Essay - Critical Introduction to the Old Testament is Genesis History or...

Critical Introduction to the Old Testament

IS GENESIS HISTORY OR MYTH?

***** is the first book of ***** Bible. It contains incredible stories of the creation ***** the universe, man's fall from grace, ***** story of Noah and the great flood, ***** the stories of the first generations of man. This book is perhaps one of the most controversial as well. The contents ***** the book are not ***** source of dispute. However, the interpretation of ***** content is a ***** of ***** scholarly debate for *****y reasons.

The first source ***** debate is exactly what type of work Genes***** constitutes. Conservative Christians consider *****is to be a his*****ry. Using this interpret*****tion, events in Genesis happened exactly as written. Other more liberal *****terpretations consider Genesis to be something other than a historical account. There are many ***** viewpoints on how to categorize Genesis. Some believe that Genesis is an allegory, others a myth, and still others compare it to the Viking Sagas. Th***** paper will examine both sides of this issue ***** present evidence to support both *****. It will discuss ***** major accepted viewpoints surrounding the ***** of Genesis.

*****s and Liberals argue on the historical accuracy, literary classification and o*****r points of Genesis. The arguments are presented as if they ***** about the entire book of Genesis. However, the true essence of the question lies in solv*****g the problem ***** authorship. In ***** respect, several models have solved this question, at le*****t as far as the latter portions of Genesis are concerned. ***** tab***** theory of ***** clearly identifies authors ***** at least ten of the eleven sections of Genesis. The only section for which no author can be found using any currently held *****ory is for the creation story. Th***** research ***** ***** ***** thesis ***** the argument for ***** *****hip of ***** does ***** concern the entire book of Genesis, but rather the ***** true argument lies in Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:4, the creation.

***** of Prevailing Liberal and Conservative Theories

The underlying ***** regarding the ***** viewpoints about the literary categorization of ***** is the question of ***** ***** who wrote it. Genes***** exhib*****s several different writing styles. Strict conservatives tend to ig*****re this fact and proclaim that Moses wrote the entire ***** start ***** finish as God dictated it. They purport ***** it is the direct ***** exact word of ***** as transcribed by one person. O*****r conservatives acknowledge the different writing ***** and still hold that it is the direct word of God, but ***** different people were used as instruments to accompl*****h the t*****k.

Liberals, however, are quick ***** point out that Genesis demonstrates several very distinct ***** styles and language patterns. ***** are ***** *****ories to explain this phenomenon. One popular theory is the "JEDP Documentary Hypo*****" (Sewell, 1994). This hypothesis states that many of the s*****ries in Genesis were passed down through ***** generation orally, with each tell*****g adding embellishments and deletions, much as with the "teleph***** game" that