Historical understandings of Genesis

Historical Understandings of Genesis
RELATED TOPICS	Creation, Eden, Adam, Eve, The Fall, Babel, Noah, The Flood Genre Creation science, intelligent design and evolution
SERMONS, ESSAYS AND OPINIONS	* Genesis 1 - Purpose (G.G.)
CONTENTS

There is some disagreement among Christians regarding the historical nature of the book. Questions naturally arise such as: "Was there a garden?", "Was their a fall with the serpent?", "Was there a world-wide flood, or a local flood?", "Was there really a tower of Babel?". Disagreement arise partly because of the way in which the book is read, in particular, which genre the reader feels most appropriately fits the book. Some Christians, especially in the Developing World and the United States, read the book as literal history, and thus understand the world to be around 6,000 years old. They see all of the Creation story to be factually accurate. At the other end of the spectrum, other Christians see the genre, at least of the first few chapters of Genesis, in a more parabolic or metaphorical way. These Christians do not necessarily believe in a literal Adam or Eve, but see the creation story as making a number of points, including God as creator, with humans rebelling against their creator.

Joseph

Sir Colin Humphreys, FRS and Robert S White, FRS

Humphreys CJ and White RS (1995), "The Eruption of Santorini and the Date and Historicity of Joseph", Science and Christian Belief, vol 7, pp151-162.

"We suggest that a cataclysmic eruption of Santorini in the 17th century BC was responsible for major famines in Egypt and the surrounding area recorded in Old Testament writings in the account of Joseph, and we give arguments for the historicity of this account. Evidence of climatic disturbances in the northern hemisphere from tree-ring widths and of a huge acidity spike in ice cores from Greenland are consistent with widespread climatic modification at this time. We suggest that the famines occurred during the period of the Hyksos pharaohs of the Fifteenth Dynasty ln Egypt, probably during the reign of King Khyan, thus providing a date for this pharaoh, and also for the old Testament patriarch Joseph. If our arguments are accepted, the eruption of Santorini, for which we take the best date to be 1628 BC, provides an absolute chronological marker for both ancient Egyptian and ancient Hebrew chronology."

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