BIBLE-STUDY: 2020/06/07 (ST. MATTHEW'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, MCMINNVILLE) - GENESIS 1:1-2:4A - ST MATTHEW'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH MCMINNVILLE
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Benjamin T. Randall
y
Sunda
Bible-study: 2020/06/07 (St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church,
McMinnville) – Genesis 1:1-2:4a
[Ask for a volunteer to read the passage.]
We begin this Sunday a long, sweeping series of Old Testament readings, taken,
in their proper order, from the first book of the Bible: Genesis. These are the
foundational stories for understanding God, the universe and the “human
condition.” They are, then, of enormous significance. Especially the one we just
heard. Indeed, lamentably, it stirs up ‘bitter conflict’ for the Church, and within
the Church.1 More than any other controversy – besides Scripture’s vision of
sexuality, of course – it alone, Genesis [chapter] One – a single chapter from a
single book from among sixty-six of them(!) – is said to be driving the decline of
the Faith in the West. Specifically, its failure to conform to the contemporary
scientific consensus and explicitly expound an evolutionary account of creation,
for which the evidence seems overwhelming: ‘that all known living organisms
are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past.’
Which changed, very slowly into the current diversity by a ‘mechanism of
natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.’2
So, does Genesis [chapter] One – if taken at “face value,” at least – rule
out such a process? I think it does. Though I admit I’m reluctant to say so: I
fear the consequences of saying so; I fear I’ve come to this conclusion having
either not studied enough of the relevant scholarship or perhaps by studying
too much of the wrong “kind;” or by having failed to properly weigh the
particular evidence that was available to me, both for and against. (My head, I
confess, is “spinning”!) But ‘being honest to the biblical texts, the authors, and
their beliefs should be our first, and in many regards our only, priority and
goal.’3 For this is where the inspired meaning is to be found. Not in what we
think is being conveyed, but what actually lies on the page. And ‘the truth shall
set you free.’ Said Jesus: [Jn. 8:32], who quoted from Genesis. The very passage
under discussion this morning, no less: [see Mk. 10:6].
Who is, then, the author? (The human author, that is: for the Bible is
“God breathed,” of course: [2 Tim. 3:16].) Traditionally, ‘[f]rom antiquity’,
Moses.4 This idea has been much attacked since the “Enlightenment.” And in
the twentieth century, adherents of the “Documentary Hypothesis” argued that
the Old Testament (as a whole) was a composite of four, underlying sources: “J;”
1 See: Venema, Dennis R. and McKnight, Scot (2017), Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture
after Genetic Science, Grand Rapids, M. I.: Brazos Press (Baker Publishing Group), vii.
2 Meyer, Stephen C. (2017), ‘Scientific and Philosophical Introduction’, in Moreland, J. P.; Meyer,
Stephen C.; Shaw, Christopher; Gauger, Ann K. & Grudem, Wayne (Eds.), Theistic Evolution: A
Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, Wheaton, I. L.: Crossway, pp. 33-60, 35-37.
3 DiMattei, Steven (2016), Genesis 1 and the Creationism Debate: Being Honest to the Text, Its
Author, and His Beliefs, Eugene, O. R.: Wipf & Stock Publishers, x.
4 Steinmann, Andrew E. (2019), Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries), Downers Grove,
I. L.: InterVarsity Press, 2.
1
Benjamin T. Randall
“E;” “D;” and, lastly, “P” – to whom our (particular) verses were usually
attributed. He was the “Priestly Writer,” a post-exilic scribe, it was imagined,
influenced by a (refined) ‘Persian imperial [context]’,5 ‘with interest in genealogy
lists, rituals, laws, and other liturgical matters.’6 Hence, ‘the hymn-like’ quality
of Genesis [chapter] One,7 with its stanzas and repeated refrain: [1:5b, 8b, 13,
19, 23].
The principal impetus for such a view – that the Hebrew texts are a
jigsaw-puzzle to be teased apart – was ‘the [striking] alternation of the Divine
names, Jehovah and Elohim.’8 Their use was seen as evidence of different
contributors who preferred one or the other. Furthermore, “Jehovah” or rather
Yahweh, (which is a far superior translation), is used by God about Himself for
the first time at the burning-bush. Any occurrences of the name before this
juncture (in Exodus), therefore, are seen as aberrant, anachronistic – betraying
the clumsy handiwork of one not sensitive to this detail. Someone for whom the
title was a thoughtless choice. (At a much later stage in history.)
Certainly, ‘the Pentateuch[– the first five books, and thus Genesis –], as it
now stands, is an edited work and not a piece of literature that was penned ab
initio by one individual. Various factors indicate strongly that the Pentateuch
was created through a process involving the editing of already-existing
materials’.9 Firstly – and most obviously, because the events therein took place
over millennia: they couldn’t have been witnessed and relayed by a single
individual, and ‘some of which must antedate by centuries the invention of
writing’.10 In other words, behind the words we’re reading there are
‘sources…originally in oral form.’11 Duane Garrett puts it like this: ‘[There is] a
prehistory to the written narrative, a pre-history that is in the perspective of
and comes from the patriarch[s themselves, such as Noah, Abraham, and so
on].’12 ‘[O]riginal autobiographies [that] were transformed into third-person
narratives at a redactional stage.’13 And the editor? Who effected this
“transformation”? Well, Moses is probably as good as a candidate as any other.
We can return to this question another time if you wish. For now, let us
agree it is enough that Genesis is in the Canon; it is sacred, certainly ancient,
and so entitled to be reckoned with as we find it – despite the discomforting
antagonism I suggest exists between its depiction of how things came to be, and
that proposed by most scientists. This “antagonism” emerges in a number of
5 Levine, Baruch (2003), ‘Leviticus: Its Literary History and Location in Biblical Literature’, in
Rendtorff, Rolf & Kugler, Robert A. (Eds.), The Book of Leviticus: Composition and Reception,
Leiden, The Netherlands; Boston, M. A.: Brill, pp. 11-23, 20.
6 Boadt, Lawrence (1969), Reading the Old Testament, New York, N. Y.; Mahwah, N. J.: Paulist
Press, 93.
7 Supra.
8 McCaig, A. (January 1930), ‘The Use of the Divine Names in the Pentateuch’, The Evangelical
Quarterly, Volume 2, No. 1, pp. 14-32.
9 Alexander, T. D. (2003), ‘Authorship of the Pentateuch’, in Alexander, T. Desmond & Baker,
David W. (Eds.), Dictionary of the Old Testament: Volume I – Pentateuch, Downers Grove, I. L.:
InterVarsity Press, pp. 61-72, 63.
10 Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. (1986), A Tribute too Gleason Archer, Chicago, I. L.: Moody Press, 30.
11 Garrett, Duane A. (2016), Rethinking Genesis: The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of
the Pentateuch, Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 100.
12 Ibid., 101.
13 100.
2
Benjamin T. Randall
places: Look again at verse twenty-four: the events of the sixth ‘day’. We’re told
that ‘God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of
every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground’. To me, the difficulty is
the occurrence of the word ‘cattle’, here: if it had said that ‘God made the wild
animals’ and left it at that, one could have speculated that the omission of what
exactly was made leaves open the possibility that Moses maybe intended us to
understand that there existed, initially, now extinct ‘animals’ like the dinosaurs,
and those primeval precursors to current species known best by
Paleontologists. However, it doesn’t. And the specified ‘cattle’ – bovinae – didn’t
emerge until just a few million years ago. That is to say, they are, geologically-
speaking, a modern animal. And very much so: the current data ‘indicates that
the divergence of Bovinae and Antilopinae [from a common ancestor] probably
took place during the middle Miocene.’14 More precisely: ‘Early fossil Bovini are
known from… approximately 6-7 [million years ago]’.15
As they “radiated” outward from an obscure point of origin somewhere in
the Himalayas,16 to exploit the vast grasslands that suddenly emerged from
beneath retreating, continental-sized, mile-thick ice-sheets,17 they – the “Bovini”
– became truly massive: one type as large as a small elephant! (In Julius
Caesar’s estimation, who remembered them from before their disappearance.18)
But ‘[t]he most convincing [extant] contender for the role of archetypal primitive
ruminant is Archaeomeryx’.19 A dainty, dog-sized herbivore bearing very little
resemblance to anything you might try to milk let alone rodeo or ranch:
Furthermore, of
course, the text
certainly means
domesticated cattle,
which ‘consist of two
major lineages that are
derived from
independent
domestications of the
same progenitor
species, the [forest-
14 Bibi, Faysal (2013), ‘A Multi-calibrated Mitochondrial Phylogeny of Extant Bovidae
(Artiodactyla, Ruminantia) and the Importance of the Fossil Record to Systematics’, BMC
Evolutionary Biology, Volume 13, available at https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-166,
(accessed April 30, 2020), 8.
15 Kovarovic, Kris and Scott, Robert (2014), ‘The Evolution and Skeletal Anatomy of Wild Cattle
(Bovini)’ in Melletti, Mario & Burton, James (Eds.), Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour of Wild
Cattle: Implications for Conservation, Cambridge University Press, pp.39-50, 40.
16 See: Gentry, Alan W. (2000), ‘The Ruminant Radiation’, in Vrba, Elisabeth S. & Schaller,
George B. (Eds.), Antelopes, Deer, and Relatives: Fossil Record, Behavioral Ecology, Systematics,
and Conservation, Yale University Press, pp. 11-25, 13.
17 See: Hassanin, Alexandre (2015), ‘Systematics and Phylogeny of Cattle’, in Garrick, Dorian J.
& Ruvinsky, Anatoly (Eds.), The Genetics of Cattle: 2nd Edition, Wallingford, Oxfordshire; Boston,
M. A.: C. A. B. International, pp. 1-18, 14.
18 See: Ajmone-Marsan, Paolo; Garcia, José Fernando and Lenstra, Johannes A. (July 2010), ‘On
the Origin of Cattle: How Aurochs Became Cattle and Colonized the World’, Evolutionary
Anthropology, Volume 19, No. 4, pp.148-157, 148.
19 Gentry (2000), 13.
3Benjamin T. Randall
dwelling] aurochs… [which]
archaeological evidence
suggests…likely occurred
[in the Middle East] only
7,000-10,000 y[ears] ago’.20
Which is to say, “in the
grand scheme of things,”
yesterday.
If, then, the “sixth
day” is meant to refer to the
first moment that there
were animals (on the
earth), the word ‘cattle’ is
extremely problematic: ‘It
turns out that the
conditions in the
Precambrian (especially, little or no oxygen and no ozone layer) seem to have
prevented early organisms from forming shells or other hard parts [like bones,
horns and hooves] for a very long time. Instead, for 2 billion years, the world
was dominated by mats of bacteria and (much later) algae, growing in the
shallow waters of the shorelines and coating the rocks.’21
But what if by ‘day’ a whole eon is meant? Of countless millennia? And
Moses merely chose to stay aloof in his account – in Genesis [chapter] One –
from the “nitty gritty.” After all, the transition from ‘mats of bacteria’ to modern
natural splendour involved a great deal of carnage: “Survival of the fittest” is a
bloody, R-rated affair, which would have been…awkward, perhaps, for the
‘exalted prose narrative’22 chosen for this crucial chapter of the Bible: one that
was likely sung. For this reason, lyrics about mass extinctions,
disembowelment, deformity, drought and so on – all basic elements in the
Darwinian equation – may have been “left on the cutting-room floor.” Indeed,
they raise “thorny” theodical questions – questions about the benevolence of
God – that would unquestionably impede the raison d'être of the passage.
And what is the raison d'être of the passage”? I think Kelly Clark puts it
well: ‘Genesis is a theological polemic against [polytheism;]…to show that the
God of Israel is the one true God, and that he is a God of order and is in
complete control of the universe, including all the creatures inhabiting the
universe. The sun is not of God, the earth is not a God, the moon is not a God,
and, finally, we are not gods.’23 ← All ideas commonplace among the peoples
with whom the Israelites shared the Middle East.
20 McTavish, Emily Jane; Decker, Jared E.; Schnabel, Robert D.; Taylor, Jeremy F. and Hillis,
David M. (25th of March, 2013), ‘New World Cattle show Ancestry from Multiple Independent
Domestication Events’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1303367110, (accessed April 30, 2020).
21 Prothero, Donald R. (2015), The Story of Life in 25 Fossils, New York, N. Y.: Columbia University
Press, 3.
22 Collins, C. John (2006), Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary,
Philipsburg, N. J.: P. & R. Publishing Company, 44.
23 Clark, Kelly James (2014), Religion and the Sciences of Origins: Historical and Contemporary
Discussions, New York, N. Y.: Palgrave MacMillan, 72.
4Benjamin T. Randall
Furthermore, I think it is worth being reminded that the Bible itself does
not present Genesis to us as a complete account of the creative process. That is
to say, taken by itself, Genesis does not furnish us with all that the Jews
believed about how things came to be as they are. That is, from a Christian
standpoint, that they were inspired to believe about such matters. Additionally,
in books other than Genesis – Job, Psalms and Isaiah, that is – we are provided
with events ‘pertaining to the creation of the world’24 that the passage we’re
examining (today) neglects to mention: about a sea-monster called ‘Leviathan’.
To my mind, the many references to this strange beast hint at a remote and
frightening stage in creation, unmentioned in Genesis [chapter] One (for reasons
we can’t uncover), when there existed a class or category of life, which, to
human eyes, was distinct from that made in the “days” described. And the
singular, distinguishing feature of that life was its size: its enormous size.
In the sea, then, there was the aforementioned ‘Leviathan’. But there was
also, on the land, the amphibious ‘behemoth’. It had a tail ‘like a cedar’ and
‘limbs like bars of iron.’ [Job 40:17-18] And in the sky, ‘Ziz’. Mentioned merely
twice, and only opaquely: “Glossed over” in the N.R.S.V., which submerges it
almost altogether. But acknowledged and translated as ‘mountain bird’ in the
C. E. B.; in rabbinical tradition its outstretched wings in flight were so gigantic
that ‘it obscures the orb of the sun.’25 For the non-believer, such “monsters” are
proof that the Bible is ancient fiction. And many, many scholars have discussed
the similarities that undoubtedly exist when Genesis [chapter] One is placed
side-by-side with, for example, the Babylonian creation-story, the Enuma Elish.
These “similarities,” of course, though fascinating, indicate no more than
that ‘Israelites were continually drawn into the thinking of the cultures around
them’.26 And yet, as I highlighted moments ago, only to an extent; to a limited
degree. So it is surely noteworthy, then, that, uniquely, unlike those myths to
which Genesis [chapter] One bears some passing resemblance, the Scriptures
set themselves apart by preserving stories which lack the archetypal trope of
heroes fighting hideous beasts: ‘Leviathan’ and the like, you see, aren’t said to
coexist with humanity: the Psalmist does not tussle and battle with them as
Hercules had to with the bronze-feathered Stymphalian birds or the multi-
headed, regenerating hydra. Rather, he thanks God that, long ago, ‘[God
already] crushed [its] head’: [74:14]. Perhaps with a meteor-strike, I wonder? At
the end of the Cretaceous, say? In the Yucatan.27 (‘He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear.’ [Mt. 11:15, K. J. V.]) → My suggestion, then, to you is that there is,
at the very minimum, one other ‘step’ – or “day” – and Moses has passed over it.
A “step” or “day” of wondrous, mighty “playthings” called ‘the first of the great
acts of God’: [Job 40:19].
24 Waltke, Bruce K. (January 1975), ‘The Creation Account in Genesis 1:1-3. Part I: Introduction
to Biblical Cosmogony’, Bibliotheca Sacra, Volume 132, No. 525, pp. 25-36, 32.
25 Drewer, Lois (1981), ‘Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz: A Christian Adaptation’, Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 44, pp. 148-156.
26 Walton, John H. (2009), The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins
Debate, Downers Grove, I. L.: InterVarsity Press, 11.
27 See: Crane, Leah (26th of May, 2020), ‘Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit just right for
Maximum Damage’, The New Scientist, available at
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2244354-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs-hit-just-right-
for-maximum-damage/#ixzz6OL2Rph6V, (accessed June 3, 2020).
5Benjamin T. Randall
Actually, that creation is more elaborate than just the seven “days” is, in
fact, “staring us in the face” in Genesis [chapter] One: in the first verse, no less.
As Justin Taylor has argued: ‘Genesis 1:1 tells us that ‘“In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth.” This is not a title or a summary of the
narrative that follows. Rather, it is a background statement’.28 Let that “sink in,”
for a moment. You and I are probably accustomed to reading the opening words
as if they were followed by a colon: “In the beginning, blah, blah, blah: (and now
this is how it went down).” Of course, if that is how we were reading the first
verse – as a label for what follows, we missed the troubling fact that such a
reading implies that God’s creative act wasn’t ex nihilo; from nothing. And yet
isn’t that what we believe? That the three persons of God were by themselves
and then they made the universe? Right.
Actually, the linguist John Sailhamer argues that the phrase “In the
beginning…” in the original Hebrew ‘refers to an extended, yet indeterminate
duration of time – not a specific moment. It is a block of time’.29 Which renders
our passage [1:1-2:4a], agrees Joseph Blenkinsopp, ‘the sequel’.30 But why did
Moses not expound more? The things he skips over would include, presumably,
the “Big Bang,” and for him to have described such an episode would go a long
way to placating the sceptics! Well, Jan Gertz offers this: ‘From the beginning
the report of the genesis of the world and of its chronological and spatial order
is focused on the cosmos of human experience and on humanity’s destiny in
such a world. Accordingly, any statements regarding the world before creation,
the heaven above the visible sky, or the abyss of the sea are reduced to include
only that which is absolutely necessary for the story to progress.’31
Therefore, some things have been left unsaid. And, tantalisingly, this
leaves us open to the possibility – no, the duty – of supplementing the story of
creation with data and hypotheses from sources external to that contained in
our chapter. About ‘humankind’, for example (in verse twenty-seven). In Genesis
[chapter] Two, of course, the method is explicit and notorious: ‘the Lord God
formed man from the dust of the ground’: [v.7]. ‘And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man He made into a woman’: [v.22]. But I have argued
elsewhere – drawing on the work of Joshua Swamidass especially – that these
things are subsequent to the events of Genesis [chapter] One;32 that “Adam” and
“Eve” originate ‘in the Neolithic [period] after the advent of farming and [animal]
28 Taylor, Justin (28th of January, 2015), ‘Biblical Reasons to Doubt the Creation Days Were 24-
Hour Periods’, The Gospel Coalition, available at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-
taylor/biblical-reasons-to-doubt-the-creation-days-were-24-hour-periods/, (accessed May 1,
2020).
29 Sailhamer, John (1996), Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account,
Sisters, O. R.: Multnomah Books, 37. (My emphasis.)
30 Blenkinsopp, Joseph (2011), Creation, Un-creation, Re-creation: A Discursive Commentary on
Genesis 1-11, London: T. & T. Clark International (Continuum), 31.
31 Gertz, Jan Christian (2012), ‘The Formation of the Primeval History’, in Evans, Craig A.; Lohr,
Joel N. & Petersen, David L. (Eds.), The Book of Genesis: Composition, Reception, and
Interpretation, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, pp. 107-136, 107.
32 See: http://www.saintmatthewschurch.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Bible-Study-
20200301-St.-Matthews-Episcopal-Church-McMinnville-Genesis-2v15-17-3v1-7_BTR.pdf, 7-8.
See also: Archer, G. L. (1982), Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Grand Rapids, M. I.: Zondervan,
68 – ‘Genesis 2 does not present a creation account at all but presupposes the completion of
God's work of creation as set forth in chapter 1.’
6Benjamin T. Randall
husbandry]’,33 as recently as ‘some 12,000 years ago’.34 A close reading also
exposes the fact that ‘there are other people around.’35 What we have in front of
us this morning, on the other hand, unambiguously concerns mankind’s
primordial emergence. And yet Moses puts it…as Garrett says, ‘abstractly’.36
Notice, for instance, that it is plural; the number open-ended. Could evolution
be “shoe-horned” in here? I asked already if ‘day’ in Genesis [chapter] One
might be a period of time considerably longer than twenty-four hours. Many
scholars have claimed – and do claim – as much; that ‘[the] six days of divine
labor plus a seventh day of divine rest, does not represent a factual sequence
telling us how long God actually took to create’.37 I came across this being
confidently asserted again and again.
And, without a doubt, what is envisaged in the
Academy would demand an astonishing amount of
time to transpire. It is really quite fascinating! Their
speculation. About how, in the late Pliocene, when
Africa was covered in dense rainforest – even the
Sahara was soggy and green – the first hominids
began to distinguish themselves from the pongids
(“apes”) by something so far unseen in the “animal
kingdom;” it was revolutionary: bipedalism (as
preferred locomotion). These were the
australopithecines. And they were ‘small, relatively
slow and defenseless creatures’.38 (You may know of
their most famous representative, “Lucy,” discovered
in 1974 in Ethiopia. And on display at the National
Museum in Addis Ababa.39) Extrapolating from the
extant fossils, her “people” ‘came and went for possibly
7-10 million years.’40 But as temperatures and
humidity plummeted for the Pleistocene – the “Ice
Age,” there occurred what climatologist John Brooke calls, ‘abrupt evolutionary
emergences...’41
Steven Stanley explains that the rainforest began to shrink, dramatically,
becoming savannah and desert – as we picture Africa, and this ‘disrupted the
33 Hill, Carol (2019), A Worldview Approach to Science and Scripture, Grand Rapids, M. I.: Kregel
Academic (Kregel Publications), 149.
34 LeCain, Timothy J. (2017), The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past, Cambridge, U. K.;
New York, N. Y.: Cambridge University Press, 29.
35 Campbell, Antony F. (2010), Making Sense of the Bible: Difficult Texts and Modern Faith,
Mawah, N. J.: Paulist Press, 80.
36 Garrett, Duane A. (2016), Rethinking Genesis: The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of
the Pentateuch, Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 191.
37 See: Harlow, Daniel C. (2008), ‘Creation According to Genesis: Literary Genre, Cultural Context,
Theological Truth’, Christian Scholar's Review, Volume 37, No. 2, pp. 163-198, 165.
38 Stanley, Steven M. (1992), ‘An Ecological Theory for the Origin of Homo’, Paleobiology, Volume
18, No. 3, pp. 237-257.
39 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)#Exhibitions.
40 Hart, Donna and Sussman, Robert W. (2009), Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human
Evolution (Expanded Edition), Westview Press (Perseus Books Group), 22.
41 Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (2014), Cambridge, U. K.:
Cambridge University Press, 58.
7Benjamin T. Randall
australopithecine adaptive complex’,42 which was entwined with ‘the availability
of abundant arboreal refugia.’43 Forcing them onto the ground, and bringing
them, quite literally, face-to-face with a frighteningly wide array of large, hungry
predators. Both those familiar to us: that is, lions, leopards, wolves, jackals,
and a number of types of hyena. As well as three sabertooth cats: Homotherium,
Megantereon, and Dinofelis.44
It was, to put it bluntly, a “sink or swim” moment; a ‘crisis for
hominids’:45 ‘[our] position in the food chain was,’ as Yuval Harari puts it,
‘solidly in the middle’.46 And this led to what Brooke calls, ‘a burst of
encephalization’.47 That is, our brains got bigger – driven by the need to develop
better stone tools – weapons – to compensate for our small canines; and for co-
operative strategizing. (Craig Stanford describes it as a ‘feedback loop’.48)
Additionally, our legs got longer, and toes shorter: both better for running
quickly away from fanged, furry danger. And, after much, much hunting and
gathering, whittling and hiding, modern man was born.
But as much as we may want to squeeze all of the above into Genesis
[chapter] One, we probably can’t. Because by ‘day’ Moses intended twenty-four
hours. (And I’m loath to admit it.) Observe that, for each ‘day’, sunrise and
sunset is described. It is almost as if Moses was deliberately emphasizing their
literal reality to forestalling our inclination to metaphoricalize!49 Also,
conservative scholars appear adamant that Genesis [chapter] One, irregardless
of “poetic features,” belongs to the genre of history,50 ‘tightly connected to the
rest of the Torah…’51 – to the other stories we love, such as about Joseph and
his colourful coat, about the plagues in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea,
etc., etc. It is the narrative “launchpad” for everything else that comes after,
including the Incarnation.
So, what do we do? Ignore the findings of geologists? (About the great age
of earth.) Pretend to ourselves that “T-Rex” and his scaly friends are fake? A
government conspiracy? If we’re honest, then we might have to accept that our
text is making incredible claims that have been falsified – such as that the
atmosphere is a ‘[hard] dome’, holding back floodwaters:[v.7]. Or that there were
plants before a sun: [see vs. 12 & 16]. Yet, this no reason to despair. Rather, we
must seize hold of an under-appreciated truth: that, yes, Genesis [chapter] One
‘was written for us, and for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was
written to [Bronze Age] Israel. …and secondarily through [Bronze Age] Israel to
42 ‘An Ecological Theory for the Origin of Homo’ (1992), Paleobiology, Volume 18, No. 3, pp. 237-
257, 238.
43 Ibid., 247.
44 Supra.
45 251. (My italics.)
46 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015), New York, N. Y.: HarperCollins Publishers, 11.
47 Brooke (2014), 72.
48 See: The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior (2001), Princeton, N. J.:
Princeton University Press, 225, n.3.
49 See, e.g. : Gentry, Kenneth L., Jr. (2016), As It Is Written: The Genesis Account - Literal or
Literary?, Green Forest, A. R.: Master Books, 100.
50 See, for example: Young, Edward J. (1962), ‘The Days of Genesis: First Article’, Westminster
Theological Journal, Volume 25, No. 1, pp. 1-34, 8.
51 Longman, Tremper, III (2005), How to Read Genesis (How to Read Series: Volume 1), Downers,
Grove, I. L.: IVP Academic, 14.
8Benjamin T. Randall
everyone else. ...[and] we must be aware of the implications of that simple
statement.’52 Which is what? That those He chose to inspire would have,
without a shadow of a doubt, ‘held to an obsolete science’ – innocent, simple
ideas about the universe – which it made better sense for Him to indulge rather
than to attack (head-on).53 Let me quote Kelly Clark again: ‘The best interpretive
strategy, then, is to understand the biblical passages that seem contrary to
well-established knowledge likely contain accommodating features.’54 The
author Carol Hill concludes something similar: ‘the biblical authors were
allowed to express their interaction with God from their own literary and pre-
scientific knowledge base.’55
But, what if the author – Moses – of Genesis [chapter] One wasn’t writing
history? I mentioned that “conservative scholars appear adamant” that it is, and
I absolutely accept Clark and Hill’s point that the ancient Israelites would have
found our ideas about evolution and so on very confusing, and would have had
very different – quaint – ideas of their own, and that God might have exploited
these as the vehicle ‘for the sake of the greater theological truth’;56 however,
what if what is historical begins where our verses this morning leave off? The
“conservative scholars” are correct to underscore how Genesis – by and large –
sets up the great Christian story of Fall and Redemption, and is necessary to it;
about how, by a genealogy if nothing else, Genesis [chapter] Two connects
“tightly” – as I quoted Tremper Longman saying – to the rest of the Bible. But,
can the same really be said to apply to Genesis [chapter] One? As C. John
Collins observes: ‘It is entirely possible, of course, that there are several kinds
of [genres] in [Genesis] …there might [even] be subsets’!57 In fact, he argues that
the first eleven chapters of Genesis are “proto-history.”58 Gordon Wenham
thinks so too: Genesis [chapter] One ‘must be evaluated on its own, as an
introduction or overture to the rest of Genesis.’59
If the Collins-Wenham thesis is right or the Clark-Hill one, we can finally
“park” the science-religion feud. But whether they are or aren’t, make no
mistake that fundamental matters of orthodoxy are given life in Genesis
[chapter] One, such as God’s estimation of His creation as ‘good’: [1:10, 12, 18,
21, 25]. Very good, actually: [1:31]. And this important detail – called, ‘the
formula of approval’ – is ‘often’ overlooked by Christians,60 too many of whom
imagine, haphazardly, that Genesis [chapter] One describes a primeval utopia; a
paradise. It doesn’t. The “paradise” is the Garden of Eden ‘created in the East’
52 Walton, John H. (2009), The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins
Debate, Downers Grove, I. L.: InterVarsity Press, 7. (Author’s italics.)
53 See: Loftus, John W. and Rauser, Randal (2013), God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian.
Twenty Controversial Questions, Grand Rapids, M. I.: Baker Books, 120.
54 Clark (2014), 72.
55 Hill (2019), 14. (My emphasis.)
56 Slifkin, Natalya (2008), The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science,
Cosmology, and Evolution, Brooklyn, N. Y.: Yashar Books/Lambda Publishers, 228.
57 Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11 (2018),
Grand Rapids, M. I.: Zondervan, 147. (Author’s italics.)
58 Ibid., 116, 123, 137 .
59 Rethinking Genesis 1-11: Gateway to the Bible (2015), Eugene, O. R.: Cascade Books (Wipf &
Stock Publishers), 23.
60 Ramantswana, Hulisani (2010), ‘God Saw it was Good, Not Perfect: A Canonical-Dialogic
Reading of Genesis 1-3’, PhD Thesis, Glenside, P. A.: Westminster Theological Seminary, i.
9Benjamin T. Randall
in the next chapter: [2:8]. Creation as a whole isn’t perfect because it isn’t one-
and-the-same as the Creator who is: [see Ps. 18:30; Deut. 32:4; 2 Sam. 22:31].
Consequently, it must suffer from deficiencies that He doesn’t. Hence we find
that, in verse twenty-eight, God commissioned ‘humankind’ to, ‘“…fill the earth
and subdue it”’. This task is given before any “Fall” and the chaos that that
produces additionally. Which is why, in chapter three, “Adam” discovers about
‘the ground’ that ‘thorns and thistles it shall bring forth’: [v.18].
In other words, as John Walton of Wheaton College exegetes, what we’re
being told in Genesis [chapter] One is that ‘God created the world as it is’.61 As
we currently experience it; not as Disneyland. And it is misguided, then, to
expect more than it can provide, or to fault it for not doing so. So, by way of
analogy, you might say that Genesis [chapter] One is a refreshingly honest
profile on a dating website, which introduces you to a lovely, charming partner,
whose interests and hobbies match your own, and then goes “the extra mile” by
pointing out (in the small-print) that she isn’t a real blond and he wears a
toupee! Forewarned is forearmed, as it is said.
61See: ‘Coronavirus and the book of Job with John Walton’ 27th of April, 2020), Biologos,
available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8GkzPL76SQ, (accessed May 1, 2020), 23:07f.
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