Follow ups

I have a limited amount of time because I'm away from home typing in an internet cafe but I have a few things to add to my previous post about biblical authority. Firstly, I thought of a good analogy for my initial thoughts of what the writer of gen 1-11 was doing when he took the sagas in circulation in the ANE culture of the time and altered them to make them Jewish. It seems to me that he was doing something vaguely similar to what many modern Christians do today when they hear the story of evolution as an explanation of where they come from. They say 'well it seems to make sense but it's missing God' so they add God into the story going round, affirming, like the writer of Gen 1-11, that God was in control and behind it all. This is clearly not all there is to it though as the writer was a lot more creative than that adding in quite large bits (e.g. about humans role in creation) which is a bold thing to do. This leads on to the second point. A friend pointed out to me that these bits could be due to his closeness to God/understanding of him, or even straight forward voice from the sky revelation. A good point, maybe I have uncritically taken on board too much critical (as in the academic type) thinking with regard to the bible. More to think about.