Southern Seminary Magazine (Vol 90.1) The Light of Truth: Apologetics in the 21st Century

kyle d. claunch
in Genesis 1-11 that marks it as an entirely different genre
than the rest of the book or other examples of historical
narrative in the Bible. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the
historical genealogies of Scripture, such as the extensive
one in 1 Chronicles and the genealogy of Jesus in Luke
3 give no indication of a different mode of historical account
with respect to the names on the list prior to Abraham.
As important as the affirmation of the historicity of
Adam is for Christian theology, grounding one’s theology
in the text of Scripture by means of a consistent hermeneutic
is equally important, and it is precisely here that the
mytho-history approach of Craig and others fails.
2
Genesis 1 as Non-Historical Literature. Other
interpreters affirm that the genre of the account
from Adam to Abraham is not markedly different
than the account from Abraham forward, but they
do see a difference in genre between Genesis 1 and Genesis
2 and following. In other words, the historical narrative
genre begins with Genesis 2:4 and is indicated using the
Hebrew word tôlǝdôt (“these are the generations of ”). This
expression is a key literary feature marking the historical
continuity of the Genesis narrative, linking the descendants
of Abraham with the rest of mankind.
Prior to the tôlǝdôt of Genesis 2:4, the text is seen as
communicating in some way other than straightforward
historical narrative. On this view, the six-day creation account
of Genesis 1 is not historical narrative, but a literary
unit intended to convey theological truth about God, man,
creation, and God’s redeeming purposes. Thus, the weeklong
structure of particular creative events occurring on
sequential days is an extended metaphor rather than a
literal week of history. There are multiple versions of this
view, sometimes called the literary framework theory. The
strength of the view with respect to the question of the
historical Adam is its space for one to maintain a commitment
to the historicity of the life of Adam and Eve and the
other events of Genesis 2–11 about which the New Testament
speaks as historical.
However, the sharp divide between the historicity of
Genesis 2 and the non-historical character of Genesis 1 is
not without problems. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is the
fact that Jesus identifies the man and the woman who are
joined together in Genesis 2:24 as the “male and female”
created on day six in Genesis 1. In Matthew 19:1–10, when
asked about the legitimacy of divorce, Jesus cites Genesis
1:27, which says that God made them male and female “in
the beginning.” He then moves seamlessly into a quotation
of Genesis 2:24, noting that God joined the two together.
In other words, Jesus unhesitatingly identifies the “male
and female” of chapter 1 with the “man and woman” who
were united as one flesh in chapter 2.
This kind of identity seems to indicate that Jesus understood
the detailed account of the creation of man and
woman and their union in marriage as giving greater
detail to the general creation narrative of the back half
of the sixth day in Genesis 1. The upshot of all of this is
that Jesus assumes the historical character of both Genesis
1 and Genesis 2.
3
The Days of Creation as Long Days. Another view
sees the entirety of the opening chapters of Genesis
as historical. However, the six “days” of creation
are not 24-hour days but rather very long epochs
of time. A “day” of creation may cover a time-period of
hundreds of thousands to many millions of years. On this
summer 2022
15