(9A) The Bible: Just a collection of myths? Part II
Vern Peterman · Dec 11, 2005
Apologetics, No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262339323990

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We find, in fact, there is no, you know, cookie cutter, you know, it's always 100 years or 500 or something. But what we found in general was that it takes centuries to develop a myth. And if you look at, okay, if I were to press it, what's the minimum going to be required to develop a myth? Cultural anthropologists have determined that if you're looking at 20 years minimum, with the right environment to begin developing elements of mythology. And you're looking at probably a minimum of two generations before you really get into something that is fully definable as myth. And more typically, as we mentioned before, with several examples. centuries of time. And one of the examples we gave is Santa Claus, coming from Saint Nicholas, who lived during the third and fourth centuries. And that myth is still evolving, isn't it? So if myths take centuries typically, minimum a couple of generations, the very beginning time is about 20 years, with the right environment.

Then we went to page 3 and 4 here on section 9 and say, is the New Testament written in mythological form? What's the kind of language you would expect with a myth? How specific is a myth going to be in terms of people, history? What kind of language would you expect with a myth?

Yes, long ago. It's typically pointing to some past that is difficult to date. Good point. How else would you typify a usual language for myth? Yeah, once upon a time could be a fairy tale. All right. You're correct in that. Yes, Tom. Okay, often myths don't give you a tight connection with the historical elements that are behind it if the intent is to draw upon that. That's correct.

You would tend to find words like long ago or very nonspecific terms, it is said. Very nonspecific language is typical. Or to just simply state it, without even, you know, who said this, where did it come from? Or, you know, the elders have long said so and so. And so very non-specific language, not the kind of thing like, well, like we see here on page three.

Look at Luke 1, 1 through 4. Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you've been taught."

Alright, now, does that sound like a mindset that is fixed in mythology? It doesn't, does it? Here is a fellow, and we know from the fourth chapter of Colossians, who is a physician, a doctor, his expertise is in observation. His expertise would be in assessing things and reaching a diagnosis. So here is a fellow who has that background now looking at the facts and saying, after carefully looking this over, here's what I deem the facts to be. Let's also look at one other thing.

He refers to eyewitnesses. What proximity, time, and physically did he have to those eyewitnesses? Was it just eyewitnesses he'd kind of heard about? What was the nature of his contact with those eyewitnesses? Yeah, basically he spent time with the eyewitnesses. Yeah, Tom? They treated what? True news. Okay. If we look at it, let's think about this instance.

When would Dr. Luke have had opportunity to get a close personal proximity to the facts? But if we talk about Dr. Luke, we actually don't see him showing up until about the middle of the book of Acts. So if he was there earlier, we don't know it. So let's be slightly skeptical and say that he wasn't there when Christ walked the earth.

And I think we have to consider the possibility that you've just suggested, and that's that he may have been eyewitness to some of these things personally. But what opportunity did he have? Let's ask this question. Dr. Luke traveled with Paul to Rome, correct? He was in Caesarea at that point in time. He also used first person, we and us, prior coming up to that time of Paul's visit to Jerusalem before Paul got put into prison. So where was Dr. Luke?

With Paul, okay? In Jerusalem. And so here's Dr. Luke, who, I mean, he's at a time now, if he were to ask the question, can you, disciples, show me, where was Jesus crucified? Could they take him? Was there anybody there to take him to the place where Jesus was crucified? Yeah.

What's the number of people who saw Christ resurrected? About 500 at once, plus others individually identified. So the number at least 500 would be a conservative estimate. Many of them were still alive when Dr. Luke was writing, even taking the most skeptical assumption that Dr. Luke was not around during the time that Christ walked the earth. There would be hundreds of people who could testify to Dr. Luke of Jesus' resurrection. So Dr. Luke, when he's writing, he's not someone distant from the facts, different from the people, distant from them. He is someone, even given the most skeptical of reasonable assumptions, that he would have plenty of people to talk to, he'd have the opportunity to look over particular documents.

He, in the latter part of the Book of Acts, we'll take a look at Dr. Luke's recording of history, he uses the word tupos when he describes the letter from the Roman commander, which means a copy. He wrote down the words that were in the document that the Roman commander sent when they took Paul from Jerusalem to Caesarea. So he's not just saying this is about what it says, but he went and here's from the record.

Now, let's take a look at the book of Acts chapter 2. Here is Peter, now think of the timing. Peter is speaking in Acts chapter 2. How long has it been since Christ has ascended? from the time of Christ's ascension until Acts chapter 2? Days. Yeah. What's that? Yeah, it had been 40 days since Christ first resurrected, right?

But from the time He ascended, it was even fewer than that. So we're talking, if we were to put a round number to it, a couple of months. So when he's speaking here, think of this in terms of it had only been a couple of months. If we were to put it in our own context, it would be somewhere around the latter part of October. Now, given that kind of a background, let's look at what Peter says.

Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to whom? You. Okay, he's speaking personally. By God, with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him your midst, just as you yourselves know, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power."

Verse 29, "'Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding this patriarch David that he both died and was buried in his tomb is with us to this day that people they could see it right there in Jerusalem and So because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath this To seat one of his descendants on his throne He looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of Christ that he was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay This was Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses So he said that in the context of it had only been less than two months. He said that in the context of he was right there in Jerusalem.

You could take a little walk for a short period of time and see where all these things had taken place. You could go right there in Jerusalem and see a great number of people who had seen Jesus resurrected. You could go, if you want to, go ahead and talk You know, Roman Guard. He's stationed right over here at Fortress Antonio. Talk to him if you think you disagree.

This was the one that says, this man truly was the Son of God. All the opportunity to dispute the testimony was right there. And of course, you know how they responded that day. They said, oh, this is all just hogwash, right? No. They had absolutely nothing to say in objection. Nothing. None.

And that's the thing, up until the destruction of the temple, even the genealogy of Jesus given in the Gospels, you could go into the temple, they kept the Jews' genealogies in the kind of perimeter wall of the inside temple area. You want to check any of it? Check it out. Check for yourself. You don't believe that that's his genealogy? Look for yourself. All these things were immediately verifiable in the context that Peter appealed to.

1 John 1, 1-4, written most likely after the time of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, many of the apostles had by this time died, John writes, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship was with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete."

His appeal was not to, long ago, we heard a story from the fathers, you know. It is said, you see the appeal here? These are things, you want to check it out? Check it out for yourself. You dispute this? Go ask. Or let's take a little walk, I'll show you.

All these things were immediately verifiable and John's appeal, and his appeal, notice, isn't just intellectual. He definitely is looking for a spiritual outcome. But his appeal is on the basis of things that were really touched and really heard and really seen. Real things. It is not a mythological appeal that he is making at all. The character of what the Apostles wrote was not mythological in character at all. You see this here. That's not what they were appealing to at all.

Now, next page, page four. Mythological Patterns in First Century Judaism. As noted on the first page, because this is a key thing to keep in mind, myth has a definition. It's not just some vague word equivalent to legend, folklore, etc. A principal characteristic of myth is that it explains and supports cultural and or religious practices and belief. One of the things that makes it difficult to explain Jesus Christ in terms of mythology is What were the Jews expecting and does it fit? Mythology develops within a culture. It develops within a culture that is cooperative with the path of the mythology.

So what happens here is you see an environment behind what took place and what's recorded that is not at all what was expected. that Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection was not what was expected. How do we get that idea? They're looking for a king. Think about this. If they were expecting Jesus to be crucified, and that was just stuck in their minds, oh yeah, this is exactly what we think is going to happen.

Would you have expected, now let me turn the question around, what behavior would you have expected from the disciples on the day of the crucifixion? Acceptance, yes, good, and what else? What other behaviors might you have expected there on that day that Jesus was crucified? They wouldn't have cut and run, which is what you see described. The vast majority of the disciples just taken off. What else? They would have been grateful. They would have said, this is wonderful. Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing.

They had not a clue what was going on. Here, this was a moment of immense victory, and here we see in the subsequent epistles where it's revealed what is the significance of what happened that day, and all they are is broken and shattered. It is not at all what they expect.

Yeah, Jack? I sort of understood that the priests and the hierarchy of the temple and stuff In actuality, they knew who Christ was and were just denying Himself to sort of protect their own money. Yeah, it's an interesting thing here. Here Jesus does miracles right in front of them.

So what's their response? They're going, whoopee, we got the Messiah, right? No. Their response instead of saying, wow, this is the Messiah. This is the one that was promised. Their response instead is, let's get rid of the guy. He's really disrupting our organizational structure here. He's really disturbing our power balance with the Romans. Yes? Yeah, here he is violating, here's the law we got from Moses from God, And here this guy is walking along and of course he's doing this on the Sabbath, that can't possibly be the Messiah. Yeah. Their perception of things was definitely not in line with what Jesus did at multiple points. Not the Jewish leaders and not even the disciples. As a matter of fact, if you look at it, do you find anybody that fully understood what was going on?

No. So to say that that's simply a mythology, there is nothing in the culture to support that mythology and its development. It just was not there. So that's one thing that would say this is not mythology. You have to have a cooperative culture with the mythology at some point, and that is not what you see. Now, Marilyn, you weren't in here when I made the comment. I hope everybody has a handout. Do you have one from today?

I credited you, Marilyn, with this supplement here because your question last week, I said we'd cover it later. Well, today is later. What I wanted to look at because Marilyn's question that she brought up last week was what of the you know, creation account and some of the older Old Testament accounts that we have, some would claim, you know, those are mythology. And I've been largely addressing the New Testament and specifically the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, which we will go in greater detail about later.

But looking at that, I've got this supplement here. We've got four points to address. step our way through it. The first point is this, there are two, I would say reasonable, none of them are at this point in time something we can say this is how it happened. We don't have that tight an information base to do that, but two very reasonable explanations that would make a rather direct line of information from the original creation and the events early in the book of Genesis to Moses. One of them is one that Randy brought up and he used a different chart. I've got a chart here that I think is a little bit clearer and less cluttered that I've reproduced below.

But the point being that let's say here is Adam and the things that were given to Adam How many generations does Adam have the ability to pass that information along to? What period of time? Yeah, Tom? Yeah, you've really got up to the generation just before Noah. where Adam had the ability, even if the transmission of information was oral, just I'm telling you, okay? Even given that, it doesn't have to be a generation and generation and generation and generation handing it off, but here is Adam, the original one, the one who was there in the garden, giving the account directly to the generation right before Noah. So because of the length of life and the overlap, you have a very short kind of chain, if you will, of transmission from Adam down to the time of the Old Testament patriarchs, the end of Genesis.

Yes, Marilyn. Yeah, that would be one possibility, because it doesn't say explicitly, here's how the information came about. So that would be one. Job was a contemporary with Abraham. So Job would fit in with the life of Abraham here. So that is one possibility. Another possibility that the text at the bottom and some of the graphics at the top of page two layout is this.

A fellow by the name of Wiseman, published back in 1936, a book where he looked at what are known as Toledoth tags, and the idea is this. When you look through the book of Genesis, you'll find a pattern, and you may have noticed it yourself. This is the generations of. Ever noticed that? Repeatedly you see that phrase. After you get past Genesis, that phrase nearly drops out. So you have something that's distinctive substantially of Genesis.

This fellow, Wiseman, his son was a professor of Assyriology and also worked at the British Museum. So he's a very knowledgeable fellow. We're not talking about someone who is unfamiliar with the facts and just making ignorant conjecture. This Assyriologist went through and edited his father's book, basically, and brought it up to date with discoveries that had been made in the decades since.

And basically underscore the same ideas with further footnotes and details and updating the available information because more tablets had been found. Now, what he laid out there was that these statements, these are the generations of, would reflect, just like we have a book and on the edge of a book, let me grab one here, On the edge of a book, we've got a title, right? Well, they would do the same with these clay tablets, which unfortunately are very heavy, but they would do the same with the clay tablets because if you get a row of clay tablets sitting on a shelf, and actually they made shelves out of stone and clay, but sitting on the shelf, then they would, just like we do, they'd want to look at the title on the edge, and the edge title would be called a colophon. And so what you see on the top of page two there is a listing, a chart, and the chart on the upper right there is these Toledoth tags, and what it would include is here is the first tablet, which would be Genesis 1-1 through the first half of 2-4, and possible author, God revealed to Adam, question mark. It doesn't say that explicitly, just saying that's a feasible explanation.

The next one here is the account of Adam from the middle of Genesis 2-4 into the beginning of chapter 5. These are the generations of, and now you get this account. And the way it would work is it would look backward to the account that you just received. So when it says these are the generations of, it would look back to the prior verses.

Professor Wiseman did is he went through and he said, all this is the exact way that people would catalog and compile the clay tablets in those early centuries. And he gave examples of it. He went through and gave all the documentation. He says, basically, while we at this point in time don't have the tablets to say, here, here's the ones that Moses used, Everything about what we know of Moses' background and training as a prince of Egypt, everything we know about the way that they drew from the tablets, fits this description and fits what you see in the book of Genesis. It would have meant that Moses had clay tablets, conceivably some that even came with Noah on the ark, and that he compiled them in the exact same way that editors and compilers of his time would do. And they would go through and what you see this is the generations of is simply that's the title on the edge of the clay tablet that recorded the information. So there would be a compilation of what was in these clay tablets. Well, I tell you what, that's an interesting question. We don't have something that explicitly says that.

But Moses would have been knowledgeable of Akkadian. We know that the Egyptian hierarchy was able to speak and read Akkadian, which would be one of the ancient tablet languages, that he would be able to bring that forth in Hebrew so that it was translated into Hebrew. That may be the case. The Jews have a tradition. I think it would be very hard to hold to it. The Jews have a tradition that they say God gave them Hebrew. That may be a little overstatement.

But nonetheless, we don't know the lineage, but one very reasonable possibility is that it was originally written in another cuneiform language. That's what we find the tablets to be in. And then that it was carried over into Hebrew by Moses. So the technology, the language ability that the upper echelon of the Egyptian royalty and those of that family had, that would be compatible with that. There wouldn't be any difficulty from what we know historically and they're doing that.

It's possible even that it came from several different languages compiled. That could be as well. Other questions on that? I've either fully answered your questions or you're just so baffled that you have no idea. Anyway, if you think of questions on that, feel free to holler. Point two there in the middle of page two, what you see there is a kind of a tree of language which would by itself conflict with the Jewish tradition that God gave them Hebrew, Nonetheless, what you see is a family of languages, and the Near Eastern languages, it's interesting if you look at them together, there's a lot of crossover and similarity. Think of it this way.

When we send kids off to school in their early years, they learn about reading and writing, and how do they start off with that? They learn what? The alphabet, okay? What are the first two Greek letters in the Greek alphabet? Alphabet. What are the first two letters in the Hebrew alphabet? Alphabet.

So what you have here is a very evident language crossover. Even though there are different languages, you notice there has to be cultural contact in order to bring that about, correct? There was cultural contact between the Jews and the adjacent cultures. So the question is, did they simply adopt the mythology of the ancient cultures that they obviously got the same language from, in very similar language, or did they come up with something quite different? And so this would, I think, be the second point here.

The character of the Hebrew creation account, in spite of the obvious point that the Hebrew language has tight connections with adjacent cultures, the character of the Hebrew creation account, let's look at page 3, ends up putting you at a very different conclusion. One of the early creation accounts from these clay tablets that we talked about is Enuma Elish, and that's the one that you see on the chart. So here's the Genesis account, God is the ultimate source of power, And what you see among the plural, the polytheistic gods that are described in this early creation, pagan creation account, is a plurality of gods that are subject to nature.

You see the big difference there right at the outset? Yes, Art? Oh, you're talking about Tower of Babel event, yeah. I think what, this is backtracking just a little bit, if you look at the chart, basically the diversity of language that you see there, I think reflects the Tower of Babel event and the confusion of languages. So that while there's confusion of languages, there is also a cultural interaction between those different languages as well, which is why we have our alphabet, and the Greeks, their alpha, beta, and the Hebrews, their aleph, bet. So there is, I think this points to Babylon, excuse me, a Tower of Babel event, because there is a singularity.

Noam Chomsky, who at least was with MIT, has himself said that he looks at originally there having been one language, and he doesn't reach that from biblical conclusions. He reaches it from other studies of information. But it's interesting how even his studies, not considering scripture at all, points to a Tower of Babel event.

At any rate, this Enuma Elish here, one of the things you see initially is that the God of creation in Genesis 1 points to a God who is separate from the creation. A God who speaks and then creation is brought about. He is not subject to it. He is not one who is tied into the consequences of what happens within his creation. One of the things that happens as you go through the creation account, as the gods battle with one another, in this Enuma Elish account, as the gods battle with one another, the pagan gods, some of the gods end up becoming a part of the creation. Their bodies become part of the creation as they die and are killed. What you find in the Genesis account is God doesn't become some part of the creation.

God doesn't become the mountains and the sky and those kinds of things. Notice that what the Enuma Elish account does is it fits mythology. Why? Why does it fit mythology? It explains, but it does so by putting the gods subject to nature. and battling with one another, and all the polytheistic accounts in the Mediterranean and the Middle East fit that pattern. The Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians, they all had polytheistic religions in which the gods ended up in some degree being subject to nature, and the gods who died, their bodies were made into the creation to make the mountains and the sky and things of that sort.

You don't see that in the Genesis account. The other thing is while the Genesis account goes through and explains different parts of, you know, you've got, here's this vegetation and that kind of animal, and it doesn't go in massive detail, but it does address the basic kinds of things that are there materially, you don't find that kind of thoroughness in the pagan accounts. The pagan accounts are typically kind of incidental, you know, here's a little bit of vegetation here, here's a mountain here, but not thoroughly explaining how things are put out there, and not with the order and sequence that you see in the Genesis account. The Genesis account, for example, is given in chronological blocks of days. The pagan accounts don't have that. The organization is not there.

So not only are the gods pulled into being physically a part of the creation, being subject to nature, But the sense of order that you see in the Genesis account is not there. And this, by the way, years and years later, would become the reason why Christian assumptions would be the foundation of modern science. Because from the very beginning, the creation account describes the God of the Bible as a God of order. The pagan cultures did not provide the basis for science. because they didn't see the world as orderly.

Let's look at the last point on the chart. God, as we see in Scripture, creates man from the soil. In the Enuma Elish account, it is the battle of the gods and the blood from that battle that is where man comes about. So notice, rather than a peaceful determination among those in the Trinity, that's what you see in Genesis chapter 1, let us make man in our image. Instead of a peaceful, unified determination to make man in God's image from the dust of the ground, you have instead this wild battle in which the resulting outcome is to make man from the blood of the battle of the gods. And rather than a determination of God, here is how it's going to happen, in an orderly manner, out of things that God made, instead it is rather sort of a cosmic accident. And the human beings were made out of the anger and wrath of the gods between themselves.

So we have a very different account. And what's interesting is this Enuma Elish is the earliest creation account that we have of the various Middle Eastern and Mediterranean polytheistic cultures. This is the earliest one, but the others offer nothing better. The others are very similar. So the Genesis account stands out very different in spite of the similarities of language that would say that the Jews were having cultural contact with other cultures. What they ended up with, the Genesis account, was not simply some variation on the pagan mythologies.

Yes, Marilyn. Yes, this is true. Maryland's making the point that almost every culture has a creation story and a flood story, and it's true. What conclusions could we draw from those accounts? If there's flood and creation accounts almost universally across the globe on different continents, what would you conclude? Pardon? There was some reality, there was some universal reality to explain the universality of the accounts.

Okay, that would be one thing. Were you starting to say something, Nancy? Same thing, okay, alright. Good, so that's one point we could make. Can we make any, draw any other conclusions from this universality of these accounts? They knew the truth, but they changed it and made it into a myth. Yeah, in other words, what happens is, starting from the point that Winnie made, that there was originally something that truly happened, and as you went to different places that got distorted, the universality, and we're talking universality that goes across different continents, across oceans, would point to a real original account with subsequent distortions. When Nancy and I were, Believe me, we were younger at one point in time.

In the county where each of our kids was born, it was Mendocino County, the Indian tribe that was in that general area was called the Pomo Indians. And I was very interested to read their creation and flood accounts. And, for example, I recall the flood account that they had.

A large mountain in the area was Mount Kanawhitai. And so what they did is they had involvement of duck and coyote surviving this great massive flood that was so high and they survived by going up on top of Mount Canocti. Very interesting. So here's this tall mountain idea, here's this massive flood, here's this idea of there's some survivors and yet substantially distorted and obviously in terms of the Pomo Indian mythology.

And that's the character as you get farther away from The Middle East, some of these get extremely distorted, but nonetheless, they are there. And it's interesting, cultural anthropologists have drawn some of these flood accounts together. Some of the compilations of these accounts have been substantial.

And yet they point to an original event that was true for this to be as universal as it is. So anyway, it's a fascinating observation. And the universality of it, that we're talking continents away, we're talking oceans away, to still have some elements in common, there's got to be something behind it. And my suggestion to you would be, we've got it in the Genesis account. Yes. The Numa Elish account, there are actually a number of copies of that.

So that's been something that's very interesting. Here's an interesting point. How many days of creation have we got in the Genesis account? Six days of creation and God rested on the seventh. There's one of the copies of this Enuma Elish that's on seven tablets. Very interesting.

So, oldest, some of them date to around the time just before Abraham, and then others of them more into the later Old Testament period, 6, 7, even as late as 500 BC. And then if you look on page 4, you'll see a larger summary. Here is the distinctions between Israel and the pagan polytheism. I would suggest to you that the commonality between the pagan polytheism points to cultural interaction in support of mythology and the distinction that Israel had in the midst of overwhelming and more powerful cultures, in some cases cultures that were militarily enforcing their doctrines. The Jews instead came up with something that was unique. not just in some minor way, but in substantial ways, different from all the other pagan mythologies in the areas around them.

One of the things that you'll see there, let's look at the ultimacy of the deity. Yahweh is the ultimate power in the universe. He answers to no one and there are no limitations on his jurisdiction. The pagan polytheistic view is this. The gods have competing agendas and limited jurisdiction. Even as a corporate body, in which you take all of them together, they don't exercise ultimate sovereignty. One of the things that happens is that we find frequently in these pagan creation accounts that there is already a world in existence that the gods are in. The gods battling amongst one another only creates certain features in addition to the way the world was, so that the created universe was already there. It has an eternality in the pagan polytheistic view, rather than there was nothing and God spoke and brought it into being. Very different concept of how things come about. So anyway, you can go through this on your own. There's no way we can go through that.

But what I would suggest to you is take a look through it just with this understanding that if you're going to explain Israel's record of how things came about as mythology, you also have to explain why their record has such a different character than that of all the pagan religions around them. And mythology at a pure humanistic level is not a good explanation in my view, especially in view of the obvious connections, other connections of culture, language being one of those substantial evidences. Okay, the last item there is actually on page five. I've got a couple of quick ones.

The valid aspect of the definition of the word myth, which applies to Hebrew creation account of Genesis, is that it explains beliefs and practices. This does not directly bear, however, on the historical veracity that is the truth of the Hebrew creation account. And this, I think, is a point to be understood. Myths explain practices and beliefs. It does not automatically demonstrate that those practices, and especially those beliefs, are false.

I could have something that explains a particular practice and belief, and it's true. Essentially, that's what we do in a courtroom every time we get together. We're trying to arrive at what are the things that we bring together that explains what actually took place. What do we believe is true based on the facts? And so it is not automatically true that a myth is false. nor is a myth automatically true. We have to look at its truth or falsehood on its own merits.

So the flip side of that is if you look at the evolutionary model, evolution was first proposed in a relatively non-religious environment among the Greek philosophers roughly 2,500 years ago. They proposed that things evolved out of an entirely material universe, which was eternal. And from that, things evolved into the world that we see now, including the various biological creatures. Modern evolutionary theory still uses this idea, here's the universe, which is essentially eternal. From that, you get everything, including the biological world around us. In that sense, because it has indeed evolved over time, the materialistic evolutionary model fits the definition of a myth.

Now, I'd be careful about how you go say that. Some people would get rather disturbed and not understand what you mean by it. But the point being this, that because something, you know, develops into a story that we can read now, and has some long history, and even if you can say this fits the definition of a myth, does not prove something true or false. It still has to be true or false on its own merits. So if somebody says the Bible is just full of myths, you could say, using the technical definition, well of course, it explains practices and beliefs, doesn't it? Now, the question of whether it's true is an entirely different question altogether. You could even agree with them if they said the Bible is full of myths.

Now, let's talk about the truth of those. We're a plum out of time. Let's pray. Lord, thank you, as we look at this, that you have indeed given us an explanation for our practices, what we do, Even as we gather here, you've given us an explanation for the things that we believe. And we believe, at a minimum, on the basis of what you've revealed here, that the things you've revealed are indeed true. And we take you at your word on that, and indeed live our lives by them. We thank you for what you've revealed, because you love us. In Jesus' name, Amen.