Two views of Genesis 1-11 are common. Young-earth creationism claims to take this text literally as inspired by God and interprets it as the history of the first few thousand years of the existence of the universe. Source criticism, on the other hand, takes it as an account of how ancient Hebrews viewed this history, God accommodating to their mythological beliefs derived from contemporary Near Eastern cultures, yet "breaking" these myths by framing them into monotheism. The former view is contradicted by science while the latter produces arbitrary hermeneutics and modifies biblical theology.

But if Adam was not the first human created in the image of God, he can be taken as a real person who lived at a Holocene time in Sumer, but who, called to prepare the way for the Messiah to come, became a type representative of fallen humans living both before and after his time.

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Inspired by God

What do we mean by considering the Bible to be inspired by God? Views of "plenary inspiration" are often misconstrued as proposing some kind of mechanical dictation by God. This certainly would not be a biblical concept. There is no doubt that God wants to reveal himself. But how might he be doing it? He can reveal himself directly to the consciousness of any human being whenever he chooses to do so. Normally, such a revelation would hardly be authoritative for others being told about it. God can also commission a prophet to tell his hearers or readers: "Thus says the LORD ..." But are later generations addressed, as well? And there may be false prophets.

The central belief of Christians is that God revealed himself most fundamentally through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of his "only begotten" Son, Jesus Christ, as presented in the collection of the canonical biblical texts called "the Scriptures." How did these sixty-six books in our Bible (excluding the Apocrypha) become "canonical" or authoritative? Each one of them was consistently recognized by communities of believers as reflecting divine authority. One crucial aspect of such canonical recognition has always been noncontradiction between a newly received book and the part of the canon already accepted. Thus, as the collection of biblical texts grew over the centuries, the canon grew concomitantly, in practice usually with hardly any delay, although "official" pronouncements of recognition might have appeared later, depending on who these "officials" were.

Paul refers to "the foundation of the apostles and prophets." (1) With "apostles" he may have designated the whole future canon of the New Testament (NT) and with "prophets" that of the Old Testament (OT). Alternatively, both apostles and prophets may refer to the proclamation of the gospel, with the OT canon included indirectly, as all NT authors presuppose it as canonical. In some cases, the writer of a book, e.g., Hebrews, did not identify himself explicitly. Other authors, like Luke, indicated that some of what they wrote was derived from diverse sources. Some OT books, such as Psalms, obviously represent collections...