A while back I caught a video on youtube where a fundamentalist Christian said:
If the Bible said 2 + 2 equalled 5 then I would take that as true and just work it out..
I've been trying to find it but can't remember which it was. Been a while back.
Isn't it a strange phenomenon? When black can be white and 2 + 2 can = 5, profound religious beliefs are really more important than actual reality.
I sometimes have to pinch myself
I appreciate your frustration with that, but that is not how Genesis 1-11 sounds.
Let me give an illustration. Many people seem to be fine going through the account--they don't know mechanically how God created, but OK, he created. The problem that derails so many is when they get to the so-called talking snake. Let's notice several things here, though.
1, There is an understanding that is not exhaustively explained in the text. That is that there is a serpent, which meant Satan, and that he is a deceiver, and that he has certain powers etc. So, no, it is not that the next snake in the area could talk either. This was Satan, and there is (unstated) backstory about him. That backstory may be found in the expression in 1:2 about formless and void, maybe not. But there is other backstory.
2, One of the features of the 'formless and void' expression is that it relates to, or is echoed in, other ancient near east cosmology. In India, there is a major player in a creation story and it is a huge sea-going snake who is cut to pieces by a redemptive creator deity. The pieces become the material from which earth or land is made. Likewise Persia. A few references to this survive in the Bible, re Leviathan. He may also have been flying, which brings to mind the 'griffin' or a 'chupacabra' and other creatures. But after deceiving Adam and Eve, he is cursed and confined to the ground. After that account, it doesn't seem to matter what form he is in; he seems to be a person when seen next. But its not 2+2=5.
3, The serpent belongs to a number of unusual features about the earth in those days. If you look at geo-mythology research (which is sort of like reading how ancient people understood fossils and legends in their own times, see A. Mayor), you find so many things that validate what we would call unusual at that time: longevity, giantism, technology, supernatural encounters, sophisticated cities. There are many, many indications that humans had conflicts with and lived around dinosaur creatures. The sheer amount of it gets overwhelming. I have put the bibliography here. It obviously conflicts with orthodox evolution.
I mentioning all this to say that rather than departing from reality, even the serpent (Satan) interaction with humans is very much part of that time of earth, though Genesis is stingy about details.
There are several other things that add 'unnecessary' detail (the names of four key rivers, the minerals). Unnecessary to the redemptive point of the text (Gen 1-11 quickly takes us to the promised divine Seed through Abraham), but mentioning enough detail to ground it in reality. It is not fantasy, fiction, hallucinogenic, psychedelic. Not 2+2=5.
