Design: It's More than DNA - Episode 002

- Hey everyone, welcome back to Genesis Marks the Spot, the podcast where we are going to be raiding the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. - In this episode we’re going to talk about some ways to look at the Bible, and then we’re going to zoom in on the book of Genesis…its structure and purpose. You’ll notice that I’m not going to talk much about some of the more common ways that Scripture is read. I want to make it clear that that doesn’t mean that there isn’t merit in some of those ideas. If it’s an interpretation that fits into the text, then that’s fine by me. I’m not trying to actively tear down any sacred cows of interpretation, so if you’re going to get mad at me for not discussing what you think is an “obvious” meaning of the text, I’m telling you right now you’re probably picking the wrong battle. And if it’s that obvious, then I don’t see the point in my discussing it, anyway. So I’m going to push a bit against some ways that I’ve seen the text commonly understood. Often I’ve held these interpretations myself. Sometimes I still do hold them as possibilities; in the end, the more literal, “plain language of the text” interpretations are often not as compelling or interesting to me—but that doesn’t mean they can’t be valid or true. - So, with that disclaimer (which applies to my podcast as a whole, by the way) we’re going to talk about the Bible and about Genesis and at the end of the episode, we’re going to get into the structure of the days of creation, which if you haven’t heard *this stuff, it is *so cool*. - Our first question is, “What is the Bible?” As professing Christians, the Bible is the revelation from God, but it is also writing from an ancient people. And then our question is, what’s the genre? Is it history, is it bibliography, is it a novel, is it theology? A lot of people think it’s a book of instructions: this is what you’re supposed to do and this is what you’re not supposed to do. And then of course there’s the aspect of prophecy, which of course plays a big part in the narrative of the Bible. - Revelation from God - Writing from an ancient people - History? Bibliography? Novel? Theology? - Book of instructions? - Prophecy - The Bible is…a book. Since it is a book, we ought to treat it as one. While we can go through textual redaction, etc, etc, we are mostly going to treat it as the cohesive whole that we have received it as. So what are the properties of a book? - A book has genre. - A book has a purpose. A book’s purpose is to communicate. It has meaning. there is a use for it. - There is intention of the author (yep, sorry, post-modernists!) - A book is cohesive. - A book has context. - It has words, which have meanings within sentences… - …which have meanings within passages - And all of those things have meaning within a culture and - …within a moment of history - Background knowledge is expected when you read a book. - Then, of course, you have pattern and design to the text that serves its purpose and is embedded in its situational context. By “embedded in its situational context,” I mean that you’re going to understand it a lot better if you understand the context within which the book was written. - For instance, if you don’t understand the concept of fiction, then you’re going to have a hard time when you come across *science* fiction and you have no idea what a Klingon is. - Let’s look at literary design strategy for a moment. I reject post-modernism which says that the author’s meaning and intent is unimportant or at least unrecoverable because our own personal context gets in the way. While I do not ignore the fact that we do have our own context that greatly muddies the waters, I feel that we humans are collectively smart enough to understand and accept situational knowledge and information that goes beyond our own. - Good faith communication requires that we seek to understand the meaning behind a statement or claim or writing. If the only thing we were doing is filtering through our own lens, then good faith communication would not be possible. It would not matter what the other communicator intends to communicate. What on earth, then, would even be the point of communicating with one another? This is not how we live our lives when we are interacting with other people, and that is not how we should read a text. - Thankfully, postmodernism is not the only type of scholarship out there. There are two forms of “historically-oriented” biblical scholarship. - There is Comparative/contextual materials…where we get into the author’s thought world and then there’s… - Literary analysis. And when we do a literary analysis, we’re looking at design, we’re looking at style, we’re looking at the strategies that a writer would use, and we’re looking at poetics…things of that nature. So with these two historically-oriented tools, we can actually do quite a bit with our biblical studies that many of us have never done before. - And here’s an aside: For many of us, in-depth Bible study has come in the form of word studies. And these are good and helpful and useful. “Word studies” are a great gateway into studying the Bible more in depth, but they are also limiting. They give you the English glosses or translations for that word but it cannot tell you which translation to choose or how it’s actually defined or how the glosses are related. (unknown) - Also, they will only give you that exact word, not similar words that might be related. - Word studies will not tell you associated ideas or concepts with that word. - Word studies can box you into word choices (being concerned more with semantics) rather than patterns, themes, and concepts. - Word studies rely on a particular translation. So, keep doing word studies if you’re doing them. If you’re not, then start doing them. Just know that they are a specific tool and that you have more tools that you can use. Let’s take a closer look at literary analysis and how that can be used to fuel our studies. There are so many things we can do with literary analysis. Narrative analogy is one of those things. - Here is a quote from Brian Sigmon’s disseration Between Eden and Egypt - “Narrative analogy is when an author shapes two or more characters, stories, scenes, or other aspects of a text [so that they] bear a significant amount of resemblance to one another, inviting further comparison between the two. The comparison sheds new light on both aspects of the text, highlighting parallels, foreshadowing, reversal, progression, or various other effects generated by their mutual resemblance and difference. Through this device, to quote Robert Alter, ‘one part of the text provides oblique commentary on another.’” —Brian Sigmon, disseration: Between Eden and Egypt end quote - We can think of many examples of narrative analogy in modern movies today, particularly in epic stories. The more critical or fatigued of us might suggest that these things are lazy writing or put there for nostalgia’s sake—maybe you continue to be a die-hard Star Wars fan, believing that the repeated story lines are brilliant writing, or you believe the movie makers are just cashing in on the same tropes without doing new work. I just watched the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie coming out and noticed quite a few throw backs to previous movies—are they merely nods to nostalgia or will they be integrated into the plot in ways that deepen it? - Look at something like the Lord of the Rings—themes are repeated, but often with new twists that suggest something underlying that subtly changes. Look at the ring temptation scenes—every character who faces this moment gives into the ring with different results…not identical but similar. Smeagol turns into a murderer. Bilbo does a great job at resisting the ring, but he is wounded. Boromir loses it and dies. Gandalf, Galadrial, and Aragorn manage to resist it. Frodo is conquered by the ring much like Smeagol but he is not morally or mortally wounded and manages to live rather than die. - This is genius story writing and this is what we see done in the Bible. Similarities are important to note—but so are differences. - Genesis’ impact is very large through the Bible. It is the most quoted or cross-referenced book. - This makes sense if it’s the earliest book and the foundational book…but the quotes and cross-references might not always be there in the ways or for the purposes that we expect. - For instance, Adam is mentioned by name only a handful of times. If we’re coming at the narrative of Adam being *the entire reason for sin in all of creation*, a position that many take, that seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? - Noah is the same; but Abraham and Jacob, they’re mentioned *all over*. - Why would the *patriarchs* be more important? - How does the primeval history of Gen 1-11 fit into the purpose and narrative of the Bible? - These are things we will hopefully look more at as the podcast goes. For now we’re going to look at Genesis. ## Overview of Genesis: ### Name - Since the Bible is a book—that means it’s literature—we’re going to look at it as such. And really it’s more sensible to talk about the Bible being a library of books. Written by different authors, for different purposes, at different times. We’re going to start by looking at the book of Genesis. - The Jewish name of the book of Genesis comes from the first word, *bereshit*, “in the beginning” (though the meaning of the phrase is debated, but that’s not our point here) - There is an older Jewish name, *sepher maaseh bereshit*, “The Book of the Act of in the beginning” That’s a mouthful in English. - This name, *bereshit* or “in the beginning” is useful to give us a general idea of the purpose and intent of the book, though there are some questions we can ask here—is the beginning “just” the beginning of the world, or is it the beginning of something more specific? Is it just the beginning of the book? The beginning of the people of Israel? The beginning of salvation history? Maybe it’s all of the above. It may seem obvious that it’s the beginning of all creation—but we can follow along with the story and see that there’s a pretty specific story line that the book of Genesis—and really the whole Bible for that matter—are centered on. - The English name “Genesis” comes from Gen 2:4: “This is the book of the generations/origins of heaven and earth.” - That Greek word “generations” or “origins” is *geneseos*, Greek. - The LXX is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), which was translated into Greek before Jesus was born. The LXX uses this Greek word as the name for the book, and the Latin Vulgate transliterated the word (the Vulgate, that’s the translation of the Bible into Latin, which happened *after* Jesus; the Vulgate was translated in the late 300s). Transliteration is where you take a word in a foreign language and just transpose the sounds into your own language. So this word, the word we get “Genesis” from, it wasn’t Latin. It was Hebrew, translated into Greek, then **transliterated** into Latin, and finally translated into English. You see, we have both translation as well as transliteration going on, but we trace the patterns back and we get to the root meaning of the word, which means either generations or origins. You can see how both might apply. - The word means “generations,” which once that is pointed out you can hear the correlation…genesis, generations. And we’ve taken it to mean origin as well as generations, though the Greek word in the LXX means generations. It’s interesting that we’ve taken this word to make it actually equate pretty well to *bereshit*, the name of the book in Hebrew. - But the Hebrew word for “generations” is actually used quite a few times in Genesis and it makes up part of its structure. Let’s take a look at that now. ### Structure - There are actually a number of ways Genesis is structured. These different structures are not in conflict with one another but can be used to look at the text from different angles. I know I mentioned the generations, but let’s take a step back and look at the geographical structure first because it’s quite simple. - We have Gen 1-11 which occur in Babylonia - Gen 12-36 occur in Canaan - Gen 37-50 (or the Joseph narrative), that occurs in Egypt - It is interesting that the middle section is the biggest and the beginning and ending are both situated in “hostile” territory, though neither Babylon nor Egypt are working as Israel’s enemy in the way they will later (indeed, “Israel” is not even a nation yet). - A second way in which Genesis is commonly divided is between the “primeval history” of the first 11 chapters and the “ancestral narratives” of chapters 12 through 50. - A third way of looking at the structure of Genesis is through the linguistic division of generations or “toledoths,” a Hebrew word that is usually translated as “generations.” When you see the words “these are the generations of…” that’s the word *toledoth*. And when I bring up Hebrew or Greek, those who know more will have to forgive me for my pronunciation. I won’t promise to be an expert; I just do my best. Sometimes I can’t even pronounce English, so there’s that. - We will be talking about the *toledoths* in later episodes. We might think of these sections of Scripture similarly to how chapters work. The number of *toledoths* is interesting…as numbers frequently are in the Bible. The primeval history of Gen 1-11 contains five *toledoths* and the ancestral narratives of Gen 12-50 contain another five *toledoths*. - So what’s up with the generations? Most of us are not all that thrilled by reading the genealogical lists of the Bible (although the toldedoths aren’t always genealogical lists), but genealogical lists play a big part in structure, themes, and understanding the undertones of the text. - Though usually connected to a person, the toledoth, or chapter if you want to think about it like that, is not *about* that person but about the lineage or outcome of the line of that person. So you can see here why “origins” might be another way to translate this word. - You’ll notice the first “*toledoth*” of the Bible is not about a person at all, but about the “generations of the heavens and the earth,” in Gen 2:4. What follows isn’t *about* the heavens and the earth. - In his commentary on Genesis, Arthur Fruchtenbaum says, “The first *toledoth* is the *toledoth* of the heavens and the earth, meaning ‘what became of creation,’ and what became of creation was a return to chaos.” - I like that. But the “generations of the heavens and the earth” could also be a reference to the fact that Adam came from dust. Again, we don’t have to choose between options here but each can inform our reading in different ways. So there’s our basic structure—it might be helpful to read Genesis in these sections, sit down and read each section one at at a time, or cross boundaries between sections to see what happens there. But however we divide the text, these sections can help us understand what the text is trying to do or say. It can help us find the text’s *purpose*. ### Purpose - Just like trying to categorize the ways in which people have seen the Bible, there are many ways in which Genesis has been viewed. And again, accepting one view does not mean we need to reject another. (But neither do we need to accept all views; the question is, which views will the *text itself* support and which do not? The question after that becomes how likely the perspective is, based on information we know of the text—which includes the situation of the text.) We’re going to look at a few ways people have interpreted Genesis. - Arthur Fruchtenbaum, who wrote the *Ariel Bible Commentary,* suggests that the main theme of Genesis is blessing and cursing. - The nation of Israel is to bless all the nations - Covenants have both blessings and cursings. - We see that evil brings evil and good brings good. - Fruchtenbaum further suggests six purposes of Genesis: - Genesis declares the nature of God - It declares the nature of God’s people - It shows the beginning of covenant - It describes Israel’s historical and theological basis - It unveils the destiny of the people of Israel - And it functions as prologue for the book of Exodus (and I’d suggest the whole Pentateuch and the Bible as a whole) - These lists, of themes and purposes, all originate from looking at the text and—importantly—can be traced throughout the book. It’s important to see that the purposes and themes are essential to the text and embedded into it. And, also importantly for the Bible, the themes and purposes of Genesis are integral to the themes and purposes of the Bible as a whole. - So here’s my point here…if the purpose or theme we are suggesting for the book is not essential to and embedded within the story—maybe it’s not a purpose at all. Something to think about. - Genesis is a deep book and it contains so much. Some other themes of Genesis that we will discuss later are: Sacred space, archetypes and patterns, and the universal revelation of God (which is not dependent on culture or time) ## The Bible and Science - What is missing, so far, in this discussion? How do we, today, tend to talk about the book of Genesis—particularly the beginning chapters? … Science! Where is the science? - In our post-modern era, the first thing we think of when we think of the first chapter of Genesis is, basically, science. This is, after all, the creation of the universe and that is something we tend to be very interested in. - But where is the science—or even the interaction of God with the physical cosmos, or the concern for the physical world for that matter—that ought to flow from the first chapter through the rest of the book, if science were a theme or pattern? - Maybe that’s unfair, though. Maybe there’s a different way to put this, a way which I’m missing or not framing correctly, but it sure seems to me that a lot of people today are awfully adamant about Genesis 1 being a chapter about watching God design the physical universe, as if it is *really important* that we know that light was floating around prior to celestial bodies and that birds and fish were created on a different day than animals and humans. - In fact, it seems that it’s ***so*** important to know these things that if we don’t acknowledge this **is** a birds-eye-view of creation, then the entire Bible, the entire idea of God revealing himself to mankind, the entire idea of our Savior coming…all of that is false if Gen 1 isn’t a revelation of on-the-ground creation. I know, in the beginning there was no ground, there were no birds, but you get my point here. - And honestly, I see this point, too. If God didn’t dictate this chapter, then *how could we have gotten any of this information*? There is no way beyond direct revelation that we could *know* about the literal physical creation since this chapter is not written from the perspective of any human’s personal experience who is writing it. And that seems fair, right? - But here’s my question. Why does it matter? Why would this information be so crucial for God to communicate? What is the point? What does this contribute to the purpose of Genesis? To be honest, looking at all the purposes and meanings in Genesis…to me, looking at it as a science book is the *least* interesting. I can’t see anywhere in the Bible where God decided to download knowledge just for the sake of knowledge. And that’s what the days of creation feel like to me when we just say, “Well it had to happen like that *because it says so*. We can’t believe in anything except this literal order.” - Well it seems to me that the order of creation is probably a little more interesting than esoteric knowledge. Did God want to put this in the Bible simply to ensure we didn’t, heaven forbid, believe in evolution later? That…that is rather self-serving and self-involved. - Anyway, *are* there other explanations—other explanations that take a high view of Scripture because frankly that’s what we are interested in here—other explanations that could explain Gen 1 from a perspective that is not “God downloading information to the writer”? Indeed there are. - The thing is, we forget we have a particular perspective today. Without realizing it, we see the world scientifically. “Truth” is equated with material fact, chronological time, cause and effect. Take a moment and picture something else. Picture truth coming, instead, through story. Picture this as *an* option; I’m not saying it’s *the* option or the only option or that it’s necessarily this way, but I’m trying to get you to think differently. Maybe think about the *Chronicles of Narnia*. Is that truth? Maybe you’ll say, “It’s an allegory…it points to a real truth, but the real truth has to be in the Bible; Jesus isn’t a lion, for crying out loud.” - What if story is how the biblical authors thought, though? Okay…Not that Jesus is a four-footed lion, but that he is the lion of Judah. We’re still considering the importance of allegory. What if you lived in a world where allegory, story, narrative, was what held truth…who cares about dry physical facts? Fit them into the narrative as you can, but the facts that don’t fit—they don’t matter. What if the people of God were hearing the stories of creation around them and they thought, hang on a second, *that’s* not how it happened; let’s fix this. We gotta write our own story that shows how *God* created. They knew who really created, and they wanted to transmit this information to the people around them. *God wanted them to communicate that, too.* He wanted them to know that he was the one who created, no one else, that he is the source of order. And they communicated that in a particular way, in a way that made perfect sense to the people around them. - Okay, end of thought experiment. - Now, of course…did the original readers think that Gen 1 explained a reality that they could have looked at somehow if they had a time machine? Probably! I mean, maybe they didn’t know about Deloreans and time machines, but if they did, they’d probably think yeah that happened and that’s what we’d see. Why not? But still…they thought differently than we do, and it’s important to acknowledge that. It’s hard to communicate *different thinking.* But hello, post-modernists, I still believe it’s possible. Even if it’s not perfect, we can get it. What is the point of what they were saying? God is sovereign; God is creator; and throughout the text we’re going to see how the things of creation still echo through time and history. These will be literary elements that will bring us back to the idea of God creating (or, in the new context, re-creating, creating anew); creation is an essential theme throughout the Bible and what matters here is not the scientific facts but the words and images and patterns that are brought to mind later in the text. (26e5-a) - This is a hard topic to convey. You’re now sitting there thinking that I completely reject the idea of God creating in six days; that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying that the biblical text can’t support this as an option…that’s what I’m concerned with, what the biblical text can support. “Was it a literal six days?” I mean, I think yes, the Bible was talking about six literal, physical days and thus sure, it’s possible God created the world in this order. I don’t see why not; I’m not suggesting that this isn’t an option, okay? It’s God; he can do what he wants. I’ll admit, it’s not my preferred option, but I’m certainly not taking it off the table. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me either way—if we somehow found conclusive proof that it wasn’t six literal days, then that’s not going to affect my faith. That’s what I’m saying. But that is the danger of the idea that this is the *only* legitimate interpretation—because when people learn that there are other options and they’re swayed by evidence this way or that…it *does* affect their faith. - Here’s the thing…the Bible is true; however, *your interpretation is not the Bible.* Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong…it’s an interpretation. If we can’t accept that *our interpretations* are not infallible, then we might run into some problems. - Let’s go back for a moment to the six purposes of Genesis according to Fruchtenbaum’s commentary. I’m going to list them in reverse order. - Genesis serves as a prologue to the book of Exodus. There is one obvious connection to the days of creation between Exodus and Genesis—the idea of the Sabbath. “If God didn’t literally rest on the seventh day, then why should the *people* rest?” you might say. Well, this depends on what it means that God rested…I don’t think God literally abstained from cooking food for himself, so already our literal example is breaking down… - Genesis unveils the destiny of the people of Israel. Okay; that really doesn’t have much obvious connection to the first chapter of Genesis beyond the fact that people had to exist for Israel to exist. - Genesis describes Israel’s historical and theological basis. Check. Would be pretty hard for Israel to exist if the universe wasn’t created, but again this isn’t all that specific. - Fourth point…Genesis is the beginning of the covenant. Well that seemed to happen after Gen 1. - Genesis declares the nature of God’s people…again, not all that specific to Gen 1. - The last…or rather first in Fruchtenbaum’s list…the purpose of Genesis is that it declares the nature of God. - Here’s where I see some of you say, well here we go, this is why Gen 1 has to be literal, because if it’s not, then we can’t accept that God is truthful and factual in his revelation. You might go on to suggest that if anything in the record of historical Israel is false, anything at all, then that casts doubt on the Messiah, Israel’s real presence in Egypt, etc. etc. - Okay, this seems reasonable. But…at what point in time would God have found it necessary to explain science? This is a real question. He’s not going to tell them anything that they don’t understand. - Let’s do another thought experiment. Let’s say God did create things via billions of years and through a process of evolution. How do we imagine that God would communicate that knowledge to a pre-scientific people? Presumably, Adam was created with some data pre-installed in his brain. Could he do calculus? Why on earth would he? That doesn’t seem too necessary to an agrarian society. - (Of course, there’s the option of the day-age in Genesis and we’ll get to that another time.) - Here’s my question…it is truly a ***falsehood*** or a ***lie*** to conform to a culture or person’s preconceptions of the cosmos? - Some of you are going to say, yes, unequivocally! - So why is there a dome that seems to hold back an ocean above the earth? - We read in Gen 1:6-7: “And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.” - Then you have Ps 148:4: “Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!” - Job 37:18: “Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?” - Oh, these are figurative, you say? Interesting. And soooo, why can’t Gen 1 be figurative in some way, as well? Why is it that God can be described as spreading out the heavens like a tent (in Isa 40:22 or Ps 104:2) but we don’t actually need to think that the heavens are a real tent? In short, why does Gen 1 get a hard pass on figurative language when we’re okay with it elsewhere? - Now, I’d agree that we need to take care with figurative language…I’m not suggesting that we can just deny historicity on the point of “it’s just figurative.” But here’s the thing…no one is denying the *reality* of creation. We’re all here, aren’t we? - I’m not trying to pick on Fruchtenbaum here; he’s got some really great stuff in his commentary. But he writes that we can’t “snip out the first 11 chapters” simply because they go against the grain of science. He says that if we did, we’d do “major damage” to Scripture, theology, and the “credibility of Jesus.” He says, “If He [Jesus] was wrong about Gen 1-11, then he could not be the Messiah he claimed to be.” - Okay, fair enough, but I don’t see most people who disagree that the Bible is teaching science…I don’t see those people, people with a high view of Scripture, remember, I don’t see them trying to “snip out” these chapters because of it. We don’t do away with Gen 1-11 “because of science.” We don’t have to. It doesn’t, in fact, do “damage” to Scripture, theology, *or* Jesus to suggest he wasn’t quoting Genesis *in order to do science.* - Where in the Bible is it foretold that the Messiah would confirm science or historicity? “We’ll believe Abraham was a real person once the Messiah tells us so.” *That’s not how it works.* - And from the other angle, we don’t need to limit our scientific thinking because of what we see in the Bible, either. If we did, why would we ever have done work with the brain and cognition? (Thinking comes from the kidneys, right??) If we did, why not accept that the world is flat and we might as well not try to sail around it? Why believe there are continents on the other side of the ocean when God clearly drew all the land together into one place? Why don’t we try to breed goats in front of stripped sticks, like Jacob did in Genesis 30 in order to get the coat patterns we prefer? - Genesis isn’t a textbook and doesn’t need to be correct on these points. - Whether or not we can describe or understand these events scientifically, the creation of the cosmos and the creation of Israel weren’t accidents. - Ultimately, what matters for creation? God is not concerned with the material world for its own sake—it is a means to an end, not an end itself. Humanity and life is what matters. Why isn’t one of the purposes of Genesis to declare *how* the cosmos is made? Because what matters is *who* created it, that it *was* created, and it was created via *order*. ## Structure of the Days of Creation - All right. Enough with my soapbox on how the Bible isn’t a science book. I needed to get that off my chest sooner rather than later and no doubt I’ll find a time to bring the soapbox out again. But right now we’re actually going to take a closer look at Genesis 1 and the structure of the days of creation. This is super fun; I hope you think so, too. - We’re going to start in the second verse of Genesis. We’ll actually leave the first verse for another day. - Genesis 1:2 (ESV) 2The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. - Okay, so the earth was without form and void. Some other translations say formless and empty. To our ear, these seem like they’re just describing the same thing. Things are just not ordered yet. (Remember how we talked about parallelism? Maybe that’s what this is.) - But let’s look at the Hebrew. These words are “*tohu va vohu*.” If you listen to other podcasts or have any introduction to Hebrew at all, these words might be quite familiar. “*Va*” means “and.” So we have “*tohu*” which means formless and “*vohu*” which means empty. It’s fun to say, too, very poetic. *Tohu va vohu.* - *Tohu* means it’s a desert, there’s no order, it’s not fit for human habitation. It’s unordered and without form. - *Vohu* means empty, uninhabited—that’s important—void is the word we often see, but that word might have other mental images, so maybe “empty” is a better word to use. - So why am I focused here? Why do these words, formless and empty, matter? Because the *rest of the chapter* hinges on these words. - This would be easier if it wasn’t audio, but we’ll do what we can, and somewhere I’ll be putting up a chart that shows this structure, so if you go to my website or fb page, you can probably find that. But most of you are just listening and can’t easily go do that, but it’s there. - We’ll start by reading some of the text. We’ll be reading from the ESV today. We’ll start after the tohu va vohu and the Spirit of God hovering. - Genesis 1:3–5 (ESV) 3And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. - Okay, the first day. Light and dark were separated, day and night, that’s the first day. - Genesis 1:6–8 (ESV) 6And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. - The second day…this expanse, “heaven,” separates water. Creation seems to be going a bit slowly, doesn’t it? Is that just me? Couldn’t the expanse just have been created in verse 1? Let’s move on to - Genesis 1:9–13 (ESV) 9And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. - Here in the first part of the third day, we have God gathering water and dry land appearing. The second part of the day has the earth sprouting plants. Suddenly the pace of creation has picked up by quite a bit! - Genesis 1:14–19 (ESV) 14And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. - Fourth day, pretty sure all of this is supposed to be the stars and the sun and moon. This is where, as a child, I started to get really confused. Everything started out slowly in creation, then sped up with plants, and now here we have astronomy. And I knew that plants need sun, so what is up with this? I mean, if it’s only a day, plants can go without light…but it’s not that light *wasn’t* around, because that was mentioned on day one…It seems strange to spend a whole day of creation here, honestly. Yeah, the sun, moon, and stars are a lot to create, but unlike how humans work, I don’t think the amount of material God is creating each day is the limiting factor here. If God was the source of light to sustain plants, then what’s the point of day four?? There is something about ruling the day and the night—that seems odd terminology. Oh well, let’s let our confusion sit and move on. - Gen 1:20-23 (ESV) And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. - Fifth day…fish and birds. - Genesis 1:24–27 (ESV) 24And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. - Okay the sixth day we have land animals and humans. Like day three, this is a pretty long passage of creation and it seems to be split up into two sections. Day three had the land gathered and the plants made. Here we have land animals made, and then humans made. - If we continued reading the chapter, we’d see some instructions about food and the seventh day where God rests. - I’ll be honest, this still gives me headaches to try to remember this if all I’m doing is listing them out in order. Now, *could* God have done it exactly this way? He’s God, so…yes. Yes, he could have. Not gonna claim otherwise. - But if he did, he did it with some interesting things in mind. Because, contrary to what my young mind thought, there was a logical order to this. - Remember *tohu va vohu*? Formless and empty. The world had no form, and no inhabitants. No form didn’t mean it didn’t look like a nice, neat ball…it meant that it didn’t have structure that was suitable to inhabitants. - Let’s look at days 1-6 again. - Day 1: Light and dark, day and night. (no inhabitants) - Day 2: Dome separating waters above with waters below. (still, no inhabitants) - Day 3: Waters below gathered and dry land appears; we have plants. (So, are plants “inhabitants”? That’s a good question The ANE would not have seen plants as “living”…they didn’t move. So that’s a disconnect between our views and theirs…when I was younger, I thought plants were the first “living things,” the first occupants. But if you don’t see them as alive, then up til now, we still have no life.) - What happens on Day 4? - Day 4: The sun and moon and stars are created! But wait…I thought we were looking for inhabitants. How are these celestial bodies described, though? They are called lights to rule the day and night. (We don’t see these as inhabitants, but the ANE would have thought of them as deities, spiritual beings…from our perspective on earth, the sun, moon, stars, and planets, they all move!…ah-haaaa) “Moving” means “life.” - Day 5: fish and birds (inhabitants!) - Day 6: land creatures and humans - Do you see what happened? Creation went first from formless (without structure) to structured, and then it went from structured-but-empty to structured-and-filled. The opposite of *tohu va vohu*. - Is that not the coolest thing ever? I mean, my ten-year-old brain would have *loved* that. - But not only that…look at how the days line up! - Day 1: light and dark - Day 4: lights rule the day and night - Day 2: waters above, waters below - Day 5: birds and fish - Day 3: land and plants (food) - Day 6: land animals and humans - God created structure for life, he provided the means for ideal existence, and then he filled those areas appropriately. He did this in an ordered manner where each resident had its appropriate place before putting them in that place. (Interesting how the garden was made and *then* Adam was placed within it.) So I’m sorry, you’ll need to forgive me if I can’t quite care if that is how it actually happened on earth or not…I’m too excited with the idea that *this actually makes sense*. - Right after the sixth day is finished, the text says: - Genesis 2:1 (ESV) 1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all *the host* of them. - Once again, two separate things—zones of habitation, and inhabitants. It’s sensible and ordered and this would surely make sense to someone in an agrarian society…you don’t put livestock into a place til it’s ready for them to live in it. Otherwise they won’t be able to live. - So what’s up with the seventh day? Well, there’s a lot to that. The first verse of chapter 2 seems to sum up all of physical creation to pair with the seventh day that follows. If physical space is designed, then *so is time*. Sabbath, being the goal of creation, is emphasized by a sevenfold structure of the chapter…it begins with a seven word sentence, it contains seven paragraphs, the Sabbath is emphasized three times on the seventh day, and so on. The day does not have a natural, single pair, but rather is paired with two groups of three. These numbers are also important throughout the text; they are not accidental. - Adding stuff after this, up til the Summary…. ## Day 7 of Creation - What does it mean for the seventh day to be paired with the other days of creation? - We say that the sixth day of creation is the culmination because this is the creation of man, the pinnacle of God’s creation. And this is true. Redemption centers on the need of mankind. The purpose of creation is to bring mankind to rule over creation, in association with God’s will. - Kathleen O’Connor’s commentary on the book of Genesis states: - Each day of God’s labors, with small variations, follows the same general linguistic structure until the creation of humans when the change in format marks humans as the climax of creation. The seventh day, however, concludes the week with the biggest structural and linguistic variation of all. The seventh day is a day unto itself. *Kathleen M. O’Connor, Genesis 1–25A, ed. Leslie Andres and Samuel E. Balentine, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Incorporated, 2018), 42.* - She notes that the first six days of creation are summed up in Gen 2:1: - Genesis 2:1 (ESV) 1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. - Following this is the statement about day seven: - Genesis 2:2–3 (ESV) 2And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. - Nothing is created on the seventh day, but blessings flow forth from it. - The traditional Jewish interpretation of the days of creation has the seventh day rather than the sixth as the climax. Jewish practice, of course, places great emphasis on the day of the Sabbath. - It is not necessary, however, to see this interpretation as being at odds with the idea that humanity and the sixth day is the climax. The climax of active creation is mankind. The creation of sacred time is the seventh day—but it’s also so much more than that. - First, what is sacred time about? Sacred time is about liturgy of some type. It is about festivals of remembrance. It is about taking time out of the hustle and bustle of our normal focuses in life and focusing fully on what God has done. Honoring God. - That’s what the sabbath is about, that is what the seventh day is about. But again, it’s also more than what we do in response to God. - Let’s read about the Sabbath in Exodus: - Exodus 20:10–11 (ESV) 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. - Clearly we have the Sabbath connected to the days of creation. God’s resting and blessing of the day is the reason the people of Israel were to observe the Sabbath. - Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary has this to say: - The sequence of “six working-days” and a “seventh [sabbath] rest-day” indicates universally that every human being is to engage in an *imitatio Dei*, “imitation of God,” by resting on the “seventh day.” “Man” (ʾādām), made in the *imago Dei*, “image of God,” (Gen 1:26–28) is invited to follow the Exemplar in an *imitatio Dei*, participating in God’s rest by enjoying the divine gift of freedom from the labors of human existence and thus acknowledging God as his Creator. *Gerhard F. Hasel, “Sabbath,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 851.* - The focus of the day isn’t us, but us as the imagers of our Creator. - The keeping of the Sabbath in Exodus was emphasized with the giving of the manna in the wilderness. The people were to gather twice as much on the day before the Sabbath so that they would not need gather on the day of rest. The Sabbath was to emphasize God’s provision. - But if the Sabbath was to emphasize God’s provision towards his people, then why did God rest? What did it mean for God to *rest*? God wasn’t acknowledging the provision from anyone else. - If you listen to other podcasts or read much modern theology, you’ve probably already heard this before…contextual material from the ANE is getting more widespread these days and I love it… - This is primarily from the work of John Walton—at least he is the most outspoken proponent of the idea that the work of creation in Genesis 1 is describing the idea of God building the cosmos as a temple. - If you look at comparative literature in the ANE, temples were often dedicated in—you guessed it—seven days, the seventh day, of course, being the climax where the temple is fully dedicated and in use. - What’s the big deal with the comparison here? - The big deal is that in the ANE, a deity would rest in their temple. Walton suggests, in fact, that this is fundamentally the entire purpose of a temple. - Here’s a quote from Walton’s book, *The Lost World of Genesis One*: - What does divine rest entail? Most of us think of rest as disengagement from the cares, worries and tasks of life. What comes to mind is sleeping in or taking an afternoon nap. But in the ancient world rest is what results when a crisis has been resolved or when stability has been achieved, when things have “settled down.” Consequently normal routines can be established and enjoyed. For deity this means that the normal operations of the cosmos can be undertaken. This is more a matter of engagement without obstacles rather than disengagement without responsibilities. *Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One (The Lost World Series) (pp. 72-73). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.* - And this makes complete sense to us in reading the Bible, doesn’t it? The Bible is replete with God’s actions and engagement with his creation. He is not a deity who sits back and does nothing. - Another point to mention…note that every day up til now had an “evening and morning.” The seventh day remains open-ended; God has sat down to engage with creation and he has never stopped. - So why the uneven number of days? The seventh day does not have a natural single pair because it is meant to pair with the first six days since the entire purpose of creation is fulfilled with the installment of God’s reign and his active ruling and connection with his creation. - We image God through our observance of the Sabbath or the equivalent because we, too, are meant to rule in creation, under God’s rule and authority. Let me repeat that. We image God through our observance of rest because we, too, are meant to rule in creation. - This idea of active engagement with creation is **not** the idea of “I just need to Be Good til I get to heaven” or “I need to Be Good so that God isn’t angry at me.” Oh no. No no no. Our purpose isn’t to Be Good; our purpose is to engage with the world as God’s representatives, actively living out his will **not** because we fear punishment but because we *genuinely* have a real purpose that does real work in the real world. - How freaking cool is that? ## The Logic of Creation and Science - Alright; let’s bring all of this back up to where we started. - I said that I needed to see a logical order of creation in order to understand it. I’ve also hinted that I don’t particularly care for the idea that Gen 1 is scientifically describing the creation. And maybe you can understand why I feel that, since the purpose of mankind’s creation overshadows any intellectual interest in science. - However, you might still tell me that the logical order of creation I have laid out actually does fit very well into a more fundamentalist reading of Scripture. God created empty spaces and then he filled those spaces. Maybe that seems logical from a scientific mindset, as well. Why couldn’t or wouldn’t God have created the world empty and then filled the world? That makes sense, right? - First of all, to look at this question, we need to ask what is meant by “science.” In this case, what I mean by “science” is that if the Bible were *scientifically* describing the creation of the world, what a scientist of today would find in his investigations if he were able to perfectly perform those investigations and “prove” what happened at creation, that *would exactly conform* to what the Bible describes. It would mean that our scientific investigations—at least when they’re really, really well done—would indicate the kinds of things we see in the text. - It’s important to note that I am talking about modern science, the act of studying the world via the scientific method, which is not the same as ancient science. It’s not true that ancient people didn’t have science…which is simply the observation and explanation of the natural world…but their science is quite different than our science. Ancient science blurred the lines between natural observation and myth or story. Gen 1 being a story that explains the origins of the natural world, it does conform to the practice of *ancient* science. - Before going to the creation, let’s take a different example of ways we meld the Bible and modern science together. If we were trying to use the scientific method to prove the cosmology of the Bible, which suggests a flat earth, then all good scientific theories would support the fact that the earth is flat. Starting out with the assumption that the earth is flat, if anything we saw in the world seemed to suggest that the world was anything but flat, then there must be a gap in our scientific theory; the theory itself can’t be wrong; there’s got to be something that we are missing. For instance, in flat earth cosmology, the shadow on the moon from a lunar eclipse cannot be from the earth since in flat earth cosmology, both the sun and moon orbit above the flat disk of the earth, inside a hard dome. One explanation of the lunar eclipse from the flat earth perspective is that there is a mysterious “shadow object” that we rarely see, an object that is invisible to us unless it is in front of the moon. - How convenient that there is something completely invisible and undiscoverable by us which can describe this phenomenon of the lunar eclipse. It’s almost like they have to make things up to support their theory. (In case my sarcasm isn’t clear, that’s exactly what they are doing. As much as I like to try to give credit to possible interpretations, I give no credence to the flat earth movement.) - The flat earth “quote-unquote scientists” have “discovered” this mysterious shadow object simply by the fact that they could not otherwise explain a lunar eclipse in their worldview. - Some might suggest that this is similar to how the planet Pluto was discovered. The problem is, though…we actually *found* the planet Pluto and there is no other evidence, aside from lunar eclipses, that this mysterious “shadow body” exists. Also, regarding Pluto, there were no other legitimate competing theories which panned out as reasonable. - If you’re not aware of how Pluto was discovered, it’s a pretty interesting story. In the 1800s, a “wobble” to the orbits of Uranus and Neptune was discovered. Basically that means their orbits didn’t correspond to the math that the other planetary orbits worked with. In the early 1900s, Percival Lowell theorized that an unknown planetary body was affecting their orbits. He couldn’t actually see Pluto at the time. The search went on for over a decade before Pluto was finally seen in 1930. - So the idea from *flat earth world* is that, just because we don’t see this “shadow object” that causes eclipses, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! - But it’s funny…flat earthers will suggest that it’s =much more simple and elegant, (and thus much more “correct”) idea that the earth and the sun are both the same size so that they can explain solar eclipses…but they will turn around and insist that we need a more complex (and invisible) explanation for lunar eclipses. - Another major indication that “flat earth” is not science but something else is that they reject all interpretations that do not fit within their set theory. - If Pluto had not been found and other explanations for the anomalous orbits had come forward, good science would say that those other explanations ought to be favored rather than clinging to the pet theory. - Of course, scientists are human and they do cling to pet theories, but that’s beside the point. - My point is that science isn’t supposed to start with a theory and hold *only* to that theory. - If we cannot bring ourselves to entertain other theories, then we’re not doing science. - I actually think that a lot of Christians are okay with this…and so they don’t really want to do science in the way science has been defined, classically. - In that case, I’m amenable to momentarily changing my definition of science to fit the conversation with a fundamentalist perspective—the fundamentalist idea being that Gen 1 is scientifically factual, that God created in six days, in this exact order, probably 6000 years or so ago, etc. - In the interests of discussion, then, I hope it would be fair and acceptable to suggest that the fundamentalist can still do science, but their theories have to fit within the confined limitations of the six-day creation account in Gen 1. (I don’t personally feel this *ought* to be a necessary restriction on our study of the world, but I’m willing to grant the position in order to explore the idea to its fullness.) - If this were our approach, then, to learning about the world, we would expect that all discoveries that look correct would fit within this paradigm in some way. - There are actually quite a number of scientists out there that claim that this is exactly what they are doing, in one way or another. They are a minority, certainly, and I personally usually (though not *necessarily*) do not believe that their work is always as compelling as that which comes from some other scientists, but this *does* go on in science today. People who claim this work *isn’t* going on aren’t looking hard enough. - I’m going to admit that I don’t like how much this approach has in common with the method of the flat earth theorists. I think that a fundamentalist perspective is unnecessarily restrictive. It causes us to try to fit in outlying data into our theory rather than ever being able to question that our theory might be wrong in the first place. It doesn’t encourage the type of rethinking I was discussing in our last episode. - There are other ways that Christian scientists approach the intersection of the Bible and scientific investigation. One way is called condordism. Concordism has something in common with fundamentalism in sharing the idea that the Bible and science are both right, but the concordist will say that the fundamentalist has it backwards. Rather than restrict science by use of the text, the concordist uses science to interpret the text. So all scientific theories become open to the Christian scientist because whatever we find, surely we can then go back to the Bible and see how we find it there…somewhere. For instance, a Christian might believe in an old universe and take the biblical expression that the Lord “stretched out the heavens” to be a description of the expansion of space postulated by modern cosmology. - I personally reject condordism for the same reason I reject fundamentalism, because I don’t think an ancient person would have thought like that in the slightest and I don’t think it’s necessary for God to have told them to write things like this just for us today to be able to point to the text and show people how scientifically accurate it is. Scientific accuracy need not be a necessary selling point to the Bible. - Rather, I prefer to try to look at the text from the way that an ancient person would have seen it and from the perspective that the text was describing reality in a particular way that would then be reflected throughout Scripture….meaning that the text uses cultural imagery and descriptions and the biblical author—and editors—were interacting with people who already had some ideas in their minds. It makes much more sense to me that they were telling stories in a way that their culture commonly did. It makes *less sense* to me that we ought to mine the Bible for scientific information about the world. This is what I really mean about using the Bible as a textbook. This is what is done by some…they take the data in their text as their starting point and move into Doing Science from there. I simply do not see that this is warranted. - Of course, when I say this, someone will often ask, well why can’t God have orchestrated things in this way so that it all fit in with the way he knew in his omniscience that the ancient person would have understood? We can both be right! - It’s definitely possible. Though it seems random and self-serving to suggest this. Either way, I reject fundamentalism and condordism from a *personal interpretive perspective*; I don’t reject that they can—potentially—be valid readings of the text. As I’ve said before, it’s no skin off my nose if God really did create the world *exactly* as Gen 1 describes, step by step. - But I will say I *firmly* reject the idea that this is the necessary way we must interpret the text because anything less shows we don’t take Scripture “seriously.” - People who claim this confuse their interpretation with the inspired text. *Interpretations are not inerrant.* - What seems clear to me from evidence in the Bible, in the study of theologians and linguists and sociologists and natural scientists all throughout time, is that the Bible is more a theological document than it is anything else. Is it historical? In the sense that these events took place and people lived, yes. But I feel like we put our own modern selves into the text when we want to see these journalistic and evidential and materialistic explanations. - There is a real separation between myself and the world of the ancient writer and reader. Though we are separated, we are also intimately connected through the information that God is communicating through this timeless text. The order of creation is not practical information for living my daily life. The fact that God is the sovereign God of creation and order…that does matter to me on a daily basis. - I also find it a beautiful reality that God can communicate his truth within the context of a particular time and culture. Through whatever means, God meticulously created humankind—our world perfect for our habitation, our DNA doing what DNA does, our minds and brains and hearts structured in the best way possible for God to achieve his ultimate goals. But we also have a text of beautiful design, a text that was created by human hands participating with God. - And this is not only the story of the Bible’s creation, but the story of the life of each one of us…living our lives in participation with the true story that God is writing. ## Summary - We covered a lot of material in this episode. If it was a bit too much to follow easily in audio form, you can go find me on my website and other places where I hope to have some graphics and other things that lay out the structure of Genesis as a whole, some information about the purpose of the text, a chart laying out the days of creation, and other material. Feel free to contact me, as well, at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to email you additional information. You can even request some topics I might cover in future episodes. ## Audience Interaction? - We will, of course, be talking more about literary design, Genesis 1 and this cool structure of creation, what it means for God to rest, and many other topics. - Next week, though, we’re going to veer into a book review. Because in my circles it’s gotten some interest, we’ll be looking at Jonathan Cahn’s new book, *The Return of the Gods.* I’ll discuss a bit of the content of the book—yes, even revealing his great mystery!—as well as reacting to it and how I feel it lines up, or not, with Scripture. ## Outro - Thanks for listening; you can like and subscribe and find me on Facebook of all places at Genesis Marks the Spot. I hope you join me next week and if you’re listening to this freshly cut, Merry Christmas!