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

Today, the creation of life and biological diversity, part 15.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

In our last session, I argued that Genesis 1 to 11 is brimming with etiological motifs concerning the origins of the world,

the origin of humanity, the origin of certain natural phenomena, of various cultural practices,

and of the prevailing religious practice in Israel.

So even if attempts to show direct borrowing of Genesis 11 from ancient Near Eastern myths,

are fraught with uncertainty and conjecture, I do not think that it can be plausibly denied that these chapters in Genesis

treat many of the same grand themes as ancient Near Eastern myths, and they also seek to ground

present realities for the pentatucal author in the primordial past.

And therefore, they deserve to be classified as a Hebrew monotheistic myth, according to the standard

definition of myth among folklorists.

But that is not the whole story, for there is an additional feature of these narratives that must now be taken into account, and that is their apparent interest in history.

This interest comes to expression most clearly in the genealogies that order the narratives.

A genealogy may be defined as a written or oral expression of the descent of a person

from an ancestor or ancestors.

And there are two types of genealogies that have been identified.

First, a linear genealogy traces a single line of descent from some ancestor to one of his descendants.

By contrast, a segmented genealogy traces the lineage of multiple persons from ancestors in the past.

And in Genesis 1 to 11, we find both linear and segmented genealogies.

The narratives of Genesis are peppered with these genealogies that express

the descent of the principal characters who are featured in the narratives.

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