A few days ago, I started a series on the recent criticisms that YECist Jason Lisle has had about William Lane Craig’s new book, The Quest for the Historical Adam. As I said in Part 1, I haven’t yet read WLC’s book, but have seen a few interviews and read a few articles about it. At first, I was a bit hesitant to read it, but I have to say, after reading Lisle’s criticism of it, I am looking forward to reading it indeed. Not to sound mean, but when I read the arguments that YECists like Lisle make against a book like this, it makes me think, “This book sounds like it might be really good!”
So, without further ado, allow me to be your tour guide through Jason’s Lisle’s second post against WLC’s book, entitled, “The Historical Adam—Myth or Reality? (Part 2). The post itself is about 3,200 words long, so as far as blog posts are concerned, it is pretty long. That being said, it could have easily been no more than 1,000 words for the simple reason that Lisle just repeats the same 3-4 points over and over again, ad nauseum. I will do my best to just hit the “highlights,” but if you find yourself getting queasy, get a dixie cup and take the advice of that wise sage Garth Algar of Wayne’s World fame: “If you’re gonna spew, spew into this!”
Let’s Begin
Lisle begins his Part 2 by quickly summarizing some of the points he made in his Part 1: Even though WLC argues that Genesis 1-11 shares literary similarities with other ANE myths, Lisle says they don’t because those pagan myths are polytheistic and have a chaos monster in them, whereas Genesis 1-11 is monotheistic and doesn’t have a chaos monster. What Lisle is clearly not getting is that saying there is a similarity in terms of genre is not the same as saying there is a similarity in terms of theology. Of course, the theology is different—that doesn’t mean Genesis 1-11 is of a different genre. Yet what Lisle is doing is looking at the subject matter, ignoring the genre of the text that helps determine how to interpret the subject matter, and simply asserting, “It is historical!” The irony of this is that immediately after doing this, he says, “The literary style of Genesis determines how its text should be interpreted—not the subject matter.” This is precisely what he doesn’t do.
In any case, in his introduction, Lisle also repeats what he routinely asserted in Part 1, namely that the big bang theory was more like ANE myths than Genesis 1-11, that Genesis 1-11 is written in historical narrative, and that since most culture have a flood story of some sort, there must have been a global flood. From that point on, he follows the format of Part 1, where he quotes WLC and then responds.
QUOTE #1
Craig: By contrast, beginning in Genesis 12, the text’s focus narrows sharply to Israel. From here on, no such similarity exists between Genesis and the myths of the ancient Near East.
Mind you, this is entirely true. Anyone who knows how to read can easily see there is a major shift between Genesis 11 and Genesis 12. There’s no sense in even have to make a lengthy argument—just read it, and you’ll see WLC is correct.
Lisle, though, can’t quite get his head around this. Instead, he says, frames WLC’s comment this way: “Craig wants to believe God begins telling the truth about history in Genesis 12, with the first eleven chapters being fictional/mythical.” Once again, Lisle shows he is unable to differentiate between a simple observation about genre/writing style and something “being true.” I can guarantee you that WLC will say that Genesis 1-11 is true—it is just written in a different genre than Genesis 12-50.
“No!” says the esteemed expert in literature. “In order to understand the author’s intention, we must use the style and form of the text to understand what type of literature we are reading.” YES! That is totally correct, Dr. Lisle! So, what is his assessment of the literary style of Genesis 1-11? You guessed it! He says it is the exact same literary style of Genesis 12-50, historical narrative! And do you want to know his reasons? (1) The Psalms are poetry that uses parallelism, but Genesis doesn’t do that. (2) The poetry of the Psalms doesn’t give details unnecessary to the main point, but in Genesis we are given a lot of details unrelated to the main point—like all the list of names in the genealogy of Ishmael in Genesis 25. And since Genesis 5 also has genealogies, that shows that Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative too. (3) Hebrew narrative uses the waw-consecutive (basically the use of “and” within a narrative), and since both Genesis 1-11 and Genesis 12-50 use the waw-consecutive, that mean it is all historical narrative.
My reaction to those reasons? (1) No one is saying Genesis 1-11 is like the Psalms, (2) That doesn’t even make any sense at all, and (3) The waw-consecutive is an indicator of narrative, yes—but not all narrative is historical narrative.
QUOTE #2
Craig: Should the primaeval narratives of Genesis 1–11 be understood, then, as a compilation of Israelite myths?
I, for one, think that is a valid question one should honestly wrestle with. Lisle? Not so much: “Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative. No.” Truly thoughtful insight!
QUOTE #3
Craig defines “myth” as “a traditional, sacred narrative explaining how the world and man came to be in their present form. A myth seeks to explain present realities by anchoring them in the prehistoric past and so to validate a culture’s contemporary institutions and values.”
I could probably quibble with the wording a little, but overall, I think Craig’s definition is pretty good. The function of “myth” isn’t to convey history, but rather to the worldview of a particular culture that shapes how they understand the gods (or in Israel’s case, God), human beings, and the world around them.
Does Lisle agree with that definition? Not so much. Instead, he asserts (surprise, surprise) that Genesis 1-11 is history, therefore it is not prehistoric. Genesis 1 is a historical account of the creation of the world, so there can be nothing prehistoric to a biblical worldview! By contrast, Lisle (again) says that since the big bang theory and evolution claim certain things happened before the existence of human beings, that it that they really are prehistoric, and therefore should be considered myths!
I know…have that dixie cup handy. Seriously, what can you say to that?
Lisle then ponders whether or not Craig might “be attempting to convince people that Genesis is not literally true by equivocating on the term ‘myth.’” Again, Lisle fails to understand the difference between genre category and truth, and for that matter truth and historical account. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is a parable, and therefore isn’t a historical account. Does that mean it “isn’t true”? Of course not. I’m sure Lisle would agree with that. Therefore, it is utterly astounding that he could be so literarily ignorant and obtuse regarding Genesis 1-11.
QUOTE #4
Craig: In contrast to other forms of folklore, such as folktales and legends, myths are authoritative for the culture that embraces them. They are sacred narratives, and as such their main characters are not usually human beings alone but deities or quasi-divine heroes, whose activities are set in an earlier age or another realm. Stories of the origin of the world and of mankind are just two of the most prominent examples of myth.
Again, I think WLC is pretty on target on his explanation of what ancient “myths” are. Lisle, not surprisingly, isn’t impressed. He accuses WLC of “attempting to argue literary style on the basis of content.” He completely ignores the first part of WLC’s quote, where he speaks of the literary characteristics of myth, and focuses solely on the part where WLC mentions that some ancient myths deal with the origin of the world and mankind. “Ah ha!” cries Lisle! “That’s content, not style!” and then points to the big bang theory and evolutionary theory and claims that according to WLC’s definition of “myth,” they should be considered to be myths too!
QUOTE #5
Craig: The lines between myth, folktale, and legend are apt to be blurry, but we can identify certain “family resemblances” that unite most myths. WLC then proceeds to list a number of these “family resemblances. Myths are: (a) narratives, (b) passed down through generations, (c) considered sacred in their communities, (d) objects of belief for those communities, (e) set in a primeval age or another realm, and (f) anchor the basis of the understanding of a community’s present existence to that primeval age.
Again, generally speaking, that’s a fairly decent overview of what ties various ancient myths together. Again. It seems that WLC is just engaging in a thorough discussion of what the genre of myth entails. And, as you should be able to tell, there is bound to be a lot of cross-over with what we find in Genesis 1-11.
For that reason, Lisle takes issue with it and actually accuses WLC of “attempting to argue that Genesis 1-11 is myth and not literal history by listing what he believes are common characteristics of myth.” YES, that is precisely what he is doing! He is showing the common literary characteristics of myth and then showing that Genesis 1-11 shares those common literary characteristics—that is why he is concluding that Genesis 1-11 has a lot in common with ANE myth!
Now, obviously, Lisle is not able to argue that Genesis 1-11 doesn’t share those characteristics. That are too obvious for even him to ignore. And so, he says something truly astounding, “Even if all these criteria applied to Genesis 1-11, that would not in any way establish that Genesis 1-11 is not literally, historically accurate.” In other words, Lisle is saying, “I don’t care! It’s historical narrative!” He then goes through every one of those “family resemblances,” says, “Well, that applies to Genesis 1-11! Does that make it a myth?”
YES! YES, IT DOES! THAT’S THE POINT!
“No, it doesn’t!” Lisle says. “Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative! If Genesis 1-11 is fiction, then so is the biblical worldview. Truth cannot be based on fiction.”
Jason, “myth” and “fiction” are not the same thing. The Enuma Elish is myth, Pride and Prejudice is fiction—those are two different genres.
“But the big bang and evolution are more like myth!”
No, Jason, those things are what we call “science.”
QUOTE #6
Craig: The claim is that the primaeval narratives belong to the genre of myth principally on the basis of their sharing common mythic themes and their effort to anchor present realities in the deep past.
Again, I could quibble with WLC’s wording here and there, but overall, I think he is explaining what the characteristics of ancient myth are fairly well. Lisle doesn’t think so. He says, “Present realities can only be anchored in past events if those events actually happened. Reality cannot be anchored in fiction.” He then points to things like our celebration of communion or the Jews’ celebration of Passover to show that if Jesus hadn’t really died and if the Exodus never happened, those celebrations would be meaningless. And yes, he also says our salvation is based on the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection, and that “If the death and resurrection of Jesus were fiction or myth, then our faith would be in vain.”
Well, on that final point, he’s right. If Jesus didn’t really resurrect in history, then our faith would be in vain. The difference is that the account of Jesus’ resurrection is found in works that have all the literary characteristics of ANCIENT HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES. By contrast, Genesis 1-11 has all the literary characteristics of ANCIENT MYTH.
To Conclude Part 2…
In a bit of irony that I can’t begin to fully appreciate, Lisle says, after he has just written two posts that completely mischaracterize and slander WLC and his book, that Christians should be “cautious to avoid verbal disputes.” He then doubles on (perhaps for the 20th time? I stopped counting) his repeated assertion that Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative, that there is nothing in literary style or content to suggest otherwise, and that every book in the OT and NT that references Genesis 1-11 takes it to be history. It doesn’t matter what WLC says, Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative!
I’ll end this post with an example of the same kind of insightful, thoughtful critique Lisle has given of WLC’s work: “No way, Jason…No way!”
