[Matthew] So what did you find was the most surprising as you started researching?
I would think not many things surprise you, I mean is there something of note as you were looking
at the doctrine of man that... [Craig] Yes, there would be a couple of things. Biblically speaking,
I think what really surprised me was the plausibility of analyzing the literary genre,
or type, of Genesis chapters 1 to 11 as something called mythohistory. This is a term that was
coined by the great assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen, and it characterizes a narrative that
does concern actual historical events, but which are told in the figurative language of myth. And
I think there are very persuasive reasons to think that Genesis 1 to 11 belongs to this genre of
mythohistory, and that therefore it's a mistake to take it as a literalistic historical narrative.
Now lest any of your viewers be upset by that, let me remind them that that's what everybody believes
about the book of Revelation, the final book of the Bible. It is filled with symbols of beasts,
and dragons, and things of that sort that are not to be taken literally but represent nation states
and alliances, political alliances and so forth. Nobody thinks that the beast is some sort of a
creature like in beauty and the beast. Rather this is a person who is opposed to God and is a
political and military figure. So I would simply ask people to be open-minded about considering
whether or not, just as we take the last book in the Bible to be symbolic and imagistic,
whether or not that might not also be a way of plausibly interpreting the first 11 chapters of
the first book of the Bible. Now the other thing that surprised me Matthew scientifically was I was
really stunned by the compelling archaeological evidence concerning how early modern cognitive
behavior is exhibited among archaic human beings. There have been spears discovered in Germany
that are as carefully crafted as modern olympic javelins are, and these date from around 400,000
years ago and were used doubtlessly in big game hunting. Moreover in France, in Bruniquel Cave,
there was found a circular construction of stalagmites
that were put inside of this cave by neanderthal men. It dates back to around 176,000 years ago
or so before modern homo sapiens came into Europe. And then there was also discovered
very recently within the last year a piece of three-ply braided neanderthal string, where
these neanderthal men had actually taken fibers and twisted them into string to make into chords,
and the archaeologists on this find said that this required mathematical intelligence that would be
comparable to what would be required by a modern language user. And I think that just
makes it completely implausible to deny the full humanity of these ancient human beings.