Debate on credibility, as with tradition and revelation, of Genesis and Gospels

MMcGr: Adam and Eve is a myth, a story, not actual history. Nothing we experience now as a part of life is the result of their actions.

BR: M. J. McGr., Adam and Eve are not only real, they're pivotal to understanding the nature of humanity.

MMcGr: B., they weren't real. A lot of ppl may believe they were, but that doesn't make it any more true. There's no evidence --zip, zilch, nada-- to support their existence and every reason in the world to understand them as the protagonists of a primitive, yet re-worked, creation myth.

S. W.: McGr.---there is no evidence that YOU would accept---which means absolutely nothing. We have the Word of God and His Church.

MMcGr: S., there's no evidence. Period. With all due respect, it's a preposterous idea, as is the Bible being the Word of God, that only an indoctrinated person would believe. [I came out of that background myself. And saying that I would "believe nothing" is both incorrect and a diversionary tactic to deflect attention away from an utterly unsupportable assertion.]

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Wrong.

Genesis story is backed up by dozens if not hundreds of para...llels in pagan mythology. It is grosso modo credible, as history, even if it were not the word of God.

I was an evolutionist before being a Bible believer.

http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-kind-of-editing-i-did-and-what.html

After reading the message, read the others on same blog, they go into more detail.
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MMcGr: Hans, I never said Genesis wasn't a ripoff of Pagan myths; it is. But, they're not actual history, either.

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Ah: you have two testimonies, not as by two different eye-witnesses, but as by two different cultures.

They are divergent on some things but clearly convergent on others.

And that sort of *proves* to you one is a rip-off on the other?

And even when we go beyond Babylon and Israel and get to dozens other paleontologic tales, converging on same things and diverging even more in detail, it does not still strike you as even a remote possibility they could all be more or less mangled memories of real events?
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B. R.: Mr. McGr., even a quick reading of the stories is enough to show that the authors not need worry about charges of derivative work. That the pagans have corrupted memories of the true beginning is not surprising, nor is it that they get all the key plot points wrong.

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But they do not.
Creation - yes (though not quite ex nihilo in their versions)
Recent such - yes (well, Egyptian bragging made it less recent, like 40.000 ys ago)
Original bliss and immortality of man - yes.
A deceiver involved in the change for the worse - yes.
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BR: Ex nihilo (from before anything God, the world of nothing key plot point)
Man sinned of own knowledge and choice. (Adam was not deceived! key plot point)
Most pagan creation myths don't have human immortals (key plot point)
How long ago, isn't a 'plot point'.

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"Ex nihilo (from before anything God, the world of nothing key plot point)

Man sinned of own knowledge and choice. (Adam was not deceived! key plot point)"

Two plot points wrong, not all of them.

"...Most pagan creation myths don't have human immortals (key plot point)"

Some do.

"...How long ago, isn't a 'plot point'."

If it is within human memory or absolutely not is.
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BR: Mr Lundahl, 'how long ago' may be important, but it is not a plot point.

"Most pagan creation myths don't have human immortals (key plot point)
Some do." - Duh, why do you think I said 'Most'?

The Pagan stories appear to be attempts to retell the 'fact' while avoiding the 'reasons'. Gilgemesh has a Flood, well enough, but it has no preacher urging repentance while building an ark for example.

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Well, the thing is, if some DO have that plot point it is not true that all are wrong on EVERY plot point.

The exact time distance between us and creation may not be a plot point, but the possibility of a tradition surviving is.
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BR: Mr Lundahl,
I didn't say that they all got 'every plot point wrong' - I said they got the key plot points wrong. Please, argue with what I say, not what you wish I said.

"The exact time distance between us and creation may not be a plot point, but the possibility of a tradition surviving is." I'm not sure what you mean by that. Moses writes a story that was revealed to him. Not one simply 'handed down' to him so there is a distance between the Genesis story and the other epics in 'source material' that is rather large. But yes, our knowledge of the stories (today) does depend on the survival of writing materials, so in that they are alike....

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The six days, Moses writes what was revealed. From creation of Adam on, he writes what he knew by tradition, whether it was also revealed or not.

THE points means EVERY point, just as much as pointS means SOME of them. Grammar.
Of course, if you want to correct THE to SOME, you are more than welcome, and I admit having argued not against your position, only against a sloppy grammar.

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Mr Lundahl, ALL scripture is given by inspiration. (St. Paul) Moses had no need to refer to 'tradition', he had God the Author for his source. We do not know what the tradition of the Jews/Hebrews was when Moses set down the account. It may have been as far wrong as those of the heathen.

Again you argue with what you wish I had written.

I did not write 'the points'. I wrote 'they KEY points', well, the key plot points.
Note, though if you will, that you've again ignored the little word 'key'. The is a particular determiner, key is the adjective modifying points, points is indeed in the plural. Syntax and grammar.

There are many places where the pagan misses the point (in the singular for the point that is missed is single, at most turns of the plot, even though by the time the story is done many points have been in error). The key points are those which mark the relationship between God and Man.

I've no need of an apology, refraining from further unmerited attack will be more than sufficient.

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Nope.

Revelation and inspiration is not same thing.

And saying the plot points where pagans differ from Genesis are more key than those both differ from evolutionism is merda tauri.
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BR: Who said they were? Nonetheless, the inspired scriptures reveal to us the true story of the origin.

Why do you insist on arguing against things not written?

I never said that the differences in plot between evolutionism and pagan myth were less key than between pagan myth and the Word of God. Both however do get their theology wrong

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They [=sacred scriptures] do. THey also reveal to us the true story of King David. Obviously by human eyewitnesses being applied for Paralipomena and Kings. Not by writers knowing everything by revelations, but by inspiration guiding them from error in transmitting the witnesses.

Same applies to Gospels and - to Genesis from creation of Adam on. Which is why the possibility of transmission by tradition without error is one KEY point of the plot. And by erroneous, but not necessarily so traditions, pagans also got some KEY points of the plot right.
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BR: The witnesses could not know the heart of the Kings, as is revealed in the text. Even when there are human witnessess, they've less information than the Author. The Scripture is not simply some 'eye witness account' it is far more than that, it is the more sure word of the prophets.

The 'possiblity' of the transmission of the story is not a key plot point in the story. In fact, one of the key points is that the story, as we have it in Scripture, actually IS the true story, written by the prophets and apostles and pen-men of Scripture under the inspiration of God.

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Being an inspired writer sometimes meant being precisely a pen-man of God: Moses in taking down the law "and the LOrd spoke o Moses and said", dito for St John when writing the Gospel (according to tradition both hands wrote in automatic writing) or when seing the Apocalypse. But St Luke too was an inspired writer who wrote without error ACCORDING TO HUMAN TESTIMONY. As is said in prologue to his Gospel. I argue we know the story of Genesis mainly through Moses, who knew it mainly as St Luke knew what he wrote about. The Six days, the law, these are other matters, known by revelation only, obviously.

In both cases their are Pagan parallels. Flood is known by Pagan tradition, in a somewhat distorted way, pre-human events totally MIS-known by a false revelation given to Hesiod, known as Theogony.

"I never said that the differences in plot between evolutionism and pagan myth were less key than between pagan myth and the Word of God. Both however do get their theology wrong."

Ah, but there are plot elements that are other than theology. It makes sense the war of Troy happened, and the voyage of Odysseus, only the theology was gotten wrong by Homer.

Which implies that Pagans get some key points of plot right along with Genesis getting it right, but when Darwinism gets it wrong, because it is not tradition but reconstruction.
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Mr. Lundahl, The beloved physician edited out that which was not true in the human witness (if any were error existed in that testamony). Genesis likewise had any errors corrected, (hence the differences in the key points of theological difference)

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"if any were error existed in that testamony" - none did. St Mary and Christians before St Luke were not in any kind of error. He had nothing to correct in his material.

Genesis has no errors to correct either, since Hebrew tradition was not mangled after the tower of Babel.

Whether six days are:
- revelation to Moses
- tradition to Moses revealed already to Henoch
or
- tradition to Henoch and Moses revealed already to Adam
is not clear from the story.

It is clear they supplement information human witnesses had no direct access to.
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BR: Mr. Lundahl,
You expect me to believe that the people who while Moses was on the mount had a golden calf to be their God had no errors in their creation story that needed correction?

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Not in the family Moses came from.

Besides, Moses had already received the tradition when they apostasised to golden calf worship.

They did so being discouraged in the desert.

M.McGr. left the discussion between me and BR early with the words:
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Guys, again, believe what you like. It has no basis in reality, but I'm all for freedom of religion, speech, etc.

http://truthbeknown.com/christconspiracy.html

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I looked up the link. But before we get there:

G.Fr: Mr. McGr., absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

M.McGr.: G., in some instances it is.

But, the more salient question is, why would you believe in something completely outlandish given NO evidence?

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If there were no witnesses to Christ rising, no Church speaking from fifty days later and getting persecuted and working miracles up to our own days, there would have been absence of evidence and evidence of absense as well. As it is there is neither. There is plenty of evidence, it is simply contested.

Similarily with the plot points I mentioned as common to Genesis and Pagans as opposed to evolutionism.

Diverging versions do not diverge all that much and the divergences there are point to tower of Babel.

Now to my appraisal of M.McGr:s link:

Dishonest misconstruing:

"The denial of "Christ come in the flesh" is an early "heresy" called "Docetism," whose proponents not only abounded during the first centuries of the Christian era but were the original "Christians," i.e., Gnostics...."

Not so. They did not deny people saw Christ, they said a spirit arranged a series of hallucinations over very long time in order to teach and that the people claiming he had a real body had simply not learned as much from that spirit as they.

Ludicrous anachronism:

"Longinus was the name of the Roman soldier who stuck Jesus in the side with a spear. Legend held that Longinus was blind and was subsequently cured by Jesus's blood. Again, this is not a historical event but part of the mythos and sacred king ritual, as Walker relates:

"The true prototype of the legend seems to have been the blind god Hod, who slew the Norse savior Balder with the thrust of a spear of mistletoe. March 15, the "Ides of March" when most pagan saviors died, was the day devoted to Hod by the heathens, and later Christianized as the feast day of the Blessed Longinus."

Ther was no cult of Hod or Balder until very much later, and the Vikings who did worship them (or at least Balder) knew nothing about Ides of March until they became Christians and used Julian calendar.

Abuse of generous admissions:

"Writings regarding Pilate and Jesus, such as the obviously fictitious "Acts of Pilate," are well-known forgeries, admitted by the Catholic Encyclopedia. The Jewish historian Philo wrote about Pilate, mentioning... his abuses, but not a single word about anyone remotely resembling Jesus Christ being crucified under his procuratorship.

These "letters" are KNOWN FORGERIES, which is why they are apocryphal."

They - the letters - were non-canonic all the time, because accepted and known only by part of Church. Not because they were in any sense "known" to be forgeries until very much later when renaissance men got an itch for proving this and that a forgery. If the Acts of Pilate are "well known" as forgeries, that only happened so much later. Catholic Encyclopedia is no Church Father.