Don

See Nahum Sarna’s “Understanding Genesis” for a good discussion of the polemical nature of Gen 1. An example is that the sun and moon are created by Elohim and not “gods” as was thought by some at the time. Since we live in a culture that EASILY discards the notion that the moon and sun are gods, it can be hard to see how radical the claim in Gen 1 was at the time it was written. To see that, one contrasts with the alternatives.

Each book of the Bible was written to people where they were at at the time it was written. 1900 or more years later, it is ALL TOO EASY to inject our different cultural assumptions into the text and not even realize we are doing it. You know about this possibility for gender verses, but it is true for the whole Bible. The question is not whether we will use cultural defaults to fill in gaps in ANY narrative, the question is WHICH cultural defaults will we use. If we use the 21st century Western cultural defaults, it might be correct sometimes, but can easily be wrong other times.

I also believe that God meant what he said and said what he meant; this does not mean we will always agree on the MEANING of what he said. Just as a simple example, we know that words have a range of meanings; if you pick A within the range of meanings and I pick B, we might both be acting in faith and yet understand the text differently. I agree that the non-egals add to the Gen origins accounts by seeing male leadership implied.