Read The Lost World of Genesis One Online
Authors: John H. Walton
Tags: #Religion, #Biblical Studies, #Old Testament
The Lost World of Genesis One (2 page)
PROPOSITION 12:
PROPOSITION 13:
PROPOSITION 14:
PROPOSITION 15:
PROPOSITION 16:
PROPOSITION 17:
PROPOSITION 1S:
Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
FAQs ............................. 169
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD affirmed by
Christians is that he is Creator. That conviction is foundational as
we integrate our theology into our worldview. What all is entailed
in viewing God as Creator? What does that affirmation imply for
how we view ourselves and the world around us? These significant questions explain why discussions of theology and science so
often intersect. Given the ways that both have developed in Western culture, especially in America, these questions also explain
why the two often collide.
The first chapter of Genesis lies at the heart of our understanding of what the Bible communicates about God as Creator.
Though simple in the majesty of its expression and the power of
its scope, the chapter is anything but transparent. It is regrettable
that an account of such beauty has become such a bloodied battleground, but that is indeed the case.
In this book I have proposed a reading of Genesis that I
believe to be faithful to the context of the original audience
and author, and one that preserves and enhances the theological vitality of this text. Along the way is opportunity to dis cuss numerous areas of controversy for Christians, including
relating Genesis to modern science, especially evolution. Intelligent Design and creationism will be considered in light of
the proposal, and I make some comments about the debate
concerning public education.
The case is laid out in eighteen propositions, each presented
succinctly and plainly so that those not trained in the technical fields involved can understand and use the information
presented here. Whether the reader is an educated layperson
who wants to know more, a pastor or youth pastor in a church,
or a science teacher in public schools, he or she should find some
stimulating ideas for thinking about the Bible, theology, faith and
science.
WE LIKE TO THINK OF THE BIBLE POSSESSIVELY-my Bible, a
rare heritage, a holy treasure, a spiritual heirloom. And well we
should. The Bible is fresh and speaks to each of us as God's revelation of himself in a confusing world. It is ours and at times feels
quite personal.
But we cannot afford to let this idea run away with us. The Old
Testament does communicate to us and it was written for us, and
for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was written to
Israel. It is God's revelation of himself to Israel and secondarily
through Israel to everyone else. As obvious as this is, we must be
aware of the implications of that simple statement. Since it was
written to Israel, it is in a language that most of us do not understand, and therefore it requires translation. But the language is
not the only aspect that needs to be translated. Language assumes
a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to
communicate into the framework of a culture. Consequently,
when we read a text written in another language and addressed to
another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully.
As complicated as translating a foreign language can be, translating a foreign culture is infinitely more difficult. The problem
lies in the act of translating. Translation involves lifting the ideas
from their native context and relocating them in our own context.
In some ways this is an imperialistic act and bound to create some
distortion as we seek to organize information in the categories
that are familiar to us. It is far too easy to let our own ideas creep
in and subtly (or at times not so subtly) bend or twist the material
to fit our own context.
On the level of words, for example, there are Hebrew words
that simply do not have matching words in English. The Hebrew
word hesed is a good example. The translators of the New American Standard Bible decided to adopt the combination word "lovingkindness" to render it. Other translations use a wide variety of
words: loyalty, love, kindness and so on. The meaning of the word
cannot easily be expressed in English, so using any word unavoidably distorts the text. English readers unaware of this could easily
begin working from the English word and derive an interpretation of the text based on what that English word means to them,
and thus risk bringing something to the text that was not there.
Nevertheless translators have little choice but to take the word out
of its linguistic context and try to squeeze it into ours-to clothe
its meaning in English words that are inadequate to express the
full meaning of the text.
When we move to the level of culture, the same type of problem occurs. The very act of trying to translate the culture requires
taking it out of its context and fitting it into ours. What does the
text mean when it describes Sarah as "beautiful"? One not only
has to know the meaning of the word, but also must have some
idea of what defines beauty in the ancient world. When the Bible
speaks of something as elemental as marriage, we are not wrong
to think of it as the establishment of a socially and legally recog nized relationship between a man and a woman. But marriage
carries a lot more social nuance than that in our culture and not
necessarily similar at all to the social nuances in the ancient culture. When marriages are arranged and represent alliances between families and exchange of wealth, the institution fills a far
different place in the culture than what we know when feelings of
love predominate. In that light the word marriage means something vastly different in ancient culture, even though the word is
translated properly. We would seriously distort the text and interpret it incorrectly if we imposed all of the aspects of marriage in
our culture into the text and culture of the Bible. The minute
anyone (professional or amateur) attempts to translate the culture,
we run the risk of making the text communicate something it
never intended.
Rather than translating the culture, then, we need to try to
enter the culture. When people want to study the Bible seriously,
one of the steps they take is to learn the language. As I teach language students, I am still always faced with the challenge of persuading them that they will not succeed simply by learning enough
of the language to engage in translation. Truly learning the language requires leaving English behind, entering the world of the
text and understanding the language in its Hebrew context without creating English words in their minds. They must understand
the Hebrew as Hebrew text. This is the same with culture. We
must make every attempt to set our English categories aside, to
leave our cultural ideas behind, and try our best (as limited as the
attempt might be) to understand the material in its cultural context without translating it.
How do we do this? How can we recover the way that an ancient culture thought and what categories and ideas and concepts
were important to them? We have already noted that language is
keyed to culture, and we may then also recognize that literature is a window to the culture that produced it. We can begin to understand the culture by becoming familiar with its literature. Undoubtedly this sounds like a circular argument: We can't interpret
the literature without understanding the culture, and we can't understand the culture without interpreting the literature. If we were
dealing only with the Bible, it would indeed be circular, because
we have already adjusted it to our own cultural ways of thinking in
our long familiarity with it. The key then is to be found in the
literature from the rest of the ancient world. Here we will discover
many insights into ancient categories, concepts and perspectives.
Not only do we expect to find linkages, we do in fact find many
such linkages that enhance our understanding of the Bible.
To compare the Old Testament to the literature of the ancient
world is not to assume that we expect or find similarity at every
point; but neither should we assume or expect differences at every
point. We believe the nature of the Bible to be very different from
anything else that was available in the ancient world. The very
fact that we accept the Old Testament as God's revelation of himself distinguishes it from the literature of Mesopotamia or Egypt.
For that matter, Egyptian literature was very different from Mesopotamian literature, and within Mesopotamia, Assyrian literature and Babylonian literature were far from homogeneous. To
press the point further, Babylonian literature of the second millennium must be viewed as distinct from Babylonian literature of
the first millennium. Finally we must recognize that in any given
time period in any given culture in any given city, some people
would have had different ideas than others. Having said all of
this, we recognize at the same time that there is some common
ground. Despite all the distinctions that existed across the ancient world, any given ancient culture was more similar to other
ancient cultures than any of them are to Western American or
European culture. Comparing the ancient cultures to one an other will help us to see those common threads even as we become aware of the distinctions that separated them from one
another. As we identify those common threads, we will begin to
comprehend how the ancient world differed from our modern (or
postmodern) world.
So to return to the illustration of marriage: we will understand
the Israelite ideas of marriage much more accurately by becoming
informed about marriage in Babylon or Egypt than we will by
thinking of marriage in modern terms. Yet we will also find evidence to suggest that Babylonian customs and ideas were not always exactly like Israelite ones. The texts serve as sources of information for us to formulate the shape of each culture's ways of
thinking. In most areas there is more similarity between Israel
and its neighbors than there is between Israel and our twentyfirst-century Western world. As another example, even though
today we believe in one God, the God of Israel, and therefore
share with them this basic element of faith, the views of deity in
the ancient world served as the context for Israel's understanding
of deity. It is true that the God of the Bible is far different from
the gods of the ancient cultures. But Israel understood its God in
reference to what others around them believed. As the Bible indicates, Israelites were continually drawn into the thinking of the
cultures around them, whether they were adopting the gods and
practices of those around them or whether they were struggling to
see their God as distinct.
As a result, we are not looking at ancient literature to try to
decide whether Israel borrowed from some of the literature that
was known to them. It is to be expected that the Israelites held
many concepts and perspectives in common with the rest of the
ancient world. This is far different from suggesting literature was
borrowed or copied. This is not even a case of Israel being influenced by the peoples around them. Rather we simply recognize the common conceptual worldview that existed in ancient times.
We should therefore not speak of Israel being influenced by that
world-they were part of that world.
