Finding Harmony

Gordon,
The difference between Jesus’ statement concerning the mustard seed and his statements concerning Adam are that neither Jesus nor the Jews believed anything about mustard seeds in absolute terms; they simply knew that in their own daily practice, of all the seeds they planted, the mustard seed was the “smallest of seeds.” That belief was a true belief; therefore, by saying that the mustard seed was “the smallest of seeds,” Jesus was by no means confirming the Jews in an erroneous belief. However, when it came to the origin of the human race, the Jews did believe in absolute terms that the entire race descended from a single human pair; and they believed that, not because of popular superstition, but because their own inspired Scriptures taught that them that. Those Scriptures give detailed genealogies of Adam’s descendants, along with the lifespan of those descendants. In terms of literary form, therefore, the Genesis narrative do not resemble ancient myths, which always take place in some shadowy, unspecified past “once upon a time;” rather they have all the earmarks of a sober historical record of actual events. Apparently, Jesus regarded them as historical, because in his condemnation of the religious leaders who were about to put him to death, he tells them that “all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth” would come upon them, “from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah to the blood of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” Jesus’ regarded Abel’s blood to be as historical as the blood of the other prophets he mentions. Later, He speaks of the days prior to His second coming as being “as it was in the days of Noah.” If you say that, in these instances, Jesus was simply making a theological point using mythical concepts inherited from His culture, the question naturally arises, “What about His statement concerning the second coming?” At this point, was He also speaking within the framework of mythical concepts inherited from His Jewish culture? Is Jesus literally coming back, or is the concept of His “second coming” true only in a “theological” or spiritual sense? That would seem to contradict the words of the angel in Acts 1:11-- “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
What I am saying is that we must be extremely careful in interpreting the Scripture by following sound hermeneutical principles. When we do that, it becomes clear that Jesus never taught error nor confirmed the Jews in erroneous beliefs based on ignorance and superstition. I believe that Paul Little points to a very real danger when he writes, “If we do not take those passages of the Bible literally that God intended to be literal, we can easily miss or change the obvious intent of the authors. Such a view would interpret certain biblical events (for instance, the initial sin of humanity beginning with Adam and Eve) as nonfactual stories recorded to illustrate and convey only spiritual truth. . .This view of the Bible would feel free to allegorize any of the historical, biblical events. The result would be a completely subjective interpretation of the truth conveyed by God’s Word. Put simply, this logic bypasses the grammatical and syntactical intent of the words. . .Biblical events such as the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ would be seen as legends conveying no vital importance. The avoidance of “literal” could lead to a pick and choose interpretation removing any thought of divine biblical inspiration.” The vital question is this-- Are we too allow men’s fallible interpretation of scientific data to override the basic principles of hermeneutics when interpreting the Bible? My trust in human scholarship ends when men tell me I must abandon sound hermeneutical principles in order to understand the Scriptures rightly.

Gordon,
How can you say that the Jews’ belief concerning the mustard seed was a false belief? Don’t you think they were capable of comparing visually the seeds they planted and determining which among them was the smallest? If I regularly plant pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and poppy seed, am I making a false statement if I say that, of all the seeds that I plant, the poppy seed is the “smallest of seeds”? Of course not! So I assert again, as an incontrovertible truth, that the Jews’ belief that the mustard seed was the smallest of all the seeds they planted was a true belief. They had eyes! They could see which was smallest! Jesus’ statement would be false only if He were trying to make some sort of absolute pronouncement concerning all the seeds that exist on planet earth-- which was not His intention at all.
Moreover, to say that the Jews believed whatever they believed “because of when and where they lived,” is a gross oversimplification. The Jews’ derived their beliefs, just as we do in the twenty-first century, from a number of sources of varying reliability. They believed some things based on simple observation and daily experience, other things based on news reports they heard from Rome, other things based on popular superstition and tradition, and other things based on historical records composed by writers like Josephus. Their belief about Adam and Eve, however, was based, not on the writings of any secular historian, but on the explicit teaching of their inspired Scriptures, which Jesus affirmed to be entirely truthful and without error. Therefore, to say they held to a particular belief about human origins “because of when and where they lived” is altogether too simplistic a statement. Moreover, a particular belief cannot be proven either true or false by looking simply at “where and when” the people lived who first held that belief. The fact that first century Jews based some of their beliefs on ignorance and superstition, doesn’t mean that all of their beliefs were based on ignorance and superstition.
With regard to the extremely long ages of the patriarch recorded in Genesis 5, I want to offer several thoughts. You say that the ages listed there are symbolic in meaning, pointing to examples from ANE literature where extremely long ages are given for historical figures. It is true that texts have been found which list ancient kings who are said to have reigned for tens of thousands of years, and no one today believes that those texts are historically accurate. However, such texts may bear witness to the fact that that men lived much longer before the Flood than after. The fact that the Bible records a precipitous drop in the lifespan of human beings after the flood suggests that changed conditions after the flood may have caused a shortening of the human lifespan. Various theories have been offered for this shortening of the lifespan-- from changes in earth’s environment to the loss of ‘longevity genes” caused by the phenomenon known as “genetic drift.“ The sharp population decrease at the time of the Flood, and the splitting of the gene pool at Babel, as well, could have affected the lifespan of human beings. That genetic mutations can cause a decrease in the human lifespan is obvious from what we observe with the premature aging disease progeria. Due to a genetic mutation, sufferers age five to ten times faster than usual, with typical geriatric symptoms of baldness, cataracts, etc., dying by the age of about 13, usually from heart attack or stroke. Jonathan Sarfati asks, “If a single change from cytosine to thymine can cause a tenfold drop in life spans, perhaps a similar mutation caused a life span drop by a similar factor after the Flood.” I should point that it is not only young earth creationists believe that there was a dramatic shortening of the human lifespan after the flood; even progressive creationists like Hugh Ross hold that view.
Although this position will undoubtedly seem ridiculous to those who take the uniformitarian view that “the present is the key to the past,” they do not appear ridiculous to those who take the opposite view that “the past is the key to the present.” What we have to decide is whether we are going to read the Bible from the standpoint of naturalism, or open ourselves to the supernatural worldview of the Bible itself. The supernaturalist believes that God in the past acted in miraculous ways to perform great nature miracles that He is not performing at the present time: causing ax heads to float, causing the shadow on a sundial to go backwards, lengthening a normal day to twice its length, causing a lifeless stick to blossom overnight, raising people from the dead, and other such “impossible” feats-- impossible, that is, according to the worldview of naturalism. The supernaturalist’s worldview enables him to take at face value many biblical teachings that the “naturalist” finds outlandish and impossible to accept. So our difference in interpretation of the Scriptures seems to be rooted, Gordon, in a difference of presuppositions. It seems to me that you seem are reading much of the Scriptures through the grid of naturalism; that explains why you cannot accept as literally true the existence of demons, for example, or their ability to inflict physical disease and suffering on human beings. On the other hand, I am reading the Scriptures without those naturalist lenses, so I see no reason not to accept at face value the biblical miracles as having literally occurred.