Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today, the creation of

life and biological diversity, part 10. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to

reasonable faith.org. Today we come to our eighth and final interpretive alternative of Genesis chapter 1, and I'm calling

this the monotheistic Hebrew myth interpretation. The monotheistic Hebrew myth interpretation.

And as a springboard for understanding this interpretation, I want to

appeal to a book by a pair of evangelical scholars, Johnny Miller and John Soden, called,

In the Beginning, We Misunderstood, published in 2012.

Now, Miller and Soden are professors at Columbia Bible College and Lancaster Bible College,

both with doctorates from Dallas Theological Seminary.

So they have conservative bona fides which are simply impeccable.

They can't be accused of being radical, liberal, or progressive scholars.

And they argue in their book that Genesis 1-1-2-2-3 is not to be taken literally.

And they rehearse the evidence against a literal interpretation of the text,

which we've reviewed already in this class when we discussed the literal interpretation.

They also agree with the literary framework view of the French scholar Henri Blochet

that the days are not chronologically ordered in Genesis 1, but rather are ordered in a kind of parallel or thematic fashion

that doesn't imply a chronological week of days. Moreover, they agree with John Walton's view

that creation begins with verse 2 of the text and not with verse 1.

So in all of these respects, their view is familiar and not new.

But what is distinctive about their view is the way in which they understand the Genesis

account in relation to ancient Near Eastern mythology.

They maintain that the key to correctly interpreting Genesis 1 is to compare it with Egyptian creation myths.

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