06/5/18

In the Beginning, Part 2

Believe it or not, biblical scholars have wandered in the weeds of competing interpretations within the first two verses of Genesis before they even get to the days of creation in verse 3 for hundreds of years; perhaps thousands. The recitation of the days of creation afterwards evokes several additional questions, including the next two. If the six days of creation aren’t 24-hour days, what are they? And what do we make of light created on the first day, when the lights of the heavens, separating the day from the night, are “made” on the fourth day?

Part 1 of this article looked at question of whether there were one or two creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis. Following the thought of C. John Collins, we concluded there is one complementary account, with the events of Genesis 2:5-25 happening on the sixth day of creation in chapter 1. But in doing so, we raised the likelihood that the length of the creation week was not an ordinary week. Continuing with the work of C. John Collins in Science and Faith and his commentary, Genesis 1-4, we will explore this possibility and hopefully provide some satisfactory answers to the questions posed above.

The structure of the Genesis 1 creation narrative is well known: six workdays followed by a Sabbath rest on the seventh day. Each of the six workdays begins with “and God said,” and ends with, “and there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” The King James translation here, “and the evening and the morning were the nth day,” is a mistranslation, seemingly from the Latin version of the Bible from the fourth century. The seventh day is different, as God doesn’t “say” anything or “do” anything; and there is no refrain about the evening and morning, as God is resting from all his work.

The creation narrative in Genesis 1:1-2:3 is often referred to as a cosmogony, meaning it is a story about how the universe began. But Collins thinks this is only partly true and in reality, misses the point of the narrative. He sees a cosmogony only in verse 1 (“in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”), with the narrative then moving on to its main point, “the making and preparing of the earth as a place for humans to live.” If the Genesis cosmogony is only within verse 1:1, then the first creation narrative is silent about the particulars of the creation of the universe.

Additionally, the terms “heavens and earth,” which refer to everything in verse 1, are used with a narrower sense after verse 2. Beginning in verse 8 (and again in verses 9, 14, 15, 17, etc.) “heaven(s)” refers to “sky.” And beginning in verse 11 (and verses 12, 22, 24, 25, etc.) “earth” refers to “land.” Another important fact in support of this interpretation is that the first place the normal Hebrew narrative tense appears is in verse 3, the beginning of the first workday.

This leads Collins to conclude that verses 1-2 are background information to the rest of the narrative. They describe the setting of day one. The typical function of this kind of background statement is to give information on an action that took place at some unspecified time before the narrative about to begin, such as with Genesis 16:1; 21:1; or 24:1.

“All this means that the origin of the whole show gets taken care of in one verse, and the author moves on to focus on something else.” Collins said that the fact that Genesis 1:1-2 is not part of the first day tells us we don’t have to take the creation week as the first “week” of the universe. So however we interpret the days of creation, we are not obligated to read Moses as claiming God began his creative work on the first day of the beginning of the universe or even at the beginning of the earth. “This tells us that some lengths of time don’t matter to the story.” So Collins proposes the following outline for Genesis 1:1-2:3.

1:1-2	Preface: the initial creation event, and conditions as day 1 gets underway.
1:3-5	Day 1: light and darkness
1:6-8	Day 2: sea and sky
1:9-13	Day 3: land, sea and vegetation
1:14-19	Day 4: light-bearers in the heavens
1:20-23	Day 5: sea animals and flying creatures
1:24-31	Day 6: land animals and humans
2:1-3	Day 7: God’s Sabbath (no refrain)

The passage is a narrative, given its frequent use of the normal Hebrew verb tense for narrative, yet it is has an unusual structure for a narrative genre. The events described within it are unique. There is only one actor—God. And there is a highly patterned (but not truly poetic) way of telling the story. The description of plant life and animals is exceedingly broad. “No single species, other than man, gets its proper Hebrew name.” The sun and the moon in 1:16 are called by unusual names, not otherwise used in the Old Testament. And the term “expanse” in verse 6 seems to be a rhetorically elevated name for the heavens or sky.

The use of phenomenological language in Genesis 1—“describing things by the way they appear, without committing ourselves to be taken ‘literally’”—is also evident in the term “lights” (mã’ôr) used to refer to the sun, moon and stars. The Hebrew word usually means “lamp.” Using this kind of language suited the purposes of the author in a particular way. Its broad stroke, majestic but simplistic, allusive and strictly patterned description “is well-suited to bring out a sense of wonder and delight at the creativity and boundless energy of God.”

All this leads us to conclude that the genre of this pericope is what we may call exalted prose. This name for the genre will serve us in several ways. First, it acknowledges that we are dealing with prose narrative [not poetry], and thus its purposes will be related to other uses of prose narrative—which will include the making of truth claims about the world in which we live. Second, by calling it exalted, we are recognizing that when we come to examine the author’s truth claims, we must not impose a “literalistic” hermeneutic on the text. Further, to call it exalted points us away from ordinary narration and leads us to suppose that its proper function extends well beyond its information to the attitudes it fosters.

God “making” the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day has posed difficulty for readers and interpreters of Scripture throughout history. First, notice how Genesis 1 makes a distinction between light and light-bearing bodies by the creation light on the first day and then “making” or fashioning light-bearing bodies on the fourth. “That is, ‘he made,’ is not the same as ‘he created.’” The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament commented:

The use of bārāʾ [create] in the opening statement of the account of creation seems to carry the implication that the physical phenomena came into existence at that time and had no previous existence in the form in which they were created by divine fiat. The use of ʿāśâ [made] may simply connote the act of fashioning the objects involved in the whole creative process.

This interpretation means that we don’t have to suppose there was some other source of light besides the sun on the first day; or that the sun, moon and stars appeared on the fourth day as the cloud cover dissipated. “We don’t have to suppose that the days are not in sequence—that day four cannot be after day three (when the plants began to grow).”

Now turn to the refrain, “and there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” What was “the significance of evening followed by morning in the ancient Hebrew world?” Simply put, nighttime was significant; this was when the worker took his daily rest, as in Psalm 104:22-23. When the sun rises, “man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.” So there is a repeated pattern of God working and resting, just as the human creatures who are made in his image. “This daily rest in Israel looks forward to the weekly Sabbath rest.”

Note also there is no refrain on the seventh day, which draws attention to itself by breaking the pattern. If Moses intended to end a first story of creation before introducing a second in Genesis 2:4, we might reasonably expect it, if the days were supposed to be ordinary ones. “Moses wanted us to think that the seventh day had no end—that we are right now living in God’s Sabbath.” The seventh day is then not a 24-hour day.

Turning to the Sabbath commandment in Exodus 20:8-11, we see that God told the Israelites to keep the Sabbath day holy, working six days and resting on the seventh. “The reason is the pattern God set in his creation week: he worked for six days and rested on the seventh.”

Some will say this proves God’s workweek was six ordinary days, since it is a pattern for a human workweek. But Collins noted how this misses two key points. First, the creation rest is unique. Second, “our working and resting cannot be identical to God’s—they are like God’s in some way; but certainly not the same.” Our rest is like God’s because we rest from our labors to contemplate his works.

If we put all of these things together, we see that the best explanation is the one that takes these days as not the ordinary kind; they are instead “God’s workdays.” Our workdays are not identical to them, but analogous. The purpose of the analogy is to set a pattern for the human rhythm of work and rest.

Collins calls this the analogical days interpretation. He claims it accounts for the details of Genesis and for how the rest of the Bible refers to the creation. It provides a tight agreement between the first creation narrative (1:1-2:3) and the second (2:4-25) by showing that the second elaborates just day six. “And if the only price you have to pay for all these benefits is to give up ordinary days—well, that’s not too bad, is it?”

But is Genesis 1:1-2:3 a scientific account of creation? If what is meant by the question, is it true, then yes Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a scientific account of creation. But if we mean: “suited to the purposes for which today’s scientists might want to use the information,” then the answer is no, it is not scientific in that sense. Collins gave the following quote from John Calvin’s commentary on Genesis, to illustrate this distinction. As Calvin reflected on the meaning of verse 1:6, he said: “For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.” Calvin went on to say as he commented on verse 1:16 that Moses wrote in a popular style that all ordinary persons “endued with common sense” were able to understand.

C. John Collins went on to comment if we just say the Genesis account isn’t quite scientific, we haven’t said enough when we’re talking about the Bible and science. “The way Genesis describes God’s work of creation lays a foundation for science and philosophy—for all sound thinking about the world. This is because it tells us that a good and wise God made the world for us to enjoy; and the things in the world have natures that are knowable.”

For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

05/25/18

In the Beginning, Part 1

There are a variety of ways to interpret and understand the Genesis creation accounts, including whether there is one account or two separate ones. Then there is the question of where should the first account end. Certainly it doesn’t end with the last verse of chapter one, or does it? And what about that pesky debate over what to do with the days of creation? We’ll start our discussion with the question of the whether there are one or two creation accounts.

It is widely agreed upon by biblical scholars that there are two creation narratives. As C. John Collins said in Science & Faith, “I don’t think anyone disputes the idea that there are two narratives; what they dispute is where one ends and the other begins, and how the events of one relate to those of the other.” He thought the key decision was in what you do with Genesis 2:4, which reads: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Right in the middle of Genesis 2:4, the creator God is referred to as “the Lord God” for the first time. Some scholars argue this means the second part of 2:4 begins the second creation account as follows: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens …” Additionally, the first part of 2:4 has clear similarities to 1:1, forming a literary inclusio, marking the beginning and end of the first creation account. So the first creation account begins with: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth …” and ends with “… These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.”

Underlying this sense of where to spilt the two creation narratives (or accounts) is The JEPD Theory or documentary hypothesis. It holds there are four sources or traditions contributing to the Pentateuch, the Yahwist (abbreviated as J from the German word for Yahwist); the Elohist (E); the Deuteronomist (D); and the Priestly (P). The theory proposes that each source reflects a particular community and historical situation, which explains the focus of their theology. We won’t explore this further, but mention it to note the use of “the Lord God” is associated with the Yahwist (J) tradition, where Genesis 1:1-2:4a is associated with the so-called Priestly (P) tradition.

The problem with making the distinction between the two creation narratives this way is that it places the phrase “These are the generations …” at the end of a narrative, when the clear pattern in Genesis is for it to introduce a narrative or genealogy. The phrase appears at the beginning of a new section ten other times in Genesis (5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2). Collins said: “It is reasonable to expect it to do the same here.” He then pointed to how in Genesis 2:4 the lines “of the heavens (a) and the earth (b) when they were created (c)” and “in the day that the Lord God made (c’) the earth (b’) and the heavens (c’)” form an elaborate mirror pattern called a chiasmus:

In this pattern the elements have the order a-b-c || c’-b’-a’, that is the second line mirrors the first in its order of elements. Scholars of the ancient Near East often feel good when they can show a chiasmus with two elements in a passage (a-b || b’-a’), though it may be chance rather than art that produced it. But when there are three elements, that’s taken as clear evidence of art—which means the author wanted you to notice it. And what was the author telling you to do once you noticed it? He wanted you to read it as a whole thought, without breaking it apart.”

So we see that the chiastic structure resists the temptation to divide verse 2:4, but is there more? In his commentary on Genesis 1-4, Collins suggested Genesis 2:4 acts as a hinge verse between the two creation narratives. The word order of Genesis 2:4a (the heavens and the earth) and the verb “created” point back to Genesis 1:1. The new divine name in 2:4b, “the Lord God,” points forward to Genesis 2:5-3:24. It also combines “God” as the title of the deity in his role as Creator with the name “Lord,” which in Hebrew is his personal, covenantal name (Ex. 3:13-15). So the covenant God of Israel (Yahweh or Lord) is the Creator of heaven and earth (God or Elohim). “It follows easily, then, that the author or editor wanted his audience to read these two accounts as complementary.”

But there is a potentially serious problem in the verses following 2:4 if we try to harmonize the two creation narratives. Despite this, Collins doesn’t think we can read the first creation narrative as being independent of the rest of Genesis; and from there the rest of the Bible. It’s part of a context. In order to illustrate the problem, look first at Genesis 2:5-7:

⁵When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— ⁷then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

In Genesis 1:11-12, God made the plants on the third day. But here, it seems the text is saying plants didn’t exist until the sixth day, when God formed man from the dust of the ground. In order to make sense of this apparent contradiction, Collins pointed to the Hebrew word translated as land, ’eres, in the ESV translation. The word can refer to “the earth” in a cosmological sense, as it does in Genesis 1:1-2; or to “the land” in the sense of a specific territory (1:10), such as Palestine. Here’s why that is important.

Palestine doesn’t get rain in the summer, so plants don’t grow until the autumn rains bring about a burst of plant growth. “So verses 5-7 would make good sense if we supposed that they describe a time of year, when it has been a dry summer, so the plants aren’t growing” because God hadn’t caused the rain and there was not anyone around to work the ground yet. “The plants are missing, it says, because there’s no rain, and no man to cultivate and irrigate.” Collins said the only way he can make sense of this explanation is if he imagined the cycle of rain, plant growth, and dry season had been going on for a number of years before this point. Significantly, “the text says nothing about God not yet having made the plants.”

In some particular land, in some particular year, at the time of year before the rainy season began, but when the mist (or rain cloud) was rising (which may suggest the beginning of the rainy season)—that’s when God formed the first human, planted the Garden of Eden, and transplanted man there. (By the way, that also explains … “a mist was going up”).

This interpretation by Collins shows the events of 2:5-25 happened on the sixth day of chapter 1. It also shows the second creation narrative is an expansion of the chapter 1 account of the sixth day. And it means we shouldn’t confuse 2:5-6 with the third day of chapter 1. Lastly, “if we are to follow the lead the way Moses has narrated these details—especially the bit about the cycle of seasons going on for some time—then we have to say the length of the creation week could not have been an ordinary week: it must have been longer.”

In Part 2, we look at what C. John Collins suggests for how to interpret the days of creation in Genesis 1 if they weren’t ordinary 24-hour days. For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

11/15/16

Genealogies in Genesis

One of the fundamental issues in the dispute over a Biblical understanding of the age of the earth is how the genealogies in Genesis should be interpreted. Bishop Ussher’s chronology dated the creation of the heavens and earth in Genesis 1:1 to a very specific date in 4004 BCE. Editions of the King James translation of the Bible (KJV) began to disseminate his chronology in the 1650s. Then beginning in 1701, William Lloyd’s annotated edition of the KJV included Ussher’s chronology within marginal annotations and cross-references. The popular Scofield Reference Bible (1909/1917) also used it, which helped establish Ussher’s chronology as one of the key theological pillars of modern young earth creation belief.

Intriguingly, Ussher appears to have done his work in the midst of a dispute over biblical chronology in his time. According to The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Modern England, c. 1530-1700, Robert Carey believed that errors in standard accounts of biblical history, relying on the apparent chronology of the Hebrew text, had provided the opportunity for some to attack the integrity and truth of the Bible. “He was critical of those who wanted to use apparent technical problems in biblical chronology to cast doubt on doctrinal certainties.” Cary and others believed that using the records of alternative sources could help resolve some of the apparent discrepancies. This was later referred to as scientific chronology, using the records of ancient history to make sense of the Bible.

Ussher’s conclusions seemed to bring a greater degree of certainty to a biblical chronology derived from the Hebrew Bible and orthodox readings of the text. His writings did this “at a time when chronology had become one of the most important determinants in a serious debate about the transmission and authority of the text of the Old Testament.” He was one of the first individuals to be fully aware of the variety of manuscript witnesses for biblical history “and the discrepancies in ancient testimony regarding the Old Testament.” His solution was to affirm the authority of the Hebrew Bible by his own extensive inquiries into the preservation and transmission of alternative textual witnesses, such as the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint.

So Ussher’s affirmation of the creation of the world at nightfall on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BCE, occurred within the context of disputes over the apparent chronology of the Hebrew text. At that time, certain individuals used these discrepancies to cast doubt on the transmission and authority of the text of the Old Testament. Today, holding to Ussher’s chronology is still seen as an integral part of affirming the authority of Scripture for many who hold to a young earth creation viewpoint.

Writing for the Institute for Creation Research, John Morris noted the association of Ussher’s chronology with the KJV in “Can the Ussher Chronology Be Trusted?” Morris clearly accepts Ussher’s dating for “all important historical events, beginning at creation and extending to the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70.” He noted where an ICR colleague had modernized the language of Ussher’s original work, and hoped it would re-establish Ussher’s chronology as a standard research tool and restore for some, “their confidence in the Biblical record.”

In another ICR article, James Johnson used ‘simple math’ and the data provided in Genesis to conclude there was no good excuse for doubting the biblical chronological data. He rejected the “irrelevant” issue of whether Genesis genealogies were open (whether they skip generations and have gaps) or closed (the genealogies are complete). Upon completion of his own interpretation of Genesis timeframes, he said there was no good excuse for doubting the biblical chronological data as he presented it.

Yet biblical scholars beginning with William Henry Green in 1890 have continued to raise questions regarding the validity of Ussher’s chronology. Green’s article, “Primeval Chronology,” was published in the journal, Bibliotheca Sacra. He said the biblical genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 were not intended for the construction of chronology.

It can scarcely be necessary to adduce proof to one who has even a superficial acquaintance with the genealogies of the Bible, that they are frequently abbreviated by the omission of unimportant names. In fact, abridgment is the general rule, induced by the indisposition of the sacred writers to encumber their pages with more names than were necessary for their immediate purpose. This is so constantly the case, and the reason for it so obvious, that the occurrence of it need create no surprise anywhere, and we are at liberty to suppose it whenever anything in the circumstances of the case favors that belief.

Several modern evangelical Old Testament scholars concur with Green. C. John Collins, as he discussed the biblical evidence for a historical Adam and Eve in Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?, noted that the genealogies in Genesis 4-5 do not claim to name every person in the line of descent from Adam, and therefore aren’t aimed at “providing detailed chronological information.” He added there was no way he knew of to assess what size gaps these genealogies allow. “It does not appear that they are intended to tell us what kind of time period they are describing.”

In his Genesis commentary from The Story of God Bible Commentary series, Tremper Longman said not all the genealogies in Genesis are of the same type or purpose. They are “ancient Near Eastern, not modern Western, genealogies.” The two main kinds of genealogies found in the Bible are linear and segmented. Linear genealogies go from father to one son (or ancestor), while segmented ones name a number of sons (or ancestors) from one father, as in Genesis 10. “Ancient genealogies are fluid.” They can skip generations. “They can change in order to reflect contemporary social and political realities.” According to R. R. Wilson, they are not normally created for historical purposes or intended to be historical records.

In the Bible, as well as in the ancient Near Eastern literature and in the anthropological material, genealogies seem to have been created for domestic, political-jural, and religious purposes, and historical information is preserved in the genealogies only incidentally.

The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary had a similar view on genealogies. It too said linear and segmented were the two major types of biblical genealogies. “Both types show fluidity among the middle names; names may be omitted or rearranged, or relationships changed.”

The Hebrews, like other ancient Near Eastern peoples, used genealogies to authenticate rights of inheritance (Num. 27:1–11), enhance the social position of outsiders (e.g., Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite [Num. 32:12; Josh. 14:6; 15:13], becomes a son of Hezron—part of Judah; 1 Chr. 2:18), establish royal and cultic lineages (e.g., David, 1 Chr. 3; priests, 2 Chr. 31:16–19; Levites, Neh. 7:43–45; temple servants, vv. 46–56), and organize their social geography (Gen. 10). Usually only men are recorded.

Genesis 10 provides a list of the descendants of Noah. Many of the names in what is called the “Table of the Nations” have been identified with racial, geographical and political entities outside of the Bible. The following map, based on the Table of the Nations in Genesis 10, was taken from the New Bible Atlas:

In his Genesis commentary, Bruce Waltke said genealogies serve several purposes in Genesis—purposes which depend in part upon the nature of the genealogy itself. Broad genealogies present only the first generations of descendants (the sons of Leah or the sons of Rachel in Genesis 35:23-26). Deep genealogies list sequential descendants, usually from two to ten. Linear genealogies display only depth (Genesis 4:17-18). Segmented genealogies display both depth and breadth (Genesis 10:1-29; cf. 11:27-29; 19:36-38). “The distinctions of broad, deep, linear and segmented genealogies help explain the various functions of genealogies.”

By tracing their lineage back to a common ancestor, broad and segmented genealogies show the existing relationships between kinship groups. Genealogies were used in tribal societies to express the rights and privileges within social relationships, rather than strict biological kinship. The Table of Nations noted above expressed the kinship and distinctions between Israel and the surrounding nations. “The segmented lists of tribes in Gen. 46:8-25 display both the unity of all Israel and the distinctness of its tribes.”

However the linear genealogies in Genesis 4:17-18, 5:1-31; 11:10-26 are used to establish continuity over time without narrative. “Because the genealogies are concerned to propel the story and establish relational links, they cannot be used to compute absolute chronology.” For example, although the pre-flood genealogy of 5:1-31 and the post-flood genealogy of 11:10-26 record the ages when an individual fathered a son and then died, they don’t give the complete sum of time for the life spans of the individuals. If the narrator intended to establish an absolute, or “closed” chronology, this is a surprising omission.

Comparing shorter and longer genealogies that cover the same time periods elsewhere in the Bible suggest the shorter ones contain gaps. We see this in Exodus 6:14-25 with four generations from Levi to Moses, while 1 Chronicles 7:23-27 gives ten. Similar to the division of history into three periods of fourteen generations in the first chapter of Matthew, the division of history between Adam and Abraham into two equal divisions of ten generations (5:1-32 and 10:10-26) seems “artistic.”

Linear genealogies also demonstrate the legitimacy of an individual in his office; or give a person of rank connections to a worthy family or individual of the past. “This purpose was unaffected by the omission of names.” We see this in Genesis 5, which showed that Noah was the legitimate descendant of Adam through Seth. “By beginning Noah’s ancestry with Adam, whom God created in his image, this genealogy represents Noah and his ancestry as the worthy bearers of the divine image mandated to rule the earth.”

By linking the genealogies by tôl^eḏōṯ [generations] and connecting the twelve tribes of Israel to Noah’s son, Shem, the narrator demonstrates the legitimacy of the twelve tribes of Israel as image bearers, destined to subdue the earth, and as the worthy seed of the woman that will vanquish the Serpent. From those tribes Judah emerges as leader at the end of Genesis. His eternal son will rule forever over the nations (Gen. 49:8-12).

With all due respect to Bishop Ussher, his chronology has outlived its usefulness. Young earth creationists seem to be trying to affirm the authority and infallibility of Scripture by holding onto it. But they err in assuming the authority of Scripture is undermined if alternative ways of interpreting the genealogies are held. And it seems to me that they undermine their witness of the gospel by insisting their interpretation is the only valid one.

For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

10/25/16

The Handiwork of God

The modern Christian, believing that the Bible is God’s inspired Word, His special revelation to us, will inevitably have to wrestle with whether or not the creation and flood accounts in Genesis are scientifically accurate. It can appear that they are being challenged to “choose whom they will serve”—the revealed God of Scripture or Science. But such an either-or presentation of the issue is a false dichotomy. And the first clue that this is so is found in Scripture itself. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”

This is the first verse of Psalm 19, which goes on to assert that this declaration is throughout all the earth. Day and night the creation pours out this knowledge, this general revelation. It comes to all human beings simply because they are alive. The Reformation Study Bible said: “God has revealed Himself this way from the start of human history.” Then there is a shift to declare the perfection of God’s word, His special revelation starting with verse seven: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.”

So there is no dichotomy between God’s two books of revelation. Abraham Kuyper asserted this truth when he said: “God is honored not by those who close the second book of nature to ponder Scripture alone, but by those who in quiet obedience zealously study the two books of Scripture and nature.” And if there is no dichotomy between God’s Word and his creation, the problem must exist in how we have interpreted Scripture.

An American scientist and Christian named Richard Bube observed in his 1963 essay, “A Perspective on Scriptural Inerrancy,” that orthodox Christians have been so intent on defending the divine origin of Scripture, that they tended to overlook its relationship to those for whom it was intended. He said we tend the treat the Bible as if it was “dropped down from heaven in one piece, transcribed by the finger of God.” He suggested that a view of Scripture that he called “arbitrary inerrancy” was at fault for this problem. By arbitrary inerrancy, he meant that: “the Scriptures must be inerrant with respect to any criterion applied to them to test their inerrancy.”

Oftentimes conservative theologians have spoken out in defense of Scriptural inerrancy as if there were only one kind of inerrancy imaginable-a kind of all or nothing inerrancy. They argue that the Scriptures are either completely inerrant in every way and with respect to every criterion for inerrancy which may be applied, or they are not inerrant at all. This is the viewpoint of “arbitrary inerrancy.” The term “arbitrary” does not imply that the motives of those who hold to this point of view are arbitrary, but rather that inerrancy must be maintained and defended against arbitrary criteria.

He said there exists a fear that we subtract from God and from His glory when we ascribe His operations in creation to natural mechanisms. There has been a human tendency “to ascribe to the direct and supernatural intervention of God” all those things for which we have no natural or rational explanation. Unfortunately, as time passes and scientific knowledge increases, the unexplained in nature decreases. So there is a tendency to marginalize the relevance of God and His work. “As we find out more and more about His creation, we see less and less evidence of the Creator!”

The problem identified here by Bube is particularly evident when Christians seek to faithfully understand the creation and flood accounts in Genesis. His sense of arbitrary inerrancy would apply to questions raised by science about the age of the earth and process of creation, as well as the reality of a global flood. The relatively recent creation of the earth in six twenty-four hour days, and its later destruction by a worldwide flood was unchallenged for centuries. Then modern geology and Darwin happened.

Christians attempted to harmonize the biblical teaching in Genesis to the developing scientific theories, in a process called concordism. An example of this given by C. John Collins in his book, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?, was how in the nineteenth century the days of Genesis 1 were said to have anticipated findings of modern science in the geological ages of the earth, “even down to details of sequence and timing.”

An obvious problem with this approach is that geologists today do not describe the earth’s history the way they did in 1871. So does that mean “we should reject contemporary geology in favor of 1871 geology, or that the Bible was wrong?” Collins went on to say:

More significantly from an exegetical standpoint, the kind of concordism on display in nineteenth century studies of Genesis assumes that the Bible writer’s purpose was to describe the same sorts of things as the contemporary scientist does. This is a highly problematic assumption, when one considers the audience for whom Genesis was written—Old Testament Israel, whose main concerns were dominated by subsistence agriculture. Further, it assumes that truth and scientific detail are the same thing, which is absurd.

Another sense of concordism is held by Denis Lamoureux. He separates concordism into theological and scientific concordism. By theological concordism, he means “there is an indispensible correspondence between the theological truths of Scripture and spiritual reality,” which he affirmed. On the other hand, scientific concordism referred to the belief there is “an alignment between the assertions about nature in the Bible and the physical world.”

Lamoureux agreed it is reasonable to believe there is agreement or accord between science and Scripture. That is what the sense of the two books of revelation means—the book of God’s works (nature) and the Book of God’s Word (the Bible). But he has something else in mind. By the term scientific concordism, Lamoureux means the belief that through the Holy Spirit, God revealed modern scientific facts to the biblical writers. Therefore, the statements about the physical world in the Bible are themselves inerrant—without error. So questioning these statements is seen as an attack on the belief in biblical inerrancy. This sense of scientific concordism does appear to underlie young earth creationism.

So when an orthodox, Bible-believing Christian seeks to understand Genesis 1, what are they to do? Are they required to take up the arbitrary inerrancy position or the scientific concordist approach of young earth creation and thus defend a strict literalist understanding of the text? Can they have a more relaxed understanding of concordism that seeks to harmonize Genesis 1 with the science of origins, recognizing that their harmonization may change as science develops? Or can they avoid the dilemmas of concordism entirely by approaching Genesis 1 as an ancient text devoid of specifics on how God created the universe? R. K. Harrison, an Old Testament professor at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto said this in his textbook, Introduction to the Old Testament:

Since the first chapter of Genesis is clearly not intended to comprise a scientific document—if only because of its sheer untechnical language—it is obviously undesirable to posit concordist theories of the relationship between the creation narratives and the findings of modern descriptive science. Having said this, however, it is necessary to remind the reader that the phases of development recorded in Genesis 1 are by no means as unaligned with the findings of modern science as was supposed by earlier writers on the subject. What is of primary importance for the Biblical student as well as for the scientist is to realize that the Genesis narrative must be interpreted from the standpoint of its anonymous author before pontifications are made as to when it is and is not “scientific.”

For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

09/15/16

What’s in a Day?

Christianity sees the seventh day of creation tied to the fourth commandment in Exodus 20:8-11. Exodus 20:11 said God made the heaven and earth in six days and rested the seventh day. “Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” C. John Collins observed that for many people, this implies that not only was the creation week “the first ‘week’ of the creation, but in fact it was of identical length to the week we are familiar with.” A day in Genesis 1 is twenty-four hours and a week is seven twenty-four hour days. Any other interpretation is a violation of the authority of Scripture and is forbidden. But what if that’s not what Genesis 1 means when it refers to days and a week?

In Redeeming Science Vern Poythress pointed out that although some people think that the length of a 24-hour day in Genesis 1 is obvious, “the text does not directly state how long the days were in terms of ordinary human measurement.” The use of the Hebrew word for day (yom) and the evening and morning refrain points to a correspondence between God’s work and the human sabbatical pattern, but it does not prove the correspondence is an identity.

The next thread to pull in the seven twenty-four-hour day understanding is that the seventh day doesn’t have the formulaic beginning and ending: “And God said . . . And there was evening and there was morning, the ______ day.” The usual reply is that the seventh day in the creation week was the day God rested from all his creative work (Genesis 2:1-3). Since he completed his work in the sixth day, the seventh day would not have a formulaic ending because the creative work was completed. Nevertheless, this is a distinct break in the pattern of the workweek with the first six days.

But how long is the seventh day? Poythress said the seventh day has a special blessing and holiness because God rested on it from all his work (Genesis 2:3). God’s rest is the pattern for human rest, as we see in the fourth commandment. Since God rested on the seventh day of creation, He blessed the Sabbath and made it holy (Exodus 20:8-11). The holiness belongs to God’s rest, not the day itself. “The holiness extends to the day precisely because it is the day of God’s rest.” In order to deserve the holiness it receives, the seventh day must be linked closely to God’s rest. So he concludes that since God’s rest goes on forever, “God’s day of rest also goes on forever.”

While God’s work of creation was finished and his rest from it lasts forever, our rest on the seventh day isn’t absolutely finished yet. We begin again on the first day of the next workweek. But our work is heading towards the coming time of absolute, final rest (Hebrews 4:9-11). “Our human rest on one day of 24 hours looks not only backward to God’s rest from creating but also forward to our final ‘day’ of rest.” Human 24-hour Sabbath rest both foreshadows our final rest, and imitates the final rest of God, into which He has already entered. “This foreshadowing involves analogy to the reality to which it points, rather than pure identity of length.” So again, God’s seventh day in Genesis 2:2-3 is unending.

“And if this is so, then it is analogous rather than identical to a human day of 24 hours.” If the seventh day of the creation week is analogical, then the pattern of God’s entire workweek forms an analogical pattern to our work and rest. God’s workweek is not the same as a human workweek, but they correspond to one another. They are analogical. Now look at this conclusion another way.

An original reader of Genesis 1 would recognize and relate to the rhythm of God working with a rhythm like that of a human work week rather than a description of His activity segmented into 24-hour days. “The pattern that strikes him is the rhythm of work, not the question of the ticking clock.” The Israelites did not have mechanical clocks, so measurement by clock time (i.e., 24-hour days) makes no sense to them. The time pattern of workdays, followed by night—evening and morning—would make the most sense to them.

Poythress said in Christian Interpretations of Genesis 1 the analogy in Genesis 1 extends to the entire week, including the evenings and mornings, and isn’t just focused on the word day. “God pauses between his works from one day to the next.” This reflects the human work pattern noted in Psalm 104:23: “Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.”

Now look at the pattern of evening and morning, repeated in the six days of creative work in Genesis 1. God is working during the day and “resting” during the evening, just as man does in his work. The lack of “evening and morning” for the seventh day in Genesis 2:3-4 indicates the continuation of his day of rest from the work of creation. “God’s rest from the work of creation is everlasting.” He no longer “creates” animals or plants or humans —the conception and birth of Christ being the only exception. So by inference, the day of God’s rest is everlasting; and not 24-hours long. So when Exodus 20:8-11 establishes a 24-hour Sabbath day of rest imitating the day of God’s rest from his creative works, it is analogical to God’s rest. “So again the salient factor is not the length of time, as measured by a clock of some kind, but rather the kinds of activities that take place during the day.”

We see God having the same pattern of work and rest, moving towards His Sabbath. The first day is God’s workday, followed by rest; and another workday and rest; continuing until the Sabbath day of rest. God cannot be literally said to “rest,” since he cannot get tired, so the language of his workweek and Sabbath is once again analogical and not literal. The narrator of Genesis “wanted primarily to tell us about the making and shaping of the earth as a place for humans to live in fellowship with their Maker.” See this link for free ebook copies of the two works referenced above by Vern Poythress, Redeeming Science and Christian Interpretations of Genesis 1.

C. John Collins said the best term for the formulaic language used in Genesis 1 was “exalted prose.” By this he meant the language is “higher” than ordinary language, as is the language in a very traditional high-church liturgy. “The language here is stylized, very broad-stroke, and majestic in its simplicity.” It makes the same truth claims as traditional prose narrative. But “we must not impose a ‘literalistic’ hermeneutic on the text.”

The alternative understanding proposed by Collins and Poythress for a literalistic sense of the days in Genesis 1 is called the analogical days view. There is an analogical, but not an identical correspondence between God’s workweek in Genesis and the human workweek of six 24-hours days and a day of rest. The days in Genesis are structured to set a pattern for our own rhythm of rest and work. The length of time for the creation week, either before or after it, is irrelevant to the purpose of the account. Poythress closed his discussion of the analogical day view in Redeeming Science with the following:

Thus, when some advocates of the 24-hour-day view claim to have specific information about the length of the days, they fall short in hearing what Genesis does and does not say. They sincerely desire to honor God’s word, and to follow God wherever he leads, but they have not done full justice to the passage. In harmony with the analogical day view, the passage simply teaches that God made the world in six days but does not provide details about how to measure the exact length of the days by some objective, nonhuman standard.

For more articles on creation in the Bible, see the link “Genesis & Creation.”

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Tag: C. John Collins

In the Beginning, Part 2

In the Beginning, Part 1

Genealogies in Genesis

The Handiwork of God

What’s in a Day?