0052 Why would God confound humanity?

Genesis One is a sign of the evolutionary record.

Genesis One can only be viewed as a sign of the evolutionary record in light of Peirce’s typology of natural signs.

Genesis One is also a sign of the oldest civilization of the ancient Near East.

0053 During most of the Bible’s theodrama, no one apparently knows this.

The stories of the Old Testament are remembered and retold by itinerate bards, as well as by temple priests.  The prophetic stories are collected, redacted, written, promulgated, misinterpreted and then fulfilled in the death and resurrection of one of those itinerate preachers, who started out as a carpenter.

The Bible, the union of the Old and New Testaments, promises the salvation of all who are baptized in the water of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, that miraculous former carpenter, serves as the New Adam.

During this entire time, the so-called “literature of the ancient Near East” is the Father’s secret.  Yes, everyone knows that the Near East is ancient.  But, no one remembers that these ancient civilizations have voices of their own.  No one knows about the cuneiform tablets buried in those dusty tells. The West recovers fragments.  Revealing fragments.

0054 Why does God empower a secularizing West, still animated by Christian curiosity, to recover some of this long-buried literature?  

Why does God reveal this secret in the middle of the modern Age of Ideas?

May I call the revelation, “a divine accommodation”?

0055 The title of chapter two of Loke’s book is “Divine Accommodation and Its Implications for Biblical Anthropology”.

0056 What is the concept of divine accommodation?

The scriptures work according to a human mode of understanding, following appearances in the common manner, and taking into account the human point of view during particular historical moments.  Divine accommodation is relevant even when the historical moment passes and fades from memory.  After all, what does our modern Age of Ideas have in common with the ancient Near East?

The theologian and biologist Denis Lamoureux responds to the challenge of divine accommodation by separating the messages of the Old Testament from the presences of premodern prescientific ancient Near Eastern conceptual frameworks.  For example, ancient Near Easterners regarded the heavens and the earth as surfaces.  Here is the inspiration for the medieval alchemist’s vision of a mundane and a celestial earth.  What happens above, happens below.  One system dwells between two surfaces.

0057 The god of the storm rules between the mundane and the celestial earths.  What better way to portray the tempestuous nature of human affairs, in our current Lebenswelt, against the eternal rhythms of earth and sky?

0058 But, can we, mere mortals, extract message from presence without distorting meaning?

Lamoureux’s project poses a paradox.  It holds the message of the Book of Genesis in high regard.  It aims to disregard the… um… presence of the world in which the book is told.  The messengers of Genesis live in the cultural world of the ancient Near East.  The dramas of the Old Testament take place on the stage of a grand theater that we, moderns, now realize has a life of its own.  Yes, the life of the ancient Near East permeates a document that comes from God and thus, cannot error.

0059 Perhaps, there is another way to understand…

What if even the apparent errors manifest divine intent?

After all, most of the apparent scientific errors reflect the premodern cognitive frameworks of the ancient Near East.

0060 What if the truthfulness of scripture is not restricted to literal words on physical pages.  It makes me wonder.  What is “truth”?  Where did I hear that question before?  Is truth the opposite of false?  Or, is true the opposite of deception?  Is truth correct and honest?  If so, then how can truth survive even one civilizational turning?  A civilizational turning?  Yes, a civilizational turning occurs when a civilization realizes that everything it knows is wrong.

The book of Genesis tells of many civilizational turnings.  The stories of Adam and Eve correspond to one.  Perhaps, the stories of Cain and Abel correspond to another.  The civilizational turning between Cain and Lamech is as clear as day.  Lamech turns God’s protection of Cain completely around.  Biblical turnings occur within the civilizational turnings of larger Near Eastern societies.  The Genesis genealogies are lists that keep track of names, despite civilizational changes. No doubt, on the celestial earth, a story attends each name.

0061 If the history of the USA is any indicator, a civilizational turning occurs every orbit of the protoplanet Pluto, around 248 years.  The American revolution starts in 1776 AD.  America grows into a nation, then an empire, and then the empire collapses in 2024.  The stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Lamech may correspond to three Plutonic orbits.

Three fairy tales for three Plutonic orbits.

0062 One can say that the fact that the Bible is written in the literary genres of the ancient Near East is divine accommodation.

One can also say that Biblical inerrancy proclaims that the apparently erroneous “sciences” of the ancient Near East are part of the revelation.  The presence of the ancient Near East cannot be separated from the message of divine revelation.

0063 This implies that there is a hylomorphic aspect to Biblical revelation.

What is a hylomorphe?

A hylomorphism consists of two contiguous real elements.  Aristotle’s hylomorphe has two real elements, matter and form.  For nomenclature, I place the contiguity in brackets.  I suspect that a familiar term fits as a label for the contiguity,producing the hylomorphe, matter [substance] form.

0064 Similarly, Biblical inerrancy and divine accommodation are two real elements.  These two elements stamp a common metal.