with the notion that it yet remains somehow, in someway, a source of the truth.