Mr. Lundahl’s Endorsement of Hypothesis #1 is Unreliable
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
In Henke (2022b), I summarized Hypothesis #1 on the origin of the Talking Snake story in Genesis 3:
“Although he does not like the idea that Genesis is based on visions, Lundahl (2022c) admits that under Hypothesis #1, God must have given Moses visions for him to write down Genesis 1:1-2:4 because people supposedly hadn’t been created yet. So, Lundahl (2022c) is forced to admit that Moses received visions from God in order to write at least Genesis 1:1-2:4. But why stop with the magic visions at Genesis 2:4? If God gave Genesis 1:1-2:4 as a vision to Moses, why would a conservative Christian or an Orthodox Jew that supports Hypothesis #2 want to stop there? Why isn’t Hypothesis #2 a valid possibility for conservative Christians or Orthodox Jews? Clearly, Lundahl (2022c) wants at least some human transmission of data involved in the origin of Genesis even though he does not have a shred of historical evidence to support such a claim. So, how does anyone that believes in Hypothesis #1, like Mr. Lundahl, objectively decide which verses in Genesis came from visions given to Moses by God and which were handed down by Adam to Moses?” [Italics and bolding in original]
Again, the four hypotheses in Henke (2022a) state:
1. The Talking Snake existed and the account in Genesis 3 was accurately passed down by Adam to Moses. Moses then wrote it down in Genesis. There would have been no human eyewitnesses for most of the events in Genesis 1-2:14. If Genesis 1-2:14 is history, God would have to have given the information in these verses as visions.
2. Moses saw Genesis 1-3 and perhaps most or even all of everything else in Genesis through visions given by God. There didn’t need to be a continuous human transmission of information from Adam to Moses. Visions from God would not be open to errors unlike written or oral transmissions from Adam to Moses.
3. The Talking Snake of Genesis 3 was part of a made-up campfire story, a parable or based on a pagan myth that eventually was taken as fact by the ancient Israelites, like how President Reagan and his fans mistook fictional stories from World War 2 as real. William Tell (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-search-of-william-tell-2198511/ ) and a number of Roman Catholic saints (https://listverse.com/2014/05/17/10-beloved-saints-with-fictitious-biographies/ ) are probably also myths. Of course, in the United States, pro-abortionists regularly use fictional TV shows to convince Americans that abortion is a good thing. Even though they are fiction, many people believe the propaganda. Right now, a lot of Russians are believing the fictional propaganda their government is inventing about Ukraine. People also often pick and choose parts of fictional stories that they want to believe and ignore the rest, such as individuals believing in the existence of “The Force” from the Star Wars movies, while recognizing that the rest of the movies are fiction. A lot of people are gullible and believe fictions are real.
4. “Prophets” or others claimed to have visions from God about events that supposedly happened thousands of years earlier. These visions were delusions or outright lies, but a lot of people came to believe them. Joseph Smith also did this and Kat Kerr continues with this nonsense in the US.
Lundahl (2022m) then makes some concluding remarks by addressing the above bolded and italicized question from Henke (2022b):
“An alternative to Genesis 1:1 to 2:4 being given to Moses is them being given to a patriarch, like Adam, and then transmitted. The basic argument is, with much of Genesis 2 and all of Genesis 3, we already have human observers, and we have no trace of Hebrews doing a "Mormon" thing and accepting things as humanly transmitted history which were only made known recently by Moses, as if he had been a Joseph Smith.”
As I argue elsewhere in Henke (2022b), there’s really no reason to believe either Hypothesis #1 or Hypothesis #2. Hypotheses #3 and #4 are far more probable. Once more here, Lundahl (2022m) is just speculating without any evidence about the origins of Genesis 1-3. There’s no reason for Mr. Lundahl to reference supposed “human observers” anywhere in the Pentateuch to justify the historicity of Genesis or the rest of the Pentateuch. That’s a circular reasoning fallacy (Henke 2022ab). Mr. Lundahl actually has no “human observers” or testimony to support Hypothesis #1. None. While we know that Joseph Smith Jr. lived, we don’t have a shred of evidence that Moses ever existed (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001). We don’t know when or how Genesis was written. There’s a huge knowledge gap between when Genesis was written and the oldest fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Mr. Lundahl has no justification for assuming that the chain of custody is complete and really went all the way from the Dead Sea Scrolls back in an unbroken chain to unsubstantiated characters named “Moses” and “Adam.” Considering how modern cosmology, astronomy, geology, and other sciences have totally refuted a 6,000-to-10,000-year-old Earth and the rest of the Universe that young-Universe creationists (YUCs) promote with Genesis 1-2 (e.g., Strahler 1999; Dalyrmple 1991; Weintraub 2011; Prothero 2007; Delsemme 1998; Reinfort 2019), it’s far more probable that Hypotheses #3 or #4 are correct rather than Hypotheses #1 or #2. Based on science, Genesis 1-3 are likely just myths.
References:
Dalrymple, G.B. 1991. The Age of the Earth: Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 474 pp.
Delsemme, A. 1998. Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of Life and Intelligence: Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 322pp.
Finkelstein, I. and N.A. Silberman. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts: The Free Press: New York, USA, 385pp.
Prothero, D.R. 2007. Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters: Cambridge University Press: New York, NY, USA, 381pp.
Reinfort, E.M. 2019. Young-Universe Creationism Versus Naturalism: Comparing the Best Responses from Two Opposing Sides: Volume 2: 12 Questions on the Solar System, Amazon Digital Services, Kindle Edition.
Strahler, A.N. 1999. Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy: 2nd ed., Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 552 pp.
Weintraub, D.A. 2011. How Old is the Universe? Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA, 370pp.