Exploring My Strange Bible - Science & Faith

Episode Date: August 16, 2017

Many people believe that science and religious faith are bitter enemies with conflicting views of the universe. One the one hand there is the scientific account of the origins of life and then there is the story of universal origins told by the bible. But is this tension real, or is it based on a deep misunderstanding of what the Bible is and how it communicates? This is a lecture I gave at a Science and Faith conference at Blackhawk Church in Madison, WI in the year 2011. I ask what it means to read the first two pages of the Bible as ancient Hebrew texts written thousands of years ago. When we begin with that simple fact, Genesis chapters 1-2 say many surprising things we never would have imagined, and they also leave unaddressed most of our modern questions. Consider this a crash course in reading the Bible as an ancient cross-cultural experience.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, in this episode, we're going to be exploring and focusing on a specific topic that has been really controversial in modern Western culture, and that is the tension, or at least the apparent tension, between science and religious faith.

A flashpoint in modern Western culture has been this debate between the scientific account of the origins of life or the origins of the universe and the beliefs or convictions held by Jewish and Christian religious communities about creation, God as a creator of the universe and of all of life. How and when and by what processes did all that happen? This was never a burning question for me personally. When I was a brand new follower of Jesus, I just kind of figured those problems all had a solution. I wasn't really concerned about them. When I went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison to do my PhD studies in Hebrew Bible, I ended up at a church community that had professors of biology, professors of ecology. The head of the biology department was one of the elders at this church.

I met all kinds of fascinating researchers and grad students, and many of whom didn't have any problem with how to sort out their commitment to scientific method and their religious faith. However, I also met lots of students and faculty who just were deeply conflicted. met lots of students and faculty who just were deeply conflicted. They had grown up with one set of beliefs about how the world came into being that they said or were taught in church communities that are the Bible's teaching about all of these matters. But then here they are in university and they're taking biology 101 and they're learning about the evolutionary development and mechanisms by which species develop and diversify. And how does all of this go together? Some people just compartmentalize it.

Other people ditch their religious faith and just go the route of science. Other people stick their head in the sand and don't listen to what science research is telling them because of their theological beliefs. Or some people just try and ignore it and wish it would all go away. So what we did at Blackhawk Church when I was working there was we put on a science and faith conference, and we lined up a whole bunch of university professors to teach about topics about this very tension. We did it on a Saturday, had no idea what would happen, and hundreds and hundreds of

students and faculty and interested people throughout the city came. And it was a really incredible experience. We all learned a ton. So this was a talk that I gave. It had nothing to do with science. It had more to do with how to read the first two pages of the Bible without imposing modern Western views of the world or the universe on these chapters, but rather understanding these as ancient Hebrew texts that they are and how they speak to us about what the world is. Even if you're a religious person or not a religious person, we need to respect that

these are texts produced in Hebrew by ancient authors that are making claims about the world and about God and humans within it. What are those claims and how can we respect Genesis 1 and 2 to say what they're saying on their own terms in light of their own culture and language? And that's what this talk is all about. I hope it's helpful for you. Part of the story of what piqued your curiosity when you heard that we're doing this conference and when you saw the poster is that there's some story kind of in your own journey about why there's tension between science and faith

or at least perceived tension. Somewhere in our journeys, we perceive that there's tension between science and faith, or at least perceived tension. Somewhere in our journeys, we perceive that there's a problem, and we're looking to resolve or reconcile that problem in some way. And my guess is it's something along the lines of that kind of tension that made you want to pay seven bucks and come here today. So what I'd like to move towards is, what is that tension? And in all the sessions today, we're going to be either fleshing out what that tension is about or ways to recognize that it's a perceived tension but not a real tension.

In many ways that's kind of the burden of what we're doing here today. We named the conference Science and Faith, not friends or foes, but a thoughtful partnership. Because it's the deep conviction of everyone who's going to be up here is that there is no inherent conflict between a deep, committed religious faith and scientific methods, scientific research. I'm convinced it's a perceived tension and not a real one. And I think the tension comes from this. And this may be a really broad way of stating where this tension between science and faith comes from. For most people who are committed to some kind of religious or faith worldview, that's usually related to the Bible in some way, the scriptures. And so there is on the one hand a conviction,

what the Bible says about world origins, about human origins. There it just says it, and there you go. And then we have another narrative in our culture, and it's the narrative of what modern scientific research tells us about world origins or human origins. And there is a perceived tension between those two. And that tension gets worked out in lots of different ways. So sometimes people will say,

well, if the Bible really is God's word, then the science, no matter what it says, must conform to what it is that God's word, then the science, no matter what it says, must conform to what it is that God's word says. Or you may have some sort of marriage between the two. Well, perhaps the Bible isn't really saying what we think it says and going to make the Bible and science kind of fit together in some kind of relationship. Or you have another resolution, which would be not these two just don't go together, take your choice and walk away. And I cannot tell you how many cups of coffee during my seven years of being down on campus every day,

how many cups of coffee I've had with grad students, with undergrad students, at Espresso Royale, Steep & Brew, or my Starbucks, working this issue out. People having a crisis of faith. And usually, whatever position or however you reconcile the tension, it usually comes down to there's some core assumptions at work. And that core assumption is that the Bible, in fact, has some very detailed, specific things to say about the material, biological, geological processes by which the world came into being and by which humans came into being. And at least, you know, I'm not going to claim

being unbiased. I do have a particular view on how this works out, but it's completely unrelated to science. It's more related to my own journey of trying to figure out what on earth the Bible is and what it says. And I think for most of us, that's really where the confusion comes in. What does, in fact, the Bible say about world origins and human origins? Well, that's the million-dollar question, right? That's what I want to tackle in our session here today. Because I think really what this gets to is a much larger confusion, not about what the Bible says about world origins, but about what the Bible is,

and about what the Bible is for, and how the Bible communicates. So if you don't remember anything from my talk, remember this. This basic observation that I think has huge implications. observation that I think has huge implications. The Bible is an ancient text. Right, yeah, okay, I already knew that. The Bible is an ancient text, okay. Next. No, no. I'm convinced that most of us, while we say we may recognize the Bible as an ancient text, the reality is that most of us do not treat the Bible like an ancient text. We treat it as though it were a contemporary text. Now, there's motivation behind this. Most people from some sort of Protestant or Catholic Christian background somehow believe that the Bible is in some way God's words,

that somehow uniquely through these texts God speaks to his people. God's words, that somehow uniquely through these texts, God speaks to his people. And so we are looking for a word from God to us in these texts. But how exactly that works out, there's actually quite a lot of confusion among most people about what that means. And so what mostly happens is people read the Bible in whatever language they happen to be reading it in, usually a translation, English, whatever, French, German, Spanish, whatever language you happen to read the Bible in. And we just kind of immediately correspond those words of the Bible

to our lives and to our world. And we expect an immediate fit between what the Bible is saying and between the language and ideas that I may happen to have about the world. And so that leads to this conflict in a lot of different ways. And it works itself out between science and faith. Well, the Bible says this, this, and this. That's the faith value reading of my Bible in English. And here's what science says, and oh, there's tension.

In my mind, we need to get back to a much more fundamental step here, because we're trying to join something that maybe ought not to be joined. So if the Bible is an ancient text, what this means is that the Bible is an act of communication. But we rarely think through the implications of what that really means because any act of communication by nature has to be done in a particular language, in a particular culture and historical context. So let's do a little thought experiment here that will kind of flesh this out.

I say the English words, but my lips hurt real bad. How many of you know exactly what I'm doing right now? Okay, all right. How many of you understood the English words, but my lips hurt real bad? We all knew what the English words mean, right? But there was actually a very small tribe among us who actually know what I was doing right there, right? That was a cultural reference to what I think was one of the most brilliant and absurd movies

of the early 2000s, right? And that tribe is small and dwindling, I'm finding, right? High school students these days, what? Napoleon Dynamite? You're joking. So we all understand the English words, but my lips hurt real bad. But to know the true significance, the background, the resonance and connection of those words, you have to do work. You have to

know the cultural background and reference. And that's a very small number of us. I say the English words, beam me up, Scotty. How many of you are tracking with me here? Okay, exactly right, exactly right. So it's a much wider cultural reference, right? Now, let's say we go to the other side of the planet a hundred years from now, right? We go to Vietnam and we say the English words, beam me up, Scotty. Who's going to know what on earth we're talking about? No, of course not. So it's just a fundamental principle of communication.

Communication is not just about words. It's about culture. And any act of communication assumes a whole world of cultural knowledge, of background, and so on. And so it's not just about meanings of words. Any act of communication is a cross-cultural experience. Think about it. Now, it may be the cross-cultural experience from you to me, and we may live in the same country, speak the same language, but even so

right there, my lips hurt real bad. Because it's a cross-cultural experience, right, to understand those words. So here's the basic principle of how this works out. You would never, at least I hope you would never, go to France and start walking around Paris and assume that everyone is going to speak English to you and want to eat Big Macs and talk about American Idol. That's the height of cultural presumption to go to someone else's culture and assume that their language, their words, their ideas are just going to fit with the way I see the world. You would never do that. But I would submit to you that most readers of the Bible do precisely that when we open the Bible's pages. We just assume that the words on the page immediately are going to correspond to my way of seeing the world, my

culture, my cultural understanding. And I think that's something at the root of what's going on in this perceived tension between science and faith. We just assume that the Bible is speaking about world origins the way we think about it. In my mind, that's just a fundamental mistake of human communication. Reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience, which means that you need to put aside our ways of thinking about the world and step into another culture's ways of seeing things. And when we're stepping into the early chapters of Genesis, we're stepping into an ancient Near Eastern culture, culture of the ancient Hebrews.

And they had a very different way of seeing the world than we do. So let's do another example, right? We did My Lips Hurt Real Bad, Beam Me Up, Scotty. How about this one? Bereshibara. Oh, excuse me. Dang it. The timing on that one. There you go. So a really good quote from John Walton that summarizes this. Effective communication requires a body of agreed upon words, terms, and ideas, a common ground of understanding. For the speaker, this often requires accommodation to the audience

by using words and ideas they'll understand. For the audience, if they are not native to the language and cultural matrix of the speaker, this means reaching common ground may require seeking out additional information or explanation. My lips hurt real bad. You need to have a conversation with me about Napoleon Dynamite and how awesome it is for you to understand. It requires homework on your part to understand my words. In other words, the audience has to adapt to a new and unfamiliar culture. So let's take one more example here in Hebrew.

Did you catch that? Oh, wait, I'm sorry. That's ancient Hebrew. So, all right, so let me translate it into English. Well, no, wait a second. The moment you translate this into English, the meaning will change. Because in English, we don't have precise, no language has precise equivalence to what words mean in another language because words don't just mean what the words mean.

Words have a whole cultural background to them. But let's just give it our best shot, at least in doing this in English. And when we give it our best shot, we actually have two equally valid translations. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Or, I think more accurately, when God began to create the heavens and the earth. Now, let's just make some observations here. The word beginning, this is the first sentence of the Bible. The word beginning in English, we think of beginning as a point in time

before which there, who knows, we're not concerned, we're concerned about a point in time and then a sequence of chronology or sequence of time after that point. So what the English word beginning means. That is not what the Hebrew word reshit means. Reshit is actually a very unspecific word. It's very general. Hebrew has a word for a beginning point of time

from which a sequence of events follows. That word is tehillah. And that is not the word that begins the Bible. The word that begins the Bible is the word reshit, which refers, it's about as specific as our English phrase way back when, you know, beginning, before now. It's very general. It's an unspecified period of time before now. So way back when, God created the heavens and the earth. Let me pitch another question to you. The English word earth. I say the English word earth

and what comes into your minds? What image do you have in your mind? Yes, of course. Right? Right? So, right? The planet. Planet.

Globe. So, let me ask you a question. You can see from the picture up here. How long have human beings had access to the mental image of the earth, the English word earth referring to a globe? How long? Yeah, like 50-ish years. 50-ish years as far as the public.

50 years. How old is Genesis chapter 1? Oh yes, it's like 3,000 years old. Right? So if you picture a globe in your head, it's the equivalent of flying to France and just assuming everyone's going to speak English and want to talk about American Idol.

No, no, stop, stop. You're importing your view of the world back into this ancient text. We have to respect the author and think, what is the author's conception? And in this case, the Hebrew word, eretz, earth is probably not a very good translation because contemporary English means planet. And the same with heavens. We think cosmos is galaxies and nebulas or whatever, this kind of thing. No, no. From

someone saying 3,000 years ago, what does it mean to say earth? It's what's down here. It's what's under my feet. What does it mean to say heavens? Oh, it's what's up there. So way, way back, I don't know when, way back before now,

God made what's down here and what's up there. See, all of a sudden, we've stepped into another culture. Let's do another example from Genesis chapter one, where the meaning of words links to cultural understanding. The second day, and we'll talk about the days of Genesis one a little bit here. Verse six, then God said, let there be a rakia between the waters. Let it separate the waters from the waters. So God made the rakia and separated the water under the rakia from the water above the rakia.

And the first question that you have is, what on earth is the rakia? What's the rakia? Well, let's turn to our English translations and let's see. Oh, well, this isn't going to help us. So the New American Standard, NIV, translate it as expanse. The New Living Translation translates it as space. The classic King James translates it as firmament. I don't know what on earth a firmament is.

And the New Revised Standard Translation translates it as dome. Oh, so this is all very clear. So what's the rakia? What is the rakia? Well, the Hebrew word rakah refers to something that a smith, a blacksmith or a metalsmith does. It refers to the hammering out a piece of metal on an anvil. And so a blacksmith would hammer out like a shield. It means smoothing out a surface.

The rakia is that which has been hammered and smoothed out. Have you ever noticed that when you look up, there's that big blue dome in the sky? It's a dome, right? I mean, you get up on a high place, and wow, it's like a big dome. Do you know why it's blue? Well, what's on top of that blue dome up in the sky? There's water. It's supporting a whole body of water up there.

Now, how do you know there's a whole body of water up there? Well, because every once in a while, the windows of the rakia open up. And they drop down some of the water that's up there, down on top of us here. And then they close and it it stops. It stops raining. Whoa, okay. We've just stepped into another culture. In the ancient Hebrew understanding of the world, that's a big, solid thing up there.

That's what the word means, rakia, that which has been hammered and smoothed out and spread like a canopy in other passages of the Bible. So this is ancient science, right here in Genesis chapter 1. Notice, there is no solid thing up there. The Bible's wrong. God's word is in error. No, no, no. The Bible is speaking about the world in a different language than our culture speaks, and we need to respect it. And this raises the big question then, perhaps the purpose of the Bible is not primarily to tell us about the physical structure of our world or about human anatomy. In the Bible, you don't think with your

brain because there is no Hebrew word for brain. This was just stuff. Where do you think? And you read through the Bible, where does human volition and thought come from? It comes from your heart, which is more located like down here. Or you can actually think with your guts, too, literally your entrails, your intestines. We know that thinking that happens in the brain, so that means that the Bible is wrong. No? No. It means that the purpose of the Bible is not to tell us about human anatomy and human physiology. So the purpose of the Bible must be to do something else. And this raises all kinds of fascinating

questions and takes us deeper, deeper down the rabbit hole. But perhaps the Bible is not trying to tell us, or the purpose of the Bible is not to tell us about the physical structure of our world. So you play this out, and some of you have done this before and may have been bothered by this. You know, you look to all of the references in the Bible about the structure of the world and how it's put together. And you've got the blue solid rakia up there. Have you ever read in the Bible these references to the pillars of the earth? The earth stands on pillars and it will not be shaken.

The Lord set it on pillars, it says in the book of Job. What's the idea? Well, the idea that the earth as we know it is flat, of course, because there's edges of the earth. You can read about the edges of the earth in the Bible. And it's floating. How do you know it's floating? Well, if you dig down deep enough in the earth, what do you eventually find? You find water. We're floating. It makes perfect sense. It's absolute perfect sense. Of course we're floating. Well, what keeps us from sinking? Well, it must be put on pillows. What holds the rakia up in the sky? As it says in the book of Psalms, it's the mountains that hold up the sky. And on

top of the rakia is waters. And then God's space, which corresponds to the temple human space here, because heaven and earth are not disconnected in the Bible. They're interconnected and they overlap. God's space sits on top of the waters up there. So this is how an ancient Israelite is envisioning the world. And this does not mean that the Bible is wrong. What it means is that the Bible is an ancient text. And perhaps the purpose of the Bible is to tell us something else than about how the world is put together in terms of its physical structure. So, let's see. Exactly right. So, in no instance of the Bible does God choose to update the ancient science of the Bible. In other words, nowhere in the Bible do you read some leap forward in the

ancient Hebrews' understanding of the physical world or human physiology or anything like that. That's just not the purpose of the Bible. So when we're going around looking for Big Bang in Genesis 1 or looking for a biosphere or signs of evolution, we're flying to France and assuming that everyone's going to speak English. No, don't do that. The Bible's trying to do something else. Some scholars who are, you know, just so you know, I'm not just making all this up on my own. Peter M., Old Testament scholar.

The Bible belonged to the ancient world in which it was produced. It was not an abstract, otherworldly book dropped down out of heaven. It was connected to, and therefore spoke to, the people in that ancient culture. The encultured qualities of the Bible, therefore, are not extra elements that we can just discard to get the real point, the timeless truths. Rather, it's precisely because Christianity is a historical religion.

God's word reflects the various historical moments in which it was written. And as we learn more about this history, we should gladly address the implications of that history for how we view the Bible and what we should expect to hear from it. And so when we turn to these early chapters of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 2, what this means is we need to put aside our cultural understanding and just say, okay, ancient Hebrew author, what are you trying to do? Let me step into your shoes. What are you trying to communicate?

And one of the most exciting things in the last 150 years or so has been the advances of our understanding in biblical study, and especially related to archaeological digs that have unearthed texts from the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Babylonians, the Canaanites, Israel's neighbors, the Phoenicians, and so on. And among these texts of Israel's contemporaries are documents that date like to the time period of the Bible or longate of the Bible. When they speak about world origins, they speak in very similar language and ideas and motifs of what we find in these early chapters of Genesis. This is not threatening. This is thrilling. Because what it means is that we can even more accurately step into the biblical author's shoes to understand what it is they

really want to communicate to us. William Brown of Columbia Seminary puts it this way, the framers of creation in the Bible inherited a treasure trove of venerable traditions from their cultural neighbors. Instead of creating their accounts ex nihilo, it's Latin for out of nothing, it's a good pun in a book on creation anyway, the composers of scripture developed their traditions in dialogue with some of the great religious traditions of the surrounding cultures, particularly those originating from Mesopotamia and Egypt, as well as those of their more immediate Canaanite neighbors. In other words, the Bible's creation narratives are not in dialogue with modern science, modern scientific concepts of Big Bang, cosmic background radiation, DNA. It's just, they're not talking to those concepts and ideas.

What they are doing, the biblical creation narratives, are in dialogue with their neighbors. Those early chapters of Genesis are a Hebrew-Israelite author talking and addressing to their Babylonian-Egyptian-Canaan their neighbors. Those early chapters of Genesis are a Hebrew-Israelite author talking and addressing to their Babylonian-Egyptian-Canaanite neighbors. And this accounts for similarities that we'll see, that I'll point out, similarities between Genesis 1 and 2 and other ancient Near Eastern creation stories, but also for key differences. And so let me just kind of throw out there a thesis statement for approaching Genesis 1 and 2 in light of all that we've been saying, and then we're going to dive into some more examples.

I've adapted this thesis statement by one of the books that we have for sale in the resource room by Richard Carlson and Tremper Longman. A thesis statement. The early chapters of Genesis accurately present two accounts of cosmic and human origins in the language and ideas of the ancient Hebrews. These texts should not be removed from their ancient context and read as if they speak literally about the universe or humans in 21st century scientific terms. They speak in terms of an ancient Near Eastern perception of the world and should be interpreted within that setting. When we discern the meaning of the text in their ancient context,

we find that they constitute a worldview statement about God and his relationship to the world, about humans and their relation to God and the world. This basic worldview statement transcends its ancient cultural setting and commands the attention of God's people in all places and all times. So ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, narratives about world origins, and of which Genesis 1 and 2 is one example, but there are Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite examples too,

they do not have as their primary purpose to narrate for us the geological, biological sequence or description of the material origins of the universe. That's not what these narratives are about. These narratives are trying to answer fundamental basic questions like, who are we? Where are we? What's the nature of the universe? Who are the gods? And how do we relate to them? What is this whole thing about? And every ancient Near Eastern cosmology is making a claim about all of those questions. And Genesis chapters one and two are definitely making a claim that was radical in their ancient context. So what I want to do for the rest of our time is just touch down at different points in Genesis 1 and 2,

read it in terms of its original context, how it would have been interpreted within that setting, and then get to what is the core worldview statement at work here. Good, so what we're going to do is we're just going to dive into some examples. If you have a Bible, you can turn. I'm going to have text up here on the screen, Genesis chapter 1. Let me just read the first five verses of the Bible. This is a translation, I guess it would be called my own, but I've culled elements from lots of different scholars and commentaries and so on. When God began to create the sky and the land,

the land was wild and waste, and darkness was over the surface of the deep waters, and the breath of God was hovering over the waters, and God said, let there be light. And there was light and God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day. Now, dramatic finish, right? Let's just notice one thing here. Now, dramatic finish, right?

Let's just notice one thing here. Do you notice in this translation, where's the period? It's just one. There's only one period, right? In ancient Hebrew, there is no period. There's no such thing as period. There's just the word and. Eternal ands.

Everything is and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. Hyper-literal translation of the Bible would never have a period if you're reading historical narrative. Almost never. Very rarely. It's just one long sequence of events. That's worth noting. Now, so we already talked about the word beginning. We talked about the sky and the land. Now, in our English translations, the next thing here is what's in many of our English translations, the phrase called formless and void. Do you see this here? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was formless and void. That's see this here? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was

formless and void. That's how most English translations read. Now, I don't know what on earth comes into your mind when you think of formless and void.

That's an old English translation. It actually comes to us from the Tyndale, one of the first English translations, and then this authorized version of King James

in 1611. Formless and void, if you're already thinking of a planet, you know, from misunderstanding the word earth, then, I don't know, as a little kid I was like, it's like a clay planet floating in space or something. It's just a bizarre image, you know, that comes into your head. No, no, no. So, sky, land.

Way back when God made what's up there and what's down here. Now, what's down here? Problems. Huge problems. Huge problems. What's down here? Began as tohu vavohu. It's a little poetic rhyme phrase right there. That's why I've adopted Everett Fox's translation, wild and waste, to catch that rhyming bit there. Tohu vavohu refers to a space that is uninhabited and inhospitable to human life. Now, for ancient Hebrew, what kinds of places are inhospitable and uninhabited?

Yeah, what's to the east of the ancient Israelites? You go down to the Dead Sea, and then up to modern Jordan, and then what? As far as you go, at least you're going to be alive to make it. What are you going to see? Tohu Vavohu. Deserts. This is a big, huge desert. Tohu Vavohu, in Deuteronomy 32, it gets translated as howling wasteland.

So, okay, this is very important for us to see here. Ancient Hebrews, they had no categories for thinking of the universe as being nothing and then God creating something out of nothing. The category of nothing is a very sophisticated modern concept, actually. And I don't claim to understand quantum physics at all, right? But at least as far as I do understand quantum physics, or as far as anyone does, nothing actually doesn't truly exist. Because even what you think is empty space and nothing isn't really nothing. Explain that one to your kids. I don't know.

So nothing's a very sophisticated concept. And the ancients had no categories. When they thought about the beginning of the world, it's not something coming out of nothing. It's how do we get this beautiful, flourishing land that we live in? There's plants, and we have the capability for agriculture, because east of here is Tohu Vavohu. And you know I know that probably everything has not always been beautiful and flourishing here. So when they envision the world, they envision the world as

beginning as a wild howling wasteland. You turn to the Babylonians, you turn to the Egyptians, you read their cosmology stories and it's, it always begins with some sort of desert wasteland and the gods or God bringing life, the potential for flourishing life out of the desert wasteland. It's precisely what we see here in Genesis chapter 1. They're dialoguing with their Babylonian neighbors. So we find darkness and howling wasteland, but we find the breath of God there in the midst of that darkness howling wasteland.

Put your hand up to your mouth with me, if you would, right close. And please say with me, hello. Did you feel that? Say it again, hello. You feel that? What is that? What is that? That's your ruach.

So it's your ruach. The word breath there, often translated spirit. So when we speak, we exhale our ruach, a bit of our ruach. So God's ruach is out there hovering in this dark, howling wasteland. And what is the first act of the God of the Bible? He speaks. He speaks. The imagery is all connected here in these first sentences of the Bible. And so God speaks. And what does God speak into being? Light. Okay, let's just stop right

here again. Okay, again, modern scientific view of the world. What is light? Is it a wave? Is it a particle? I don't know. Solve that one. So we have a technical term for the smallest little packets of energy that we call light, and that term is photon. Oh, God's making photons here. No, God is not making photons. That's like flying to France, and so you get the idea. So, okay, let's step into the culture shoes. Light is not making photons. That's like flying to France, and so you get the idea. So, okay, let's step into the culture shoes.

Light is not a thing. You can read many, many commentaries, and they just assume, well, in our cultural assumption, light is a thing, so that must be what Genesis 1 is talking about. Holy cow, no chance. Light is not a thing. What does God call the light? It's our first clue.

God does not call the light photon. What does God call the light? It's our first clue. God does not call the light photon. What does God call the light? Day. What is day? Day is not a thing. God is not creating or manufacturing anything here. What is God doing? God is designating the sequence of time.

Day and night. For whom are the words day and night meaningful? Us. Us. Day and night is part of our construct of how the world functions and is meaning. What's the basic building blocks of how things grow and flourish

and humans can do what they do? How is the sequence of light and dark, light and dark, it's like the same every single day. So it's regular, it's coherent, and it creates the potential for meaning in our lives. Where did this come from? Who ordained this rhythm of the world?

The Israelite God. So God's not creating a thing here. And as you work through the days in Genesis chapter 1, often God's not making or manufacturing anything. He's creating, as John Walton says, who we've hosted here before, his book is on sale, he's bringing function and order out of chaos. He's creating the potential for beauty and meaning out of chaos. This would be jaw-dropping in the ancient Near East, the perception of God here in Genesis chapter one. Because in the ancient Near East, the perception of God here in Genesis chapter 1.

Because in the ancient Near East, one of the most common motifs for cosmologies, especially Babylonian and Canaanite, is a theme called, a motif called Theomachy. Right, just two Greek words, Theo, God, Machy comes from machos, which means fighting or battle. So one of the most ancient depictions of world origins that we have from the ancient Sumerians is the idea of the Sumerian god Ningursu fighting a seven-headed dragon, slaying the dragon, splitting it open, and from the two parts of the body, making the heavens, the sky, and the land. In the lower left, you see an ancient depiction of the Babylonian god Marduk.

And he's fighting this ancient goddess Tiamat. Tiamat is the goddess of the waters. It's a very well-known story from the Babylonian creation narrative Enuma Elish. And it's actually quite graphic. You know, don't read it to your kids when they're too young. Because Marduk, he's the Babylonian god. He's going to found Babylon and make Babylon the greatest, most powerful nation ever. And so he takes, he gets in this battle with Tiamat. And he causes a huge wind to come towards Tiamat. And catches Tiamat when the mouth is open. And then, like, the wind's going down her throat.

And she's like, you know, you can picture the scene. I don't know, like, the lips going like this. And Marduk shoots an arrow. Arrow goes down, pierces her. And it's horribly graphic. And Marduk takes, sticks two hands in her mouth, and rips Tiamat in half. And out of one half makes the sky, and out of the other half makes the land. In the lower right, you see the Canaanite god Baal, or in English we butcher it to Baal.

And in Baal, Israel's contemporary neighbors have a cosmology about Baal fighting the same god of the sea, except in their word it's called Yam. Same thing, Baal slays Yam. Also fights another god to bring order out of chaos and to make the world. And that god, interestingly, is called Litan. It's the cognate word, the Hebrew word you find in your Bibles, Leviathan. When Baal killed Litan, who was Litan? Serpent.

A fleeing serpent annihilated the twisting serpent, the ruler with seven heads. The heavens grew hot and then they withered. And then after Baal kills Yam and Litan, Baal creates his royal palace and in a seven-day ceremony inaugurates his rule over creation. What's the worldview statement being made in these narratives? The world is the result of a violent conflict,

which creates all of a sudden a precedent. How are humans, what's the nature of humanity and how we go about relating to each other and flourishing in our world? Well, it's a narrative of violence and conflict that's at the root story of the nature of humanity. Contrast this with Genesis 1. The Israelite neighbor goes and has a cup of coffee with a Babylonian friend, and he says, well, actually the world's quite different. Actually, the world is not the result of a

violent conflict among the gods. The world is the result of this unrivaled God. The God of Israel is the God who rescued us out of Egypt and slavery, that God. And this God has no rivals. That God. And this God has no rivals. The world that this God creates is not the result of violent, selfish conflict. No, no, no, no. This God creates a world like it's like a royal artist. Just speaks, commands as a royal king.

And things come into being. And the world that our God has created is a world of goodness. It's a world of beauty. It created is a world of goodness. It's a world of beauty. It's like a work of art. And this thing, man, this baby just hums. You know what I'm saying? Because day and night, and this God has packed this world with potential for self-regeneration and flourishing and so on. It's a worldview statement.

That's what Genesis 1 is. So how do the seven days relate to all of this then? For an ancient Israelite author, and again, John Walton summarizes this in his book. I'll just go through it briefly. Seven days would have had immediate cultural reference, just like my lips hurt real bad. The seven-day structure of Genesis 1 would have had an immediate cultural reference

to the Israelite readers. Because seven days was the official period of time in which an ancient Israelite king or an ancient Near Eastern king, at the beginning of their reign, they would claim authority over the temple and there would be either the construction of a new temple or inauguration of an existing temple to show that this king is now reigning over the empire or the universe and so on. So you can read this in the Bible. When Solomon builds a temple, he builds it in seven years. He has a seven-day dedication feast, right? And then a seven-day inauguration ceremony. And what happens on the seventh day of that inauguration ceremony?

In the narrative, this is in 1 Kings, God's presence comes to dwell in the temple. God comes to rest in his temple. And what scholars have often noticed about Genesis chapter 1 is what's this like symmetry, this artistic symmetry design of Genesis 1. And so you have two panels. You have God-ordaining structures that make the world meaningful. Time, the sky and the weather, land and vegetation and agriculture. And then the next three days are lined up right next to them with the functionaries or the inhabitants of those domains. With the sun, the moon and the stars that guide our view of time. With inhabitants of the sea and sky. And then the sixth day, humans are at the pinnacle of God's creative work.

Many scholars, they tune into this, they make the case, John Walton does again in the book that we have on sale, that Genesis 1 is not trying to talk to us about chronology, the chronological sequence of world origins. It's not about cosmic chronology, but cosmic theology. It's making a theological claim about the nature of the world. That the world is God's temple. That the world has order and coherence. The way our world

came into being was through coherence and meaningful order. Not violent conflict, but beauty and meaning and order. And then as the crown of God's creative work, like any ancient Near Eastern king, he came to rest in his temple. Now here's what's fascinating. It's the first six days in Genesis 1.

There's a little concluding formula. There was evening and there was morning one day. There was evening and there was morning the second day. Three, four, five, six. There's no concluding was morning, second day. Three, four, five, six. There's no concluding formula for the seventh day. And why is that? Is God no longer ruling the world? No, God is ruling and in control of the world.

The seventh day has no end. We're in it. That's the theological claim being made by Genesis chapter 1. And so that is what ancient Israelites commemorated every seventh day, to rest in the fact that God is in control of the world. It's a different way of seeing world origins. Genesis chapter 1 in 15 minutes. There you go. Genesis chapter 2, and scholars have been long aware of this. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 have two distinct narratives when it comes to human origins. And this is the point of contention, a hot topic these days,

especially in Protestant and Evangelical Old Testament scholarship. So in Genesis 1, you have a sequence of events where you have land, plants, animals. Humans are the pinnacle of creation in Genesis chapter 1. In Genesis chapter 2, humans come first. And then they tend the ground for agriculture. And then the animals, and then man, and then a female. So two distinct views. And the author just plops both of them in front of us. So that's the first clue that a literal,

like whatever you want to do with a literal reading, you just got a huge problem right there off the bat. Maybe the author is not trying to tell us about chronology. Maybe he's sitting two distinct statements about the world in front of us. And so when it comes to human origins, again, the Israelite author is engaging with his Babylonian neighbors and making a very radical claim. So let's just, we'll move down to humanity in Genesis chapter 2.

And this is the statement here in Genesis chapter 2. The Lord God formed the man, and if you've been around Blackhawk very long, you know the Hebrew word for man, because I say it all the time. Adam, Adam, or Adam. That means humanity. God formed Adam from the dust of the ground

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. And we hear that and we think, okay, so God has hands, apparently. He's reaching down into the dirt and forming a little lump of clay. Hold on, hold on. No, no, no. The ancient Israelite author is sitting down with his Babylonian neighbor right here in Genesis chapter 2. The idea of the gods forming humans out of the clay of the earth is a very common motif in ancient Near Eastern cosmologies.

In Babylonian cosmologies, one very well-known one called the Atrahasis Epic, the gods are tired of working and providing for themselves. And so they want to create beings that will be slaves for them. And so they say, well, none of us like the god Kingu, so let's kill him. Let's slit his throat and drain his blood into the clay of the earth. And then out of the blood mixed with the clay we'll make humans and they will be our slaves.

And that's how the story goes. Until the humans make too much noise and then they get mad at them, so they send cosmic flood to wipe them all out, right? And so the story continues. This idea of humans being the result of a murderous act of murder and blood, but divine and earth. Humans are both from the earth but connected to the divine. And the Israelite author steps into this conversation and says,

yes, but, yes, we know that humans are from the earth because you die and they rot and go back to the earth. Yes, we know there's something unique about humans that connects us to the divine. It's the image of the divine breath here. And they use the same image as their Babylonian neighbors, formed out of clay. The Hebrew word formed here is a very technical term, yatsar. It's what describes the work of a potter sitting at a wheel forming a pot out of a lump of clay. But the unique claim, the worldview claim of Genesis 2 is this, is that no, humans are no slaves of the gods. God was the first one to plant the garden and to make the world a beautiful flourishing place. And what's

happening here is God is creating a creature of his own nature, divine, but also connected to the earth. How are humans treated by God in Genesis 2? Wonderfully. He sets them up with a great piece of real estate. You know what I'm saying? And he says, have a blast. Go for it. Imitate my creative acts by becoming co-creators

and making the world flourish. Go for it. Have a blast. It's a totally different vision of the nature of humanity. It's a dignified vision. Every human is infused with the nature and character of the divine. And so one Old Testament scholar connects it this way. This is where the Imago Dei, humans reflecting the image of God, comes from,

which was a very radical idea in the ancient Near East that every human is humans reflecting the image of God, comes from, which was a very radical idea in the ancient Near East, that every human is made in the image of God. It's the claim of Genesis 1 and 2 that God granted a royal priestly identity as Imago Dei to all humanity, whereas in the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, whereas power in the Babylonian and Assyrian empires was concentrated power in the Babylonian and Assyrian empires was concentrated in the hands of a few, power in Genesis 1 is diffused and shared. All humans are made in the image of God. No longer is the image of God applied only to a privileged elite. Rather, all human beings, male and female, are created as God's royal steward, entrusted with the privileged task

of ruling on God's behalf. This democratizing of the Imago Dei in Genesis 1 constitutes an implicit critique of the entire royal priestly structure of ancient Mesopotamian society. There's a radical claim about the nature of humans here in Genesis 2. We don't hear it because we're stuck on, God has hands and he's making clay? No, you're mistaken. Fly to France and learn how to speak French. Like, learn what these authors are doing in their context.

This also raises questions about human origins and the relationship of Adam and Eve and these kinds of things. The current spectrum of views of how this relates to how we should think about Adam and Eve and so on. I mean, just to summarize very briefly, to conclude, you have on the one hand views, and this is all held within even conservative evangelical scholarship right now. You have Adam and Eve, they're more like literary characters, and the story is meant to describe all of humanity's struggle with temptation. You have another whole other side of this discussion, that this is a literal historical narrative,

just like the Book of Kings or the first century Gospels about Jesus, and they're telling us real people, real places, actual couple. This is how sin and death entered into the world. And then you have mediating views in between those two, that there is a real beginning to humanity. Yes, humans had a real origin and they are reflective of the divine in some way. We are morally accountable and we have morally failed, but the language of Genesis 2 is not literal language describing those real events. You've got a whole spectrum here. And I would encourage you, if you have questions about that, to want to flesh that out, I'd

be more than glad to do that in the Q&A. So the basic principle, to conclude, is that the Bible is a human word, the Bible is a divine word. As a human word, what this means is we need to use all of our tools, our thinking caps, to understand the ancient setting, the ancient background, the resonances and connections that the biblical creation narratives would have had as intended by their authors. And our understanding will continually develop

because we're not given the privilege of ultimate understanding. So we always hold our interpretations loosely because human knowledge is always growing and understanding. That's our God-given task as we flourish in God's world. The Bible is a human word. That shouldn't scare us. It should excite us and thrill us and motivate us to do some homework when we read the Bible. But the Bible is not just a human word.

It's my conviction that the Bible is also a divine word. And so all of our efforts to do background, to do homework, all need to be in the service of hearing across the millennia this divine voice that is addressing every single one of us as hearers of this word. And it's a voice that's telling us who we are, what this whole world is about. It's a voice that's calling us to respond. And as good readers of the scriptures,

that's the voice we need to pay attention to most. Well, I hope that was helpful. And more importantly, I hope that was helpful. And more importantly, I hope it was stimulating. My real hope is that you're asking a ton of questions right now and needing to rethink a whole bunch of things you thought you already knew about. And that's awesome. If you're looking for further resources, I have actually done a number of other lectures on this same topic, and they'll be coming out later on the Strange Bible podcast.

If you're a bookworm, let me throw a few books at you. One I referenced in the lecture by a Hebrew Bible scholar named John Walton. The book is called The Lost World of Genesis 1. Look it up on Amazon. It'll change the way you read Genesis 1 in light of its ancient Hebrew language and context forever. If you're looking for something that's a little more basic, not so like right into the original language and culture, there's a book called, great title, it's one of my favorite titles on this topic, it's called In the Beginning We Misunderstood, Interpreting Genesis 1 in its original context. It's by two pastors actually,

Johnny V. Miller and John M. Soden. And it's written for anybody, no matter what background or no background you have in the Bible. Super helpful introduction into this whole debate and specifically talking about why this has been so politically and emotionally charged in the history of the church in America. It's a very, very helpful survey of this issue. And then last of all, something that's pushing the conversation in a new direction is a recent book by a scientist and a biblical scholar, Scott McKnight, who's a professor of New Testament, and then Dennis Venema, who's a genetic scientist.

They wrote a book called Adam and the Genome, Reading Scripture After Genetic Science. Super, super insightful. And this has more to do not just with world origins, but with human origins and how it's connected to this whole debate. So we'll be addressing more matters of science and faith in the Strange Bible podcast in episodes to come. So, to be continued. Thanks for listening, you guys.