Johann
Well-known member
I marvel at my own ignorance! I am appalled at my own historical, cultural, and denominational conditioning! What a mighty God we serve! What an awesome God has reached out to us (even in our rebellion)! The Bible is a balance of love and power; grace and justice! The more we know the more we know we don't know!
Here are the basic approaches of some helpful books:
Genesis 1-2 interpreted along the lines of modern science:
Bernard Ramm's The Christian View of Science and Scripture (good scientifically and theologically)
Hugh Ross' Creation and Time and The Genesis Question (good scientifically but weak theologically)
Harry Peo and Jimmy Davis' Science and Faith: An Evangelical Dialog (very helpful)
Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology (evangelical approach to theistic evolution)
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God
Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Who Was Adam?
Genesis 1-2 interpreted along the lines of Ancient Near Eastern parallels
R. K. Harrison's Introduction to the Old Testament and Old Testament Times
John H. Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One
K. A. Kitchen's Ancient Orient and Old Testament
Edwin M. Yamauchi's The Stones and the Scriptures
Genesis 1-2 interpreted along the lines of theology from LaSor, Hubbard and Bush's Old Testament Survey (Fuller Seminary OT professors)
"Literary device also is found in the names used. The correspondence of the name with the person's function or role is striking in several instances. Adam means "mankind" and Eve is "(she who gives) life." Surely, when an author of a story names the principal characters Mankind and Life, something is conveyed about the degree of literalness intended! Similarly Cain means "forger (of metals)"; Enoch is connected with "dedication, consecration" (4:17; 5:18); Jubal with horn and trumpet (4:21); while Cain, condemned to be a nād, a "wanderer," goes to live in the land of Nod, a name transparently derived from the same Hebrew root, thus the land of wandering! This suggests that the author is writing as an artist, a storyteller, who uses literary device and artifice. One must endeavor to distinguish what he intends to teach from the literary means employed" p. 72.
the theological implication of Genesis 1-11:
"Implication for Gen. 1-11. Recognizing the literary technique and form and noting the literary background of chs. 1-11 does not constitute a challenge to the reality, the "eventness," of the facts portrayed.
One need not regard this account as myth; however, it is not "history" in the modern sense of eyewitness, objective reporting. Rather, it conveys theological truths about events, portrayed in a largely symbolic, pictorial literary genre.
This is not to say that Gen. 1-11 conveys historical falsehood. That conclusion would follow only if it purported to contain objective descriptions. The clear evidence already reviewed shows that such was not the intent. On the other hand, the view that the truths taught in these chapters have no objective basis is mistaken. They affirm fundamental truths:
(1) creation of all things by God
(2) special divine intervention in the production of the first man and woman
(3) unity of the human race
(4) pristine goodness of the created world, including humanity
(5) entrance of sin through the disobedience of the first pair
(6) depravity and rampant sin after the Fall
All these truths are facts, and their certainty implies the reality of the facts. Put another way, the biblical author uses such literary traditions to describe unique primeval events that have no time-conditioned, human-conditioned, experience-based historical analogy and hence can be described only by symbol. The same problem arises at the end time: the biblical author there, in the book of Revelation, adopts the esoteric imagery and involved literary artifice of apocalyptic" p. 74.
If it is true that one language was spoken in Genesis 1-10 (cf. Samuel Noah Kramer, The Babel of Tongues: A Sumerian Version, "Journal of the American Oriental Society, 88:108-11), then it needs to be clearly stated that it was not Hebrew.
Therefore, all of the Hebrew word plays are from Moses' day or patriarchal oral traditions. This verifies the literary nature of Genesis 1-11. Also see John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, pp. 58-62.
I would like to make a personal comment. I love and appreciate those who love and appreciate the Bible. I am so grateful for people who take its message as an inspired, authoritative message from the One true God. All of us who study the Scriptures are attempting to worship and glorify God with our minds (cf. Matt. 22:37).
The fact that we as individual believers approach the Bible differently is not an aspect of unbelief or rebellion but an act of sincere devotion and an attempt to understand so as to incorporate God's truth into our lives.
The more I study Genesis 1-11 and for that matter, much of the book of Revelation, I perceive it is true but literary, not literal. The key in interpreting the Bible is not my applying a personal philosophical or systematic grid over the text but allowing the intent of the inspired original authors to fully express themselves.
To take a literary passage and demand it to be literal when the text itself gives clues to its symbolic and figurative nature imposes a modern bias on an ancient divine message. Genre (type of literature) is the key in a theological understanding of "how it all began" and "how it will all end."
I appreciate the sincerity and commitment of those who, for whatever reason, usually personality type or professional training, interpret the Bible in modern, literal, western categories, when in fact it is an ancient eastern book.
I say all this to say that I am grateful to God for those who approach Genesis 1-11 with presuppositions that I personally do not share, for I know they will help, encourage and reach people of like personalities and perspectives to love, trust and apply God's Book to their lives!
However, I do not agree that Genesis 1-11 or the book of Revelation should be approached literally, whether it is Creation Research Society (i.e. young earth) or Hugh Ross's Reasons to Believe (i.e. old earth).
For me this section of the Bible emphasizes the "Who" and "why" not the "how" and "when" of creation.
I accept the modern science's sincerity in studying the physical aspects of creation. I reject "naturalism" (i.e. all life is a chance development of natural processes), but surely see process as a valid and demonstrable aspect of our world and universe. I think God directed and used process. But natural processes do not explain the diversity and complexity of life, current and past.
To truly understand current reality I need both the theoretical models of modern science and the theological models of Genesis 1-11. Genesis 1-11 is a theological necessity for understanding the rest of the Bible; but it is an ancient ANE literary, succinct, artistic presentation, not a literal, modern, western presentation.
Parts of the Bible are surely historical narrative. There is a place for the literal interpretation of Scripture: there was a call of Abraham, an Exodus, a virgin birth, a Calvary, a resurrection; there will be a second coming and an eternal kingdom. The question is one of genre, of authorial intent, not personal preferences in interpretation.
