The Lost World of Adam and Eve (2 page)

Proposition 1

Genesis Is an Ancient Document

Biblical authority is tied inseparably to the author’s intention. God vested his authority in a human author, so we must consider what the human author intended to communicate if we want to understand God’s message. Two voices speak, but the human author is our doorway into the room of God’s meaning and message. That means that when we read Genesis, we are reading an ancient document and should begin by using only the assumptions that would be appropriate for the ancient world. We must understand how the ancients thought and what ideas underlay their communication.
1

In one sense, every successful act of communication is accomplished by various degrees of accommodation on the part of the communicator, but only for the sake of the audience that he or she has in mind. Accommodation must bridge the gap if communicator and audience do not share the same language, the same command of language, the same culture or the same experiences, but we do not expect a communicator to accommodate an audience that he or she does not know or anticipate. High-context communication is communication that takes place between insiders in situations in which the communicator and audience share much in common. In such situations, less accommodation is necessary for effective communication to take place, and, therefore, much might be left unsaid that an outsider might need in order to fully understand the communication.

This is illustrated in the traffic reports that we hear constantly in Chicago, where the references to times of travel and locations of problems assume that the listener has intimate knowledge of the highways. As a regular commuter, I find the traffic reports that offer times of travel from various points and identification of stretches where one might encounter congestion to be very meaningful. When it is reported that it is a thirty-eight-minute trip from “the cave” to “the junction” and that it is congested from “the slip to the Nagle curve,” I know exactly what to expect. When out-of-town guests visit, however, this information only confuses them. They do not know what the slip or the cave is (nor could they find them on a map), they don’t know how far these places are from one another, and they don’t know that on a good day one can go from the cave to the junction in about eight minutes.

By contrast, in low-context communication, high levels of accommodation are necessary as an insider attempts communication with an outsider. A low-context traffic report would have to identify local landmarks and normal traffic times between them for out-of-town listeners or inexperienced commuters. These would be much longer reports. If the traffic reporter made the report understandable to the out-of-town visitor, it would seem interminable and annoying to the regular commuter it seeks to serve.

I propose that in the Bible God has accommodated the communicator and immediate audience, employing the communicator in a high-context communication appropriate to the audience. So, for example, a prophet and his audience share a history, a culture, a language and the experiences of their contemporaneous lives. When we read the Bible, we enter the context of that communication as low-context outsiders who need to use all our inferential tools to discern the nature of the communicator’s illocution and meaning. We have to use research to fill in all the information that would not have to be said by the prophet in his high-context communication to his audience. This is how we, as modern readers, must interact with an ancient text.

Those who take the Bible seriously believe that God has inspired the locutions (words, whether spoken or written) that the communicator has used to accomplish their joint (divine + human author) illocutions
2
(which lead to an understanding of intentions, claims, affirmations and, ultimately, meaning) but that the foundational locutions are tied to the communicator’s world. That is, God has made accommodation to the high-context communication between the implied communicators and their implied audience so as to optimize and facilitate the transmission of meaning via an authoritative illocution. Inspiration is tied to
locutions
(they have their source in God);
illocutions
define the necessary path to meaning that can be defined as characterized by authority.

At times our distance from the ancient communicator might mean that we misunderstand the communication because of elements that are foreign to us, or because we do not share ways of thinking with the communicator. Comparative studies help us to understand more fully the form of the biblical authors’ employed genres and the nature of their rhetorical devices so that we do not mistake these elements for something that they never were. Such an exercise does not compromise the authority of Scripture but ascribes authority to that which the communicator was actually communicating. We also need comparative studies in order to recognize the aspects of the communicators’ cognitive environment
3
that are foreign to us and to read the text in light of their world and worldview.

Consequently, we are obliged to respect the text by recognizing the sort of text that it is and the nature of the message that it offers. In that regard, we have long recognized that the Bible is not a scientific textbook. That is, God’s intention is not to teach science or to reveal science. He
does
reveal his work in the world, but he
doesn’t
reveal how the world works.

As an example of the foreign aspects of the cognitive environment, people in the ancient world had no category for what we call
natural laws.
When they thought of cause and effect, even though they could make all the observations that we make (e.g., when you push something it moves; when you drop something it falls), they were more inclined to see the world’s operations in terms of divine cause. Everything worked the way that it did because God set it up that way and God maintained the system. They would have viewed the cosmos not as a machine but as a kingdom, and God communicated to them about the world in those terms. His revelation to them was not focused on giving them a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of the natural world.

He likewise did not hide information of that sort in the text for later readers to discover. An assumption on our part that he did would have no reliable controls. For example, in the days when we believed in a steady-state universe, people could easily have gone to the Bible to find confirmation of that science. But today we do not believe the steadystate theory to be true. Today we might think we find confirmation of the Big Bang or the expanding universe, but maybe someday we will no longer consider those to be true. Such approaches cannot be adopted within an authority framework.

In the same way, the authority of the text is not respected when statements in the Bible that are part of ancient science are used as if they are God’s descriptions of modern scientific understanding. When the text talks about thinking with our hearts or intestines, it is not proposing scientific ideas that we must confirm if we wish to take biblical authority seriously. We need not try to propose ways that our blood-pumping organs or digestive systems are physiologically involved in cognitive processes. This is simply communication in the context of ancient science. In the same way, when the text talks about the water below the vault and the water above the vault (Gen 1:6) we do not have to construct a cosmic system that has waters above and waters below. Everyone in the ancient world believed there were waters above because when it rained water came down. Therefore, when the biblical text talks about “water above” (Gen 1:7), it is not offering authoritative revelation of scientific facts. If we conclude that there are not, strictly speaking, waters above, we have not thereby identified an error in Scripture. Rather, we have recognized that God vests the authority of the text elsewhere. Authority is tied to the message the author intends to communicate as an agent of God’s revelation. God has accommodated himself to the world of ancient Israel to initiate that revelation. We therefore recognize that although the Bible is written for us (indeed, for everyone), it is not written to us. In its context, it is not communicated in our language; it is not addressed to our culture; it does not anticipate the questions about the world and its operations that stem from our modern situations and issues.

If we read modern ideas into the text, we skirt the authority of the text and in effect compromise it, arrogating authority to ourselves and our ideas. This is especially true when we interpret the text as if it is making reference to modern science, of which the author and audience had no knowledge. The text cannot mean what it never meant. What the text says may converge with modern science, but the text does not make authoritative claims pertaining to modern science (e.g., some statements may coincide with Big Bang cosmology, but the text does not authoritatively establish Big Bang cosmology). What the author meant and what the audience understood place restrictions on what information has authority. The only way we can move with certainty beyond that which was intended by the Old Testament author is if another authoritative voice (e.g., a New Testament author) gives us that extension of meaning.

I propose instead that our doctrinal affirmations about Scripture (authority, inerrancy, infallibility, etc.) attach to the intended message of the human communicators (as it was given by the divine communicator). This is not to say that we therefore believe everything they believe (they
did
believe that there was a solid sky) but that we express our commitment to the communicative act. Since the form of their message is grounded in their language and culture, it is important to differentiate between what the communicators can be inferred to believe and the focus of their intended teaching.
4
So, for example, it is no surprise that Israel believed in a solid sky and that God accommodated his communication to that model in his communication to Israel. But since the text’s message is not an assertion of the true shape of cosmic geography, we can safely reject those details without jeopardizing authority or inerrancy. Such cosmic geography is in the belief set of the communicators but is employed in the framework of their communication, not the content of their message. Beliefs may be discernible specifically in the way they frame their ideas or generally in the communicator’s context. Often we judge the author’s beliefs about his world as irrelevant or immaterial to the text’s message and therefore unrelated to the authority of the text. In the same way, the idea that one thinks with one’s entrails is built into the expressions that they use and the beliefs of the biblical communicators, but the revelatory intention is not to make assertions about physiology or anatomy. In these cases, I would contend that cosmic geography and anatomy/physiology are part of the framework of the communication. To set aside such culturally bound ideas does not jeopardize the text’s message or authority. Genre is also part of the communication framework and is therefore culturally bound. We have to account for the cultural aspects and shape of the genre before we can properly understand the communicator’s intentions.
5
At the other end of the spectrum, having once understood the message, we cannot bypass it to adopt only a generalized application (e.g., “love God and your neighbor and you will do fine”) that dismisses as accommodation and potentially erroneous the communicator’s genre-encased message.

The authority and inerrancy of the text is, and has traditionally been, attached to what it affirms. Those affirmations are not of a scientific nature. The text does not affirm that we think with our entrails (though it communicates in those terms because that is what the ancient audience believed). The text does not affirm that there are waters above. The question that we must therefore address is whether the text, in its authority, makes any affirmations about material human origins. If the communication of the text adopts the “science” and the ideas that everyone in the ancient world believed (as it did with physiology and the waters above), then we would not consider that authoritative revelation or an affirmation of the text.

So, the question is, is there any new revelation pertaining to science in the Bible? The question does not pertain to statements the Bible makes about historical events that take place in the world, such as the plagues or the parting of the Red Sea. Those historical events involve unusual occurrences that by their very nature are likely beyond the ability of science to explain (not only in the phenomenon, but in the forewarning, timing and selective targeting). The question instead pertains to the regularly occurring events and the normal mechanics and operations of the world around us. Does the Bible give any revised or updated explanations of those? I would contend that it does not. Every aspect of the regular operations of the world as described in the Bible reflects the perspectives and ideas of the ancient world—ideas that Israel along with everyone else in the ancient world already believed. Though the text has much revelation to offer about the nature of God and his character and work, there is not a single incidence of new information being offered by God to the Israelites about the regular operation of the world (what we would call natural science). The text is thoroughly ancient and communicates in that context.

This does not preclude the text from reporting historical events that would have involved science that the ancients did not understand (e.g., the mechanics of the flood). In such cases, the Bible is not
providing
scientific revelation; it is being
silent
on scientific matters. Whatever scientific explanations we might posit would not carry the authority of the text (just as our interpretations do not carry authority). When we apply these insights to the biblical view of human origins, we find that while the text offers theological affirmations (God as active, humans in his image, etc.) and may offer an account of historical events (which will be an issue for genre analysis, discussed later), it does not offer explanations of natural mechanisms. God did it, but the text does not offer a scientific explanation of how he did it. Instead, the text describes origins in ancient-world terms, although informed by correct theology.