Genesis 36 — Thoughts

Is the Bible History of Myth?

Does this chapter bore you? "These people lived here. They married those people and had these descendants."

Admittedly, it's not the most exciting thing to read, but I actually take a lot of comfort in passages like this. Myths don't usually include these kinds of non-narrative details — but histories do.

There are many other — and better — reasons to believe that the Bible is history and not myth. But this is one that occurs to me the most as I read through the Bible. The original audience for this material would have known of these events. They knew these places, and they knew their family lines.

To them, Scripture wasn't just a wild speculation about the supernatural, it was a recording of their history. And they would have known if something that was shared was out of line with their own experiences and records.

So while it's not particularly enthralling to try to pronounce the names of these few dozen people we know nothing else about, I'm grateful that we have that opportunity. Because they were real people.

And the God they knew really is the true and living God.

(Originally written August 15, 2020)