Question:
I have read in your literature you believe the first chapters of Genesis to be allegorical. This is incorrect thinking. If you have any Biblical proof of Genesis being anything other than an account of creation, please do respond.
Answer:
Can we look at the billions of galaxies composed of billions of stars, and think this vast creation came to be only a few thousand years ago in six 24-hour earth-days? Is it reasonable to think that God lived in holy isolation from eternity past, until 6,000 years ago when He suddenly decided to create all the heavens and earth all at once? If God (as in verse 1) created the heavens and earth “in the beginning,” why the subsequent details of different creations on different days?
It is impossible to accept the Genesis account as literal, without closing our eyes to obvious facts all around us. The Divine author calls upon us to “reason” (Isa. 1:18) and in doing so, we feel satisfied in our understanding that the Divine author did not intend the first chapters of Genesis to be accepted as an account of a literal creation. In allegorizing Genesis we avoid contradiction and arrive at the understanding the Author intended and which is in harmony with the rest of Scripture.
What contradictions are there to avoid? When taken literally, the account holds many unreasonable statements, some of which are:
On Day One, “God called the light day, and the darkness he called night” and on Day Three, grass and trees were created. Yet the celestial bodies that give light and life were not created until the fourth day. Is this reasonable?
Then on Day Six, man was supposedly given dominion over everything? Literally? What happened since? Have there not been many men conquered by beasts and other “living things” such as disease?
“Adam” means “man” and is used in a plural form. Doesn’t this suggest a composite “man,” or group, rather than an individual? According to Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon the term is plural in Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man in our image …. and let them have dominion”).
The command of God to Adam and Eve concerning the forbidden tree was: “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” They did eat and they were condemned, but they did not die the day that they sinned. They went on living for years, and became the parents of children (see chapter 4). In fact, Adam lived a total of 930 years, before dying. Clearly the penalty for Adam’s sin was not immediate literal death. Additionally, God cursed Adam saying ‘in toil you shall eat of [the ground] all the days of your life” (Gen. 3:17). This is inconsistent with previously proclaimed consequence of death. Both condemnations cannot be taken literally without there being clear contradiction.
Was there a literal “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the garden of Eden? The very name of identifies a non-literal (or symbolic) tree. What literal tree produces fruit of “knowledge”? What possible connection could there be between eating literal food and recognizing one’s nakedness? Furthermore was there a literal “tree of life” in the garden? What tree produces “life” as its fruit? Surely the tree of life must be symbolic. Yet, if the story is literal, can we have a symbolic tree in a literal garden?
Was Adam able to give names to “all cattle, and the fowl of the air and every beast of the field”? This is a feat not yet accomplished even by devoted scientists working forty hours a week for a lifetime. With all the documenting presently done, it is said that a large part of the living animals and plants (something like 40 or 50%) have yet to be named and catalogued.
If Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the whole race, how is it possible that races of people living today are different in skin color and various features, features which are transmitted generation after generation? How could they all have descended from two human parents?
When God placed a curse upon the serpent, He said to it, “Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle,…On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.” Is there any serpent today that is known to live by feeding on literal dust?