John Walton—“Genesis Through Ancient Eyes”

A common objec­tion to Chris­tian­ity is that there’s supposedly a fundamental conflict between the bib­li­cal and sci­en­tific sto­ries of the ori­gin and devel­op­ment of the uni­verse, the Earth, life, and so on and so forth.

John Wal­ton, ((John Wal­ton has a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Cog­nate Stud­ies from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Insti­tute of Reli­gion, Cincin­nati, Ohio.)) in his talk on “Gen­e­sis Through Ancient Eyes,” responds to this objec­tion with the claim that the ori­gin sto­ries in Gen. 1–3 in the Bible are about func­tional rather than mate­r­ial ori­gins.

Here’s a sum­mary from BioLogos:

In this talk, orig­i­nally deliv­ered at the BioL­o­gos President’s Cir­cle meet­ing in Octo­ber 2012, Dr. John Wal­ton dis­cusses the ori­gin sto­ries of Gen­e­sis 1–3, and why their focus on func­tion and arche­types mean there is no Bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive of mate­r­ial origins.

This is very inter­est­ing. Wal­ton, for exam­ple, thinks that the days in Gen. 1 are lit­eral 24-hour days, but that they are about the inau­gu­ra­tion of the cos­mos as God’s tem­ple, not mate­r­ial ori­gins, so that this fact says noth­ing about the age of the uni­verse, or the Earth, or life.

Here are the four parts of the talk (roughly 51m.16s in total), with very rough sum­maries:

Part One 8m.26s	Scrip­ture is author­i­ta­tive, and we need to hon­our and under­stand the text Scrip­ture was writ­ten for us, but not to us: the orig­i­nal texts were not writ­ten in our lan­guage or our cul­ture, and trans­la­tion is required there are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between ancient (Israelite, Egypt­ian, etc.) cos­mol­ogy and con­tem­po­rary sci­en­tific cosmology we need to see the Gen­e­sis texts in the same way as the ancient Israelites would have
Part Two 14m.42s	there is no sci­en­tific rev­e­la­tion in the Bible ancient Israelites under­stood exis­tence in func­tional rather than mate­r­ial terms and focused on func­tional rather than mate­r­ial origins for ancient Israelites, to name some­thing was a cre­ative act: this is reflected in Gen. 1–3 Gen. 1 is about God bring­ing order from non-order Gen. 1 explains the ori­gins of our home (our per­sonal, spir­i­tual place), not our house (the phys­i­cal place where we live)
Part Three 11m.23s	the word bara’ (cre­ated) often refers to func­tional rather than mate­r­ial cre­ation in the Bible Gen. 1 focuses on func­tional over mate­r­ial ori­gins (e.g. time, weather, food) Gen. 1 is a tem­ple story ((This notion helps to explain what it means for human beings to be made in the “image of God.”)) the sev­enth day (rest) is impor­tant in the cre­ation story: rest expresses con­trol over ordered sys­tem, and God comes to rest in the cosmos—not to sleep, but oper­ate (see e.g. Psa. 132.7–8, 13–14)—and estab­lishes it as his “home” ((Why the Sabbath, then, in light of Ex. 20.8–11? Because God’s in control, and we need to remember that—not because God decided to “take a day off.”)) the days in Gen. 1 are lit­eral 24-hour days, but they are about the inau­gu­ra­tion of the cos­mos as God’s tem­ple, not mate­r­ial ori­gins, so this fact says noth­ing about the age of the uni­verse, or the Earth, or life
Part Four 16m.45s	the phrase “it was good” is about proper func­tion, not moral­ity (see e.g. Gen. 2.18) what­ever order God estab­lished was good, but not every­thing was ordered (e.g. sea, ser­pent, out­side the Gar­den of Eden) the sec­ond account of cre­ation in Gen. 2–3 is a sequel to, not a syn­op­tic retelling of, the first account in Gen. 1 (e.g. like Luke/Acts as opposed to Matthew/Mark) the peo­ple in Gen. 1 aren’t nec­es­sar­ily the same as in Gen. 2–3: the sec­ond account of cre­ation doesn’t need to fit into the sixth day in the first account of creation the sec­ond account of cre­ation con­tains arche­typal rather than sci­en­tific descrip­tions, so there is no bib­li­cal account of mate­r­ial human origins humans were made in the image of God and given priestly roles: to serve and keep (Gen. 2.15), with Eve to help Adam in his sacred task appli­ca­tion: we need to min­is­ter bet­ter to scientists appli­ca­tion: we need to do bet­ter at evan­ge­lism, and not keep peo­ple out of the king­dom because of their sci­en­tific con­clu­sions about origins appli­ca­tion: we need to do bet­ter at deal­ing with attri­tion that results from young peo­ple believ­ing that, in accept­ing sci­en­tific con­clu­sions, they’re forced to give up the Bible and their faith in sum­mary: we need to stop mak­ing the Bible what it isn’t

—Thomas Larsen.

Originally posted on my blog.

Image from BioLogos.