The article below (from "A Symposium on Creation" Vols. 1-5 @ http://www.creationism.org/english/symposium/) is used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Book House Company, copyright ©1968-1975.  All rights to these materials are reserved.  Materials are not be be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Book House Company.

Dr. McCone is Associate Professor of Anthropology at California State College. Prior to accepting this position, he taught at Michigan State University, and South Dakota State College, and served as pulpit supply or pastor of a number of churches of different denominations in South Dakota and Montana.

Dr. McCone holds a B.A. in Religion from Wessington Springs College, a M.S. in Sociology from South Dakota State College, and a PhD. in Anthropology and Sociology from Michigan State University.

Essay-IV

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION:

The Biblical Record and Problems of Historical Explanation

In the discussion of archeological data and problems of evolutionary interpretation of the origins of civilization, we were confronted with a people called the Sumerians who seemed to stand at the meeting point of history and prehistory. They appeared to be at once the avenue of pushing the boundaries of our historical knowledge of man farther into the past and also a forbidding barrier because of the mythological understanding of their world and of their own past. The sacred writings of the Hebrews have given to us an identification of these people in the expression “land of Shinar.” It was to this land that peoples in the east migrated, then took counsel, and eventually built a tower to reach unto heaven only to have God confound their language so that they could not understand each other’s speech. According to the account of the Hebrews, there lived some centuries later in what was at that time the capital and center of Sumerian culture, a man called Abram. God called him out of Ur from country and kindred and house so that he would show him and give to him a land, promising to bless him and through him to bless the whole world. These promises were renewed to his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, was sold by his brothers into Egypt. He, through a series of miraculous incidents, was made second in rank to Pharaoh. His activities regarding the famine not only preserved Egypt but provided a refuge for his father, Jacob, as well as his brothers and their families.

After a stay of some generations in Egypt in which the rulers eventually made them slaves, God undertook through Moses to free them and lead them back to the land of Promise. It is this Moses who not only was used to work miracles of deliverance and give to his people the Ten Commandments from Mt. Sinai, but who also is credited with giving to his people a written record that provided them with a connecting link of events and lives with the Abram who had been called out of Ur of Chaldees. But Moses' Record goes much farther than that. Mainly via the means of genealogies the record continues past Abram to the land of Shinar and the town of Babel, and still farther to a world-destroying flood and the rescue of eight people and a large cargo of animal life in the ark. And still the record reaches into the past till there is given the creation of man and the world and the universe in which he lives.

It would appear that in the Hebrew record we are taken back to the very beginning via historical events rather than over the route of evolutionary assumptions.

Sumerian History and Legends Becoming "Myths"

However, at this point a protest would be raised by many and that is to remind us that the Sumerians also had myths about a beginning and about a flood and its survivors from whom they had descended. And since Abraham was a Semite who came out of Ur of the Chaldees, the Hebrew "myth" is to be traced through him to the earlier Sumerian myths.

In response to this mythical designation of the Genesis account, two things need to be said. The second is far more important than the first. First, a brief observation about myths and their connection with actual events. At one time, all myths were thought to be purely fictional presentations of the imagination of man. It was thought they may have been the medium of symbolic or moral teaching truths but nothing more. The Homeric poems were regarded by many in this light. Heinrick Schliemann however “naively” believed that there was some actual event truth in the Greek myths. His position was confirmed when the leads provided by the Greek myths led to the archeological discovery of Troy and later to Mycenae. This established as a fact that though the Greeks had understood and written in mythological manner, the things about which they wrote were events that had actually taken place in time. If we were to accept in this sense the mythological status of the records of Genesis, they probably would still have greater significance for us than would be granted by those who dismiss them by calling them myths. Still, they would suffer from the same kinds of limitations which characterize the Sumerian myths.

At this point we are brought to the second and more important response to the designation of Genesis as myth. By what consistent conceptualization of myth can this Hebrew book be called a myth? There has been a continuing effort in anthropology to arrive at a usable consistent definition of the term, myth. Though the Sumerian myths do deal with origins and a flood, it is not this that validates our calling these stories myths. It is rather the manner in which these problems and events are presented and also the function which they play in the social life of the people that warrants their designation as myth.

In the mythological narratives of the Sumerians, natural forces are personified and deified. Thus, the sky is Anu who is the highest authority in the polytheistic hierarchy. Enlil is the storm and is understood as the heavenly power conceived in terms of force. So also the earth is dually personified into male principle or water and female principle or soil and by which the productivity of the earth is easily understood. This kind of involvement of man, deities, and natural forces presented a problem in their explanation of origins. It is not surprising, however, that with this mythological kind of understanding of the world they would have to explain the origin of the gods also. In fact, the Sumerian myths make no distinction in the origin of society, of the gods, and of the world of nature simply because they are inseparable in their thinking, In the beginnings of the development of modern anthropology, Tylor observed this character of myth saying, “First and foremost among the causes which transfigure into myths the fact of daily experience, is the belief in the animation of all nature rising at its highest pitch to personification" (Bidney 1950: 16). The absence of the mythological characteristic in the Genesis account demands the attention of anyone comparing it with these criteria as well as by comparing it with the content of the myths themselves. After contrasting the world views of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures, Henri Frankfort observes their similarity by saying,

... the two peoples agreed in the fundamental assumptions that the individual is part of society, that society is embedded in nature, and that nature is but a manifestation of the divine (Frankfort and Others 1949:241).

This doctrine was, in fact, universally accepted by the peoples of the ancient world with the single exception of the Hebrews (Loc. cit.).

The Biblical Creator as Distinct from The Creation

This difference is not only unmistakable but is demanding of attention since the Hebrews came out of the cultural context of the Mesopotamians and spent several centuries within the geographical boundaries and under the political dominance of the Egyptians. Frankfort calls explicit attention to the difference among the Hebrews stating that Yaweh is not in nature. As creator, He is distinct from both man and nature. And also nature is never understood in terms of the biological or psychological characteristics of man. The non-mythological character of the Hebrews views is expressed by Frankfort, "This conception of God represents so high a degree of abstraction that, in reaching it, the Hebrews seem to have left the realm of mythopoeic thought" (Ibid.: 244).

A second manner in which anthropologists have defined myth comes from Malinowski, the Polish born, British Social Anthropologist. Malinowski viewed myth in terms of the function which it played in society. Rather than seeing myths as explaining natural phenomena, he sees them as containing and maintaining the basic beliefs which uphold the social order. The myths of ancient civilization also fit this definition. The origin stories not only produced a pantheon of deified, personified forces of nature but also they are related in a power structure to form a divine state. Each city in Mesopotamia was ruled over by its own god who occupied his place in the polytheistic state. When one city fought against another it was perceived as war in heaven, and when a city came out as dominant over the others it was understood that the gods had granted the Anu and Enlil function to the god of that city and his authority was then recognized and respected. The ensi or human ruler of the city was regarded as the servant of the god. In this sense the mythology of both Mesopotamia and of Egypt served as the validating foundation of the state for almost three millenniums and as Frankfort observes, without a single rebellion against it. The social order of the city states was functionally inseparable from the mythical belief which supported them.

Here again the origin account of Israel stands out in stark contrast. First, because their belief system existed prior to and apart from their relatively short experience as a nation-state. Second, because in this short existence the people and frequently their leaders rejected or were in conflict with their system of beliefs. Only their prophets and a very small minority of the people remaining true. Third, this belief system continued on beyond the cessation of Israel as a state or a kingdom. The belief system of the mythology of ancient civilization came to a complete end when the social order which it supported ceased. While each of these points could be greatly expanded, they prove conclusively that the beliefs encompassed in the Genesis account are not mythological in the sense of being produced by a cultural process in the social order and of occupying a functional relationship within it.

Utterly apart from the matter of personal commitment to or rejection of the Genesis account, any objective observation using a consistent set of anthropological defining criteria forbids its categorization as myth.

A minimum attention has been given here to handling some of the most important objections to the historical character of the first book of Moses. This has been necessary in order to address our attention more clearly, and with at least less possibility of being misunderstood as to its claims to historical truth. If the label of myth cannot be applied to these opening chapters of our Bible, does it follow that they then may be regarded as history. Here, as with myth, it is important to state what is meant by the term history; is any account that is not myth history, and conversely, if not history, then myth? The popular connotation usually attached to myth is that it is a fanciful creation of the imagination of man and therefore completely lacking in credibility. Similarly, the connotation associated with history is a reliable account of the actual events of the past. Therefore, if any question is raised of the historical status of the Biblical account, this is immediately taken as questioning the actuality of the events recorded, the reliability of the authors, and hence of inspiration of the book itself.

The Book of Genesis as Real History

I should like to assure you that I have no question of the inspiration of the Book of Genesis, the reliability of its author, whom I have no reason to believe that it was other than Moses, nor the occurrence of the events described. The problem comes only when history is given an explicit definition. History is a human perspective and understanding of the past. It is always a selection, ordering and interpretation of the events of the past structured in some sense within the framework of man's present social conditions. As such, history is in a dual sense a human product, that is, the events are the events of man and the under- standing of the events is also the work of man. History as we know it has its beginnings with Herodotus and other early Greek writers. In the thinking of Ernst Cassieer (1953:219 ), "what we call historical consciousness is a very late product of human civilization. It is not to be found before the time of the Greek historians. And even the Greek thinkers were able to offer a philosophical analysis of the specific forms of historical thought. Such an analysis did not appear until the eighteenth century. The concept of history first reaches maturity in the work of Vico and Herde." Recently Cyrus Gordon has been pointing out the Semitic contributions to the beginnings of Western civilization in Greece, and there can be no question that much later both the Old and New Testament have had a tremendous influence on the thinking of Western man. However much credit the Greeks owe to their Hebrew and other Semitic predecessors, still we must credit them with the beginnings of the writing of history as we know it.

The position which I wish to state and then explicate its meaning is that Genesis cannot be called history in the strict sense that the idea of history has developed in Western civilization and that if it is called history, it is necessary to make explicit certain qualifications. As I attempt to make clear this position, I think you will understand that rather than calling the Biblical account into question, I am only pointing to its unimpeachability.

Historical Perspectives and Understanding

1. While history as an understanding of the past is a human product, in the same sense the Bible is not. Men were used as the medium of writing the Scriptures. Though they did not write as mechanical robots, yet they were holy men of God moved by the Holy Spirit.
2. The perspective of history is the perspective of man and the locale of human events which is the earth. The perspective of the Bible is that of God and from above. It is a heavenly perspective even though it is focused upon the events of man upon the earth.
3. History is written from the perspective and in the context of the times and of the social order of its writers. Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, of course, did live during a specific period of time and did live in some kind of structured social situation. Neither is it questioned that culturally, he was confined to the resources of his people and time. However, it must be remembered that Israel had remained culturally distinct from the character of ancient civilization. Even when Israel did drift away from God, their prophets were sufficiently detached from social involvement in these movements that they could proclaim a message uninfluenced by them. It is just such messages that give to us the Biblical record of events. They were detached from their time and situation only in the sense that the New Testament writers to the Hebrews could say of their message, "God, who at sundry times and divers manner spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." It is this character of the Bible, including the Old Testament and the book of Genesis, that though it was written in the distant past and to a people of the past, it has an up-to-date message for every age and every society.
4. The primary purpose of history is to give to man an understanding of his past. More subtly and subjectively it serves to validate the present social situation in which he lives and moves and has his being. The Bible, on the other hand, claims to be a self-revelation of God to man. Rather than validating his present social situation, it raises serious questions about both his past and his present.
5. The points that we have raised are not to discredit history. Nor in questioning the historical character of the Bible have we in any wise called into question the truthfulness of the events recorded in it. To further observe differences between history and the Bible in general, which, of course, includes the Genesis account, it must be observed that the Bible does not give us some things which are necessary for an historical explanation of the past. History requires that we have some arbitrarily chosen point in time from which we measure time and which provides the temporal structure for the relating of events in time. This is not found in the Bible, but it is the kind of thing which is constructed when the Bible is pressed into the mold of the modern conception of history. This is usually done by either taking the point in time that Western man uses, i.e., the birth of Christ, or attempting to measure back to creation as a point in time. Actually, this is an attempt to make "the date" of creation as the arbitrary anchor point in time for a Biblical historiography - or at least chronology. These kinds of efforts to support the Biblical record by giving to it a character of modern history inadvertently very seriously call it into question. For once creation is made a point in time or a measure of time of any length, it ceases to be creation in the Biblical sense. Time is an integral factor in man's understanding of an existing created order. Space, time, and matter-energy provide the functional constituents of our understanding of the world of nature. As such, “time” is an integral aspect of that which God created. To say that God created the universe at a point in time or in a certain duration of time, whether it be in terms of days or of geological ages, is to make God a creature of time and creation to be something far less than creation. The folly of these attempts may be seen when one carries out the attempt to date creation by some such date as 4004 B.C., September 17th, at 6:00 P.M. on a Saturday evening.

Chronology in Genesis rather than being anchored to an arbitrary point in time is given only in the successive lives of a genealogy. It is interesting to observe also that a certain genealogy is chosen, ie., that which follows Seth to Noah rather than the genealogy of the descendants of Cain. In this sense the chronology follows a genealogy of witnesses. Our modern kind of historiography would have been anchored to some point in the events of the civilization of Cain and other events would have been selected and recorded according to their significance in the development of this social order. In contrast, Genesis gives to us only the fact of the existence of the civilization of Cain and its ultimate destruction at the food, relating it only to the genealogical line of witnesses. The genealogy then continues on through the three sons of Noah but the chronology is attached only to the lineage of Shem, reaching to Abram. In each one of the genealogies a statement is inserted relating it to the significant event at Babel. To the lineage of Japheth is simply added the statement, “By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands: every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.” The lineage of Ham through Cush leads to Nimrod of whom it that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord and that “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech Accad Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” The genealogy of Shem leads to Eber which may be the origin of the name Hebrew. Of one of Eber's sons, Peleg, it is stated, “for in his days was the earth divided.” The Biblical account of the confusion of language and the diffusion of peoples here in the land of Shinar or of Sumer is identified with all three genealogies but only for that of the line of Shem is there a chronology. The significance of the event as Biblically recorded is primarily in terms of a line of witnesses rather than in the arbitrary framework of the development of a social order. Its says significance is not then historical in the modem sense.

Besides lacking the arbitrary temporal structure of history, there is also a lack of the spacial and social particulars which modern historiography calls for. After stating in the opening verse of Genesis 11 that the earth was of one language and one speech we read, “and it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there.” We are not given any social identification, how many they were, in what year, whether this was a mass migration or whether a gradual continuous migration over ten years time or possibly over a century of time. Nor can one deduce how long they dwelt here before the suggestion to build the city arose, nor who it was who made the suggestion, or anything about the social-cultural situation out of which this decision arose. And yet, it is all of these things that history is about. The fact that the Biblical record lacks these necessary features of secular human history in no wise calls into question the credibility of the events which it describes.

Conclusion

In conclusion it should be remembered that the Bible leaves unrecorded untold number of events in the world of nature and the world of man. Man, through the methods of history and pre-history, may attempt to discover records and interpret them. This is a legitimate concern of history, archeology and anthropology. His search may be limited by the amount of undiscovered data remaining hidden in the earth. He may also restrict his own progress if he chooses erroneous assumptions that mislead him in his search. But, in the light of what has been presented we have to conclude first that events revealed to man in the Genesis account cannot be pressed into the mold of history, nor is it a substitute for history. This is to say that we cannot merely hook secular history on to divine revelation at Genesis 11 and claim thereby that we have solved the problem of bridging the gap between history and prehistory by having produced a continuous history from Adam to modern man. But a second conclusion must also be maintained, that is, the events discoverable to man can never be in conflict with the events revealed to man.

These conclusions lead to a closing question which might be phrased something like this: If the record of Genesis is not history in the same manner that modern man has come to understand the past, can it be related to or contribute to modern man's concern with prehistory and of pushing the horizon of history further back? I believe the Bible presents reliable suggestions for the direction that research should take by pointing to the Sumerians. Archeological, linguistic, or any other kind of cultural and historical research of this people promises to yield fruitful results provided the limitations are remembered which were expressed at the close of the paper on archeological data. This kind of research would not have as its object to prove the historical veracity of the Bible or its truth does not rest on these kinds of foundations. Nevertheless, it may well increase our knowledge of man's past. But still, the question may haunt our minds: Will not the time come when historical research and Biblical revelation will be brought together in a common mutually supporting system of the understanding of past events? To this question I would respond, “Not until that day when man stands redeemed side by side with his Redeemer and from the perspective of eternity views the at once tragic and wonderful events of the human drama of time. Then the history of man and divine revelation will be inseparably molded together even as their authors have been reconciled and made one."

Bibliography

The Bible, King James Version

Bidney, David
The Concept of Myth and the Problem of Psychocultural Evolution. American Anthropologist 52:16-26, 1950.

Cassirer, Ernest
Essay on Man. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1953.

Frankfort, Henry and Others
Before Philosophy. Baltimore: Penguin Books, In., 1949.

For further information or to contact Baker Books regarding their other fine publications, click below: