Re: ANE cosmology; was : A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

In a message dated 6/2/2006 11:06:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
glennmorton@entouch.net writes:
The accomodationalist view is that God taught true theology but accommodated
the science to that of the culture of the day when God inspired the Bible.
Let me give an example how I think the ancient culture was "accomodated" in
the Biblical account yet without any compromise of scientific truth.

One Day 5 God created the sea creatures including the "great tanninim". The
word tanninim always refers in the Bible to reptiles -- either snakes or
"dragons", without exception. So Day 5 says God made great big water-dwelling
reptiles. What were they?

Those who teach ANE accomodation say that this is a reference to the
Canaanite myth of Leviathan, which was a dragon that lived in the sea and was part of
the polytheistic mythology. It is mythology found in the Bible, according to
that view.

Here is an alternative view. Many ancient cultures in addition to the ANE
cultures had myths about dragons. Why? Partly because myths percolate very
effectively around the world so that the good ones get shared and propagate
quickly. But more to the point, the whole dragon concept started because ancient
peoples were acquainted with dinosaur skeletons that could be found on or near
the surface. (I understand that in China people even made tea from the ground
up dino bones so that they could drink the "magic" of the dragons.) So the
dragon myths began in truth -- there really were these giant creatures walking
the earth at one time. The Leviathan myths were also grounded in that truth.
So the ancient Hebrews needed to know about Leviathan. Are the Canaanite
myths true? Just as we get preoccupied with evolution and other modern issues at
the edges of faith and culture, so here was an issue that they wanted answers
for. Where did Leviathan come from?

When Moses penned Gen.1, he gave them the answer. He explained that
Leviathan was not created by the primeval sea goddess to defeat the 2nd generation of
gods or any such thing as taught in the myths. Instead, the transcendant God
Yahweh created these great reptiles. This provides the theological framework
that the original audience needed to interact with Canaanites and survive as
monotheists in their culture. And yet this "accomodation" is not bad
cosmology, because we know that the dinosaurs really were living creatures and that God
really did bring them into existence as a part of all the other living
creatures on Day 5.

So I don't think "accomodation" and "truth" are mutually exclusive. I don't
think God taught any bad science. I think that we need to get into the
language and mind of the original audience, and understood through their language we
will see that it communicates truth at every level, not just theological. If
we don't get into their mind and language at all, then we will read bad
science into the text like the YEC's do. But if we get only part way into their
mind, then we will end up with bad accomodation. I think the problem with
accomodation is that it doesn't go far enough to see the truth; if finds the
theological answers and then declares victory and stops looking.

Phil Metzger
Orlando, FL
Received on Sat Jun 3 01:22:40 2006