"It seems strange that you are particular about these first three chapters."

I suppose most theological controversies seem strange to those who aren’t much interested in them. Genesis 1-3 seems to be a narrative describing how the material universe and humankind came to be. Suppose you are persuaded — as I am — that the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution are at least pretty close approximations to what happened in the beginning. A couple of exegetical options are available: contort the Biblical creation narrative to conform to the scientific one, or regard it as a metaphorical story that doesn’t really describe the historical creation at all. You, I, and others have investigated these two options in some detail in the True Myth post here at OST. A third option is to dismiss the historicity of Genesis 1-3 in its entirety, which is what I’m exploring here.

The historicity of individual people and the migrations of groups of people have few if any general scientific implications. Instead of riding all possible slippery slopes toward discounting the Bible on more general grounds, I’m suggesting that the very top of the slide is a particularly perilous passage. So I’m looking for a bypass. It appears that so far I’m the only one who’s interested in this experiment here at OST, but I think I’ll carry on for awhile.