{"id":25523,"date":"2013-03-23T10:05:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T15:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=25523"},"modified":"2013-10-10T11:48:25","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T16:48:25","slug":"study-genesis-and-the-gospels-through-akiro-kurosawas-rashomon-this-weekend-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2013\/03\/study-genesis-and-the-gospels-through-akiro-kurosawas-rashomon-this-weekend-only\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Genesis and the Gospels through Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, this weekend only (updated)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rashomon\"<\/a>One issue that appears repeatedly when studying scripture is dealing with conflicting accounts and multiple perspectives. We have four Gospels that vary in detail, several creation stories, both inside the Bible (Gen 1-2:4, 2:4ff, and the scattered watery Chaoskampf account<\/a>), and outside (Genesis accounts, Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, Temple), as well as two conflicting accounts of Israelite history (Samuel-Kings<\/a> vs. Chronicles<\/a>), and two interpretations of the destruction of Ammonihah (Alma 16-17 vs 25, see Grant Hardy’s article<\/a>). Our modern tendency is to treat all of these, and indeed nearly all scripture, strictly as history, although bad or inaccurate history, and since we really don’t like multiple accounts, we then\u00a0wrest<\/span>\u00a0ahem…\u00a0harmonize<\/em> them. To some extent, that misses the point; none of these were written as history as the modern person would understand it, as a dispassionate, journalistic wie-es-eigentlich-gewesen<\/em><\/a> how-it-really-happened neutral account written down by an eyewitness clerk. Perhaps that’s a bit exaggerated.<\/p>\n

Someone with a grounding in historiography would have a better grasp on the issues, arguing that history is necessarily reductionist, biased, selective. Each of these accounts represents a particular perspective and viewpoint. It’s more important to figure out what they’re trying to say, what that viewpoint is, why they are telling it the way they do, then to figure out how to harmonize them. \u00a0When it comes to Gen 1 vs Gen 2:4ff, one of the traditional scholarly analyses involves assigning one account to one tradition (Gen 1 is priestly<\/a>), and the other to a different tradition (Gen 2:4 belongs to J, or the Yahwist tradition.) I am deeply sympathetic and fairly convinced by this view, which has been discussed all over the blogs. (I’ll put up some links if asked.)<\/del> See here <\/a>(less technical, skeptical), here<\/a> (personal experience, less technical, writing book on the subject), \u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>, lots from FPR (I went to Patheos to search for these, and it oddly directed me to the old wordpress version.)<\/p>\n