This is part one of an answer which I hope to have ready by March 15 to send to Kevin R. Henke. As per now, his pdf is not available as a link, or I would link to it to say what I am answering.
Hypothesis I
1. The Talking Snake existed and the account in Genesis 3 was accurately passed down by Adam to Moses. Moses then wrote it down in Genesis. There would have been no human eyewitnesses for most of the events in Genesis 1-2:14. If Genesis 1-2:14 is history, God would have to have given the information in these verses as visions.
I consider this the correct one. Genesis 1:1 to 2:4 is mostly only accessible as a vision by God to Moses. Only part of the day six was accessible to Adam and Eve, and could have been in the Genesis 2 account.
The blessing in Genesis 1:28 would have been there, but was omitted since given in God's vision to Moses.
Hypothesis II
2. Moses saw Genesis 1-3 and perhaps most or even all of everything else in Genesis through visions given by God. There didn’t need to be a continuous human transmission of information from Adam to Moses. Visions from God would not be open to errors unlike written or oral transmissions from Adam to Moses.
To me this idea is a parody of "verbal inspiration". And ideally suited, for those not believing it, to turn around and make comparisons to Joseph Smith (see IV).
Written or oral transmissions would, as Haydock mentioned, naturally be "open to" errors, as you mentioned at least one of the accounts of an Alexander Battle was erroneous, since they contradict each other.
God protecting the transmission from error would be part of the way in which He actually inspired Moses.
In Exodus 6, we find Moses' genealogy.
[16] And these are the names of the sons of Levi by their kindreds: Gerson, and Caath, and Merari. And the years of the life of Levi were a hundred and thirty seven. [17] The sons of Gerson: Lobni and Semei, by their kindreds. [18] The sons of Caath: Amram, and Isaar, and Hebron, and Oziel. And the years of Caath's life were a hundred and thirty-three. [19] The sons of Merari: Moholi and Musi. These are the kindreds of Levi by their families. [20] And Amram took to wife Jochabed his aunt by the father's side: and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of Amram's life were a hundred and thirty-seven.
Now, Levi is mentioned in Genesis:
And she conceived the third time, and bore another son: and said: Now also my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons: and therefore she called his name Levi.
[Genesis 29:34]
And Gerson, Caath and Merari mentioned, chapter 46:
[11] The sons of Levi: Gerson and Caath and Merari.
[26] All the souls that went with Jacob into Egypt, and that came out of his thigh, besides his sons' wives, sixty-six. [27] And the sons of Joseph, that were born to him in the land of Egypt, two souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob, that entered into Egypt, were seventy.
So, Moses had no natural track of his great-grandfather and grand-father, but he had his family history restored to him by visions of God ... not credible. It is equally not credible that he knew of the march through the Red Sea by a vision of God, rather than by his own eyes and those of thousands of Israelites - if it had been in a vision given him, why would the other Israelites have believed what they did not know themselves?
Hypothesis III
3. The Talking Snake of Genesis 3 was part of a made-up campfire story, a parable or based on a pagan myth that eventually was taken as fact by the ancient Israelites, like how President Reagan and his fans mistook fictional stories from World War 2 as real. William Tell
(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-search-of-william-tell-2198511/ )
and a number of Roman Catholic saints
(https://listverse.com/2014/05/17/10-beloved-saints-with-fictitious-biographies/ )
are probably also myths. Of course, in the United States, pro-abortionists regularly use fictional TV shows to convince Americans that abortion is a good thing. Even though they are fiction, many people believe the propaganda. Right now, a lot of Russians are believing the fictional propaganda their government is inventing about Ukraine. People also often pick and choose parts of fictional stories that they want to believe and ignore the rest, such as individuals believing in the existence of “The Force” from the Star Wars movies, while recognizing that the rest of the movies are fiction. A lot of people are gullible and believe fictions are real.
I am very sorry, but the problem is ... you believe in an unnatural propensity of believing, not that a fiction is true, but that a fiction is your own memory.
Modern scholars dispute the historicity of William Tell and Protestant scholars dispute that of lots of Catholic saints (and the modern scholars you provide are culturally Protestant. I may take up separate posts when trying to deal with these links, but Smithsonian Mag is not my best academic resource for European History of the Middle Ages and Listverse is trusted when providing lists, but not quite as trusted with backing up each detail on each list with good scholarship.
I am sorry, you asked to not have "line by line" quotes interspersed with my comments, but as you give lots of diverse examples of highly differring relevance, this is the way I need to do it.
The Talking Snake of Genesis 3 was part of a made-up campfire story, a parable or based on a pagan myth that eventually was taken as fact by the ancient Israelites, like how President Reagan and his fans mistook fictional stories from World War 2 as real.
The World War II itself was perhaps a fictional story too? No? In that case, the reaction of Reagan would have promoted fiction into a minor detail of an overall historic context.
Then again, the historic context was highly talked of, and so each person (Reagan too) would have got his knowledge of it from many different sources. One of them was a film, and Reagan mistook a fiction for a well-told documentary.
What overall historic context could there be in which Genesis 3 could fit as a minor detail? None, from the nature of the case.
Of course, in the United States, pro-abortionists regularly use fictional TV shows to convince Americans that abortion is a good thing.
I have your word for it, and I highly doubt it. More probably, you are dismissing anti-abortion TV shows as fiction, even if they are not. But even if you were right they were not true, that would fall under fraud rather than fiction.
But here you are also confusing "message" with "fact" - a fictitious fact being taken as real is different from the message being taken as valid.
People also often pick and choose parts of fictional stories that they want to believe and ignore the rest, such as individuals believing in the existence of “The Force” from the Star Wars movies, while recognizing that the rest of the movies are fiction.
Already answered. One can and should take the world view promoted by fictions seriously. Tatooine as much as Third Age Gondor are fictional settings, Luke Skywalker never wielded a light sabre and Aragorn never arrived to the battle of Pelennor. But this has no bearing on whether you believe the kind of world view you think George Lucas or J. R. R. Tolkien conveyed - the one, as mentioned believed in "The Force" - or would have been disingenious to his fans if not so believing. The other believed God uses small acts of righteousness - defined as pity, as obedience and a few more - to achieve great plans that none of the mortal participants could have made. I do believe the latter. I do not believe the former.
The question at hand was, do people - as in communities - take things they know to be fictions for real historic memories? Normally not. The yes for Reagan's WW-II story is highly hedged, both as to who came to believe a thing, and as to outstanding significance of the thing believed. But the "yes" for Star Wars is on your own admission in fact a "no".
A lot of people are gullible and believe fictions are real.
You have given no good examples. At least when it comes to fictions originally enjoyed as such, and real as real history with normal transmission.
Hypothesis IV
4. “Prophets” or others claimed to have visions from God about events that supposedly happened thousands of years earlier. These visions were delusions or outright lies, but a lot of people came to believe them. Joseph Smith also did this and Kat Kerr continues with this nonsense in the US.
Here you have come to a totally different topic - and you blamed me for bringing up Alexander!
A visionary usually is not a historian. Kat Kerr seems (according to a first google) to have given accounts on what Heaven is like, not of historic facts in the past, and Joseph Smith is to this day very traceable as the "information bottleneck" in his own day to historic information previously unknown - either since always (if, as we agree, he or a demon made it up) or (even on the Mormon view) since the time when Book of Moroni ends (between 400 and 421 AD).
Moses is not similarily traceable as such for information provided in Genesis - while he would qualify as "information bottleneck" to us, like Arrian and his four colleagues, at least up to very recent discoveries - there is no pretence he was perceived as information bottleneck for Genesis histories (after chapter 1, as mentioned) in his own time.
Even less can we trace the Babylonian captivity as an "information bottleneck" for all of the Torah, as some have tried. You see, the Samaritan worshippers of The Lord (not all of the Samaritans, but some of them) split off religiously from Judah before the Babylonian captivity. Why would they have taken a book from people who, coming back from there, were already their religious adversaries?
The bottom line on this one, while it doesn't require any historic transmission, it also doesn't function as explanation for texts which we know to have been transmitted as history, and not in the Joseph Smith like way, as "miraculously recovered" history.
I have an equal aversion to this kind of qui-pro-quo as Mr. Henke has for the supernatural - on which I will return on occasion.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Ash Wednesday
2.III.2022
To next post - On Verifying the Supernatural
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