What Does the Church Say About Early Genesis? | The Jimmy Akin Podcast
Jimmy Akin | 20 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwU7FLfIgqc
You do admit chapter 14 as fully historic in the normal sense?
Here is the thing for Deep Timers. IF the world is 100 000 or millions or billions of years old, the atmosphere is old and Carbon 14 is arguably in a kind of equilibrium.
So, c. 100 pmC. So, carbon dates should roughly match real dates.
However, in Genesis 14 you have an Asason Tamar inhabited when the chapter begins. It doesn't state that but also doesn't deny that the place was abandoned after the attack. However, Asason Tamar is En-Geddi, as we know from Chronicles (not looking it up, could it be II Chron. 20:2 or sth?).
However, the latest habitation in En Geddi prior to the Iron Age is carbon dated to ending in 3500 BC.
And if Abraham was born 2015 BC, given he was c. 80, the real time was 1935 BC.
3500 - 1935 = 1565 extra years, or the actual carbon 14 level had to be 0.5 to the power of (1565/5730), or c. 83 pmC.
If Abraham was born later, like an Exodus in the time of Amenhotep II would imply, even more extra years, even lower pmC, like 82 sth ...
"doesn't endorse either of these approaches"*
In the early world of PBC, there was no decision that would have gone against the idea of a video camera catching a good match for the wording in Genesis 1 to 11.
I'm obviously not counting 1992 under a non-Pope.
"in his preface"
Ah, so Joseph Ratzinger didn't write The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church but he wrote a preface to it.
How much does the preface endorse that horrible document?
It badmouths "Fundamentalism" horribly ....**
"at the time these documents had magisterial authority"
As in, no more, same documents?
That's not consistent with "sensum quem sancta mater ecclesia ... tenuit atque tenet" ...
[Letter to Cardinal-Archbishop] "Suhard"
Looking it up.***
"It is therefore impossible to deny or to affirm their historicity as a whole without unduly applying to them norms of a literary type under which they cannot be classed."
Sorry, but either one finds a loophole in the term "historicity as a whole" (like the historicity is not the same type) or one admits that Pius XII approved a faulty reply to part of the Church.
Or says, this means he was not Pope. That would make the election of Michael I one after at least 42 years of sedevacancy.
Tradition has always held Genesis to be a historical book.
Or, he was for the moment leaving the question open for discussion.
"overly enlarged the area of certainties that the faith can guarantee"
First, he shows he is not in continuity with that actual magisterium. Not Catholic. Not Pope.
Second, if anything, it overly diminished the area, left things open for discussion that could have and now after the discussions even more can now be affirmed with certainty.
"about the methods and limits of historical knowledge"
Well, more like what he affirmed as new understanding thereof is fake understanding thereof, the kind of faking of epistemology that Chesterton fought against (he had no Ratzinger to show him an example of such a sceptic pretending to wield cardinalic or papal dignity).
"where later Popes, such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI contradicted them"
Oh, they contradicted the Magisterial PBC in its binding judgements?
You see it as the judgements no longer being binding. I see it as they not being Catholics and therefore not Popes.
Just to mention, the authorship of the Fourth Gospel is by "early" PBC not explicitly tied to the Son of Zebedee, so Jean Colson is not falling afoul of it.
There is a big difference between early Church knowing two Johns and later conflating them, and early Church knowing one John and misattributing an authorship to him. The latter is condemned, the former, providentially, isn't. I say providentially since saying "John the Apostle" came close, but didn't hit it, as "Apostle" is not absolutely limited to "The Twelve" ... (where the only John is a Son of Zebedee).
"very abbreviated"
I'd agree. My reason to conclude that they were transmitted orally to Abraham, before he had a beduin caravan.
And that Abraham wrote down other things, and presumably these too.
You see, Sagen aus Österreich contains stories of an often historical or dubious nature, not meant as fiction, though in some cases, probably, tongue in cheek, and they are very abbreviated compared to stating such historical facts as articles or (when invented) as novellas.
The very abbreviated nature is a good signature for oral transmission. WHETHER Genesis 3 (for instance) was orally transmitted all the way from Adam to Abraham OR (for instance) Sarug possessed a book about it, was dispossessed of it by an idolatrous son and grandson (Nachor and Thare) and had to orally summarise what he could no longer verify in detail.
I'd go against the latter scenario, as it is possible or even probable that Thare didn't commit idolatry until Abraham was already 75 (i e he left Ur or Haran, whichever, on the spiritual death of his physical father).
"much more extensive sections"
Indeed. Suggesting these parts were originally written down by Abraham and the rest and came to Egypt when Jacob arrived, apart from what Joseph had already written himself in Egypt.
Clay tablets or papyri are insecure possessions of a lone traveller, can be stolen from a resident, but are a very secure possession, on par with tents and clothes, for a Beduin tribe. Which Abraham started to be head of in chapter 12.
"anthropomorphic language about God"
In Genesis up to chapter 3, Adam can walk with God and can describe a theophany, basically of pre-Incarnate Christ.
In Genesis 11, whoever saw what God was up to (perhaps in a dream) was also given a hint of the upcoming Incarnation of God.
"cosmic ramifications"
Not all of them. If Jubal (presumably recalled with additions and bad theology by Hindus as Krishna, though the actual Hebrew for that would be Kush) invented music instruments, that's a cultural, but not actually a cosmic ramification.
And if his half brother invented siderurgia along with chalcurgia, not only is the ramification non-cosmic, but to Abraham it would have been an incomprehensible fact with no ramification.
"from obscure ... to well known"
Indeed.
Genesis 1 to 11 spans pre-Flood events, with lower Palaeolithic giving us some, Mahabharata other, details. And the Neolithic, which had recently turned to Chalcolithic before Abraham was born, and the Upper Palaeolithic before Babel but after the Flood.
"history in the classic or modern sense"
OK. History comes in two genres. Thukydides and Mommsen. Got it. Every single other literary genre is "not fully historic" ...
I think this could be the last act of the PBC magisterium in a sense that parallels Deicide being the last act of the OT Cohen Gadol magisterium.
"non-historical if evaluated in terms of the modern methods"
By such evaluation, every single line of dialogue in a Classic work of history is non-historical, as the Classic view was that historians could not change what was said, but were free to present how it was said as they liked.
I would contend that modern standards, or at least the latitude about dialogue in Classic standards actually is met in Genesis 1 to 11. If we go on a few lines, here is sth nearly good:
The first duty in this matter incumbent on scientific exegesis consists in the careful study of all the problems literary, scientific, historical, cultural, and religious connected with these chapters; in the next place is required a close examination of the literary methods of the ancient oriental peoples, their psychology, their manner of expressing themselves and even their notion of historical truth the requisite, in a word, is to assemble without preformed judgements all the material of the palaeontological and historical, epigraphical and literary sciences.
Apart from "psychology" which is chimaeric about absent and therefore about past peoples, and "even their notion of historical truth" ... the investigations proposed are now very fruitful and precisely for Fundamentalists, for Creation Science, for Flood Geology.°
I've done my contributions°°, like verifying no fossil find anywhere has a whale above a plesiosaur. Or that Babel was Gobekli Tepe. Or that carbon dates match up very well, if the Biblical chronology is presumed (I'm using that of Roman Martyrology Christmas Day and presuming an Exodus ending the 13th Dynasty). Or that the breaks in generation overlaps from Genesis 3 to Abraham are comparable to from Trojan War to Homer.
"later ... pertain to history, but that it's expressed in a symbolic or figurative way"
1) Thank you for admitting this approach is indeed later than 1948.
2) I'd have appreciated you not using "the Church" as name for that entity making such statements.
3) I hope you'll be telling me in a moment how much later.
"we can't read ... without a careful story of how people thought and wrote at the time Genesis was composed"
This is a way more stupid thing than the 1948 document actually said.
1) Because it invalidates all reading prior to 1948 and some time past, which is contrary to "sensum quem ecclesia ... tenuit atque tenet"
2) Because it assumes the Hebrews and hagiographers had the same "mentality" to use the word in a loose way as idolatrous contemporaries
3) and because it assumes we can get closer to what the contemporaries did than guess-work, extrapolation from bragging (a certain Sayce on genealogies), and even wishful thinking ("we" wish the Flood wasn't supposed by Moses to have happened in actual fact as presented, so "we" assume a Babylonian writing about Enlil or Marduk and Tiamat didn't really mean it ... excluding my actual self from this "we" obviously).
hope of attaining
In other words, the need for an open mind is temporary.
Now, some would say, it is past, and it's results have confirmed the traditional (pre-PBC) readings. I'm of these.
adapted to the understanding of mankind at a lower stage of development
That one hasn't aged well.
* Text matching a video camera with a time machine and complete fiction.
** Ten years and some ago, I took him for the author of it, and wrote Apostatic Rejection of "Fundamentalism" in 1994
*** Found it cited last on this page:
Documents of the Pontifical Biblical Commission Translated
July 7, 2022 | Admin
https://creationtheologyfellowship.org/2022/07/07/documents-of-the-pontifical-biblical-commission-translated/
° Creation Ministries International, Answers in Genesis (the latter unfortunately good friends with anti-Catholics, like Ray Comfort and Todd Friel) °° Creation vs. Evolution
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