In this brief post, I will look at how Answers in Genesis responds to Enns’ explanation of Messianic prophecy and his view of Jonah.
Messianic Prophecy
In addition to criticizing Peter Enns over his explanation of the Gospels, Mitchell also accuses him of denying that “the Old Testament writers were prophesying under God’s guidance at all.”
Not surprisingly, I have to say no, he never said such a thing. What she took issue with is Enns very valid and true point that nowhere in the Old Testament can you find a prophecy about a future messiah dying and rising from the dead on the third day. The thing is—Enns is absolutely right. No Jew in the first century expected the Messiah to die because there was nothing in the Old Testament that explicitly said that.
Seriously, if you grew up in church, didn’t you ever wonder that very thing? If it was so obvious in the Old Testament that the Messiah was going to die and then rise in three days, then how could the entire Jewish people—and Jesus’ own disciples for that matter—fail to see it? If you never thought about that, as a teacher I need to tell you that you need to put your thinking cap on!
What Enns is trying to explain is exactly what was going on with how the Jews understood their Scriptures, what Jesus was doing, and what the Gospel writers were trying to convey when they quoted the Old Testament and applied passages to Jesus. Now, this is a huge topic that has been the subject of entire books. I will attempt to give a very simple explanation of it. Ready? Here it goes…
What Jesus’ followers witnessed and experienced, both during his ministry, as well as his death, resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, caused them to see the Old Testament in a whole new light. Jesus’ death and resurrection changed everything; it changed their entire Jewish worldview.
Your typical Jew in the first century was taught that when YHWH returned to His people, He would first send someone from the royal blood-line of David, who would wage war against the Gentiles and re-establish the political kingdom of Israel. Through that political and military might, the Gentiles would succumb to YHWH’s kingship. It was quite easy to get that interpretation from certain passages in the Old Testament, but because that was the overall Jewish worldview of the time, it caused Jews to conveniently overlook other passages in the Old Testament.
Simply put, their pre-conceived notions of what they assumed YHWH was going to do made them blind to what YHWH was actually doing. It was only after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit that Jesus’ followers started to truly “get it.” Jesus’ death and resurrection was, as Enns states, “both [a] surprise ending and deeply connected to Israel’s story,” and this surprise “drove the Gospel writers to do some creative reading.” Therefore, what we see in the Gospels are Jesus’ followers saying, “Hey, Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire story of Israel, but in a way that we simply were not expecting! Wow! Listen up! It makes sense now!”
Apparently, the notion that the Gospel writers engaged in “some creative writing,” is too much for Mitchell to handle or understand, for she obviously interprets “creative writing” as “lies, falsehoods, and fabrications.” She actually says, “This notion has long been discredited by evangelical scholars”—truly a remarkable statement, given the fact that this is the accepted view of some of the most influential evangelical scholars today, from Richard B. Hays, N.T. Wright, Richard Burridge, the list can go on…and yes, Peter Enns as well. So, to a point, Mitchell’s claim is a lie.
Jonah
Mitchell also takes issue with Enns’ treatment of Jonah, namely his claim that Jonah is not a historical account of a prophet literally being swallowed by a giant fish, who later preached in Nineveh. I wrote my master’s thesis on Jonah, and I agree with Enns—Jonah has all the characteristics of a parable. Another reason to doubt that Jonah should be read as an actual historical account is the facts of history itself. We have the ancient annals of the Assyrian empire, and at no point in any of the annals is there an account of an Israel prophet coming to Nineveh, warning of its destruction, and of the entire city of Nineveh repenting and turning to the God of Israel. Such an event, if it happened, would certainly have been recorded in the annals of Assyria—but nothing of the sort is mentioned. Why? Simple: it didn’t happen.
The story of Jonah is a parable addressed to the post-exilic Jewish community who was struggling with how to deal with the surrounding Gentile population. The challenge of the story of Jonah essentially is this: if Gentiles (like Nineveh in the story) repent and turn to God, and if He extends His covenant love to them, are you going to agree with God, or are you going to be like Jonah and get angry with God? That’s why we are never told Jonah’s reaction to God’s question at the end of the story: Jonah’s decision is the very challenge to the post-exilic community. The decision is theirs to make.
Mitchell though hears the word “parable” associated with Jonah, and she hears, “You’re saying Jonah isn’t true! You’re saying God is lying! You’re saying the Word of God is untrustworthy!” And, in her attempt to “defend” the historicity of Jonah, she makes an astounding claim:
“Under the preaching of a reluctant Jonah, Nineveh—from top to bottom—repented and was spared God’s judgment (Jonah 3). Only in a later generation, when the nation reverted to its former wickedness, did God judge it by permitting another nation to overrun it and destroy it.”
What makes this so astounding is that there is no historical evidence anywhere that there was ever a massive repentance in Nineveh in which the entire population turned to the God of Israel, and thus there is no historical evidence anywhere that Nineveh then went back to their pagan ways. Why? Because they had never turned to YHWH in the first place.
Mitchell has totally made this claim up out of whole cloth, pure and simple. But this is just par for the course with the people of Answers in Genesis. For an organization so devoted to trying to prove that Genesis 1-11 is actual history, they really have a knack for making fictitious things up to support their claim that Genesis 1-11 is historical.
