Thank you for the question about etiological motifs in Genesis 1–11, “Do you agree or disagree about H. Gunkel proposed that the author of Genesis 1-11 contains some etiological motifs and Genesis 1 explains the origins of Sabbath? How would you discuss as much as you can?”
One can agree with H. Gunkel that there is etiological motifs in Genesis. This is logical as there are cause and effects. The purpose of Genesis 1:1 is to declare that the Creator God brought the Universe and Earth into existence as well as being the cause for life on earth. In other words, without God, there wouldn’t be a Universe or Earth.
Studying the motifs of Genesis 1–11 is valid of the different means whereby Moses verbalize the history of Israel. The usage of certain phrases was to help the listener to remember the history and commands of God. The phrase, “This is the account” was used to help the Israelites to know their history and the division of their history. Studying the poetic or literary methods is excellent.
The disagreement that I have with H. Gunkel, if I understood him correctly that he moves beyond the motifs to interpreting the various accounts as not history but “stories” or fables. Modern scholars date the Old Testament to the Babylonian Era and use the Babylonians religious beliefs as the bases for the writing of the Old Testament history.
The critical debate is the existence of the King Solomon’s Temple. If the Temple existed prior to the Babylonian Temple, then one can conclude that the Israelites had their own history and religious practice prior to their captivity in 586 BCE. Gunkel argues that the Israelites copied to some extent the Babylonian stories for their own history. The Scripture asserts that their history predates the Babylonian period and the Babylonian record is a distortion of the history of civilization. This is where the debate then and even today.
As I have mentioned that I disagree with H. Gunkel that the verses of Genesis 1:1–31 that leads to the Sabbath. True that God ceased his creative work, but that is not the end of the Biblical narrative. It is only starting with the works of human as God has given humans the responsibility to care for the Garden and the Earth.
When H. Gunkel wrote what he did, the archaeological discoveries and scientific discoveries were only beginning. In my view Genesis 1 is not fable but has a scientific bases of/for it. The Big Bang is the concurrent view of cosmology, geologists confirms that the world was once under the ocean as every mountain top has sea life on it, the macro-evolution of sea life to human life of the “evolutionary process” was already stated in Scripture, the uniqueness of the sun and moon upon the earth, etc. correlates with the Biblical narrative. The Babylonian creative account does not compare to the accuracy of the Biblical narrative. It would be quite remarkable that the “Biblical narrative stories” happens by chance to have quite a correlation with our scientific understanding of the Universe and Earth. The challenge for the Christians is the “day” whether being literal or figurative days.
SUMMARY: H. Gunkel is correct that there are motifs or literature styles in the Biblical writings, but his interpretations of the Biblical narratives are fables or solely based on the Babylonian records are his subjective interpretation of the text.
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