[Weatherman123]

Agreed. His book was the first I heard of this theory, many years ago, in a college class called "Bible: Myth and History". I was a cowardly atheist (agnostic) at the time. Now I've accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I'm in a four year Bible study program and it's based on the Historical Critical Theory of the Bible. I believe all of what's written in the wonderful library we call the Bible is divinely inspired, but I believe some books were written by some authors and some books by others. I believe some books were written by more than one writer (for instance, Genesis) and edited by another.

But I'm finding this is not a popular view on FR. Oh well.

[VRWC_minion]

I believe some books were written by more than one writer (for instance, Genesis) and edited by another.

I understand rub between what you have been taught and a literal reading required by the fundamentalists. I urge you though as an excersize to try a purely literal approach to the text and you will be richly rewarded by God. The Genesis story 1 and 2 are full of meaning when you try this.

Take one line of text per day. Go back and get the original hebrew for each word. Check out where each word was used before. For example, one of the words in the first line of Genesis uses a word that is translated "flutereth (sp?)". It is only used once anywhere else int he OT and it describes an eagle or other bird preparing its nest. Ever since then I have an image of God preparing like a bird preparing her nest before beginning his creation.

The danger in NOT reading with an open mind that the text may just be meant to be literal is that instead of you assume that any text you read that isn't readily understanble or reconciable to known facts must be a metaphor. By doing so you limit the potential of the text to cause you to dig deeper. You also avoid the very real trap that you are seeing what you want to see in scripture and not what is there.

To try and create a metaphor for what I am attempting to say I often liken the bible to a prism. If you stood on one side of the prism and I on the other we will both see different colors. The source of the light is the same but our perception is different. You will strongly argue that the red you see is the correct color while I will strongly argue the green I see is the correct color.

Even though we are both correct we both lose out by not taking a look from the other persons vantage point. Using this as my guide I use two general methods of interpeting scripture. One is basd on what you have been taught in your studies, the other is a pure literal reading. I must add that I am somewhat disapointed in that the fundamentalists often don't take some scripture (especially genesis) fully literal and they all have virtually the same explanation for apparent decrepancies without entertaining other possibilties. I am therefore mindfull that the fundamentalist view point may not actually be a literal reading either.

[unsnatchable]

You say that you are a Christian yet your post started out describing the creation account as a myth... Are you simply confused? And now I am having a really hard time figuring out what your point was to begin with. Either you are attempting to discredit the biblical account and therefore it's divine inspiration and authority or you are foolishly helping those that would. Christians will never win arguments like these. It takes faith to believe what you cannot see and cannot prove. The fact that people many different ones wrote that bible is a non factor in believing it to be truth. The "discrepancies" pointed out are not discrepancies at all unless one needs to see them to support unbelief.