Genesis creation myths Sample Clauses

Genesis creation myths. In turning to the two creation stories in Genesis, the xxxx is treating them as revelatory, being part of the scriptural canon; as truth-bearing, being part of the living word of scripture; and as foundational to the whole scriptural canon, being its theological underpinning. Such serious reliance upon ancient mythological texts, acknowledged to be such by Xxxx Xxxx XX (cf. TOB 3:1, n 4), is intended not to affront a rational, scientific and historical world-view, so much as to imply the limits of operating exclusively within its boundary. Xxxx Xxxx’s turn to the creation myths follows the gospel lead of Xxxxx who, when interrogated by the Pharisees about contemporary marriage practices and their implications (Mat. 19:3-12; Mk. 10:1-12), directed them to the two Genesis accounts of man’s beginning. In directing attention to the beginning of mankind, Xxxxx is simultaneously positioning his interlocutors as the objects of His teaching (‘You, read this’) and as the subjects of that teaching (‘Read about yourself’). Deploying this tactic reminds them that they are not only the detached observers/enforcers of the law they purport to be but are participants within it. In pointing to the creation myths, Xxxxxx is pointing to the original order of the world which transcends history, in the mythic pre-historic beyond. The transcendent atemporality of myth reminds man he is circumscribed by time and space, and points to his fleeting earthly existence. Myth also attests to the macro- continuity of that existence; that every human life ‘begins at the beginning [...] the same problem of good and evil [...] the same need to learn how to live’94 and follows the same developmental arch or ‘ancestral pattern.’95 Referring his questioners back to their mythical origin is to re- contextualise their contemporary cultural ideas and to assess to what extent the present coheres or diverges from the truths of the narrative. Xxxxx clearly regards the texts as being authoritative and having ‘normative meaning’ (TOB 1:4) and in citing both accounts, treats them as organically connected. This internal warrant one would not expect to be persuasive for those who do not subscribe to the authority of Judaeo-Christian scripture, though. The warrant may appear more persuasive, and less misaligned with the historic context within which the xxxx wrote, if one turns to a consideration of myth as a genre.