Roger's shrubbery (needs pruning): The eternally working Creator (part 3)

Understanding what God means
So we can gain some "understanding" on ways that the ancient records could have been compiled; but next we need to try to understand how "accurate" (at least, in our information-driven, Western sense) the records were, especially the earlier ones. Even a cursory reading of Genesis will make it obvious that, going back toward the beginning of the book, the earlier accounts tend to get shorter and shorter (the account of Noah and the flood is a notable exception), even though they record individuals' lifespans said to reach hundreds of years. Obviously, a lot of information about events, and people's lives, dropped out of the records over time, before they were finally compiled into the book we have as Genesis. And in contrast with what was said in part 2 of this series, about the genuine reliability of oral records, still given enough time it's inevitable that mistakes or omissions will creep into any records; in extreme cases, it's like the game of Telephone, where a group of kids whispers a sentence from ear to ear around the room, till its weirdly morphed final version is the cause for fits of giggles and laughter.

So the mere fact that the earlier records in Genesis are usually so abbreviated is strong evidence that a lot of information had dropped out before they were compiled in a single book. The fact, meanwhile ... no matter how ancient or fragmentary some of the earliest records were ... that many events, and even names, make a consistent thread of spiritual or prophetic insights that continues right on not only through Genesis, but through all the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (written over the next 1,500 or more years), is startling evidence that their final product, in its design and authorship, was orchestrated far beyond what any human authors or editors could collaborate to produce. (You would have to postulate some sort of 1,500-year "conspiracy", somehow maintained across multiple cultures, in various languages; often with some of the writers having no contact with, or even knowledge of, many of the others' works; and through frequently chaotic and violent episodes in history; yet somehow succeeding in developing, and passing along, an story overall coherent and consistent in many details. Shades of The da Vinci Code!) Still, just as with Job, it's vital to realize that the completely valid truths conveyed in Scripture need not always have been synonymous with the events having been as literal as the records may appear ... at least, not "literal" or "accurate" as we think of it.

Literally murky
That's always the hangup. In the West, we simply cannot conceive of an account, presented as a historical record of people and events, that somehow could be true and valid, yet not necessarily portray specifically accurate facts the way we want it to. "Nonfactual true history"? To us, that sounds like an absurd contradiction, a complete oxymoron. It is true that, the more recent any account is, the more likely it is to be able to be confirmed against corroborating records or evidence; the life of Jesus is a stellar example of that. The central events of his life, namely his crucifixion and resurrection, are so amply confirmed by internal evidences in the gospel accounts (such as unlikely figures being presented as primary eyewitnesses, which no one would do if they were trying to invent a credible, but fake, story), and by events in church history (such as the completely unlikely conversion of Paul, from jihadist persecutor to the foremost advocate of Christianity; and the fact that most of Jesus' first disciples paid for their faith in a risen Christ with their lives, which none would have done if they had even suspected that the resurrection was not true), that it has been said that Jesus' resurrection is more historically confirmed than are such accepted events as the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, or George Washington's crossing of the Delaware.

But the early events of Genesis take us back into murky depths of time, with the records coming through at times like partly-heard whispers or half-seen pictures. They also come from a time when cultures often drew no sharp distinction between what we would precisely define as "fact" or "legend", or even "allegory". None of this calls into question the spiritual truths conveyed there; and none of this at all challenges the understanding of God that he so consistently urges us to gain about him, throughout his Word. In fact, our understanding of him is anchored squarely in Christ himself; not in Genesis, any more than it might be anchored in the Psalms or any other part of Scripture. And nowhere in the New Testament is it even implied that genuine faith in Christ, or a genuine relationship with him, is somehow contingent on also holding to a strictly literalistic view of Genesis, as our society would view "literal": salvation is presented as dependent simply on faith in him alone, as Son of God and Lord risen from the dead (as detailed, for example, in Rom 10.9). Believers in him, after all, are called Christians, not "Genesisians", "Adam-and-Eveians", or any such thing.

Early thinkers in both the church and Israel, in fact, cautioned that literal-appearing parts of Scripture ought not to be declared as having to be taken so literally: Jewish theologians of at least the second century before Christ had suggested that the creation "days" of Genesis might represent indefinite lengths of time, not necessarily literal twenty-four-hour periods; and the respected Christian thinker Augustine, in the fifth century, concluded that it isn't really certain what actual events the early Genesis stories were meant to describe, and that we should be cautious about drawing conclusions about nature or the physical universe based on what those passages appear to say. Such wisdom would be timely among many in society today.