0131 The book concludes with a short chapter titled, “We Disagree. Now What?

0132 What is the nature of Gen 1-11?

In this examination, I suggest that genres may correspond to cycles of history.

For example, the last four hundred years of the Latin Age discusses the world in the genre of Aristotle (and Aquinas).  The four hundred years of the Age of Ideas works in the genre of empirio-schematics.  The upcoming Age of Triadic Relationswill discourse using diagrams of triadic relations, such as signs, category-based nested forms, judgments and so on.

Roughly, a genre and a cycle lasts for four hundred years, consisting in four turnings of four generations.

0133 Nine cycles pass between the start of the Ubaid (associated with Adam) and the end of Ur III (associated to Abraham).

Gen 1-11 does not neatly designate nine genres.  But, it offers an image of spiraling developments, culminating in two great disasters: Noah’s flood and the confounding of the language with the Tower of Babel.   The first associates to the Uruk period.  The latter associates to the end of Ur III, when Sumerian becomes a dead language.

0134 Professor James Hoffmeier sees Gen 1-11 as history and theology.

Gordon Wenham views Gen 1-11 as protohistory.

Kenton Sparks envisions Gen 1-11 as ancient historiography, which electrically jumps to a humorous sound-alike, histriography.

0135 All these conclusions are drawn without awareness of a scientific hypothesis that changes the grounds of inquiry: the first singularity.

0136 The historicity of Gen 1-11 is hotly contested, despite that fact that the literature of the ancient Near East offers similar narratives.

Gen 1-11 is a special example of the literature of the ancient Near East.

Why?

It survives within a living tradition.

0137 Today, in the twilight of the Age of Ideas, the hypothesis of the first singularity adds a new wrinkle to the proceedings.

Okay, it pulls the rug out from under the contest.

Why?

Gen 1-11 offers an insider’s view to the start of our current Lebenswelt, our simultaneously uplifting and falling world of unconstrained social complexity.

0138 God’s Word_2a, the stuff of grace, percolates upwards, through the sensible classification of genre_2b, and enters into the stuff of nature, a scientific hypothesis concerning the evolutionarily-recent potentiation of unconstrained social complexity_2c.

0139 This hypothesis touches base with Saint Paul’s intuition.  Adam connects to the entire civilized world, our current Lebenswelt, the world of unconstrained social complexity and the world of speech-alone talk.  Today, no culture is untouched by the wealth and power of civilizations.

0140 Perhaps, the North American Plains Indians and the Australian Aborigines are the last viable cultures to lose the hand component of their hand-speech talk.

Is it a coincidence that the first singularity completes at the same time that our awareness of the first singularity begins?

Our theodrama begins with Adam.

0012 Here is a picture of the infamous Galileo controversy.

0013 If the relation belongs to thirdness (the realm of normal contexts), then there are two configurations for assigning categories to the other elements of judgment.

If the Book of Nature belongs to secondness (the realm of actuality), then the Revealed Book of God belongs to firstness (the realm of possibility).  Nature is real and the Bible is fiction (that is, not real).

If the Revealed Book of God belongs to secondness (the realm of actuality), then the Book of Nature belongs to firstness (the realm of possibility).  The Bible is real and natural inquiry in not relevant.

0014 So, which is more real, nature or grace?

0018 What if Genesis is neither history nor fiction?

The title of the book offers this option as well.

Charles Halton proposes that an alternate judgment arises after cuneiform-bearing clay tablets are unearthed from tells in the Near East.  They are found in ruins of royal libraries.  Clever scholars figure out how to translate them.

First the tablets are read.  Then, they are interpreted in light of the genres that they display.  The literature of the ancient Near East contains its own genres.

Reading yields what is.  Interpretation produces what ought to be.  Genre brings interpretation (what ought to be) into relation with reading (what is).

0019 Here is a picture of how extra-Biblical contemporaneous writing offers the neither option.

0020 This judgment clearly transcends the either/or dichotomy of the religion and science controversy.

Or does it?

In one genre, Gen 1-11 is read and interpreted as history.

In another genre, Gen 1-11 is read and interpreted as fiction.

Does the old either/or battle merely shift to the terrain of genre?

Yes, we may project modern genres onto the literature of the ancient Near East.

No, the literature of the ancient Near East is neither history nor fiction.

0021 In the previous blog, the relation, genres of the ancient Near East, serves as a antithesis to the relation that both parties in the religion-science controversy are in agreement, the separation of nature and grace.

What does this imply?

The modern period begins, as Charles Halton recounts, with Galileo’s thesis as the antithesis of Aristotle’s framing of the reading and interpretation of the Bible.  The resulting controversy hinges on the dichotomy of nature and supernature.  They are separate.  Either Genesis is history (and natural knowledge is not pertinent) or fiction (and natural knowledge is irrefutable).

0022 The postmodern synthesis begins with the admission that the literature of the ancient Near East expresses genres, that do not match the modern genres of history or fiction.  Genre offers a path to bring reading into relation with interpretation.

0023 The recovery and translation of cuneiform texts from the ancient Near East offers both science and religion new opportunities.  Science may observe and measure genres as phenomena.  Religion may compare written origin stories of the ancient Near East to Gen 1-11.

0024 The latter inquiry produces an observation that is hard to ignore.

All origin stories of the ancient Near East (with the exception of the Genesis Creation Story) depict a recent creation of humans.  For example, in one ancient Mesopotamian myth, humans are created to do the work of the gods.

How far is that from God creating Adam and giving him a garden to tend?

This observation is consistent with the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0025 Is the first singularity historical?

No, it occurs in prehistory, starting around 7821 years ago.

Yes, it potentiates history.  In fact, it potentiates all the written origin myths of ancient Mesopotamia.

0026 How so?

The hypothesis of the first singularity entails four key features.

First, the semiotic nature of hand-speech talk, practiced by all humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, favors constrained social complexity.  In contrast, speech-alone talk facilitates unconstrained social complexity, characteristic of our current Lebenswelt.

Second, the transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk is called “the first singularity”.  The first singularitystarts when one culture (unwittingly) loses the hand-component of hand-speech talk.  This culture is the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

Third, the semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk explains the dynamic trends towards increasing labor and social specialization, evident in the Ubaid from its inception.

Fourth, relative differences in wealth (labor specialization) and power (social specialization) inspire adjacent hand-speech talking cultures to abandon the hand-component of their hand-speech talk (in imitation).  These extra-Ubaid cultures are not aware of the consequences.  Through mimesis, speech-alone talk spreads to all the world, seeding the potential of unconstrained social complexity.

0027 These four features explain why the origin stories of the ancient Near East depict recent origins for humanity.  The transition from hand-speech to speech-alone changes the semiotic qualities of language so much that, mythologically, humans are born again.

Oh, the Ubaid even forgets the “again” part.

According to Mesopotamian myths, humans are created by newly differentiated gods.

According to Genesis, Adam is fashioned out of dust.