Travis, were the universe, world, and mankind created 4-10 thousand years ago? Did men used to live until they were almost a thousand years old? Is most of archeology a lie? Most of science a lie? If you answered no, no, no, and no, then you need to reevaluate the strict historicity of Genesis 1-11. If you answered yes, yes, and yes – then there be dragons.

It doesn’t seem as though you really understand what Enns is talking about, nor are you trying to understand what he is talking about. I don’t see a careful consideration of his viewpoint, which is the hallmark of scholarship.

If I sound harsh its because I see year after year anti-intellectual approaches to the Bible. We will spend countless pages defend our constructed theologies from the painfully obvious and it is driving people away from God.

Accoriding to your explanation, if what Enns is saying is that all myths are historically false (yet somehow true), then I must humbly and respectfully disagree that Genesis 1-11 is not myth. (You say Genesis 1-12 in your post, but I do not think that you want to say that Abraham too must be relegated to a mythical feature as well. So I took you to mean Genesis 1-11.)

What Enns is essentially saying, although not so blatantly, is comparable to saying that all reds are colors.

What his point is, and given some of your comments on the other thread, is that most people don’t get what myth is, what it does, and how it functioned. As with most good biblical scholars, he is using in two simultaneous ways. Firstly, he is using it as a term that contains the mindset that actually describes the thinking that the people he is talking about actually used. Secondarily, he is using it as a term that carries their completely foriegn worldview into ours for comparison and analysis. The use of the word myth here touches two contemporary uses. One of these is a popular notion of the pejorative term that uses myth as anything that says it is true, but is not. Here there is only noise in pronunciation which is similar. The other is a descriptor term which is very similar to the premodern notion of myth, but describes the same things in modern and postmodern contexts.

A myth in the ancient and second modern context is part of a metanarrative that people constructed and held to be objectively true for the people using them. (without being a privileged observer, which is reserved for God herself, I cannot state if they are actually objectively true or not)

Given the rampant misunderstandings surrounding this issue and the bizarre over-attachment to historical “truth,” what Enns is saying here is very enlightening and insightful because a whole lot of evangelicals simply don’t get it. They don’t get that Gen 1-12 can be true and historically false. This is because they get screwed up on what truth the text is referring to. They are so culturally conditioned to think that only historical narratives are true, right, correct, and acceptable. This is patently false. the ancients here are not worried about “objective history.” Instead, they are looking for thematic explanations. Narrative truth is something completely different than historical truth. Additionally, every single historical narrative is biased. There is no objectivity to be found. It is a modernist pipedream. Even video tape shows a limited and selected perspective.

So as long as Enns’ definition is to be taken as a list of necessary but not sufficient conditions for myths in the Bible, I would agree with it. But if he later adds to these conditions “not a metanarritive” or “not objectively true,” then we have moved to something more interesting and non-tautologous.

No, I agree.

Anyone else? I am looking at the people who had concerns last go around.