Deuteronomy 6:20-23 “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers.”
Discussion
The purpose of this section is not to catalogue the many lines of evidence that testify to the validity of the Bible as the record of the Jewish people dating back to their Exodus from Egypt about 1490 BC, and the validity of Genesis, in particular, as a general history of the world. Those aspects of the discussion are dealt with in the other topic areas on this website as well as from many other sources. Also, the purpose is not to review the evidence for the faithful transmission of scripture through the careful management and transcription of the sacred texts down through the centuries. There are many other sources and websites that delve into those topic areas.
Rather the purpose of this section is to contrast and compare the Jewish account of creation and the world with the general outlook, beliefs and records of the many people groups that populated the world among which the Jewish nation was birthed, developed and flourished. Essentially, the Jews and their religion was utterly unique in the ancient world. Specifically, the Jews wrote with the objective of being factual about their experience and history with the transcendent and eternal God, Yahweh, regardless of how it made them look. Conversely, the surrounding people groups may have written facts, but their objective was not to be “factual” as much as it was to ensure control and survival of their people through the mythological application of pagan ritual and magic.
The Bible was birthed by a people who lived in the midst of other nations who worshiped pagan gods and believed in myths to explain their existence. Though the Jews were immersed in a world of paganism and mythology, the expression of their beliefs in the Bible, especially the Torah, was neither pagan nor mythological by nature. It is important to understand the fundamentally different objectives of the Jewish people in writing their history versus the “histories” of all the other people groups that surrounded them. Whether you accept Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament as history or not, the objective of the Jews was to write what they considered to be a factual history as the people of God, regardless of how it might reflect on them individually and collectively. Consequently, this section might have been better titled “Bible Factual” rather than “Bible Facts,” but that would have been just a bit too confusing.
The majority of this section relies on the insight and scholarship of John Oswalt whose book, The Bible among the Myths, lays out the striking difference between ancient mythology and Scripture. From our modern perspective, most of us think we know what mythology involves and many believe the Bible is mythological. However, John Oswalt explains the real difference between mythology and Scripture, and to that end the following sections are quotes from his book. I encourage you to acquire a copy of his book for yourself.
Continuity: The Basis of Mythical Thinking (Chapter 3 in The Bible among the Myths see ref. (1))
…the ruling idea in the worldview that gives myth its distinctive character is continuity. This is the idea that all things that exist are part of each other. Thus, there are no fundamental distinctions between the three realms: humanity, nature, and the divine… This idea has a number of far-reaching implications. For instance, it means that things that look the same or sound the same are the same. So, since the idol is like Baal, it is Baal. What is done to the idol is done to Baal. (p. 48)
The fundamental point, however, is that all things that exist are physically and spiritually part of one another. This is the single most important aspect of the way of thinking that characterizes myth… They (i.e. those who believe in myths) have two chief concerns: explaining why things are as they are now, and maintaining things as they are now. These concerns spring directly out of the human terror of chaos. (p. 49)
If there is a radical discontinuity between this realm and the one that explains it, then we are truly helpless—at the mercy of the gods—and this is something the human spirit cannot bear… we can act out what we want the gods to do and it will be done, not because they must do it, but because in our very actions they are doing it. They and we are one… First, such concepts as past and future have no real value to the mythmaker. “Now,” the present, is all that exists, and thus reality only relates to the present. (p. 50).
If there is anything that is discontinuous with me, it is meaningless… to say that the deity is not the world, or that the world is not the deity, is to make life uncontrollable and meaningless… To distinguish between the source and the manifestation is to make the source unreachable through the manifestation, a circumstance that is highly undesirable. (p. 53)
If we understand the human, the natural, and the divine worlds as all being a part of one another, then magic, especially sympathetic, or imitative, magic comes to have great significance. Magic may be defined as “the use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces.” To accomplish something in the natural or divine realms is a matter of doing a similar thing in this human realm. (pp. 54-55)
It is a theological statement. If continuity is to work, both as a philosophical and a practical principle, then there can be no boundaries anywhere in the cosmos… Once you allow boundaries anywhere in the cosmos, it becomes impossible for me to control things, to manipulate reality, through the use of magic. (pp. 56-57)
First, myth is invariably polytheistic. Of course there are many gods if we are explaining the divine in terms of this world. There are many different forces in this world and there must be a god for each one. This is not an accidental characteristic but an essential one. The world is an emanation of the divine and the world is multiplex. Therefore, there must be many gods… Second, the gods are always represented by images in the shapes of this world… Third, myths assume that matter is the fundamental element that has always existed, the essential constituent of the universe… Out of this matter come the first gods, who in turn form the chaos into the present order… But fourth,… one senses that the human personas of the gods are only masks worn to make the forces that they represent more intelligible… Fifth, the myths take a uniformly low view of the gods. The gods are untrustworthy, seeking their own ends… If there is an absolute in the myths,… then it is that raw impersonal power… that is behind everything; that which magic seeks to tap into and utilize; that to which the gods themselves are subject and which they seek to use against each other… In the myths, conflict is the source of life. There is never-ending conflict between the forces of construction and the forces of chaos. (pp. 57-59)
… there is a uniformly low view of humanity in myth. Humans were created to serve the gods, and to a significant degree their creation was an afterthought… Furthermore, humans have no real control over their destinies,… Choice seems to be an illusion. (pp. 59-60)
In myth, there is no single standard of ethics… As a result, it becomes impossible to say that there is a single standard of right and wrong that is everywhere applicable. What one god wants, another god hates. (pp. 60-61)
Thus, it is not surprising that world myth is uniform in imagining reality to be a continually turning wheel that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. The past is only significant insofar as it shows us continuities that will repeat themselves. Thus, omens are of great importance. At some time in the past the shape of the entrails of a sacrificial animal coincided with some significant event. If that shape should present itself again, we may expect the same events to happen again. (p. 61)
(In other words, in mythology “cause and effect” is not understood as a condition of the physical world. Since everything in mythology is literally connected, the association in “now” of two apparently disconnected events is the controlling factor so that, at some time in the “future” (i.e. another “now”), if one of the associated events, e.g. the particular shape of entrails, should repeat then the expectation is the “connected” event will also repeat, e.g. the sudden death of the king, or his defeat in battle, etc.)
Transcendence: Basis of Biblical Thinking (Chapter 4 in The Bible among the Myths see ref. (1))
The single most obvious difference between the thought of the Old Testament and that of Israel’s neighbors is monotheism… only once in the history of the world has a culture contrived to attain and maintain the idea of the absolute unity of deity. (p. 64)
A second characteristic of Old Testament thought is iconoclasm: the insistence that God may not be represented in any created form… Above everything else it implies that God is not to be identified with this world… the doctrine of transcendence: God is not the world, cannot be identified with the world, and cannot be manipulated through the world. (p. 65)
A third characteristic of Old Testament thought is that the first principle is not matter but Spirit… the Spirit is the basis of everything, but because he (i.e. God) is the creator of matter it has a real and lasting significance. Thus the Bible is in a position to insist that the problem of humanity is not a tragic fatedness to evil, but a spirit that prefers evil to good. (p. 66)
The Old Testament’s understanding of origins is very different from that found in Near Eastern myths. In the myths conflict is essential to the creative process… Conflict may be a characteristic of the created cosmos, but that is not because conflict is a characteristic of reality… Significantly, evil only enters the world through willful disobedience by human beings, and that well after creation is complete… Far from creation being the result of conflict between eternal principles of Order and Disorder, the Bible presents creation as being the result of the purposive will of God. (pp. 67-68)
Unlike the myths, the Bible shows a high view of humanity, and this is directly related to the biblical concept of origins… We are in his image because of free, divine choice. Because of that choice, we have the opportunity to participate with God in the development of earth’s resources… The same picture obtains in Genesis 2, where humanity is seen as the center of the circle of creation, playing the partner of God in giving the constitutive names to all that God has created. (pp. 69-70)
But the Bible insists that if God is uniquely personal, he is yet absolutely consistent. He is determined to bless people even when it is not to his own advantage… Thus the word hesed,… speaks of a completely undeserved kindness and generosity done by a person who is in a position of power. (pp. 70-71)
Yet another example of these boundaries between God and creation is found in the prohibition of the use of all magic. Sorcery of every kind is forbidden, and the Israelites may not attempt to manipulate God in any kind of ritualistic way… Since we cannot relate to God in magical ways, how do we relate to him? Surprisingly, the Bible calls the Israelites to relate to him through ethical obedience… To be holy as Yahweh is holy means to treat people as persons of value, not objects for one’s own use. (pp. 75-78)
God is known: in the human-historical world of ethical choice. He is not to be known through metaphysical speculation resting on the assumption that he is continuous with the cosmos. He is not the cosmos, but he breaks into it, revealing his purposes to us and calling us to decide for or against those purposes. (p. 79)
Transcendence means that there is no way in which I can mechanically manipulate the forces that ultimately control my life. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 1. To give God the glory due him (1:21) is to admit his transcendence, to admit that I and my desires are not God. That admission is too costly for most of us. In order to make God in our image, we would rather submit to all the inevitable results of continuity. (pp. 82-83)
Alone in the ancient world the Old Testament insists throughout on a way of thinking about reality that is unique. (p. 83)
References
(1) Oswalt, John . The Bible among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? (Ancient Context, Ancient Faith). Zondervan Academic.