This evening I engaged in an online debate with the far right, ultra-fundamentalist young earth creationist Kent Hovind. It was quite a trip. I’m not sure how well it went over, but I thought I’ll share the link if anyone might be interested to see what it is like trying to arguing the genre of Genesis 1-11 with someone who believes the King James Version is the only inspired version of the Bible.
I think I could have been better, but it certainly was interesting. Here is the link to the Anderson-Hovind Debate.
I’m fully opposed to YEC, but I wouldn’t call Hovind “far-right”.
Well, he called himself “right-wing” in his closing comments. But I don’t know his work well at all so
I’m not talking about right-wing. Of course Kent is on the right. I’m talking about “far-right”.
Considering that he has declared democracy “evil and contrary to God’s law”, has endorsed “The Protocols of The Elders of Zion” and is a part of the “Sovereign Citizen” movement, [https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/creationism-gets-dash-anti-semitism] I think it’s pretty fair to call him far-right.
It looks like quite a number of YECs have turned up here, parroting the bad scientific arguments (for a ‘6,000 year old Earth’) of Hovind eg on a ‘shrinking’ sun and on lunar recession (I’ve just replied to one of the more talkative ones who claimed that Hovind had destroyed billions of years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4461&v=K2dcIQvegQs
Oh my poor eyes and ears. Good job. Reading the comments was bad enough; I responded to them.
Why do Kent’s (and other YECs’) talking points always sound the same? Don’t they ever have anything new to say? I heard all this exact stuff growing up in the early 90s. I’m at the point where I can’t even listen to them without getting flashbacks, lol.
It’s definitely a lesson in patience and…. grace >_< Character-building and all that.
I thought it was extremely interesting.
When Rev. Hovind numerous times stated that he doesn’t need help reading scripture I wish I could’ve asked him whether or not he uses scripture commentaries. If so, then perhaps scripture isn’t as crystal clear as he thinks? Or why does he spend so much time and money on all of his books and videos explaining Genesis if the meaning of scripture is clear to any literate person?
I think he just wasn’t hearing Dr. Anderson when he talked about the context of Genesis though at least he recognizes that scripture is comprised of many different literary genres.
It’s also interesting that he’s a pretty vocal critic of the early fathers like Irenaeus yet admits he doesn’t really know much about them.
And when he basically says “I don’t need a Hebrew/Greek Bible because I have an English translation” (the KJV no less!) that opens up all sorts of problems. How does he *know* his Authorized Version is as accurate as he thinks it is? He’s depending upon a group of 17th c. Anglican Bishops with a definite agenda (combating Puritanism) to have perfectly translated a 12th c. Byzantine ms. (we now have much older NT mss, like *Codex Vaticanus* and *Codex Sinaiticus*) to create the King James or Authorized Version. The KJV has been edited and reprinted a half-dozen times since 1611. Which one of those AV editions is the “correct” one? The modern KJV he uses is not identical to the original, since the original was in heavy Gothic typeface, with a calendar of saints’ days observed by the Church of England, as well as the tables for computing the date for Easter.
For that matter the very church fathers Rev. Hovind seems to mistrust are the same guys who put the cannon together in the first place. He takes their choice of canonical books for granted but not their interpretation of said canonical books.
I lean towards the view that you don’t/can’t have sin or death (physical or spiritual death) before “the fall.” William Dembski addresses this idea in his book *The End of Christianity,* in which he basically argues that the curse of the fall was/is retroactive. In his view that’s how you reconcile a fossil record that shows death billions of years ago with the notion that sin and death entered the world through the sin of Adam.
I find Dembski’s idea intriguing but don’t know exactly what I think about it yet.
Ultimately at the end of the day I think Christianity stands or falls upon whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was literally bodily resurrected or not, not whether the first 11 chapters of Genesis are true in a literal, wooden fashion. There’s a much bigger issue at stake.
Pax.
Lee.
I watched the entire debate and I had a few questions for Dr. Anderson.
1. In Matthew 23:35, was Jesus referring to a real person (Abel) or a fictional character?
1a. If a real person, why do you view Gen 4 as mythical but Matt 23 as real?
1b. If not a real person, why does Jesus refer to Abel as a real prophet?
2. Is Exodus literal history?
2a. If yes, why do you think Exodus 20:11 is literal but Gen 1 mythological?
2b. If no, I’m pretty sure you’ll say yes. See 2a
3. If I understood correctly, you said that you do not believe in a real person, Adam, but instead that God just generally created mankind. How do you rationalize the Biblical passages that refer to Adam as a real person? (Gen 1-11, I Chron 1, Luke 3, Romans 5, I Cor 15)
4. Since you think the Gen 3 reference to the tree of life is mythical, is the reference in Rev 22 also mythical?
5. Does the modern scientific paradigm force Christians to re-interpret the Bible, or should the Bible guide our interpretations of evidence?
6. Why do you choose Gen1-11 as mythical but Gen12-50 as history? Even John Walton wrote:
“We cannot be content to ask, ‘Can the word bear the meaning I would like it to have?’ We must instead try to determine what the author and audience would have understood from the usage in the context. With this latter issue before us, it is extremely difficult to conclude that anything other than a twenty-four hour day was intended. It is not the text that causes people to think otherwise, only the demands of trying to harmonize with modern science.” -John H. Walton, Genesis, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 81–82
Hi ApoloJedi,
I’ll try to reply briefly to your questions.
1. All of the #1 questions: Jesus is referring to inspired Scripture. Just because he refers to those passages does not automatically mean he was claiming they were actual historical people. We can’t “get into his head” to know what he was thinking on that topic when he was quoting Genesis.
2. Yes, I believe there was a historical Exodus. But again, resting on the Sabbath was the way the Israelites bore witness to YHWH. It was saying, “We’re going to take a break on the 7th day as a testimony that YHWH is still in charge and can keep the world going without our help.” One doesn’t have to take Genesis 1 as a LITERAL seven days to bear witness to YHWH.
3. All those passages are references to Genesis 2-3. What you need to see is that Genesis 2-3 isn’t attempting to give us a “scientific/historical account” of origins. Origin stories in the ancient Near East were written in the genre of mythological narrative as a means of expressing that culture’s beliefs and worldview. Ancient Israel is no different–Genesis 2-3 is a statement about the nature of human beings. Yes, those beliefs come by means of the narrative in which Adam and Eve are two people in the story, and yes, Genesis 1-11 weaves that (along with the genealogies) to the point where they meet up with a real historical person, Abraham. But that is a literary convention. As strange as it may sound to us in the modern world, the people didn’t use genealogies and origin stories to convey bare historical facts.
4. To the point, yes, Revelation is drawing about a lot of mythological imagery of the ancient world, from the Tree of Life, to the “Great Dragon,” etc. And that’s okay. Apocalypses were an accepted genre of literature, and one of their hallmarks was using ancient mythological imagery. The point is that when Christ comes again and renews creation, we will have eternal life. There doesn’t have to be a literal tree. The tree is symbolic.
5. Modern science and Scripture are two entirely different things. Science shouldn’t make us re-interpret Scripture, but neither is Scripture addressing modern scientific questions.
6. As a Literature major, it seems obvious to me that Genesis 1-11 comes in the form of ANE mythological literature. That being said, I say it USES the genre of myth to completely obliterate the ancient Near Eastern mythological worldview that those kinds of myths promoted, and to instead “set the stage” for understanding God’s involvement in history, starting with Abraham. Once you get to Abraham the time slows way down, and we are told of numerous places that have actual historical and geographical proof of.
It seems my comment didn’t get posted the first time, so I’ll try again.
I come from a KJV-Only background, and though I still am fond of the King James I’ve been considering finding a more readable translation; do you have a particular one you use and would recommend? Besides your own of course.
Hi Wiley,
For some reason your comment wound up in the “spam” folder.
Other than my own translation, I have always loved the NRSV. There are a couple things I could quibble about with it, but overall I think it is a great read. I also LOVE the JPS Hebrew Tanakh translation of the Old Testament. When it comes to the OT, you CANNOT go wrong with that one.
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Bible-Scriptures-Translation-Traditional/dp/0827603665/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Tanakh&qid=1594229977&sr=8-2
Dr. Anderson
Where can one get your own translation? Also, I hope all is well as you have not written in a while.
Yours meanwhile,
The programming nerd