MYTH, HISTORY, AND INSPIRATION: A REVIEW ARTICLE OF INSPIRATION AND INCARNATION BY PETER ENNS

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2006 by Beale, G K

In this respect and in connection with some of Enns's directly preceding statements, he poses a difficult question:

If the ancient Near Eastern stories are myth (denned in this way as prescientific stories of origins), and since the biblical stories are similar enough to these stories to invite comparison, does this indicate that myth is the proper category for understanding Genesis? [p. 41].

He answers this by asking another question:

Are the early stories in the Old Testament to be judged on the basis of standards of modern historical inquiry and scientific precision, things that ancient peoples were not at all aware of? [p. 41].

He answers by saying that it is unlikely that God would have allowed his word to come to the Israelites according to "modern standards of truth and error so universal that we should expect premodern cultures to have understood them." Rather, more probably, God's word came to them "according to standards they understood" (p. 41), which included mythological standards of the time (and, recall once more, that part of Enns's definition of "myth" is that "stories were made up" [my italics]; p. 41). He concludes that the latter position is "better suited for solving the problem" of how God accommodated his revelation to his ancient people (p. 41).

Enns acknowledges that beginning with the monarchic age (1000-600 BC) more historical consciousness arises, so that history "is recorded with a degree of accuracy more in keeping with contemporary standards" (p. 43). He immediately adds, however, that a negative answer must be given to the question "can we not also conclude that the same can be said for Genesis and other early portions of the Bible?" (p. 43). He continues, "[I]t is questionable logic to reason backward from the historical character of the monarchic account, for which there is some evidence, to the primeval and ancestral stories, for which such evidence is lacking" (p. 43). He says the same thing even more explicitly on page 44:

One would expect a more accurate, blow-by-blow account of Israel's history during this monarchic period, when it began to develop a more "historical selfconsciousness," as it were. It is precisely the evidence missing from the previous periods of Israel's history that raises the problem of the essential historicity of that period [my italics].

So, in one respect, we are on somewhat firmer ground when we come to the monarchic period because it is there that we see something more closely resembling what one would expect of "good" history writing by modern standards: a more or less contemporary, eyewitness account.

Likewise, Enns says a little later,

The Mesopotamian world from which Abraham came was one whose own stories of origins had been expressed in mythic categories . . . The reason the opening chapters of Genesis look so much like the literature of ancient Mesopotamia is that the worldview categories of the ancient Near East were ubiquitous and normative at the time. Of course, different [ancient] cultures had different myths, but the point is that they all* had them.