Showing posts with label Higher Criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Higher Criticism. Show all posts

Sunday, March 03, 2019

Lightning and Molasses

Last week I took issue with an argument made by the higher critics that Genesis 2 teaches that animals were created after mankind rather than on the fifth and earlier part of the sixth days, as described in chapter 1.

Their argument, if you recall, is based on a straightforward linear reading of chapter 2. The creation of man is described in verse 7, they say, followed by the creation of beasts, birds and livestock in verse 19, then the creation of woman in verse 22. That “contradicts” the order given us in chapter 1.

My response was that the narrative is not linear, and that all the events of chapter 2 are not given to us in consecutive order. There is no reason they should be.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

The “Two Creations” Myth

I keep reading that there are two different creation stories in Genesis. More importantly, the argument is made that the stories are not just different but mutually contradictory.

This was news to me when I first heard Jordan Peterson say it, and I have been reading Genesis regularly over the course of my entire life. At first I wondered if the problem was that I hadn’t been reading carefully. Yet, even poring over the text repeatedly, I find I simply don’t see the issues that prompt the higher critics to assign Genesis 1 to the Babylonian captivity and most of Genesis 2 to a different author at a different historical period.

So why do the critics insist the narrative from Genesis 2:4 on forms “a second account”?

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Skepticism and Renown

Director David Lynch says this about U.S. President Donald Trump:

“He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.”

Lynch is not necessarily expressing approval here; note that his metric for presidential greatness is the ability to disrupt. That would not be everyone’s measure of a man, let alone a U.S. president.

What Lynch’s comment does point out, though, is that it is not the least bit outrageous for a man to mull over how a contemporary stacks up against the all-timers in his field, whether or not his verdict is a favorable one. This sort of comparison is made all the time, even when only a year or two have passed.

Sunday, October 07, 2018

Specific Enough for You?

Yahoo Answers fields a tough one:

“Were all bible prophesies [sic] written years after the events took place?”

Best Answer: Yes, the ‘prophecies’ in the bible are nothing that go beyond what a kid with knowledge about the world can’t predict. [I’m pretty sure he means “can” there — Ed.] Not to mention things that have always happened.”

That “best answer” is the sort of handwaving you often get from people who haven’t actually read and studied the later books of the Old Testament. The prophets of Israel and Judah frequently made predictions that go well beyond “things have have always happened”.

Monday, July 23, 2018

A Little Prophetic Pigskin

Isaiah prophesied for many years under many different circumstances about many nations and about many different things on the mind of God.

When he began his prophetic ministry, Assyria was at the forefront of world affairs. During Isaiah’s lifetime, Samaria fell to the Assyrians and Jerusalem was besieged by them. Even Israel’s neighbors had their own ill-fated run-ins with Sennacherib’s “unstoppable war machine”. So naturally much of the earlier chapters of Isaiah is concerned with current events. He would say things like, “Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people,” and then he lived long enough to see that very thing happen.

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Deals and Deal-Breakers

Modern critics divide the book of Isaiah into three sections: (1) chapters 1-39, (2) chapters 40-55, and (3) chapters 56-66.

The claim is made that the latter two sections, which contain very specific prophecies concerning events that took place hundreds of years after Isaiah died, were actually written by disciples of Isaiah living during those later periods of Judah’s history and carrying on his mission under his name.

Naturally, conservative scholars disagree.