Karl Barth and the Bible as Saga

Genesis is Truly Set Apart

In my book Set Apart: How Genesis Stands Alone, I explore the creation account in Genesis, arguing that, unlike ancient mythology, the Bible tells us something true about both history and God. This book is important for Christians interested in the study of ancient Near Eastern literature because it counters a popular, and deeply flawed, view that Genesis should be read like any other origin story from ancient Near East but with a Hebrew perspective. This common view is what I label in the book as the Unified Worldview Paradigm (UWP). UWP scholars such as John Walton believe that the fundamental view of creation in the Old Testament emerged from the “shared cognitive environment” of the ANE. Consequently, figures like Adam and Eve are not historical people but mere symbols used by the biblical writers to teach profound religious truths.

John Walton's Lost World of Ethics

In contrast to the UWP, I argue for what I label the Divergent Worldview Paradigm (DWP). The DWP holds that the essential details of Hebrew cosmology are distinct from ANE mythologies and similar only in their secondary details. Adam and Eve are more than religious symbols, they’re real historical figures that play an important role in human history.

Both the UWP and DWP hinge on four significant points of contention:

1. the sui generis (originality) of the Hebrew worldview,

2. the basic meaning of Divine-revelation,

3. the definition of the term myth and how it relates to the book of Genesis, and

4. the consequent implications for the hermeneutical relationship between science and Scripture.

However, what I don’t address in the book are theological outliers like Karl Barth whose ideas don’t fit easily within either paradigm. There are parts of Barth’s writings that appear to support the standard UWP. The writers of the Bible, Barth claims, did not posses a unique view of the world:

Each in his own way and degree, they shared the culture of their age and environment, whose form and content could be contested by other ages and environments, and at certain points can still appear debatable to us. Quod potuit homo dixit (Man has said what he could). This means that we cannot overlook or deny it or even alter it. In the biblical view of the world and man we are constantly coming up against presuppositions which are not ours, and statements and judgments which we cannot accept.¹

The modern reader of the Bible, Barth contends, will find the authors of the Bible are, 

echoing contemporaries in time and space who did not share their experience and witness, often resembling them so closely that it is impossible to distinguish between.²

Barth concludes that the Bible, while uniquely Hebrew, was still fundamentally shaped by ANE culture.³ The biblical writers, shaped by the dominant culture, offer presuppositions and judgments that we moderns don’t share. Consequently, the “truth” behind the stories passed down to us in the Bible must be reinterpreted by and for each new culture. So while Barth’s statements in Church Dogmatics share some kinship with the UWP, his definitions are often unique and shouldn’t be forced into either the Unified or Divergent Worldview Paradigms.

One example of Barth’s idiosyncratic language is his definition of myth as a form of human speculation concealed behind a narrative for the purpose of presenting a reoccurring principle grounded in some historic singularity.⁴ There is no way, Barth argues, to prevent some scholars from finding myth in the Bible. However, he is concerned that such conclusions reflect the efforts of the scholar to read into the text the bias of his or her own age.

It is really quite natural that an age whose thought, feeling and action are so highly mythical as the so-called modern period that culminates in the Enlightenment (including Idealism and Romanticism) should seek myth in the Bible too—and find it. . .. For the person who does not ask about revelation there is nothing left, of course, but to ask about myth. . .. We can only declare that the interpretation of the Bible as the witness to revelation and the interpretation of the Bible as the witness to myth are mutually exclusive.⁵

Barth prefers the term saga over myth which, for him, allows the acceptance of the Bible as “history” as long as it doesn’t corrupt his view of revelation. Here too is another of Barth’s unique definitions. For Barth, the Bible is not itself revelation, but merely a witness to God’s revelation. Thus the Bible is not itself a universal truth but a culturally conditioned revelation that must be compared to the revelation of God in other times and cultures. Barth, Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, 329.⁶

Based on these unique definitions of revelation and history, Barth says that the label myth denies the historical elements, but to label the Bible history denies the revelatory truths which transcends the time-space events.⁷ The Bible as saga, Barth counters, properly positions the Bible is a witness to a revelation about God to men rooted in a special historical event (bound in time and space) but which “cannot be historiographically expressed.”⁸

While I disagree with Barth, this short post illustrates the importance of not forcing all scholars into the two paradigms advanced I advance in my book. There’s a lot more space for future study and discussion. For now, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of my book, Set Apart: How Genesis Stands Alone, and join me in the conversation.

1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G.T. Thomson and Harold Knight, Vol. 1 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 508.

2. Ibid., 509.

3. Ibid., 510. Or in Barth’s words, “homo Judaeus.”

4. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley, 2nd ed., Vol. 1 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 328.

5. Ibid., 328–329.

6. Barth, Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, 329.

7. William Lane Craig’s concept of “myth-history” has a strong resemblance to Barth. This summary by Guy Prentiss Waters is excellent,“Craig is aware that he must interact with the evidence from the New Testament relating to Adam and Eve. He claims that the New Testament authors “caution us to avoid overly easy proofs of OT historicity on the basis of NT citations” (241). The NT affirms the “truth-in-the-story” of Genesis 1-11, including the fact that “there was a progenitor of the entire human race through whose disobedience moral evil entered the world” (242). The NT, then, aligns with a mytho-historical reading of the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament.” Waters, Guy Prentiss. "WILLIAM LANE CRAIG, THEISTIC EVOLUTION, AND THE NEW TESTAMENT." Presbyterion 50, no. 1 (2024): 55.

8. This unique phrasing is from the summary in the editor’s preface and not a direct quote from Barth. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 1, ed. G. W. Bromley and T. F. Torrance, trans. J. W. Edwards et al., Vol. 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), viii.