Making Sense of Genesis

Its Unfolding Ideas and Images

Wilson

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498290777
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Early Genesis is like a table of contents for the rest of the book, a seed from which the rest of Scripture and history unfolds: so many ideas, images, and events can be traced back to it. Like the seeds that are so often our staple for life, Genesis also provides food for the soul, true wisdom, and the big picture we need to live in this world. But its message can be hindered by misunderstanding its purpose.Making Sense of Genesis looks at what works and what doesn't work when interpreting Genesis. It's not a commentary, so it doesn't interact with all of Genesis or much that has been written about it. Rather, it observes how the ideas and images in early Genesis unfold and are fulfilled, and how they are just as true and fresh for us now as they were in the beginning.

Chapter 1

Making Nonsense of Genesis

Trouble Turning Scripture into Science

Most of my favorite books have been made into action-packed movies now, but one of the things that seem to get lost in the process is the dialogues that reveal the heart and mind of the characters who gave the stories their wide appeal. One such example is the following exchange between Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, who is the “I”;

“‘I could hardly imagine a more damning case,’ I remarked. ‘If ever circumstantial evidence pointed to a criminal it does so here.’

‘Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,’ answered Holmes thoughtfully; ‘it may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.’ . . . ‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘that the facts are so obvious that you will find little credit to be gained out of this case.’

‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,’ he answered, laughing. ‘Besides, we may chance to hit upon some other obvious facts which may have been by no means obvious to Mr Lestrade [a Scotland Yard detective].’”1

Unfortunately, my approach to interpreting Genesis has for a long time been that of the faithful Watson, which is to take it at “face value” and regard it as literal history. A key point where Holmes diverges from Watson is that he takes small details seriously, and if they cannot be made to fit the easy explanations and the big pictures, then it is the big pictures and popular reasoning that must be wrong, and Holmes sets out to discover what is really going on. This has been my own more recent journey with Genesis.

But I don’t want to start with the small detail that brought my original view of Genesis unstuck, because for those who don’t do biblical Hebrew it’s a heavy beginning for a book. Instead, I want to prepare the scene by looking at some other problems which have become clearer since then.

One example is stellar evolution, the science of the (very slow) life cycle of stars and solar systems. It’s even gaining acceptance in principle in the Creationist camp.2 One of its conclusions is that planets form at the same time and as part of the same overall process as the birth of their governing star. A literal reading of Genesis, on the other hand, requires that the earth was formed before the sun, and that the sun was formed in a single day.

Also, Genesis 1 tells how a “firmament” or “expanse” (Heb. raqîaʿ) was made that separated the waters above the expanse from the waters below it, the seas.3 The Hebrew word in question refers to something like metal that has been spread out as per Job 37:18: “Can you, like him, spread out [Heb. tarqîaʿ] the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?”4

This understanding of the sky as a thin, impervious material rather than a void, is why Genesis views the sky as able to separate the source of rain—the “waters above the expanse”—from the seas. It’s also why Genesis 1:20 describes birds as flying “across the face of the expanse of the heavens” (own translation) rather than “through the expanse of the heavens.” But Genesis also says that the sun, moon, and stars are located in this “expanse.”5 Given what we now know, this would mean that the “waters above the expanse” lie on the other side of the sun, moon, and stars in outer space. So although Genesis 1 may be good at using ancient cosmology to teach about God, it falls short if we want to regard it as a cosmology in its own right.

John Yeo claims that when Ancient Near Eastern science and cosmology were incorrect, the Bible only ever uses these beliefs as metaphors, in poetry but never narrative, 6 but this is not true. Another ancient misunderstanding was that beneath the earth was the void space of the underworld, and beneath this again was the subterranean freshwater sea which was called the “Abzu” by the Sumerians.7 This subterranean sea was understood to be the source of the fresh water on the earth. This belief is reflected not only in Psalm 136:6 (among other historical events) but also in the Flood account, where it says that “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth” (Gen 7:11).

Another problem is how Genesis 1 portrays the discontinuity of the days in Genesis (“And there was evening, and there was morning, an Xth day”). This is alright for the first three days, where the source of light isn’t specified. God could have just switched it off at night. But because Genesis 1 portrays a cosmic scale of creation rather than a local scale, and because the sun is the light source for the last three days, day is continuous at the cosmic scale from here on, because the sun doesn’t switch off at night—the earth just rotates, bringing darkness to one area and day to another. So God would have been working around the clock for the last three days. Yet Genesis 1 portrays these working days of God as separated by periods of nighttime.

Also, while the NIV and ESV translate the days of creation as “the first day . . . the second day” etc., the Hebrew text reads “one day . . . a second day . . . a third day.” It lacks the definiteness one would expect of a literal account of the first six days of the universe!

The location of Eden also raises problems when we try to read it literally. Eden was “in the east,”8 meaning east of Moses’ Israelite audience who were in Southern Palestine. Because a river flowed out of Eden and divided into four rivers that watered most of the known earth,9 Eden was (or was on) a high mountain. Ezekiel shares this understanding when he says of the King of Tyre, “You were in Eden, the garden of God . . . you were on the holy mountain of God.”10

But the Tigris and Euphrates (two of these four rivers that go out from Eden) converge east of Southern Palestine, at the bottom ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Making Nonsense of Genesis
• Chapter 2: The Richer Realm that Matters More
• Chapter 3: Patterning History for a Higher Purpose
• Chapter 4: The Unfolding Image of God
• Chapter 5: Seed and Soil that Speak of Salvation
• Chapter 6: Blight and Blessing in Genesis and Deuteronomy
• Chapter 7: Ruling the Wicked and Winning the Reward
• Bibliography