> ...
> Does ANYONE out there believe that the Bible does not require that
> there was a real flood or real tower of Babel? Is anyone willing to
> publically state that these chapters are non-historical?
I am not! Without a clear, rational hermeneutic which would allow us to
make such a distinction, the historical basis of our faith (the literal
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) would be threatened by hopeless
subjectivism. There are clear hermeneutical principles which allow us to
recognize e.g. metaphor, symbolism, apocalyptic, poetry, etc. But no
such criterion allows us to relegate the putative historical accounts of
Gn 4-11 to a non-historical status, that is, to distinguish these
chapters unambiguously from other putative historical accounts. (I do
think there are such principles we can apply to parts of Gn 1-3, but that
horse has been well beaten in recent weeks...)
Garry DeWeese