Episode 50. The last characteristic in oral traditions, is that there is a lack of concern for strict coherence. This is sometimes termed a primitive or pre-logical mentality, because these accounts are contradictory at times. Therefore, we should expect some contradictions. A good example of contradictions appear with the conflicts in the order of creation events between the first two chapters of the Bible. In Genesis 1, God creates birds in the fifth day, land animals on the sixth day, and man and woman at the end of the sixth day. But in Genesis 2, God creates man then land animals and birds, and finally the woman. It's worth pointing out at this time that there is a simple solution to this problem of contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2. Most theologians think that we're two different creation accounts that were edited together. The first is known as the priestly account written roughly around 500 BC, BCE and this is Genesis 1. The second is the Jahwist account which was composed around 1000 BC, BCE and this is Genesis 2. Later in the course, we'll talk more about these original sources. But for our present purpose, we can ask, isn't a lack of concern for strict coherence part of science? No, not at all, because science is hyper logical. This lack of concern for strict coherence in oral traditions leads to a critical question is there an ancient epistemology in oral traditions? In other words, an epistemology that is different from ours and one that is not obsessed with the foundational epistemological categories of coherence, correspondence, and concealents. The anser that David Lindberg offers to this question is a definite yes. In quote six he writes, a cosmology, that is a view of nature, exists within every oral tradition but often beneath the surface seldom articulated and almost never assembled into a coherent whole. Therefore we need to be cautious not to read oral traditions through our 21st century epistemological standards. There is a significant implication for hermeneutics with regard to ancient epistemology. And it's this, don't read an ancient text like the Bible, which features an ancient epistemology through modern, hyperlogical 21st century epistemological categories. In this way the problem of eisegesis can extend to epistemology. This is my suggestion, we need to cut the Bible some epistemological slack. If historians like Lindberg can recognize and respect ancient epistemology in ancient text, then so too Christians with the Bible. Now, don't be concerned Christians this is only a hallucinating of the incidental features like the order of creative events in the biblical creation accounts. This is not a loss of the message of faith. In fact this will solve a lot of these so called contradictions in scripture. To conclude, is the origins account in oral tradition science? My answer is both yes and no. In particular, oral traditions feature an ancient science. End of episode.