#750 Muslim Misunderstandings of Mytho-History

Dr. craig’s response

While I don’t take time to watch videos that people recommend to me, your description of this video provides ample opportunity to correct what will doubtless be typical misunderstandings or misrepresentations of my view of the primaeval history of Genesis 1-11.

The first thing to be said is that Muslims, as well as Jews and Christians, are all in the same boat when it comes to properly interpreting Genesis 1-11, since Muslims also accept the Old Testament as the inspired Word of God. Notice that the Muslim can’t get off the hook by saying that the Genesis narrative we have today is a wholesale corruption of an original that did not contain these stories. For Mohammed advised his followers to go to Jews and Christians of his day and to read their Scriptures in order to find the truth. Since we have biblical manuscripts dating back centuries before Mohammed, the Muslim can’t say that the text was corrupted after Mohammed gave this advice in the Qur’an. Moreover, several of the figures and events of the primaeval history are themselves referred to in the Qur’an, such as God’s creation of the world in six days, Adam’s creation from the dust the earth, Adam’s naming the animals, Adam and Eve’s temptation by Satan in the Garden and their fall into sin,  the story of Cain and Abel, the story of Noah and the ark (see the surahs entitled “The Cow,” “The ‘Imrans,” “The Table,” “Repentance,” “Hūd,” “Tā’ Hā’,” “The Moon,” “Noah,” and so on).

So the Muslim, too, is stuck with the same hermeneutical question of how best to interpret these events. Does Mr. Hijab believe in a literal six day creation? Does he believe humans fell into sin by eating the fruit of a tree in a garden? Does he think that Noah’s flood virtually wiped out human life at some time in the recent past? We’re both in the same boat here. My proposal can actually be seen as a help to the Muslim by freeing him of the heavy burden of defending the literal truth of such stories.

Next, it’s important to accurately represent my view. My view is not that Genesis 1-11 is allegorical, as Mr. Hajib alleges. That would be a genre mistake. (Neither, by the way, did the Alexandrian theologian Origen take these narratives to be allegorical. Rather Origen believed that Scripture has multiple senses, one of which is the spiritual sense, which seeks to communicate important spiritual truths to us that may be independent of the historical sense.) Rather I’m suggesting that these narratives belong to the literary genre which the great Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen called mytho-history. They relate historical events in the figurative language of myth, and therefore should not be read literalistically.

Mr. Hijab tries to put me on a slippery slope which will lead to the denial of more central tenets of Christianity. This is naïve. I certainly agree that “we must allow for at least the possibility that this . . . hermeneutical approach can be applied to other” texts of Scripture. Of course!  But that no more implies that the Gospels are mytho-history than the book of Revelation’s being apocalyptic literature implies that the Gospels are apocalyptic or the Psalms’ being poetry implies that the Gospels are poetry. On the contrary, New Testament scholarship has come to the consensus that the genre of literature most closely resembling the Gospels is ancient biography, which had an interest in historical accuracy.

Mr. Hijab is right that “If one wants to say that all is literal then one needs to maintain not only the contradictions, the internal ones, but also that the universe is 6000 uears old.” But, of course, I do not maintain that all is literal; to the contrary. Therefore it is false that the Bible “is full of contraddictions in whatever way you decide to interprete it, allegorical, literal or otherways.” On a mytho-historical interpretation it is not contradictory. (I refrain from taking a cheap shot at the contradictions and follies in the Qur’an.) The doctrine of inerrancy states that the Bible is truthful in all that it teaches. To discern what the Bible teaches requires hermeneutical skill, including a sensitivity to the genre of the literature involved.

Does my identifying the literary genre of Genesis 1-11 as mytho-history make God “the author of confusion”? No more than the identification of the Psalms as poetry or of Revelation as apocalyptic literature or of Proverbs as wisdom literature makes God the author of confusion! The Bible contains many different types of literature as vehicles of God’s Word, which bespeaks God’s artistry. God is free to use a variety of literary forms to teach us His truth, and Mr. Hajib is in no position to tell God what literary genres He must employ.

In any case, Mr. Hajib is wrong to think that God is going to punish you for not believing the Bible. That is not the determinant of salvation. Rather He will punish people who reject His Son Jesus Christ, his atoning death and resurrection.