More on the Four Hypotheses for Genesis 3
Kevin R. Henke
October 25, 2022
In Henke (2022bh) and Henke (2022b), I stated the following:
“In Lundahl (2022d), Lundahl (2022f), Lundahl (2022b), and in several of his emails, Mr. Lundahl makes a totally unwarranted assumption that if the earliest known audience believed that Genesis 3 or another claim in an ancient text was historically true, then the claims must be true. Of course, this assumption is nonsense for the following reasons:
1. People lie and make up stories.
2. People misinterpret natural events and sometimes credit them to supernatural forces (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, severe storms, draught).
3. The history of Mormonism, Scientology, etc. demonstrate that lies can become accepted by thousands or even millions of gullible people in a short amount of time, perhaps in no more than decades or a century.
4. Even if ancient historians (such as the five ancient biographers of Alexander the Great, Section 6.0) were sincere and honest, they still may have included inaccurate information, false rumors and misinterpretations in their works.
5. We don’t know who wrote Genesis 3 and when it was written.
6. The Dead Sea scrolls have the oldest known fragments of Genesis. This was about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly wrote the book. So, how could the writers of the Dead Sea scrolls have reliably known anything about events that occurred perhaps a thousand or more years earlier? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is not a fabrication that may have been additionally altered or rewritten long before the Dead Sea scrolls? Why should anyone trust the claims in Genesis? Lundahl (2022c) assumes that God would have protected Genesis from corruption, but this assumption is totally without merit.
7. The biology of snakes is incompatible with them talking and there’s no evidence of either a supernatural or biological Talking Snake ever existing.
8. As further discussed in Section 5.0 and Henke (2022a), Hypotheses #3 and #4 on the origin of the Genesis 3 Talking Snake are rational, but Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not.
9. Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claims in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible are factual.” [emphasis in original; my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022t) is largely a response to my nine points. Actually, Lundahl (2022k) earlier responded to these same nine points when they were originally listed in Henke (2022b). I previously responded in Henke (2022bj and 2022bp) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022iu) to his comments on the first seven points in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively.
In this essay, I’ll further discuss point #8, which is in italics above. In Henke (2022bq), I had earlier replied to the comments on point #8 in Lundahl (2022k). Here are Mr. Lundahl’s additional comments on my point #8 in Lundahl (2022t):
“Here I will requote his four hypotheses [from Henke 2022a and Henke 2022b]:
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.
Henke has given no reason to take any of hypotheses 2, 3 or 4 as rational, except by mistaking a general negativity against the supernatural (scepticism is too dignified a word) for rationality. The examples given for his hypothesis 3 have been refuted here: Excursus on William Tell and Catholic Saints
He has also given no reason to discard hypothesis 1, since he consistently misconstrues how important for history first known audience actually is.”
Here, Lundahl (2022t) is absolutely wrong. Again, as I explained in Henke (2022br), the burden of evidence is on Mr. Lundahl to find archeological and/or other external evidence to support the reality of the Talking Snake in Genesis 3, the existence of demons and angels, the existence of Adam, the reality of his fabled documents that were supposedly passed down to Moses (the fabled Q and the JEPD “documents” are no better), the very existence of Moses and evidence of the accurate preservation of Genesis from the time that it was written to our earliest copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (the Genesis knowledge gap; Henke 2022iL). As explained in Henke (2022b), Henke (2022bp), Henke (2022de), Henke (2022ej), Henke (2022ew), and Finkelstein and Silberman (2001), Mr. Lundahl is completely empty handed. He has no evidence whatsoever to support Hypothesis #1. Now, Hypotheses #3 and #4 are far more probable than either Hypothesis #1 and #2 as I explained in Henke (2022b) and my later essays. That is, people lie and misinterpret stories all the time and quite often, as seen in the present Trump-supporter “first audience” (Henke 2022cc) and the present Russian “first audience” (Henke 2022da), millions of people believe that those lies and misinterpretations are real. Lies and misinterpretations commonly exist, but there’s no evidence that a Talking Snake and magic fruit trees ever did.
Now, the Will Tell story is perfect example of the reality of Hypothesis #3; that is, a fictional story being widely taken as real (Henke 2022ek). Furthermore, the St. Philomena hoax and its widespread deception among the “first known audience” of the 19th century Roman Catholic Church is a perfect example of the reality of Hypothesis #4 (Henke 2022es). Considering these examples and how they demonstrate the reality of Hypotheses #3 and #4, I’m surprised that Mr. Lundahl would dare to even mention his failed essay “Excursus on William Tell and Catholic Saints” (Lundahl 2022n). For rebuttals of Lundahl (2022n), see Henke (2022ek through 2022eu).
Reference:
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.