Pete Enns discusses Kevin DeYoung’s defense of the historicity of Genesis 1-3. Both men claim that the Genesis creation account is meant to supplant the mythical creation accounts of Israel’s neighboring cultures. However, Enns disagrees with DeYoung about why the Hebrew stories were better.
Israel’s stories do not supplant the other stories by being somehow “historical” by contrast–to show those Babylonians “what really happened.” Israel’s stories offer an alternate theological account of their God by employing mythic themes and imagery of other cultures–even if those themes and images are reframed and re-presented by the biblical writers, which they certainly were.
The polemic of Israel’s creation stories works because they share the same conceptual world of their neighbors. DeYoung seems to think the polemic works because it abandons that conceptual world.
via Thoughts on Kevin DeYoung’s Restless Comments on the Historical Adam | Peter Enns.