The Lost and Found World of Creation Texts (Views of Creation Series, Part 1) - Episode 010

- Hey, and welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, the podcast where we are raiding the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and today we are going to be discussing creation. That’s always a loaded and fun topic, don’t you think? We’ve touched on creation before, of course, and we’re going to do so again and again and again because there is so much to think about and so many views to explore. In this episode, I’m going to get into some of the common ways that people interpret Genesis 1, but because this is a massive topic which requires a lot of exploration to give each of these interpretations their due course, we’re going to do an overview but then focus on one particular view. So, today’s main focus is going to be on the functional view of creation, most notably espoused by Dr. John Walton. This view is the one that I personally feel is most applicable to our purposes in this podcast—that is, in terms of biblical theology, which means reading the Bible in its original context. I wish to stress, again, that this is not the only way to read the Bible, but it is a way and a way which requires some unpacking due to its unfamiliarity and need for background information. I also feel like this is the view that might be most new to those who are beginning to explore biblical theology. So we will talk about these things like the literal six-day creation in-depth, as well, but since that is most familiar to people, I don’t really feel like starting there. Oh, and by the way, by saying that I think this view is “most applicable” to our studies here, I’m not suggesting it’s necessarily the “right” view. Just so we get that out of the way. Even if it is the right view… Okay, okay, I’m kidding. Sort of. - Anyway, if we’ve got time in this episode, I also want to get into some of the parallel ANE sources directly because I think that will help flesh things out very well. - Now, before we begin, for those interested, I will be putting up some things on my site which I hope will help you follow along visually or just to help you keep up with all this information. I realize that this might be data-overload for some, but keep in mind that we’re going to be coming back to a lot of this stuff. When we discuss the other views of creation more in-depth, I will repeat some of this overview, hopefully with some nuances each time because thinking about the same thing from a slightly different angle or with different data in hand will help us think holistically and critically. And, even if you’ve already studied this stuff in depth, maybe there are some points you haven’t seen before. I know that this is usually the case for me. With each of these episodes I put together, I’m learning as well and I appreciate all of you who are coming along with me. ## Overview of Views of Creation ### Literal Six-Day Creation - For sake of brevity and consistency, I’m going to call the first view of creation the “literal view of creation.” There are, perhaps, better ways to describe this, more complete and descriptive ways, but I’m settling on this. By calling this the “literal” view, I do not suggest that the other views cannot or are not literal. I do not suggest that the other views are simply symbolic or metaphoric or whatever else. I’m using the term “literal,” as a distinctive label, that’s all. This is literally what you read in the “quote-unquote” “plain” English reading. I could call it the “plain” reading or the “fundamentalist” reading or the “literal six-day creation,” but I’m pretty sure that by calling it the “literal view,” you’ll know what I’m referring to and that’s what matters, okay? - One of the best defenders for this view that I have come across is Dr. Joseph Pipa. We’ll get into more of his work when we go deeper into this view, but for now I’ll settle on some basic quotes from him. He says, quote: - “When I lecture on this topic, I’m often asked the question, “Well, so what? What’s so important about one view over against the others as long as the people who hold to the nonliteral views of Gen 1 hold to the inerrancy of Scripture? Does it really matter?” I think it does for a number of reasons, and the first is the premium that Scripture places on the supernatural and sovereign character of God’s creating work.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - This isn’t the place to try to analyze this view, but I do want to point out the idea that Pipa here seems to be suggesting that only this literal reading of Scripture will suffice to grant the supernatural and sovereign nature of God’s creation. Now, maybe that’s taking this quote too far; perhaps he is only suggesting that this view does this and he’s not trying to comment on the other views. However, I bring up this point so that when we look into the other views of creation, we can ask ourselves this—does each view, in fact, present God as having a supernatural and sovereign character? Would this be a fair criticism to place against these views, because I agree that the Bible does present God’s work in supernatural form and that all of his work places his sovereignty on display. So any framework we have for creation ought, also, to reflect that. - For the record, Pipa does go on to compare the literal view with what he says are “nonliteral” views—this is one reason I chose to call this the literal view, because he himself presents it that way—and he says that nonliteral views do not do many things that the literal view does, and I promise that we will get into all of that eventually. Another of his claims is that nonliteral views are “not easily grasped by your average church member.” He says that this undermines people’s confidence. I think that’s an unfortunate perspective. I personally feel that it undermines peoples’ confidence to suggest that they cannot understand something. You tell a child that they’re unintelligent and they’ll believe you and live up to that potential! I think you, dear listener, are quite capable of thinking for yourself and understanding many difficult concepts. You are capable of thinking about things from different perspectives and analyzing them. In fact, I’m so confident in you that I think you can go investigate all these things yourself, that yes, you might need someone to set you on the road because no human ever has been able to think of everything themselves or gather all data, but once on that path, you are very capable of travelling down it. - At any rate, I don’t think we need to do a whole lot of description for this interpretation. God created in six literal days, in the exact process that we see written down on the first page of the Bible, and that’s that. ### Literary Framework - So our next interpretive framework for viewing creation can be called the “literary framework” view. Two of the proponents of this view are Mark D. Futato and Meredith Kline. We will probably get into both of their work when we do our episode centered on the literary framework of Genesis 1. “Literary” is not “literal.” Literary refers to literature. - Because this view is not going to be familiar to all of my listeners, I need to do a brief summary of its purposes. The literal view that we just discussed approaches Genesis 1 and asks “What happened in creation?” The literary framework view, on the other hand, approaches Genesis 1 and asks, “What does Genesis 1 teach?” The purpose here is to look primarily at the theological messaging of the text. - Futato brings forth a quote from Galileo who said, “The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” Futato also quotes John Calvin who said, “The Holy Spirit has no intention to teach us astronomy.” - Did you know that there are different types of **causes**? There are what we call “ultimate” causes and then there are “proximate” causes. A proximate cause is the immediate thing that makes something happen. An ultimate cause is the cause behind the cause. The proximate cause of a cake is the action of mixing the ingredients together and baking them inside a pan. The ultimate cause of a cake is a birthday. - So, as Futato explains, the text of the Bible tells us the ultimate cause of creation—God. It doesn’t speak to the proximate cause of creation, which would be the scientific causes of creation. The ultimate cause makes use of proximate causes. - When we study the literary framework, we treat the Bible like it is a narrative text, telling a cohesive story, so the important things to note aren’t dry facts but how those facts are presented in a literary design. If you listened to my second episode, we got into some of that with the days of creation. - We’ll move on from this perspective, remembering that we will return to it again in a later episode. Please note, too, that just because these are separately presented doesn’t mean we need to pick one interpretation and reject the others. These views are not all opposites. You can probably see how someone might hold to both the literal and literary frameworks at the same time if they were so inclined. ### Analogical Days - Our next point of examination is that of the “analogical days.” I have seen this presented by C. John Collins. And by the way, all of these perspectives I’ve presented so far are found in the Logos Mobile Ed Course “Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on [Its] Meaning and Significance.” These lectures are where I am getting many of my quotes from. And I try, also, in my transcripts of the episodes to give the citation information, as well, if you’re interested in delving in yourself. - The idea behind this view, the analogical days, is that the seven days of creation are analogous to the typical human workweek. The seven days of Gen 1 are to be the pattern which we are to use for our own lives. - A quote from Collins: - “So the six days that precede set for us a pattern of God’s activity of working, and you can see that most clearly in the way each day ends: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day,” the second day, and so forth. Just like an Israelite, He’d start in the morning and He’d work until it was evening. Then He’d stop working, and then He’d rest during the nighttime. And then it was morning, and He’d start the next day. So you see God working just like He had told Israel to work.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - Collins suggests that we ought to look at the text and ask “How is the text supposed to be used?” That’s pretty similar to the literary framework’s question about suggesting that the purpose of the text is to teach. But this question here about use, that’s very practical. How would the ancient Israelite put this text into use in his life? In other words, “What was his application?” And considering that the next time we see the seventh day of creation mentioned is in reference to how the people were supposed to keep the Sabbath, this view of God’s week relating to the human week makes a great deal of sense. They are directly told that they are to pattern their week in reflection of God’s creative week. - We’ll get into details about this perspective later. Next up is no doubt our favorite perspective of all….. ### Evolutionary Creationism! - Hang on, that’s not your favorite?? It’s certainly got a lot of strong options connected with it! - And of course, presenting it this way is actually condensing a number of nuanced views together into one. Under this same umbrella, we might put things such as “intelligent design,” which is a particular view itself. Intelligent design is actually more of a scientific theory than it is a theological perspective, but some people don’t see much difference between separating science and theology and fair enough if that’s how one wants to go about things. - But, as interesting as science can get, here we are going to focus on what the Bible is saying. - So, the basic idea of “evolutionary creationism” as presented by Tremper Longman in that Logos Mobile Ed course I suggested before is not that the Bible teaches evolution per se, but that the Bible simply doesn’t tell us the mechanisms—or, remember, the proximal causes—of creation. - Here’s a quote from Longman as he discusses genre, which is something we’ve discussed before: - “there’s more than two options here, and often the discussion is posed as if there are only two options: either it’s literal history—just straightforward history describing how God literally created the cosmos and humanity—or it’s myth and has no connection to history. I hope that at the end of my talk you’ll realize that there are other options available to us.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - Longman goes on to discuss the genre of theological history: - “it’s talking about things that actually happened in space and time. It’s not myth; it’s not poetic without historical reference. It is theological history. And by emphasizing theological history, we mean that it’s history that focuses on God and His relationship with His people, as opposed to, say, political history, or military history, or economic history. My point is that theological history doesn’t undermine the idea that it’s actually referring to space and time events, and indeed, we need to take that seriously. ”However, I would go on—as we’re exploring the different signals that the author is sending us about how to take his words—I would go on to say that Gen 1–11 is different from Gen 12 and following in that it sends signals to us that it’s giving us a figurative description of these past events, not a literal description of these past events.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - Now, at this point you might wonder…why on earth is this called the evolutionary perspective when it sounds a whole lot more allegorical or figurative? I ask myself that same question. - Towards the end, Longman suggests that since Gen 1-11 are theological history rather than history done in a way we expect today, then this is why we are absolutely free to pursue the idea of scientific evolution. - He says: - “Genesis 1–3 presents a figurative description of actual historical events, but it doesn’t tell us how God did it. And therefore, I believe that we can turn to science and ask that question, which is why I personally would describe myself as an evolutionary creationist, because I don’t see any conflict between the Bible and evolutionary theory.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - He continues to say in response to some detractors: - “Now, as you might imagine, I’ve often been criticized by people who say that I bend the interpretation of the Bible to conform to science. I would respond by saying that science can sometimes actually help us read the Bible better. And here, I find extremely illuminating and helpful a quote from Pope John Paul II, who said, “Science can purify [our] religion; … religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - Longman shows this is in a practical message, referring to what happened to Galileo: - “There was kind of a kneejerk reaction to science here, rather than what, I think, theologians should do, which is to go back to Scripture and make sure we’re reading it correctly. Now, that doesn’t mean we bend it out of all proportions, but our doing that is based on the utter belief that Scripture and nature, when both are rightly interpreted—because, of course, Scripture needs to be interpreted as well as our understanding of nature—when both are rightly interpreted, then they’re not going to conflict with each other.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - So you see, in Longman’s framework, in part because of the idea of special and general revelation, science and the Bible ought to go hand-in-hand. But we do this not to limit ourselves in the realm of exploration. - Okay, I’ve probably brought out a bit too much information here already in this perspective. Suffice to say, we will be exploring it some more—though keep in mind I’m not interested in arguing for or against evolution and other scientific areas, but how can we read the Bible. ### Identity Accounts - There are, no doubt, many other views of creation we could hit upon here, but we’ve got to stop somewhere. Our final example and actual focus for today stems from the work of John Walton. Now, there are actually a few ideas here that are related to one another, but we’ll kind of tackle them one at a time, staring more broadly. Walton presents the idea that Genesis 1-2 is an “identity account” rather than an “origin account.” - Walton isn’t asking “What happened?” He isn’t asking “How did it happen?” He isn’t asking “What is the use of the text?” He isn’t asking, broadly, “What is the theological messaging?”—though his work does answer that directly. No, the two questions Walton brings to the text are, “What is the cosmos?” and “Who are we, as humans?” - Pausing here for a moment…isn’t it interesting that we can come to the text with such widely different questions? And depending on what we are asking of the text, we are going to get such different answers. Are there right or wrong questions to ask when approaching the Bible? I could say, no of course not! There are no stupid questions, right?? But…that doesn’t really make sense, because there are sensical and nonsensical questions. We can definitely be asking a question of the text that it is not prepared or intended to answer. However, there’s nothing wrong with asking the question—my suggestion is to ask ALL of the questions, but when we get back an answer that doesn’t concord to reality or experience or the rest of the text, that’s when we might ask ourselves if we’ve, in fact, asked the wrong question. It’s like, put it all out there and see what sticks! That’s not a bad method of investigation. - Okay, so “what is the cosmos?” and “who are we, as humans?” These aren’t asking how we got here; they aren’t really interested in material origins. Here we want to know what arose out of those material origins. Who or what came of God creating? ## Dive into Walton’s Framework Hypothesis ### Identity Accounts, Continued - Walton has very direct responses for his two questions. - “What is the cosmos?” It is made to be sacred space. God created the cosmos as a single, giant temple, his physical place of residence. I absolutely love the concept of sacred space and what it means for God to dwell in creation. This concept, along with the answer of “who are we?” are two things that flow from the first pages of the Bible through to the last pages and directly into our own daily lives. This is the story that we were all made to live within, the true story of God interacting with humanity, and us having real things to do in reality. There are many ways that this is expressed in Scripture; it is not just in sacred space, but sacred space is one way that this is shown. - And the question of, “Who are we?” We are the image of God, placed here to act as God’s representatives on earth. From Genesis to the climax of the incarnation of Jesus, to the book of Revelation and into the new creation and forever, we are the image of God. - And so, I ask myself…if we are ranking the questions that we could be asking of the Bible, what question could be more foundational than this? What question could matter more? What question could reach deep into our lives and create a framework within which we can view all of everything? - Well, you can see why I wanted to start here, with this interpretation. ### Biblical Authority - In his description of this framework, Walton begins with the topic of authority and how the Bible claims authority over us. - “We have to start out with that which is most important. We want to come to the biblical text to understand what its authority has for us. Whatever we gain in interpretation, we want to be able to say that we are well representing the authority of the text, that we are [being] faithful interpreters. How does that authority work? It’s pretty basic. God has decided to communicate. He has a message that He wants to offer us (revelation), and He chose to do that through human communicators; that’s how He chose to do it. And since He did that, these human communicators are vested with the authority of God. It’s God’s message; it’s God’s authority, but He’s put it in them, and therefore, we have to get it through them. We have to go through the communicators, the human authors, in order to get what God has. ”In that sense, we can understand that **the Bible is written for us but not to us.** We are supposed to gain from it this message that God has for us, but it’s not written in our language; it’s not written in our culture. We have to get that message by reading someone else’s mail. The ancient world was very different than our world.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - The idea that the Bible was written “for us but not to us” is going to be a major refrain of this podcast. And in order to understand what is meant by that phrase, you need to have a nuanced understanding of what “for” and “to” mean here. When we say the Bible was not written “to us,” we simply mean that we are not the original recipients of the text. When it was written, there was an actual literal physical human audience who originally heard or read it. It was written in their language, using metaphors and imagery that they would understand, written in modes of thoughts that were common to the time. - When we say that the Bible was written “for us,” we are saying that it is a timeless message of the text that goes beyond its original audience, that goes beyond the original language and idioms, that isn’t embedded into one way of thinking but rather is directed to all people, everywhere. There is a bit of a disconnect between us and the original recipients, because we don’t know their metaphors, we might not know how to think in ways that are pre-enlightenment. And because there is this disconnect, if we want to fully understand the text in the way the original audience did, we need to bridge this disconnect. - Again, I’m going to give my caution here…this does not mean we cannot read the Bible and understand its message. The message of salvation history, the nature of God, things which touch on how and why we follow Christ….all of this can be understood very easily. - What this means, rather, is that not everything in the pages of the Bible are going to make sense to us when we read them in our modern English, with zero background study. There’s nothing wrong with that. This is how writing works. The Bible is meant, as Tim Mackie of the Bible Project says, to be “meditation literature.” We can read it every day of our lives and gain new insight. We can study its world continually and gain new perspectives and new knowledge. There is no end to this pursuit, and that should thrill us. Well, at least I think so! And if you’re here listening to me, I think you might think so, too. - All right. That’s why we are here, to get into this kind of information. - So, looking at Gen 1 as an identity account of the cosmos, how does that work? How do we see that it’s identifying rather than telling the process of origins? ### The Functional Framework: ANE Context, Not Science - This is where Walton presents his “functional” framework. Walton, in fact, suggests that the Bible isn’t talking about material origins at all—or, at least, it’s not doing so in Gen 1. Now, before you get too freaked out at that claim, no one here is suggesting anything, anything at all!, against the idea of God creating everything out of nothing. Yes, God created everything and he did so out of nothing. Hear that loudly. - But we don’t see that in Gen 1 and that shouldn’t bother us because you don’t see that anywhere else in the ANE, either. As we will see, and as we actually have seen, ANE creation accounts began with something that wasn’t nothing. The reason for this is that this is how they thought. The idea of “zero” wasn’t essential to them. Once “zero” came into the thought world by the time of the New Testament, that’s where we see the formulation of “creation ex nihilo,” or “creation out of nothing.” Before then we don’t see it **because they weren’t thinking it!** It’s really that simple. - We’re not going to read too much of Gen 1 today, but as a reminder, here is how it starts out, from the ESV: - Genesis 1:1–2 (ESV) 1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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. - Now, it’s possible we have “creation out of nothing” with the initial phrase “God crated the heavens and the earth.” But if this is the first creative act, it is presented in a radically different way than the other creative acts in the chapter, which all follow a particular pattern. It’s very common to see this not as the first creative act but more of a “summary statement,” so we might instead say, “When God began creating…” Now, this gets into some Hebrew grammar and all kinds of things that are out of bounds for my point here, so I’ll direct you to some resources I’ll have up on my website if you’re interested in exploring that. Those resources can explain it better than I can here over audio, anyway. - So if “God created the heavens and the earth” isn’t the first creative act, then that means that when the Bible opens, we have the earth sitting there in its shapeless mass like unformed playdoh. Okay, I’m kidding, it doesn’t really mean that as we explored in a previous episode! What it means for the earth to be without form and void is that it was disorganized and chaotic. - Walton uses an analogy. He says we can see material creation as a story that tells about a house being built. A house is just an empty shell, void of lived-in purpose. Walton suggests that the biblical narrative is actually describing the creation of a “home” rather than a “house.” The creation of a home presupposes the existence of the place of residence already; it presupposes that the house exists, but the house, by itself, cannot function as a home. More is needed. Organization and occupants are brought into the house and this is what creates a home. Walton suggests that this is what we see unfolding in Genesis. - If you’re interested in reading about this idea, I highly recommend Walton’s book, *The Lost World of Genesis One*. He has a number of books in the “Lost World” series; they aren’t all as good as this one, but it’s an easy read and really lays these ideas out well. I’m going to read a few snippets from this book: - “Some Christians approach the text of Genesis as if it has modern science embedded in it or it dictates what modern science should look like. This approach to the text of Genesis 1 is called “concordism,” as it seeks to give a modern scientific explanation for the details in the text. This represents one attempt to “translate” the culture and text for the modern reader. The problem is, we cannot translate their cosmology to our cosmology, nor should we. If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that it never said. It is not just a case of adding meaning (as more information has become available), it is a case of changing meaning. Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say.” *Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One (The Lost World Series) (pp. 16-17). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.* - Wow. Literalists accuse people like Walton of not taking Scripture seriously, but I do wonder sometimes if it is not the literalist who can’t stand taking Scripture on its own terms. When I wanted to force the idea of light having a source on day one simply because I expected it to have a source, wasn’t I the one who wasn’t taking Scripture seriously? Just a thought to consider. - I think this point ought to be seriously considered by literalists. Unless you are presupposing that Gen 1 is the lone exception; quote from Walton again: - “Through the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science beyond their own culture. No passage offers a scientific perspective that was not common to the Old World science of antiquity.” *Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One (The Lost World Series) (p. 19). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.* - And simply by comparing Gen 1 to other ANE texts, we can see clearly that Gen 1 fits the pattern of these other texts. It simply makes much more sense to me to think of the creation account as being an ANE creation account rather than assuming that it has to be ***both*** an ANE creation account ***as well as*** a scientific account of creation where God orchestrated things so that somehow, in some way, that ancient writing would line up with the exact process of creation. - If that is how we are thinking, then that means that we believe God accommodated the writing **for us especially, so that the text lines up with our scientific thinking.** God surely had to accommodate himself to the ancient writer, but to us? Why? Because we’re too obtuse to see the world in any other way than our own? Did God say, “I’d better make sure this lines up or else people in the 21st century won’t believe I’m real.” Did God also ensure that he accommodated the writing to make sense to every other culture and time? Because he knew we are otherwise incapable of understanding the basic message of creation? - You see, I don’t think literalist interpreters really take our abilities of comprehension seriously. This is the problem with the influence of post-modernism, as well, this idea that the only way we can read a text is through our own perspective. How ridiculous! How insulting to our intelligence! - I personally feel that God believes us quite capable of reading an ancient text and figuring out what it meant to say without getting unnecessarily bogged down in the details of communication. ### The Functional Framework: Function over Form - Back to our idea of function over form. If you listened to episode 2 where we got into the structure of the days of creation, you remember how creation was first ordered into environments before it was populated with inhabitants. Creation was about creating order over chaos. - In *The Lost World of Genesis One*, Walton describes how the cosmos was created to “mirror” the construction of a temple (or, if you prefer to think of it this way, temples were constructed to “mirror” the creation of the cosmos!). God takes up his rest in the temple on day 7 not because he’s tired and drowsy, but because he’s now ready to rule. - So that’s the cosmos in a nutshell. God didn’t create it because he was curious about what those funny little creatures on Planet Earth would do, like it’s some ant colony. God created it and intended to participate within it himself. He is not at all separate from it. This shatters any deistic idea of an aloof God who only sticks his hand in creation when he’s bored, if that. - So what about mankind? Who are we? - The literalist—and I pick on them a bit, I admit it, but they’re already familiar to us and so we know them well—the literalist insists that Adam and Eve are the first humans created; they must be the first because the Bible is “so clear” on this point, isn’t it? Jesus mentions Adam, after all! Eve is said to be “the mother of all living,” so we must all be descended from her. - I’m not trying to provide some proof that disproves this idea here. I mean, really, good luck disproving it in any real sense and what’s the point, anyway? I can’t really prove that my great-great-great grandma was some specific person on my family tree, how on earth could anyone prove who Adam and Eve were? The very idea is preposterous, really, and pointless to boot. - Oh I know there are plenty of people who don’t think it’s pointless, that there must be some genetic and biological connection between everyone today and two humans in this past. Usually this has to do with the transmission of sin or a sin nature or guilt or some such thing. At some point I am certain we will get into why that is actually not necessary whatsoever. - But in any case, just like with creation and how the function matters more than the form, similar things can be said concerning our first human parents. Walton brings this up in the form of archetypes. - The names “Adam” and “Eve” were not just picked out of a hat from a host of possibilities. Rather, “Adam” literally means “humanity” and “Eve” literally means “life.” Does that mean they can’t have been names? I guess not, but the point is that they embodied these ideas. They represented them like images. Here’s Walton describing archetype: - “An archetype is not the same as a prototype; a prototype is like the first one off the assembly line. This is not just a matter of being the first off the assembly line; this is a matter of representation, of even embodiment.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - The archetypes of humanity are there to tell us something really big and important about what it means to be human. We connect to archetypes not because we have to be biologically descended from them, but because what can be said about the archetype can be said equally of all of us. There’s no real personality given of Adam or Eve because they weren’t being represented in the text as individual humans with quirky traits—they were being represented in the text as ***representative*** humans, as ultimate examples of humanity. Not the best, most stellar examples, but examples in the sense that we are all the same. - The creation of Adam out of the ground isn’t describing this so we can figure out how to make humans out of dust. Rather, dust represented mortality, the fact that this is what we return to in death. - The creation of Eve out of Adam’s side is, again, not describing a method, but rather her function, her role, the intent of their lives together. Even the literalists tend to focus on this when describing the creation of Eve. She and Adam were one flesh; this doesn’t have to be literal, but you bet it has to be figurative if we are going to live the way God wants us to live. **The literal interpretation is a possibility but not a necessity; the figurative interpretation is not just a possibility but it is a necessity.** - Literalists are very fond of saying that we must read the text in the way that they do; this is simply not the case. **All interpretations, however, can come together in some forms of looking at the symbolism and the imagery. These are the things we can agree on and thus *these are the core—and clear—meanings of the text.*** - You see, it is simply not the case that nonliteral interpretations make the text *less clear*. That is just bunk. - Okay, so now our very big question! Is it true that the Bible is very like the ANE at large in presenting a functional, rather than a materialistic, account? It’s a fair question! If we actually find that they really did have texts about materialistic origins, then that blows a pretty big hole in Walton’s proposal. When reading Gen 1-2, I can be persuaded that this isn’t about material origins…look at the first verse of chapter one, and Adam and Eve were both created out of prior matter, as well, so we can see that there is this organizational principle at play. - What we need to do next is look at actual ANE creation accounts. - Before we go there, though, I want to look at the Bible a little more closely, as well, because did you know that there are many more places than the first two chapters which talk about creation? ## Creation in the Bible (not exhaustive, only passages which seem related to general ANE creation texts) - We’re not going to read Gen 1-2 today. They are pretty familiar, so let’s expand our horizons from there. - First, remember how I said that the Bible does, in fact, affirm creation out of nothing? Let’s go there first. - Hebrews 11:3 (ESV) 3By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. - See? There we have it. What is seen was not made of things that are visible. - We also see creation out of nothing in some extra-biblical texts. In the book of 2 Maccabees: - 2 Maccabees 7:28 (KJV Apoc) 28I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise. - God made them of “things that were not”…that’s an odd way of saying “nothing,” but maybe illustrative of the trouble people had in originally communicating the idea? - And even without the concept of “nothing,” in the OT we can still see that it is affirmed that God created all: - Psalm 33:6–7 (ESV) 6By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. 7He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; he puts the deeps in storehouses. - There is no way we can understand that to suggest anything other than YHWH as supreme creator of everything, even all of the spiritual realm. - Further scouring does bring forth a possibility of “creation out of nothing” in the OT, so I do want to bring this one up: - Psalm 90:1–2 (ESV) 1Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. 2Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. - Before “you had formed the earth and world.” That does sound like there might have been nothing before this. - However, what is lost in the English translation here is that these verbs of the mountains being brought forth and the earth being formed…it’s actually literally birth language, giving the image of these things being born. Here is a quote from United Bible Society’s Translator’s Handbook on Psalms: - “In verse 2 the Hebrew text is literally “before the hills were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world.” The language is poetic, portraying God as giving birth. The second verb means “to have labor pains” (see also comments on “whirl” in 29:9). The birth imagery functions poetically here to hint at the birth of humankind, which suggests the limitations of time that are imposed on humans in contrast with God, who is eternal.” *Robert G. Bratcher and William David Reyburn, A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Psalms, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1991), 793.* - Because this is “birth imagery” I don’t think we should press this language too literally to mean something like “before anything at all was ever made” even though in English it sounds like a general “forming” of the world. The focus in this passage isn’t really on “nothing, then something,” but rather its point is that God is everlasting. The earth did have a beginning, it had a start within time, but God does not. God is not finite like creation. - I want to bring forth a couple of passages that are going to relate directly to our ANE texts. In the ANE, there are a number of motifs that are repeated. One is the idea of separation, particularly of waters. Another is the concept of the chaos waters. Waters that are destructive to good order and life. The sea is part of this motif. So let’s read a section of Ps 74: - Psalm 74:12–17 (ESV) 12Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. 13You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. 14You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. 15You split open springs and brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams. 16Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. 17You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter. - Now, I don’t remember anywhere in Gen 1 where God “broke the heads of the sea monsters” or “crushed the heads of Leviathan.” These are the remnants of the motifs we see in other stories, of gods fighting sea creatures and creating out of their bodies the world. There are many places in Scripture where we see this kind of thing and it itself is probably worth its own episode. One more, from the book of Job: - Job 26:12–14 (ESV) 12By his power he stilled the sea; by his understanding he shattered Rahab. 13By his wind the heavens were made fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 14Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” - We haven’t been able to get to nearly as many creation texts as would be fun to get to…I’ll probably do an episode all on cosmology where we read as many of these as we can. But I want to end this section on the biblical texts of creation with one of my favorite Psalms; the imagery in this is replete with creation and sacred space motifs; it’s just beautiful. The imagery of Leviathan, a great and powerful chaos beast playing in God’s creation is not only beautiful, but very amusing. Here’s Psalm 104: - Psalm 104:1–35 (ESV) 1Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, 2covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. 3He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; 4he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. 5He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. 6You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. 8The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. 9You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. 10You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; 11they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell; they sing among the branches. 13From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. 14You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth 15and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart. 16The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17In them the birds build their nests; the stork has her home in the fir trees. 18The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers. 19He made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. 20You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about. 21The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. 22When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. 23Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. 24O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. 26There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. 27These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. 28When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 29When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. 30When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. 31May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works, 32who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! 33I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. 34May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD. 35Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more! Bless the LORD, O my soul! Praise the LORD! - What a beautiful Psalm. The imagery is so rich and there is so much to look at. ## ANE Context - I’m always finding myself in these episodes without enough time to read as much of the ANE texts here as I’d like. We’ll go ahead and squeeze some in here but for fuller treatments, you can go to the episodes where I read from primary sources because I know that most of you are not going to go to the effort to go find them and read them yourselves…and I don’t blame you in the slightest. I really think they’re intriguing and helpful in the effort of getting ourselves out of our own mindset into an ancient one, though. - Today I will give some introductions and highlights to some of these texts, because part of our issue with them is simply that they are unfamiliar. These are not stories and names that we have heard repeated over and over like the Bible or our favorite Greek myths perhaps. Because we haven’t heard them, they don’t stick in our minds and we get characters and plots mixed up even if we have heard them. - Anyway, enough rambling. Two episodes ago I did a reading of *Enuma Elish*, the Babylonian creation account. So if that is fresh in your mind, that will be helpful. If not, that’s okay, I’m going to quote the immediately applicable portion and if you want you can go back and listen to that to see what else stands out to you for the purposes of this discussion, because for sure there are going to be more points to consider than what I bring up here. - For the moment, we are going to be fairly focused on what we are looking at. Dr. Walton tells us that ANE creation accounts began with preexisting material, so if that’s what we see in the texts we will be looking at, that will confirm Dr. Walton’s position. He also says that the creation accounts of the ANE do not care so much about *material* origins, but rather *functional* origins. In other words, rather than being concerned with how stuff got here, they are concerned with why it is there, what is it for? I’m not entirely sure, but this might be a bit harder to investigate because in a sense it’s a bit of an argument from silence, actually, and we are trying to access motivation and intent here, which…is certainly not always clear when we are reading any text. I’m sure we’ve all have experiences where we’ve misread a friend’s text message or email—and it’s about a zillion times easier and more likely to misread the text messages from the ancient world. - Also, from our perspective, there are relatively few ancient creation accounts that really line up with the Bible in the way of… what seems to be a story of God or the gods creating the cosmos. It’s usually the origin story of the gods, not the world. That in itself might be a point in Dr. Walton’s favor. If they were asking questions like, “Where did the world come from?”, wouldn’t we see more of these types of accounts? But, and it’s an important but, it’s hard to tell exactly what they were thinking, from our perspective. Unfortunately, the textual record is just not as plentiful or always as helpful as we’d like it to be. So I just want to make sure that we do keep this caveat in mind. - Anyway, back to *Enuma Elish*. How does it start out? Here’s the beginning: - “When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name,” - So here we are, heaven and earth already exist but *have not been named.* The fact that they haven’t been named is illustrative for Dr. Walton’s point. Naming was connected to function and purpose. - If you’re familiar with the *general* story of *Enuma Elish* already, you know about Tiamat’s body being used to create the sky and land, so the fact that heaven and earth show up first here is interesting. It seems confusing to us when we are thinking in terms of materialistic, organized…organization. - Let’s continue reading for a moment, remembering that Apsu is not necessarily a god, but is the embodiment of fresh water, and Tiamat is the embodiment of salt water. - “Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, (And) Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters commingling as a single body;” - So, we had heaven and ground and now we have water that exists. Continuing to read: - “No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, When no gods whatever had been brought into being, Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined— Then it was that the gods were formed within them. Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth, by name they were called.” - All right, we’ll end here. No reed hut, no marsh land (what do you want to bet that marsh land has something to do with agriculture?)…the point here is the formation of the gods. We clearly do not have creation out of nothing here. As we continue the story, the gods fight and Tiamat’s body is separated into sky and land. - Let’s look at another story. Another Old Babylonian text has been known as the *Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess*. Pay attention to the reason mankind is made…because they were going to bear the work of the gods. Their function was to be slaves. The first part of the tablet is broken, but beginning where we can read, it says: - "That which is slight he shall raise to abundance; The work of god man shall bear!" The goddess they called to enquire, The midwife of the gods, the wise Mami: "Thou art the mother-womb, The one who creates mankind. Create, then, Lullu and let him bear the yoke! The yoke he shall bear, . . . [ . . . ] ; The work of god man shall bear!" Nintu opened her mouth, (10) Saying to the great gods: "With me is the doing of (this) not suitable; With Enki is (this) work (proper)! He purifies everything, Let him give me the clay, then I will do (it)!" Enki opened his mouth, Saying to the great gods: "On the first of the month, the seventh and fifteenth days, I will prepare a purification, a bath. Let one god be slain, (20) And let the gods be purified by immersion In his flesh and his blood. Let Nintu mix clay, God and man, Let them together be smeared with clay. Unto eternity let us hear the drum." - So here we have mankind made by mixing the blood of a slain god with some clay. - Our next myth…I almost don’t want to read this one because it’s kind of gross. Gross in a weird way that is liable to give me nightmares maybe, I don’t know. Do you ever have nightmares about your teeth? I do, and they’re the worst. They’re so terrible. This might give me that kind of nightmare, but it’s also…kiiiiind of interesting. It’s silly, actually…it reminds me of a kids’ book. And yes, if you don’t know that kids books can give you nightmares, well I don’t know where you’ve been. - I’m going to read this, anyway, because we might be able to claim that it’s an instance of creation out of nothing—but we have to assume that the god Anu wasn’t himself created. That’s the hitch; from just this text, we don’t know where they think that Anu came from, but in other myths from the same area Anu was **definitely** not the uncreated creator, so I’m not sure we ought to read too much into this beginning. But, as a preface, what this is text is, it actually was a magical incantation to solve toothaches. This text supposedly explains the root cause of toothaches. So here we go: - “After Anu [had created heaven], Heaven had created [the earth], The earth had created the rivers, The rivers had created the canals, The canals had created the marsh, (And) the marsh had created the worm— The worm went, weeping, before Shamash, His tears flowing before Ea: "What wilt thou give [me] for my food ? What wilt thou give me for my sucking?" (10) "I shall give thee the ripe fig, (And) the apricot." "Of what use are they to me, the ripe fig And the apricot ? Lift me up and among the teeth And the gums cause me to dwell! The blood of the tooth I will suck, And of the gum I will gnaw Its rootsl" *Fix the pin and seize its foot. (20) Because thou hast said this, O worm, May Ea smite thee with the might Of his hand!” - Okay, so yes, I said that was weird. But the beginning of this is why I read it…Anu exists, and creates this cascade of creation…he creates the heaven, and the heaven creates the earth, which creates the rivers, which create the canals, which create the marsh, which create the worm. The worm wasn’t happy with delicious figs and apricots, so it wanted teeth. - Yeah, that’s just…so gross. - Anyway, I had to read that because, as I hope you’ll see, I’m not trying to pick and choose texts here that only support the thesis we are looking at, so if you want something close to creation out of nothing, there you go. I’m not personally convinced. - Before we go, we’d better offer up some Egyptian examples. Egyptian mythology has a long, long history and as such you get different variations at different times. But in many variations, the god Atum begins creation on what is known as the “primeval hillock,” because that sounds better than “ancient hill.” The version I’m going to read mentions Atum being alone—and so we think, a-ha, he’s alone—except that he’s alone in Nun (n-u-n) and what is Nun? Chaos waters. Yep, the good ol’ mound of dirt with chaos waters. There are some hints in some of these versions that suggest something *like* creation out of nothing. But the creation out of nothing is usually chaos waters. So, even in the initial creation, it’s not organized in any way, it’s not functional, it’s just ..wild and waste. Oh, and to make this a little more sensible, I guess I ought to go over the cast of characters here. We have Atum, otherwise known as Re, and we have Nun, and we have Shu, who is the sky. The Ennead is a group of nine deities. And Osiris is the god of the afterlife and resurrection. Oh, and it mentions Horus, who is the falcon-headed sky god, usually the son of Osiris. Okay, let’s read: - "I am Atum when I was alone in Nun; I am Re in his (first) appearances, when he began to rule that which he had made." Who is he ? This "Re, when he began to rule that which he had made" means that Re began to appear as a king, as one who was before the liftings of Shu had taken place, when he was on the hill which is in Hermopolis. "I am the great god who came into being by himself." Who is he ? "The great god who came into being by himself" is water; he is Nun, the father of the gods. **Another version:** He is Re. "He who created his names, the Lord of the Ennead." Who is he ? He is Re, who created the names of the parts of his body. That is how these gods who follow him came into being. "I am he among the gods who cannot be repulsed." Who is he ? He is Atum, who is in his sun disc. **Another version:** He is Re, when he arises on the eastern horizon of heaven." "I am yesterday, while I know tomorrow." Who is he ? As for "yesterday," that is Osiris. As for "tomorrow," that is Re on that day on which the enemies of the All-Lord are annihilated and his son Horus is made ruler.... - So anyway, we see that all this is really so much more focused on who the gods were and how and why they were who they were and all that kind of thing. - I’ll introduce one more thing, from the theology of Memphis—Memphis, Egypt, not Tennessee. This is interesting because it is a little different. Instead of just describing physical elements and gods doing something, it’s a little more intellectual…things arising out of ideas or thoughts (which come from the heart in the ancient world), and things are *spoken* into existence. So that is much more like what we see in the Bible. - The beginning of this is a little convoluted to our ears, so I’m going to skip around a bit. But here is the beginning, just so you get a taste of it, and importantly note, he found something in ruins and **recreated** it anew. This makes a little sense because what was going on here was the fact that Memphis had to justify its new existence as **a center of power**. So here we are, quote: - “Live the Horus: Who Prospers the Two Lands; the Two Goddesses: Who Prospers the Two Lands; the Horus of Gold: Who Prospers the Two Lands; the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: ]Nefer-ka-Re; the Son of Re: Sha-[ba-ka]], beloved of Ptah-South-of-His-Wall, living like Re forever. His majesty copied, this text anew in the House of his father Ptah-South-of-His-Wall. Now his majesty had found (it) as (something) which the ancestors had made but which was worm-eaten. It was unknown from beginning to end. Then [his majesty] copied [it] anew, (so that) it is better than its state formerly, in order that his name might endure and his memorial be made to last in the House of his father Ptah-South-of-His-Wall in the course of eternity, through that which the Son of Re: [Sha-ba-ka] did for his father Ptah-[tenen], so that he might be given life forever” - So the text goes on to describe the creation of the gods via thought and word. And here’s the last thing I’m going to read: - “Thus all the gods were formed and his Ennead was completed. Indeed, all the divine order really came into being through what the heart thought and the tongue commanded. Thus the spirits were made and the spirits were appointed, they who make all provisions and all nourishment, by this speech. (Thus justice was given to) him who does what is liked, (and injustice to) him who does what is disliked. Thus life was given to him who has peace and death was given to him who has sin. Thus were made all work and all crafts, the action of the arms, the movement of the legs, and the activity of every member, in conformance with (this) command which the heart thought, which came forth through the tongue, and which gives value to everything. (Thus) it happened that it was said of Ptah: "He who made all and brought the gods into being." He is indeed Ta-tenen, who brought forth the gods, for everything came forth from him, nourishment and provisions, the offerings of the gods, and every good thing. Thus it was discovered and understood that his strength is greater than (that of the other) gods. And so Ptah was satisfied,19 after he had made everything, as well as all the divine order.20 He had formed the gods, he had made cities, he had founded homes, he had put the gods in their shrines, (60) he had established their offerings, he had founded their shrines, he had made their bodies like that (with which) their hearts were satisfied. So the gods entered into their bodies of every (kind of) wood, of every (kind of) stone, of every (kind of) clay, or anything which might grow upon him, in which they had taken form. So all the gods, gathered themselves to him, content and associated with the Lord of the Two Lands.” ## Does Walton Have a Solid Thesis? - So, with all of that, can we say that Walton might be right? That the person in the ANE did not think of creation as being creating material but rather organizing matter into useful form? - It seems to me to be a much more useful construct than trying to view it as Science! - We have seen that it is at least very rare for anything in these ancient texts to suggest anything that seems to be creation out of nothing. I won’t say it’s necessarily impossible, but it’s so rare as to be quite questionable. By far the prevailing view is that things were made out of other things. And this makes sense when we realize that these creation texts were often used in contexts such as the resurrection of the dead (in the case of Egyptian books of the dead, texts which were placed with mummies in tombs) or that they were used at the hoped-for renewal of life in the yearly spring. - For sure what we see over and over is an emphasis on how the gods got to be where they are and why it is so important to be worried about them. - One more quote from Walton, about how essentially we take the concept of authority as part of our theological structure of creation: - “I don’t think we can construct science from the text because it’s a text that is situated in an ancient cultural river; it’s embedded there. I don’t think we should read science into the text because science is not authoritative. Even the science that we are most confident about, it doesn’t have the authority of the text, and we should not be bringing that into the text. So I neither want to build science out of it or read science into it. I want to try to understand the text as the author and his audience would have understood it, because that is the audience that God was addressing. And we know that we can get authority there, and that’s what we should be looking at.” *Joseph A. Pipa Jr. et al., TH331 Perspectives on Creation: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).* - Science is not authoritative. I love it, and it’s so true. ## Summary - Just a quick summary before we go. Today we briefly talked about five views of creation: the literal interpretation, the literary framework, the analogical days, evolutionary creationism, and finally we focused on the identity accounts of creation from John Walton. Next time we get to this series, we’ll pick another view to focus on and we’ll be building on what we’ve structured here in continuing to look at the functional framework compared to the others. ## Outro - Thanks once again for listening to Genesis Marks the Spot! I hope you enjoyed this episode and will continue to join me next week. I have technically started a series here on the views of creation, but I will not finish it immediately. I am going to break it up with some other episodes, because if I do them all at once then that’s all we’ll be talking about for months! And there are so many interesting topics to explore. Also, I’d like to just get into the text and study it in sections. I know there’s plenty of podcasts that do that already, going verse by verse, so that hasn’t been my focus, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t! Maybe. To some extent. We’ll see. - As always, I’d really appreciate any interaction you might care to give…like, subscribe, mention on social media, share it with your friends, give reviews. I’ve had many wonderful comments from you and truly, I deeply appreciate it. All these things are very encouraging to me and it also helps others find the material if you share and like and do all of that. Feel free, as well, to email me at [email protected] or find me on FB. Thanks, and I hope you’ll join me next time!