One of the books I read over my Christmas vacation was John Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate—highly recommended for anyone unsatisfied with the major interpretations of Genesis 1: Young Earth Creationism and the Framework, Day-Age and Gap Theories.
For instance, Young Earth Creationism (YEC) had become increasingly problematic for me, as I read about the geological and astronomical evidence for an ancient universe and began to ponder the theological significance of living in a cosmos that was created 14 billion years before my arrival. Additionally, I did not see an exegetical necessity for a 6,000-year-old earth and found increasingly problematic YEC's extreme attempts to reconcile scientific evidence with their biblical interpretation.
Although it is built on solid Ancient Near Eastern scholarship, Walton's book is brief and highly accessible to the average reader. The core of his argument is this: The author of Genesis 1 was not attempting to argue that God created the material substance of the universe—his ancient readers would have all assumed this to be true. Instead, Genesis 1 is an account of God's ordering and arranging the cosmos into a temple which would reflect His glory and from which He would rule. With this view, Walton argues, it is unimportant whether one believes the universe is 6,000 years old or 14 billion years old, because this is simply not what Genesis 1 is about.
6 comments:
Ah, if only there were an Ebook version
I like this train of thought!
**above should say Romans 3:4, not 3:8. Sry, mistyped :)
Christopher, you raise some good points. I would encourage you to pick up the book, because I can't do it justice in a 200-word review. Here are a few comments I would offer in response to what you've written:
First, neither Walton nor myself necessarily have a problem with God creating the world in six literal days. The question is this: Is that what Genesis 1 says, and is that what the original listeners/readers understood it to mean? This is the exegetical question that Walton attempts to answer, and he does not start from science to answer it. This is not an issue of faith. It is basic exegesis—the uncovering of what the text means and not attempting to make it answer questions that its original readers were not asking.
Second, why would Moses not borrow concepts from Ancient Near Eastern traditions to describe the creation? Biblical authors from Genesis to Revelation use language and imagery familiar to their audiences in describing theological truths—from the sea monster imagery of Job to the agricultural parables of Jesus and the forensic language Paul uses to describe justification.
Third, the Bible is not the only revelation of God to man. Although the Bible is the final revelation, He speaks through conscience and in general revelation through creation (e.g. Romans 1). Science is a tool God has given us to discern his activity in creation. If we observe the light from a star 1 million light years away, why is it wrong to attempt to reconcile this scientific observation of God's revelation with the biblical account? If we analyze a fossil and determine it to be 30 million years old, why is it wrong to attempt to understand why God created rocks and stars that appear much older than 6,000 years?
Ultimately, all these questions come down to how one does exegesis. Did God inspire Genesis 1 to defend his role as creator, to counter evolution or to attack other rather recent scientific theories or was he attempting to reveal something else that may not even be on the radar of modern readers? The goal of exegesis is to first determine what the text meant to its original audience and to work forward from there. Pure and simple, that is what Walton attempts to do.
Chris: What about believing in a world that is BILLIONS of years old is against the Bible? In Genesis, it mentions six "days" and the word "days" is incredibly subjective because day requires light and dark, and the Sun wasn't created until after a few days.
I am glad that you have been brave enough to bring this topic up Matt. I have not been brave enough to bring it up on my own blog.
I am tired of people saying that they read Geneis "literally". It is not a literal text, it is in an oral text. As such it is full of oral devices and ancient oral world view. For us to force our literal world view upon an oral text is very bad analysis of a text indeed.
We can be guaranteed that when the stories of creation were composed the date of creation was not in the slightest bit part of the topic.
In our oral telling of these stories to some Sakha people here in Siberia, we actually started with the creation story of the garden, Adam and Eve. We then moved on to the next story in the garden, when they disobeyed and ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Later we went back to the creation song in Genesis 1, where "everything God made was good." It was quite a surprise to our friends that everything was good, as the world we live in is not good at all. They found the second two stories easier to understand.
By the time we got round to the creation song about everything being good, they were ready to interact with this, as the other two stories had made sense to them. This is certainly what Genesis 1 is all about, contrasting the good and perfect Creator God from all the evil gods in the world around. (Not about when the universe was created.)
Post a Comment