[Some think that the Shekinah is a vestige of Yahweh's consort, some
think Asherah, or possibly both. I just used the name to convey the
idea that the idea of 'son' can be a metaphoric, or mythic, one, as
well as a literal, bodily one.]
> >For example, it seems clear in the account that the flood is a cosmos-
> >deconstructing affair, in which the waters which the ancients believed
> >surrounded the earth were loosed and the universe (as they knew it)
> >dissolved back into primordial chaos, with the Ark a bubble of salvation.
> >(It also seems clear that their notion of what the universe consisted
> >of was limited to their own 'land' and did not encompass the whole planet.)
>
> I actually agree with you, that they believed that the flood encompassed
> their land. I don't think they had a concept of planet earth.
>
> >Triage on the historical facts destroys the mythological significance.
> >I suppose it is up to everyone to decide which is the meat of the story.
> >Looking at the stories of other cultures, it seems inescapable that
> >the mythological aspect of the story is the primary message.
> >
>
> then was Jesus great...great-grandfathered by a mythological being? Does
Sooner than that! As the Messiah, Jesus' *father* is God. (This was
probably true for all the Israelite kings.)
> this treatment of Jesus make one want to really believe what Luke says
> about him? Are the genealogies to be believed prior to the mythical Noah?
> I mean is Jesus NOT descended from Adam, or do you believe that Adam was
> mythical?
I don't think there was ever anybody who was the first human being in the
sense that God made him out of dirt, but of course there's a mythological
First Human. This is true in every mythology I've ever read (which
includes Joseph Campbell's cycle, so is not quite lightweight :-)). That
Jesus is descended from Adam (or, rather, that it is mentioned) is very
significant, as you know from reading Paul. This is probably getting
a bit off-topic, though....perhaps we should continue off-screen.
> >Another part of the debate is the recent (post-Enlightenment) use of
> >analogy to talk about God (and spiritual matters generally). Previously,
> >analogy was taken as revealing, but not definitive. That is, for
> >example, being the ancestor of someone was an analogy that need not be
> >literalized. Now, we tend more to insist that our religious analogies
> >are factually definitive, and one becomes the father of another by
> >participating in conception and physical birth resulting. (This is
> >developed in more detail in Placher's book _The Domestication of
> >Transcendence_, which I'm reading now.)
>
> Then what else in the Scripture need not be literalized? Did the waters not
> part? Did Jesus really not raise Lazarus? What are the criteria by which
> we decide what is and what is not to be literalized?
The parts about God (for a good start) shouldn't be literalized. I'd
also include parts about the mythological age of Israel (that is, most
things before the occupation of Palestine). If you look at comparisons
between the Pentateuch and later records, as one case, you find very
intermittent contact between God and Israel later on, and virtual daily
contact before. After the occupation, the history records only a
few instances of God's direct actions (notably the epiphany of Elijah,
where God is not anything tangible, but rather the "sound of nothing");
in the mythological age, God was there every day in a pillar of smoke,
thundered from mountains, came and appeared to Abraham, Jacob, Moses,
the 70 elders, Joshua, and I've probably forgotten some. After the
occupation, God speaks through visions, prophets, the Urim and Thumim,
the 'sound of nothing', angels, and other avatars. If you look at
other mythologies, there is widespread occurence of the theme of the
mythological age, before the Gods ascended to heaven, or when people
and animals still communicated, etc.
Of course, this doesn't mean mythology has no historical basis. (The
case of Mt. Mazama in the Northwest is a good example.) I take it
to mean, though, that the message of the story is primarily mythological,
or theological, and not primarily historical. If we can learn
historical facts from them, so much the better, but I'm reluctant
to interpret the stories in a way that is very sensitive to historical
fact. That is, I think they are the way they are for good reason,
and (in my opinion) if we make interpretive commitments which endanger
the mythological and theological message in favor of historical
certainties, or downplay them in an attempt to reconcile to a more
scientific history, we'll run the risk of minimizing what I consider
to be the central thrust. These stories are the 'property' of everyone
and no-one, though, and I'm not sure there is any way to really
harm them, and dealing with them on a historical basis may be better
than not at all, so I don't think it *wrong* or anything to do so,
I just have less interest in those projects than in those involved
with more mythological or theological readings.
-Greg