By faith

By 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.

Hebrews 11 v 3

A functional creation

In its conclusion The Lost World of Genesis One summarises the argument for a functional view of creation:

1) The Hebrew word translated "create" (bara) concerns assigning functions
2) The account begins in v2 with no functions (rather than no material)
3) The first three days pertain to the three major functions in life: time, weather, food
4) Days four to six pertain to functionaries in the cosmos being assigned their roles and spheres
5) The recurring comment that "it is good" refers to functionality (relative to people)
6) The temple aspect is evident in the climax of day seven when God rests - an activity in a temple

Are the Genesis days 'ages'?

In an effort to make the Genesis text fit geological time it has been proposed by numerous people that the 6 days of creation are in fact a description of 6 ages, or long periods of time.

I don't think this is correct. The use of 'evening' and 'morning' to describe the extremities of each day signal to me that they are literal days that are being described.

But the argument comes back that the Hebrew word yom, that is translated 'day', is in other parts of scripture used to describe a period of time. This happens in expressions like 'in that day' where the writer is clearly pointing to a lengthy period of time much greater than 24 hours.

This may be true but the problem is that here yom is being used ias part of an idiomatic expression. If we remove the single word out of the whole phrase then it no longer still caries the whole phrase's meaning. For example, take the phrase "Watford played a long ball game". Here 'ball' is being used as part of an expression that means a type of pass in football. But if we take the word out of that context it is no longer correct to define ball as meaning pass. If it did then to say "Pass me the ball" would be a bit of a strange request.

This problem arises from trying to take a passage that was never intended to be a literal description of natural history and make it fit such a chronology.

Marked contrasts

Whilst there have been some posts on this blog that highlight the ways in which Genesis relates itself to Ancient Near East mythologies, it is equally important to note the ways in which it contrasts.

In the ANE creation was made to serve the gods. But in the Genesis account creation is there for the benefit of humanity. The cosmos is good because it provides a home for us.

In the ANE people are also made to serve the gods, but in Genesis people are called into relationship with God, co-workers with him.

We really are the climax of creation.

The Bible and Mythology part 4

The emergence of dry land from the waters is a common element in Egyptian cosmology, and there it has a definite referent. That is, the emergence of the primeval hillock in cosmology reflectsnthe yearly relity of the fertile soil emerging in the aftermath of the inundation of the Nile. Thus it is clear that the emergence of dry land is associated with the growing of food.

The Lost World of Genesis 1 by John H Walton

Creation's Title

The first verse of Genesis 1, that grand opening statement, can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Some commentators see this as being a pre-creation that occurred before the actions of the following verses but Walton disagrees. Of the term 'beginning' he says (p45):

In Hebrew usage this adverb typically introduces a period of time rather than a point in time. We can see this most easily in Job 8:7

which says...

Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.

So what Walton is suggesting is that verse 1 is actually referring to the period of the creation that follows in the rest of the chapter.

This suggests that verse 1 serves as a literary introduction to the rest of the chapter. This suggestion is confirmed by the fact that Genesis 2:1 concludes the seven-day report with the statement that the "heavens and earth were completed"

Functional not Material

I'm enjoying reading 'The Lost World of Genesis One' at the moment. I'm hoping there will be a few posts to extract from it! John Walton's book looks at Genesis 1 within its ANE context and builds the thesis that 'creation' in that setting means functional, and not material as presupposed in our 21st century understanding.

ANE mythology asked about the purpose of the world around it rather than how it came into material existence. Therefore the Biblical account reflects that definition of the creation concept. For example:

Throughout Genesis 1 any number of possible meanings have been proposed for "good". In the history of interpretation it has been often been understood in moral/ethical terms or as a reference to the quality of the workmanship. While the Hebrew term could be used in any of those ways, the context indicates a different direction. We can find out what the author means when saying all of these things are "good" by inquiring what it would mean for something not to be good. Fortunately the near context offers us just such an opportunity: "It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen 2:18). This verse has nothing to do with moral perfection or quality of workmanship - it is a comment concerning function. The human condition is not functionally complete without the woman. Thus throughout Genesis 1 the refrain "it was good" expressed the functional readiness of the cosmos for human beings.

The meaning of 'bara'

I've come across this interesting paper on the meaning of the Hebrew word 'bara', which is often translated as 'created' in the Genesis 1 creation account.

The word is used selectively:

v1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

v21 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.

v27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Its interesting to ponder on why these aspects were selected for bara creation. Traditional lexical entries for the word have defined it as meaning 'to create or form' but this paper suggests that it is better rendered as 'to separate'. Van Wolde describes it as being:

... a temporal process in which God moves the objects along a path, at the beginning of which they are not distin- guished and proximate, and at the end of which they are spatially distant and kept separate

This difference is a significant one. I don't think it would be in keeping with the context of this chapter to force the meaning of the words to fit the physical creation processes (this approach nearly always ends up going wrong somewhere along the line), but rather to think about what spiritual messages this is giving us....

P.S A number of scholars and commentators disagree with this thesis. See here, for example.

Ancient Near East beliefs

It seems clear that the creation accounts of early Genesis were designed to undermine the prevalent myths of the time. The following example comes from Egypt, dating to around 2000 years ago. The full text can be found here.

Serve God, that he may do the like for you, with offerings for replenishing the altars and with carving; it is that which will show forth your name, and God is aware of whoever serves Him. Provide for men, the cattle of God, for He made heaven and earth at their desire. He suppressed the greed of the waters, He gave the breath of life to their noses, for they are likenesses of Him which issued from His flesh. He shines in the sky for the benefit of their hearts; He has made herbs, cattle, and fish to nourish them. He has killed His enemies and destroyed His own children, because they had planned to make rebellion; He makes daylight for the benefit of their hearts, and he sails around in order to see them

The Instruction of Merikare

Logos

In John chapter 1...

"John is seen to be revealing Jesus Christ in all his cosmic glory; the Son of God from the beginning, the present and the future. You can't get a "bigger picture" than that. Jesus is revealed as the Logos of God; the Reason God created all things, the Reason all things exist, the Reason we have been formed if only we will be formed in him. In other words, John 1 is a Creation story that, like all good creations stories, starts from the beginning and explains everything.

We benefit by using the word Logos in the full philosophical context of the day, which John supersedes in a similar way to the Genesis supersession of the Ancient Near East myths. The term Logos was widely used in the Greco-Roman culture and in Judaism. And although it has many everyday meanings (such as word, speech, statement, discourse, refutation, ratio, account, explanation, reason), through most schools of Greek philosophy the term was used to designate a rational, intelligent and thus enlivening principle of the universe. To ancient people every phenomenon had to have an underlying factor, agent, or principle responsible for its occurrence; hence demons, principalities and power and the pantheon of the gods. The Logos was deduced from thinking about the universe as a living creature.

The 6th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term Logos in a metaphysical sense. Heraclitius asserted that the world is governed by a firelike Logos, a divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the flux of nature. The Logos accounts for how things are put together, and how they interact. He believed that this force is similar to human reason and that his own thought partook of the divine Logos.

What soul, then, has skill and knowledge? Even that which knoweth beginning and end, and the reason [logos] that informs all Substance, and governs the Whole from ordered cycle to cycle through all eternity. (Marcus Aurelius, V, 21 pp. 124-125)

Perhaps the most extensive accounting of The Logos was by Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew who lived around the time of Christ. Philo wrote allegories of Old Testament books authored by Moses, interpreting them in the light of Greek philosophy. He used the term, logos, more than 1300 times in his writings, in many varied ways. Of particular note are his references to The Logos as the Divine Reason, by participation in which humans are rational; the model of the universe; the superintendent or governor of the universe; and the first-born son of God. Although there is no direct evidence that John ever read Philo (and it doesn't matter either way), its pretty obvious that the concepts he articulated were firmly in the mind of John when he wrote his gospel.

As therefore the city, when previously shadowed out in the mind of the man of architectural skill had no external place, but was stamped solely in the mind of the workman, so in the same manner neither can the world which existed in ideas have had any other local position except the divine reason [logos] which made them ... (Philo, On the Creation V20 p. 4)

...for God, like a shepherd and king, governs (as if they were a flock of sheep) the earth, and the water, and the fire, and the air and all the plants, and living creatures that are in them, whether mortal or divine; and he regulates the nature of the heaven, and the periodical revolutions of the sun and moon, and the variations and harmonious movements of the other stars, ruling them according to law and justice; appointing as their immediate superintendent, his own right reason [logos], his first-born son, who is to receive the charge of this sacred company, as the lieutenant of the great king; ... (Philo, On Husbandry XII 45 p. 178)

So in Greek thought we can boil Logos down like this:-

a conception or idea
the plan or model of the universe
the source of order in the universe, that by which all things come into being and all things come to pass
the source of human reason and intelligence
universal all-pervading enlivening force

John takes the Greek Logos on in the same way that Paul takes on the Unknown God and Moses takes on the ANE myths; John rewrites the script and elevates Jesus Christ as Stephen Hawking's "fire in the equations," and God's own reason "why the Universe goes to all the bother of existing." Its ultimate big picture language, and John's embrace of it shows that Christianity really does have all the answers."

By J Pogson

On Genesis One... Part 2

To understand Genesis 1 you have to understand that this is a polemic against all the stories in the ancient world, about how the world came to be the way it is, which are all stories about multiplicities of gods, huge cast lists of deities, all of whom are fighting, squabbling, plotting each other’s downfall or hacking each other to pieces, and they come in endless shapes or forms. And of course Judaism gets rid of the entire cast list. All of a sudden you get this extraordinary radical idea, that there is just one God, and he has no company up there. The only company he has is this creature that he has created in love in his own image. Which is why Genesis 1 is so serene. God says ‘Let there be’ and there is.

Jonathan Sacks
Chief Rabbi, London

On Genesis One... Part 1

If we want to understand the exalted language of Genesis 1:1-2:3, we must accept it on its own terms. We fail if we attempt to degrade it to the level of a potted history.

Treating it as history demeans the Bible's teaching of creation and creates a conflict between it and the witness of creation itself. It also generate a lot of silly uncertainties and unaskable questions, like how were there day and night before the sun, was it night on the opposite side of the earth, how long were the evenings and mornings north of the Arctic Circle, and were the great lights really below the waters above.

If we read Genesis 1:1-2:3 with the respect that is due to it, we find that it is not just compatible with the geological (and biological) wonders we are fortunate enough to know and understand, but enriches their appreciation.

B Philp

The Bible and Mythology part 3

For the final post of 2009 it seems only right that we should head into the underworld.

Hades was the brother of Zeus in Greek mythology and Lord of the Underworld, ruling over the dead. In the tradition of tyrants Hades yearned for more power and more subjects – looking favourably on those who would send him more dead and not being willing to let any of his subjects leave.

"Hades is not to be soothed, neither overcome, wherefore he is most hated by mortals of all gods."
Homer, Iliad 9.158

His special helmet rendered him invisible and he liked to keep dogs – three-headed ones.

By the Christian era Hades became the name not just of the god, but of the whole underworld as a place.

In the New Testament we find references to Hades, but significantly it is used only to indicate the grave or death – not an entire underworld civilization. The only place where this is referred to is in Jesus parable (made up story) of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16).

So again the Bible takes commonly held ideas and uses them to bring people to God. Peter must have felt a thousand feet tall when Jesus said this to him:

‘And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell [hades] shall not prevail against it.’
Matthew 16 v 18

(Part 1) (Part 2)

The Bible & Mythology part 2

In Paul's speech from Athens (Acts 17) he makes use of a number of references to Greek mythology:
1) He uses one of their altars to introduce them to Yahweh - the Unknown God v23
2) He picks up on the idea of 'the ether', the medium that the Greeks believed sustained them, and replaces it with God - 'in him we live and move and have our being' v28. This is actually a quote from the poet Epimenides (600BC).
3) Quoting other poets (Aratus and Cleanthes) he even lifts a line from a Hymn to Zeus! 'We are his offspring.' (v28)!

This repeats the pattern seen in part 1 where the Bible uses existing myths and beliefs as a base for teaching people about God.

God the Potter

One of the side-effects of William Paley's famous 'Watchmaker' analogy of creation is that it seems to have tram-lined our thinking of what it means for God to be our Creator. It conjures the picture of God bending over a bench fiddling with the various parts of each creature before releasing them into the world.

Science should cause us to change our view on this and instead see God as a potter, that is someone who both started the wheel in motion and continues to mould and shape His masterpiece.

The interesting thing is that this is exactly how the Bible portrays God:

But now, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Jeremiah 64 v 8

The Bible & Mythology part 1

This is the god Marduk, one of the chief players in middle-eastern mythology and a character that illustrates how the Bible uses mythology to bring people to God.

In his epic struggle with Tiamat (the dragon in the background) the great beast tries to swallow Marduk only for the hero to emerge, splitting the belly of the beast in two.

A dramatic tale but what's the point? Well for me it helps us to understand why Jonah had such an impact on the people of Assyria. They had been used to hearing tales of their god emerging from the belly of a beast and so it must have been amazing to see Jonah spewed up onto the sand - a testimony to the divine origin of his message.

God's message takes people from whatever understanding they have and draws them to know Him, the true and living God.

Mother of all living

In Genesis 3, after the fall, we read of Adam giving his wife a (new?) name:

'The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.'
v 20

What does this mean? Well first let's try and take it literally. In this reading Eve is the mother of everything that has life. Genesis 1 (i.e. the nearby context)describes this life being in every moving creature of both land and sea. In fact even the serpent (ch 3v1) is described as being a part of the 'living'!

There are many mother earth myths that talk of living creatures being born of a woman but I don't believe that this is what Genesis is saying to us. I think that this is to be taken spiritually not literally. Like much of what we read in this chapter this title is in anticipation of Jesus Christ. God says to the serpent:

'I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel'
v 15

Now, this isn't talking about a literal battle between humans and snakes but rather a spiritual battle between the ways of good and the ways of evil. Eve's offspring wins, crushing the head of the serpent's. This is the victory of Christ that brings life to all.

'...that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.'
Hebrews 2 v 14

That is how Eve is the mother of all living, because all who are alive are alive through Christ.

Biblical contradictions

The website of the American Atheists has a list of contradictions that it claims show how the Bible is not the inspired word of God. Here's an example:

ON CIRCUMCISION

"This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised." -- Genesis 17:10

"...if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." -- Galatians 5:2

This is a classic example of someone who simply doesn't understand the message and most likely hasn't even tried to understand the message.

In the Law of Moses Jewish boys were required to be circumcised in keeping with the promises made with Abraham (as quoted above). In the New Testament believers are told that there is no need to be circumcised NOT because circumcision is wrong, but because the teaching of Christ goes beyond it.

In Galatians Paul is talking to people who were rejecting the teachings of Christ and going backwards. That's why he said what he said. Th fact is that Jesus said that he didn't come to destroy the Law of Moses - but to fulfil it, and that Paul in some circumstances actually went and carried out circumcision! So the contradiction is not a real one.

Harmonising those two passages is very straight-forward but only if you're actually interested in doing so. Seek and you will find. Close your eyes and all you'll find is the inside of your eyelids.

Through one man...

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned
V 12

So death is a result of sin and in particularly the sin of Adam. Yet one thing that the fossil record shows clearly is that the act of dying had been going on for a long time before Adam was around, so how should we understand this?

In this passage Adam is being used in a representational way. We know this because, well, for one thing Adam wasn’t the first person to sin - Eve nipped in there before him (as Paul highlights in 1 Tim 2 v 14).

So Adam is the representational ‘one man’ through whom sin came into the world. It’s worth recognising here that sin is the choice to do the wrong thing. As Adam and Eve where the first creatures to have a relationship with God, to know him and to know his will, it makes sense that they were the first to be able to choose to go a different way - sin.

The passage in Romans goes on to elaborate how Adam was a ‘type’ of the one who was to come. This is why he is again paired up with Jesus (see also here). The thinking moves on as follows:

For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
V 17

Paul is using Adam to help us understand the significance of Christ. All who are saved are saved through the Lord Jesus. What’s interesting is that this must therefore include those who were born before Jesus existed. Other passages reveal this to be true.

This then helps us understand how death could have existed before Adam. God creates things in anticipation. He created a world where death is the only certainty of life in anticipation of Adam’s sin. He also brought salvation to men in anticipation of the work of Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous… so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
V 18 - 21

The secret place...

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Psalm 139 v 15

This verse from one of David's most famous Psalms is another example of how the idea of being created from the dust can be a metaphor for the natural process. The 'earth' described here is the same word used in the opening chapter of Genesis where we read that 'God called the dry land Earth'.

So is David saying that he came into being in some mysterious location near earth's molten core? Of course not:

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
V 13

It's a picture, and part of the wider view that describes our mortal, material existence. This is relevant to one of the scenarios by which we can understand Adam and Eve (discussed here).