When Did the Bible Stop Telling Us Stories?

The Tower of Babel lesson portrayed by this picture seems to be: "When you can't understand what someone is saying . . . hit them with a stick."

You may have heard pro-lifers make the point that if you don't accept life beginning at conception, then there is no other really obvious place to put the line. Does a "blob of protoplasm" become a "life" at 3 months? At the first noticed heartbeat? At viability? At birth?

I suggest now that we take that same line of thinking into the question of Church history v. Church mythology. As someone who believes in a seven day creation about 6000 years ago, I ask naysayers when we switched over from myth to history.

I was trying to figure out the point in the chronology of Bible stories where in an evolutionary view of the universe we start calling stuff that happened in the Bible "history" instead of "myth." Here is a rough list of Old Testament events and my guess at where the line gets drawn.

My point, of course, is that the line is arbitrary and that we should consider the creation story historical if not literal. Just as the absence of a better "life" line in the development of an unborn baby indicates life beginning at conception, the absence of a historical "myth" line in the Bible supports a seven day creation.

Often considered non-historical:

• Creation
• Adam and Eve
• Cain and Abel

Enoch taken up to heaven without dying?

Whoops! Chronologically this happens here but this might be considered history.

• Noah's ark
• Ham shames Noah by "uncovering his nakedness" causing Ham to get all his descendants cursed. (Descendant cursing is very politically incorrect and considered non-historical now.)
• Tower of Babel, where we supposedly get our different languages

Probably stuff considered "historical" starts at this point:

• Sarah and Hagar each have babies with Abraham. The boys are named Isaac and Ishmael. Muslims trace their Biblical roots back to Ishmael.
• The near-sacrifice of Isaac foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ

Sodom and Gomorrah

Whoops! This goes here chronologically but because it is the source of a lot of anti-homosexual talk, it is often discarded as myth.

• Rebekah marries Isaac; they have two children.
• Esau sells his birthright and then is tricked out of his blessing by Jacob.
• Jacob's ladder
• Jacob marries Rachel then has children by her and two other women.
• Eleven of Jacob's sons gang up on poor Joseph, eventually causing the entire family to move to Egypt, which is a good thing . . . for awhile.
• 400 years and hundreds of thousands of descendants later, Moses leads that BIG family out of Egypt.
• 40 years of wandering in the desert
• 10 commandments given twice
• Ark of the Covenant
• Deborah, Gideon, Samson, Samuel and the judges
• Saul, David, Solomon
• Israel and Judah divided
• Elijah and the prophets
• Babylonian exile (bye-bye nation of Israel)
• The nation of Judah returns to the promised land
• Maccabean revolt
• Jesus is born


I am neither a historian nor a theologian and cannot tell you what is causing the difference of belief before and after the break. Where is it indicated in the New Testament? Those earliest stories are not treated differently when referenced by Our Lord and the apostles. Why do we believe in David but not in Noah?

I would like to hear comments on this. Did I put the line in the right place?

Thank you for listening to another of my creationist tirades.

Evolution - Why, God?

The Garden of Eden is on a map so it must be real, right?

In the 6,000 years or so since civilization got rolling there has been a lot written about the Biblical six-day creation. The Bible actually gives us two somewhat-contradictory stories in terms of when God did what.

Those stories, though, established the entire flow of our society, of our calendar. Six days of work, one day of rest = one week. The very foundational idea of original sin came out of that, as well.

Books have been written about all the nuances of how this six-day creation took place and what it meant. There has been speculation about Adam and Eve's motivation. Was the serpent threatening Eve? Was Adam being a coward in eating the apple instead of kicking the serpent's butt? And maybe it wasn't an apple at all, the Bible doesn't specify. Eve could have bit a big chunk out of the banana of transgression. (Sorry, I just like how that sounds.)

Why is it that we aren't told to just read the Bible through once and then believe ourselves to know everything of religious importance? Why is it that you can hear the same passage every year of your life and get something new out of it every time?

The word of God is so complex and meaty and full of layers and symbolism. It seems like nothing God ever does has only one meaning.

So all that is background for this one thought. "Evolution - Why, God?" I haven't heard any theologians explain why on earth God would tell us twice that He made the world in this one way, full of beauty and meaning, and then turn around, and without telling us anything, make it in a completely different way.  And then Jesus comes to teach us all about God but doesn't bother to mention this little discrepancy.

Billions of years to create everything. What is the symbolism of that? Where are the layers of Truth stacking upon each other, pointing to future events and past, that we see in everything else God does?

I think the theologian who tells us "why" should be the next Doctor of the Church.

Center of the Universe?

As a homeschool mom, I decided to teach my children astronomy last semester. There was a lot of talk about "red shift" and our expanding universe. It seemed logical to me that the universe had to be expanding from some central point. A quick Google search proved me wrong.

I was floored to read that astronomers do not believe there is a center of the universe. A big bang would give you a point of origin, right? Wrong. Astronomers actually believe that prior to the Big Bang there was no time or space. This belief was confirmed by a friend with a doctors degree who teaches astronomy at the local university and is an otherwise very reasonable person. No time or space.

How on earth do you get an accidental, godless creation of the universe suitable for atheists out of NO time and NO space?