The Historicity of Biblical Events
This important question came up for me as I was reading a discussion by Old Testament scholar Eugene Ulrich. This was in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (pp. 2–3). In that discussion, he made some remarks that made me wonder about his views on the historicity of events recorded in Scripture, which led to this initial exploration of the subject in general.
If I were to recommend just one or two sources to pursue these questions further, it would be A Worldview Approach to Science and Scripture by Carol A. Hill, and A Biblical History of Israel, 2nd ed. by Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. Some of Carol Hill's proposals provide the most satisfying answers I've found to my questions on the historicity of the Genesis accounts. A Biblical History of Israel is the best comprehensive account that I've found on these matters.
Complex Texts: Puzzling Perspectives
In the discussion I mentioned above, Ulrich was explaining that much of the material preserved in the Scriptures began as oral traditions.
If I were to recommend just one or two sources to pursue these questions further, it would be A Worldview Approach to Science and Scripture by Carol A. Hill, and A Biblical History of Israel, 2nd ed. by Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. Some of Carol Hill's proposals provide the most satisfying answers I've found to my questions on the historicity of the Genesis accounts. A Biblical History of Israel is the best comprehensive account that I've found on these matters.
Complex Texts: Puzzling Perspectives
In the discussion I mentioned above, Ulrich was explaining that much of the material preserved in the Scriptures began as oral traditions.
Large parts of what end up as passages in the written books [of the Bible] began as small oral units. Certain legal pronouncements, cultic prayers, or wisdom sayings, for example, secured an enduring existence by becoming part of a law code, a liturgy, or a collection of proverbs... Israelite culture, like most ancient cultures, was primarily an oral culture. Even when extended narratives, law codes, prophetic traditions, or wisdom collections were written down, they were nonetheless primarily recited and transmitted orally. Although oral transmission can preserve texts with great accuracy, it is quite likely that certain variations of synonymous words and phrases, as well as expansions by inclusion of related materials characterized the handing down of the texts through the centuries... Again, these oral units would normally have been recited and transmitted accurately, but they would also sometimes be logically adapted to the larger context or framework into which they were being placed.
I thought that was helpful, but I didn't know what to do with this:
Myths, legends, and tales that taught and entertained successive generations became incorporated into the large narrative strands that constitute many of the biblical books.
Myths, legends, and tales? I didn’t know which narratives he had in mind until I read this example:
This process of incorporation [of oral traditions] into larger frameworks could happen several times. For example, an initial anonymous saying from antiquity could secondarily be attributed to Abraham in a certain story, then be included in a form of the larger pre-monarchic national epic, which would finally be incorporated into the major Pentateuchal strand which we now read in Genesis.
You know, I could see “an initial anonymous saying from antiquity” being “secondarily attributed” to someone else in a biblical text if such a compositional practice does fit what we would expect of the particular text in question. But I certainly didn’t expect this of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis. And it’s even more puzzling when I hear Jewish scholars (of all people!) treating Israel’s foundational narratives as if they weren’t actual historical events. Well, if they aren't, they aren't, but that would seem to go against what the biblical story itself is claiming.
Other Perspectives: More Balanced Assessments
Bill T. Arnold, one of my top sources on Genesis, sees a different picture: “Israel understood these accounts to be fundamentally factual, and without that factuality ‘the patriarchal narratives have sense but not reference’” (Ancient Israel’s History: An Introduction to Issues and Sources, p. 90).
That’s what I thought. I don’t see how biblical faith could even work if these events were actually invented. At least not without altering the nature of the faith altogether.
But here’s the thing: we still need to read the biblical literature “with as high a degree of literary competence as possible in the conviction that it is futile to ask whether a text is speaking truly about the past before one knows what it is saying.” (Iain Provan, Philips Long and Tremper Longman, A Biblical History of Israel, p. 412).
That makes sense to me. So, what are these texts saying? What sort of texts are they? And what does it mean exactly that these account is “fundamentally factual"?
“In some cases the biblical texts were not written as history. In every case the literature was selective in its treatment of the events. Often the nature of the literature governed much of what was chosen and why it was chosen for inclusion in the written texts. Even where the literature comes closest to what looks to the modern reader as history, choices were made contingent on the purpose of what was being written.” (Richard Hess, Ancient Israel’s History, p. 63)
Ok, and what about texts like Genesis 1–3? The Primeval History (Genesis 1–11) is “a unique blending or merging of literary categories -myth and history” (Arnold, 75). In this unique genre, which Jacobsen calls “mytho-historical,” and of which there’s precedent in the ancient Near East, “mythical themes have been arranged in a forward-moving, linear progression, in what may be considered a historicizing literary form, using genealogies especially, to make history out of myth” (Arnold, p. 75).
So how do we read this kind of biblical literature? Arnold explains that:
Many readers of the opening chapters of Genesis will leave open the question of the historicity of these events, taking them as possible, no matter how remote the possibility may seem to us now. Others will admit the implausibility of those events as real or historically factual, largely because of specific literary features of the Genesis account. In truth, the situation perhaps is more complex because there may be vestiges of historical features embedded in the text, especially in Genesis 6–9; 10. But each such text needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis, and opinions will, of course, vary widely. Here it may be helpful to retain a distinction between “historical” and “literal.” In other words, a text may be essentially metaphorical or symbolic and still retain historical features or elements that reflect real events in time and space. Some of the events of the Primeval History may be historical but not literal. (p. 79, emphasis mine)
That sounds judicious to me. I would only add that we also need to take into account the witness of the rest of the canon—how other biblical authors, and the Bible as a whole, interpret the texts in question.
The ancestral narratives (Genesis 12–36), on the other hand, aren’t mythological in nature at all, but neither are they modern historiography. Arnold and others describe it as “protohistory,” a time between Israel’s prehistory (or mytho-history) and it's actual history as recorded in the rest of the Old Testament (see Arnold, p. 92). Similarly, Ben Witherington calls it “theological history.”
The material in Genesis is presented as history with a theological interpretation that incorporates poetry and prose and various other literary types. For our purposes, it is sufficient to say that the OT writers/editors of this material present it as some sort of theological history chronicle, and this is how the NT users of the material take it as well, including Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews. (Ben Witherington, Torah Old and New, p. 169)
A Preliminary Conclusion
I am glad I don't have to reimagine biblical faith as a Story largely based on tales, legends and myths, which would be the case if the patriarchal narratives were indeed made up. But I can see now how it could work for "an initial anonymous saying from antiquity" to be "secondarily... attributed to Abraham in a certain story" without rendering that story actually "made up." Not that I'm convinced though. I still feel uneasy with this claim, given the sense I get from the overall witness of Scripture regarding the nature of these narratives.
The accounts narrated in Genesis 1–3, on the other hand, do seem symbolic in nature, and not to be taken literally. However, it also seems to me that the biblical authors (including the New Testament writers) treat these accounts as events that actually happened—at least in some sense. This all fits, if it's as Arnold says, that "a text may be essentially metaphorical or symbolic and still retain historical features or elements that reflect real events in time and space." As far as I can tell, it does seem that these accounts are using symbolic language to narrate events that in some sense did happen. The question is, In what sense?
In general, the early chapters of Genesis (1–11) are dealing with pre-history, accounts written using the typical ancient Near Eastern mythological patterns, though transforming them, to give us rather what Yahweh wanted us to know about “the beginning.” To my mind, if these events did happen—events like the Great Flood, for example—it would make sense that they would be remembered in cultures all over the ancient world (as they are), so that even if the genre of their myths don't allow for historiography, they would still be remembering the past—embellished though it may now be, with made-up bits.
However, even the biblical writers themselves didn’t communicate the way we do. In their cultures, exaggeration was not necessarily considered inappropriate when speaking of sacred matters. And they clearly didn’t write history the way we do.
To grasp the nature of the realities and events these texts are describing in a way that's existentially and intellectually satisfying to us, we need to patiently allow for the integration of the “scientific” reading of our texts with the larger Story they are telling. I have come to believe that to succeed at this we’ll need to do it from within the biblical Story—as inhabitants and characters ourselves within it—which is precisely where these texts locate us.
Regarding the questions and issues that must be tackled along the way, Provan, Long and Longman propose the following:
This must involve a discussion of all the fundamental issues of epistemology and of procedure that have been raised... in relation to what is commonly referred to as “critical method.” What conclusions may truly be drawn from the fact that our biblical traditions are artistically constructed and ideologically shaped entities that are perhaps distanced in time from the past they apparently seek to describe? What in reality is the role that extrabiblical data, including archaeological data, can or should play in the reconstruction of the history of Israel? How should the relationship between biblical and extrabiblical data be regarded? What role does or should the ideology of the historian play in such reconstruction, and what should be the relationship between ideology and evidence? Is historiography a science or an art? It is questions such as these that must be comprehensively addressed... They are basic questions, tied up in large measure with the fundamental question of how we know about the past (or anything) at all; and we need to ponder them in depth. In essence, we need to do something that “critical scholars,” who have shown themselves generally well able to criticize the tradition and one another, have often not demonstrated a great capacity for doing: criticizing their own governing assumptions, and indeed their own idea of criticism. (A Biblical History of Israel, p. 36)
Notes and Sources
1. Bill T. Arnold and Richard S. Hess, eds., Ancient Israel’s History: An Introduction to Issues and Sources (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).
2. Richard Bauckham, “Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story,” in The Bible in the Contemporary World: Hermeneutical Ventures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 1–16.
3. Allan R. Millard, “Abraham,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 Vols., ed. David Noel Freedman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 36–41.
4. James K. Hoffmeier, “These Things Happened: Why a Historical Exodus Is Essential for Theology,” in Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?, ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012): "The sojourn-exodus-wilderness events... stand at the heart of Israel’s religious life, as evidenced by the fact that these themes are ubiquitous throughout the Old Testament itself. Clearly the biblical writers throughout the Old Testament believed that the exodus occurred as presented in the Pentateuch, for they repeatedly affirm their faith in Yahweh, who brought them out of Egypt, through the Sinai wilderness, and into the land, as God had promised Abraham and his offspring... In the New Testament, Paul was able to make a theological point and application for the Corinthians from the Israelite sea crossing because “these things happened to them” (1 Cor. 10:11). Simply put, if these things did not happen, there is no theological lesson!” (pp. 111–112).
5. Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Eridu Genesis,” Journal of Biblical Literature 100, no. 4 (1981): 513–29, https://doi.org/10.2307/3266116.
6. K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003).
7. Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III, A Biblical History of Israel, 2nd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015): “We see no reason, then, to believe that the Old Testament does not mean to speak about the past, and every reason to believe that it does. We share that opinion with many others across a broad spectrum of biblical scholars who would not agree with one another on a whole host of other issues about the same biblical narratives. Norman Whybray, for example, states, ‘The Pentateuch . . . is an outstanding but characteristic example of the work of an ancient historian: a history of the origins of the people of Israel, prefaced by an account of the origins of the world.’ Writing of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, Halpern argues that ‘much of the literature in question is antiquarian in its intent. . . . We must approach it not as fiction, and not as romance, but as historiography.’ John Van Seters states that ‘the Yahwist was an ancient historian,’ who sought to write history ‘in a manner similar to other comparable works of ancient historiography, both in the classical world of Greece and Rome and the primeval traditions of Mesopotamia.’ The Old Testament means to speak about the past” (pp. 62, 63-64).
8. Iain Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017).
9. Ben Witherington III, Torah Old and New: Exegesis, Intertextuality, and Hermeneutics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018).
