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Notes -
Not actually true- up until the development of scientific evidence for evolution and an old earth, most Christians, including the apostolic churches, took those passages completely literally. It wasn't dogmatically required, but, like, Matins of Christmas talks about the earth being 4,000 years old at the time of Christ. The Byzantine calendar takes the same assumption. This was the mainstream assumption in 1800.
I think we're taking past each other. Venerable Bede wrote:
The purpose of Joshua is not merely to record ancient bloodshed, but it was recorded as scripture for the a more allegorical purpose, in this case for spiritual combat. I can pull quotes from Origin, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, etc that say the same.
Likewise, the beginning of the book of Genesis provided a thought provoking, textured, allegorical recounting of the origins of man. Everyone saw that there were two, contradictory accounts of the origin of man in the first two chapters. The purpose of handing down these chapters was not to present an accurate account of history but to present a Biblical anthropology. Most commentary on these stories focus on the relationship of God and man presented in the stories as perennial spiritual truths. They were also taken as the best account they had of the beginning of the human species.
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