There is considerable disagreement and controversy today within the evangelical academy regarding the nature of myth and the historical truthfulness of Scripture. While this disagreement surfaces from various scholars who affirm belief in the inerrancy of the biblical text, these scholars often employ interpretative assumptions and methodologies that undermine the historical truthfulness of Scripture and the nature of Biblical inspiration. This disagreement leads to misunderstanding the nature of myth and fails to understand the nature of God’s supernatural acts.
Rather than fashioning a new scholarly approach to the interpretation of history and theology, these scholars are denying the historical truthfulness of Scripture when subverting the Bible to the Ancient Near Eastern mythical views of creation and flood accounts. In many respects, these scholars are embracing the errors of scholars like Schleiermacher and Bultmann, whose commitment was to the so-called “sciences” or “scientific knowledge” rather than confidence in the verbal, inerrant text of the Scriptures.
This paper will demonstrate that the assumptions and methodology of this neo-evangelical approach to the interpretation of the biblical text, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures, are inconsistent with the historical texts of Scripture and inconsistent with the nature of an omnipotent God Who works within the world He has created by His Word. In fact, those who aver this incorrect approach to Scripture, in which the supernatural is viewed as myth, and the myth supposedly reflects inerrant truth about God’s nature, are in variance with the nature of myth, history, and the nature of the Creator.
This paper will further demonstrate that the historical texts under discussion are, in fact, true history and consistent with other historical accounts; additionally, the paper will illustrate that these errors are a departure from the New Testament view of the Old Testament, the meaning of inerrancy within the Evangelical Theological Society as defined by the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy and in some cases a departure from the Christian Faith.
The paper will also demonstrate that scholars’ averring mythical accounts in the Old Testament reflect a misunderstanding of the proper use of myth, a methodological error of relying on Ancient Near Eastern pagan writers, and an error of imposing the presuppositions of alleged “science” upon God’s divine acts.