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

It would be good if Enns could tell us the grounds upon which one can decide what parts of OT history are historically true and which are not, since some scholars may think that there are more places than Enns has pointed out where mythical or legendary material is positively affirmed by biblical writers. Even when he says that the history recorded in the monarchic period of Israel's time is more reliable than earlier history recorded in the Pentateuch, how can we be sure of that, since there may have been other mythical traditions in circulation that had affinities with significant strands of that monarchic history and which could cast doubt on the veracity of that history?

Thus, it may be true that Enns almost never makes the explicit verbal statement that the mythical accounts in Genesis and Exodus are not historical, but he more often conveys the concept. Nevertheless, the following quotations (that I repeat), especially when understood in their contexts, are virtually explicit statements that these biblical accounts are not essentially history but myth.

The reason the biblical account is different from its ancient Near Eastern counterparts is not that it is history in the modern sense of the word and therefore divorced from any similarity to ancient Near Eastern myth. What makes Genesis different from its ancient Near Eastern counterparts is that. . . the God they [Abraham and his seed] are bound to ... is different from the gods around them [p. 53; my italics].

The biblical account, along with its ancient Near East counterparts, assumes the factual nature of what it reports. They did not think, "We know this is all 'myth' but it will have to do until science is invented to give us better answers" [p. 55; my italics].

The point I would like to emphasize, however, is that such a firm grounding in ancient myth does not make Genesis less inspired [p. 56; my italics].

Strikingly, the second quotation even affirms that biblical writers "assumed the factual nature" of their "reports," even though they were really not factual but "myth."

Therefore, the most probable assessment of his view so far is that conceptually, at the least, he affirms that the biblical writers imbibed myths at significant points, recorded them, and, though they were not essentially historical, they naively affirmed such myths as reliable descriptions of the real world because they were part of their socially constructed reality. Furthermore, divine inspiration did not restrain such social-cultural osmosis. John Walton's assessment of non-evangelical approaches to the ANE and the OT is generally applicable to Enns's: "the attempt has been made to reduce the Old Testament to converted mythology whose dependency exposes its humanity."14 There are, however, three important caveats to be made about his approach that differs from the customary non-evangelical approach: (1) he believes the point of the Pentateuchal mythical narratives, like that of the creation and of the Flood account, is to highlight for Israelites that their God is to be worshipped in contrast to the other ANE gods. (2) Enns apparently sees more reliable history being recorded beginning with Israel's monarchic period. (3) He believes the Bible is fully inspired by God.