Some rabbinic traditions shed more light on the Hebrew Scriptures than others. I think that’s because some traditions are more mythologically based, while others are things that possibly might have occurred. While this may cause some Bible scholars to write off much of Genesis as mythological, I don’t believe that to be the case.
I’ll use a more-recent illustration. Not from a KVM or KJV or anything like that, but from something we’re all culturally closer to.
In the history of America, our first president was George Washington. There is much about George Washington that is historically-verifiable fact. The wooden dentures, for example, are verifiable. The crossing of the Delaware is a matter of the historical record.
But the chopping down of the cherry tree? Well, that’s a bit more problematic. Young George may have been that honest, but there’s not a lot of historical witnesses to this episode in his life, and it’s quite possible that it is a tale spun to illustrate Washington’s honesty, long after he became president and after his parents, who might have been able to verify the tale’s veracity, were long gone.
Could the cherry tree incident have happened? Perhaps, but it feels more like George mythology.
In the same way, one can look at a tale about Haveh (Eve) having bad dreams about the enmity that would later manifest in her sons, Kayin and Havel (Cain and Abel), and see something that’s conceivable but impossible to verify; or at a tale about the Torah personified in a debate with Moshe and David and write that off as mythological; or to just about any tradition and, with a little logic and common sense, come to a conclusion to what extent a tale is either mythological or plausible.
Tags: George Washington, KVM, rabbinic traditions