judge

Genesis contains myths. It should be obvious!
There is for example the story of angels or sons of God coming and mating with daughters of men. The progeny were the "hroes of renown".

Can't you see that this kind of thing does not happen in real life?

When we find stories which science shows us have no basis in fact then it is foolish to just assume that those who wrote or put together the stories thought they happened.

Later on some start to take them literally.

Jesus works with what he has. It is of no use for him to get involved in useless discussions about whether this or that event happened.
Instaed he goes to the heart of the issue and uses the metaphor (myth) to drive home his point.

Logic&Reason

How do you spell faith?


B-r-a-i-n-w-a-s-h-e-d

judge

Rubbish ( IMHO of course). The original teller know that he is dealing with METAPHOR or MYTH IMHO.
It is only later on that the meatphor becomes literal.


No one ever believed that the unbelievable stries in genesis 6 ever happened at first.
It is only later on that men literalise them.

judge

Let me ask you this then. If the biblical flood story is derived from earlier flood stories then did it literally happen?

Did the other flood stories literally happen also?

I think the answerust be "of course not".

They must have had another function, that being a mythical function within the culture IMHO.

Buster Daily

As received, of course not.

You underestimate the evolutionary nature of stories. The flood myth started as, "Remember that year when the river was so wide you couldn't see the opposite bank?"

The next iteration might be, "I think so. My dad said that they had to put their posessions on a raft to get them to higher ground."

Followed by, "Well my grandpa knew this guy that had to rescue his goats from the water. He was so happy to save them that he built an altar to [insert god]"

Of course they did. The fittest stories survived and evolved becoming more and more functional.

I am not discounting that a literary work cannot become the basis for something perceived to be history. My point is that we shouldn't assume someone "made up" every tall tale.

John Kesler

Unlike walking on water, performing healings, and raising the dead which happen all the time.

You are reading modern knowledge and sensibilities back into the Bible and assuming that because modern people know that certain events don't literally occur, then the biblical authors must have known this too.

So when he said that Sodom would be held accountable on the day of judgment he didn't really mean it, huh? You err by assuming that because you find a story too incredible to be taken literally, Jesus must have belived this, too.