Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The issue is that “literal creationists” are actually only selective literalists (or, as I would call them, “inconsistent literalists”). If one were truly consistent in interpreting the creation description in Genesis 1 at face value (along with other creation descriptions in both testaments), one would come out with a round, flat earth, complete with a solid dome over the earth, and the earth supported by pillars, with Sheol underneath, etc. But creationists who claim the literal mantle don’t do that, since the results are clearly non-scientific.
My view, as readers know, is that we ought to simply let the text say what it says and be what it is. It was God’s choice to prompt people living millennia ago to produce this thing we call the Bible, and so we dishonor it when we impose our own interpretive context on it. Our modern evangelical contexts are alien to the Bible. Frankly, any context other than the context in which the biblical writers were moved to write is foreign to the Bible.
So, who’s the literalist now?
Read the full article: drmsh.com/interpreting-genesis-1-literalist
#BiblicalLiteralism #GenesisCreation #DivineCouncil #BiblicalInterpretation #AncientNearEast
The issue is that “literal creationists” are actually only selective literalists (or, as I would call them, “inconsistent literalists”). If one were truly consistent in interpreting the creation description in Genesis 1 at face value (along with other creation descriptions in both testaments), one would come out with a round, flat earth, complete with a solid dome over the earth, and the earth supported by pillars, with Sheol underneath, etc. But creationists who claim the literal mantle don’t do that, since the results are clearly non-scientific.
My view, as readers know, is that we ought to simply let the text say what it says and be what it is. It was God’s choice to prompt people living millennia ago to produce this thing we call the Bible, and so we dishonor it when we impose our own interpretive context on it. Our modern evangelical contexts are alien to the Bible. Frankly, any context other than the context in which the biblical writers were moved to write is foreign to the Bible.
So, who’s the literalist now?
Read the full article: drmsh.com/interpreting-genesis-1-literalist
#BiblicalLiteralism #GenesisCreation #DivineCouncil #BiblicalInterpretation #AncientNearEast
