Creation and Pentecostals [1 ed.] 152756908X, 9781527569089

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Creation and Pentecostals

Creation and Pentecostals: Hermeneutical Considerations of Genesis 1-2 By

Marius Nel

Creation and Pentecostals: Hermeneutical Considerations of Genesis 1-2 By Marius Nel This book first published 2021 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2021 by Marius Nel All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6908-X ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6908-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Research Justification ................................................................................ ix Word of recommendation .......................................................................... xi Foreword .................................................................................................. xii Introduction .............................................................................................. xv Purpose of the study Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 1 Introduction to Genesis 1-2 Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 Authorship .............................................................................................. 6 Documentary Hypothesis and Genesis ................................................... 8 The different sources ......................................................................... 8 Different views ................................................................................ 13 Conclusion ....................................................................................... 14 Literary analysis supplementing a historical survey ........................ 16 Worldview ............................................................................................ 17 Precosmic world .............................................................................. 19 Comparison between Israelite creation emphases and the surrounding culture .................................................................... 21 Genesis 1-11 ......................................................................................... 23 Genealogies in the book of Genesis ..................................................... 25 Genre of Genesis .................................................................................. 27 Date ...................................................................................................... 32 Message addressed to the people of Judah in the primaeval (Urgeschichte) narratives ............................................................... 34 Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 37 Introduction to pentecostal hermeneutics Introduction: A diversity of pentecostal hermeneutics ......................... 37 Early pentecostal hermeneutic ............................................................. 38 Hermeneutic method ........................................................................ 38 Early Pentecostals or fundamentalists............................................. 41

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Narratives in hermeneutics ............................................................. 44 Conclusion ....................................................................................... 46 Pentecostal fundamentalist-literalist hermeneutic ................................ 47 Need to be accepted ......................................................................... 47 Quasi-fundamentalist Bible reading practices ................................. 48 Speaking about God ......................................................................... 52 Distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic..................................................... 53 Authorial intent ................................................................................ 54 Emphases of the new hermeneutic ................................................... 56 Several unique approaches............................................................... 57 Bible and Spirit ................................................................................ 60 Literary approach ............................................................................. 62 Corporate interpretation and distinction .......................................... 64 Hermeneutical divisions among Pentecostals .................................. 66 Conclusion ....................................................................................... 67 Pentecostals reading Genesis 1-2 from a hermeneutical perspective ...................................................................................... 70 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 77 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 78 Comparison with similar narratives in surrounding cultures: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Hittite, and Syrian creation parallels Introduction .......................................................................................... 78 Comparison with similar narratives in surrounding cultures: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Hittite, and Syrian creation parallels .......................................................................................... 79 Enki and the World Manor .............................................................. 83 Atrahasis epic................................................................................... 84 Enuma Elish ..................................................................................... 86 Creation of the World by Marduk .................................................... 90 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 91 Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 93 First creation narrative (1:1-2:4a) Introduction .......................................................................................... 93 Reading Genesis 1:1-2:4a..................................................................... 98 Genre .................................................................................................. 105 Literary analysis ................................................................................. 110 Genesis 1:1-2 ................................................................................. 114 Genesis 1:3-5 ................................................................................. 122 Genesis 1:6-13 ............................................................................... 124

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Genesis 1:14-19 ............................................................................. 127 Genesis 1:20-25 ............................................................................. 127 Genesis 1:26-31 ............................................................................. 128 Genesis 2:1-3 ................................................................................. 137 Genesis 2:4a ................................................................................... 143 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 144 Chapter 5 ................................................................................................ 147 Second creation narrative (2:4b-25) Introduction ........................................................................................ 147 Literary analysis ................................................................................. 156 Genesis 2:4b................................................................................... 156 Genesis 2:5-6 ................................................................................. 160 Genesis 2:7..................................................................................... 163 Genesis 2:8-9 ................................................................................. 166 Genesis 2:10-14 ............................................................................. 173 Genesis 2:15-20 ............................................................................. 175 Genesis 2:21-23 ............................................................................. 181 Genesis 2:24-25 ............................................................................. 188 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 192 Chapter 6 ................................................................................................ 193 Creation narratives and a viable theological response Introduction ........................................................................................ 193 Pentecostal contribution to theology’s debate with science ............... 195 Four ways of thinking about creation and science ............................. 200 Atheism .......................................................................................... 200 Creationism .................................................................................... 206 Intelligent design ........................................................................... 213 Theistic evolution .......................................................................... 222 Implications for worldview ............................................................ 234 An alternative way of thinking ........................................................... 237 Pentecostal emphasis on miracles ...................................................... 243 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 248 Chapter 7 ................................................................................................ 250 Genesis 1-2 informing pentecostal hermeneutics Introduction ........................................................................................ 251 Reading Genesis 1-2 from a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic ...... 251

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Informing the pentecostal hermeneutic from the theological perspectives that Genesis 1-2 provide .......................................... 253 A literal reading of Genesis 1-2 ..................................................... 254 Fear of consequences of a non-literal interpretation of the Bible .. 257 Contribution of religion to scientific endeavors............................. 259 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 262 References .............................................................................................. 265

RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION

The purpose of this book is to describe pentecostal hermeneutics in terms of its view toward the two creation narratives found in Genesis 1 and 2. During the first century of its existence, there were significant hermeneutical developments in classical Pentecostalism. In early times, Pentecostals read the Bible in the same way as the Holiness movement, guided by Baconian principles of “common sense.” They looked for “facts” within the Bible (using “Scottish Common Sense Realism”) and harmonised the “facts” they drew from the Bible. The supposition in their Bible reading method was that any typical person who accepted that God’s word was correct could discover the “facts” of Scripture, in the same way as one could find the “facts” of science. During the 1940s and 1950s, the second and third generation of Pentecostals strove for acceptance by the society and its structures. They found a ready ally among Evangelicals, accepting their fundamentalist-literalist hermeneutic. Since the 1990s, pentecostal scholarship defined a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic in continuation with some aspects of Pentecostals' early practices. The direction of interpreting the Bible started with the present and past charismatic encounters with the Spirit, expecting to find the revelation of God's word in reading the Bible and applying its truth to the existential situation. The implications of the distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic in interpreting Genesis 1-2 are discussed, taking contemporary theories about the origins of the universe and life forms into consideration. Written from the science of the exegesis of Old Testament and a survey of literary studies, the book is aimed at scholars across theological subdisciplines, especially those interested in the intersections between theology, a pentecostal hermeneutic, and scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life forms. It addresses themes and provides insights that are also relevant for specialist leaders and professionals in this field. Pentecostals will also find much that helps them understand the relationship between theology and science and the meaning of the biblical creation narratives for contemporary believers.

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Research Justification

No part of the book was plagiarised from another publication or published elsewhere. The author thanks the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) for providing funding for this study. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the view of the NRF. Marius Nel Unit for Reformed Theology and Development of the South African Society North-West University South Africa

WORD OF RECOMMENDATION

In Pentecostals reading Genesis 1-2’s creation narratives, Prof Marius Nel offers a comprehensive appraisal of the influence of the hermeneutical angle of incidence on reading and understanding Scripture. The hermeneutical point of departure consequently has deep implications for worldview and is arguably the dominant determinant to distinguish between views of creation among Christians, notably among Young Earth Creationists, Old Earth Creationists (including proponents of Intelligent Design) and Theistic Evolutionists. While hermeneutic tradition influences a range of theological tenets, Nel focuses on creation narratives in the Bible and the interplay with modern science in developing a consistent world view. In line with Prof Marius Nel’s previous great works, this book continues to demonstrate his scholarly prowess. While he provides insight from a Pentecostal tradition, his perspective and arguments offer in my opinion a sound and enriching basis for a wider audience interested in the intersection between science and faith in the origins debate. The book is scholarly, yet accessible to students and the general public, thanks to the inclusive writing style and articulate clarity of reasoning. The book provides well-founded and much needed theological guidance to faith communities, notably religious leaders, at a time when the dialogue between science and faith is often portrayed as dichotomous and hence avoided. Nel elegantly exposes the dichotomy as false, argues against the conflict hypothesis, or the non-overlapping approach where apparent (and historic) inconsistencies are avoided, in favor of an insight which reconciles science and Scripture as resonating perspectives of God’s Grace and Glory. Prof Frik van Niekerk Professor of Energy North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

FOREWORD

There are several ways to read the biblical narratives that preceded the dawn of Israel’s history in the patriarchs, starting from Genesis 12. One can read the narratives of Genesis 1-11 as attempts of one school of thinking in Judah's Southern kingdom about a “scientific” account of the early origins of life forms in a theologically discounted manner. It can also be viewed as archetypal stories that serve an etiological purpose, that is, to explain certain phenomena and customs. Or it could have served as the attempt of a Yahwist to recount and discount the ancient accounts of the surrounding culture of how human life originated and developed in earliest times in a theologically sound manner. In conservative circles, it is viewed as the literal Godbreathed words whispered by the Spirit of God into the ears of human authors who recounted everything they heard faithfully. Or it can be seen as a contemporary account of how certain Yahwist believers attempted to articulate their faith in God in terms of how life originated and human life developed in its earliest stages. How one views these narratives is determined by, and determinative for how one views the Bible as such. Is it an ancient book representing a culture and tradition from another age and time with historical value for understanding early Israelite thinking developments? Or is it read as a book that provides some theological attempts to facilitate belief in YHWH in terms of certain issues that figured in Judahite thinking and experience that requires to be unlocked and translated to mine its theological message might have some relevance for contemporary believers in God? Or is it to be understood literally and biblicistically as “inspired” and believers' means to evaluate scientific findings of the origins of early cosmology and human history? This study is limited by two considerations. The first is by the utilisation of a hermeneutic that has been developing among pentecostal scholars during the past three decades that follow a specific direction of reading the Bible, from current encounters with Jesus Christ through his Spirit to an interpretation of the Bible that is enlightened by the Spirit’s guidance and applied by the Spirit to refine behavior in the daily life of believers. Such a pentecostal hermeneutic is discussed in more detail in the second chapter.

Creation and Pentecostals: Hermeneutical Considerations of Genesis 1-2 xiii

Any biblical hermeneutic should take note that the biblical creation narratives, representing an ancient document from another age and culture than our own and told over many generations before they were written down, are at the same time a part of the church’s canon. 1 As a part of Jewish and Christian believers’ biblical canon, the narratives fulfill a specific normative function that requires that they should be read as serious literature. To reconcile this observation with the givenness of the ancient character of the narratives may present challenges. Walter Brueggemann is correct in warning that an exposition of the narratives requires that the whole range of possibilities in that process of ancient documents becoming canon should be faced. 2 The material has been declared as the canon; it becomes canon only when people take them as normative. But it may never be forgotten that in becoming canon, the narratives did not cease to be material shaped by and cast in the ways of the ancient Near East. 3 At the same time, just because it is a part of the canon does not imply that everything in the Bible can be taken as normative. That which is incidental to the primary intent of a narrative cannot have the same didactic value as the intended teaching, though it might shed more light on the author’s theological suppositions. For historical precedent to have normative value, it must be demonstrated that such was the author's specified intent. 4 Canonical hermeneutic considerations see the Bible in terms of special revelation, in relation to the general revelation that other disciplines like the natural sciences unlock through God-given noetic capabilities of human endeavors of inquiry upon the natural world. “Revelation” is used here 1 At the time of Jesus and rabbi Hillel, certain sacred books were recognized by Jews as foundational to their religion and authoritative in their religious practice. All Jews recognized the “Law” (Torah) and most would have recognized the “Prophets,” as attested to by references in the New Testament to the “Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12; Luke 16:16; and Rom 3:21). There was not, however, a Bible in the sense that the leaders of the general Jewish community had specifically considered, debated, and definitively decided the full range of which books were supremely and permanently authoritative (Abegg, Flint and Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, vii). The early Christians accepted the Greek Septuagint, which contains some additional books, as their Old Testament, while early Rabbis finalized the list of books for the Hebrew Bible in the second century CE. These two early collections, the shorter Hebrew one and the longer Greek one, determine which books are included in the Bibles used by modern Jews, Protestants, and Catholics (Abegg, Flint and Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, viii-x). 2 Brueggemann, Genesis, 3. 3 Brueggemann, Genesis, 3. 4 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 79.

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Foreword

specifically in terms of the “theological intentionality” of Scripture as a result of the Spirit’s intervention. It is neither contentless experience, as in liberalism, nor timeless propositions limited to the Bible, as in conservatism. 5 Scripture is revelatory in the sense that it provides readers with what they could not discover themselves, a knowledge of God and how to live in a relationship with God. 6 The Bible's text creates a narrative world that encounters readers and calls for their attention, creating a reality that confronts both the readers’ reality and all other realities that call for the readers’ attention. The Bible is revelatory because that is the primary way to know of its world and Subject, God. 7 Such a hermeneutic is also necessarily, and not just possibly, interdisciplinary because it draws readings of Scripture and readings of the world inevitably together. 8 A second consideration that limits the study is defined by an attempt to discuss current scientifically acceptable theories about the origins of life and the development of human life in a theologically accountable manner in such a way that room is left for a dialogue with scientists, many of whom are believers in God. This discourse then leads to the suggestion of an alternative way of thinking about the origins of the universe and the theory of evolution as a possible way of explaining the origins of species of life, in chapter 6.

5

Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 131. Brueggemann, Book That Breathes, ix. 7 Thiselton, “Hermeneutical Dynamics,” 7. 8 Oliverio, “Contours of a Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic,” 49. 6

INTRODUCTION: PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to suggest a viable way for Pentecostals to interpret the creation narratives found in Genesis 1-2. The first important question to ask is, what is distinctive about the way Pentecostals interpret the Bible? Within Pentecostalism, two broad hermeneutical traditions are found, a quasi-fundamentalist-literalist way of reading the Bible and a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic that is aligned in some respects with the way early Pentecostals read the Bible and emphasises a pneumatological condition for hearing the word of God within the Bible. Insights generated by reading Genesis 1-2 from this pentecostal hermeneutic, it is suggested, will empower Pentecostals to partake in the vital debate between science and religion. The research has a twofold purpose: to inform a reading of the archetypal narratives in Genesis 1-21 from a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic that has been developing since the 1990s in pentecostal scholarship and to inform the theological perspectives that Genesis 1-2 provides from such a hermeneutic.2 Although technical detail about a variety of issues, including issues such as authorship, dating, and sources, as well as the historical and scientific accuracy of Genesis 1-2 is important, the research is not focused on these issues. A full discussion of the academic discourse about these issues and 1

The ideal would have been to include Genesis 3-4 in the discussion because of the relatedness of its narrative to the Genesis 2 narrative but restrictions of space made it impossible to do so. 2 The study is limited to classical Pentecostalism which came into being in the opening years of the twentieth century, without referring to the second wave of charismatics that originated in established churches in the 1960s, and the third wave of neo-Pentecostalism with its many diverse forms that represents independent groups and churches and originated since the 1980s and 1990s. “Classical” was added in about 1970 to distinguish classical Pentecostals from charismatics (Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 4). To classify the wider Pentecostal movement is nearly impossible, as demonstrated by the wide divergence of such classifications existing among scholars.

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Introduction

the possibility of a consensus among scholars can be found in many good commentaries available. The issues will be discussed cursorily, providing a summary of critical findings before attention is shifted to the focus of pentecostal hermeneutics, and the reading of Genesis 1-2 from this perspective. 3 The focus for Pentecostals is not on the text per se but on hearing the voice of the Spirit within the context of present-day encounters with and revelations of the Spirit while reading the text prayerfully, as pentecostal hermeneutic emphasises. The research supposes that Genesis 1-2 has been informing Christian theology since its inception in the first century CE and it provides some key theological principles focused on the Creator’s power, unity, and sovereignty as well as the Sabbath and diverse relationships of humankind. The principles defined in Genesis 1-2 serve as a framework to read Genesis 1250 (as well as 3-10) and the rest of the Bible and interpret believers' lives in contemporary times. It is true of all acts of reading that the assumptions one brings to a text about the nature of the text will profoundly determine how the text is understood.4 If the text is read literally as the truth, as Creationists and other conservatives do, then Genesis 1-2 will be interpreted as historical truth. However, if the text is read as a theologically driven attempt to explain how and why the creation of the world and humankind took place, written in the language, worldview, and thought patterns that characterised the period in which the narratives originated, as theistic evolutionists and others do, then Genesis 1-2 is read as theological narratives that contain a message for present-day believers. The first attempt implies that a conflict with scientific ways of explaining the origins of the universe and life must necessarily result while the second may accommodate some of the contemporary scientific explanations and facilitate discourse with scientists. Each reader interprets the text with an own agenda, and the interpretation is aligned with the preconceptions and assumptions by which the text was approached. That this is the case will become clear when Pentecostals’ two most widely used hermeneutical angles, a literalist and distinctly pentecostal angle, are demonstrated at the hand of the narratives in Genesis 1-2. These angles represent a literal reading that supplies certain historical conclusions

3 In using the term “pentecostal”, a capital letter is used in terms of the movement and people and a small letter to refer to issues associated with the movement and its people. 4 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 1.

Creation and Pentecostals: Hermeneutical Considerations of Genesis 1-2 xvii

without the restrictions of literalism, while a distinctive pentecostal reading supplies some theological reflections. A charge that many Protestants brought against pentecostal Bible reading practices was that in the past, their Bible reading practices did not give a good account of the socio-historical contexts in which biblical texts originated. It is a characteristic of literalist readings of biblical texts that it ignores the role the sociohistorical context should play in understanding the text. Clark Pinnock agrees: “A strong emphasis on the divine inspiration of the text naturally tends to overshadow the obligation to read the Bible in its own human and historical setting in order to grasp its truth. It encourages readers to seek the pure divine message to themselves here and now and to assume they will grasp its meaning best by reading the text in the most ‘natural’ way, which means, in a way congenial to the assumptions of the reader, maximising the danger of text manipulation.” 5 The charge should be taken seriously because of the reality that the biblical text represents an ancient document that originated within certain historical circumstances. Its message was not directed at people living in the twenty-first century CE with their own concerns and interests, but Genesis 1-2 was compiled and finalised in the sixth century BCE in an exilic and postexilic situation that addressed the hopelessness of a situation that was threatening Judah’s survival as a nation. For that reason, careful attention will also be given here to the ancient Near Eastern context in which Genesis 1-2 originated, including a discussion of the genres that the narratives represent as well as their possible dependence upon extra-biblical material to which Judeans were exposed in the world in which they found themselves. The argument is developed along certain lines. First, attention is given to the introductory material of Genesis 1-2. Who was responsible for these narratives? When was it written down? What were the possible sources used? Who were the first listeners to these narratives, and why was it directed at them? What was the message (or messages) they were intended to hear in the context of their situation? Next, a short introduction to a developing pentecostal hermeneutic is given that is distinctive from the way other traditions approach the biblical text with the purpose to apply it in reading Genesis 1-2 (chapter 2). Emphasis is placed on the changed direction of reading. While most conservative Protestants read the Bible as the word of God (revelatio sacrio literalis

5

Pinnock, “Climbing Out of the Swamp,” 153.

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comprehensa, in the words of Matthias Flacius), 6 emphasising the text and the intention of its authors, Pentecostals start with their contemporary situation. In opening the Bible, they expect to hear a word from God that is explicated by God’s Spirit who initially inspired biblical authors to pen the text and continues to illuminate it to the attentive, present reader. Their context is determined by the encounters Pentecostals had with God in the past and the consequent life transformation they experienced when they encountered God. In listening to the text, on the one hand, their interpretation is determined by the way they had been experiencing the revelation of the Spirit in their lives and on the other hand their interpretation is subjected to the expectation that they will receive a message from the text that the Spirit will apply to their immediate context and situation. In the next chapter, a comparison is made between the two biblical creation narratives and the creation myths of surrounding cultures. It seems that the biblical accounts might have been influences by these myths. The question is asked to the extent of the influence, and the way that the biblical accounts critique certain prominent features of the myths is discussed. The next element of the argument is an exegetical consideration and discussion of Genesis 1-2. A distinction is made between the two creation narratives (Gen 1:1-2:4a and Gen 2:4b-24), and the two accounts are discussed separately (in chapters 4 and 5). It is recognised that these narratives form part of a larger primaeval history, of Genesis 1-11. Reference is made to the history of early humankind’s sinfulness (Gen 3-4), the interruption of the genealogy in Genesis 5 before the discussion of humankind’s sinfulness is commenced, ending in the re-creation narrative as a result of God’s judgment, with Noah serving as the savior of humankind (Gen 6-9) and ending with a second genealogy (Gen 10). Before entering the events that marked the beginning of Israel’s existence, with the narratives about the patriarch Abraham and his offspring, Genesis 11 again focuses on humankind’s amazing ability to sin, and God’s judgment at the tower of Babel before these chapters are concluded with the last genealogy

6 Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics, 12. Flacius represented the Protestant viewpoint against the Roman Catholic Church that asserted that tradition is to be consulted in the interpretation of allegedly obscure parts of the Bible. Flacius regarded the Bible as containing the word of God and presupposed the possibility of universally valid interpretation through hermeneutics. He restricted allegorical interpretation to simile that was not required for interpreting the Old Testament at all.

Creation and Pentecostals: Hermeneutical Considerations of Genesis 1-2 xix

(Gen 11:10-31) that culminates in Terah that became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. In chapter 7, attention is given to possible ways that theology can interact with the natural sciences and specifically contemporary theories of the origins of the universe (Big Bang theory) and life forms (theory of evolution). Four different means of interacting are discussed before an alternative is presented that accommodates pentecostal sentiments. In the last chapter, the pentecostal hermeneutic is revisited and informed by the findings of Genesis 1-2, completing the full argument circle.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 1-2

Introduction In this chapter, some introductory issues are discussed, including the issue of authorship and the documentary hypothesis that was presented as an explanation for the origins of the Pentateuch, traditionally ascribed to Moses, while a literary analysis complementing the historical discussion is described. Next, the worldview found in Genesis and of the people of Judah living during and after the Babylonian exile is described and compared with that of the surrounding cultures. The archetypal “history” presented by Genesis 1-11 is described along with the role played by genealogies in the book as a whole, before the genre, date, and the message addressed to Judah in the primaeval history are discussed. Israelite religion did not originate in a vacuum. Although it is difficult to describe the developments that eventually led to the traditions found in the Bible, it is clear that it was influenced by the surrounding cultures in which the people of Israel found themselves at different times. Its novel aspects, as John Collins explains, did not come de novo to Israel but reflected beliefs and practices that had been current for centuries.1 The Hebrew language was a Canaanite dialect, and Canaanite was a Semitic language, like Akkadian. The Hebrew language uses the word El for God; the term inevitably carries with it associations of the Canaanite high god. Genesis 1-2’s creation narratives draw motifs from the myths that functioned in surrounding cultures, and specifically the Atrahasis, Enuma Elish, and Gilgamesh epics that were discovered. It can safely be asserted that similar myths that functioned in other cultures were also probably known to the people of Israel, although the stories of these myths have not as yet been recovered during archaeological excavations. Much of the language and imagery found in the Bible were culture-specific, deeply embedded in the traditions of the Near East, and can only be fully understood when they are viewed in 1

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 46.

2

Chapter 1

the perspective of the epics with which they entered into conversation. It emphasizes that knowledge of the myths of Near Eastern religion is supposed as essential in interpreting the biblical narratives.2 The book of Genesis consists of two blocks of material, the primaeval history3 of Genesis 1-11 and the ancestral narratives of Genesis 12-50. The editor of the book had a theological intention in compiling the different blocks of material that combine the final product into a message. The sixteenth-century Reformer, John Calvin, writes that the intention of Moses, the author of Genesis, in beginning his book with the creation of the world is to render God, as it were, visible to us in God’s works.4 However, that is the product of reading the book from the perspective of someone living centuries after the origins of the book. The intention should rather be the careful indication and identification, and possible distinction, of the national God of Israel, YHWH, with the God of the creation of the heavens and earth, and all life forms, and the God who revealed Godself5 to the patriarchs.6 Genesis served to order the theological world of Israel and to introduce the history of Israel’s redemption from the slavery in Egypt, the exodus to the promised land, the occupation of (a part of) Canaan, and life in the promised land, that eventually ended in the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles of the Northern and Southern kingdoms respectively, and the resettlement of a part of Judah in the land, with many Jews staying behind in the diaspora.

2

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 46. “History” is used in qualified sense. In the words of Severian of Gabala of the end of the fourth century CE, it represents “a revelation of the Holy Spirit, it describes the creation performed by the power of God and revealed to Moses by the charism of inspiration; it is not as a historian that Moses said this but as an inspired author” (Severian of Gabala, Commentaries on Genesis 1–3, 24). 4 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 58. 5 In attempting to accommodate the asexuality and genderlessness of God, as will become clear, e.g., in the discussion of the biblical creation narratives, the rather akward way of referring to God as a neutral being is followed to avoid sexist language. In my opinion, it is critical that the traditional maleness associated with God should be denied at all costs in the light of the damage caused by patriarchy, sexism, and chauvinism, especially in Africa. It implies that the Old Testament’s practice of referring to God as a male should be denied. Instead of using the female in referring to God, which is also an option and serves as a corrective to the traditional maleness associated with God, a neutrality is preferred here, although at times it results in akwardness (as in “Godself”). 6 Waltke, Genesis, 1. 3

Introduction to Genesis 1-2

3

In this study, synchronic and diachronic approaches, or historical and literary approaches to the text are balanced in attempting to draw out the significance of the text for contemporary believers. In line with the pentecostal tradition, it is accepted that the biblical author was communicating something meaningful to an audience that would understand the message.7 In the words of William Reyburn and Euan Fry, it is accepted that these events took place a very long time ago. The person reporting about creation did not witness the events personally.8 Actually, no person who ever lived could have witnessed the creation acts personally except the first persons who were created, and then only as from the time of their creation, that is, the last act in the first narrative and the first act in the last narrative. The last remark is that it is accepted that the events described represent a trustworthy report and not mere gossip or hearsay.9 To do justice to the ancient text that Judaism and Christianity viewed as canonical and authoritative, contemporary readers must take their place among the author’s audience. They have to imagine themselves in the situation in which the first recipients found themselves. The Pentecostal audience consists of believers who view the Bible as the word of God in some way or another; their expectation in reading it is that the Spirit who inspired the original authors in a dynamic way in what they wrote would apply God’s word to the situation and needs of contemporary readers. The author’s communication consists of two elements, the way the author said it (literary analysis) and the way the audience heard it (cultural 7 “Meaning” has to do with incorporating real understanding into one’s interpretation of ultimate reality, which influences the way one lives one’s life (Archer, “Hermeneutics,” 110). 8 In the words of Severian of Gabala (Commentaries on Genesis 1–3, 24), “he (the author) told what he had not seen and described what took place when he was not an eyewitness.” However, not all agree. David Guzik (Genesis: Verse by Verse Commentary, Gen 1), representing a conservative section of authors, e.g., quotes somebody (Morris, without giving further detail) who asserts that it is probable that Genesis was written originally by actual eyewitnesses of the events reported therein. The original narratives, recorded on tables of stone or clay, came into Moses’ possession who selected the appropriate sections for compilation, inserted his own editorial additions and comments, and provided smooth transitions from one document to the next. Guzik, Genesis: Verse by Verse Commentary, Gen 2:4-7 even goes so far as to think that the first chapters of Genesis were reveled by God to Adam because no human was present to witness the seven-day creation event! 9 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 22.

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Chapter 1

adaptation).10 The literary analysis is complicated by the unknown languages of biblical communication and their functioning within the cultural, social, economic and political circumstances and with a worldview that is strange for contemporary readers. The literary analysis needs to take into account the discourse, grammar, syntax, and lexicality of the text. By consulting good commentaries, it becomes possible to unlock many of the exegetical insights developed by scholars through the years. When it comes to cultural adaptation, it is even more difficult to bridge the gap. To effectively communicate, both parties must agree on the meaning of words, concepts, and ideas. The difference in language is already a stumbling block; that biblical authors functioned with a worldview different from those worldviews used by diverse readers of the Bible makes it a risky task to determine the meaning of an ancient communication like the biblical text. The problem is that the authors are not available anymore to ensure that their readers understand what they were saying or intended to imply and that contemporary readers do not necessarily know that they interpret a text in the wrong way because the associations of words and concepts got lost in the mists of time. Therefore the audience must seek out additional information and explanations; the process of interpreting biblical texts can never be finished, and it is not possible to state with any certainty that the meaning of a passage has finally and absolutely been determined. All exegetical labor is, for that reason, always characterized by provisionality. The problem is aggravated when contemporary readers read their theological and cultural ideas and worldview into the text without realizing it. Then the reader, for instance, decides that the Bible makes a definitive statement about the inadmissibility of any same-sex sexual behavior as practised by LGBTIQ+ people without recognizing that the few instances where such behavior is described in the Bible do not necessarily refer to the same practices that contemporary people imply.11 It is necessary to be aware of and question the possible unconscious enforcement of our values in our interpretation of the Bible. The Bible functioned in a “high context culture” consisting of people characterized by a rich common culture that was assumed by all members of that society. The contemporary cultural scene, however, represents a “low context culture” where a mixture of people are represented from widely different backgrounds and ethnic identities, displaying the articulation of a 10 11

Walton, NIV Application Bible, 20. See Nel, LGBTIQ+ People and Pentecostals.

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diversity of worldviews and values.12 In the biblical world, there was no need to explicitly articulate the worldview and values since all shared in it, and it formed the unspoken presuppositions of authors rather than the subject of their discourse. To discover their unexpressed worldview, thorough knowledge is required about the world they lived in and what they thought. To understand the cultural adaptation that is necessary to understand communication to and by people living in ancient times requires the tools of comparative analysis. One implication is that readers then see the egocentric identity that characterizes many contemporary people in contrast to the group-centric identity that characterized biblical times. As a consequence, we emphasize primary responsibility for ourselves, developing our individual potential, and promoting independence while biblical people saw their primary obligation to the extended family, tribe or clan, and own people, promoting interdependence.13 In the biblical world, one’s behavior was dictated by the customs and ethical sanctions of the group in which they found themselves while in our world, one’s behavior is governed by the rights and duties specified in international laws and the requirements of human rights, in conformity with one’s personal goals. In our world, one’s status and worth are determined by individual achievements or possessions while ancient people rooted the individual’s worth and status in the status of the family to which the person belonged. We can achieve another status by our behavior while in biblical times, it was ascribed and could seldom be changed. In that world, the individual who achieved and competed with others became disruptive to the interests of the group, and such behavior was viewed as unacceptable, while we view competing and achieving as the norm, motivating and empowering us to better our situation and circumstances. We view the group that we belong to as a collection of individuals with something in common while the ancient group consisted of organically connected people. While we see the individual as an entity separate from other people and the surrounding world, they viewed the individual as organically and irreversibly connected to the other persons of the group that they belonged to and to their physical world. We make personal decisions by ourselves and do not necessarily consider the interests of any group that we belong to while in biblical times a personal decision could only be made in consultation with the group and a willingness to move own interests aside to serve the group’s interests. We are driven by the need to satisfy our personal needs and desires, betraying our strong personal identity, private 12 13

Simkins, Creator and Creation, 41. See Pilch, Introducing the Cultural Context, 97 for fuller discussion.

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autonomy, and self-reliant achievement while biblical people could only be satisfied interpersonally because they existed in corporate solidarity with the group and with strong familial collaboration, requiring interdependent collaboration. Many people living in the global South today display elements of such a biblical worldview, and it might be that they understand some values that the Bible contains better than Western people.14

Authorship Jews and Christians viewed Moses as the author responsible for the five books of the Pentateuch (Torah), a view shared by literalist Pentecostal readers and fundamentalists.15 Richard Belcher represents the viewpoint of conservative Christians that Moses was used as the primary human instrument to reveal God’s message to Israel because he was the only prophet to whom God spoke face-to-face.16 This was also the case in the Hellenistic period, with Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, and the Jewish authors Philo and Josephus who considered Moses as being responsible for penning the “book of Moses.”17 That Moses is the author is not supported by either the book or the rest of the Bible. Belcher bases his argument that Moses is the fundamental author

14

For instance, for anyone moving in the vast squatter camps that litter South Africa’s cities it quickly becomes clear that the average breadwinner cares for a group of people consisting of members of the extended family, many times sharing the same hut made from zinc. At times, up to ten of twelve people live closely together, sharing in the fruit of poverty and despair and sharing, at times, one state pension between them. 15 Old Testament passages that attribute Genesis to Moses are Josh 8:31; 2 Ki 14:6; Ezra 6:18; Neh 8:1; 13:1–2; 2 Chron 25:4; 34:12; 35:12; Dan 9:11; Mal 4:4. Passages that assert that Jesus attributes quotes from the Torah to Moses are Matt 8:4; 19:8; Mark 1:44; 7:10; 10:5; 12:26; Luke 5:14; 16:31; 20:37; 24:27, 44; John 5:46–47; 7:19, 23. Other New Testament passages that attribute quotes from the Torah to Moses are Luke 2:22; Acts 3:22; 13:39; 15:1, 15–21; 26:22; 28:23; Rom 10:5, 19; 1 Cor 9:9; 2 Cor 3:15; Heb 10:28; Rev 15:3. Early Church Fathers accepted Mosaic authorship, with the exception of Ireneaus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian (Utley, How It All Began, 4). 16 Belcher, Genesis, 14. The author implies with the statement that he interprets literally that God has a face and can be seen, suppositions that no Jewish reader of the Hebrew Bible could ever accept. At least the author is consistent in literally reading the Bible; many other literal interpreters of the Bible do so piecemeal and where it suits them they interpret a passage as symbolical or allegorical. 17 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 49.

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primarily on the Pentateuch’s supposed statement of this fact.18 Other conservatives prefer to designate Moses as a substantial author and not the fundamental author to explain extra additions such as Numbers 12:3 (“Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth”) and the account of the death of Moses.19 Still, others think that some of the material of the Pentateuch has a Mosaic origin, but they think that the final author is unknown because the final form of the Pentateuch only originated much later, perhaps during the Babylonian exile. Many critical scholars agree that the book originated in the sixth century BCE, before and during the traumatic events of the Judean exile in Babylon. It does not imply that Genesis originated in Babylon because its authors and editors used older oral and written traditions to formulate a theological message for Judeans living in the strange world of the Mesopotamian deserts. “Mesopotamia” got its name from the Septuagint translation20 of Genesis 24:10, stating that Isaac set out from “Aram Naharaim,” or “Aram of the two rivers,” probably the land between the Upper Euphrates and the Balik or Habur Rivers.21 Its life is dominated by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, and along their banks, irrigation was used to bring water to the fields. Typical rainfall in the area is around eight inches, implying that only sheep and goats could be pastured in its wide wilderness.

18 E.g., he refers to the reference to Moses who wrote the words of the law received at Sinai in a book (Deut 31:24), which was placed in the ark of the covenant (Deut 31:22), as supposedly containing the whole of the Pentateuch. Another argument he uses is that the text attests to eyewitness accounts such as Exodus 15:27, which gives the exact number of palm trees and springs. He argues that the books reflect Egyptian customs accurately, concluding that the text fits the time and events in Moses’ life. Other passages in the Old Testament also refer to the law of Moses (Dan 9:11-13) and the book of Moses (Eza 6:18; Neh 13:1; 2 Chron 25:4). Even the New Testament agrees that Moses wrote the law (Mark 7:10; Matt 19:7). The problem with these textual references is that it explains that Moses wrote the law in a book and that the law was referred to by Israel as the law of Moses but that does not imply in the least that it refers to the Pentateuch. 19 Dillard and Longman, Introduction to the Old Testament, 42, 50-51. 20 The Septuagint is the ancient Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament of Christians. It was translated by different Jewish scholars over the course of the third, second, and first centuries BCE. The oldest fragmentary manuscripts of the Septuagint include John Rylands Papyrus 458 (second century BCE) and Papyrus Fouad 266 (about 100 BCE). Complete (or almost complete) manuscripts exist as well: Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century CE), Codex Vaticanus (fourth century CE), and Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century CE) (Abegg, Flint and Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, xi). 21 Greer, Hilber and Walton, Behind the Scenes, 12.

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Documentary Hypothesis and Genesis The different sources In reading the Pentateuch, Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) and Karl H. Graf (1815-1869) designed the so-called Graf-Wellhausen synthesis of the documentary hypothesis to explain the seams or fractures where different sections of the text were stuck together as a means to explain the way the Pentateuch originated. The hypothesis was based on several observations, consisting of the variation in style and language between the two creation narratives (and other parts of Genesis), with the first creation account being solemn and repetitive while the second narrative is lively; the variation in the names of God; the variation in theologies, with the God of the first narrative appearing to be distant and powerful while the second narrative depicts God as human-like and immersed in human life; repetitions and doublets; internal contradictions; and the episodic nature of the narratives.22 They argued that there were four separate documents, called after their authors, the Yahwist (so-called because the author consistently refers to God as YHWH (J), the Elohist (so-called because the author consistently refers to God as Elohim (E), the Deuteronomist (D), and the Priest (P). These documents were woven together by an editor (called a redactor) into one document, that eventually became the Pentateuch as it exists in canonical form. The hypothesis asserts that it is possible to identify and pull out the four independent documents from the Pentateuch and reconstruct them to look at each one’s unique angle and focus. The Priestly source (P) is represented extensively in Leviticus, although there are some signs of P’s reworking of other sections. Deuteronomy was recognized as substantially a distinct source. The remaining narrative material was seen as a combination of a Yahwist source (J)23 and an Elohistic source (E).24 The Priestly document

22

O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 19.

23 Scheffler, “Literature of Israel’s United Kingdom,” 88. Found in 2:4b–4:26 (creation

and fall, and Cain and Abel with the development of civilization), 6:1–4 (or 6:1-8, the narratives about giants, human evil, and YHWH’s intervention); 7:1–8:22 (partially, mixed with P, concerned with the flood); 9:18–27 (partially, about Noah’s sons); 11:1– 9, 28–30 (the tower of Babel); 12:1–4a, 6–20, 13:1–5, 7–11a, 12b–18, 15 (partially); 16:1b, 2, 4–14, 18-19, 21 (partially); 22:20–24; 25:1–6, 11b, 18, 21–26a, 27–34; 26:1– 33; 27:1–45; 28:10–22 (partially), 29–30 (partially); 31:1, 3, 36–50; 32:3–33:17, 34 (partially); 35:14, 16–22, 36, 37 (partially), 38-39, 41 (partially), 42–44; 46:28–47:4, 6b, 12–27a, 29–31; 49:1–27; 50:1–11, 14 (Ryle, Book of Genesis, xix–xx). 24 As found in 20:1–17; 21:6–32; 22:1–13, 19; 27:1–45 (partially); 28:10–22 (partially); 29–30 (partially); 31–32:2 (partially); 33:19, 20, 34 (partially); 35:1–8,

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was seen as the oldest stratum of the Pentateuch, and for that reason, also referred to as the Grundschrift (G), the basic document. The Priestly document25 is recognizable by its dry, formulaic style, an interest in genealogies and dates, ritual observances, and history punctuated by covenants. The book of Leviticus is quintessentially Priestly material. After the 1860s, the theory was revised, and P was left as the last, or second to last contributor to the Pentateuch. The order or sources was now established as or J, E, P, D, although some still preferred J, E, D, P.26 For nearly a century, scholarly consensus accepted that the documentary hypothesis solved the problem of how the Pentateuch was compiled from different sources and traditions. Some additional sources were suggested at later stages, including the proposal of a Fragment Hypothesis that allowed for a greater diversity of authorship. It was also believed that the tradition was transmitted orally for a long time before it was eventually written down in the seventh century BCE or later. Some scholars included Joshua in the Documentary Hypothesis, speaking of a Hexateuch. However, the foursources theory remained dominant until the last quarter of the twentieth century. The D source was not problematic; it is primarily the book of Deuteronomy except for chapters 32-34, perhaps with some traces found in passages in Genesis and Exodus. The distinctive themes of the Deuteronomist are the covenant, the prohibition to offer sacrifices outside the sanctuary, and the linkage between faithfulness to the instructions of the Torah and the blessings of YHWH on the faithful keepers of the covenant. The Deuteronomic tradition was associated with the reforms of King Josiah in 621 BCE. The distinction between J and E is more problematic. E uses the name Elohim for God and associates revelation with dreams. Elohim in Genesis 1 37 (partially); 40; 41 (partially); 42 (partially); 45; 46:1–5; 48:1-2, 8–22; 50:15–22 (Ryle, Book of Genesis, xxi). 25 As found in 1:1–2:4a; 5:1–28, 30–32; 6:9–22; 7:6, 11, 13–16a, 18–21, 24; 8:1, 2a, 3b–5, 13a, 14–19; 9:1–17, 28, 29; 10:1–7, 20, 22, 23, 31, 32; 11:10–26, 27, 31, 32; 12:4b, 5; 13:6, 11b–12a; 16:1a, 3, 15, 16, 17; 19:29; 21:1b, 2b–5, 23; 25:7–11, 12– 17, 19, 20, 26b; 26:34-35; 27:46–28:9; 29:24, 29; 31:18b; 33:18a, 34 (partially); 35:9–13, 15, 22b–29, 36; 37:1, 2a; 41:46; 46:6–27; 47:5, 6a, 7–11, 27b, 28; 48:3–6, 7 (?); 49:1a, 28b–33; 50:12-13 (Ryle, Book of Genesis, xxvi). The differences between the character of P and E’s contents and the style of their diction are so distinct that they can easily be separated from each other. 26 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 51.

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is not a proper name, but a generic term and so means roughly “deity.”27 Elohim to refer to God occurs by far the most often in the Bible (2,750 times). It starts in the Pentateuch with the Abraham narrative cycle in Genesis 15 and is built around four figures with prophetic traits, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. In contrast, J is more colorful, with its preferred name for God as YHWH, its depiction of YHWH as an anthropomorphic God, and talking animals.28 YHWH argues with people, holds fellowship with them, walks around, gets angry, and is pleased. Abraham’s call in Genesis 12 and his covenant with YHWH in chapter 15 explain that the theme of promise and fulfillment is prominent in Yahwist thinking. J is responsible for a substantial part of the primaeval history found in Genesis 1-11, and its horizon is more universalistic than E. Especially Jewish scholars keep on defending the integrity of the J source vehemently. To 27

Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 74. The reason for Elohim being in the plural has been explained in various ways. One way is to take it as numerical or collective, denoting God and the angels, or God insofar as God reveals Godself and works through a plurality of spiritual beings. Another view is that the plural is abstract and neutral, as the Godhead that includes a spiritual plurality as the media of an immundane efficacy. It can also be a plural of intensity, emphasizing God as the one who in one person unites all the fullness divided among the gods of the heathen. Lastly, it might also be a pluralis trinitatis, as the plurality of Elohim, as a Christian explanation (Lange, Genesis, 112). 28 The name YHWH is explained only once, in Ex 3:13–16, especially v. 14. However, the Pentateuch often interprets words by popular word plays, not etymologies. There are several theories as to the meaning of this name, as from an Arabic root, “to show fervent love;” from an Arabic root “to blow” (YHWH as storm God); from a Ugartic (Canaanite) root “to speak;” following a Phoenician inscription, a causative participle meaning “the one who sustains,” or “the one who establishes;” from the Hebrew Qal form meaning “the one who is,” “the one who is present,” and in future sense, “the One who will be;” from the Hebrew Hiphil form, “the one who causes to be;” from the Hebrew root “to live” (e.g. Gen 3:20), meaning “the ever living, only living one;” from the context of Ex 3:13–16 as a play on the imperfect form used in a perfect sense, “I shall continue to be what I used to be” or “I shall continue to be what I have always been.” I think that the answer should be looked for in the Hebrew forms of the verb. It refers to the God of Israel perceived as the giver of life and existence, from the verb, “to be, exist.”. In later Judaism the covenant name, the tetragrammaton, became so holy that Jews were afraid to say it lest they break the command of Ex 20:7; Deut 5:11; 6:13. So they substituted the Hebrew term for “owner,” “master, husband, lord”—adon or adonai (“my lord”). When they came to the word YHWH when they read their sacred texts, they pronounced it as “lord.” This is why YHWH is written LORD in English translations (Utley, How It All Began, 44). They also substituted the vowels of adonai when the Masoretic text was vocalized, leading to the nonexistent word, Jehovah.

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disentangle J and E from each other proves, however, to be a difficult task, with many differences that mark the discussions of scholars of the sources.29 J was dated in the ninth century, D in the seventh, and P in the sixth or fifth centuries BCE. J and E were both pre-Josianic and pre-Deuteronomic, and it was assumed that J was older than E. Gerhard von Rad differed from Julius Wellhausen’s dating of J and argued that J should rather be associated with the reign of Solomon when the tribes of Israel developed into a state on the international scene. J originated in Judah, the southern part of Israel. It is found in Genesis 2-3 and 11:1-9. He argues that the Yahwist was a court historian who told the story of how a group of slaves acquired the status of a nation that was respected eventually by its neighbors. The Yahwist, writing from the newly attained pinnacle of Solomon’s successful kingdom with its diplomatic ties across the oikumene, provided an ideology for the newly established state, containing claims for Solomon’s glory and fame that cannot be proved by any evidence outside the Bible.30 It is not excluded, however, that it also provided a profound critique of royal autonomy, serving as a polemic against the rebellious pride of creatures who refuse to live in relation to the Creator because of their craving to be autonomous (see, e.g., Gen 3:5; 11:6).31 Herbert Ryle believes that the J and E narratives found their origin in collections of popular narratives that contained the early folklore of the Israelites and were based upon oral traditions.32 These traditions were probably recited at festivals, kept and preserved at certain sacred spots, repeated over camp-fires, and declaimed at burials and burial-places. They may have obtained a stereotyped form in time. Some of them can be found in collections of songs, found in the Old Testament (Num 21:14; Jos 10:12, 13; 2 Sam 1:18) and elsewhere. They probably existed in different versions, long before they were committed to writing. The collections represented by J and E had been gradually formed, probably in shorter as well as longer versions. They are not the work or composition of a single author. J originated in the Southern Kingdom of Judah with Hebron as the main city, giving Joseph prominence, while E comes from the Northern Kingdom, with the towns of Bethel, Shechem, and Beer-sheba being given prominence. Abraham resided at Gerar and Beer-sheba, Jacob at Beer-sheba 29

More detail about the discourse is found in Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 59-60. 30 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 62. 31 Brueggemann, Genesis, 14. 32 Ryle, Book of Genesis, xxiii.

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and Shechem.33 Walter Brueggemann explains that the narratives seem to be closely linked to the royal court because the court sponsored scientific and philosophical investigations into the mystery of life. Such investigations are always closely related to the use and the legitimation of human power.34 The Elohistic source, responsible for Genesis 1:1-2:4a, was created as a northern alternative account of Israelite prehistory, after the death of Solomon and the disastrous decision of Rehoboam to follow his father’s taxation policies led to the separation of the northern kingdom of Israel from the southern kingdom of Judah. It is dated to the ninth or early eighth centuries BCE when the Arameans were the most significant foreign power, from Israel’s perspective. J might then be slightly older, although it is difficult to prove. The editor of the primaeval history gave precedence to J, but there are a few sections in Genesis (e.g., 1:22, 28) where it seems that the editor assumed that E was prior. Neither J nor E knew about the prohibition to worship and sacrifice outside the central sanctuary, implying that they were compiled before Josiah’s reform of the cult in the seventh century BCE.35 The only outstanding question was of the composition of the priest–author’s history that is placed by scholars in the period of neo-Babylonian hegemony, somewhere between the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE to the fall of Babylon to the Iranian–Achaemenid rule in 539 BCE. The implication is clear, that it represents the vibrant dialogue between the book and the historical struggles of Judah during that time, preceded by a long history of destruction by invading empires, war, disaster, trauma, and their effects.36 Another option is to date it to the early years of Iranian–Achaemenid rule when Judaean deportees returned to Judea. Along with the anonymous Isaiah 40–48, whose prophetic sayings have much in common with the P creation account, the God of Israel is presented as a creator deity. Interpreted together, Genesis 1:1–2:4 and Isaiah 40–48 provide the “essential core of a biblical theology of creation.”37

33

Ryle, Book of Genesis, xxiii–xxiv. Brueggemann, Genesis, 12. 35 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 63. 36 O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 3-6. 37 Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 23–24. 34

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Different views In the last part of the twentieth century, the near-consensus regarding the documentary hypothesis was shattered by more and more researchers and for different reasons. For instance and relevant for our discussion, Kenneth Mathews states that there is a growing recognition that the differences between the two creation narratives can be attributed to other reasons apart from viewing it as two original, competing creation stories.38 Mathews argues that the supposed two narratives should rather be seen as two complementary descriptions that form part of one congruent narrative. In the second narrative, the narrator provides more information about the first one’s short reference to the creation of humankind. He attributes his view to the many similarities in literary structure and content that suggest to him that they come from one hand. The “second” narrative represents a thematic elaboration of the key features found in 1:1–2:3.39 However, these arguments do not seem to be convincing; at the most, it should rather serve to warn against a cheap shredding of the Genesis narratives to accommodate the source hypothesis, without solid evidence. The documentary hypothesis was rejected by conservative theologians from the start, in the same way, they rejected the historical-critical methods developed to read the Bible, and initially especially the Old Testament. They rejected it for the same reason, that the existence of separate sources within the Pentateuch coming from different periods and changed to support and serve the purposes of the editor implies that each word of the Bible was not spoken directly by God, breathed by the Spirit into the ear of the human author. Such a view encroached on the authority of the Bible that conservative Christians wanted to defend at all costs. In this study, the earlier consensus is accepted that documents underlie the Pentateuch and that earlier Yshwistic and Elohistic sources were combined much later by an editor, the Deuteronomist, that essentially formed the core of the book of Deuteronomy that was composed in the seventh century BCE, and finally ended when the Priest compiled the Pentateuch in the service of establishing a new identity for exilic and postexilic Jews in the sixth century BCE.40 The 38

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 187. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 187–188. 40 Arnold, Genesis, 12-13. “Jew” seems to be a simple derivation of the word Judah, which was one of the twelve original tribes and eventually lived in the southern parts of the land of Israel. The city of Jerusalem that served as spiritual and political center for Israel was in Judah’s territory. Today the term is used to refer to the descendants 39

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four-source theory is viewed as the regnant source analysis of Pentateuchal studies, enriched by several nuanced interpretations of critical studies, based on form-critical and tradition-critical investigations.

Conclusion For the sake of this research and the discussion, the documentary hypothesis is accepted in a qualified way, providing a viable explanation for the use of theological angles of incidence as well as different names for God that characterizes the early narratives of Genesis, while the use of Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythological language and images in the archetypal narratives is also acknowledged. It is accepted that the Pentateuch in its final form was compiled by the redactor during the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE. The implication is clear, that events such as the creation narratives represent were eventually recorded centuries after they occurred. The Old Testament, as we know it, or Hebrew Bible as Jews referred to it, probably did not exist in its final form until the first century CE.41 The needs of the exiles that can be summarized as despair and hopelessness were addressed as the reason for the compilation of older traditions. The Assyrian exile for practical reasons extinguished the existence of the ten tribes; the same could have happened with Judeans during their own exile a hundred and fifty years later if the priests did not propose the alternative for Jewish religion in the holy scriptures that to a certain extent served to replace the lost Jerusalem temple and cult, a loss aggravated by the loss of the monarchy, destruction of the capital city and most other towns, and the suspension of selfgovernment. The newly compiled scriptures, the Torah, helped to form (and re-form) the identity of the Judean people. It must be admitted, as John Collins emphasizes, that any contemporary reconstruction of earlier forms of the biblical text contains a speculative element.42 What can be stated with surety is that the texts are indeed composite, incorporating layers from different eras and displaying different traits that betray the interplay of different traditions and explain the many contradictions and differences. At most, the editors added some of their own distinctive emphases to emphasize their theological message but they did not revise the older traditions in any systematic way. It remains possible to of Judah. For the purposes of this book, the terms Israelite, Hebrew, and Jew will be used interchangeably, referring always to the same group of people (Shahan, Genesis to Jesus in One Hour, 8). 41 Shahan, Genesis to Jesus in One Hour, 3. 42 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 65.

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identify the different sources, such as the Yahwist and Elohist. The Priest tied the narrative sources together by providing the opening creation narrative and connection of the different narratives with his genealogies and dating formulae. It might be that a Deuteronomic editor finally added his (or their) own touch to the shape of the Genesis narratives as well as Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Only then was Deuteronomy added as the last book, and that explains why it is fully integrated with the other books. Perhaps a compiler then mediated the different traditions, keeping the Priestly and Deuteronomic theologies to exist alongside each other without giving precedence to one or the other.43 It is accepted that the Yahwist was a “historian” (in the meaning the word was accorded in the ancient Near East) that worked in the eighth or ninth centuries BCE. It might even be possible that a national epic of Israel’s origins was produced for ideological reasons during the reign of King David and his son, Solomon. The Yahwist represents a single author who combined oral and written narratives that had been handed down for generations to write a continuous narrative from the creation of the world through the Davidic kingdom to David’s successor (1 Ki 2:5-46).44 As a composite of older sources, the Yahwist (J) used an older tradition from the northern kingdom, the work of the Elohist author E. Whether E had existed as an independent and complete work is not known; it might have served as a supplement to J.45 The combined work is referred to as JW or, more appropriately, as RJE, for the redactor of the JE materials. The impossibility of recovering and reconstructing the transmission of the tradition in its earlier times is demonstrated clearly.46 A second source in Genesis is the Priest, distinguishable by an own theology and style, as in the case of J and E. P uses the name Elohim exclusively for God, and not YHWH (in Gen 2, also YHWH Elohim). Most scholars agree as to the extent of P’s work in Genesis; today, investigation focuses on the nature of priestly material. It is accepted that P functioned in pre-exilic and exilic times, the traditional source-critical assumption of its date, although some scholars argue that it should be dated earlier, in pre-exilic times.47 43

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 65. Friedman, Hidden Books in the Bible, 3-56. 45 McEvenue, “Elohist at Work,” 315-32. 46 Arnold, Genesis, 16. 47 A third source in the Pentateuch is also identified, originating from a holiness school (H), conmprised of Lev 17-27. A last source is Gen 37-50, and specifically Gen 37, 39-45, and portions of Gen 46-7, the Joseph Novel, an independent historical source. 44

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The two creation narratives present two different cosmogonies, the earlier and simpler one found in Gen 2:4b–25 by J, and the later and more systematic one, found in 1:1–2:4a by P. The earlier one (Gen 2:4b–25) reminds of a scene familiar to dwellers in the desert, of a barren and dry world. In this world, there is not any rain to make it fruitful or human being to till it (v. 5). Then a stream issues from the earth, irrigating the whole face of the ground (v. 6). YHWH forms the human being out of the dust, breathes life into him (v. 7), and causes them to dwell in a garden of rich soil and fruitful trees (vv. 8–17). Next, YHWH also forms the beasts of the field and the birds of the air to serve as companions for the human beings (vv. 18– 20), only to find that they are not able to be human companions. Then YHWH causes the human being to sleep and forms a female human being to serve as his companion (vv. 21–25). The scene has now changed from a desert to a garden, an oasis teeming with life and vegetation. The later, more elaborate cosmogony (Gen 1:1–2:4a) that continues in Genesis 3 is derived from the alluvial region of Babylonia, reflected in the initial primordial watery chaos, with the wind of spirit of God hovering over it (v. 2). Then six creative days are described.48 Genesis, in conclusion, represents a carefully structured composite text of J and P materials, edited by H, a redactor who included the Joseph Novel near the conclusion.

Literary analysis supplementing a historical survey Since the 1970s, a new development in biblical exegesis was the use of nascent literary criticism that attempted to overcome the atomizing excesses of source- and form-criticism by rhetorical or aesthetic criticism, starting with the work of James Muilenberg.49 Instead of dividing the text into smaller documents ascribed to sources, the text as a whole was read from different perspectives. Brevard S. Childs’ and James A. Sanders’ canonical criticism also served the same purpose. Literary criticism assumes that a text such as the edited version of Genesis, the so-called redacted text, shows coherence as a literary work, although it may be characterized by certain contradictions and disparate elements. Genesis is not a unitary artwork, like a novel, but the product of many hands and an elaborate process of editing.50 It accepts that the editors had a strong sense of thematic and narrative purposefulness in the way they edited the different strands, using and 48

Ryle, Book of Genesis, 42. Muilenberg, “Form Criticism and Beyond.” 50 Alter, Genesis, 12. 49

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revising some old traditions, like genealogies, etiological tales, ethnographic tables, or the vestiges of mythical stories, while at the same time the editor might have recreated something without an explicit source. In the recent past, since the closing decades of the twentieth century, several critical scholars kept on questioning the documentary hypothesis.51 Bill Arnold refers to this development as the maturation of literary criticism, rejecting the dichotomy existing between the older diachronic and newer synchronic approaches.52 He argues for a synthesis between a source approach as well as sensitivity to the rhetorical sophistication of the text. Arnold compares traditional historical-critical scholarship to “strip mining” that opens layers of traditions and sources like a seam in the earth’s surface, and newer literary approaches to a “wilderness preserve” that protects and admires the boundaries and integrity of a text.53 To explain how the landscape was created, it is important to combine the “geologic” formation of the text with an analysis of the final form of the text, avoiding the extremes of exclusive use of one approach. Some of the narratives contain literary masterpieces, implying that it was not the work of an editor that utilised different sources.54 The implication is that an editor’s work in putting the sources together would always be recognized as clumsy. These arguments eventually led to the development of canonical criticism, with Brevard Childs focusing on the final form of the text without being concerned with the historical processes of how the text came into existence.55 Now theology and authority took on greater importance than during the early years of scholarship. However, it was not accepted that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. In the exegetical analysis of Genesis1-2, the diachronic approach will be supplemented by a synchronic investigation of the text.

Worldview The worldview of ancient people was defined by the myths they told about their history and identity. Many contemporary people define a “myth” as make-believe stories of gods acting in morally unacceptable ways. However, 51

Discussed in Whybray, Making of the Pentateuch. Arnold, Genesis, 13. 53 Arnold, Genesis, 14. 54 Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 58-9. 55 Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament, 132-5. 52

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this does not do justice to the definition or function of myths that influenced ancient people, including those that identified themselves with Israel. The fact of the matter is that ancient myths are serious but imaginative attempts to explain life in this world.56 Ancient mythology served the same function as science does in contemporary society. It explained how and why the world and humanity originated and how it worked. In that world, the reality was viewed as consisting of the visible and invisible. Events in the visible world were determined by the power play between invisible forces. Myths reflected and formed the worldview and values of the culture in which it functioned and provided a window for contemporary readers of ancient texts into that culture.57 Israel’s cultural views can be deduced from the myths the Israelites told about themselves, their world and identity.58 Such myths are found in the Bible as well. The purpose of the myth is to transcend the limitations of rational and scientific language, to activate the imagination, and to state something about the mystery of life and the meaningfulness of human existence.59 For that reason, myths are not true or false; they are sensible or senseless, appropriate or inappropriate. They are not primarily concerned with history but with the present and the future. Their substance is not facts that explain certain origins and phenomena, in the case of Genesis 1-2 about the creation, but a narrative and faith tradition that was used to make sense of human existence in a specific situation and the existence of the world around humanity. They represent a form of metaphorical imagination, enriched by aspects of prophetical imagination.60 They were not stories that Israelites made up but represented the preservation and transmission of their worldview and values; the only way we can access the people, their world and God. In some instances, their worldview differed from those of surrounding cultures while in other respects, remarkable similarities can be found, as will be shown in the archetypal narratives found in Genesis 1-2. Similarities include the way Israelite and other literature see the world, with the cosmos consisting of three tiers, composed of the heavens, the earth and 56

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 33. Walton, NIV Application Bible, 27. 58 The term “myth” is used here to refer to the founding stories that Israel used, in the same way as their neighbors did. It is used in a positive sense and specifically to relate their myths to those of the surrounding nations with which it displays similarities but because of its negative identification by non-theologians the terms will be avoided in the rest of the book. 59 Esterhuyse, God van Genesis, 30. 60 Esterhuyse, God van Genesis, 99-100. 57

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the underworld. The heavens were the place where the deities dwelt, and they were composed of three (or more) levels with pavements of different kinds of stone. There was only one landmass or continent on the earth that consisted of a flat disk. At its ends, mountains were found that served as support for the dome or solid mass that represented the sky and, behind it, the heavens. The dome separated the seas found on earth from water found in the heavens. In the Egyptian creation narratives, probably some of the oldest such narratives, the goddess Noet protects the earth with her flexible and curved body like a dome.61 The landmass on earth was surrounded by waters and supported by pillars that based the earth on the underworld.62 The worldview is supported by texts such as Genesis 1:6;63 Psalm 24:2; 75:3.64 Israel shared the ancient cosmology with the surrounding cultures, that consisted of a flat disk-shaped earth, with mountains at its end that support a multi-layered sky, called a domed firmament. The sun, moon, and stars crossed the dome in patterns that are clearly regular and predictable. The dome itself had chambers through which water came from above, the rain. There was not only water above the earth but also underneath, that was tapped by wells and fountains. The waters around the earth made up the cosmic seas.65

Precosmic world In the ancient Near East, the precosmic world was understood not as a world devoid of matter but as a world devoid of function, order, diversity, and identity, according to John Walton.66 In the same manner, acts of creation focused, not on the matter but origins of function and order. The verbs used to describe creation betray that it operates in this semantic realm of naming, separating, and temple building. This is important in understanding the biblical creation narratives; these themes play the same significant role and 61

Esterhuyse, God van Genesis, 14. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought, 165-6. 63 Walton, Genesis 1, 122 describes just how much of ancient Near Eastern cognitive environment is observable in this core Israelite text (Gen 1). 64 Literal readers conveniently read such references as symbolical and not representative of Israel’s worldview because “it is hard to maintain a high view of the truth or the authority of Scripture” (Belcher, Genesis, 22). Biblical authors used phenomenological language, describing the cosmos primarily from the perspective of an observer on the earth. They did not try to make scientific statements concerning whether the sun or the earth is at the center of the universe. 65 Arnold, Genesis, 41. 66 Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 23. 62

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for the same reasons. The things that are created are not described to show their importance for people’s existence but to explain what functions they serve. The functions are the cause of creation and the decision of the gods; they create to serve their interests. People are merely functional in terms of the needs of the gods. Creation is characterized by this teleological perspective that largely transcends and ignores the material, physical, and natural world. Reality and existence are concerned with function and order, and it is not perceived in terms of matter and objects. The functions of the cosmos and culture are all relative to people. And humanity’ origins focus on their role in the cosmos, whether in terms of their status or their functions. It is clear that any material that is mentioned in the creation of humans does not have material significance; they are discussed in archetypal terms. People and the divine work together to ensure order in the cosmos; the separation of heavens and the earth serves to describe a part of this order. The earth was conceived by ancient people as round and immovable, a lofty mountain that rested on the abyss of the waters. The arch of the sky stretched above the earth where the father of the gods resided. The sky rested on the foundation of heaven, the horizon. Above this firmament was the abode of the gods where the sun shone continually. Between the visible heaven and the inner part of heaven were the upper waters, a heavenly ocean. On the east and west side of the world, there were doors, through which the sun passed on its daily circuit. The authors of the cosmogonic and epic poems did not necessarily take their images literally. In the sky, there were four classes of heavenly bodies, fixed stars, the planets, the comets, and the meteors.67 The temple plays an important role in creation narratives. The temple is seen as the hub of the universe; the creation of the universe is described in terms of the construction of the earthly temple that houses the divine. The gods take up their residence in temples for various reasons, of which the most important is to rule the cosmos as the final part of ordering the cosmos in creation consisting of separation.68 It is clear that much of the ancient Near Eastern cognitive environment is also observable in the core Israelite text of the creation narratives. What makes it difficult at times to recognize these interfaces is the believers’ tendency to read texts from the ancient world and interpret their mental constructs by imposing their modern ontology on it.

67 68

Muss-Arnolt, “Babylonian Account of Creation,” 17-18. Walton, Genesis 1, 119-121.

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Comparison between Israelite creation emphases and the surrounding culture John Walton provides a useful comparison between the concepts functioning in Israel and the surrounding Ancient Near East as far as the early narratives are concerned.69 In their creation narratives, for Israel, the world was formless and void before God started ordering the earth and creating life forms while the surrounding cultures referred to nonexistence and the absence of gods. Both cultures agreed that the primal condition consisted of deep water or an abyss and darkness, although in Israel these existed as objects and elements that God used to create while the surrounding people viewed them as gods that opposed each other and that led to violent conflict. When both accounts refer to a separation of the water, for Israel it implied the possibility that life could originate on earth while in Mesopotamia it led to the corpse of the god of the abyss, Tiamat, being divided into sky and earth. In both, the wind (or spirit) played a decisive role in the process of creation. Both refer to sea creatures but Israel viewed them as created beings serving a function assigned by their Creator while in the other cultures, they represent chaos monsters that would continue to threaten human lives. In the ancient world, liminal creatures were considered to be representatives of non-order or chaos. In the rest of the Old Testament, it seems that the tannîn, that is, the great creatures of the sea, are counted among the chaos creatures (Job 7:12; Ps 74:13; Isa 27:1; 51:9; Ezek 32:2).70 However, according to Genesis 1, these creatures are made by God, implying that they exist under God’s dominion and care. In both cultures, people are made from the stuff of the earth, either the dust or clay. Human life was invigorated in Israel by the breath of life while Mesopotamia describes it as the spirit of the god. In the surrounding world, the king was made in the image of the major god, while Israel viewed all people as representative of God’s rule on earth. In Mesopotamian thinking, the gods rested after achieving victory over opposing gods and used their corpses to create human life that served the gods while in Genesis, God rests after ordering the formless void and later would call all people to rest weekly in communion with God. The gods created the world of humans accidentally as a result of conflict between the gods while God’s creation represents a cohesive plan of action. The Mesopotamian creation accounts referred to the creation of an entire population of people that is already civilized. In their creation, the gods used 69 70

Walton, Chronological and Background Charts, 80-81; Old Testament Theology. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 38.

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a mixture of clay and the blood that they retrieved from a rebel god that was slain by them. The creation of human beings was the result of a conflict among the gods. They had to overcome the forces of chaos to bring order to the created world. In stark contrast, in the Genesis account, the creation of humankind does not follow on any conflict between God and opposing forces. It is depicted as a serene and controlled process.71 Human beings are created equally and with dignity by God while humans served as the gods’ slaves. Their only dignity consists of the provision in the needs of the gods. Willem Boshoff and Eben Scheffler explain that in Western culture, the concept “god” is primarily associated with the idea of the creation of the whole world or cosmos.72 However, this is not so in the ancient Near East. Creation narratives played a small role; the divinities, their functions, and their behavior were mostly concerned with fertility and nature. In most cultures, a female deity was venerated as the universal mother of life and, with her husband, served as the dying and rising gods, representing the annual blooming and fading of vegetation associated with the change of seasons. The names of the divine couple differ according to the cultures. In Mesopotamia, they were Ishtar and Tammuz, in Asia Minor Cybele (the magna mater or great mother), in Egypt Isis and Osiris, and in SyroPalestine they were Asherah and Eshmun or Baal. People believed that it was possible to produce and renew fertility through specific rites that involved their gods. Then ancient religion also entails cosmic or astral gods associated with celestial bodies.73 In Egypt, one finds the sun-god Amon-Re and Aten, in Babylonia Marduk, Shamash (“heaven”), and the moon-god Sin. The events surrounding these gods and their behavior were regularly recounted in myths that also explained what happened on earth, as a reflection of the drama of cosmic forces. Then there were also deities in Syro-Palestine that were associated with specific localities, such as sacred trees, springs, mountain tops, or sacred rocks. These gods were called “baal,” meaning “master, owner.” These gods were placated by burnt offerings, as Judges 6:17-21 explains.

71

Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary, Ge 1:26– 31. 72 Boshoff and Scheffler, “World of the Ancient Near East,” 54. 73 Boshoff and Scheffler, “World of the Ancient Near East,” 55.

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Then there were also gods associated with specific persons, families or groups of people, in many cases referring to non-sedentary people.74 Genesis’ reference to the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” functions on this level. A tribal god functioned as the lord, leader, and judge of the tribe. They were fashioned in terms of an animal and worship of the god included a sacrificial meal that was supposed to unite the god and the worshipers. City-states also had their own gods with temples dedicated to them, and these gods served as guardians of the community. Lastly, different national gods can be distinguished among groups that functioned as states.75 Surrounding cultures ascribed the cause of a worldwide flood that extinguished life on earth to the plan of the gods who attempted to exterminate people because of the troublesome noise they made that disturbed the god’s peace and rest while in Genesis the flood was planned by God to punish the increasing violence that occurred among human beings. In God’s grace, one righteous family was spared in the ark to ensure a remnant of human life on earth while in the other tales, some survived the flood as a result of a ruse of some of the gods who still saw the usefulness of human beings in providing in the gods’ daily material needs. In both cultures, the ark consisted of a pitch-coated boat although the duration of the flood differed, between forty days and nights, and six days and nights. Both arks landed and rested on a mountain, and the same type of animals was sent out to determine when the flood would have receded enough for humans to leave the ark. The result for Noah was that God made a covenant with him and his descendants while in Mesopotamian myths, the result could have been immortality except that it did not realize. In terms of their key theological perceptions, Israel and her neighbors differed substantially.76

Genesis 1-11 Genesis 1-2 features within the larger context of the primaeval history found in Genesis 1-11. Genesis 1-11 serves as protohistory, describing the period before the people of Israel was established as a nation and serving to bring Israel’s existence in relation to the creation of heavens and earth, and humanity along with the other life forms on earth. The primaeval history is not history in the normal sense of the word, as illustrated by elements such 74

Boshoff and Scheffler, “World of the Ancient Near East,” 56. In Sumeria one finds Enlil, in Babylonia Marduk, in Assyria Ashur, in Persia Ahura Mazda, in Egypt Re and Amon-Re, among the Canaanites El and Baal, among the Philistines Dagon, in Ammon Molech, in Moab Chemosh, and in Edom Qaus. 76 Walton, Chronological and Background Charts, 80-81. 75

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as a talking animal in Genesis 3:1 and the cherubim with the flaming swords in Genesis 3:24. Not is it fable in the usual sense; its references to rivers and mineral deposits in Genesis 2:10-11 are too factual for that. “Myth” is a word which suggests for many people that the narratives are only the disguise for unhistorical and timeless truth. Karl Barth rather referred to it as “saga,” stating that they represent an intuitive and poetic picture of a prehistorical reality which is enacted once and for all within the confines of space and time.77 Robert Utley agrees and states that Genesis 1–11 is prehistory. It is crucial theologically, but somewhat veiled in terms of literary genre. That it is veiled can be compared to the way the Bible describes the end of history (as, e.g., in Revelation).78 Perhaps it is best to refer to these stories as “narratives,” rooted within time and space, that confronts readers with the truth about themselves.79 Israel’s history is characterized by sin and violence, as demonstrated by the narratives about the liberation of Israel from Egypt, the exodus, the entry into the promised land, the time of the judges, and the kings as portrayed in the two historical versions of the Deuteronomist and Chronicler. The sin and violence started already in protohistory, shortly after the creation of humanity, with the first couple’s disobedience to God by eating of the forbidden fruit (Gen 3) and the first person born to the human couple being killed by his brother (Gen 4). The themes of sin and violence persist through Genesis 1-11, getting progressively worse down the generations and eventually leading to the near extinction of humanity and all other life forms on the planet, in the narrative about Noah’s flood (Gen 6-9). It shows sin as endemic, something inherent in the human psyche.80 Genesis 1-11 serves as a good introduction to the history of Israel, with its recurrence of the same themes of sin and violence that characterize Israel’s history, ending in the Assyrian exile of the ten tribes of Israel in the eighth century BCE and the Babylonian exile of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the sixth century BCE. Genesis originated as an explanation of why Judeans were exiled at the hand of their history, explaining its continuing emphasis on human sin, rebelliousness, and disobedience to the Creator. Because Genesis 1-11 features matters such as a conversation between a woman and a snake, the consorting of God and humans, people who lived for almost a thousand years, and a flood that covered the entire earth 77

Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, 181. Utley, How It All Began, 1. 79 Atkinson, Message of Genesis 1-11, 53. 80 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 22. 78

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including the highest mountains, it is better to refer to it as myth rather than history. The most important access contemporary readers of the Bible have to biblical observations about creation is found in this text, that must be understood within its context. An aspect of the context is that Genesis 1–11 is originally probably an Israelite and, in the text as it now stands, a lateJudaean or early Jewish version of a mythic literary tradition which was already of venerable antiquity at the time the biblical author wrote it down, as can be seen when it is compared with the myths of the surrounding cultures.81 Joseph Blenkinsopp continues the argument that Genesis 1-11 refers to myth and reminds that it does not refer to an event as a “once-off” act of a deity or a cosmic singularity. 82 The distinctive literary character suggests that one should rather read it as “primaeval history.” The entire narrative scope of Genesis 1–11 corresponds to is in important respects dependent on pre-existent extended myths of cosmic and human origins consisting of conflicts in the world of the gods, the creation of human beings in the world to help solve the problems underlying the conflicts, the spread of humanity and the disturbance of the order of creation leading to an annihilating judgement, and a new beginning in changed circumstances. The basic pattern is creation—un-creation—re-creation.83

Genealogies in the book of Genesis The book of Genesis naturally divides into two parts, consisting of the archetypal narratives in the first eleven chapters and the narratives about Israel’s origins in the rest of the book. One of the most interesting features of the book is the use of genealogies (tôlČdǀt) that can be translated as, “This is the account of….” The genealogies occur at: Prologue: Creation 2:4 tôlČdǀt of heavens and earth The Fall and its results 5:1 tôlČdǀt of Adam and descendants 6:9 tôlČdǀt of Noah and descendants 10:1 tôlČdǀt of Shem, Ham, and Japheth

81

Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 12. Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 16–17. 83 As suggested by the title of Blenkinsopp’s study, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation. 82

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Patriarchal history 11:10 tôlČdǀt of Shem 11:27 tôlČdǀt of Terah (introducing Gen 12-50) 25:12 tôlČdǀt of Ishmael 25:19 tôlČdǀt of Isaac 36:1 tôlČdǀt of Esau Joseph narrative 37:2 tôlČdǀt of Joseph The meaning of tôlČdǀt is disputed among scholars, and they differ whether the genealogies introduce or conclude different sections of the text but agree that they serve to indicate hems where different sections get together. The word is the noun pattern of yƗlad, “to father, give birth to.” The word tôlČdǀt is always in the plural, and it is not confined to genealogical material alone. It also introduces a straightforward narrative. In modern Hebrew, interestingly enough, the term refers to “history.” Genealogies frequently also contain residual narrative material and generate more narrative.84 As a plural noun, tôlČdǀt refers to that which is generated or produced by the individual in question.85 It is translated as “these are the genealogies (yƗlad) of” or “this is the account of,” and it is used in two different ways in Genesis. It is followed by the name of the ancestor of an important character and followed by a narrative of the account of the life of that important figure (as in the case of Noah [6:9-9:29], Isaac [25:19-35:29], Jacob [37:2-50:26], and Joseph [Gen 37-50]). The only exception is in Genesis 2:4-4:26, with the tôlČdǀt of the heavens and the earth that is not followed by the name of a person. The second way Genesis applies the term is where the name of an important person leads to a genealogy of the descendants of that character, as in the case of the tôlČdǀt of Adam in 5:1-32, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (10:1-32), Terah (11:27-25:11), Shem (11:10-26), Ishmael (25:12-18), and Esau (36:1-43). The tôlČdǀt phrase serves primarily as a structuring device for the book of Genesis.86 It serves as a heading for what follows and a linking device that ties the sections together. It also serves a narrative function with the focus of the narratives on the righteous line through which God will accomplish God’s purpose to bless the nations. The tôlČdǀt clause is followed by a temporal clause in Genesis 2:4 and 5:1, and three times by descriptive 84 Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 4. See, e.g., the additional information about Enoch (Gen 5:21–24) and about Nimrod (Gen 10:8–12). 85 Arnold, Genesis, 5. 86 Belcher, Genesis, 48.

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nominal clauses (6:9; 11:10; 37:2). In the other cases, the term is followed by descriptive nominal clauses. In both cases where the temporal clause follows the word, the narrative is concerned with creation.87

Genre of Genesis The word “genre” has a range of meanings that complicates its understanding. It is used here to refer to a focus on style and form as the primary aspects, and on content only as a possible supplemental or secondary contributor.88 At the same time, genre refers to an emic category because it represents an insider’s perception rather than a theorist’s or outsider’s analysis that uses universal and universally accepted “types” that can be postulated to organize all literature in all cultures. That does not exclude that it can contain some universal tendencies, resulting in a universal typology. The typology is the product of a high level of generality by two intersecting axes that consists of succession and projection. Succession classifies discourses’ focus on succession in time or not, while projection focuses on projected time rather than the time that has already taken place, or realized time.89 The intersection of the two axes leads to four types of discourse: a narrative with its focus on succession but not a projection, an expository discourse without any focus on either succession or projection, a procedural discourse with a focus on succession and projection, and a hortatory discourse with a focus on projection but not succession. Narratives are then also divided according to the location of the events, in the real or imaginary world. This is the difference between non-fiction and fiction. Another distinction is between poetry and prose. Other divisions can be made on emic distinctions as well, based on the customs of a particular language and culture. Genesis as a whole is, according to this classification, prose narrative, with some poetic pieces embedded in it and with some narratives with a future orientation (as in Gen 49). Genesis 1 is also a prose narrative, with one short poetic piece embedded in verse 27. The same is true of Genesis 2, with the poetic part found in verse 23. As a narrative, however, Genesis 1-2 shows unique characteristics, permitting Kenneth Mathews to describe it as a unique piece of literature.90

87

Arnold, Genesis, 5. In line with Poythress, Interpreting Eden, 107. 89 See discussion in Poythress, Interpreting Eden, 109. 90 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 109. 88

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The decision whether Genesis 1-2 represents fiction or non-fiction is a value judgment made by the different interpreters that are determinative for its interpretation. Fiction is a descriptive label for a nonfactual narrative that recounts events in an imaginary world, while non-fiction claims to recount events that happened within time and space and in the real world. In fiction, it is clearly not possible to distinguish between false and true in the descriptions. As far as non-fiction is concerned, it is necessary to decide whether the claims of the narrative to be about the real world are true or false when compared with reality, insofar as it is possible. In discussing Genesis 1-2, it should be kept in mind that nobody was available to witness the events that took place during the processes of creation as recounted in the two creation narratives. The only witness was God, with human witnesses coming onto the scene at a late stage. This necessitates the question, who provided the knowledge to the biblical narrators of these events? From where did they get their information about the events? Who told them about the creation acts? The answers to these questions answer the truth value of the distinctive narratives. What is important in all cases is that a document should be treated according to its genre; the decision about genre classification in the case of Genesis 1 and 2 is clearly an emic one determined by theological motives.91 The emic character that qualifies genre classification warns one not to naively carry genre classifications used in one’s own culture to another, or from one language to another. For a long time, it was customary that poetry was recognizable by form and rhyme; this is not true of Hebrew poetry, or modern forms of English poetry as well. In the past, the two creation narratives were regularly described as either myth or history, as discussed in the previous part. Douglas Mangum, Miles Custis, and Wendy Widder explain that the use of the label “myth” is problematic; there are just too many definitions of that term that are used and that contradict each other, making the term rather useless. Contemporary people, as a rule, view “myth” as something that is false or fictional; Genesis does not represent myths in that sense. These accounts are “myth-like” in the sense that they are traditional stories explaining something’s origins, performing the function of the myths found among surrounding cultures. The narratives are, in that sense aetiological in purpose, rather than historical. The predominant style is narrative, but narrative can be used to present mythology, epic, folktale, parable, fable, and history. What is important to remember is that the narratives exist as a traditional Israelite 91

Poythress, Interpreting Eden, 118.

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account of origins, even if it utilized the mythical material of surrounding cultures, and that it serves as a preface to the Pentateuch.92 Walter Brueggemann argues that they neither represent a structure of reality, as in myths nor a chronicle of events, as in history.93 He suggests that they represent story-telling.94 However, the term “story” is loaded with so much negative baggage that to use it in terms of the Bible as a canonical book is risky if it is not further qualified. It is rather suggested that they be described as narratives that depend on story-telling to relate the theological truths that the authors wanted to convey to their readers. The narratives are not primarily concerned with relating facts but with imparting a message the editor thought was important enough to relate to the audience of the day. In the process of relating a narrative, there are important transactions that happen between the speaker and listeners. One of these transactions is that listeners share with the speaker the same cultural context that includes, in the case of the creation narratives, the context of the surrounding cultures and their stories about the creation of the world and life forms. These narratives play a specific role in the faith of ancient Israel, as evidenced by its being handed down through the ages and becoming part of Israel’s canon, the Hebrew Bible. As the canon, the narratives are part of the proclamation of God’s decisive dealings with God’s creation. In an oral culture, it should also be kept in mind that the narratives were part of the remembrance and transmission of Jews and influenced the way they formulated their worldview and values. A majority of the world’s cultures still prefer oral to written communication and find it easier to remember key pieces of information in story form, rather than in the form of a rational, well-argued discourse consisting of propositions.95

92

Mangum, Custis and Widder, Genesis 1–11. Brueggemann, Genesis, 24. 94 The way early Israel thought show considerable similarities with African traditional thought. African history constitutes the history of their religion, and it is preserved in the form of stories and legends (Shorter, African Christian Theology, 49). Harlyn G. Purdy (Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, xiii) writes in this regard that allegorization and spiritualization is a popular, and perhaps preferred method of interpretation of the Bible in Africa because it lends itself to imaginative interpretation and the use of stories to reinterpret the current situation. It also partly explains why Pentecostalism is popularized among Africans; its Bible reading practices support such ways of interpretation. 95 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 36. 93

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Thomas Whitelaw agrees that the creation narratives are not history because the occurrences it describes belong to a period which antedated the dawn of history. However, it is also not science because it refers to a condition of our globe that modern research has suggested does not conform to the biblical descriptions.96 The absurdities, puerilities, and monstrosities that abound in the myths are conspicuously absent from Genesis 1-2. William Oliverio distinguishes between the three locations that interact to form the context of narratives.97 In the first place, he refers to the narrative world-in-front-of-the-text, that is, the interpreter’s storied understanding that produces meaning and which is itself also potentially produced by the narrative. Secondly, there is the narrative world-in-and-with-the-text, that is, the internal sources of the historical transmission of the text in its grammatical and linguistic becoming from its origination through redaction, translations, and printings to its interpreters. Lastly, there is the narrative world-behind-the-text, that is, the storied background of the origination and authorship of the text, in this case in oral mode, in its enculturated and (in terms of its canonical evaluation, inspired and revelatory) background. All these locations should be kept in mind in considering the descriptive and prescriptive value of the narrative as it is read and considered within the broader theological narration and framework that exists for all interpreters of biblical narratives, as a more productive way forward for hermeneutically sensitive reading and interpretation. The narratives also served as a transformation and theological critique of the myths of the surrounding cultures of Babylonia, Egypt, and Canaan. It utilized older material and transformed these older materials to serve a quite new purpose, that was directly related to Israel’s historical experiences that were interpreted in terms of faith in YHWH. The result is that it is useful to utilize external parallels to elements in the myths of surrounding cultures to interpret the biblical references, but they are not the primary clue to the claim of the text.98 For contemporary readers to do justice to the interpretation of the narratives, good knowledge of the mythical creation traditions of these cultures is imperative. Narratives are not interested in deep structures, abiding truths, or exact proofs. It does not trade in scientific explanations backed up by mathematical evidence, as it is not concerned with eternal realities as such. 96

Whitelaw, Genesis, 1.

97 Oliverio, “Contours of a Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic,” 46. 98

Brueggemann, Genesis, 41.

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Walter Brueggemann, for that reason, suggests that an explication of the narratives should rather avoid the solidity which appeals to myths and proof which rests on history. A narrative is not concerned to provide anything that is absolutely certain, either by historical certification or by universal affirmation. It lives by the “scandal of concreteness, by the freedom of imagination, and by the passion of hearing.”99 Its concreteness tells about people in a specific time and place who engage in irreversible events, and its imaginativeness implies that it can be told in more than one way. And depending on the way it is told, who listen to it and the way it is heard, it can have more than one meaning. The events related in the narrative happened in another time, but they loom with authority in the present time, intruding upon and transforming the present situation with its light. Narratives are concrete and particular but also open-ended. It implies that it always leaves the listener when the narrative is finished, with possibilities to fulfill and play-act the narrative in the present. Bill Arnold defines the genre of Genesis as “mytho-poetical literature,” referring to how themes previously regarded as mythological are arranged along a historical timeline, using cause and effect for theological purposes.100 Many of the narratives also serve an etiological function, to support an explanation for a situation, name, or custom that existed in the time of the narrator. It explains why something is as it is, and introduces the next theme of the book. The primaeval mytho-history of the first three chapters uses etiologies in this way to explain the sabbath law (2:1-3), the institution of marriage (2:24), the cause of serpentine locomotion (3:14), the reason for human hatred for snakes (3:15), and the reason for pain in childbirth (3:16).101 Genesis 1-11 answers questions such as: What happened when the earth, the sea, the sky, and the heavenly bodies come into being? How did the vegetable world, and the birds, fishes, reptiles and beasts originate? How was humankind created? How did sin and death enter the world? Why do women suffer during childbirth? And why is human life characterized by laboriousness? What led to the occurrence of the arts and industries among humankind? Why are there different languages and types of races in the world? Why is the tradition of a flood prevalent among various traditions in the surrounding cultures’ folklore as in the Bible?102

99

Brueggemann, Genesis, 4. Arnold, Genesis, 7. 101 Arnold, Genesis, 11. 102 Ryle, Book of Genesis, xii. 100

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Herbert Ryle, on the other hand, refers to the genre of Genesis 1-2 as folklore and myths.103 He writes that the creation narratives can probably be traced back to the common stock of primitive Semitic folk-lore. The folklore originated in Israel’s exposure to Canaanite culture, from Babylonian influence, or from traditions that had existed before the immigration into Palestine. Because Babylonian thought and culture pervaded western Asia in the second millennium BCE, it certainly influenced Hebrew thinking to some extent. However, the influence was not so great as previously held by scholars, with only a few points of resemblance between the Babylonian and Israelite cosmogonies. Israel certainly did not borrow its creation narratives in toto from the Babylonians. The narratives originally represented myths, according to Ryle, that is, poetical tales using imagery familiar to Israelites and using a worldview that ascribed natural phenomena to the action of divine beings. Israel did not view these phenomena in terms of physical laws defined by science. Their interest did not lie in secondary causes, but they interpreted what happened and what was around them in theological terms, seeing in nature the handiwork of the Creator.104 The narratives are not concerned with secondary causality but primary causality, in terms that will be discussed further in chapter 6. Although these stories were rooted in polytheism, it has been entirely removed from that context and transplanted successfully to a monotheistic view of life and the world. Now it acknowledges the worship of YHWH as the only God.

Date Genesis 1-2 found its origins in the work of a Yahwist and Priestly Historian; both accounts were edited by a Priestly Editor who lived either in pre-exilic times in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE or in exilic and post-exilic times in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE.105 The two narratives 103

Ryle, Book of Genesis, xxxii–xxxiii. Ryle, Book of Genesis, xxxix. 105 The Yahwist (J) was responsible, according to the theory of the different sources interwoven in the Pentateuch, consisting of the Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priest, for Gen 2–16; 18–22; 24–34; 38; 49; Ex 1–24; 32; 34; Num 11–12; 14; 20–25, and Judg 1. J is recognized by the use of the name YHWH for God but also other features. J uses the name “Reuel” for Moses’ father-in-law, Horeb mountain is always named as Sinai, and the Palestine inhabitants are referred to as Canaanites. The Elohist (E) refers to God as “Elohim”, Moses’s father-in-law is called Jethro, the mountain is called Horeb, and the Palestinian inhabitants are called Amorites (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yahwist-source; accessed 2020-11-06). The word Palestine is probably derived from a word used to describe the land of the Philistines, 104

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functioned historically in other contexts before it was re-employed and retold with a specific intention by the Priest. They are addressed to Judeans who faced the imminent Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem or who were exiled to Babylon after the city, kingdom, and temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed. That the book reached its final stage only in the exilic and postexilic period is demonstrated by the fact that it is obvious that some passages and expressions are later editorial glosses (e.g., the names “Dan” in Gen 14:14 and “Chaldeans” in 15:7), and that there are sections (such as the list of Edomite kings; cf. 36:31) that could only have been added to the work during the early days of the monarchy.106 Since 539 BCE some Judeans took up the offer to return to their homeland that was destroyed while many stayed behind in the diaspora. The narratives addressed the social, political, economic, and spiritual needs of the exiles as well as those who returned to Palestine. Judah probably experienced their exile as the victory of the Babylonian gods over the God of Israel. These gods had defeated the dreams of the God of Israel, or so it seemed.107 For Israel, it was important to be reminded that YHWH was the ultimate power in the universe who reigns supreme and sovereignly, while the gods in Mesopotamia had competing agendas and limited jurisdiction. Israel’s God could not be presented in any material form while the gods were perceived iconically, anthropomorphically, or in the form of natural phenomena. While YHWH is consistent in character, the gods were portrayed as morally rather reprehensible beings. They acted inconsistently and unpredictably, and they were accountable to no one. They needed the provision of human sacrifices to survive while YHWH does not need anything. YHWH’s requirements are made in detail in the Torah, while the requirements of the gods could only be deduced from human fortunes and misfortunes.

and seems to have come into use to describe the area occupied by the Jews after King David conquered the Philistines in battle. 106 As recognized by Ross, Genesis, 9, although he still maintains that the book was completed in the time of Moses. He represents the view of conservative scholars that Moses may have used sources, and even allows for some editing and clarification as well as a few additions to the Pentateuch after Moses. His angle is that the biblical material, in the form we have it, records actual events and gives them correct theological interpretations. 107 Brueggemann, Genesis, 25.

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Message addressed to the people of Judah in the primaeval (Urgeschichte) narratives The needs of the Judean exiles and returnees were addressed in the narratives, including the place of Judeans in the light of their unique relationship with YHWH, the God who had chosen Israel to be God’s people. The primaeval narratives explained to listeners where the people came from and what was the beginning of their history, ending in narratives about Abraham and his descendants, the Israelites. Another question with which Judeans struggled was why the God of Israel allowed enemies to destroy the Judean kingdom and cult. In the ancient world, a divine being(s) related to the shrine built for the god to live in and sacrifices were brought at the shrine to provide in the daily material needs of the god, in the hope to impress the god to such an extent that the god would provide in the needs of the supplicants. When the God of Israel’s temple was destroyed, ancient people accepted that their God lost to the superior powers of the Babylonian gods under the headship of Marduk. Exilic Judeans had to answer to the theological claim and the nagging doubt that their God proved to be the loser in the divine battle between Israel and Babylon, without understanding why the God who had led Israel as a slave people successfully from the powerful Egyptian pharaoh to their own land now let the people be conquered by their enemies and be taken into exile. The destruction of the cult and temple threatened Judean religious identity, and they could have taken the same route as their cousins who during the eighth century BCE were taken into Assyrian exile. The people of Israel dissolved, and without their religion, it could have happened to the two surviving tribes, Benjamin and Judah, as well. Now some priests, however, devised a strategy to prevent the destruction of the Judean cult by compiling and editing what eventually became the Jewish scriptures. During this time the Deuteronomist, for instance, compiled the Deuteronomist History in the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings to answer the question, why was Judah taken into exile? Where Judean religious identity had been connected to the thrice-annual visits to the Jerusalem temple, now they found their religious identity in the study of scriptures. Instead of bringing sacrifices, they worshipped God by studying the Torah. The explanation provided by the primaeval narratives for the exile was that Israel’s breaking of YHWH’s Torah was eventually punished by YHWH after ample warning, and Jerusalem was destroyed. What it cost God to punish God’s people by banishing them from their country and allowing the enemy to destroy the temple that was dear to God is explained in the

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narratives. The God who grieved over humanity and their sinfulness in Genesis 1-4, was the God who also grieved about Judeans in their perpetual sinfulness and eventual judgment.108 Did that imply that God had forsaken the exiles? Did YHWH remain in the promised land? Could God be worshipped in a strange land? The Genesis narratives explain that God was not connected to a specific country; many Judeans probably connected the garden of Eden to a place somewhere in the marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates, an area adjacent to their new home in exile. The garden as the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers suggests that Eden was in Armenia from where these two rivers have their source (v. 14).109 The God who cared enough for the first man to find a soulmate for him when he was alone and cared enough for humanity to save a remnant in the family of Noah would certainly not forsake the exiles. The God who created everything on earth, including all life forms, by speaking a word also cared for Judean exiles and would provide eventual deliverance and bring them back to their own country. Another issue that exiles faced with this explanation was the question of whether this punishment implied that God had written off God’s people. Did the message of divine judgment form the conclusion of God’s history with Israel? The primaeval narratives provide an important perspective on this issue when it speaks about a divine judgment that was, however, consistently followed by divine forgiveness because God was a loving Father. When the first two human beings were confronted by God with their disobedience to God’s clear command, they heard the curse as their punishment, but at the same time, they received names, clothing and children from God. Cain was judged for his misdemeanor but also provided with a mark that protected him from revenge and possible reprisals from those affected by his crime. God judged people on earth for their violent behavior and decided to destroy all life on earth but at the same time saved Noah, his family, and other life forms from the destruction and havoc caused by the deluge. Out of the judgment at Babel and the dispersion of people across the world, Abraham would be called to establish a people that would be dedicated to the service of God. Most primaeval stories are concerned with people’s sins and their divine judgment, but the last word is always saved for the realization of grace.

108 109

McKeown, Genesis, 51-52. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 207.

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For the first time, Judeans were confronted on a large scale with foreigners that formed a large majority, necessitating them to answer the question, how should Jewish believers relate to these people? As a people holy unto the Lord, implying that they were set apart for the service of the Lord, they previously excluded all other people from their cult. Now they lived as enslaved people in a foreign country where different religious cults were followed. The primaeval narratives held a significant message for them, that all people were made in the image of God, implying that people were equal and had the same dignity. All people belonged to God, not only the descendants of Abraham. Judeans should learn to relate to foreigners appropriately. The last issue that faced Judeans was, what did the future hold for them as a people? For what could they hope? The narratives that explain that the curse of the garden of Eden would eventually be overcome in God’s statement to the snake in Genesis 3:15 that although the snake would strike the heel of one of the woman’s offspring, that person would strike the snake’s head while the curse on the land would be overcome by toil in the sweat of man’s face. In the same way, the curse of Judean punishment that led to their exile and the destruction of all that was precious to them would also be overcome. Robert Gnuse makes an interesting and provocative statement, that the primaeval “history” also provides a perspective to the Judean exiles that they might have found rather strange, that not only were all people equal before God and enjoyed the same dignity but that men and women were equally created and that all people were of royal descent, not only those kings who claimed divine descent.110 Royal prerogatives were undermined in the democratic angle of narratives that in a politically revolutionary way proclaimed that rulers should be servants of the people and that people did not exist to serve the needs of the aristocracy. Christian believers did not find such perspectives in the primaeval narratives; Robert Gnuse suggests that it is because the stories were first told as children’s stories, serving the interests of parents and teachers who were the products of their culture and worldview.111

110 111

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, ii. Gnuse, Robert. Misunderstood Stories, vi.

CHAPTER 2 INTRODUCTION TO PENTECOSTAL HERMENEUTICS

Introduction: A diversity of pentecostal hermeneutics It is submitted that the discourse within Pentecostal circles about the biblical creation narratives and its relation to scientific findings of the origins and development of the universe and living species cannot be understood if the diverse hermeneutical perspectives found within Pentecostalism are not taken into account. In this chapter, three such hermeneutical perspectives will be distinguished. To provide a historical introduction to the hermeneutical developments, the hermeneutic found among the earliest Pentecostals is sketched. Later its relation to the third development, of a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic will be shown. The early hermeneutic grew into an alliance with Evangelicals and a quasi-fundamentalist hermeneutic, forming a second development. Lastly, it will be shown that both the second and third hermeneutical perspectives determine how Pentecostals interpret the Bible, with implications for the explication of the creation narratives. The chapter closes with a short discussion of the hermeneutical considerations that should be taken into account in reading Genesis 1-2 when using a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic. It is possible to distinguish broadly between three different hermeneutical angles1 that developed within Pentecostalism during the century of its existence, consisting of the theory of Bible reading practices found in early Pentecostalism, the development of a quasi-fundamentalist-literalist tradition

1

Archer (“Hermeneutics,” 111) agrees and defines the three stages as an early precritical period (1900 into the 1940s), the modern period (1940s into the 1980s), and the contemporary period (1980s through the present). It is, however, not possible to think of the process as linear since the three stages in several ways overlap.

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since the 1940s, and a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic developed in pentecostal scholarship during the past thirty years, since the 1990s.2

Early pentecostal hermeneutic3 Hermeneutical method The original classical pentecostal hermeneutic was a hermeneutic of revelation and origination that explicitly elevated the Protestant canon as the authority in a dialogical relationship with pentecostal experiences, producing new readings of the text and new experiences.4 Pentecostals refused to drive a wedge between the “spiritual” and the “material” and expected that the Spirit still had something new in store for them about which none had thought.5 Early Pentecostals used four core interpretive assumptions.6 They accepted the Protestant Bible as the sole and ultimate authority for Christian belief and living; for them, the Bible functioned dialogically with their religious and general experiences to form a theological understanding of their world and circumstances. Secondly, they 2

It is acknowledged that one cannot speak with justice about “Pentecostalism” because it represents a movement that consists in diversity (Arrington, “Pentecostal Identity,” 10). However, there are some elements that occur in common among the better part of the diverse constitutions that are described with the same denominator. Instead of using the rather akward “Pentecostalisms,” as Robeck (“Making Sense,” 23) suggests, the reader is alerted to the fact that the use of “Pentecostalism” in the research does not deny the diversity that is inherent to the movement as such but accommodates it. Albrecht and Howard (“Pentecostal Spirituality,” 242) make an important remark that is correct in my observation, that the self-perception of most Pentecostals is that they are primarily a part of a movement, rather than a denomination, organization, or religious society. Pentecostals formed denominations when they found it impossible to resist institutionalization due to legal requirements and as an emergency measure but in their self-perception they remained participants in a work of the Spirit on earth during the last era before the second coming of Christ. 3 Hermeneutic is used here in terms of the definition provided by Braaten (History and Hermeneutics, 131), that it is the science of reflecting on how a word or an event in a past time and culture may be understood and become existentially meaningful in the present situation. It is engaged in two tasks: the ascertaining of the exact meaning-content of a word, sentence, text, etc., and the discovery of the instructions contained in symbolic forms (Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics, 11). 4 Oliverio, “Theological Hermeneutics,” 144. 5 In the words of the doyen of pentecostal scholarship, the deceased Pentecostal theologian Walter Hollenweger, “Critical Tradition of Pentecostalism,” 8; ; Geist und Materie. 6 Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics, 231–34.

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justified the existence of their movement as restorationist, as a continuation of the early church that was established with the outpouring of the Spirit.7 They also accepted a fourfold or fivefold “Full Gospel” as the doctrinal grid that oriented their beliefs and living. Fourthly, their rationality was defined as a pragmatic and naive realism that integrates reality with the primacy of the supernatural.8 The Bible enjoyed for them epistemic primacy and priority over the formulation of doctrines.9 The historical distance between contemporary believers and the ancient text was frequently ignored while they read the text as literally as possible, taking it at face value.10 However, at the same time, they read it from an experiential view as well.11 In many instances, they did not have access to information about the biblical languages, culture and worldview needed to interpret some passages in the Bible. To read the Bible literally implies that “it means what it says.”12 In the process, the distance between the original context of Scripture and the context of the reader was collapsed, and they identified their interpretation uncritically with what they perceived to be the author’s intention.

7 What Pentecostals need to reconsider is to what extent it is possible to depict the situation in the early church and the church’s response to the situation that is conditional to replicating it. I suggest that they need a certain agnosticism regarding the early church and especially the operation of the gifts of the Spirit among the early Christians to be truthful to the uncertainty and lack of more information about the work and gifts of the Spirit in the early church (see Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 180). It is not possible to identify what is considered as the work of the Spirit in the contemporary Pentecostal movement with what early Christians experienced and described as the Spirit’s work without further qualification. Another fact to keep in mind that it is not possible to translate the descriptive history of the early church into normative experience for the contemporary church because it is not possible to correlate current experience with the experiences of the early church described in the New Testament. Menzies, “Methodology of Pentecostal Theology,” 6 argues that such descriptions of spiritual experiences can only be considered repeatable but not normative. Menzies is correct in observing that unless we are prepared to choose church leaders by the casting of lots, or are willing to encourage church members to sell all their possessions and share the profts with the poor, we cannot simply assume that a particular historical narrative provides the basis for normative theology. However, not all Pentecostal scholars agree; some argue that the historical descriptions in Acts are both history and theology. 8 Oliverio, Theological Hermeneutics, 51–77. 9 Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics, 104. 10 Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 65–66. 11 Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 226. 12 Boone, Bible Tells Them So, 13.

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Their method of interpreting the Bible consisted of the practice to search the Bible for all scriptural references to a particular subject, using a concordance, and then synthesizing those references into a theological statement, harmonizing the material in a deductive method.13 They strung all the texts dealing with the same subject or word together to ascertain what the Bible says about the subject. Their Bible reading method relied upon intuitive and deductive interpretive reasoning skills. They used the same Bible reading method that their predecessors, the Holiness movement, had employed but did so from a pentecostal perspective.14 It encouraged a synchronic interpretive strategy, which removed all the verses that related to a particular word or topic from their original contexts and placed them together where they could be studied as a unified whole.15 When texts seemed difficult to explain, they utilised allegory, analogy, and typology to find meaning in them.16 They did not primarily look for information in the Bible, not even about God; what they emphasized was that one should expect to encounter God while reading the Bible and that one’s life would in the process of reading be changed for the better. And they learned from the biblical narratives the necessary language to enable them to verbalize their spiritual experiences in testimonies about charismatic encounters that formed an essential element of all worship services. Their vocabulary to describe their spiritual encounters they learned from the Bible.17 The “history” they found in the biblical narratives they interpreted in a positivist sense, as “facts” that were undeniably true because it was contained in the Bible, which represents the word of God that was always true. The scopus they used to interpret the Bible was the fourfold “Full Gospel,” of Jesus as savior, baptizer, healer, and soon-coming king—or the fivefold “Full Gospel,” with Christ as sanctifier added.18 In other words, Jesus figured as the center of their theological grid because the Spirit’s sole task was to reveal Jesus to the church (John 14:25-6). This formed the grand narrative of Pentecostals, consisting of one outstanding story and one predominant theme running throughout the Bible.19 Myer Pearlman calls the

13

Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 102. Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 52. 15 Archer, “Hermeneutics,” 112. 16 Spittler, “Scripture and the Theological Enterprise,” 75–77. 17 Plüss, “Azusa and Other Myths,” 191. 18 Lewis, “Reflections of a Hundred Years of Pentecostal Theology,” 1–25, and Nel, “Pentecostals’ Reading,” 526–27. 19 Tackett, “As People of the Gospel,” 20. 14

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grand narrative of the story of redemption through Christ, as “seeing the story of the Bible.”20 They believed what they read in the Bible because they had experienced the story (or gospel) of the Bible within their own lives and communities, demonstrated by many testimonies that evidenced life transformation as found, for example, in alcoholics’ lives changed dramatically and drastically within a matter of minutes and transforming them into respectable citizens, partners, and parents. And they continued to advocate for a continuing encounter with God via the Spirit as foundational to spirituality.21 The early Pentecostals were mostly uneducated, poor, and marginalised. The established churches initially rejected and reviled their enthusiastic emotionalism, revivalist fervor, charismatic experientialism, and welcoming spirit to the dispossessed and marginalized.22 The theology they engaged in was not according to Western standards but consisted of songs, poems, testimonies, and dances.23 They theologized about their encounters with God, using biblical language and always within the context of worship and prayer. Later, John Polkinghorne writes in the same tradition that any theologizing outside the liturgical and doxological context would be like doing science without laboratories.24

Early Pentecostals as fundamentalists? Early Pentecostals did not read the Bible in a fundamentalist manner.25 The Oxford theologian, J.W. Burgeon, in responding to Darwin’s theory of evolution, writes in such manner, The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth on the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every 20

Pearlman, Seeing the Story of the Bible, 12. Tackett, “As People of the Gospel,” 19. “Spirituality” refers to lived experience of faith (Albrecht and Howard, “Pentecostal Spirituality,” 235). Theology examines human understanding of God but spirituality considers the more encompassing experience of God. 22 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 26. 23 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 269–72. Cartledge (“Pentecostal Theology,” 254) affirms that it is still the case that ordinary or everyday theology continues to reflect these modes. 24 Polkinghorne, Science and Creation, 86. 25 Nel, “Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism,” 57-71; Lewis, “Reflections of a Hundred Years,” 8. 21

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Chapter 2 syllable of it (where are we to stop?), every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the Word of God, not some part of it more, not some part of it less, but all alike the utterance of Him who sitteth upon the throne, faultless, unerring, supreme.26

Pentecostals did not ascribe authority to the Bible per se due to its inerrancy or infallibility as in fundamentalist circles, but its authority consisted in its utility of demonstrating the ways to a personal encounter with God.27 Harvey Cox also argues that it is a mistake to equate Pentecostals with fundamentalists.28 Fundamentalists attached unique authority to the letter of the verbally inspired Scripture, and they did not trust Pentecostals’ subjective stress on the immediate experience of the Spirit of God. Their theology was cessationist;29 they denied supernatural intervention as in biblical times and argued that it ceased at the end of the first century CE.30 Fundamentalists enshrined their theology in the standard Western formal theological systems but Pentecostals embedded their beliefs in testimonies, ecstatic speech, and bodily movement. Cox states further that for Pentecostals, a general worldview is to be preferred over systematic comprehension and rightness of logic, as among fundamentalists.31 Pentecostals viewed the Bible as a single, unified narrative of God’s redemptive plan, a grand, unified story that led them to utilize intertextuality as a justifying mark of a faithful reading.32 And they appreciated the narrative quality of Scripture because it allowed them to become part of the biblical story of God’s involvement in the world.33 They entered the world of the Bible, and the world of the Bible shaped their world. Their regular charismatic experiences altered and informed their epistemology and worldview, 26

Quoted in Barrett, Science & Theology, 99. Ellington, “Pentecostals and the Authority,” 17. 28 Cox, Fire from Heaven, 15. 29 At the Fundamentalist World Conference in 1928 it was decided that the notion of the experiential encounter with the divine, crucial in pentecostal theological thought and spirituality, was not consistent with a fundamentalist approach (Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 147). Cessationism functions within and is consistent with modernist thinking. 30 Russell Spittler (“Are Pentecostals and Charismatics Fundamentalists,” 106) argues that Pentecostals and fundamentalists are “arch-enemies” in terms of the practice of Spirit baptism and healing. However, in terms of their approaches to the Bible, both movements were pre-critical and uncomplicated, implying that they had much in common. 31 Cox, Fire from Heaven, 201. 32 Green, “‘Treasures Old and New,’” 15. 33 Pinnock, “Work of the Holy Spirit,” 245 . 27

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absorbing an existential awareness of the miraculous and the influence of the Spirit into their daily lives.34 The foci of a pentecostal Latter-Rain worldview35 can be summarized: it is experientially God-centered with all things that relate to God and God that relates to all people; it is holistic and systemic, with God present in all things and holding all things together and causing all things to work for the Spirit-filled person; it is transrational, with knowledge that is relational rather than limited to the realms of reason and sensory experience; it is concerned with truth, but not just propositional truth; its pentecostal epistemology of encounter with God is closely aligned with the biblical understanding of how one comes to know, rooted in Hebrew thought and to be contrasted to Greek philosophical approaches to knowledge; and the Bible hold a special place and function within this worldview, with the Bible viewed as a living book in which the Spirit is active.36 Their experiences of Spirit baptism evidenced by speaking in tongues and divine healing served to prove their restorationist urge that the first church was to be restored in their midst.37 The truth of biblical narratives was demonstrated in their own experiences with the Spirit that conformed to those described in the Bible. “The sign that their interpretation was correct came as God worked miracles among them, as a testimony to the correct preaching of the Word.”38 William Seymour, the early Azusa Street revivalist, stated that everything Pentecostals experienced were measured by the Word, and every experience was to be measured up with the Bible. Some thought that it was going too far, but his opinion was that if Pentecostals lived too close to the Word, they would settle that when they would meet the Lord in the air.39 And they expected that when they read the Bible, the same Spirit who had inspired biblical authors would move in them to reveal and apply the meaning of the text. For that reason, they considered the Bible as a book of truth and facts, which the community must only believe and apply. And their continued experience of the Spirit’s speaking to the community affirmed their belief in the inspiration of the Bible,40 in 34

Ervin, “Hermeneutics: A Pentecostal Option,” 24. See Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 83 for further discussion. 36 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 85. 36 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 117, referring to Jackie David Johns’ ideas. 37 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 47. 38 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 66. 39 Quoted in Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 53. 40 Purdy (Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 100) adds that the Spirit is not only involved in the inspiration during the production of the written text 35

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contrast to fundamentalism that emphasized the authority, as well as its inerrancy, of the Bible in its past inspiration.41 For Pentecostals, the Bible was not a historical artefact but a living document that was supposed to be applied literally to their context. The Bible contained the menu of what believers could expect that God wanted to do for them, and they read their experiences and tribulations into the described experiences of biblical characters. The narrative of Acts was incomplete for an important reason, because it supposed that the Holy Spirit would continue with the work of God in the contemporary church. Related to this is Pentecostalism’s view that if the book of Acts were not in the Bible, there would have been no modern Pentecostal movement.42 In this sense, they saw themselves as restoring or recovering the “full gospel” that the early church proclaimed after the day of Pentecost.43

Narratives in hermeneutics The way they viewed the Bible, as a lived story, led them to utilize its narrative parts to theologize about their own experiences.44 They used Scripture to participate via the Spirit in the continuing expression of the gospel, with Scripture emerging from the gospel.45 They understood the narratives literally, as supposed to be repeated in their lives, and biblical characters’ experiences and morality were to be emulated.46 Because of their Christcentered scopus, they read the Old Testament Christologically, and they used allegory and typology when they did not find Christ in the text, like many in the early centuries of the existence of the Christian church did. They read the Bible with an end-result in mind. Their participatory and embodied use of Scripture via the Spirit empowered them to participate in a continuing expression of God’s work of revelation among humanity.47 The but also in the transmission of the text. Pentecostals add that the Spirit is also engaged in the interpretive process; the Spirit’s voice is not only heard in the ancient text but also in the present. At times, the focus might have been lost on the role of the Spirit in the transmission of the text that provided believers through the centuries with the Scriptures. 41 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 130. 42 Archer, “Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation,” 167. Archer, “Hermeneutics,” 111 remarks that pentecostal identity, experience, and theology are all directly connected to the book of Acts. 43 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 131. 44 Dayton, Theological Roots, 22. 45 Tackett, “As People of the Gospel,” 16. 46 Nel, “Pentecostals’ Reading,” 527. 47 Tackett, “As People of the Gospel,” 17.

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power of God was evidenced in tangible experiences of conversions, sanctification, and being filled with the Spirit, with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues.48 Jacqueline Grey defines an embodied reading of the Bible in terms of the prophetic voice and activity that envelop the person, finding a voice in the actions of the prophet.49 The prophetic narrative is lived as a critique of the status quo as far as the cultural norm differs from the way of God. In reading the Bible, they used a pre-critical approach, the same as other early Holiness believers used.50 “Pre-critical” refers to an approach to the Bible that understands the text to be transhistorical and transcultural. It is based on the assumption that the biblical text continues to possess an immediate and straightforward relevance in new times and situations.51 Pentecostals also hold to “plenary relevance,” that is, that all Scripture is relevant and holds the answers to the totality of life situations.52 All one must do is read, believe, and obey the Bible.53 It served as an adaptation of the proof-text method, a reading approach that was also used by the writers of the New Testament. They deliberately mimicked the hermeneutic demonstrated in the Lukan narrative, using a form of “pesher” interpretation. The result of the approach was that they found beyond the plain meaning of the text a new significance of the words as revealed and applied to the current situation by the Spirit. It implies that they bypassed the authorial intent, as far as it is possible to discover it, and spiritualized and contextualized the text. In the end, the Bible influenced early Pentecostals to a large degree, making it possible to speak of their high view of Scripture, a characteristic that should guide the contemporary reading practices of Pentecostals. However, the early spiritualizing tendencies cannot be viewed as normative for present-day Pentecostalism.54 Their practice led to an ahistorical reading of the Bible that ignored the historical and social contexts, and hence the message that the first readers could hear within the 48

Albrecht and Howard, “Pentecostal Spirituality,” 246. Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 59. 50 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 13. 51 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 78. There is a positive side to a pre-critical reading of the Bible in that it implies that the Bible is relevant, understandable, and accessible to everyone. The Bible is taken out of the hand of scholars and reverends and placed back in the hand of the individual believer, empowering them to be the priesthood of all believers. The negative side is that it fails to recognize that language is always embedded in culture. 52 Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 222. 53 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 112. 54 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 131. 49

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words of the text. Early Pentecostals did not defend the authority and inspiration of Scripture on the same grounds as fundamentalism, that divine interventions ceased at the end of the apostolic era. Fundamentalists promulgated the inerrancy of the Bible through their historical-grammatical exegesis; it engages an author-centered hermeneutics, most often drawn from E.D. Hirsch Jr., the leading author-centered hermeneutic theorist of the twentieth century. For Pentecostals, it was not important to understand the text per se; they expected and emphasized that the Spirit would be active in interpreting and applying the text for their community in such a way that the text represents God’s words for God’s people for today. The believers did not need commentaries or exegetical help; they needed to hear the voice of the Spirit and believe the revelation to apply it. Where Pentecostals and fundamentalists agreed was that the Bible should be read literally and believed as containing facts, in contrast to higher criticism (of German historical criticism) and its “anti-supernatural” presuppositions that served liberal theology.55 Pentecostals traditionally denied the liberal appraisal that sees the Bible as a document with human error amid passages that are inspired. They argued that such a view undermined the authority accorded to Scripture by the church through the ages. It leaves the reader with the task of separating fact from fiction and truth from error.56

Conclusion Early pentecostal hermeneutics can, in conclusion, be characterized as oral, charismatic, largely ahistorical and minimally contextual, literal in its interpretations, morally and spiritually absolutizing, pragmatic, and pastoral.57 It is charismatic rather than didactic; Wesleyan/Arminian; with the charismata providing assurance; experience-centered; and due to their historically-linked holiness ethic, Pentecostals strive for separation from the world. In conclusion, they viewed and respected the Bible as inspired and preserved by the Spirit and used by the Spirit to illuminate, teach, and transform contemporary believers’ lives.

55

Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 43-5. Arrington, “Pentecostal Identity,” 15. 57 Nel, An African Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 80. 56

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Pentecostal fundamentalist-literalist hermeneutic Need to be accepted After the Second World War (1939-1945), the second and third generation of Pentecostals attempted to improve their social status, moving toward social conservatism and institutionalizing the movement along the lines of other established churches.58 Previously they were treated as sectarian, and they were rather proud of the designation, although they regularly experienced discrimination as a result. Now it became necessary to improve their status as a condition to gain recognition as a church, to get recognition as pastors, and to serve as marriage officials and commissioners of oaths. They found a helpful ally in Evangelicals,59 but at a price. To become acceptable by the religious establishment, they adapted their worship style and church buildings, establishing a professional pastorate and Bible schools to train their pastors, and banned women from participating in the pastoral and homiletical ministry. Without theological literature of their own, they used the textbooks written by conservative Evangelicals, and in this way, they established the Evangelicals’ fundamentalist-literalist way of reading the Bible as their own, ignoring the reality that Pentecostalism is a tradition sui generis.60 Now they tried to present themselves as a kind of “Evangelical plus,” that is to say, Evangelicals plus fire, or sanctification, or missionary awareness and success, or speaking in tongues, or healing, etc.61 In the process, they shifted a significant part of their focus in reading Scripture from encountering God to the purpose of establishing doctrine.62 They entered the universities and academic seminaries and in the process abandoned their early pentecostal Bible reading method, and some even 58

Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 132. Jacobsen, “Knowing the Doctrines of Pentecostals,” 90–107. Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 168-70 proposes that two factors played a role in determining Pentecostalism’s alignment with the conservative Evangelical movement: that as a restorationist and reform movement it shared the same predisposition with fundamentalist thinking the same response to the modern objectivist and historicist paradigm functioning within Modernism, and that Pentecostals studied at conservative Evangelical institutions due to a lack of such theological institutions among themselves. 60 Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit, 356. 61 Hollenweger, “Critical Tradition of Pentecostalism,” 8. 62 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 132. 59

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adopted the historical-critical approaches defined by modernity.63 Especially redaction criticism appealed to them because it emphasizes a close reading of the final form of the biblical book to discern the theological intention of the author. It allowed them to read Luke’s theology of Spirit baptism as articulated in his Gospel and Acts and Paul’s understanding of Spirit baptism in the letters ascribed to him as complementary, and not contradictory as many other scholars describe it.64

Quasi-fundamentalist Bible reading practices Like their fundamentalist allies, most Pentecostal scholars reacted to what was perceived as liberal theology’s attack to destroy the authority of the Bible through historical-critical criticism, developed by German higher critical views. In time, their leaders and members accepted the hermeneutic that reads the Bible in a literalistic fashion, accepting the truth and validity of each statement of the Bible as the “word of God.”65 The Bible was read at face value, and the reader’s interpretation was uncritically amalgamated to the author’s intention. This had a profound effect on the way Pentecostals thought about many issues, including the formulation of their eschatology66 and their view of evolution and the existence of the universe and the earth for billions of years. In the end, as a result, a prominent part of Pentecostalism was identified with Evangelical/fundamentalist orthodoxy. Since the 1980s, they also utilized the historical-grammatical methods for interpreting the Bible widely, as demonstrated by the work of Gordon Fee and Robert Menzies.67 Only the role and function of the Holy Spirit was added as it was believed that the gift of the Spirit was restored in the life of the church to its rightful place. Pentecostal-Evangelical-fundamentalist hermeneutics became identical with each other.68 It was effective to address the dangers of modernist thought, neoliberalism as well as the “wildfire” of heretical

63

Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 131. By 1945, virtually all professional biblical scholars had accepted the historical-critical approaches to biblical interpretation. 64 Archer, “Hermeneutics,” 114. 65 It was a hermeneutic shared by African slaves, characterized by literal and figurative interpretation of biblical texts. Today it also plays a prominent role in the global South, and especially in Africa where it is guided by values of freedom and justice, and supported by an eschatology aimed at inspiring and assessing human effort (Ware, “On the Compatibility/Incompatibility,” 193). 66 See discussion in Nel, African Pentecostalism and Eschatological Expectations. 67 Fee, Gospel and Spirit; Menzies, “Jumping Off the Postmodern Bandwagon.” 68 McLean, “Toward a Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 35.

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teachings that characterized periods and episodes within the historical development of Pentecostalism in its many diverse forms. In the process, however, the role of experience was denied that played a determinative role in the proclamation of a canonically based, scripturally sound gospel message, and the life and practice of the church.69 This resulted in the denial of specific divine activity occurring continuously within the space-time continuum.70 Then the use of biblical language that employs phrases such as “God said” and “God acted” does not make sense because they do not have any semantic value that refers to any real object or event. The subject of such phrases does not exist, and therefore it has no referent in reality. It complies with modernist thinking that asserts that no modern person living in a world made up solely of natural cause-and-effect and human relationships can make any meaningful statement about a subject that does not exist. God does not refer to any referent in the space-time continuum of natural cause-and-effect. It is distinctive of pentecostal thought and an unnegotiable prerogative, to the contrary, that the mode of God’s presence in and among God’s people is the same today as it was in biblical times. For Pentecostals, hearing an audible voice and observing causative acts that they ascribe to God are real. Their spirituality is characterized by healings, visions, dreams, prophecy, tongues and their interpretation, and personal direction perceived as insights within the believer’s mind.71 Integral to fundamentalist thinking are five points: the verbal inerrancy of Scriptures, the virgin birth and deity of Jesus Christ, the substitutionary atonement, the physical resurrection of Jesus, and Jesus’ bodily return to the earth shortly.72 It used an eschatological schema to inform all theological endeavors that interpret history and prophecy in terms of seven periods or “dispensations” according to the different methods of God’s dealings with humankind.73 The periods consist of innocence, conscience, human government, promise, law, grace, and kingdom. The church age is the age of grace that will end with the rapture of the church at the second coming, introducing the age of the kingdom. 69

McLean, “Toward a Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 36. McLean, “Toward a Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 38. 71 McLean, “Toward a Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 49. Refer also to the discussion in chapter 6 about miracles in the context of a society determined by scientific reasoning. 72 Synan, “Fundamentalism”, 325; Ellington, Evangelical Movement, 49-72. 73 Boone, Bible Tells Them So, 13 70

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Fundamentalists believed the Bible to be perspicuous; all common readers can deduce its clear meaning and plain sense (sensus literalis).74 In most cases, the meaning plain readers get out of the Bible is the correct one. This method of biblical interpretation is called literalism, and it is based on the assumption that the Bible in all parts is true, word for word. If any biblical text would contradict scientific facts or fly in the face of logic, then the facts are to be disregarded and the logic ignored.75 It is a high view of the Bible, demonstrated by the centrality of the pulpit and sermon in the sanctuary and worship service. Its hermeneutics is a “this is that” hermeneutic, implying that they just read the text and believe it. The Pentecostal community believed that their reading processes are “simple” and faithful to the witness of the Bible. However, a reading practice may be “simple”, but it is never simplistic, as Jacqueline Grey argues.76 Pentecostals were not sponges that read the text with unqualified belief; they (like other people) approached the text through a sophisticated symbolic interaction of literalism and the dynamic of their Spirit-experiences. What may be unique to Pentecostals was their expectation and anticipation of an encounter with God in reading the Bible that would lead to life transformation. Fundamentalists were anti-scientific and anti-intellectual. Although they accepted Francis Bacon’s principles of careful observation and classification of facts, they were not willing to accept the principal assumptions and conclusions of recent science that did not agree with the Bible (or rather, their interpretation of biblical texts).77 They wedded Baconian principles to “common sense” that affirmed the ability to apprehend the facts clearly (“Scottish Common Sense Realism”), requiring them to harmonize “facts” drawn from the Bible and scientific data. The most important idea underlying the Common Sense Baconian system was the concept that the common person, acknowledging the self-evident principles of the existence of God and the veracity of God’s Word, could discover the “facts” of Scripture, in the same way as one could discover the “facts” of science.78

74

McLean, “Toward a Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 36. Whalen, “Literalism”, 280-81. 76 Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 1. 77 Barr, “Fundamentalism,” 364. 78 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 85. 78 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 128. 75

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For this reason, they rejected the theory of evolution, for example, because it would have been incompatible with the biblical view of God as Creator as found in Genesis 1-2.79 These “facts” comprise their unspoken assumptions.80 Several reasons for their rejection of the evolution theory were given. It includes the argument that there was no reason to believe that the six days of creation were not six literal days. Although 2 Peter 3:8 states that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day, the Genesis account states repeatedly that each creation day was characterized by an evening and a morning, implying a normal twentyfour-hour day. Another reason is that the Bible makes it clear that the plants, sea creatures, birds, mammals, and reptiles were all created after their kind. God did not initially create an amoeba that turned into life forms. The last reason is found in the statement that humankind was created in the image of God. If human beings evolved from apes, the implication is clear, that God, in whose image human beings were made, must have been ape-like when he created Adam. It is clear that from the very beginning, humans possessed God-like characteristics such as speech, reason, creativity, and moral consciousness.81 As stated, Pentecostals employed a Bible reading method to interpret the Bible that showed some similarities with the fundamentalist common-sense interpretive approach, following in the steps of their predecessors, the Holiness movement. It was a common-sense approach that straightforwardly read the Bible, and the presupposition was that any common person could understand the Bible.82 They assumed that authorial intent could be identified and employed to determine the original meaning of the text. Their study of the Bible consisted of both the grammatical content of the text itself, and the historical background of the text, author, and original audience.83 It utilized grammatical-historical exegesis in the service of their inerrant and infallible view of Scripture.84 It also relied on inductive and deductive interpretive reasoning skills. The inductive approach focused on the literary content of the text where the 79

The argument they used is summarized by Morris (Long War Against God) who writes, “When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.” 80 Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 7-8. 81 Strassner, Opening up Genesis, 22–23. 82 Archer, “Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation,” 168. 83 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 5. 84 Hutchison, “Bible study,” 63-64.

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single word was interpreted within the verse of Scripture in which it was found and the verse interpreted as a part of the larger literary context, such as the paragraph, pericope, chapter, book, Testament, and the whole of Scripture. The deductive approach was used to develop and define doctrine, with all available data on a particular topic in the Bible being compiled and harmonized into a cohesive synthesis.85

Speaking about God An important remark is made by William Oliverio, that modernistfundamentalist tendencies within Pentecostalisms drove pentecostal hermeneutics necessarily towards the kinds of conceptual and linguistic habits concerning God and what God is doing that have often been subjected to the criticisms which find human conceptual languages engaging in the hubris of turning theology into a human techné that, wittingly or unwittingly, seeks to control knowledge of God.86 This way of doing theology reflects resourcing of modern rationalisms that was smuggled in through the theological methods that Pentecostals learnt through exposure to their fundamentalist allies. In the process, it tried to control the givenness of what was revealed by awarding exclusive and final authority to the biblical revelation, without leaving room for the inspired interpretation of biblical texts in the presence of and through the moving of the Spirit.87 What Pentecostals using these Bible reading methods ignored was the important distinction between the continual tension that exists between the kataphatic and apophatic in genuine theological interpretation. A condition for “hearing” from God in reading Scripture is the necessity of silence before the text and the Lord, in worship and prayer. Then the compulsion to turn the Lord into a mere idol serving human interests and saying what humans want to hear, creating a god made by their own philosophical machinations or imaginations is replaced by a liturgy of song and worship before the God who reveals God’s love for and judgment on humanity. This God is not at the beck and call of human understanding, a means to an end of making the whole of being intelligible in keeping with the principles of reason. God is not placed at human disposal as a factotum existing as the ultima ration.88

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Archer, “Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation,” 169-70. Oliverio, “Introduction: Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic,” 51. 87 Oliverio, “Introduction: Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic,” 52. 88 Westphal, Overcoming Ontotheology, 12. 86

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Distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic Since the 1970s, a distinctive pentecostal scholarship developed for the first time, introducing a third hermeneutical angle. By the 1990s, the movement that became a tradition engaged its quasi-Evangelical-fundamentalist hermeneutic, which predominated at the time and created a hybrid hermeneutic.89 At first, scholars wrote the history of the movement before looking at its theological foundations. Since the 1980s and 1990s, with their questioning of the seeming “evangelicalization” of pentecostal hermeneutics, they debated about the possibility and viability of a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic.90 It was only at the turn of the twenty-first century that the first full-fledged development of an explicit pentecostal theological hermeneutics took place, with the work of Amos Yong.91 His theological paradigm consists of a “trialectic” of Spirit-Word-Community. Today the contemporary version of the hermeneutic is further developed by Simon Chan, Frank Macchia, Steven Studebaker, Wolfgang Vondey, Daniel Castelo, Dale Coulter, Chris E.W. Green, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Edmund Rybarczyk, Christopher A. Stephenson, Lisa Stephenson, and Koo Dong Yun. What is important is that Pentecostals should continue to resist the pressure to be totally absorbed into the Evangelical world by serving as a distinct voice in the world of biblical interpretation. They should use their pneumatological and experiential emphases to enrich the proper interpretation and application of the Bible,92 becoming a formative dynamic power in theology.93 The hermeneutic is defined in terms of a strong pneumatic element that can authentically account for the pentecostal ethos and tendencies.94 French Arrington describes the pentecostal method of interpretation as essentially pneumatic and charismatic. The implication is clear, that the interpreter relies on the Spirit’s illumination of the biblical text in order to come to the fullest understanding of the text.95 The Spirit does this by bridging the time 89

Oliverio, “Introduction: Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic,” 2. Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 132. 91 Yong, Spirit-Word Community; Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh. 92 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 13. 93 To use a term of Thiselton, “Hermeneutical Dynamics,” 5. 94 Lewis, “Reflections of a Hundred Years of Pentecostal theology,” 10, and Oliverio, “Introduction: Pentecostal Philosophical-Theological Hermeneutic,” 3. For a survey of the debate surrounding the issue of pentecostal hermeneutics, see the Fall 1993 and Spring 1994 issues of Pneuma, the journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies. 95 Arrington, “Pentecostal Identity,” 16. 90

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and cultural distance between the original author and the contemporary interpreter, Arrington explains. The Spirit illuminates the ancient author’s words and what it means to us living in a much later age. Through the Spirit’s mediation, the Word becomes alive and speaks to our situation with new possibilities of personal and social transformation.96 The implication is clear, that the interpreter should rely on the Spirit’s illumination of the biblical text as a condition to understand the biblical text.97

Authorial intent Interpretation of the Bible starts with but goes beyond the literal meaning of the text. Some argue for the absolute control of the text and authorial intent over meaning while others grant the complete unrestricted ability to the text to produce meaning or significance for the reader in that given moment. The truth must be sought between these two extremes, as Harlyn Purdy suggests. It is critical that the Bible must retain some inherent meaning to ensure that it remains authoritative, even though postmodernism would deny such inherent meaning in any text. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the interpreter also contributes to the creation of a text’s meaning, although Pentecostals emphasize that the Spirit influences their reading process and helps them in interpreting it, saving them from a purely subjective interpretation.98 It is acknowledged here that inherent meaning in a text comes from the author’s intent, without denying the importance of applying a readerresponse interpretive method as well. Kenneth Archer, in this regard, calls for the affirmation of both the openness of the text and the constraints provided by the text.99 To deny authorial intent in preferring a spiritualized reading of the text is dangerous and ignores Pentecostalism’s traditional high view of the Bible. This is a form of an extreme reader-response hermeneutic. Even though the Spirit might influence a part of the interpretation, there is no way to distinguish between a reading that respects the text in itself and unrestrained imagination masquerading as a revelation.100 Authorial intent hedges the meaning of a text and defends it from unlimited interpretation coming from fantasizing in the reader’s

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Arrington, “Pentecostal Identity,” 16-17. Arrington, “Pentecostal Identity,” 16. 98 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 120. 99 Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 173. 100 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 125. 97

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imagination about possible meanings and the inherent dangers it poses for the church. Is it possible to find a text’s authorial intent? The issue has been debated hotly. It is probably the most responsible view to acknowledge that to identify with absolute certainty the originally intended meaning is highly unlikely because historical distance makes it impossible for contemporary readers to place themselves in the shoes of the first listeners, or to ask the author any questions. However, readers can certainly attain an adequate knowledge of the author’s intent by carefully considering the literary, historical, and social context of the text.101 The adequate knowledge will at most probably be partial, but it will be adequate to understand enough of what the author originally intended for the first listeners to hear because biblical authors wrote with the intent to be understood. Contemporary readers have enough knowledge of the history, culture, language, and mindset of biblical authors and listeners to enable them to hear the text adequately and understand it sufficiently. Especially by considering the historical circumstances in which the text was generated and with what purpose the author wrote it down, it becomes possible to define the intention of the authors in defining the theological message to the people in their sight.102 Pentecostals, additionally, also expect to hear in the Bible the voice of God that is related to the authorial intent since the ultimate author is the Spirit. For that reason, it should be emphasized again that the context for pentecostal Bible reading should be worship and prayer, with the expectation that the Spirit will aid the reader in understanding the biblical passage.103 Craig Keener, in developing a Spirit hermeneutics that is proposed to serve the Pentecostal community in reading the Bible in the light of the day of Pentecost, emphasizes that the original context of the biblical text is not dispensable. It is the anchor and arbiter for claims to interpret the text today.104 At the same time, Keener emphasizes the historical contingency of both the ancient and modern horizons.105 Understanding the past requires a historical horizon. We cannot place ourselves within a historical situation to re-experience what the first listeners experienced and already have a horizon

101

Autry, “Dimensions of Hermeneutics,” 35. Carson, “Hermeneutics,” 15. 103 Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 173-4. 104 Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics, 119. 105 Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics, 120. 102

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from which we read the text.106 To simply read ourselves into the context is biblicistic; a proper separation between the historical and contemporary horizons needs to be recognized. A biblicist reading flattens the text in preparation for symbolization.107 If Pentecostals do not consider the text on its own terms, as a cultural and historical product of the time of its origin, then a premature fusion of horizons will occur.108 It will result in the collapse of the textual horizon into that of the readers’ own narrative biography, and all that is realized is that readers’ ideas, theology, and concepts speak back to them. In this way, the text is “re-created” in the readers’ image. Own interests and desires are projected into what the text proclaims. The affective fallacy, whereby meaning lies in the effect of the work upon the reader, should be avoided, by reaffirming the historicalcultural distance between one’s own and the text’s horizons.109 The result is a confusion of cultures since the hermeneutical distance between the text and the reader is not respected, and it denies the uniqueness and immanence of God’s message to the original community.110 In contrast, John C. Poirier and B. Scott Lewis insist that the only meaning of the text can be found in the author’s intention.111

Emphases of the new hermeneutic French Arrington describes pentecostal hermeneutics in terms of three major characteristics: pneumatic illumination, the dialogical role of experience, and an emphasis on narrative texts.112 He explains what a pneumatic reading of the Bible implies. It requires readers to experience the Spirit’s presence and revelation in the interpretive process, implying that they deliberately submit their mind to God to exercise their critical and analytical abilities under the guidance of the Spirit and that they open themselves to the Spirit and listen to the nudging of the Spirit while they examine the text prayerfully. Lastly, 106

The term “horizon” denotes the distance from the then-and-there to the here-andnow. The first horizon refers to the particular origin, location, language, and point of view of the text. The second horizon refers to the perspective or particular point of view of the receiving individual, limited by their location and space, rooted in a particular culture, and shaped by life experiences, in the words of Archer (“Hermeneutics,” 109). 107 Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 134. 108 Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, 530. 109 Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 119. 110 Ma, “Biblical Studies in the Pentecostal Tradition,” 62. 111 Poirier and Lewis, “Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics,” 21. 112 Arrington, “Hermeneutics, Historical Perspectives,” 376.

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understanding is completed with a relevant response to the transforming call of God’s word.113 The interpreter relies on the Spirit’s illumination to come to a full understanding of the biblical text by way of a personal experience of faith as an essential part of the interpretative process, by submitting the mind to God so that the critical and analytical abilities of the interpreter may fall under the guidance of the Spirit, by a genuine openness to the Spirit while the text is being examined, and by responding to the transforming call of the Word by modifying behavior and attitude in line with the Spirit’s revealed truth.114 During the past three decades, Pentecostal scholars also adopted and embraced literary approaches that concentrate on what the text is communicating and how it is communicating this, reader-response approaches that investigate the impact the text has on the reader community, and advocacy hermeneutics that looks at the socioeconomic and ethnic makeup of interpreters that lead them to “see” and “hear” things in the text that others may miss. The emphasis on the final form of the text proved beneficial for Pentecostal academic readers and some aspects of it also reflect the pentecostal precritical stage of Bible reading.115

Several unique approaches Several unique approaches to the interpretation of the biblical text were developed that were consistent with the theological tradition and spirituality of Pentecostalism. One such group, the Cleveland School, consisting of John Christopher Thomas, Kenneth Archer, and Rickie D. Moore, emphasized the role of the reading community in the interpretive process. Thomas refers to the way the early Jerusalem community read the text to solve an issue that was becoming divisive among them, the participation of non-Jewish believers in the Christian church. Thomas finds in the description of Acts 15 an emphasis on three interactive components that were decisive for the hermeneutical model applied by the apostles, consisting of the biblical text, the Spirit, and the community with their experiences of the Spirit. They discerned the activity of the Holy Spirit in the testimonies of the apostles about the conversion of non-Jews and their Spirit baptism, in the same way as Jewish converts experienced it. A decision was reached by the 113

Arrington, “Pentecostal Identity,” 18. Arrington, “Hermeneutics, Historical Perspectives,” 381-384. 115 Archer, “Hermeneutics,” 114-15. 114

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community that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). The Spirit was identified as being active in all stages of the interpretive process.116 Thomas’ model integrates the most important values of the Pentecostal community, Scripture, pneumatic experience, oral testimony, and community interaction. Archer continues with the model, finding the three basic tenants for a unique Pentecostal hermeneutic in Scripture, the Spirit, and the interpreting community. He bases his model on the reading practices of early Pentecostals, a harmonizing and deductive method that combed all Scripture references on a topic before synthesizing it into a doctrine. In the process, they ignored the historical and social contexts of the different passages to a large degree. What they were looking for was the narrative of God-at-work within the canon of Scripture that could be duplicated in the current situation.117 Archer’s hermeneutical strategy includes “a narrative approach to interpretation that embraces a triadic negotiation for meaning between the biblical text, Pentecostal community, and the Holy Spirit.”118 Amos Yong also makes an important contribution to the debate when he brings together the acts of interpretation inspired by the Spirit and the objects of interpretation via the Word with the contexts of interpretation across various communities, advocating an ecumenical reading practice among Pentecostals.119 He interprets the three features that Archer also emphasizes, employing a Trinitarian and metaphysical framework and using the philosophy of American pragmatics. It provides a way of reading the Bible that is also a heuristic theological method. Amos’ approach is triadic in that it contains three moments, of the Spirit in experience, the Word in interpretation, and the community in context. It is also trialectical in that the three moments are interdependent and reciprocal, with each being informed and shaped by the others. And it is trialogical in that each moment is submitted to the others, even though anyone can serve as the starting point. Each moment remains open to the correction of the other two in the ongoing process of interpretation. The Spirit’s ministry in Bible interpretation does not mean that the Spirit provides new revelation to the Bible reader. The Spirit works in conjunction 116 The model is developed in Thomas, “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible,” “’Where the Spirit Leads,’” and “’What the Spirit is Saying to the Church.’” 117 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 133. 118 Archer, Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 4. 119 Yong, Spirit-Word-Community.

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and association with the Bible, not beyond it or in addition to it. The work of the Spirit does not imply that the Spirit gives “Spirit-filled” believers a mental acuity for seeing truths that lie “under” the surface that other dedicated readers of the Bible could not see or discover. The work of the Spirit in interpreting the Bible also does not exclude the use of commentaries and Bible dictionaries; the experience of biblical readers is that the more they study a specific passage with all available aids the more its meaning gets unlocked. The Spirit’s contribution does not serve as a substitute for diligent study and careful thought about the interpretation. The fact that the Spirit reveals the Word in the Bible does not imply that readers could ignore common sense and logic. They may expect the Spirit to enlighten their minds to think clearly and accurately. The Spirit does not as a rule provide sudden intuitive flashes of insight into the meaning of biblical passages but rather applies the passage to the situation of the reader.120 The last contribution to the debate that needs to be mentioned is the work of Rickie D. Moore. He develops the idea of an “altar hermeneutics” as the sacred zone of encounter with God that alters the interpretation of the Bible.121 The transformative work of the Spirit happens at the altar, the place of sacrifice, when readers sacrifice their own agendas, self-interests, hurts, fears, and hopes.122 Then the living Word can examine and heal readers, transforming the reading community. The goal of reading the Bible is not to gain more information about God but to grow into a deeper relationship with God. The Bible becomes a vital and necessary prophetic voice to the Pentecostal community. The pentecostal hermeneutic is applied in the interpretation of the book of Revelation by Robby Waddell,123 Scott Ellington applies it to some of the Psalms,124 and Lee Roy Martin develops a pentecostal “hearing” of the book of Judges, underscoring hearing rather than reading the Bible as the hermeneutical goal of the pentecostal community.125 Scott Ellington states correctly that the Bible is considered to be authoritative for Pentecostals because they find the Spirit as active and working with 120

Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 85. Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 156, referring to a discussion by Roy B. Zuck. 121 Moore, “Pentecostal Approach to Scripture,” 149. 122 Moore, “Pentecostal Approach to Scripture,” 155. 123 Waddell, Spirit of the Book of Revelation, 124. 124 Ellington, “Reciprocal Reshaping.” 125 Martin, Unheard Voice of God. 120

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experiential immediacy in the lives of believers who read the text prayerfully.126 At the same time, he emphasizes the privileged position of the text. The Bible remains the standard by which all experience is measured and interpreted, and a resource of the community to define their expectations of pneumatic experiences in line with the biblical examples.127 Pentecostals must remember that their pneumatic experiences are to be measured, evaluated and corrected by the Bible. Own spiritual experiences, revelations, or interpretations may never be given canonical significance.128

Bible and Spirit The role of the Spirit in interpreting the text can be described in two ways, as the discovery of the original intention of the author and the application of the original meaning of the text to today. What is implied is the serious and academic study of the text as well as waiting on the Lord to speak to the reader; both components can lead to the “aha!” moment of in-breaking insight that transcends the horizons of exegetical studies.129 It implies that the revelation by the Spirit of new meanings of the text that was originally inspired by the same Spirit cannot be left out entirely. The problem with the claim that the Spirit reveals God’s word to contemporary readers is the same as in describing the mechanics of inspiration of the original text. The problem is defined by two elements, the divine component and the human element. In what way did biblical authors receive the revelation? Various proposals have been made through the centuries to describe the mechanics of inspiration, like dictation, providential insight, ecstatic experience, illumination, existential encounter, and verbal plenary inspiration. Most traditional Pentecostals probably hold to some form of verbal plenary inspiration rather than a dictation model.130 It suggests that the Spirit moved upon individuals and caused them to write down God’s revelation. The 126

Ellington, “Pentecostals and the Authority,” 36. Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 173. 128 Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 174 argues correctly that the Bible can in one sense be comprehensible apart from pneumatic illumination, as the result of careful linguistic, literal, and historical analysis. Such analysis is indispensable as a first step to an understanding of the Bible as “human words” while pneumatic illumination is needed in order to ensure that the Bible as the unique word of God is also understood. This represents the deeper understanding of the biblical text as it is perceived through the eyes of faith and the aid of the Holy Spirit (Arrington, “Hermeneutics, Historical Perspectives,” 382). 129 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 136. 130 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 117. 127

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individual personality, culture, vocabulary, and character of the author were not bypassed or eliminated in the process. However, the Spirit’s involvement in the process of writing down the message implies that the very words are inspired and not merely concepts and ideas about divine revelation.131 It must also be admitted that more than one version of some biblical passages circulated at the same time, even in the earliest church. This is demonstrated by the manuscript tradition found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint and other translations, and evidence from the many manuscripts that were discovered. In practice, it implies that the locus of inspiration is not the biblical text as originally produced, but the text as received and used in the church at various times and in various languages. Such inspiration must, however, be attributed to the continuing work of the Spirit. The original texts are not infused with divine power since the text that was eventually handed down to the church represents some faulty copies and uncertain reconstructions.132 It is suggested that the preferred way of thinking about the inspiration by the Spirit of the original text that does justice to the way Pentecostals use the Bible is in terms of an existential encounter, a perspective that was popularized by Karl Barth after it was developed by some nineteenthcentury scholars such as Friedrich Schleiermacher. It proposes that inspiration is not so much a quality of the Bible itself but that inspiration occurs at the moment of a personal encounter with the Bible, from which the word from the heart of God is born through the mediation of the Spirit.133 This is the moment the Bible becomes the word of God, a living word that transforms its reader. God is encountered in and through the pages of the Bible illuminated by the Spirit in a reader’s encounter with God. Probably the most distinctive aspect of pentecostal Bible reading practices is the explicit emphasis on reading the Bible from the standpoint of believing and experiencing that we live in the era of the Spirit where spiritual gifts operate that was long rejected and ignored by the church.134 In their restorationist urge to recover and experience the activity of the Spirit that characterized the early church, Pentecostals’ interpretation of the Bible is informed by their experience with the Spirit, while at the same time their contemporary experience is informed by Scripture. This is their way to 131

Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 117 (footnote 66). Wooden, “The Role of ‘The Septuagint’,” 139. 133 Chung, Karl Barth: God’s Word in Action, 327. 134 Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics, 287. 132

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ensure continuity between the biblical narrative and present-day experience. Readers regularly consult the text in order to understand their spiritual experience, looking for resonances in the Bible with what they perceive to be their parallel pneumatic encounters. In the process, they find the language and symbols to express their ineffable experience in the biblical text.135 “The community testifies to the experiences attributed to the Spirit and then engages Scripture to validate or repudiate the experience or issue, necessitating a dynamic balance between individual, Spirit, Scripture, and the faith community.”136 The pneumatic experience is the beginning of the reading process but also the end-result; in their encounter with the divine “author,” readers are transformed.137 The result is that Pentecostal readers emphasize orthopraxy and orthopathy, consisting of correctness in practice and lifestyle, rather than orthodoxy.138

Literary approach Another way to look at the pentecostal hermeneutic is to compare it to a literary approach as a complement to the historical-critical approach to the biblical text, as suggested in the first chapter. The literary approach requires that the divine is approached in terms of language and the biblical text as a literary creation rather than in dogmatic terms. The literary approach leaves the room, it is submitted, for another vision of the divine and transcendence that is more in line with pentecostal hermeneutics than the theological baggage carried by the historical-critical approach that originated in science’s claim to only use objective language. In earlier times, humankind and nature were identified with each other in terms of life, power, and energy. Subject and object were linked by this common power, and words contained a “verbal magic” that released some kind of magical energy.139 They had a “this-is-that” hermeneutic because humanity and nature were identified. In a next phase, God was linguistically entombed as a result of the rise to domination of the descriptive, necessitated by the rigorous standards set to all scientific endeavors and language framed on the model of truth by correspondence. In this perspective, the truth was related to an external source that served as a criterion of judgment, as Edgar

135

Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 114. Nel, African Pentecostal Hermeneutics, 187. 137 Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 114. 138 Nel, African Pentecostal Hermeneutics, 159. 139 Frye, Great Code, 7-8. 136

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McKnight explains.140 Now, subject and object were separated and stood in a metonymic relationship, implying a “this-is-put-for-that” hermeneutic. Words were seen as the outward expression of an internal reality in a Neoplatonic way, in imitation of a reality that could be conveyed most directly by words. Its theology used a transcendent being as the unifying conception by way of verbal analogy, supported by syllogisms and deduction of knowledge from the premise of revelation. Later it was realized that syllogistic reasoning and analogical language did not succeed in describing reality because the question of actual existence did not order words as such. Bultmann states that obeisance to science and technology led to contemporary people’s loss of the capacity to conceive of the divine.141 It became necessary to find criteria external to words among the objects found in nature. In this way, the criterion of reality became the order of nature as the source of sense experience.142 However, “God” was not found in nature, implying that the concept was dysfunctional in linguistic terms, except in special cases.143 Their experience of the “death of God” implies people’s loss of a capacity for biblical transcendence. The language used in the Bible differs from both perspectives because the God of the Bible is viewed as an integral part of reality. God can only be reached reflectively but cannot be identified with the world. The Bible avoided the language of polytheistic cults of the surrounding cultures, and its language of the epic was avoided by using prose narration. In the surrounding cultures, reciting the epics became participation in the cosmic events by way of sympathetic magic, releasing quasi-physical powers through the words. In biblical language, words also have power, but it is directed to the daily lives of the listeners, calling on them to accept the implications of the words by changing their lives accordingly. The narrative presents a theological discussion of events rather than a descriptive one that includes a dramatic “showing” that is bound to a sense of the past.144 It is necessary to “see” what happened in the past to accommodate a reenactment in the present, building faith in listeners to expect that God would again intervene, this time in their crisis.

140

McKnight, Postmodern Use of the Bible, 197. As quoted by McKnight, Postmodern Use of the Bible, 196. 142 McKnight, Postmodern Use of the Bible, 102. 143 Frye, Great Code, 15. 144 McKnight, Postmodern Use of the Bible, 200. 141

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A pentecostal hermeneutic represents a deconstructive move that should not be identified with postmodernism’s tendency to despair and nihilism. It acknowledges the limitations of the subject-object dichotomy that is supported by theological presuppositions. Is it presumptuous to assert that Pentecostals in their urge to restore the early church in its missionary vision to reach the world with the gospel, exemplified in the empowerment that Spirit baptism entails, relate in part to biblical language? A pentecostal worldview with its apocalyptic perspective of the present reality reflecting another reality that can only be discerned in spiritual terms accommodates forces, energies, and powers rather than analogues of physical bodies, as found in the Bible as well. As in the case of biblical language, they read the Bible not to gain information about an object but to experience existentially what biblical people experienced in terms of their relationship with God. In this world, “God” is not primarily an abstract noun that represents an immutable being, set in opposition to human experience and without reference to the natural world, but rather a verb.145 Being is not an object and cannot be referred to directly and straightforwardly.146 Pentecostals do not find a function for propositions about the God of the Bible, but their religious language conveys subjective affections, although it is related directly to what they believe (doctrine) and their practice. When the language of the Bible is taken in a literal sense, it is utterly misunderstood. The language is not concerned only with a Being, but the understanding of being that serves as a precondition for understanding Being. The way to comprehend the Being is through the participation of beings in the Being.147 The result is that contemporary readers appreciate biblical texts in a way comparable to the experience of the earliest readers, justifying the restorationist urge of Pentecostals.

Corporate interpretation and distinction Another important remark is that pentecostal hermeneutics should always emphasize the reading process as the product of a corporate entity, rather than focus on individual readers. The diverse spiritual gifts enjoyed by different believers demonstrate the necessity of the contribution of each believer to the edification and health of the corporate body of Christ. The unity of race, gender, ethnic and social differences within the body of Christ also illustrates the diverse contribution that each individual makes to the 145

McKnight, Postmodern Use of the Bible, 203. Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, 79. 147 Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, 117. 146

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interpretation process. In the present day, the overcoming of the lingering divisions of race, gender, and ethnic and social differences has become imperative, and the Pentecostal movement should listen corporately to understand the heart of God for the contemporary situation. The community’s involvement safeguards the church from the dangers that subjectivism holds for a movement where the experiential is emphasized to a significant extent. Indeed, it is not possible to read an ancient text without realizing the preunderstanding that informs one’s interpretation of the text, and part of the preunderstanding of an interpreter always includes the past experiences of the individual. The difference is that pentecostal hermeneutics acknowledges the role of the experiential in the preunderstanding of the text, emphasizing that specific experiences of the individual with the work of the Spirit play a role in exegeting the text. The text is read deliberately in terms of one’s awareness of the experiential immediacy of the Spirit.148 The immediate group discerns the direction of God’s Spirit in both experience and reading, and they should be connected to the wider regional and global community. It requires from each member and group to be willing to submit before the corporate body for discernment and guidance humbly.149 It must be remembered that any faith community is characterized by what Douglas Jacobsen calls “foundational narrative convictions.”150 These convictions consist of the primary story or metanarrative that explains the reason for the community’s existence. They serve to differentiate the community from all other groups. These convictions provide the raison d’etre for the group, and they color the interpretation of the Bible by members of the group. That Pentecostals originated in a tradition that distinguished it from the rest of the Christian church implies that their hermeneutical strategy will be distinctive. What they find in the Bible is to some extent, and perhaps even to a large extent determined by what they bring to the text, in the words of Walter Brueggemann.151 Their narrative tradition serves as a pre-understanding and influences interpretation since their community narrative acts as an interpretive lens. Duncan Ferguson identifies four types of pre-understanding that play a formative role in interpretation: informational, attitudinal, ideological, and methodological.152 They act as filters when the Bible is being interpreted. The impact of the

148

Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 181. Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 138. 150 Jacobsen, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” 13-15. 151 Brueggemann, Book That Breathes Life, 3. 152 Ferguson, Biblical Hermeneutics, 13. 149

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products of pre-understanding cannot be eliminated. However, it is important to limit it as far as possible. A significant part of the Pentecostal interpreter of the Bible’s pre-understanding is the way they perceive their relationship with the Spirit. This is a part of the attitudinal aspect of faith, in Ferguson’s terms, where their pneumatology and charismatic experiences determine their perspective on their relationship with God, impacting their interpretation. A Pentecostal reader is a pneumatic person153 who believes in continuationist fashion that God reveals Godself to people reading the Bible prayerfully and embraces the claims of the Bible. The Spirit brings meaningfulness and significance to the Bible for the pneumatic person, implying that its words, phrases, sentences, and accounts have an emotional impact on the reader.154 It is the reading community that embraces scriptural authority, through its interpreters, and engages in an ongoing process of correcting, testing, reevaluating and restating the meaning of biblical texts for belief and practice that is a necessity to defend the faith community from heresies.155

Hermeneutical divisions among Pentecostals A significant part of members and pastors of the classical Pentecostal movement, however, still read the Bible in a pre-critical and fundamentalist fashion, implying a growing divergence in the practice of biblical interpretation.156 Harlyn Purdy describes the deep divide and separation between Pentecostal academics and those engaged in pentecostal ministry. While Pentecostal preachers continue to engage in a traditional pentecostal interpretation that emphasizes the immediacy of the text, recognizing multiple dimensions of meaning and witness to the “revelation of the Spirit in the text,” Pentecostal academics think in a more sophisticated way about the relation between the reader’s past and present experience, the text, the Spirit, and the faith community. Purdy emphasizes the “genuine need to 153

The term is not used in an elitist fashion; other believing readers of the Bible may also be characterized as pneumatic. 154 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 104. 155 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 116. 156 See, for instance, the results of research into the Bible reading practices within the AFM of SA, which found that 66 percent of those who completed the questionnaire believe everything that the Bible says is true and 67 percent believe that the entire Bible is the inspired Word of God. See Nel, “Bible Reading Practices in the AFM.” Also Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 170.

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engage in the work of developing a distinctive Pentecostal hermeneutic for the twenty-first century.”157 Bradley Noel refers in this regard to clear evidence that the shift in pentecostal scholarship to a new hermeneutics has not yet made a significant impact in the pentecostal pew.158 For that reason, many Pentecostals prefer to use the King James Version, a custom found widely among African Pentecostals.159 The result is wide divergence between members and most pastors, and some theologians.160 The first group focuses on the principle of inerrancy, the other in their pneumatic version on an author-centered hermeneutic theory. Many pastors emphasize the immediacy of the text and multiple dimensions of meaning, neglecting the historical context that does not contribute in any meaningful way to their appropriation of the text since their dominant patterns of meaning tend to be typological.161 They accept instead of scientific hermeneutics a “kind of pragmatic hermeneutics” that accepts that the Bible reader should obey what should be taken literally, and for the rest one spiritualizes, allegorizes, moralizes, or devotionalizes.162 It is agreed here that the life-transforming participation in the world of the Bible should remain essential to pentecostal Bible interpretation processes, implying that pentecostal theology will always be oral, narrative, and devotional before it is written down. But the narrative world of the biblical text in the context of the faith community should always form the primary context for pentecostal Bible interpretation.163 Amos Yong characterizes pentecostal theology as “biblically-based, especially informed by the narrative of Luke-Acts, pneumatologically orientated, christologically focused, confessionally located by emerging out of pentecostal experience,” fallibilist, multi-perspectival, self-critical, and dialogical.164

Conclusion A good hermeneutics draws together a framework that includes the history of the text, recognizes the role language plays concerning the author, text, 157

Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 14. Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 85. 158 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 115. 159 The King James Version is still the most read English translation in the twentyfirst century (Zylstra, “Most Popular,” 1) 160 Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 179. 161 Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 164 . 162 Fee, Gospel and Spirit, 86. See comments on Fee in Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 85. 163 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 70. 164 Yong, Spirit of Creation. 158

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and interpreter, and acknowledges the existence of time. The pentecostal hermeneutic is characterized by its insistence that personal experiences of transcendence and a transcendent God are needed for a valid interpretation of the biblical text, while also being aware of the communal nature of all interpretation.165 In other words, although pentecostal interpretation is cognitive, it always includes the expectation of an encounter with God in and through the text. The reading experience is made relational and dynamic through readers’ desire to meet the divine “author” and to be transformed through the encounter. They bring a supposition of spiritual experience to the reading of the text. And frequently they find resonances between the text and previous personal experiences of divine encounter.166 They expect that Bible reading would always result in life-transformation because the revelation of God in the Bible led to the same kind of experiences for those involved.167 Protestants are word-oriented and emphasize the cognitive content of the biblical revelation and its logic-based interpretation; Pentecostals, in contrast, emphasize spirit/Spirit and the experienced reality of God in one’s life and the world.168 The Protestant center of gravity is the Bible, with doctrine and scriptural teaching being central and defined based on the Bible; the pentecostal center of gravity is the experiential and existential, requiring the felt presence of God as normative and a condition for reading the Bible effectively. Pentecostals embrace the message of the Bible and believe its words, but they read with the purpose to act like people described in the Bible who were touched by the hand of God, without primarily being interested to define doctrine or theologize.169 They agree that the Bible is the bedrock of truth, but at the same time, they recognize ongoing extra-biblical revelation. “Truth” is in the first place found in God, the embodiment of truth, and the result of a relationship with God. Scott Ellington observes that biblical authors were not interested in writing history in the modern sense of the term. At the same time, however, they were not writing creative stories without any reference to the ”real” events. What they present is “truth-in-testimony,” in the tradition of Walter Brueggemann. The truth claim of Scripture is not in its declaration of 165

Autry, “Dimensions of Hermeneutics,” 32–47. Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 113. 167 Autry, “Dimensions of Hermeneutics,” 50. 168 That does not mean that Protestantism and Pentecostalism do not share other similarities, which include an emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, and each believer having direct access to God; the singular authority of the Bible, in contrast to tradition or church hierarchy; and salvation based on grace through faith alone, apart from any human effort. 169 Jacobsen, Global Gospel, 35–36. 166

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“historical facts”, but in the testimonies of believers who experienced God’s hand in the events they participated in, telling about it with the purpose to encourage other believers.170 However, that is not all that needs to be considered in locating truth in history when one is busy with biblical hermeneutics. It is difficult, and at times even impossible, to confirm and reconstruct biblical history because of the separation in time, culture, and region between ancient narrators and contemporary readers. It is further complicated by a scarcity of corroborating source materials outside the Bible. And any direct participation by God in the biblical account cannot be considered because it falls outside the range of modern historical methodology.171 These events are not available to be examined in terms of conventional historical methods. Pentecostals measure any extra-biblical revelation against the guidelines provided in Scripture, and the community of faith serves as the center of discernment to protect it against the risks inherent to its subjectivism. It is recognized, as it has become clear from the discussion, that it is not possible to speak of a single pentecostal theological hermeneutic. The different practical, socio-ethical, and theological lenses used by the different Pentecostal communities lead to trajectories of various hermeneutical types, emphasized by the work and emphases of different Pentecostal scholars. And local and unanticipated developments might continue to transform the development of theological hermeneutics since it represents a hermeneutic of accommodation with culture.172 In conclusion, Pentecostals have changed the direction of Bible reading. The dynamic nature of their reading practices include both an inductive text encounter, with their experience read into the text from their expectations, and a deductive text encounter, through experience read from the text.173 Their praxis informs what they find in the Bible, and they go on to acknowledge that what they find in Scripture informs their pentecostal praxis.174 When the text is read with the purpose to encounter and know God, then the direction of reading the text moves from the religious experience of encounters with the Spirit to Scripture and back again. It represents a hermeneutical cycle (rather than a circle) of practice where encounters with the Spirit is informed by Scripture, and the interpretation 170

Ellington, “History, Story, and Testimony,” 253, 255 Ellington, “History, Story, and Testimony,” 250. 172 Oliverio, “Theological Hermeneutics,” 149. 173 Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 113. 174 Arrington, “Use of the Bible by Pentecostals,” 106. 171

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of Scripture is informed by practice. For Pentecostals, The Bible provides them with the necessary vocabulary to describe their encounters of God’s Spirit. They developed an epistemology with a distinct pneumatological flavor. The readings represent a continual cycle as the spiritual experience, and the desire for experience drives the reading, and the reading drives the spiritual experience.175 This is distinct from the Protestant direction, that starts with the Bible and goes to the practice of the reader. In cases where Pentecostals experience charismatic revelation, they emphasize that the Spirit would never contradict the Bible, providing an important means to measure what believers “hear” as “the voice of the Spirit.” The Spirit, however, is primarily actively engaged in aiding the interpreter of the Bible and re-presents it so that God’s will in a current situation is revealed.176 Now they emphasize the importance that all interpretations arising from the mystical activity of the Spirit should always remain subject to the scrutiny of the Bible itself. Although Pentecostals probably give more weight to the Spirit’s activity in interpretation than most other communions, the Bible should always be given the place of priority and ultimate authority for them to preserve themselves from heretical teachings as the result of a subjectivist reading of the Bible.177 The faith community serves as a corrective to individual voices and interpretation as a subordinate partner of the Spirit, with Scripture as the measure to distinguish the validity of the personal revelation. This protects the church against moderate extremism, radical individualism, and impractical abstractions, in the words of Douglas Lowenburg.178

Pentecostals reading Genesis 1-2 from a hermeneutical perspective When Genesis 1 and 2 are read as literal historical documents, as the pentecostal hermeneutic that developed from cooperation with Evangelicals that was discussed in the previous chapter does, some of the conclusions 175

Grey, Three’s a Crowd, 113. The activity of the Spirit in engaging the interpreter and faith community is beyond objective observation, and any attempt to describe the Spirit’s involvement in a pentecostal hermeneutic is doomed to fail (Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 102). 177 Purdy, Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 110. 178 Lowenburg, “Twenty First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 29. Lowenburg (“Twenty First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic,” 25) also asserts that the Spirit speaks tabula rasa, an assertion that cannot be supported. 176

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that one reaches are that the two narratives follow one on the other successively. The first narrative turns into the second temporally. Other conclusions are, inter alia, that God created the earth from an already existing mass that was a formless void (tǀhǎ wabǀhǎ), while a wind of/from God swept over the waters,179 that the creation days refer to twenty-four hour periods that are determined by the earth’s revolving around the sun, although the sun was only created on the fourth day, and that the creation of light that shines on earth was done on the first day before the sun was created.180 It includes the belief that the word is six-thousand years old and that the six days of creation refer to days as we know it (young-earth theory) that denies the conclusions from science that the expanse originated fourteen billion years ago and that the earth was formed as a result of debris four-and-a-half billion years ago, with life forms originating hundred and fifty million years ago. People reading the Bible in fundamentalist and literalist fashion sometimes use the argument that the early church, as well as the “true” church through the centuries, read the Bible in literalist fashion, an assertion that is not supported by church history. An interesting example is that of Augustine (354-430 CE), who exercised an enormous influence over the church in the West, culminating in the Reformation’s appraisal of many of his theological 179

“Wind of/from God” can also be translated as “breath of God,” “wind from God” or mighty wind” (if “God” is taken as the superlative, which is a possibility. In the Old Testament, the term consistently refers to the divine spirit, however, and for that reason the translation “wind of/from God” is preferred. Jer 4:23 might have had this text in thought when he refers to the earth as waste and void. He prophesied during the Babylonian crisis, around 600 BCE, and he sees the earth as to be undone and returned to the condition in which it was before creation (Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 79). 180 Indications that the Genesis “day” (yôm) could not have been used for a literal twenty-four hour day is the sun’s absence for the first three “days,” used as a temporal expression for the entire creative period of six days in the tôlƟdôt section that follows, “in the day they were created” (2:4a). Mathews concludes that he weight of the arguments favors a nonliteral “day,” but definitive answers to the meaning of “day” and the duration of creation remain elusive. That “day” is not used in its normal meaning is not surprising; several other Hebrew terms, such as “heavens” and “earth,” also have varying meanings in the narrative (Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 149). Other alternatives are that the days refer to millions of years each, or normal twenty-four hour periods with millions of years separating each creative day, that the days serve as a literary framework that portrays “days of forming” and “days of filling, or that the days of creation should be understood in terms of an analogy with the work-week of a Hebrew laborer (Grudem, “Incompatibility of Theistic Evolution,” 23).

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conclusions. Augustine realized the risk when one turns biblical texts into precise scientific treatises. He emphasizes the poetic and allegorical nature of the creation narratives, and writes, “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”181 The relevance of Augustine’s viewpoint is not only relevant when one is confronted by fundamentalism that defined Creationism but also Intelligent Design based on the concept of irreducible complexity, as discussed at more length in chapter 6. Sometimes literalists conclude from their reading of Genesis 1-2 that the text teaches that the creative acts of God exclude any mention of evolution and that women are meant to be subordinate to men. In the same way, they conclude from an interpretation of Genesis 3-11 that divorce is always sinful, that sex is sinful because of the shame of the first human couple about their nakedness, that the woman was responsible for bringing sin into the world and that man did not have any share in it, and that the sin of Ham destined all Africans to be inferior as a race, deserving to be slaves because Genesis 5:25-27 condemns the descendants of Ham as cursed, lowest of slaves to his brothers, Shem and Japheth.182 That Europeans caught 12.5 million Africans without considering their dignity or rights and sold them as slaves were justified by the curse of Noah on Ham; African people were meant to be slaves.183 Some literalists argue from Genesis 1 and 2 that God created man and woman as naturally immortal; they lost their immortality when they ate the apple (a fruit that does not even feature at all in the biblical narrative!). The supposition in many cases is that the curses that God put on the snake, the woman and the man (Gen 3:16-19) are binding and unchangeable, that it resulted in the absolute depravity of all humankind, disqualifying them from anything good, and that these curses prescribe the nature of reality. The observation that the archetypal narratives of Genesis 1-2 can and have been abused to oppress people in terms of gender, race and religion provides enough motivation for Pentecostals to reconsider the hermeneutical 181

Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, 1:41. Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, iii. 183 https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/howmany-slaves-landed-in-the-us/; accessed 2020-10-15. 182

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implications of reading the text in a biblicist and literalist manner. In the classical Pentecostal tradition in the early days, women ministered without distinction from men because anyone perceived to be anointed by the Spirit to preach, minister healing, or bring another ministry to believers was viewed as authorized by God. Due to their exposure to Evangelicalism in their attempt to gain social acceptance, Pentecostals barred women from all pastoral work, reserving the Sunday school and prison ministry for them. They used many biblical arguments to justify their new viewpoint. One such argument was that because the woman was created after the man, it implies that women are inferior to men, not only in terms of their physical strength or mental abilities but also their spiritual capacities. This is still used to exclude women from any ministry in many Pentecostal churches, especially in Africa. When the Bible is abused as a tool to oppress people and make them inferior to others, it represents an evil and insidious Bible reading method that cannot be accepted by any believers. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is still to be found among the oppressed, marginalized and despised. If believers’ reading of the Bible leads to their disregard for the dignity and rights of other people, the church should urgently revise the way it reads and interprets the Bible. Because the Bible is authoritative for many believers, including Pentecostals, and they use it as the norm for arranging their lives, Bible reading practices always have to be considered for their practical and political results. Theology is concerned with the first-order investigation of religious phenomena, evaluating the validity of claims being made in the domain of human religious experience, and with setting the first-order accounts within a more comprehensive matrix of understanding, as John Polkinghorne explains.184 For both theology and its consideration of scientific implications, there is ample room within this definition. Both concern themselves with the same subject material, to investigate the natural and human worlds. It might be objected that they differ in their methods, with science being rational, using evidence for its conclusions, and theology being assertive, ignoring evidence because it accepts the authority of the Bible in all matters. However, science never attains absolute truth, only verisimilitude and its method are not always clear cut. The scientific method does not comply with the requirements of a Baconian method or a Cartesian modernist program; it was argued that a pentecostal hermeneutic should be divorced from it as well. Science’s method is rather “critical realism,” recognizing 184

Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 27.

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that it is only possible to attain a verisimilitudinous grasp of reality but acknowledging the challenge that it is not possible to rid oneself of all intellectual precariousness or to draw final conclusions valid for all time. Pentecostal theology is dependent on the direct revelation of God, primarily based on the testimonies of biblical authors but not limited to the Bible. While anyone who can read can interpret the Bible, it is submitted that only Spirit-filled believers encounter God in reading the Bible. The implication is that encounters with the divine cannot be induced or contrived. It can only be received as gracious gifts that are dependent on God’s will to reveal Godself to a specific individual or group of people. God, as the transpersonal Reality is not open to human manipulation. God transcends human observers. In the context of their experiential concept of revelation in relation to the Bible, Scripture does not serve as a divinely dictated textbook that provides all the answers needed to the questions contemporary life poses to believers. It is also not an unchallengeable set of propositions that demands believers’ unquestioning assent. It is rather viewed as the record of spiritual experiences of people in the past that God in God’s wisdom decided should serve as foundational for the church through the ages. In the words of John Polkinghorne, it represents “the laboratory notes of gifted observers of God’s ways with men and women.”185 The purpose of the notes is to invite its readers to expect God to reveal God’s word to contemporary believers. Believers do not read the Bible in order to submit it primarily to critical scrutiny to understand what it means but to submit themselves to the interrogation of the Spirit through what they read in the Bible. For that reason, the pentecostal emphasis is not on the creeds or the formulation of doctrine but on the appropriation of the spiritual insights generated by biblical authors, for the Spirit to apply it to the complexities the postmodern world poses to believers. Its theology does not rest on timeless propositions. Instead of propositionalism, Pentecostals see Christ as embodied truth. Rationalist-imbedded statements about truth do not establish the meaning of truth that Scripture narrates. Pentecostals challenge Western-oriented, modernist ecclesial traditions built upon notions of universal rationalism that identifies spirituality as a quest for propositional truth.186 Modernist thinking uses a positivistic philosophical paradigm which took history as the dominant category of meaning in the service of 185

Polkinghorne works among a growing number of scientists who are Christian believers that emphasize the reasonableness of religious belief, such as Owen Gingerich, Francis Collins, Peter E. Hodgson, Michael Heller, Stephen Barr, Kenneth R. Miller, and Marco Bersanelli (Barr, Believing Scientist, 72). 186 Althouse, “Waxing and Waning,” 131.

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the Enlightenment ideal of “objectivity” that accepts that history is the dominant category of meaning and that “truth” is to be defined as “objectivity.” Modernists found the meaningfulness of the Bible in the “kernels” discovered in the Bible by critical, objective reconstruction and in the process of historical development itself.187 Theological language is human language “stretched” in some way in attempting to do a kind of justice to the encounter with God as infinite reality, as Ian Ramsey reminds us.188 In reading the biblical creation narratives, the pentecostal hermeneutic is not limited by the biblicist constraint to accept them as word-for-word descriptions of how creation took place, on a par with scientific theories of creation. It accepts that the narratives about the creation of life and human beings on the planet serve a theological purpose by coveying truth through an imaginative narrative that links with the creation narratives of surrounding nations. Its uniqueness in terms of the creation myths of surrounding nations exists in the theological emphases found in the narratives. They do not represent matter-of-fact historical occurrences; their purpose was rather to explain to people experiencing a crisis that was threatening their survival and identity what the existence of a creator God meant for them.189 Their different genres and the differences between the two narratives betray that they do not intend to convey scientific truths but a significant theological message about God and humanity in a way that the first listeners found digestible because it could be associated with existing knowledge. They contain historically conditioned accounts of certain significant theological truths.190

187

Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 167-8. It must be admitted that in most cases, very few “kernels” were left after the completion of the critical task, as demonstrated, e.g., by the Jesus Seminar debate and its reduction to Jesus’ sayings. 188 Ramsey, Religious Language. 189 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 58. 190 That these historical truth played an important role in Jewish history can be seen in the occurrence of the traditions in the books found at the Dead Sea. Twenty-four manuscripts of Genesis were found, only surpassed in number by Psalms, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy. The manuscripts are relatively fragmentary and preserve only parts of thirty-two chapters. They do, however, reveal a text of Genesis that is generally very close to the traditional Hebrew text; only eleven manuscripts exhibit variants beyond the more common slight deviations in spelling. The two (or possibly three) manuscripts from Wadi Murabba‘ât, dated according to their script in the beginning of the second century CE, are identical to the traditional Hebrew text.

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The creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 have an archetypal and paradigmatic purpose, a view that pentecostal hermeneutic can accommodate.191 They are paradigmatic, in that they explain through a story that God is the one true God who created the universe, including the earth and human life. The relationship portrayed by the narratives between God and humanity explains that the earth is intended to be God’s dwelling place, among human beings. From Genesis 3 and onwards the narratives explain why this close relationship did not realize in the longer term, but the significant contribution of the creation narratives is that God created the earth as a temple and human beings as priests serving in this temple. The fact that it contrasts sharply with the reality of Israelite history explains the intention of the narratives, to reflect on God’s dream for the earth and human beings. At a later stage, Israelite prophets reflecting about this dream would speak of new heavens and a new earth, and the ultimate realization of the close relationship between God and humanity as portrayed in the creation narratives. The literary framework view, supported in this research, understands Genesis 1 to be an artistic, literary presentation of creation that is not supposed to be taken literally or chronologically. It makes sense of Genesis 2:5’s reference that no plant of the field was yet to be found on the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground. The verse looks back at Genesis 1 and shows that normal providence was at work in Genesis 1 because the earth was without vegetation since it had not rained. A chronological presentation of the days of Genesis 1 runs into problems with light and vegetation being made before the sun. These days, however, makes sense when their literary relationship explains as the narrative is an artistic work. It connects light and the sun to each other, and the sky and the seas to the fish and the birds. Dryland and vegetation are related to land animals and human beings, while day seven does not have any correlation to state its uniqueness with the Creator resting over all creation on the heavenly Sabbath.

Retelling the Genesis creation accounts, the flood, and events in the life of Abraham were a popular pastime in the Qumran community, as with the writers of the Second Temple period. Several theological issues found their beginnings in Genesis (Abegg, Flint and Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, Gen). 191 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 30.

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Conclusion Pentecostal considerations of the biblical creation narratives and its relation to scientific findings of the origins and development of the universe and living species are determined by different hermeneutical angles used to interpret the Bible. To make sense of the discussion, the hermeneutical differences that exist among Pentecostals should be understood. Three such hermeneutical perspectives were distinguished. The first refers to the hermeneutical developments among the early Pentecostals, that consisted of a high view of Scripture that is qualified by the need that the reader meets God within the text. If Bible reading is not accompanied by charismatic experiences, the data provided in the text can be understood, but it does not become the “word” of God with life-transforming power. Since the 1940s, many Pentecostals looked for acceptance and established a second hermeneutical perspective; their sectarian status had become an albatross around their necks. In this way, the early hermeneutic grew into an alliance with Evangelicals and a quasi-fundamentalist hermeneutic. Pentecostals accorded authority to the Bible, the infallible, inspired and flawless word of God. They interpreted the Bible in literalist-biblicist fashion. Since the 1990s, pentecostal scholarship started developing a third, distinctive hermeneutic that shows some affinities with the way early Pentecostals read the Bible. It emphasizes that for Bible reading to be effective in revealing God’s word, the Spirit, Bible, and faith community are essential. The direction of reading the Bible is from the charismatic experiences of the faith community with the Spirit to the Bible and taking it back to the practice. This hermeneutic holds implications for the explication of the creation narratives, implying that Genesis 1-2 should be read without the constraints of a literalist understanding, making it easier to integrate new scientific thinking about the origins and developments of life on earth.

CHAPTER 3 COMPARISON WITH SIMILAR NARRATIVES IN SURROUNDING CULTURES: MESOPOTAMIAN, EGYPTIAN, UGARITIC, HITTITE, AND SYRIAN CREATION PARALLELS

Introduction It was stated in the introduction to the study that one’s assumptions lead to one’s interpretation of the foreign world represented by ancient text narratives such as Genesis 1 and 2. For that reason, an anthropologist reading the narratives as primitive myths will come to different conclusions about it than a scientist who read it as a scientific explanation of creation. And someone reading it literalistically will find ‘historical’ information in the narratives while a theistic evolutionist will find theological “truths” in it. In the words of John Lange, the author’s subjective truthfulness is guaranteed by the fact that Genesis forms part of inspired Scriptures. The creation narratives are no invention. The one who first described the scenes so vividly clearly has a firm belief in a great objective reality represented by them. The narratives never grew like a myth or legend, but it is one total conception, perfect and consistent in all its parts.1 As motivated in the second chapter, the angle of reading and interpreting Genesis in this study is pentecostal, implying that certain presuppositions are deliberately applied. However, at the same time, a careful and rigorous analysis of the narratives is a necessity, whatever one’s own hermeneutical stance. At first, the analysis will be done in various phases before an attempt will be made to unravel the theological conclusions and challenges that Genesis presents for the pentecostal Bible reader. In the first part, Genesis 1 and 2 will be read in terms of similar narratives found in the mythologies of the ancient Near East. Next, a discussion of 1

Lange, Genesis, 147–48.

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possible genres will be presented, based on the comparison with similar narratives found before the biblical narratives were written down. The implications of choosing a genre will be also be unraveled. In the next two chapters, attention will be given to the creation narratives themselves, when aspects of literary criticism will be utilised to define the shape and structure of the texts alongside a historical and grammatical survey. In both cases, of discussion of the genre and literary analysis, insights into the meaning of the text are provided by the discussion.

Comparison with similar narratives in surrounding cultures: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Hittite, and Syrian creation parallels The first scholar to turn scholarly attention to the narratives found in surrounding cultures that sound similar to Judah’s creation narratives was Herman Gunkel (1862-1930).2 In his Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Enzeit of 1895 and commentary on Genesis (1901), Gunkel engaged with the material that archaeologists unearthed and assyriologists deciphered. For instance, the Enuma Elish describes an epic battle between Marduk and Tiamat, two Mesopotamian gods. Gunkel thought echoes of these battles could be found in Isaiah and some Psalms, and also served as material from which the Genesis creation narratives ensued. He acknowledged that the major mythological features had been expunged by biblical authors and that it is possible only to speak about what he calls “faded myth” in the Old Testament.3 Gerhard von Rad and Claus Westermann, two prominent Old Testament scholars, agreed with Gunkel that one finds similar themes between Near Eastern texts and Genesis 1-2 but that it does not imply that the Genesis narratives are essentially mythical. Von Rad emphasizes that the Genesis narratives do not contain myth or saga, but rather material reworked by a Priestly editor in the service of a message to listeners of the narratives.4 Westermann, in his turn, refers to Genesis 1-2 as “narrative.”5 However, it was not long before some scholars thought that the biblical authors copied these epics and changed them a little here and there to allow 2

For a useful discussion of the materials available on the creation of the cosmos in the cultures surrounding ancient Israel, see Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature, 2038; Greer, Hilber and Walton, Behind the Scenes, 91-141. 3 Gunkel, Creation and Chaos, 80, 92; Genesis, 32. 4 Von Rad, Genesis, 63. 5 Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 1-5.

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for Israel’s unique theological accents and sentiments. John Collins, for example, states his belief that the best guide to the literary character of the biblical text is the comparative literature of the ancient Near East.6 As will be shown, such a view does not do justice to the highly significant differences that characterize a comparison between the biblical and ancient accounts of other nations. Eventually and in reaction to the viewpoint of a large-scale influencing of the archetypal narratives by the ancient epics, other scholars opined that the biblical accounts were not influenced in any significant way. The similarities between the two groups of material were circumstantial. However, this view does not account for the many similarities and the seeming way in some instances where the biblical author responded and replied to images and data from the epics. In studying the biblical narratives, it quickly becomes clear that their authors were sophisticated word artists who employed the narratives to make theological statements that were definitive to Israel’s understanding of God. They responded to the current religious and political thought behind the Near Eastern creation narratives (in the ancient world it was not possible to think about politics without considering it in a theological perspective) by developing a monotheistic perspective that holds important considerations for human worth and dignity. The primaeval narratives contained religious critique on the polytheism of their neighbors and political criticism of their kings and priests. Although Gunkel, Von Rad, and Westermann judged judiciously on the relationship between the biblical creation narratives and those of the surrounding cultures, a long debate about the issue ensued. Eventually, a consensus developed among scholars that the connection between the two was overstated at times. It does not deny that the other narratives influenced biblical authors, but it denies that it implies that the Bible employs myths known to the other cultures. Rather it provides commentary and critique on the fundamental ideas about the divine and human found in those narratives. The anthropology portrayed in the creation narratives of surrounding cultures viewed people as the slaves of gods. People were created when lesser gods revolted against their daily task to provide food for the senior gods. Because the kings claimed divine descent, implying that they were the representatives of the gods, their people were forced to serve them with their labor without further compensation. In contrast, biblical creation narratives portrayed people in positive terms, affirming their dignity, equality and freedom, as well as their personal responsibility. In writing about the 6

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 27.

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creation of people, biblical authors sarcastically and ironically affirmed an anthropology that functions in direct contrast to the negative and pessimistic way other cultures viewed human beings. Biblical anthropology is behind the development of what eventually became accepted intellectual assumptions and the accomplishments that characterize human science and technology. In an important sense, Genesis 1-2 is not about the creation of earth and life on it, but “a manifesto about the value of the human person.”7 Although some ancient Near Eastern myths concerning the creation of the earth, humanity, paradise, the tree of life, and the origin or mortality, evil and suffering were preserved, it should be remembered that it is probable that only a fraction of such myths were recovered and it is not possible to state that those that had been preserved are representative of such myths existing in the ancient Near Eastern world. Creation narratives were found in Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, Israel’s narratives seem to be the closest to the narratives from Mesopotamia. The oldest of the Mesopotamian myths are in the language called Sumerian, a language unrelated to any other in the ancient world. Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia between 3200 and 2000 BCE, and although the language survived until the second century BCE, it was later only used in the cult and those texts that were copied from ancient times. The origin of the Sumerians is unknown. They developed the city-states of Uruk, Lagish, and Umma. Shortly before 2300 BCE, they were conquered by Sargon of Akkad, who lived some way further north in Mesopotamia but still south of Babylonia. The Sumerians developed the earliest known writing system, around 3200 BCE. They wrote with reeds on clay tablets with a system of wedge-shaped signs called cuneiform. Later epics were written in Akkadian, also using the cuneiform of writing that the Sumerians developed, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and spoken from around 2400 BCE with Sargon the Great until 1000 BCE. Mesopotamian literature for the next two millennia used Akkadian as its medium; Sargon and his descendants ruled the first Mesopotamian territorial state for almost two centuries. Today the location of their city is unknown, but they contributed a rich legacy of art and literature to the ancient Near East. After them, the Third Dynasty of Ur united most of Sumer for about a century at the end of the third millennium.8 During the second millennium BCE, Babylon rose under the reign of Hammurabi in the eighteenth-century BCE. Their power faded after 7 8

Gnuse, Misunderstood stories, 2. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 27.

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Hammurabi and their descendants again influenced Near Eastern history about a thousand years later, with Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of, inter alia, Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. In the early second millennium, Assyria, in northern Mesopotamia, became powerful, attaining their greatest power in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries. Another revival of their power followed in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, called the Neo-Assyrian kingdom.9 Egypt developed hieroglyphics as a writing system around 3100 BCE; stone buildings appeared shortly afterwards. Most of the pyramids were built in the period from 2700 to 2160 BCE. Egypt was ruled by Hyksos, foreigners from Asia from 1648 to 1540 BCE before Egyptians regained the throne, and they extended their power as far as the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. Egypt also ruled over Canaan for much of this period. In the fourteenth century BCE, Pharoah Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten, also changed the traditional worship rites of the sun and solar disk and the new religion was monotheistic in character. He changed his capital to Amarna and today many so-called Amarna letters had been discovered, letters sent from the Pharaoh to the vassals in Canaan, providing important information about Canaan’s situation. His successor, Tutankhamun departed from Amarna and revered the solar disk again.10 Canaan initially extended to what is known as Lebanon and Syria and did not exist as a political entity except when it was occupied by foreign armies and relegated to a province of the occupying forces. During the first millennium BCE, the Canaanites living in the coastal cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos were called the Phoenicians, from the Greek designation of the region. The Bible refers at times to the Canaanites as Amorites, from Amurru, the Akkadian expression for the land to the west, that is, relative to Mesopotamia.11 The group originated in northern Syria and eventually exerted pressure on the urban centers of Mesopotamia. Amorites were involved in the destruction of Ur at the beginning of the second millennium, and Amorite rulers were reigning in several Mesopotamian cities. The Philistines were sea people who came to Canaan from the Aegean Sea, although it is difficult to retell the story of their settlement in Palestine. They tried to settle in Egypt but were hindered when they were defeated by Rameses III about 1190 BCE. They then moved to and settled successfully 9

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 27. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 28. 11 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 30. 10

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in the coastal towns of Palestine, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, Gath, and Ashdod, south of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon and adjacent to emerging Israel.12

Enki and the World Manor The oldest of the Mesopotamian accounts date to around 2000 BCE and is known as Enki and the Ordering of the World, or Enki and the World Manor.13 Ea or Enki creates nature, civilization, and the cult, although Enlil is the deity who rules over the pantheon. Most of this narrative got lost.14 The Eridu Genesis from the same tradition dates from around 1600 BCE and relates the stories of creation, the flood, and personages that performed the same tasks as biblical personages. The mother goddess is called Nintur and she brought people from a nomadic existence to settle in cities. It sounds like the Genesis 11 account of Shinar and the tower of Babel. Kingship is created before cities are established, serving as a way to legitimize the power that kings claim for themselves. Enki and Nonmah occur in various Sumerian narratives, relating how younger gods are forced to serve the senior gods, including digging canals needed for their provision of food for these gods. When the junior gods rebelled, Enki and his mother solve the dispute by recruiting various birth goddesses to create humanity. The goddesses use clay from the abyss called Apsu and shape it to form human beings. After the figures are implanted in the goddesses, they give birth to humans. Then Enki and Ninmah, also called Nintur, Mami, Belet-illi, and other names engage in a contest in which Ninmah must make creatures and Enki has to find a place for them in the world. Ninmah makes disabled persons, infertile women and men who continually discharge semen and Enki is successful in each case to place them in the world. Enki uses his opportunity to create two sickly creatures, and Ninmah cannot find any place for them before Enki makes an immature fetus, to mock Ninmah’s infertility. In so doing, he wins the context and introduces human congenital disabilities and illnesses into the world.15 Seemingly other Mesopotamians viewed suffering as the result of good gods who in their drunkenness accidentally established human suffering. In contrast, Genesis 3 depicts suffering as a result of

12

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 30. Use is made of the translations found in Dalley, Myths from Mespotamia. 14 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 2. 15 Van Seters, Prologue to History, 55. 13

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human beings’ sins. Some shorter narratives name two human beings, Ullegarra and Annegarra, as the initial human creatures. A Babylonian text of the sixth century BCE relates that Anu creates the heavens while Ea or Enki creates deities that serve as patrons of human endeavors such as religion, arts, and farming. At a later stage, human beings are enlisted to do service to the gods.16 The king is created apart from the rest of humanity. In another account, Ea and a mother goddess create people and the king, taking a lot of time in designing the king. The king gets the task of warfare, while he is endowed with glistening splendor and beauty, legitimizing the divine institution of kingship.

Atrahasis epic The Atrahasic epic, written in Akkadian in about 1700 BCE in the court of Amorite Babylon, starts with the already introduced struggle of the lesser, younger gods to provide daily in the material needs of the older generation of gods who spend their time resting, reminding of the institution of the Sabbath in Genesis 2:2.17 After working very hard for forty years, the younger gods complain to Enlil, their chief god, that they cannot continue with the job. When their complaint is not met with any positive response, they surround Enlil’s palace after setting fire to their tools. The gatekeeper wakes the chief god because the attack happens during the night. Enlil then summons the other gods to advise him as to possible actions, and one of them, Ea, advises that it would be best to compromise by tasking Belet-ili, the goddess of the womb, to create the first human beings to bear the load of the gods. Ea kills Ilawela (or Aw-ilu), the god who led the rebellion, to use his blood with clay to mold seven human couples, using fourteen wombgoddesses as midwives. The different classes of people are created without explaining what these classes consist of (the text was lost here), probably legitimizing the different classes that existed during the early second millennium BCE. After serving the gods faithfully for six hundred years, humankind has multiplied and the noise they create irritates the gods to such an extent that Enlil orders that the shuruppu-disease should kill all human beings. The plague effectively decimates the human population. Enki then advises Atrahasis, whose name means “very wise,” to have humanity withhold offering from all gods except the one who controls the plague. Eventually, that god relents and puts an end to the affliction. Enlil then makes several similar attempts to reduce humanity, and each time Enki 16 17

Van Seters, Prologue to History, 59. Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 8.

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advises Atrahasis about a solution. The final solution employed by Enlil is found in a worldwide flood that swipes humankind from the face of the earth. Enki then instructs Atrahasis to build a boat that can take his family to safety. With all people wiped out, the lack of offerings by humanity is quickly noted by the other gods who are horrified at the destruction caused by Enlil. When Atrahasis leaves the boat after the flood that lasted seven days and seven nights, he makes an offering of thanksgiving that attracts all the gods who smell the odor. At Enlil’s insistence, the gods devise a plan to control the human population in order to avoid the problems caused by their noise. Some women are barren, the babies of others die at birth, and some priestesses are forbidden to bear children.18 The text was copied for at least a thousand years.19 Some parallels are striking, such as the climax of creation found in the creation of humankind, the connection between the creation of humankind and the flood, and the use of clay as an alternative to the dust out of which the first human beings were created in Genesis 2:7. However, the differences are even more striking, found in the monotheistic telling of the Genesis creation narrative in contrast to the numerous Igigi gods in the epic, the depiction of the creation of an environment specifically suitable for humankind to thrive in versus the creation of humankind on earth to serve as slaves for the gods, Genesis’ portrayal of the earth as a peaceful habitation for the human being that stands in a direct relationship with God in contrast to the combat that marks the polytheist epics, and the Genesis account of a world without violence with living beings living in a vegetarian way, not necessitating the killing of others versus a world characterized by striving and the punishment of human beings by death. Violence only becomes a challenge in Genesis 4, in contrast to creation as God intended it to be, as a result of human sinning. When the animals are created in the second creation narrative in Genesis, the world is a peaceful place, and no hint is given of the killing of animals for food or sacrifice. The first creation narrative emphasizes that the goal of creation is the Sabbath, the day God rests from God’s labor. In ancient thought, gods rested in temples that human beings dedicated to their exclusive use, leading Gordon Wenham to argue that both the Genesis creation narratives view the creation of the world as creating a temple in which God can dwell and rest. “Peace between all God’s creatures and his presence on earth is the essence of the divine scheme.”20 In contrast to the epic’s portrayal of the purpose for the creation of humankind as serving the needs of the gods, the biblical author portrays 18

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 34. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 33. 20 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 27. 19

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human beings as created with the purpose to represent God and God’s reign on earth. For that reason, they are created in the image of God.

Enuma Elish Some great works of Akkadian literature were discovered during the 1870s, including the creation story Enuma Elish and the Gilgamesh Epic. These discoveries caused a sensation, with the light that the Enuma Elish was supposed to throw on the topic of ancient creation narratives and the Gilgamesh Epic threw on the narrative about Noah and the ark with a similar sounding myth, and their supposed similarities with the biblical accounts found in Genesis.21 That they influenced Israelite narrative conceptions is illustrated by the discovery of a copy of the Gilgamesh Epic at Megiddo in 1955.22 The Enuma Elish dates from about 1900–1700 BCE. It was found in Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh and other copies were found at several other places. It consists of seven cuneiform tablets written in Akkadian that describe the creation of the world and human beings by Marduk. The epic comes from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylon (1125-1104 BCE). Babylon had developed into the power center of the ancient Near East under Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE). In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, named for the opening words of the epic that states, “When on high,” Marduk is the hero-god who displays his superior power by his creative acts. It serves as a biography for Marduk, telling how he became the most important deity in the Babylonian pantheon.23 At first, he was the patron deity of Babylon. The epic recounts the myth of the gods, Apsu, a male god of fresh water and Tiamat, a goddess of salt water and their children.24 Marduk is born from the god Ea and the goddess Damkina in a large extended family where most 21

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 31. Other discoveries that followed were the Amarna letters in 1887 and over two thousand texts, written in cuneiform script and a language that proved to be closely related to Hebrew at Ugarit or Ras Sharma on the Mediterrainean coast in northern Syria in 1929. These documents dated from the fourteenth century BCE. In 1933, another discovery of more than twenty thousand tablets at Mari on the Euphrates river contributed to the discussion of myths. The most important of these tablets date from the eighteenth century BCE. Since 1964, approximately 1,750 cuneiform tablets were discovered at Ebla Tell Mardikh, near Aleppo in western Syria and dated to the third millennium BCE, the largest single find of cuneiform texts from the early period. And in Emer (modern Meskene) in Syria some 800 tablets were found in the mid-1970s (Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 31). 22 Esterhuyse, God van Genesis, 17. 23 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 6. 24 Utley, How It All Began, 7.

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members are family of each other in the pantheon. At this stage, Apsu, the god of fresh water below the earth, and Tiamat, the goddess of salt water, are disturbed by the noise created by the younger gods. Tiamat is a complex and fascinating figure, according to John Collins; as Mother Nature, she takes care of her offspring at one moment and in the next, she devours them. The lesson is clear: for life to flourish on earth, nature has to be subdued.25 The older generation of gods and the younger generation do not see eye to eye, something that has been happening many times in human history as well. When Apsu decides to kill all the younger gods, it leads to a civil war, led by the old goddess Tiamat that opposes the younger generation of gods, led by Ea, the god of magic and the underworld who finds that he is powerless against the powers of Tiamat. After slaying Apsu, Ea lives in Apsu’s body. Eventually, Ea’s son Marduk challenges Tiamat26 to single combat where he traps her in his net, inflates her quickly with the wind so that she cannot shut her mouth, and then shoots an arrow down her throat that strikes her heart and she dies. Marduk then cuts the corpse in two and forms the sky (or firmament) and the earth from it.27 Mountains hold the sky in place. Tiamat’s spit becomes the clouds and her tail the Milky Way, the Tigris and Euphrates flow from her eyes and she becomes the source of life. Now that Marduk is assigned as the victor and chief god, he appoints the moon and the sun to govern the days and nights, forming the weekly, monthly, and annual calendar. The moon’s waxing and waning define the month while the sun god, Shamash, is responsible for the yearly calendar. Then Marduk builds a great temple in Babylon, designating the city as a holy home to stay when the gods visit earth. People in the ancient world believed that the sun, moon, and stars were not material objects but powers that existed supernaturally. An, Enlil, and Enki, the major gods, put the moon and stars in place according to the prologue to a Sumerian astrological treatise. Their task is to regulate days, months and omens. In the famous Babylonian Hymn to Shamash, the sun god, reference is also made to the god’s role in regulating the seasons and the calendar in 25

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 36. Marduk reacted at the insistence of Ea but set one condition to fight Tiamat: “If indeed I am to be your champion, / If I am to defeat Tiamat and save your lives, / Convene the council, name a special fate … / And let me, my own utterance shall fix fate instead of you! / Whatever I create shall never be altered! / Let a decree from my lips never be revoked, never changed” (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 2489). 27 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 6. 26

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general. Intriguingly, Shamash is also the patron of divination.28 However, Genesis 1 corrects this view and explains that sun and moon were nothing else than lights. They did not represent the gods. Genesis 1 states that their functions are to separate the day from night, to provide the calendar for the celebration of religious seasons, and to govern day and night, making it possible to discern years from one another.29 Whether Israel and Genesis 1 shared the view of other ancient people that the stars were engraved on the underside of the solid sky rather than suns that were farther away and moving away from the earth is not clear.30 The younger gods’ dissatisfaction with the older gods was the result of the task the younger gods had, to provide food for the older peers on a daily basis. Marduk now commissions his father to create humankind, giving human beings the duty to be food purveyors to the older gods. Ea executes Qingu, Tiamat’s advisor, confidant and general, and from her blood, he fashions human beings. The younger gods express their gratitude for their liberation by building the Esagila temple with its ziggurat in Babylon, replacing Nippur as a sacred city, a task that took them two years to complete. The epic ends with a list of Marduk’s fifty names, associated with different victories that marked his life, and the injunction that children should learn these names by heart. It becomes clear that the purpose of the epic was to explain why Marduk was the chief god of the Babylonians, and why Babylon served as the holy city for all Babylonians. It emphasizes that humankind must serve the gods by obeying the injunctions of the priests through their sacrifices and temple taxes. It legitimates the priests’ enormous power and the cult. The emphasis is not on the creative acts as such but Marduk’s greatness. The epic was to be recited at least once a year, during the New Year festival. In the recital, the king played the role of Marduk, as representative of the high god. The king is legitimated as the one responsible for providing order in the same way as Marduk had done when he ordered the cosmos in his battles. Although it is possible to see several parallels between the Enuma Elish and Genesis 1, one senses a very different atmosphere in the two narratives. The first focuses on the strife and struggle between the gods for supremacy in concepts that remind one of the human tendency to stimulate conflicts, while Genesis depicts the earth as a hospitable and peaceful home for all 28

Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary, Ge 1:14. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 38. 30 Israelite cosmology is discussed in the first chapter. 29

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living beings, the creation of human beings as the climax of the Creator’s creative endeavors, and creation as an act requiring nothing more than the monotheistic God speaking everything into existence. Although some researchers argue that Genesis functions separately from the polytheistic theogonies also found in the Enuma Elish, arguing that the epic as we now have it might have been from a late date, perhaps the same time as the Genesis account, it is accepted here that some aspects in the biblical creation narrative are intended by the narrator to serve as a commentary and critique on the Mesopotamian myth. Examples are found in Genesis 1:1 that serve as a protasis or initial statement that requires a concluding statement, like the beginning of the Enuma Elish (discussed later); the expression “heavens and the earth” used by the biblical author as objects created by YHWH and Mesopotamian accounts of creation that used it as ancient primordial deities; and the designation of a simple man as the product of YHWH’s creative act in contrast to the Mesopotamian distinction between common humanity and royalty.31 Eventually, the Priestly editor, responsible for Genesis 1, the genealogy of Seth, and the flood narrative32 critiques the Enuma Elish while the Yahwist editor (Gen 2:4b-25) critiques the Atrahasis Epic with its narrative of human creation and development showing some similarities with Genesis 2. By using the Yahwist text,33 the Priestly editor produces profound criticism of the Mesopotamian religion and ideology.34 31

Hamilton, Book of Genesis, 104. The information provided in chapter 1 about the documentary hypothesis is summarized here for reasons of comparison. The Priestly editor, written by a priest– scribe, was responsibility in Gen 1–11 for the first creation narrative (Gen 1:1–2:4a), the ten-member genealogies before and after the deluge (5:1–32; 11:10–26), an account of the moral corruption which led to the deluge followed by the initial instructions to Noah (6:11–22), one of the two strands of the deluge narrative (7–8), the new dispensation and covenant with the survivors of the cataclysm (9:1–28) and, according to some commentators, the core of the Table of the Nations (10:1–32) (Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 6). 33 The Yahwist’s account (J) was written in the time around 950 BCE, during the prosperous reigns of kings David and Solomon. It is concerned with the Israelite empire, speculating about its purpose and durability. J reflects the confidence of a successful empire characterized by many military victories and successful trade links with many parts of the oukoumene. The focus of J is on Zion and Jerusalem (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yahwist-source; accessed 2020-11-06). 34 The priestly writings (P), dating from the sixth or fifth centuries BCE, emphasize the priestly tradition or interest, giving detailed explanations and descriptions of 32

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Creation of the World by Marduk Another Chaldean text from the seventh century BCE relates what did not exist (as suggested in Gen 1:2; 2:5) before Marduk creates the earth and people, with the help of the goddess Aruru. The text may refer to a much older myth. Unfortunately, only fragments of the poem survived.35 Most of the poem comes from Marduk, the supreme god of the Babylonians. The account intends to honor Marduk. It seems to have been written during the reign of Asurbanipal, king of Assyria (668-26 BCE), called Osnappar by Ezra 4:10. The first tablet expresses the cosmological doctrine of the author's day. Unfortunately only the first part of the tablet was recovered, which informs us that there was a time when what is above was not yet called heaven and what was below was not yet called the earth was not yet named. All the water that existed was gathered together in one mass of water, representing their progenitor, Mother Tiamat. No field was as yet harvested and no dry land could be seen. At that time, none of the gods existed. Then the gods were created and they generated the upper and the lower firmaments. Eventually, after a long time elapsed, the god Anu was made by An-Sar and Ki-Sar.36 Light and order interplayed in the new creation of the visible world, everstruggling one against another. The fight is described as between Balritual laws and procedures (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Priestly-code; accessed 2020-11-06). P differs from the Elohist and the Yahwist. It is characterized by detailed ritual instructions of interest for priests, bodies of standing laws of a ritual character, and exhaustive genealogical lists. P was responsible for editing parts of Genesis, combining the J and E narratives. P’s own contribution is only in brief references to dates of births, marriages, and migrations. P is responsible for the first creation narrative in Genesis. Like the Elohist, P uses the term Elohim consistently for God. After God revealed God’s name (YHWH) to Moses (Ex 3, in the P strand), P also utilizes YHWH to refer to God. A characteristic of P is that it avoids anthropomorphic portrayals of God, emphasizing the transcendent character of Israel’s awe-inspiring high God (https://translate.google.co.za/?hl=en-GB&tab=mT &authuser=0#view=home&op=translate&sl=af&tl=en&text=ontsagwekkende%20 groot%20god; accessed 2020-11-06). 35 The Babylonian account harmonizes with the History of Berossus, a priest in a temple at Babylon in the days of Alexander the Great, in all the essential points, and the account of Damascius, a philosopher of the sixth century CE. Besides this Babylonian account of the creation in a series of successive acts, there have been found fragments of two tablets in the library of Cutha, now Tel Ibrahim, in Babylonia 36 Muss-Arnolt, “Babylonian Account of Creation,” 18.

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Merodach (or Marduk), the principle of light, and Tiamat, the principle of darkness, also represented as the dragon, the wicked serpent (comparable to the chaos of Gen 1:2). Marduk was a part of the younger gods, and in the Babylonian pantheon, he gained ascendancy among the gods, becoming the acknowledged leader of heaven and earth. Originally he was as god only associated with the early morning sun. In one of the fragments, the gods addressed Marduk: “Your work, O Lord, be greater than that of the (other) gods; To destroy and to create, speak and it shall be done. Open thy mouth, and his (perhaps the evil god's) word shall vanish away. (i. e., be made powerless). Speak then again to him and his word shall be restored." The fragment continues that Marduk spoke, and his mouth destroyed the god who did evil. Tiamat was killed and her host was scattered. Marduk formed the visible heavens out of the skin of Tiamat, and it became the habitation of Anu, Bl, and Ea, the chief triad of gods in the Babylonian pantheon. Then Marduk creates animals, the Tigris and Euphrates that function as the source of life in Mesopotamia, cities, and civilization, although it is difficult to decipher what is left of the text. No reference is made to divine conflict, reminding of YHWH’s creation employing words, while the list of things that are created agrees with Genesis 1, although in a different order.

Conclusion The Atrahasis Epic is five hundred years older than the Enuma Elish and probably serves as an important source for Enuma Elish. Both accounts relate that the world is primarily created out of the water, as suggested by the biblical narrative as well. The early Greek philosophers also stated that the world was made out of the water which preceded it and served as the primary element out of which all things came. They also defined a so-called “Prime Mover” behind the nature of the creative driving force that was responsible for the creation of everything.37 A characteristic of the myths of the surrounding world is the positive view that humanity is progressing. Oriental theology believed in human society progressing towards a higher civilization. The biblical narratives affirm the opposite, contradicting this view and telling of the fall of the first human couple, perpetrated by their second-born child who murders his brother (Gen 4), as well as the violent and abusive behavior of their descendants. Humanity is descending into a world of increasing violence and wickedness, 37

Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 1.

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demonstrated by Genesis 6’s narrative of the sons of God that visit the daughters of humans, who bear children to them, leading to God’s intention to extinguish human life on earth (Gen 7). The author’s conclusion is that when YHWH saw that the extent of the wickedness of humankind on earth and that all the inclinations of the thoughts of their hearts were continually evil, YHWH was sorry that humankind had been created on the earth. It grieved YHWH’s heart. YHWH then decided to blot out from the earth all human beings, animals, things and birds (Gen 6:5-7). Kenneth Mathews argues that when Genesis 1-3 is compared to the Babylonian Atrahasis (of ca. 1600 BCE), it points to a second-millennium BCE origin of these narratives.38 It is not accepted that the author was dependent on this Babylonian tradition, although it is clear that it was influenced by, and responded to, the myths of surrounding cultures. The origins of the oral narratives go back to an early date, although it is also accepted that these traditions were finally penned down and revised for the new context of exilic Judea in Babylonia. In the next two chapters, the two creation narratives are discussed exegetically and some of the insights gained from a comparison with similar narratives in Mesopotamian and other creation myths are utilized.

38

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 80.

CHAPTER 4 FIRST CREATION NARRATIVE (1:1-2:4A)

Introduction In this chapter and the next, the two creation narratives are investigated exegetically and hermeneutically, as an introduction to chapter 6 that discusses the biblical creation narratives in terms of philosophical theories about the origins of the universe and life forms. At the same time, a comparison with some similarities between the biblical narratives and the epics of surrounding nations is also made in so far as it is relevant. In the last chapter, the creation narratives of Genesis 1-2 are discussed from a pentecostal hermeneutical perspective that considers the scientific views of the origin of the universe and life as well. In reading an ancient document, it is necessary to consider what the author intended to communicate.1 In postmodern thinking, a certain scepticism prevails about the possibility to discover authorial intent, and the meaning of a passage is rather linked with the preunderstanding and subjectivist interpretation of the individual reader. It serves as a critique and rejection of the notion that only what is historically and objectively true is meaningful; meaning is not limited by positivistic constraints.2 However, it is accepted that it is possible to find the message that the author intended by carefully reading the text within the context in which it originated, trying to put oneself as a contemporary reader in the shoes of the first listeners. Here the biblical narratives are also read as a part of the canon with value for Christian believers, implying that God has accommodated the communicator and immediate context in the Bible by providing communication that was relevant for its first readers while contemporary readers can still find value in listening to and applying the message to their situation. The human author is a doorway into the room of God’s message and meaning.3 The authority attached to the Bible is tied to the message the author as an agent of God’s 1

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 15. Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 171. 3 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 15. 2

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revelation intended to communicate to the first listeners. To understand this message, the inspiration and enlightenment by the Spirit, the prime Author of the text, is conditional for hearing the message of God in the ancient message, applied to a new situation. The implication is clear, that the Bible is written for contemporary readers as well, but not to them. It does not communicate in their language, addresses their cultural context or anticipates the questions that they may want to put to the text. If they read their own ideas into the text without considering its “foreignness” to their situation, they attribute the authority to themselves and their ideas.4 Kenneth Mathews warns that the scholarly literature concerning Genesis5 could be appropriately named “Legion.”6 There exist a nearly incalculable number of resources published through the centuries on these chapters, implying that it is impossible to utilize little more than a fraction. Genesis 1 is clearly based on a poem when its structuredness, wordplay, and rhythmic use of words are considered. The structure of the events is repeated throughout the days of the week, as illustrated by referring to 1:3–5: Introduction:

And God said

Command:

Let there be light

Completion:

And there was light

Evaluation:

God saw that the light was good

Action:

God separated the light from the darkness

Naming:

God called the light day

Time:

There was evening and there was morning, one day7

4

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 19. The name of the first book is Genesis, as in the Latin Bible (or Vulgate) and in the Greek Old Testament (or Septuagint). The name is taken from the Greek rendering of the Hebrew word for “generations” in Gen 2:4, “This is the book of the generations (Heb. tôledôth, Gr. LXX., who render tǀldǀth by ਲ ȕȚȕȜȠȢ ȖİȞȑıİȦȢ) of the heavens and the earth” (Ryle, Book of Genesis, ix). In the Hebrew Bible the book is entitled Berêshîth (= “In the beginning”) from the opening word of the first verse. 6 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 23. 7 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 24–25. 5

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This account of creation is described in parallel format (the numbers following the description refer to verse numbers): Day 1 (3–5)

Day 2 (6–8)

Day 3 (9–13)

Introduction 3

Introduction 6

Introduction 9

Command 3

Command 6

Command 9, 11

Completion 3

Completion 7

Completion 9, 11

Evaluation 4

Evaluation—

Evaluation 10, 12

Action 4

Action 7

Action 12

Naming 5

Naming 8

Naming 10

Time 5

Time 8

Time 13

Day 4 (14–19)

Day 5 (20–23)

Day 6 (24–31)

Introduction 14

Introduction 20

Introduction 24, 26

Command 14, 15

Command 20, 22

Command 24, 26, 28, 29

Completion 15

Completion—

Completion 24, 30

Evaluation 19

Evaluation 21

Evaluation 25, 31

Action 16–18

Action 22

Action 25, 26, 27, 28, 30

Naming—

Naming—

Naming—

Time 19

Time 23

Time 31.8

It describes the beginning of humanity and includes the beginning of the world that humanity inhabits, and of time and space. It presupposes that everything that exists has a beginning except God, a significant idea in a world that contains a theomachy along with a cosmogony. While the writers 8

Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 26.

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of Genesis understood that the cosmos had to have had a beginning, many great scientists of the early twentieth century believed that, on the contrary, the universe was “always there.” From 1917 until 1932, Einstein was among them.9 Bill Arnold argues that the uniqueness of Genesis 1 in terms of the rest of biblical literature lies in its existence without any preceding literary context. In interpreting texts, the context of the immediately preceding unit of the text plays an important role. Genesis 1’s lack of a preceding context implies that it is intended to serve as an introduction to the rest of the Bible, charting the course for the reader.10 Kathleen O’Connor describes the first creation narrative as a poetic narrative because it contains concise, balanced sentences with carefully chosen and constructed language. It is poetical like a hymn of praise, containing vivid imagery and rhythmic arrangements.11 Genesis 1’s author was a member of the priestly caste who composed the narrative as a part of the attempt to encourage exilic Judeans who had lost their king, temple, and country and was threatened by the possibility that they might even lose their identity as a separate group of people. Eventually, the narrative was reworked to serve along with the second creation narrative as an introduction to the narratives in the rest of Genesis, as well as Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The author was informed by Mesopotamian and Egyptian cosmogonies. This information was used to provide points of association for the earliest listeners but also to develop an alternative view of God and reality, resulting in an alternative worldview.12 It was not the author’s primary goal to provide a polemic on the creation narratives of the surrounding cultures although such a polemic functions in the background, with the focus on Israel’s distinctive spirituality and theology in mind. The first creation narrative emphasizes the unique and exalted position of humanity in the created order; Genesis 1:26-31 repeatedly states that God was satisfied with the created work, evaluating it as “good” in every respect. 9

Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 74. Arnold, Genesis, 29. 11 O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 27. 12 The picture of the universe as it was understood by the ancient Hebrew authors, including the authors of Genesis 1 and 2, can be recovered by looking specifically at passages such as Pss 104:2–3, 5–9; 148:4; Job 26:11; 37:18; 38:4–11; Pro 8:28– 29; Amos 9:6. The question whether the Old Testament contains a unitary of diversified worldview is not discussed here. 10

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It might be that the priestly interests contributed to the author’s description of the creation of animal life (Gen 1:24-5) as a prelude to Israel’s dietary laws, as Bill Arnold asserts, although this is not clear from the text itself.13 What is more clear is that the focus on the establishment of the seventh day as the Sabbath supports the centrality of its observance in Israel’s religion (Gen 2:1-3). The priest might have belonged to the holiness school, a group of priests distinguished by their theological interests in encouraging Jews’ holiness in imitation of their God and providing an explanation for Judah’s rejection by their God. Existing narratives in Genesis 2:4-4:26 are complemented by another creation narrative to develop themes that are important to the Priestly editor. Genesis 1 is characterized by a recurring formulaic structure and apt symmetry that begin each time with an introduction (“And God said”), followed by a volitive command (“Let there be”), an indicative result or commentary (“and it was so” or “and God made”), a divine evaluation (“God saw that it was good”), the naming of the object (“God called”), and a concluding merism (“There was evening and there was morning”). The description closes with an enumerative summary (“the [xth] day”).14 The text as a poetic narrative was likely formed for liturgical usage, in Walter Brueggemann’s opinion.15 The focus of the encouragement for exiles is found in the image of the chaos that is confronted by God (1:2) and the solution of the joyous and serene rule of God over a universe able to be at rest (2:1-4a). Surprisingly little reference to Adam and Eve is found in the rest of the Old Testament. The prophetic literature (e.g., Is, Ezek; Joel) contains some allusions to Eden as a place of fertility, while Ezekiel 28 refers to a cherub that taunts the king of Tyre and a figure driven out of Eden, the garden of God. The first reference to Adam and Eve is found in the writings of Ben Sira, from the early second century, and the Dead Sea Scrolls somewhat later.16 In contrast, new findings of documents from ancient times continue to demonstrate the link between the myths of the surrounding nations and the manuscripts that eventually became Israel’s sacred Scripture. A recent discovery was announced by Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor, two 13

Arnold, Genesis, 30. Arnold, Genesis, 31. 15 Brueggemann, Genesis, 31. 16 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 69. 14

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biblical experts, of two clay tablets that were found at Ugarit, in today’s Syria, that contain a myth about Adam, Eve, and the devil.17 The biblical authors reworked these myths creatively and critically. The text about the creation of the earth and life can be read by contemporary believers as supporting evolution, implying that the evolution theory was functioning behind what the authors perceived as the creation mode of life. This view is called “concordistisch,” in contrast to “consonantie” (Dutch terms: concordist and consonant) that leaves room for the biblical detail to reflect in some ways what is found in the “book of nature,” although it does not deny a dissonance between biblical and scientific findings.18 However, it lifts some of the tension that exists between the Bible and the scientific theory of evolution. It is important to acknowledge the tension that exists to leave room in theological discussions of Genesis 1 and 2 for the important contribution that science has to make in the debate about the origins of life, a theme that is taken up further at the end of the exegetical labor of interpreting the two narratives.

Reading Genesis 1:1-2:4a As discussed in the first chapter, Judean creation narratives functioned within the religious and political beliefs of the Chaldean-Babylonian Empire that influenced Judean existence profoundly from 605 to 540 BCE. It was Nebuchadnezzar II who finally destroyed Jerusalem and took the upper- and middle-class Judeans into exile in Babylon (597/596, and finally in 586 BCE), that was only ended in 539 BCE. Even after Judeans could return to their own country by the dispensation of the Persian conquerors of the Chaldean Empire, most Jews remained in the diaspora.19 In this context, the Babylonian god, Marduk, was seen as superior to the gods of people conquered by the Chaldeans, including Judeans’ YHWH.20 To empower exilic Jews to retain their ethnic identity, priestly authors devised the 17

Korpel and De Moor, Adam, Eva en de Duivel. Van den Brink, En de Aarde Bracht Voort, 22-3. 19 Persians allowed Judeans to return to their homeland to serve as a bulwark against Greek merchants who visited the Palestinian coastline, threatening Persian commercial and political interests. 20 It is practice to distinguish between “Israelites,” the people of the Northern Kingdom that were conquered by the Assyrians and extinguished as a people in its own right during their exile, “Judeans” that refer to people who had lived before the Babylonian exile in Judea and returned after 539 BCE, and “Jews,” the people of Judea who remained in exile and never returned to Palestine. 18

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strategy to revise the existing Scriptures and used it to attack Babylonian religious ideas. They used traditions that probably served their ancestors in various contexts and retold these narratives in response to the new situation in which Judeans found themselves. As discussed in the previous chapter, Babylonian myths legitimated the institution of the kingship by assigning the king as the representative of the gods on earth. Common humanity served to provide in the needs of the gods, legitimizing the power of the priests and their hold on common humanity who supplied in their needs by way of temple taxes and sacrifices. Genesis became a “resistance document” within the heart of Babylonia that lauds the superiority of YHWH and the people of YHWH over the gods of the conquerors, a form of “intellectual guerilla warfare.”21 The God of Judeans related to the Judean exiles in a particular way. By speaking the earth and life into existence, YHWH created order out of the chaos that existed,22 implying that God could also lead Judeans out of the chaos that the exile carried into the lives, establishing hope that they would eventually return to their homeland.23 According to Genesis 1, God speaks eight times creatively (in vv. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26). With this metaphor, the author emphasizes that the “divine activity of creation is voluntary, effortless and rational,” in contrast to the creation myths of neighbouring cultures. Their myths are characterized by a process of struggle and conflict that never ends.24 One can see the opening words of Genesis 1:1 as the main clause that summarizes the creation narrative found in verses 2-31. The Hebrew states, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” “Beginning” translates literally as “in a first act.” Barry Bandstra suggests that it should be translated as “at commencement” or “initially.”25 Genesis 1:1 then contains a complete sentence, with God creating chaos before it was structured. John Walton suggests that “chaos” should be interpreted, in the light of the creation myths of surrounding cultures, not as a cosmos absent of matter but 21

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 14. That the universe is orderly is demonstrated by the concept of laws that applies in every sphere of the universe and that is expressed by mathematical formulae. Morris (Biblical Basis, 64) notes the orderliness and discusses the difficulty of reconciling the second law of theormodynamics that requires an inexorable process of decay into greater and greater degrees of disorder. 23 Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, 48. 24 Osborn, “Creation,” 429–30. 25 Bandstra, Genesis 1-11, 43. 22

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a world lacking functions, order, diversity, and identity. It is characterized by darkness, water, non-discrete heaven and earth, and the absence of productivity, gods, and the cult.26 Another option is that Genesis 1:3 serves as the primary clause upon which Genesis 1:1 is dependent, implying that God said, “Let there be light” at the beginning of the creation of heavens and earth when only a formless void existed. The implication is clear, that raw materials existed before the creative acts because the reference to it occurs as a part of the conditional statement to the very first divine command. The last option is the way Genesis 1:1 was understood traditionally. Genesis 1:1 is viewed as a separate act of creation, assuming that God created the raw materials that the universe would eventually consist of and then begins to work with this “formless void” (tǀhǎ wabǀhǎ) that is described in the rest of the narrative. It does not preclude a break in time between the first and last creative acts. Then origins of the creation are understood as “out of nothing” (ex nihilo),27 a supposition that seems to fly in the face of the Big Bang theory that was confirmed in 1965 to explain the origins of the world,28 after the Steady State theory was accepted for long. This theory stated that the universe had always existed and was therefore self-existent without a beginning that necessitated a cause.29 It is supported by a statement of Carl Sagan, that the universe is all that is, or was, or ever will be. When Genesis 1:1-2 is read together, God did not (necessarily) create the formless void (tǀhǎ wabǀhǎ) at that stage but encountered it and began to shape it. In stating that something existed from which YHWH created the universe implies that what existed was an object and not parts of divine 26

Walton, Genesis 1, 139. For instance, Guzik (Genesis, 16) argues that the Hebrew verb bara (“create”) is very specific and means “to create out of nothing.” He infers that it shows that God did not create the world out of Godself, but out of nothing because God is separate from the creation. No further proof ot the use of the verb bara to mean “to create out of nothing,” however, is provided. Brueggemann, Genesis, 45 does not agree but explains that creation out of an already existing chaos is relevant for the context in which the Genesis 1 narrative is presented as an encouragement to listeners, in terms of their historical experience of exile that was also “formless and void”. 28 Contra Collins, Language of God, 66. 2 Macc 7:28 and Wis 11:17 first affirmed creation out of nothing, reflecting Hellenistic-Greek influence (Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 20). 29 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 197. 27

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beings, and it probably served as part of the biblical critique of the religious ideas of surrounding cultures that used divine bodily parts as the raw material or elements from which creation is eventually fashioned. God created the earth in its existing form with life forms in six historical days by merely speaking it into existence. The picture of the world established by the narrative is that earth consists of a dome above the earth, with water above the dome, referring to the source of rain and hail, and water under the dome, that is, upon the earth in the form of rivers and oceans. God names the “sky”, “earth”, and “seas” in Hebrew. Important to note that God did not create the waters and the firmament, and light and darkness but assigned them roles. Derek Kidner makes the interesting remark that it is appropriate that God is the subject of the first sentence of the narrative since the concept dominates the rest of the story. It is used some thirty-five times in as many verses in the narrative.30 An interesting feature of the first creation narrative is that the day started in the evening: “there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” This is true of Jewish tradition that is followed until today, with the Sabbath starting when the sun sets on the sixth day and ending at the sun’s setting on the seventh day. William Reyburn and Euan Fry state correctly that although it sounds in part like the Jewish twenty-four-hour day, which was from sunset to sunset (Lev 23:32), the Jewish day did not end in the morning. It implies that “morning” refers to “the following period of daylight.” Light has just been created and separated from the darkness. The text refers to the order, where darkness is first, followers by the coming of the created light.31 An important distinction between a literalist and literary reading of the creation narrative found in Genesis 1 has to do with the length of the seven days mentioned in the narrative. The debate about the length of days is summarized by Richard Belcher.32 The day-age view argues that the Genesis 1 day (yôm) represents a long period of time, leaving room for belief in an old earth and the development of the geological record and it helps solve the problem the travel time of light poses for a young earth view. Augustine already opines that the enumeration of days and nights was 30

Kidner, Genesis. Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 35. 32 Belcher, Genesis, 25-47. 31

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necessary to provide a distinction between the nature that is not yet made or brought into a form and those which are made, so that they should be called morning, propter speciem (i.e., in reference to manifestation, coming out, receiving the form, or species) and evening, propter privationem (i.e., their want of form, or formlessness, total or comparative).33 They are Goddivided days and nights, in distinction from the sun-divided days and nights. Common solar days do not belong to this higher chronology. As to how long or how short they were, Augustine gives no opinion. He just states that “day” is not a name of duration. They are to be regarded not so much in respect to the passing of time as to their marking the boundaries of a periodical work or evolution. These creation days contain the essential idea of cyclicity or rounded periodicity, or self-completed time.34 The analogical day view states that the days of Genesis 1 are not ordinary human days; they are God’s days. Although some similarities exist between God’s world and day and the human world day, significant differences include that the days are only analogous to human days, as holiness in human terms can only be analogous to God’s holiness.35 The regular day view, favored by Belcher, holds that God created the universe in a very short period of time.36 At the end of six days consisting of twenty-four-hour periods, the universe was functioning properly. It also accepts the absolute creation of all things, including space, time, matter, and energy, out of nothing. It argues that the distinction of day and night and the reference of “morning” and “evening” signifies that the days are normal human days. There are also various versions of the regular day view, including that gap theory, or ruin-restitution view that argues that Genesis 1:1 represents a full, complete creation, followed by a catastrophe resulting in the condition of 33

Augustine, On Genesis, 62, 161. Lange, Genesis, 131. 35 In his book, Das Heilige, Rudolf Otto suggests that “holiness” is the central concept in all religions. It does not function in the first place as an ethical category and for that reason he prefers to describe holiness in terms of the “numinous.” The numinous consists of a sense of “awe” before the mystery of God (mysterium tremendum) and an intimate fascination in the relationship with God (mysterium fascinans) (Du Rand, God’s Mystery, 152-3), 36 It is remarkable that Belcher, as many other proponents, view Gen 1 in terms of the creation of the universe or cosmos, while Gen 1 states explicitly that it is limited to God’s creation of the earth (‘ere‫ )܈‬and the heavens, with the focus on earth and life forms. 34

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the earth as formless and void, that coincides with the fall of Satan, a figure that developed very late in Jewish thinking. The fossils lived in the first creation and were extinguished during the catastrophe. Another view is historical creationism that argues that “beginning” in Genesis 1:1 does not refer to a moment in time, but to an indefinite period of time, allowing for an extended period of time before the events described in Genesis 1:3 happens. This also allows for an old earth and the formation of fossil records. The last view also sees Genesis 1:1 as describing the creation of the universe, but now the earth is in an uninhabitable condition covered with water and dark clouds. Many years may have transpired between the creation of the universe and God’s work in six regular days to make the earth a habitable place for life forms to exist. This solves the problem of light seen today that took billions of years to reach the earth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s remark about the length of the Genesis 1 days is relevant.37 He admits that it might have referred to “day” in the sense of a day of morning and evening. The biblical author was bound by the author’s own time, knowledge, and limits but it is also accepted that the author’s message provides important information about God’s creation. And the reference to the “day” explains that God’s daily works are the rhythms in which the creation rests. In creating lights in the dome of the sky, God’s purpose is that they should serve as signs to distinguish both the night from the day and the advance of seasons. It can literally be translated, “for signs and for fixed times.” The “signs” can refer to the constellations, comets, eclipses, shooting-stars, etc. The position of the sun, moon, and stars was necessary to indicate the seasons of the year. The term, “fixed times.” probably refers to the distinction of periods in the year used for agricultural and rural purposes. To determine when the festivals should be reference was made to the time of particular moons or the rising of particular stars.38 The greater light rules over the day and the lesser light, the moon, over the night. The demythologization of existing creation narratives also implies that light and darkness are not objects of even phenomena but periods, for it is lengths of time that are represented by the names “day” and “night.” The statement is for that reason concerned with metonymy and can be translated, “God called the period of light ‘day’ and the period of darkness God called ‘night’.” Darkness is not an object, implying that as a non-object, 37 38

Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 49. Ryle, Book of Genesis, 13.

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it could never be joined to light. Darkness refers to the presence of chaos and the lack of order that existed at the time when God began to create.39 John Lange does not agree. Although he refers to darkness as nothing of itself, he thinks that it must refer to something more than a mere negation. It cannot only be viewed as a mere absence but should rather be seen as the obstruction of something that already is.40 Rather, God separated the period of light from the period of darkness.41 The creation of the first day includes the creation of time. When God makes life forms on earth, in the sky and the sea, God gives them the order to be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the earth, affirming human sexuality and distancing Godself from an ethic of abstinence and asceticism.42 On the sixth day, God creates cattle,43 creeping things and wild animals before God turns God’s attention to the creation of humankind. “Creeping things” refers to reptiles like snakes, lizards, or turtles, as well as insects, rodents, and all kinds of small animals. “Living things of the earth” or beasts of the earth refer to wild animals, or perhaps dangerous animals.44 God creates human beings in God’s image and likeness. The implication is that God is not a sexual or gendered being. God did not create men in God’s image, then women in man’s image; both male and female reflect the likeness of God. For that reason, it is not strange to find female imagery (e.g., as a mother [Ps 131; Isa 66:13]; and Wisdom, a feminine noun [Prov 1:20–33; 8–9]) to refer to God in addition to the more common male imagery for God. This concept of a non-gendered God distinguished Israel from their neighbors. The neigboring groups’ pantheons were composed of goddesses as well as gods and they envisioned creation as connected to divine sexual activity. The God of the Bible is, however, neither male nor female.45 Humans are commanded to rule the created order on behalf of the Creator. Robert Gnuse opines that the narrative of Adam’s creation suggests that adam (humankind) were both common human beings and kings, in contrast to later Mesopotamian myths that were told to legitimate the divine institution 39

Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 31. Lange, Genesis, 130. 41 Walton, Genesis 1, 152. 42 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 79. 43 That the text refers to domesticated animals and their care clearly reflects an anachronism, as pointed out by Longman and Walton. Lost World of the Flood, 28. 44 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 48. 45 Longman, How to Read Genesis, 108. 40

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of kingship.46 Verse 27 adds that God creates humankind as male and female and the next verse adds that they should, like other life forms on earth, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. God then gives human beings every seed-bearing and fruit-bearing plant for food. Each time God observed that what is created is good. However, on the sixth day, after the creation of human beings, God looks at everything that God has made and sees that it is very good. The next day, the seventh, God rests from God’s work and blesses and hallows the seventh day as a day of rest.

Genre Augustine stated that the Spirit of God who spoke through biblical authors did not choose to teach men about the heavens, because it was of no use for their salvation. Biblical authors concentrated on bringing a relevant message to their audience that is concerned with faith in God. Believers accept that the purpose of the Bible is to inform them about God, their potential relationship with God, and the way to be reconciled unto God. In the famous words ascribed to Galileo Galilei, the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go.47 To discuss the relationship between the creation narratives in Genesis and science, it is essential to speak about the genre of the ancient narratives. Do they represent myth, history, religion, or science? To consider the question of a texts’ genre, one should start by analyzing the passages carefully. As discussed above, the definition one uses for “myth” has several implications. If one defines a myth as stories that are fanciful and untrue, then it is clear that the biblical accounts do not qualify as myths for believers in God. In applying such categorization to biblical narratives is tantamount to doing an injustice to the integrity of the narrators. However, when a myth refers to a story that explains phenomena and experiences, or an ideology that explains the cosmos and humanity’s origins, then the creation narratives in the Bible qualify to be classed as myths. Do the narratives contain historical accounts? Clearly, the author is concerned with historicity, as can be seen in the genealogies that trace Israel’s history back to the primaeval figures called Adam and Eve. But the accounts do not bear a resemblance to modern, positivistic conceptions or versions of 46 47

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 4. Quoted in Barrett, Science & Theology, 33.

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historiography that a historical account is based on the facts of events that set down exactly as it happened, using primary sources that provide reliable information about events. Historical interpretation in this view does not require any interpretation. Postmodernity asserts that all historical work necessarily has an ideological content determined by the assumptions used by the author, mostly unconsciously. Bradley Noel follows Foucault who believes that modernity erroneously believed that there is an objective body of knowledge that only needs to be discovered, that scholars possess an objective body of knowledge “that it is neutral or value-free” and that the pursuit of knowledge is always universal in its scope and benefits all humankind rather than just a specific class.48 The same is true of interpretation, that it is possible to give a neutral interpretation to a text, something that Kenneth Archer explains as impossible to do.49 Noel denies the ideal that a category such as a disinterested knower exists and that nobody can ever stand beyond history and human society. No vantage point offers certain and universal knowledge, implying that truth as theoretical and objective does not exist. Truth as a claim to knowledge cannot be validated by procedures devised by the appropriate scholarly community.50 The Genesis accounts are unique in the sense that it does not refer to the experiences of humanity but it is concerned with the acts of God. No human was present to see the creative acts. In the Bible, one finds a specific tension between the historical referent and authorial creativity in the writing of historical accounts that leaves room for creativity in the interpretation and presentation of the data.51 At times, authors dischronologize the events that are portrayed. It happens in the Gospels where information was moved for strategical rhetorical reasons and to emphasize a theological point, and it happens in Genesis when the creation days are ordered for literary reasons and not logical ones. God creates light before God creates sources of light. It will be argued that the discrepancy serves in Genesis 1 to critique Mesopotamian mythological and religious traditions. The symmetrical nature of the account, discussed in the next section, and its similarity with creation narratives found in the surrounding culture, including the widely used seven-day typology, suggest that the authors use stereotypical formulae to make the difficult subject understandable to those listening to them. The accounts are not concerned with historical veracity as such, but in bringing an important theological message to listeners finding themselves 48

Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 26. Archer, “Hermeneutics,” 109. 50 Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 26. 51 Waltke, Genesis, 76. 49

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in a hopeless situation, in the language and images they could understand, although later readers may not be informed about it. The agenda of the narrative was theological, to tell listeners that God created the universe in an orderly fashion and that God is in control and would take care that order would eventually be restored for the exiles who lost their country, king, and temple. Tremper Longman argues that to uncover the meaning of the text, some principles of interpretation are important.52 A first principle is to recognize the literary nature of the text by asking what kind it represents, how did ancient Hebrews tell stories, whether the text was written at one time and by a single person, and by asking what can be learnt from comparing it to ancient Near Eastern literature with the same contents. A second principle is to explore the historical background of the text. A third principle is to reflect on the theological teaching of the text, that comprises the reason for its inclusion in the Hebrew (and later Christian) canon. The last principle is to reflect on the contemporary situation.53 The creation accounts certainly have scientific dimensions in their description of flora and fauna, the origins of stars and other heavenly bodies, the systems needed for life, and other natural elements of the earth. But they are essentially different from scientific endeavors because they are concerned with different matters. Sciences investigate the forces and content of nature while the Genesis author is concerned with a transcendent Creator, a subject that science is disqualified from discussing because it cannot be observed by scientific measurements and instruments. While science’s results represent only a proximation of causes, Genesis 1-2 are concerned with the ultimate cause. They are not abstract statements about the origin of the universe and life, but pastoral and theological statements addressed to a real historical problem and people living in a specific historical situation. The challenge was to find a ground for faith in YHWH when the experiences in sixth-century BCE Babylon seemed to deny the rule of YHWH. It is a liturgy that cuts underneath the Babylonian experience and grounds the rule of the God of Israel in a more fundamental claim, that of God as the Creator of everything that exists. The text is not supposed to be used for general ruminations about the world but rather serves to be a ground for faith in YHWH when the more immediate experience is against it. It addresses the contemporary experience of abandonment, as found in sickness, poverty,

52 53

Longman, How to Read Genesis, 23. Longman, How to Read Genesis, 34.

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unemployment, and loneliness most effectively.54 And it invites the assembly of believers to confess and celebrate the world as God had intended it to be, even though it does not comply with the current experience of Judeans. The rhetoric and rhythm of command/execution/assessment permit and invite appropriate antiphons and responses from believers.55 They are not concerned with geological matters and genetic influences in creation but wish to explain who created the universe and humanity, and why. The author is not concerned with how God created but makes a statement about who the Creator is. Genesis and science also use different language. Science uses exact measurements that are converted into mathematical formulae, characterized by theoretical terminology while the creation narratives are in the language used every day by all people. If these anthropomorphic accounts of God are read literally, it implies that one should read other texts also literally, such as Psalm 139:13 that states that God knits humans together in their mothers’ wombs. To read it literally ignores the phenomenon of overcoding that occurs in the early narratives found in Genesis 1-11. For that reason, it is important to read them as literary creations and not as attempts to describe historical events, two approaches that mostly exclude each other. When read as literary expressions, the overcoding in Genesis 1-2 becomes clear, requiring that codes beyond the natural language are to be applied because of the figures of speech and genre of the narratives.56 In the words of Robert Alter, “Every culture, even every era in a particular culture, develops distinctive and sometimes intricate codes for telling its story.”57 However, John Lange is correct in his observation that the anthropopathic expression may be understood neither as literal-dogmatic nor as mythical, but as religio-symbolical, representing the divine in the analogy of human action. Human life, action, and image serve only as shadows to describe divine action and make it comprehensible.58 It is assumed that Genesis 1-2 functions as symbolical, metaphorical, and analogical and that they should be interpreted as such. Science serves as descriptions of what, how, and by what process things happen in the observable world while the creation narratives prescribe certain behavior when it answers the questions of who, why, and to what 54

Brueggemann, Genesis, 25. Brueggemann, Genesis, 30. 56 McKnight, Postmodern Use of the Bible, 221-2. 57 Alter, “How Convention Helps Us to Read,” 115. 58 Lange, Genesis, 192. 55

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purpose creation happened. Their purposes differ and they answer different questions; the religious narratives ask questions science cannot answer.59 They explore different aspects of human experience and humans’ impersonal encounter with a physical world that they transcend, that keeps science busy, and the personal encounter with the One who transcends them, keeping theology busy. They use different methods, science using the experimental procedure of putting matters to the test and theology confessing that the commitment of trust must underlie all personal encounter.60 They also address different communities of people that require different means of validation. The academic community requires science to provide empirical evidence for validation while Pentecostal believers who read Genesis find validation in the internal witness of the Spirit (testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti) to the theological truths of the accounts (Gen 8:16).61 This view takes the transformative power of the Spirit as evidenced in Scripture, and demonstrated in their daily lives.62 Although these accounts represent theology, they are not “theology” in the traditional sense of the word. Theology traditionally consists of a systematic exposition of doctrines that are derived from the Bible; the Genesis accounts provide narratives about divine matters.63 They are not busy with abstract truths and reasoning but tell a story of the Creator and the created. Their theological truths are represented in anthropomorphic language to inform their audience about a theocentric worldview and the reasons why humanity in general, and Israel in particular, stand in a unique relationship with their Creator. It is a worldview that depicts the earth as the stationary center of all created order, and the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies that orbit the earth.64 Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that the ancient image of the world found in Genesis 1 and 2 confronts contemporary people in all its scientific naïveté and appears altogether as absurd. Here the biblical author is exposed as one whose knowledge is bound by all the limitations of the author’s own time.65 59

Waltke, Genesis, 75. Barrett, Science & Theology, 10. 61 Tackett, “As People of the Gospel,” 22. 62 Solivan, Spirit, Pathos, and Liberation, 96. 63 In pentecostal parlance, “theology” is viewed in terms that are related to an antiintellectual approach (Hollenweger, “Critical Tradition of Pentecostalism,” 7). They read biblical narratives to order their own encounters with God, and then “theologize” about such encounters. They do not use the traditional Western concept of “tradition” as the systematic exposition of doctrines. 64 Barrett, Science & Theology, 24. 65 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 50. 60

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This is only one of the reasons why a literal reading of the text based on the theory of verbal inspiration and inerrancy will not do. A literalistic reading of the Old Testament requires one to accept the biblical cosmological model that reflects Aristotle’s First Cause, that the earth was at the center of everything, that everything else moved in perfect circles around it, and that the celestial objects were perfect while the earth was imperfect.66 This stands in direct opposition to the heliocentric view that Copernicus developed, that the earth is simply another planet that orbits the sun. Eventually, this worldview would change into one where our solar system is only one of the billions of solar systems, each consisting of billions of stars and that the galaxy, of which our solar system is a part, is not in the center of the cosmos but somewhere aside. The worldview also favors human beings as the crown of creation, as representatives of the reign of the Creator God.

Literary analysis A literary analysis of the narratives provides interesting results, indicating that the narratives are deliberately highly structured. Long ago, readers already remarked that the six days of creation stand in a relationship with each other. Day 1 Creation of light Day 2 Creation of sky and seas Day 3 Creation of land and plants

Day 4 Creation of lights – sun, moon, stars Day 5 Creation of birds and fish Day 6 Creation of animals and humans Day 7 Sabbath67

The first creation narrative can be summarised by way of literary analysis: Introduction to nonfunctional situation (1:1-2) Setting of functions: Days 1-3 (1:3-13) Installing functionaries: Days 4-6 (1:14-31)

66

Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 423. Petty, Science & God, 77 suggests that the rhythmic and highly crafted nature of the creation days can be considered as a hymn or a prayer. However, the inference cannot be proven and reflects personal taste. 67

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Sabbath: Day 7 (2:1-3)68 Walter Bruggemann makes the important remark that the structure of the narrative is important, for it bears a part of the message, regarding Genesis 1:3-25.69 The structure is symmetrical as it moves in a careful sequence of time (“there were evening and morning…); command (“God said: ‘Let there be…”); execution (“And it was so”); assessment (“God saw that it was good”); and time (“there were evening and morning…”). The structure demonstrates the good order of the created world under the serene rule of God. The order of “evening and morning” represents the Hebrew day starting at sunset and ending just before sunset the following day. However, not all agree. Victor Matthews, Mark Chavalas and John Walton think the narrative speaks of the evening first because the first time period of light is just coming to a close. They add that for the narrator, light is the regulator of time.70 The central element in the rhetorical pattern is the movement of commanding to execution. Everything happens exactly as God says. The world and its design are not due to accidental or autonomous factors because it is based on God’s will. The implication is clear: the shape of reality can only be understood as the purpose of God, affirming to exiles who might have started to doubt whether the world is still in the purview of YHWH, while it seemed as though the Babylonian gods had conquered the Judean monarchy and temple cult and extinguished Judeans’ hope. Creation is because God commands it to be, and it exists with God’s permission.71 The interesting feature is that God creates light in a world characterised by darkness before God creates the sources of light. Already in biblical times, people would have realized that it is not logical and that the author was saying something about light and darkness that moves further than the physical objects of light found in the celestial sphere. When God speaks, light prevails over the darkness of God-forsakenness, even without creating sources of light. In the second pair of creation days, the inhabitants of the sky and the seas are created in conjunction with the creation of the sky and the seas. And in the last pair, the creation of land and plants stands in conjunction with animals and humans, establishing a pattern for listeners to

68

Walton, NIV Application Commentary, 57. Brueggemann, Genesis, 30. 70 Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary, Gen 1:3–5. 71 Brueggemann, Genesis, 30. 69

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remember the detail but also emphasizing the order that resulted from God’s creative acts. The seventh day stands in a unique position because it is not paired with any day, underlining that God has completed the creation and now rests from the work. It stands apart in content and structure, implying the importance of the seventh day for Israel.72 Victor Matthews, Mark Chavalas and John Walton explain that in the Egyptian creation account from Memphis, the creator god Ptah rests after the completion of his work. Likewise, the creation of human beings is followed by rest for the Mesopotamian gods, but the rest is brought into focus by stating that people have been created to do the work, leaving time for recreation for the gods. It is clear that the desire for rest is one of the motivating elements driving these creation narratives, is the conclusion of the three authors. “The containment or destruction of chaotic cosmic forces that is often a central part of ancient creation narratives leads to rest, peace or repose for the gods.” For Hebrew listeners, the narrative explains that God does not require rest from either cosmic or human disturbances but seeks rest in a dwelling place (as in Ps 132:7–8, 13–14).73 Umberto Cassuto shows that the prelude to the first creation narrative (1:12) and the tailpiece (2:1-3) have common features that betray that the narrative was carefully composed.74 The themes of “creation,” “God,” and “heavens and earth” reappears in the tailpiece but in reverse order: 2:3 God rested from the work in creation; 2:2 On the seventh day God finished; 2:1 The heavens and earth were finished. By inverting the key concepts, the account is brought to a graceful ending. However, there are also other common features that Cassuto lifts out. Genesis 1:1 has seven words, 1:2 has fourteen (7 x 2) words, and 2:1-3 has 35 (7 x 5) words. The narrative hinges on the seven days in which creation took place. In ancient times, the dedication of a new temple took seven days, with the seventh day as the climax of celebrations, when the gods are supposed to move into the temple. John Walton also explains the creation of the world to the building of a temple.75 At the end of the day, the world is not created as a beneficial place for human beings to dwell in, but as 72 In the New Testament, the order was changed. to demonstrate that Christians rest before they work because Christ completed the act of atonement whereby their relationship with God was restored once for all. Their Sabbath speaks of eternal rest in Christ (Heb 4:9). 73 Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary, Ge 2:1–3. 74 Cassuto, Commentary on Genesis I to VI, 21. 75 Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature, 26.

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God’s dwelling place, living among human beings and holding regular communion with them. It is clear that the number seven has a specific significance and associations for the author. And not only for this author, but the number seven also plays an important role in many other narratives and legal provisions of Israel. The seventh day of the week is holy, and so is the seventh month and the seventh year (Lev 23:23-43; 25:8-22). Jericho was circled on seven days and seven times on the seventh day, headed by seven priests blowing seven trumpets before the city fell before the Israelites (Josh 6). In the first creation narrative, several important key themes and phrases are repeated in multiples of seven. The term “God” occurs thirty-five times, “heavens” and “earth” both occur twenty-one times, and the phrases “and it was so” and “God saw that it was good” both occur seven times. A literary analysis shows the intricate way the creation days are ordered. Eight acts of creation occur in six days with two acts of creation each on the third and sixth days, enhancing the parallels between the first and second three days. Each separate day begins with “And God said,” containing the divine command of creation, for a total of ten times, followed by the command, “let there be,” for eight times, and ending with the fulfilment formula, “And it was so,” the execution formula, “And God made,” the approval formula, “And God saw that it was good,” a divine word or naming or blessing, and the mention of the days. All the formulae are grouped in sevens, and that is the reason why the approval formula is omitted in vv. 68, the execution formula in v. 9, and the fulfillment formula in v. 20. Kenneth Mathews shows the parallels in the structure of the first creation narrative graphically: UNPRODUCTIVE BECOMES PRODUCTIVE Day 1 Light and Darkness Day 2 Sky and Waters Day 3 a. Land and Seas b. Vegetation

76

UNINHABITED BECOMES INHABITED Day 4 Luminaries Day 5 Fish and Fowl Day 6 a. Beasts b. Human: male and female76

Taken from Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 115–116.

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The seventh day provides the conclusion of the week and has no matching element, but it is distinctive in many ways from the former six, to emphasize its unique character, as a day of rest and consecration. The author deliberately structures the narrative to emphasize the order that characterizes creation and God’s might to create a world by speaking alone. At the same time, the use of the number seven in various highly imaginative ways emphasizes the seventh day, which is unique in terms of the other six creation days. The narrative is framed in such a way that Israel’s God is portrayed as the one and only true Creator Lord without any rival.77 While the myths of surrounding nations reflect a heavenly imitation of what happens on earth, with the earth serving as a playground for capricious deities, the God of Israel was viewed as the lord and creator of nature that cares for creation. The fundamental premise is that God is the Sovereign Lord above and over nature, not bound up in the process of creation nor a fertility participant in the cycle of life and death, plenty and famine. There is no Hebrew theogony. God has neither a father nor a consort. “The idea of creation by the word preserves first of all the most radical essential distinction between Creator and creature. Creation cannot be even remotely considered an emanation from God; it is not somehow an overflow or reflection of his being, i.e., of his divine nature, but rather is a product of his personal will.”78 That the first creation narrative is placed first in the work of the compiler that eventually led to the book of Genesis, implies that the narrative serves as a prelude to the book as a whole, and this is confirmed by several themes introduced here that come up again and again in the rest of the book, such as human sinfulness, God’s creative powers, creation and re-creation, etc.

Genesis 1:1-2 Literally, Genesis 1:1 reads “At the beginning (B’rêshîth), God created the heavens and the earth.”79 John Lange suggests that b’rêshîth might have been employed deliberately to denote an absolute principium, unlimited and unconditioned by any other thing or time. The construct form best denotes the beginning of a creation, or of some creation, or some assumed point of

77

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 117. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 118–119. 79 Bereshith forms the title of the book in the Hebrew canon, in conformity with the custom that is also found in the Enuma Elish. 78

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commencement in it, which is determined by the context.80 Bede the Venerable of the eighth century CE, makes the important remark that God, who created the world before the beginning of time, had existed eternally before time. God created the heavens and the earth at the very inception of time, and the swiftness of the outcome declares the omnipotence of the One who can will an act, and it is done. It also illustrates the preexistence of the Creator.81 Bereshith lacks the definite article, perhaps implying that Genesis 1 describes the “beginning” of God’s creative process, not the absolute beginning of the world. Genesis 1:1 refers to the primordial past and not the beginning of time. Genesis 1’s creation is from chaos, not out of nothing (ex nihilo).82 Bereshith is an adverb, followed by “he created” (bƗrƗ’), implying that a subordinate clause is being used that anticipates that the main clause will be provided. The verb that refers to creation (bara’) is not used only concerning God, implying effortless creative abilities, as some commentators suggest, but it is also used for an act of salvation, implying the emergence of something new, as used in Deutero-Isaiah 40:26, 28; 42:5; 47:7, 12, 18.83 The use of the verb only here in the sentence is not proper Hebrew syntax; in Hebrew, a sentence starts with a verb. However, this sequence characterizes Akkadian in which the Enuma Elish was written (where the first words, used as the title of the work, represents an adverbial form). It seems that the author of Genesis 1 might deliberately have imitated the Mesopotamian epic to inform listeners that the narrative serves as a parody on the epic.84 John Walton emphasizes that existence should be defined not in terms of the material. The definition of existence that encompasses the wide variety of objects associated with bƗrƗ’ is the definition that dominates the ancient Near Eastern cognitive environment, emphasizing a functional rather than 80

Lange, Genesis, 126. Bede the Venerable, Commentary on Genesis, 114. 82 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 16. The early Jewish-Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo found its first expression in 2 Macc 7:28, and later in John 1:3; Rom 4:17; Col 1:16 and Heb 11:3 (Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 33). Genesis 1 does not preclude or defend the possibility; in terms of the earth, it is clear that God used existing material created at an earlier stage. 83 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 23. 84 The extent to which the Enuma elish influenced the creation narratives in Genesis is not clear and scholars differ about it. Fact is that points of contact between the two documents are few and far between, in the words of Walton (“Interactions in the Ancient Cognitive Environment,” 335). None of the supposed connections and similarities are close enough to necessarily suggest borrowing (Walton, “Interactions in the Ancient Cognitive Environment,” 336). 81

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material existence. In Israelite ontology, existence is concerned with a function and a distinguishable role in an ordered system. The term bƗrƗ’ carries within it the latent idea of separation, as it is applied in cosmological contexts. The best translation of the verb in Genesis 1, Walton suggests, is “to bring something into functional existence,” implying that the establishment of order is often accomplished by making a distinction as roles, status, and identity. Genesis 1:1 then becomes, “In the initial period, God brought cosmic functions into existence.”85 The result of bƗrƗ’ is the establishment of order by separating and naming the roles and functions. Another term is also used, ‘Ɨsâ. This is a more complicated term than bƗrƗ’. It is used no less than 2,600 times in the Old Testament and can have several meanings. It implies that the correct translation of the term in Genesis 1 is not necessarily “to make.” The verb occurs in Exodus 20:11 as well, “in six days the LORD made (Ɨsâ) heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it,” and it is clear that it refers to the same context as in Genesis 1. Exodus 20:8-11 explains that for six days, people are to do (‘Ɨsâ) all their work but they are not supposed to do (‘Ɨsâ) so on the seventh day. The implication is that God also did all God’s work in six days before God rested on the seventh day after completing (Ɨsâ) God’s work. Now Exodus 20 alludes to Genesis 2:2-3, that explains that the work of doing (‘Ɨsâ) was the same as the work of creating (bƗrƗ’) that God had done (‘Ɨsâ). In other words, bƗrƗ’ is what God “does” (‘Ɨsâ). And bƗrƗ’ is associated with the establishment of order and function. To translate bƗrƗ’, several terms can be used constructively, including “provide” and “prepare;” God provided the earth with the sun and moon, with dry land apart from the waters, and with vegetation. However, other interesting alternatives can also be used to translate the term, such as “to take under your care,” “to celebrate,” “to assign,” “to appoint,” or “to establish.”86 The author begins the narrative with a theologically loaded wordplay in the first sentence and emphasizes the start of the narrative with the alliterative sequence: bČrƝ’šit bČrǀ’, “In the beginning when (God) created …”87 The

85

Walton, Genesis 1, 132-3. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 30. 87 Arnold, Genesis, 37. 86

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wordplay helps to emphasize the first word and anticipates the manner in which God creates by bringing order and shape to the existing matter. What is the syntactical relationship between verses 1 and 2, and their relationship to verse 3? Traditionally verse 1 was taken as an independent sentence; most early translations follow it. Then verse 1 serves as a superscription or title, and 1:2-2:3 becomes a commentary on the “how.” God develops the chaos of verse 2 into an ordered world. John Walton believes that the Masoretic pointing and traditional reading of bČrƝ’šit as an independent clause are warranted by the observation that this clause shows much affinity with Egyptian phrasing, rather than with the Enuma Elish.88 B’rêshîth means literally “In beginning,” not “In the beginning,” which would be “Bârêshîth.” Consequently, Ryle contends that “B’rêshîth,” being grammatically in “the construct state,” should be translated “In the beginning of,” or “In the beginning when”; and not, as if in the absolute state, “In the beginning.”89 If b’rêshîth is in the construct state, verse 1 serves as the protasis; verse 2 as a parenthesis, and verse 3 as the apodosis: “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth (now the earth was waste..), then God said, ‘Let there be light.’” Then verse 1 is a summary statement describing the “first” creation that consisted of the heavens and the earth, and verse 2 serves as a description of the kind of earth God created at first. The description of the “second” creation then starts at verse 3. Verse 1 is then an initial step in creating the world, separate from the creation described in verses 3-31. A third approach that is preferred in this research because it represents the best interpretation of verse 1 is that verses 1-3 are translated, as in other ancient creation accounts, as a subordinate, temporal clause, independent from the rest. It translates, “In the beginning, when God created … the earth was a formless void …” (see NRSV). The second alternative of translation is to take verse 1 as a temporal clause, making verse 1 dependent on verse 3, rather than verse 2. It then translates as, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, and the earth was unformed and void … God said …”90 Some scientists claim that the universe had no beginning, implying that there is no need for any creator. That the universe was created, however, does not necessarily imply that the universe had a beginning some finite 88

Walton, Genesis 1, 125. Ryle, Book of Genesis, 2. 90 Arnold, Genesis, 35. 89

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time ago.91 This distinction was made by Thomas Aquinas who explained that it is possible to prove philosophically that the universe is created, but it is not possible to prove philosophically that the universe had a beginning rather than having existed for an infinite time. While it is true that anything created by a human being was created a finite time ago, this is not true for God who does not create in the same way as human beings. God is the cause of the universe but that does not necessarily imply that the existence of the universe had a beginning. The beginning must be distinguished from the origin. To use an analogy that will be utilized again in a later chapter, a playwright’s play originated in the mind of the playwright, but the beginning of the play is in the first moments suggested by the first act. The playwright is the origin and reason for the play. In the same way, what happened at the moments of the creation of the universe represents the beginning of the universe. The origin of the universe is in the mind of God. One cannot answer the question as to why there are a universe and life forms on earth by looking at the universe alone; one has to go beyond the universe to “consult” the mind of God. The beginning of the universe, like the opening of a play, has nothing to do with the cause of its existence. It is possible to imagine a universe without beginning and end that still requires a creator.92 The beginning of the universe also represents the beginning of time, as Augustine showed in the fifth century CE, an insight discovered by modern physics only in the twentieth century. It makes no sense to speak about any time passing “before creation” because “time” represents a created thing, implying that it had a beginning. God existed in a dimension in which time (and space?) does not play any role. God exists “outside of time,” dwelling in the “sublimity of an ever-present eternity.”93 As something physical, as Albert Einstein’s theory of General and Special Relativity proposes, time and space form a space-time manifold or fabric that is acted upon by other physical entities and acts upon them in turn. Space and time do not exist over and above them. Space-time can bend, flex, and ripple and such distortions carry energy and momentum, the same as all physical entities do. Before the beginning of the existence of any physical entities, space-time also did not exist. It began at the point of beginning of the physical universe.94

91

Barr, Believing Scientist, 123. Barr, Believing Scientist, 124. 93 Augustine, Confessions, 46, 119. 94 Discussed in Barr, Believing Scientist, 124-25. 92

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At this stage, “the heavens” refer to the universe apart from “the earth” and it represents a Semitic merism, a linguistic phenomenon in which a combination of two contrasting parts of the whole refers to the whole. In the rest of the narrative, the term “the heavens” is restricted to the domed sky created in verses 6-7. Verses 9-10 define “the earth” in terms of the habitation of humans and animals. The term “heavens, skies” is used in the plural form only in the Old Testament.95 The “formless void” (tǀhǎ wƗbǀhǎ) reflects two Hebrew words. The second word of the pair looks like a nonce term to Robert Alter that is coined, especially to rhyme with the first and to reinforce it.96 The Hebrew words (tǀhǎ wƗbǀhǎ) refer to a condition that is without form and empty, resulting in the translation found several times of “waste and void.” Herbert Ryle correctly states that the Hebrew tǀhǎ wƗbǀhǎ is not translatable.97 The Septuagint’s translation is ਕȩȡĮIJȠȢ țĮ੿ ਕțĮIJĮıțİȪĮıIJȠȢ, “invisible and unformed,” and fails to provide the Hebrew meaning. The Latin, inanis et vacua (“void and empty”), is closer to the original. The alliteration of the Hebrew terms cannot be reproduced in English. Ryle suggests that “void and vacant” would represent something of the sense and the sound. The idea of the expression is that at the beginning the earth was a chaotic waste and now, for the first three days of creation, God is to give the earth a recognizable shape. The expression can be translated in two main ways, as two separate descriptive terms connected by “and,” for example, “unformed and void” (as in NIV), or as the main word with an added descriptive term, as, “formless wasteland” (in NAB).98 The earth is described as an unfilled mass covered by water and darkness.99 Several translations imply that the formless matter was an initial creative act of God (NEB, NAB, Good News Bible). When the two words are used in combination in later biblical texts, the context always describes a situation that resulted from judgment (as in Isa 34:11; Jer 4:23). That does not suppose that the situation in which the earth found itself before the creation events of Genesis 1 necessarily implies that the prior world was judged by God. Later usage of the terms cannot determine earlier use. Darkness symbolizes judgment (Ex 10:21), death (Ps 88:13), oppression

95

Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew Step by Step, 6. Alter, Genesis, 21. 97 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 4. 98 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 30. 99 NET Bible, 1. 96

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(Isa 9:1), the wicked (1 Sam 2:9), and sin, in other words, whatever opposed God. In this context, it is significant that God first created light. Previously it was thought that tǀhǎ refers to watery chaos while the second (bǀhǎ) refers to a desert, both of which were threatening contexts in which Palestinians lived. However, a difference of opinion prevails about the meaning of the words. Some argue that the first refers to a desert since the Syrian Ugaritic thw refers to a wilderness. David Tsumura prefers to translate it as “earth that is not yet productive.”100 The implication is that both words refer to the same concept, justifying a translation such as “formless void” or as the KJV translates, “without form and void.” John Walton argues that “desert” is also not a good translation for the second concept; it rather refers to formless matter that existed before creation.101 Chaos clearly played a significant role in the thought of ancient people; the term is used to refer to indescribable and invisible forces that seemingly threaten human existence on a large scale. In another publication, John Walton describes the use of the two words as a hendiadys (two words that should be taken together to refer to a larger whole or one concept) and suggests that the term refers to the absence of form and order, described as a wasteland. It describes non-productivity, nonfunctionality, and purposelessness.102 Genesis 1:1’s “darkness covered the face of the deep” (Heb. t’hôm,103 LXX ਕȕȪııȠȣ, Lat. abyssi) also presents several interesting perspectives. “The face of the deep” refers to the surface of the deep waters upon which the earth is said to rest (Gen 7:11; 8:2; 49:25), and it can refer to a deep place, such as an “abyss,” or, more likely, to the deep waters of the unformed or surging oceans, such as in “raging ocean” or “primitive ocean.”104 “Deep” (tČhôm) is related to Tiamat, the Mesopotamian goddess of chaos. The Hebrew term is used thirty-five times in the Old Testament, of which thirty-four times are without the definite article. Where the article is used, it refers to a deep ocean but when it is missing, one can infer that it applies to a name, implying that the deep should be personified. The link with the Mesopotamian Tiamat is clear. However, the creation narrative leaves no 100

Tsumura, Creation and Destruction, 80. Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 140. 102 Walton, Genesis 1, 140-41. 103 ʭˣʤˢʍ “depth, abyss” nearly never takes the definite article in the Old Testament (Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew Step by Step, 6. 104 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 31. 101

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room that this personification presents an active threat to the work of the Creator God at work in the narrative. The author hints at a divine personification but then rejects the notion. The “wind from God” that “swept over the face of the earth” may serve as a veiled reference to the battle between the Mesopotamian creator deity and the goddess of chaos (Chaoskampf).105 Again the author uses an image known to listeners but then rejects the idea that chaos can present any real opposition to God. No battle is needed, and the wind obeys the Creator, as would happen later when Jesus spoke to the roaring wind (Mark 4:35-41). The verb attached to the breath-wind-spirit that comes from God elsewhere described an eagle fluttering over its young and so might have a connotation of parturition or nurture as well as rapid back-and-forth movement.106 “Wind (rǎach) from God” can also be translated as “Spirit of” or “a spirit from” God. It may refer to a being within the divine being, divine power and force, or the essence of God. John Walton warns, however, that rǎach is never translated as “wind” or “mighty wind” elsewhere when the term is modified by ‘Ɵlohim.107 He suggests that rǎach should be translated as “spirit” of God but understood as having taken on some of the roles of the wind(s) known from ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, and the activity of the spirit of God should be considered in relation to the potentiality inherent in the pre-creation state.108 Whatever the contextual meaning of the term, the implication is clear that in Genesis 1:1 it refers to a “most powerful and direct fashion” in which God is involved in the formless void that would become the earth and life.109 In the words of John Calvin, before God had perfected the world, it was an undigested mass. How could such a disorderly heap stand? The power of the Spirit was necessary in order to sustain it. However confused the mass might have been, it was rendered stable, for the time, by the secret efficacy of the Spirit. It might mean either that the Spirit moved and agitated itself over the waters, for the sake of putting forth vigour; or that the Spirit brooded over it to cherish it. The implication is that

105

Gunkel, Creation and Chaos, 106. Alter, Genesis, 21. 107 Walton, Genesis 1, 146. He finds three differences between the rǎach of Genesis 1 and the wind in ancient Near Eastern myths: wind is not part of the pre-creation state in ancient Near Eastern cosmological texts; it is not deified or personified in the ancient Near East; and in Genesis 1, the rǎach does not roil the waters aggressively. 108 Walton, Genesis 1, 141. 109 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 22. 106

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chaos required the secret inspiration of God to prevent its speedy dissolution.110

Genesis 1:3-5 The first day sees the separation of light and darkness, two concepts that especially played a significant role in Egypt with the interplay of light and darkness in the divine realm. In Egyptian accounts, the creation of light is normally the first creative act, when the sun god Ra brings light and life in the day; during the night, the chaos of darkness rules. However, it is probable that the biblical narrative rather critiques sarcastically the Mesopotamian view that Marduk is the source of light, separate from the sun, in Mark Smith’s opinion. While Genesis 1 relates that the creation of lights happens on the first day, the sun and moon as sources of light are only created on the fourth day. What the biblical author does is to admit that light and the sun present two different sources but then continues to explain that light is not the supposed god but a created object, like the deep and chaos. It is unconnected to the divine.111 Ezekiel 8:16 refers to sun worship that took place in Judah during the monarchial period. It might be that the biblical author is disconnecting light from God by describing it as a created object on the first day, with an additional disconnection between God and the sun on the fourth day.112 That God separates light and darkness implies, according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that the light unveils and creates form, ordering the chaos and unveiling form. Without the light things cannot exist over against each other. Now the form can become aware of existing over against something else and so becomes aware of its own existence. This is the work of the first word of the Creator, and now the creation can see the Creator’s light.113 Verse 4 concludes that God sees that the light is good (tôb). “God looks at God’s work and is pleased with it because it is good. This means that God loves God’s work and therefore wills to uphold and preserve it.”114 The divine evaluation that occurs throughout the creation narrative implies that the notion of goodness is weaved into the very fabric of creation.115 This 110

Calvin, Commentary on the First Book , 73–74. Smith, Priestly Vision, 77-78. 112 Smith, Priestly Vision, 84. 113 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 43–44. 114 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 45. 115 Niditch, Oral Word and Written Word, 14. 111

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does not refer to moral or ethical goodness; God’s perfect work cannot produce any evil or bad thing. It is rather a way to state that it is exactly what God intended to do in the creative acts. God, as an artisan, examines God’s work and finds that it meets expectations. It fulfills God’s purpose in creating it. In the words of Kenneth Mathews, the divine evaluation indicates that God is Judge, as well as Landlord, who evaluates the consequences of God’s creative word (1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). The meaning of tôb is fluid, used for that which is happy, beneficial, aesthetically beautiful, morally righteous, preferable, of superior quality, or of ultimate value. “Light” is declared “good” because it accomplishes its purpose, of dispelling the “darkness” (v. 2).116 That God names the light and darkness, identifying it as day and night, is repeated throughout the narrative. An interesting side remark is that the expected definite article before “day” is omitted here, as is the case with all six days.117 The implication is not clear. The emphasis on naming only makes sense when one understands the ancient Hebrew traditions of giving a name. The function of one’s name is more significant and meaningful in the ancient world than most contemporary names because a name represents more than a way of identifying someone. Names frequently serve a hypostatic function, describing the very essence of an individual. Naming is often also determinative of existence. The naming of day, night, sky, earth, and seas result in the establishment of the essential components of the universe. The act of naming, an important feature in the narrative, indicates the existence (“being”) of the element named as well as God’s authority over God’s creation. However, the capacity to name also involves the authority to designate in some sense the character, essence, or unique ways of being in the world of the objects being names. Names create relationships, establish linkages, and join objects and people with one another.118 It is God’s exclusive privilege and prerogative that God shared and extended to the first human being, who gives the animals their designation, calling his companion “woman” (2:19, 23; 3:20).119 The giving of a name is a creative activity and related to function. As a part of the human task of subduing and ruling the world, humans assign functions to the animals, determining what roles they would play, as an important element of their task as vice-regents

116

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 146. Alter, Genesis, 21. 118 O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 53. 119 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 147. 117

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for God.120 In the second set of creative acts, the other components are derived from these components. On the second day, God separates the waters from the waters, calling into mind the image of Marduk fighting the seven-headed dragon goddess, Tiamat, made of water and representing chaos. Marduk splits her like a fish and uses the one part to function both as the waters above the firmament and the other as the waters on earth, and the land. Tiamat reappears in the Old Testament, as Tannin, Leviathan, and Rahab (or sometimes, the “sea”). But here the water does not refer to a divine being or a beast; it is an object that God uses in the creative act. And there is no combat between God and water; God speaks, and every existing object obeys what God says while God’s words also create what does not exist. Marduk, the Babylonian creator, proves his worth by creating a star with his words that also disappears at his command; the god Ptah in Egyptian Memphite theology creates employing his heart and tongue. In the same way, Israel’s God speaks something into existence that did not previously and independently existed.121 It should also be remarked that only at first God creates by speaking in this narrative; in the rest of the narrative, God speaks as well as takes action to “make” or bring about the feature of creation.

Genesis 1:6-13 Genesis 1:6’s “firmament” or “dome” (ˆʔ ʩ ʑʷʸ,ʕ rakia,) refers to a hard bowl. The noun comes from the verb “to stamp” and “to spread,” implying that the dome was stretched out like a tent or hammered out like a burnished metal bowl.122 It refers to the whole region of the air, the area above the earth. The heavens and the lower atmosphere is referred to as rakia. The word is used to signify both the heaves and the lower atmosphere or only one part. John Calvin writes that the Greek word used in the LXX to render the word is ıIJİȡȑȦȝĮ, which the Latins have imitated in the term firmamentum. However, this limits the meaning of the word to only one aspect, for literally, it means expanse.123 Holes in the bowl allow rain and hail to fall on the earth, but the durability of the bowl guarantees that life on earth would not be flooded and wiped out by the watery chaos existing above the 120

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 40. Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 111. 122 Hamilton, Book of Genesis, 122. 123 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 79. 121

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earth. The “dome,” “firmament,” or “expanse” consists of an expanse of air pressure that exists between the clouds and the water that covers the earth. Its purpose is to separate the water above the dome from the water found on earth. When it rains, the dome is rent so that water streams to the earth; a problem would be if the dome were to tear, annihilating life on earth in a flood, as occurs during the flood described in Genesis 7. Passages such as Job 26; 38; Psalms 74; 89; 106; 148 and Proverbs 8 suggest that the God of Israel won in the momentous struggle against the forces of evil represented by Tannin, Rahab, Leviathan, the ocean, or Tiamat. However, Genesis 1 makes short drift by stating that God orders and separates the chaos to form the basic products that would support life on earth. Genesis 1 represents a solid monotheistic argument. The third day sees the separation of land and the water beneath the firmament. This makes good sense for people who live in swamplands and applies to the south of Mesopotamia when people started draining the marshlands to farm there, as happened since about 6000 BCE. Their struggle to gain land that can be tilled from the watery swamp started with their separation of land and water. With the garden of Eden probably situated somewhere in southern Mesopotamia, the imagery in Genesis 2 suits that description as well. “Eden” serves as a reference to a geographical area of which the garden was a part. For this reason, “Eden” is used both of the garden itself and for a larger region. In Genesis 2:8, 10 the toponym “Eden” occurs by itself; “garden of Eden” is found in 2:15; 3:23–24 (also Ezek 36:35; Joel 2:3).124 Outside Genesis, Eden appears in apposition with “garden” (Ezek 28:13).125 Now God creates vegetation that comes from the earth, consisting of plants that yield seed, and fruit trees of every kind. The verb “put forth” and the noun “vegetation,” as verb and object, come from the same root, and implies that the vegetation had no existence before God’s spoken command. The wordplay illustrates God’s rhetoric as a creative force that is also 124

The garden is described as the “garden of YHWH” (Gen 13:10; also Isa 51:3) and later “garden of Elohim” in Ezek 28:13; 31:9. It implies that God is its Owner. In ancient Near Eastern mythology, a “garden of God” motif is found that depicts the divine residence on earth that possesses abundant waters (the Hebrew ҵƝden probably is derived from West Semitic and means “a place of abundant waters”), fertile herbage, and beautiful stones. In Gen 2, “garden of God” or “garden of the LORD” is absent. It is not God’s dwelling place but the place where God meets with humankind. 125 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 199.

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rhetorically artistical.126 This is also where God hands over God’s creative power, encouraging and empowering the earth to put forth on its own. An important question to answer is, how do we know when an author intends to use figurative language? It is not always clear that a particular passage is figurative. However, in the creation narratives, several elements clearly stand out as figurative, such as animals coming “from the earth” (Gen 2:19). Can the use of “days” in Genesis 1 be understood as figurative? A literal interpretation denies it, as Kurt Strassner, for example, argues that although 2 Peter 3:8 states that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day, the creation narrative repeatedly explains that on each day there was evening and there was morning, implying the normal sequence of one twenty-four-hour day.127 However, there are certain signals that the author does not intend for us to use the reference to seven “days” to reconstruct an actual weeklong creation process.128 The rhetorical shaping illustrates that the creation account is not presenting an account of material origins but that it is rather equating it to the seven days of temple inauguration. This is demonstrated by, for instance, the fact that sun, moon, and stars do not come into being until the fourth day, which makes Origen notice that no person of intelligence will find the account logically consistent when the days refer to a period of twenty-four hours if there were no sun, moon, or stars to point out the end of a day and the beginning of night time.129 On the third day, God completes two creative acts, in contrast to the rest of the days. It might be that the eight creation acts were to be fitted into a week when that format was introduced to the narrative.130 The implication is clear, that the first creation narrative had more than one author and editor. Eventually, an old narrative(s) was utilized to bring a theological message to people in a situation that they had never experienced before, the Babylonian exile. The first three days, in conclusion, relate how creation took place by way of the separation of elements while the next three days see the population of the earth. The concept of separation, central to the creation narrative in Genesis 1, demonstrates the extent to which Genesis is at home in the 126

Arnold, Genesis, 42. Strassner, Opening up Genesis, 22–23. 128 Longman and Walton, Lost World of the Flood, 25-6. 129 Quoted in Longman and Walton, Lost World of the Flood, 26. 130 Gunkel, Creation and Chaos, 119-120. 127

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cognitive environment of ancient Near Eastern cosmogony, for these activities permeate both Egyptian and Mesopotamian accounts.131

Genesis 1:14-19 The sun is created on the fourth day while the light was created already on the first day. The reason for the strange discrepancy is that it is needed to fit into the scheme in which the narrative is cast. A further reason might be that ancient people saw the light of the early morning that appeared before the sun rose over the horizon, making it logical to assume that light existed separately from the sun, moon, and stars.132 The sequence of sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:16 reverses the sequence used in the Enuma Elish, probably deliberately for the sake of informed listeners who were familiar with the Mesopotamian myths.133 For priests, the calendar serves an important function to arrange the cultic services, and in ancient times the sun and moon delineated time. It served to delineate YHWH’s sacred seasons and appointed feasts. That is the reason for the emphasis in the narrative on the sun and moon. While Mesopotamians used the cycle of time for cultic purposes in terms of a year, Genesis 1 (and the Israelite religion) emphasized the week of seven days, with the seventh day as the highlight and most sacred day of each week.

Genesis 1:20-25 God creates the “great sea monsters” or “great monsters” (tannin; the word is used for monsters, or creatures of strange and monstrous size, as found in mythological and poetical pictures, such as the dragon, Behemoth, and Leviathan [Ps 74:13; 148:7; Isa 27; 51:9], the crocodile [Ezek 29:3], and snakes [Ex 7:9])134 that swim in the ocean on the fifth day, according to Genesis 1:21. It most probably relates to the Mesopotamian myth where Tunnan or Tunnanu is defeated by the storm-god Baal in the north Canaanite or Syrian version of the creation battle.135 Robert Utley thinks that it may refer to leviathan. The word is associated with Israel’s enemies, such as Egypt (Isa 51:9; Ezek 29:3; 32:2, also referred to as “Rahab” in Ps 89:10; Isa 51:9), and Babylon (Jer 51:34). It is also associated with cosmic enemies 131

Walton, Genesis 1, 162. Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 27. 133 Hamilton, Book of Genesis, 128. 134 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 15. 135 Hurowitz, “Genesis of Genesis,” 46. 132

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(Job 7:12; Ps 74:13; Isa 27:1). In the creation accounts of the Canaanites, leviathan represents a god fighting against Baal. In the Bible, leviathan is always under the control of God and a part of God’s creation.136 Psalm 74:13-14 sketches tannin as a seven-headed dragon but here tannin refers to animals created by God as a part of the population of earth. Tiamat is only a created animal, under the control of the Creator.137 It is striking and remarkable that the words, “and God saw that it was good,” which was used after the creation of the water animals and the birds (v. 22), is now omitted. Herbert Ryle speculates that it is because the description of the sixth day has become very long in comparison with that of the previous five days, or verses 28–30’s blessing on humankind may be considered to embrace also the living creatures created on the same sixth day.138

Genesis 1:26-31 If the highlight of the first creation narrative is the emphasis on the seventh day as a Sabbath, the creation of man in Genesis 1:26 ranks as the second most significant element.139 The kind of divine speech changes abruptly in verse 26. In previous creative acts, God spoke things into existence (“Let there be …, “let the waters gather”, or “let the earth put forth”) but now the words make this event distinctive. “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”). Until now, God has been introduced simply as commanding; now, when God approaches the most excellent of all God’s works, the creation of humankind, God enters into consultation. Calvin argues that this is the highest honour with which God has dignified humanity, supporting their uniqueness in terms of the rest of the life forms.140

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Utley, How It All Began, 28. Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 66-67. 138 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 17. 139 Osborn, “Creation,” 431 makes the important remark that traditional readings of the primeval history that emphasize the special status that Genesis 1 seemingly confers on humankind are not correct. The creation of humankind is not the climax of Genesis 1, an impression that may have been reinforced by the creation of humankind in Gen 2 before anything else. It is true that the primeval history clearly distinguishes humankind from the rest of creation, and elevates humankind above it. However, the privilege of being the climax of the first creation narrative is accorded not to humankind but to the establishment of God’s Sabbath, suggesting that communion with the creation as a whole is foremost in the mind of the narrator. 140 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 91. 137

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Why the plural, “Let us make humankind in our image” that is also present in the verb (“let us make”)? Various proposals were suggested through the centuries to solve the mystery. Some think that God spoke to other deities, others refer to the “plural of majesty” used extensively when kings and queens were addressed (and the way they spoke about themselves);141 David Guzik notices that the word “God” (‘elohim) is used with the singular, implying that the meaning is singular which is not correct (“let us make”).142 Examples show that in other literature of the period, the single deity (or the divine representative, the king) is addressed in the plural. It might also be that the expression is used deliberately as cohortative, and the plural form stresses the intensity of the divine statement. Another possibility is that God is talking to God’s court that consists of the heavenly hosts. Perhaps Israelites at first viewed them as lesser deities who served God but by the time the creation narratives were finally penned down they existed as divine assistants at the beck and call of God. In this narrative, they play an insignificant role, as befits the monotheistic character of the account. Eventually, they would evolve into angels. The last possibility was when Christians read the verse in light of the doctrine of the Trinity that they designed in their early history to explain and justify Jesus’ divinity. Certainly, the biblical author did not have such a notion in mind and it is far-fetched to suppose that the Holy Spirit would have inspired biblical authors to use words they knew would not make any sense to their listeners. An intratextual observation is, however, probably a better explanation and is to be preferred, that in Genesis 11 the people used the same verb, “let us” to describe their intention to build a tower that would defend them from being spread out across the world.143 With Genesis 1 and 11 serving as the bookends of the primaeval history, the first narrative describes the successful creation of the world by God and the second the failed creation of a tower by people, emphasized by the use of the same verb in both accounts.144 People are made in the “image” of God, that is, as representative of God. Two terms are used. Tselem and demut refer respectively to an image of a statue, model or replica and the noun of “to be like or to resemble.” The 141

Mathews, Apologetics Study Bible, 3 Elohim is a plural noun although it is also used as if it were a singular. The word should be seen as a generic term, referring to the class of gods, and when the term is applied to their God, the Israelites who confess that God is one (Deut 6:4), use the singular of the accompanying verb (Guzik, Genesis, 14). 143 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 33. 144 This is the astute remark of Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 36. 142

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terms are used to explain that humans, in some way, reflect the Creator’s form and function. However, that does not imply that they look like God in terms of a similar physical appearance. A long discussion by theologians followed about the meaning of “image and likeness” as possible references to human reason, freedom, and the soul; it is accepted here that it refers to humans’ spiritual capabilities and capacities to stand in a relationship with the invisible God and to rule over the created order in God’s stead.145 What it implies is that God made humanity special and different from all other created life forms. Kurt Strassner argues that the statement that both human beings were created in the image of God hold significant implications for what it means to be human, as highlighted in the distinct traits of humanity outlined in the narrative. If humanity is created “in the image of God,” no one has the right to degrade or destroy human life, a principle valid in the establishment of social justice in race relations and sexual ethics. The statement to rule over the other created beings and to subdue the earth implies humanity’s dominion over both herbage and animals, also implying their responsibility to take meticulous care of creation. That God created human beings as male and female imply that human beings were created equal, in the image of God, although their roles and functions are distinct. The last remark is that 145

Many other suggestions have been made for the meaning of the phrase “in the image of God.” For instance, Guzik (Genesis, 23) suggests that it refers to humanity’s natural countenance to look upward, their variety of facial expressions, their sense of shame expressing itself in blushing, the ability to speak, and the possession of personality, morality, and spirituality. These are according to Guzik the exclusive possession of humankind. Blenkinsopp (Creation, Un-Creation, ReCreation, 26) explains that as the first man himself fathered a son “in his image, after his likeness” (Gen. 5:3), the likeness of humanity with God consisted in the beauty and perfection of the human form, as the first man is described as “full of wisdom, perfect in beauty” in a poem of Ezekiel’s (28:12). Augustine adds that the image of God resides in the human power of reasoning and understanding (in his Confessions, XIII 32). Perhaps the divine image refers to the commission to represent God on earth as God’s viceroy. Lastly, imago dei may refer to the human being’s capacity for dialogue, as a being who can address and be addressed by God. This represents a relational rather than anthropological understanding of the image and likeness, emphasized by Karl Barth (in his Church Dogmatics, III/1). Bede the Venerable, Commentary on Genesis, 116 writes in this regard that just as through diligent care humankind is created from the earth and by the breath of the Creator, they are raised up in the strength of the life-giving Spirit, so that they who are made in the image of their Creator would exist not through a word of command but through the dignity of God’s creation (Severian of Gabala, Commentaries on Genesis 1-3, 128).

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the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it implies that humanity was and is capable of receiving and understanding moral instruction, and they are also responsible for obedience to moral strictures.146 When the two terms, tselem and demut, are interpreted in the light of the prevailing political language of the day, it becomes clear that the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Syrian kings were described in the same terms, as representative of their respective gods.147 The link can be seen in the cognate words for selem and demuth, in salmu and demuti. The royal rule was legitimated with the kings claiming that their rule exemplified the rule of the gods. Their statues were called “images” because they represented the visible presence of the gods. They served as the presence of the deity on earth, emphasizing the divine power represented in the king that did not allow any political opposition. As the image casts a shadow, so the salmu of the king protects the people, in the same way, that the gods cast their shadow over the king. The implication of Genesis 1:26 is clear, that not only kings but all people are divine representatives because they represent God in the world with authority to rule over nature in the stead of God. As the image of God (imago Dei), people’s function is described.148 At the same time, in the light of the events related in Genesis 3, the reader recognizes the risk the creation of human beings holds for the Creator.149 The term is used to transfer the tasks and trappings of royalty and cult and the offices of divine representation

146

Strassner, Opening up Genesis, 24–26. Middleton, Liberating Image, 47. 148 Utley (How It All Began, 29–30) helpfully describes how the concepts of image and likeness were understood by Christian theologians. Irenaeus and Tertullian referred to image in terms of physical aspects of humanity, and to likeness in terms of spiritual aspects of humanity. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, and John of Damascus used “image” to refer to the nonphysical characteristics of humankind while “likeness” refers to aspects of humankind that can be developed, such as holiness or morality, and if not developed then they are lost. The Scholastics (Thomas Aquinas) used “image” for humankind’s rational ability and freedom and “likeness” for their original righteousness and supernatural gifts that were lost at the fall. The Reformers denied any distinction between the terms (Gen. 5:1; 9:6). Luther and Calvin both expressed this concept in different terms, but basically expressed the same truth. Utley suggests that the terms refer to personality, consciousness, language skills, volition, and/or morality. 149 Thielicke, Hoe de Wereld Begon, 65. 147

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and habitation to humanity.150 The concept of “image of God” is used in terms of four categories in the Old Testament, pertaining to the role and function that God has given humanity, the identity that God has bequeathed upon them, the way that they serve as God’s substitute by representing God’s presence in the world, and the relationship that God intends to have with them.151 The term “image of God” is rarely applied to humanity as a whole in the rest of the ancient Near Eastern literature; the only exception is in The Instruction of Merikare. There the image of the deity is attached to specific individuals, invariably kings. In other Assyrian and Egyptian literature, it is used to endow the king with divine sonship and enable the king to function on behalf of the deity. The implication is clear, that the authority of the king is equated with divine sanction. The term operates within the political and bureaucratic model in which the ruling function of the deity was carried out on earth by the king.152 Genesis 1 serves as a critique of every religious temptation to idolatry by making a surprising counter-assertion. God can only be imagined in one way within creation, and that is through humanness. Human beings are the only creatures who can disclose something about the reality of God. It is not possible to know God through any image made by human hands; God is known peculiarly and exclusively through this creature, the human being. Fixed images and human images are contrasted with the prohibition to make any images while humanness exists to proclaim what the essence of the relationship between God and human beings is.153 Humanity attests to the Godness of God by exercising freedom with and authority over creation and other created beings, with everything entrusted to human care. In the biblical narratives, the function of humanity is described in relation to people. They do not exist exclusively to provide in the needs of a god or gods. In Mesopotamia, the cosmos functioned as a world that existed for the sake of the gods. Their role as people living in the world was secondary to their service to the gods in their world. And the function of their service to the gods was described in terms of the interests of the king and priests. The role of the gods was eventually delegated to kings. In Genesis 1, however, humanity receives a ruling responsibility that is subordinate to God, similar to the position that the lower gods in Mesopotamian polytheism held to the

150

Walton, Genesis 1, 175. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 41-42. 152 Walton, Genesis 1, 176. 153 Brueggemann, Genesis, 32. 151

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higher gods. The result is that humanity is bequeathed a dignity not attested to in the literature of the rest of the ancient world.154 Humans provide a shadow that protects the world. In a world where persistent human interference is threatening the survival of the planet as a fit place for life, the implication is clear. At the same time, Genesis 1 critiques the political concept of kingship, declaring that all human beings without distinction have dignity and take responsibility for God’s world.155 The verb “to dominate” (radah) is used to refer to “to subdue, rule over, or to tread the winepress.” This is not the normal verb used to express the idea of “to rule.” The verb is used widely in the ancient world to refer to royal dominion. Although the verb is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to “enslavement” or “to assault sexually,” here the context is of human beings in a relationship with nature that is beneficial for both, and it should rather be translated “to bring under human control for humans’ advantage.” The NET Bible suggests as translation: “harness its potential and use its resources for humans’ benefit.”156 “Subdue” and “have dominion over” are parallel expressions with reference to the plants and animals that God has put on the earth. It is not a command on the same level as to go to war and conquer the enemies, but rather gives the first people and their offspring the right to “take control, be in charge, have direction over,” implying that humankind is to be masters over nature. They are being put in charge of nature.157 In Genesis 1:26, it is used within the context of “image” and “likeness” to emphasize the participation of all human beings in the dominion of the earth. The related term in verse 8, “subdue” (kabas), can refer to “to rape or conquer one’s enemies” (where rape was a frequent occurrence), but here its meaning in connection with “to rule” is rather to harness the earth’s life-giving power to serve humanity, for instance, by harvesting the fruit of the earth as food. “Dominion” is sometimes confused with “subjugation,” with the subjugation of the earth blamed for the abuse of nature by way of technology. However, this is to misunderstand “dominion” in the sense used in Genesis 1, where “dominion” does not have to do with exploitation and abuse but rather with caring for and securing the well-being of every other creature. The dominance refers to the care of shepherds for their animals, tending and 154

Walton, Genesis 1, 177. Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 176-77. 156 NET Bible, 4. 157 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 52. 155

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feeding them.158 According to Karl Barth, the creator is “humanized” as the one who cares in costly ways for the world in and through human beings entrusted with power and authority to rule.159 It gives an inverted view of God as the immanent in self-giving, and not only the transcendent and awesome God, and an inverted view of humankind as the agents of God that receives much from God and from whom much is expected.160 Of all the creatures that resulted from God’s eight creative acts, God speaks directly only to human creatures, demonstrating their unique position as the image of God. God addressed them as “you” (twice in v. 29), implying that human beings stand in a different, intimate relationship with the Creator. Human beings are speech creatures par excellence.161 As discussed, Mesopotamian myths connect the creation of human beings to the murder of a chaos god, and people are created from the god’s body and blood. It is befitting since they are made to serve the needs of the conqueror gods. In their service to the gods, the temples of Mesopotamia were fabled as centers of wealth, serving as lending institutions of their day that exploited the poor with the exorbitant rates of their loans. The mythology legitimates priestly power.162 Genesis 1 critiques the ideology when it states clearly that all human beings are not only divinely created but bestowed with divine authority to rule in God’s stead on earth. The author might also be criticizing the significant role of the Jerusalem priests and the part they played in Judah’s downfall and exile. That Genesis 1:27 states that God creates humankind as male and female have significant implications for the relationship between men and women, and the way they view their own functions and those of the opposite gender. “Male and female” replaces the terms used often in the preceding description, “each according to its kind.” “Male and female” are in Hebrew a fixed word pair, as in many other languages, that always occur in that order.163 The Hebrew terms for “male” (zƗkƗr) and “female” (nƟqƝbâ), as opposed to man and woman, particularly express human sexuality (e.g., Gen 5:2; 6:19; 7:3, 9, 16). That sexual distinction between land animals is absent is probably so as not to detract from the privileged role of human life 158

Brueggemann, Genesis, 32. Barth, Humanity of God. 160 Brueggemann, Genesis, 33. 161 Brueggemann, Genesis, 31. 162 Middleton, Liberating Image, 168. 163 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 51. 159

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whereby procreation contributes to humanity’s dominion over the lower animals.164 It implies that sexuality is good because it was ordained by the Creator as part of the creation. Human sexuality and sexual bonding between husband and wife are deemed “very good” by God (1:31) and are to be honored as the divine ordinance for men and women.165 The body-life of human persons is affirmed, with sexuality indelibly related to their anatomy, an integral part of whom they are.166 At the same time, sexual identity is not part of the Creator, even though it is an inherent part of creation. Sexuality and sexual identity and function belong to the creation and exist as God’s will for creation; it does not belong to God’s person. However, because human beings serve as an image, modeling or analogy of God, sexual metaphors are useful for speaking about the mystery of God.167 Sexuality belongs to the goodness God intends for creation but does not characterize God, although the relations implied by intimate community within a sexual encounter demonstrates the relational character of God who exists as a plurality of communion. It is important to note that in this narrative, both sexes are created simultaneously, as opposed to the second narrative. God also creates man in the plural (“them”), and not only the ‘adam found in Genesis 2:7. “Adam” (‘adam) does not refer to a masculine man, but it is used generically for human beings, whether male or female. It refers to a sexually undifferentiated person until the fashioning of a woman.168 Eventually, the word ‘adam 164

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 173. Davidson, “Theology of Sexuality in the Beginning,” 5–24. Utley (How It All Began, 34–35) makes an interesting remark. He thinks that the importance that the creation is very good exists in the light of later gnostic Greek thought that influences Jewish thinking, that matter is evil and spirit is good. The same dualism is found in some Mesopotamian texts and serves as an explanation of the problems on earth. The biblical account differs because it explains that matter was created for God’s purpose and there was no evil in God’s original creation. 166 Atkinson, Message of Genesis 1-11, 72. 167 Brueggemann, Genesis, 33. 168 Alter, Genesis, 22. Translations do not always agree when the rendering should be “man” or (better) “humankind” and when it should be “Adam” (Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 11). The usual reason for translating ’adam as “man” is that it has this general sense when it is preceded by the Hebrew article. The defined form ha’adam is “man,” the undefined ’adam, “Adam.”When ’adam comes after a preposition (as in 2:20b), the article is only recognized as a change in the vowel points, but since vowel points were added after the sixth century CE, the presence of the article in the original is not certain. Gen 1:26 says, “Let us make (Qal imperfect, but is used in a cohortative sense) ’adam in our own image … and let 165

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becomes a real name, but only after Eve was named by the human being in Genesis 2:23. Genesis 1 contains a positive view of women that was probably not widely held by ancient people. An interesting observation in verse 27 is that the singular verb is first used to refer to humankind, but the plural verb is used to refer to the different sexes created by God. It affirms that humankind as a single entity stands in solidarity before God and that humankind exists as a community. Neither is the full image of God; God is only reflected in the community of humankind. “God is, according to this bold affirmation, not mirrored as an individual but as a community.”169 The divine assignment, “be fruitful and multiply” in Genesis 1:28, functions in a context where Judah’s existence was threatened by their decimation during the Babylonian conquest of their country. Mesopotamia seemingly did not experience the same problem; in several sources, one reads about the overpopulation of the small area around the great rivers where cultivation of the land was possible. For the same reason, the Levitical law prohibits any form of birth control as well as any sexual activity that precludes the possibility of conception. That it is not always possible to translate a biblical assignment to contemporary times and apply it to the practice of believers’ lives is demonstrated by Genesis 1:28’s “be fruitful and multiply” (pƟrǎ ǎrǎbǎ). The Hebrew sound of the two words calls the nominal hendiadys of verse 2, “formless void” (tǀhǎ wƗbǀhǎ) to mind. Contextually the assignment functioned to motivate Judeans to contribute to population growth. In our day, where the earth is threatened by uncontrolled population growth, especially in areas and countries where the poorest people live and suffer, the assignment sounds different. The emphasis is rather combined with the assignment to rule over and subdue the earth, implying human responsibility for the protection of the earth and nature. Contemporary people need to ignore the literal meaning of the words. A text might mean something else for people living in widely different circumstances, illustrating the danger of an exclusive literalistic

them rule (Qal imperfect used in a jussive sense).….” Here ’adam without the article cannot mechanically be translated as the personal name “Adam.” Gen 2:5 also has no article before ’adam, which should allow us to translate as “Adam,” but here the reference is not to a particular person named Adam, but to the absence of anyone to cultivate the land, to be translated as “no man” or “no one.” 169 Brueggemann, Genesis, 34.

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interpretation of the Bible. A text might imply something else for us than what it did for the first listeners. Interesting is that human food consists of plant yielding seed and tree with seed in its fruit (v. 29). Part of the order and harmony that characterizes God’s creation of the earth and life is portrayed in human food that excludes violence and the taking of any life. Early human beings were vegetarians. “Since this first creation was a kingdom of peace and concord neither human being nor animal killed for food; all living creatures had a vegetarian diet. The wolf lay down with the lamb and the lion ate straw like the ox (Isa 11:6– 7).”170 Genesis 1:31 states that all that God created “was very [mƟҴǀd] good.” God withheld a final evaluation until the completed creation because only after the six creation days has the lifeless earth been fully changed (1:2) into what God had intended it to be. The earth is well-ordered, complete, and abounding in life-forms. If God had not intervened, the earth would have consisted of encroaching darkness, unrestricted waters, and empty wastelands. However, God had transformed the earth by God’s matchless wisdom (Ps 104:24; Prov 8:22–31).171

Genesis 2:1-3 The last feature of the first creation narrative is God at rest after completing the creative task, implying that human work on earth is also intended to culminate in rest, exemplified by the institution of the Sabbath. The creation accounts also establish two other fundamental human institutions: marriage and work. Significantly, human work, marriage, and Sabbath were founded during creation and before the fall into the sin of the first human couple, illuminating even contemporary understanding of these institutions. The Sabbath was not instituted at creation in terms of human maintenance. The first narrative states only that the Sabbath is built into the structure of the creation week. God works six days and then rests on the seventh (Gen 2:1–3). The narrative does not suggest that humans are supposed to follow the creation pattern; however, the fourth commandment in Exodus grounds its observation in creation (Ex 20:8–11).172

170

Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 21. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 175. 172 Longman, How to Read Genesis, 108–109. 171

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Interesting is that the text states that “on the seventh day God finished the work that God had been doing,” leading to misunderstanding in early times about these words and leading to the Samaritan, Septuagint, and the Syriac Peshitto translations translating it as “on the sixth day.” However, God did not work on the seventh day; God finished the work. Reference to the sixth day came to an end in 1:31.173 The narrative provides an aetiological explanation for the Sabbath, the significance which for Israel cannot be overemphasized. The Hebrew verb “to rest” is shabath and sounds like the word for “Sabbath,” which is shabbath.174 It is used in the OT to show how things cease (like a war) or come to rest or stop (like Noah’s ark finding dry ground and resting on it).175 The day is hallowed and sanctified by God’s resting, a term also used in connection with the Sabbath in Exodus 20 (but not Deut 5). To hallow is to take an object out of its worldly relation, and to devote it to God.176 It is important to note that the original Sabbath in Israel was not a day of worship but a day of rest. Rest is the objective of creation.177 Especially during the exile, it seems that the observation of the Sabbath received special significance as an act that announced Judeans’ faith in their God and a rejection of all other gods, religions, and worldviews.178 The term “rest” may create the wrong impression, that God is weary and needs rest (2:2). However, the concept rather refers to the cessation of work, not resuscitation due to fatigue.179 It does not refer to sleep, relaxation, or leisure time but rather to the freedom from invasion and conflict so that people could live at peace, conducting the business of their daily lives without interruption. Resting represents a state or order in society.180 According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, rest means more than having a rest; it means to rest after completing one’s work. It means the peace of God found in worshiping God.181 Marduk also rests after the vicious battle with Tiamat, allowing the other gods, including the igigi (or lesser gods) to rest when human beings took over the job of providing in their daily sustenance. Divine rest seems to be a symbol of the victory of powerful gods in battle. While Mesopotamia thought that the gods 173

Ryle, Book of Genesis, 24–25. Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 55. 175 Ross, Genesis, 41. 176 Lange, Genesis, 176. 177 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 46. 178 Brueggemann, Genesis, 35. 179 Arnold, Genesis, 48. 180 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 46. 181 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 69. 174

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now rest because human have to do the work to produce for their sustenance, the biblical narrative emphasizes that God rests, and allows all human beings to rest weekly. The Babylonian king playing the role of Marduk during the New Year’s festival rests along with Marduk. Rest is the prerogative of the gods and the kings who did not soil their hands with hard work. However, Genesis 2 explains that all people, including the poor, slaves, and the weak may rest; indeed, they are given the assignment to rest regularly, every week. As stated, the Babylonian calendar did not recognize the concept of the week. Indeed, some seventh days in their calendar was viewed as “unlucky days” (limnu); the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eight days were included in this list. Clearly, the biblical author explains to listeners living in the Babylonian world that in God’s world, the seventh day is blessed, excluding any other day from bringing misfortune, unluckiness or accidents. One does not find any explicit mention of a temple in the first creation narrative, but the images of the rest of God on the seventh day and the institution of the Sabbath, like the garden of Eden in the second narrative, connect the idea of a temple that figures prominently in Near Eastern cosmogonies and biblical contexts with the creation acts of Gen 1-2. The temple served as the center and command center of God’s rule, and the control room from where God exercised control of the universe as an ordered system. The temple was established so that people could relate to God.182 The same ideas are prominent in Psalm 132, ascribed to David. The poet reminds YHWH of David’s vow to find a place where the Mighty One of Jacob could dwell (vv. 1-5) and then calls on the people to come to the dwelling place of YHWH, to worship at God’s footstool (vv. 6-7). God sits enthroned in the temple on the “ark of your might” (v. 8). YHWH has chosen Zion for God’s habitation, God’s resting place and residence “forever” (v. 14). No other divine rest occurs in the Hebrew Bible than the rest associated with God’s presence in the temple on Mount Zion. The image is found also in other ancient Near Eastern creative narratives, serving as a clear indication to the reader that a temple metaphor underlies the understanding of the deity’s status.183 In the ancient Near East, the rites surrounding temple inaugurations, as a rule, took seven days, and the deity entered the temple to take up divine rest on the seventh day, as stated above. John Walton concludes that creation in 182 183

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 48. Walton, Genesis 1, 180.

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Genesis 1 uses the language of temple-building, regardless of whether it is understood as reflecting a temple-building activity (as in the accounts of the construction of Baal’s temple in seven days) or a temple-inauguration account (like the one described in the Gudea Cylinder B).184 The dedication of Solomon’s temple also took seven days, and on the seventh day, a feast and banquet were held, as described in 1 Kings 8:65 (2 Chr 7:9). The account may also be based and modeled on the creation narrative of the seven days of creation. If the first three days are concerned in the temple metaphor with the assigning of functions, then the next three days are concerned with the inauguration of the temple. Now the functionaries are installed in the temple and everything is arranged so that order reigns when the deity takes up their rest. In the ancient world, the moment when the deity entered the temple was the point where the temple came into existence, and its existence is dependent on the deity’s continued presence in the temple. The mere completion of the material construction phase does not produce a functioning temple. In the creation narrative of Genesis 1, cosmos takes place when the cosmos (or temple) is made functional for its human habitation, employing the presence of God. Joseph Blenkinsopp explains that the author was not concerned with the chronological order of creation; hence the narrative does not answer “scientific” questions so often asked by readers of this chapter, such as how light could have been created before the sun. The logic in the narrative moves on a different level, beginning with the primordial darkness like the darkness of empty space in Genesis 1:2, leading to the creation of undifferentiated light on the first day as the first of seven acts of separation and differentiation. The unusual order of “night and day” with the evening before the morning signifies that the author has the liturgical day in mind in the account. After creating the firmament on the second day, dry land emerges on the third day that serves as a platform on which the heavenly bodies rests, to be created on the fourth day. The movements of these bodies were recorded by the priests for the sake of keeping the liturgical calendar with its religious and cultic feasts up to date, as Genesis 1:14 (with its reference to “signs”) explicitly states. The festal calendar was necessary to

184

Walton, Genesis 1, 181.

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ensure the orderly worship of ‘Elohim, ending with the Sabbath, and with the festivals in season.185 Only then is humanity created, and the means to sustain them, signifying the sanctification of human existence along the temporal axis of the liturgical calendar and inseparable from the spatial axis of the cosmos that serves as ‘Elohim’s temple. The implication of the priestly account is clear - human beings are created to worship God, and they live in a world created as a cosmic temple. At one stage, the author of Job reproduces the symbolism of the universe as the temple of God by depicting the liturgy that accompanies the laying of the foundation stone of the cosmic temple in creation in Job 38:4-7 that is related to the dedication of the second Jerusalem temple in 515 BCE. The stars and planets are represented as deities (the “sons of God”) who make music as they move in their orbits.186 At first, the Sabbath was a new moon festival in Israel, but it was reinterpreted as a part of the exilic foundation of Israel’s identity and took on a new religious meaning, as a holy day of rest. It is done in reaction to Mesopotamian customs. At the same time, the author emphasizes that the emphasis on the year in the Babylonian cult, finding its highlight in the New Year’s festival that exclaims Marduk and the king’s powers, can safely be ignored. A seven-day sequence is not unique to Israel; it first occurred in fourteenthcentury Ugaritic inscriptions for “expressing extended processes,” as is especially evident in the building of a palace or temple for Baal, that took seven days. Israel’s institution of the Sabbath was an alternative way to present reality by reserving each week one day for the observance of rest, with every week becoming a mnemonic stroll through the creation itself, being reminded of their creator God.187 Walter Brueggemann, in his commentary on Genesis explains the significance of the institution of the Sabbath as the culmination of the first creation narrative.188 The Sabbath discloses that the God of Israel spends six days in faithful invitation rather than coercion, and on the seventh day, the Creator does not rest because of exhaustion or fatigue but in serenity and peace. It 185

Later differences arose about calendric matters, with Ben Sira defending the traditional lunar calendar while the author of Jubilees calculated the calendar with reference to the sun. 186 Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 21–22. 187 Arnold, Genesis, 49-50. 188 Brueggemann, Genesis, 35-6.

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is interesting to note that Genesis 2:2–3 contains four lines, the first three of which are parallel, each possessing seven words (in the Hebrew), with the midpoint of each line having the same phrase, “the seventh day.” A literal translation displays the structure: “So God finished by the seventh day his work which he did, / and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he did, / and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified (Piel imperfect) it, / because on it he rested from all his work which God created to do.”189 “Blessed” refers to God giving or conferring God’s favor; the one who receives it receives a benefit. “Hallowed” is used as an intensive form that means “to sanctify,” that is, “to set apart for God’s use, to dedicate to God.” In this context, it is important to make the purpose clear, that God sets the seventh day apart as a special day for rest, a day when people can rest and worship God.190 The author clearly highlights the importance of this day. In later Israel, the ritual observance of the Sabbath became the preeminent sign of God’s covenant with Israel (e.g., Ex 20:11; 31:17). YHWH is not anxious about the creation but at ease with the well-being of God’s rule. The Sabbath also makes a kerygmatic statement about the world, illustrating that creation is safely in God’s hands because it does not rely on our efforts but on God’s promises. By observing the Sabbath, believers break with their own efforts to sculpt the world according to their purposes and rely on God to achieve God’s purposes with creation. The Sabbath is also a sociological expression of a new humanity that is willed by God, returning to the original purposes with creating human beings. It reflects the end of exploitation of nature and other human beings because the Sabbath betrays the revolutionary equality in society. All people rest equally, regardless of social status or power (Ex 20:8-11states that no one, neither male nor female, slave nor livestock, nor resident among Israelites may do any kind of work). The new humanity portrayed by the Sabbath does not exist at the moment; it is an eschatological foretaste and anticipation of how creation will function when God has fully established the original purpose with creation. By keeping the Sabbath, believers pray for the breakthrough of the new sanity that would shape humanity in God’s new world. Lastly, the Sabbath is about the rest of God, as a promised rest of humanity.191

189

Literal translation by Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 176–177. Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 56. 191 Matt 11:28-30 states Jesus’ invitation to humanity to find their rest in him by bearing his easy yoke and carrying his light burden. 190

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Genesis 2:4a Where does Genesis 2:4a fit into with its statement, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created”?192 Is it a summary of the first creation narrative and its divine acts, found in Genesis 1:1-2:3, as an original part of the Priestly document? Or does it fit into the next narrative, as many other translations suppose? Does it serve as an introduction to the next section (as Derek Kidner suggests) or does it close a section (as R.K. Harrison and P.J. Wiseman think)? According to Robert Utley, it seems to both close a section and introduce a new one, serving as a break in the narrative. It seems that 1:1–2:3 deals with the creation of the cosmos while 2:4–15 focuses on the creation of humanity which is contextually related to chapters 3 and 4.193 The concluding statement of the first narrative is, “This is the tale (or literally, these are the begettings) of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” The first creation narrative begins and ends in the same way, with a reference to “the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1; 2:4a). In the second part of what is now verse 4, reference is made to “the earth and the heavens,” indicating a change in narrative. Robert Alter refers to this style change as sharply, in terms of the “grand choreography of resonant parallel utterances of the cosmogony.” The style changes include that instead of the symmetry of parataxis, hypotaxis is initially prominent. The second account begins with an elaborate syntactical subordination in a long and complex sentence that stretches all the way from verse 4b to the end of verse 7. Another style change is in the way the divine is depicted; now, God is portrayed as anthropomorphic, in a very down-to-earth way. In the first account, Elohim summons things into being from a lofty distance by merely speaking from above. In the second narrative, YHWH Elohim is a craftsman and farmer, fashioning, blowing life breath into nostrils, building a companion from a rib. From a harmonious cosmic overview of creation, the second narrative provides the “technological nitty-gritty and moral ambiguities of human origins.”194 “Heavens” is always used in plural form in Hebrew and it refers to the place where the stars, sun, and moon are found (Gen 1:14–16) and where birds fly

192

See the discussion about “generations” in the first chapter. Utley, How It All Began, 41. 194 Alter, Genesis, 31. 193

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(Gen 1:20).195 The English “sky” is used to refer to the open space seen above the earth, but the connotation of the biblical account with the divine is lost in the translation. In translating the term, the association of the sky with God’s dwelling place must be kept in one way or another.196

Conclusion What does Genesis 1-2:4a contribute to our reading of the book of Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament that served, and serve as Israel’s (and Christians’) holy scriptures? It is submitted that Genesis 1 and 2 provide exegetical spectacles for readers, allowing them to read the rest of the Bible with a picture of God as Creator and humankind as God’s handiwork and representatives on earth. Lawrence Richards suggests that the central message is that all that exists is the work of a Person that was carefully and thoughtfully designed. “Creation is a mirror, placed to reflect our thoughts and our worship to the Person whose image Creation enables us to see.” 197 It directs the reader’s attention, not to the world, but its Maker. While the rest of Israel’s neighbors lived in a world populated by numerous gods and found themselves at times the victims of the gods’ whims, biblical authors portray God as one, supreme in power. In Genesis, the sun and moon are created objects that serve functions assigned to them by God; in the ancient world, the sun and moon (Shamash and Sin) were viewed as gods. For that reason, the biblical author did not use the loaded terms, “sun” (šemeš) and “moon” (jƗrƝa‫)ۊ‬, but “the greater light” and “the lesser light.” The personified powers in the surrounding world granted to the sun are demoted in Israel to mere artefacts, lamps that rise and set on the command of the creator God.198 The spotlight is on Israel’s monotheistic God. God does not have any rivals, but that does not imply that God is the only spiritual being in existence. For that reason, Genesis 1:26 states, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Some argue that one finds in the use of the plural traces of the polytheistic background against which the Genesis narrative operated. Some Jews hold that the plural refers to angels that accompanied God while many Christians see in it a reference to the Trinity defined by the Christian church before the fourth century CE. It most 195

Other uses are in 1 Ki 8:30 where it refers to the place of God, and in Isa 66:1 as the place where God is enthroned. 196 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 38. 197 Richards, Teacher’s Commentary, 19–20. 198 Brichto, Names of God, 69.

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probably refers to other spiritual beings, created by God and serving God in different capacities. Some of the psalms (e.g., Ps 97:7) refer to these beings as “sons of God,” while Genesis 6:1-4 tells of the “sons of God” or “sons of the gods” and how they meddled with the daughters of humankind. These beings are subservient to the supreme God, as Psalm 95:3 (see also 96:4-5) explains, “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” Parts of the Old Testament leave room for the existence of the gods; it is probably a late development that denies them any existence. It seems that Genesis 1:1-2:4a’s rhetoric connects to this late development. Allen Ross argues that the first creation narrative provides a portrayal of God as the sovereign Creator of all life. The God of Genesis formed all that is in the world, along with people. Creation represents a theocracy consisting of the rule of the God of Israel over all of creation. The implications are great. In the first place, it implies that everything that exists must be under God’s dominion, including all forces of nature, all creatures, and all material objects. While these things were venerated as gods by the surrounding cultures, none of them could pose a real threat to the plan of the one true God. In the second place, the account of creation lays the foundation for the law. Knowledge of the One who created all things excludes any other gods (Ex 20:3). People made in God’s image on earth do not make an image of God after the pattern of a human (Ex 20:4–6; Isa 44:9–20). The seventh day set aside by the Creator requires that the Sabbath day should be used in the celebration of God. Creation, based on the nature of the creator God, provides the rationale for the commandments. A third implication is that people may realize that their lives will be ordered and blessed if they obey the word of YHWH. The last implication is that God formed the cosmos out of empty and formless space, chased away darkness by creating light, created by dividing existing elements, and then sanctified and blessed everything, implying that God is a redeeming God.199 The great God is sovereign in God’s rule over the universe while the other spiritual beings fulfill tasks assigned to them and serve God in worship and adoration. The first creation narrative serves as a parody or mimotext on especially Mesopotamian creation myths and religious ideology.200 Similarities with these myths clearly exist, as summarized by Robert Gnuse.201 It includes that the narratives all start with a temporal, dependent clause, referring to the pre-creation situation as barren and chaotic. They all 199

Ross, Genesis, 34–35. Sparks, “Enuma Elish,” 627. 201 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 46. 200

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emphasize the role of water in this world, while the separation or splitting of water serves as a condition for creation with the establishment of land. Heavenly lights are created next, and light exists before the creation of the sources of light. These sources serve to define space and time. In all accounts, similarities can be found in the sequence of things that are created. However, there are also significant differences. Genesis’ monotheism does not allow for the existence of any other divine being that can compete with God. In this worldview, water, darkness, and heavenly bodies like the sun and moon are impersonal and not divine. While Marduk fashions the heavens out of the body of Tiamat, God makes it by beating material in a dome. God creates human beings by speaking a word; God does not need anyone or anything else to create them for God. God creates people to serve as representatives of God’s reign on earth, not to serve God’s selfish interests. All people, including the female gender, are made in God’s image; it is not limited to kings or men only. All people are equal, and all enjoy the same dignity. The priesthood is not instituted or legitimized during creation; it is a later development. And the biblical account is not only concerned with the way Marduk gains sovereignty over the motley crew of Babylonian gods but with God and humanity in a way that affirms the worth of each human being. Genesis 1:1-2:4a serves to critique the Mesopotamian royal and priestly ideology. The last remark refers to God’s statement in verse 28 that commands human beings to be fruitful and multiply. It was argued that the dangers of a literalistic reading of the first creation narrative are demonstrated and underlined when the statement is viewed as normative for contemporary people faced with the effects of overpopulation that contributes to the current threat of the earth and life forms by the challenges presented by climate change that can be ascribed to human overutilization of natural resources.202

202

Climate change consists of increasing average global air and ocean temperatures, leading to the widespread melting of snow and ice, decreasing the average annual Arctic sea ice extent by 2.7% over decade in winter, and 7.4% in summer, over the last thirty years, resulting in rising average global sea levels at an average of 1.8 mm/year since 1961, and land regions warming faster than oceans (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Summary for Policymakers”). Some of the negative results affecting life on earth include increased winter floods, reduced spring/summer melt-related river flows, adverse effects on crops due to warmer temperatures, an increase in heat-waves, and an increased spread of diseases (United Nations Environment Program, Climate in Peril, https://www.uncclearn.org/wp-content/ uploads/library/unep125.pdf; accessed 2021-01-01).

CHAPTER 5 SECOND CREATION NARRATIVE (2:4B-25)

Introduction According to Genesis 1:1, God at the beginning created “the heavens and the earth,” while Genesis 2:4b states, “In that day that YHWH God made the earth and the heavens,” reversing the terms and warning listeners and readers that two different narratives should be distinguished in Genesis 1-2. The first narrative refers to cosmic creation; the latter emphasizes human creation. The two narratives complement each other; there are no contradictions to be found.1 For instance, Genesis 1 that describes humanity as made in the image of God and called upon to rule over creation is supplemented and contrasted with Genesis 2 that sees humanity tasked with tending the garden and naming the animals, a function of rulers. Most readers of the Bible probably read Genesis 2:4 and the rest of the chapter as though it follows on the previous narrative without suspecting that the editor of the narratives used another source and provided an alternative to the first creation narrative.2 They think that Genesis 2:7 begins a more specific account of what happened on day six of Genesis 1. It represents a recapitulation that provides more detail. The sixth day describes the creation of humanity and now Genesis 2 elaborates on that process, doubling back on that event. However, the order of events is confusing. Where does Genesis 2:5-6 fit in, which states that there were no plants when God created humanity? Yet in the first account, plants have already been created on the third day. In the first account, God also creates animals first, before humankind. What do they eat in the meantime? And if the events in Genesis 2 take place in one day of twenty-four hours, how is it possible that God could bring all the animals to Adam who names them, even before a helper is found for Adam?

1 2

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 18. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 63.

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Not all agree that there are two creation narratives. Conservative scholars reject the assertion while Lawrence Richards suggests that Genesis 2 rather employs a common literary device that sketches the background first, and then highlight one feature, providing additional details about it. He compares it to a chorus that sings, followed by one singer stepping forward and expounding the subject further, or to a guide who shows the audience the panorama of a giant mural before they examine the detail more closely. He thinks that the phrase in Genesis 2:4, “This is the account of,” that sets off the introduction of each new section in Genesis (5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2), is utilised here to set the scenery of creation in place before readers are invited to take their seats and observe the play.3 There are other reasons for considering that there are two creation narratives that serve as sequels. The change in the way the narratives refer to God, from “God” to “YHWH God,” is another reason why the two narratives are distinguished from one another. In the context of the second narrative with its description of the creation of humanity, the reference to God as YHWH is significant. The Tetragrammaton, probably originally pronounced as yahweh, is in the Qere of the Masoretic tradition yehǀwâ, resulting from combining the consonants yhwh with the vowel signs of the post-exilic substitutes for the divine name, ҴadǀnƗy (“the Lord”) or, if yhwh accompanies ҴadǀnƗy, then with Ҵelǀhîm (“God”).4 The term occurs 6,823 times in the Old Testament. No certain etymology of the divine name can be given. The name is probably an imperfectum form of the verb, hyh, meaning “to be, become, 3

Richards, Teacher’s Commentary, 29. Jenni, ʤʥʤʩ yhwh Yahweh, in Jenni and Westermann, Theological Lexicon, 522. Utley (How It All Began, 42) explains that Ҵelǀhîm is not found outside the Old Testament. It is used to designate both the God of Israel and the gods of the nations (Ex 12:12; 20:3). It is also used of other spiritual beings (angels, the demonic) as in Deut 32:8 (LXX); Ps 8:5; Job 1:6; 38:7. It also refers to human judges (Ex 21:6; Ps 82:6). In Gen 1:1 it serves as the first title or name for the deity where it is used exclusively until Gen. 2:4, where it is combined with YHWH. Theologically it refers to God as creator, sustainer, and provider of all life on this planet (Ps 104). It is synonymous with El (Deut 32:15–19). The original meaning of the generic ancient term for deity is uncertain, though many scholars believe it comes from the Akkadian root, “to be strong” or “to be powerful” (Gen 17:1; Num 23:19; Deut 7:21; Ps 50:1) (Utley, How It All Began, 43). Ps 14 illustrates that Ҵelǀhîm is used parallel to YHWH in Ps 53. When the term Ҵelǀhîm designates the God of Israel, a plural noun, usually (with exceptions) it has the singular verb to denote the monotheistic usage. 4

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show oneself, act.” Some argue for a causative hiphil of this verb, rendering an etymology of “the one creating, the one keeping in existence,” but that does not seem to be attested. The qal, “he is, he shows himself to be active,” should rather be considered.5 It approaches the interpretation of Exodus 3:14 rather closely. God is the one who is alive. It is also related to the concept of life-giving power, as, e.g., Psalm 104 shows. The author refers to the sea that houses innumerable creeping things, both small and great, including Leviathan (vv. 25-6). Verses 29-30 then explain that when YHWH takes away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When YHWH sends forth YHWH’s spirit, they are created. The use of hashem (the Name, as post-exilic Jews chose to refer to God in order not to violate the commandment not to wrongfully use the name of YHWH their God [Ex 20:7]) is significant for listeners to the Hebrew narrative, reminding them of their God’s creative powers, as explained by the etymology of the name of God. If Genesis 1-2 represents two narratives, it implies that the persons referred to in Genesis 1 may not be Adam and Eve, or at least, not only Adam and Eve. In the light of an evaluation of genetical discoveries in the light of the biblical creation narratives, this is an important consideration. Early interpreters of the biblical narrative considered Adam and Eve to be the progenitors of the entire human race, but this view is confronted by genomic discoveries. The human genome has a history of fusions, breaks, mutations, retroviruses, and pseudogenes while it shows material continuity with other species, suggesting relatedness or similar histories. Genetic analysis provides evidence of common descent and a gradual development that explains genetic diversity. The discovery of genetic history does not support a biblical interpretation of Genesis 1-2 that contends that God created Adam and Eve de novo, distinct from any predecessors and using no biological process, with a complicated genome. Adam’s genome would then contain parts that do not function as the genomes found in other species and it would not be able to mutate that disables genes. However, it would look a lot like the genome of related species. Another interpretation that contends genetic analysis is that God totally disrupted the genome, not only of humans but of all species as a response to the fall described in Genesis 3.6 Either the biblical reader has to dismiss all the evidence provided by genetic history provided by the genome, or it has to consider that Adam and 5 6

Jenni and Westermann, Theological Lexicon, 523. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 181.

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Eve were not the first human beings ever to exist and that all of humanity does not descend from Adam and Eve. According to John Walton, biologists think that “Mitochondrial Eve,” as the first person resembling contemporary human beings is referred to, lived in Africa about a hundred and eighty thousand years ago while Y-chromosomal “Adam,” an African lived two hundred and ten thousand years ago, implying that they cannot have been husband and wife.7 Both of them were also members of a large population because Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam were not the only ancestors of humans. The way science looks at the origins of human beings now is that there were not first human beings because humans evolved from species that preceded them. The genetic diversity that exists in humans cannot be traced to two individual human beings, a single pair. Such diversity that exists among human beings requires a genetic source population of thousands of predecessors. The conclusions of some biologists that a single female, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve, from whom all human beings are descended and the Y-chromosome found only in males can be traced back to a single source do not support the idea that Adam and Eve were the first human beings. These matters should be considered in a discussion of Genesis 1-2’s narratives. The fact that the book of Genesis contains two creation narratives suggests that the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 came after an en masse creation of humans in Genesis 1. Population geneticists think that the human population never consisted of less than five thousand to ten thousand individuals. The smallest number occurred some hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Although this information was generated by computer models than can be modified when other parameters are set, the number can never get to two individuals alone. Population genetics does not offer a reconciliation with the way the biblical creation narratives are read traditionally, probably by most believers today.8

7

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 183. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 185. What to do with Acts 17:26 that contains Paul’s remark to the remark on Mars Hill that all the nations of the world come from one man is discussed by Walton (Lost World of Adam and Eve, 185). He argues that Paul refers to nations whose historical roles and territories are dependent on God (national origins) and not to human origins, with Genesis 10:32 in mind, that states that all the nations come from the three sons of Noah. Paul refers to the “one man” from whom all nations come, and Walton argues that he refers to Noah, and not Adam. Paul did not use “man” (anthrǀpǀn) but “nations” (ethnos anthrǀpǀn).

8

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If Genesis 2 is a sequel, it implies that there may be other people created in the image of God, not just Adam and Eve and their family. In reading Genesis 4, this observation solves some significant problems, if the narratives are read as representing historical facts, such as that Cain does not have to marry his sister in order to acquire a wife (Gen 4:17). Cain’s fear that whoever might find him would want to kill him when he is driven from YHWH’s presence (Gen 4:14) also makes more sense because other people will then be populating the earth (or that part of the earth inhabited by Adam and his family). Cain also builds a city (Gen 4:17) that requires more people to be more than a settlement for one family. That there are two creation narratives is supported by the observation how Genesis 1-11 is structured. One finds apart from the two basic creation accounts, pre-flood (1:1-2:24) and post-flood (9:1-17) also two stories of disobedience, pre-flood (6:1-4) and post-flood (9:18-28). There are two genealogies of continuity, pre-flood (5) and post-flood (10:1-32; 11:10-29). One also finds two major traditions of sin and judgment, pre-flood (3-4) and post-flood (11:1-9). In this context, the creation narratives also exist in a dual form (1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-24).9 There is, therefore, no precedent by which to conclude that the introductory formula in Genesis 2:4 is bringing the reader back into the middle of the previous account, as most ordinary readers of the narrative might have concluded.10 That there are two creation narratives have some significant implications, such as that Genesis 1 refers to the creation of generic humanity, in line with the common way of reporting the creation of humans in the accounts of the surrounding cultures. Genesis 1 also does not report the mechanism or process used in the creative event, only that God creates them. While Walton argues that Gen 3:20’s reference to Eve as “the mother of all the living” serves to define Eve as the source of all that is alive, including animals. They did not descend biologically from Eve; in the same way, all human beings did not descend from her. In discussing genealogies in Gen 5; 1 Chron 1; Luk 3:38 that consistently go back to Adam, he asserts that Adam serves in the thinking of biblical authors as the fountainhead of the people of God, and not of all people on earth (Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 187). They did not think of genetic ancestry or material continuity because it was not important for them. Their mindset of the covenant with YHWH that defined their existence as God’s people led them to see Adam as the first person chosen by God to enter that covenant. Adam was also the first priest, serving as “the first significant person” (Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 188). 9 Brueggemann, Genesis, 22. 10 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 65.

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Genesis 1 recounts the creation of humanity in God’s image, implying that God ordered sacred space to function on behalf of humanity, Genesis 2 explains how humans function in sacred space on its behalf, in contrast to Genesis 1. Genesis 1 begins with a state of non-order in the larger cosmos while Genesis 2 begins with a state of non-order in the terrestrial realm. And while Genesis 2 locates sacred space as the cosmos as such, Genesis 2 limits it to a specific sacred space, the garden in Eden.11 In reading the narratives as historical facts, as literalists do, the events in Genesis 2:4b –25 follow temporally on the previous narrative.12 Most readers probably see the narratives as temporally linked since they follow on each other without any indication that it represents two different narratives. Although the words in Genesis 2:4a, that “these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created,” suggest the end of a clearly outlined passage in Genesis, as will be discussed in more detail, literal readers gloss over the contradiction of Genesis 2:5, that at a stage when no plant or herb of the field had started sprouting because there was no rain upon the earth, the LORD God had already formed man from the dust of the ground, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life (v. 7). Literalists accept the existence of a garden in Eden. The word in Hebrew means “pleasure” but comes from the Iranian language where pairaida za means “walled gardens, arbors, orchards” in Zoroastrian religion, where God created a paradise with trees that were pleasant to see and good for food, for the pleasure of the first human being. Humanity/humankind was tasked to till and keep the garden. He received every tree as food, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that existed along with the tree of life. The “tree of life” indicates that the tree produces the source of life in the garden.13 It can be translated as “the tree that gives life” or “the tree whose fruit causes people to live forever.”14 One would have expected that the complement to the tree of life should be a tree of death, but in an 11

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 68. It should be kept in mind that Jesus and the New Testament authors apparently affirm the historicity of the events in Gen 1-3 in not less than ten separate book of the New Testament (Grudem, “Incompatibility of Theistic Evolution,” 28). Bede the Venerable functions in this mode when he states that Gen 2:4b-5 should not seem to contradict the previously mentioned word of God (Gen 1:1-2:4a), but it ought to be clearly understood that this Scripture uses the word “day” to mean all that time when the primordial creation was formed (Severian of Gabala, Commentaries on Genesis 1-3, 137). 13 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 202. 14 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 65. 12

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important sense, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil contains the potential to become a tree of death.15 The motif of gods guarding their superiority over humanity is widespread in myths of the surrounding nations. One such story is of the Greek Prometheus who was condemned to torture when he stole fire from the gods to benefit human survival. The emphasis on “knowledge of good and evil” might be associated with God’s guarding of such knowledge from humanity that might benefit them to God’s disadvantage.16 However, it should be remembered that the tree of knowledge of good and evil has no parallel in ancient Near Eastern literature.17 Mangum, Custis and Widder mention that elsewhere in the Bible, the idea of “knowing good and evil” has various senses: as a proper discernment in legal judgments (1 Kgs 3:9); legal responsibility for one’s actions (Deut 1:39); the implication of mature decision-making (Deut 1:39; 2 Sam 19:35; Isa 7:15); and even omniscience (2 Sam 14:17, 29). Some connect it to moral or ethical freedom or sexual knowledge. That it refers to knowledge about the sexual is derived from the use of the Hebrew word yada, meaning “to know,” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (see Gen 4:1). However, they are correct in asserting that the idea of sexual knowledge in Genesis 2–3 does not fit the context of the narrative. Genesis 3:6 states that the tree’s fruit was desirable to give insight (haskil), a concept that reminds of Wisdom literature that describes special wisdom that is appropriate only for God (Prov 30:1–4; see also Ezek 28). The prohibition against eating of the tree might then have been a test to see if people would be content to stay in their proper place (Isa 14:13; Prov 30:3–4). The sin was a form of disrespect for God when the humans tried to obtain what was forbidden to them, a wisdom that would make them like God.18 The Hebrew word for “sleep” is tardƝmâh, from rdm, used seven times as a noun and seven times with its verbal root to refer to an induced sleep (as in 1 Sam 26:12; Isa 29:10) in which God reveals Godself in a vision or dream (as in Gen 15:12; Job 4:13).19 The sleep in this instance can describe three 15

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 71. In the Sumerian and Babylonian mythologies humankind is always created to serve the gods but in the Bible Adam and Eve are made in the image of God, to have dominion over creation. This is the only work they are assigned to do and it has nothing to do with God’s needs (Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 68). 17 Utley, How It All Began, 46. 18 Mangum, Custis and Widder, Genesis 1–11, Gen 2:4–25. 19 Wenham, Genesis 1-15, 69. 16

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different sorts of circumstances: when someone is unresponsive to circumstances in the human realm induced by something in the human realm; when someone is unresponsive in the human realm and equally unresponsive to God; and when someone has become unresponsive to the human realm in order to receive communication from God.20 The man responded with a poetical song about the woman who was made from his bone and flesh (v. 23). Now the author provides a theological perspective on the creative act of the woman by explaining that it symbolizes that man and woman belong together and become one flesh, referring to the sexual act. The narrative ends with the statement that both the man and his wife were naked without feeling any shame. Diodorus Siculus and Plato both mention nakedness as a feature of the golden age and a characteristic of the first human beings.21 What is important in reading the two narratives divided by Genesis 2:4a is that the original socio-historical context(s) of the narratives should be taken into consideration and that its genre should be considered. The genre indicates that it was not meant to be read literally. Its function lies on another level, to explain theological ideas about the divine and human, and their relationship. Proverbs 8:22-31 presents a perspective on creation in terms of its discussion of wisdom that is personified. Before YHWH made anything, God made wisdom, even before the beginning of the earth. At that time, before the mountains had been shaped and the hills brought forth and God had not formed the fields with their soil (vv. 25-26), there was no water on the earth (v. 24). The second creation narrative offers a sophisticated, sustained, and intentional reflection on human destiny, in the words of Walter Brueggemann, that focuses on human persons as the glory and central problem of creation.22 Brueggemann suggests that one does not speak of a second, parallel story of creation but rather of a more intense reflection upon the implications of creation for the destiny of humankind. The observation is correct that this text (Gen 2:4a-3:23) is probably the most misunderstood in the Bible. This makes it difficult to read the statement of the text apart from the superstructure that wrong interpretations are laid 20

Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 78-9. Whitelaw, Genesis, 52. 22 Brueggemann, Genesis, 40. 21

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upon it.23 Much misinterpretation is based on the perception that this text is decisive for several issues that are discussed in the Bible. On the contrary, the text is exceedingly marginal with no clear subsequent reference to it being made in the rest of the Old Testament, with the possible exception of Ezekiel 28. The use of the text in the New Testament is limited to Paul’s reference to it in the early chapters of the book of Romans.24 It is important to note that, leaving aside the names listed in 1 Chron. 1:1–27 which are drawn from Genesis 1–11, neither the persons who feature in these chapters nor the stories about them feature anywhere else in biblical texts. Outside of Genesis 1 and 5, Adam is not mentioned again in the Old Testament.25 “The Bible is not under tyranny to this text. A beginning in exposition is to see the text in its actual role in the Bible. That role is limited.”26 One such misunderstanding of the text is that it provides a pessimistic view of human nature, exemplified in the Calvinist doctrine of the total depravity of humankind. To find such a pessimistic view of humankind, one would do better to turn to some of the prophets such as Jeremiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel. Genesis 2-3 does not show how evil came into the world; in fact, it does not give any explanation of evil. And it is not concerned with sexuality; there is no linkage between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17) and sex. It is rather about the political dynamics of power, control, and human autonomy.27 In reading the text, its nature should be kept in mind and it should determine the way it is interpreted. It is a narrative about the summons of the calling God for human beings to be God’s creatures, serving the purposes for which God created humankind. People are called to live in God’s world on God’s terms. The temptation to ask questions of a biblical text that the text does not answer has to be avoided. The questions about the 23

Brueggemann, Genesis, 40. The normativity of Pauline theological exposition that is based on a typological hermeneutical approach is an issue that Pentecostalism needs to consider. The typological interpretation of the Old Testament within the New Testament cannot be accepted as the proof that typological interpretations should be continued in contemporary times (Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 184). In reading Gen 2, it is important to hear the text as it stands, without any preunderstanding formed by Pauline discussion of the text in terms of issues that were important to his Roman readers. It is my contention that Paul draws judgments that are not based on the text. And Paul is not concerned with abstract issues about the origins of evil, causes of death, or sin but he is proclaiming the good news about Jesus of Nazareth, using those issues in a judicious way. 25 Blenkinsopp, Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation, 2–3. 26 Brueggemann, Genesis, 40. 27 Brueggemann, Genesis, 41. 24

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danger of sex, the origin of evil, the appearance of death, the essence of sin, or the power of the fall are not on the agenda of the author. The narrative is rather concerned with the reality of God.28 In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words, the first creation narrative is thought out from above, from where God is, and humankind is the final work of God’s self-glorification. Here the world is created for God, existing for God’s honor and glory. The second creation narrative, in contrast, is about the world in its nearness and about God-for-humankind, with God having fellowship with humankind in the garden. In the first, humankind is the final work of God and the whole world is created before humankind but in the second narrative, humanity is first created, and vegetation, animals, birds, and fish are created for the sake of humankind. The emphasis in the first narrative is about what God does, while the second is about what happens to human beings in their relation to God. In the first, God is depicted as a strange God; in the second, God exists in human form, as an anthropomorphic God. In this sense, Genesis 2 functions as the other side of Genesis 1.29

Literary analysis Genesis 2:4b The second creation narrative starts without any allusion to the days of creation found in the previous account. “In the day that” is simply the vivid Hebrew idiom for “at the time when.”30 The argument of Bill Arnold, that the tôlČdǀt statement of Genesis 2:4a is independent of the Priestly document and that it was supplied by the editor combining the different narratives to form a new document, using 2:4 to introduce the new block of material, would have carried weight if it were not for the words, “the heavens and the earth” in 2:4a in contrast to “the earth and the heavens” in 2:4b, betraying that a break between two different narratives.31 However, the issue is not of cardinal importance and the statement can be read in any of the two ways without altering the differences between the two narratives.

28

Brueggemann, Genesis, 43. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 71–72. 30 Ryle, Genesis, 27. 31 Arnold, Genesis, 55. Arnold applies this to all the tôlČdǀt statements in the book; he argues that they were supplied by the final editor. 29

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The older epic account of the origins of humanity found in Genesis 2:4b-25 is supplemented by the newer account of the Priest. In this way, Genesis 1 and 2 (along with 3) came from different authors but they have been edited together in such an intentional way as to produce a binocular view of creation that can be compared in some respects to the functioning of the three Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke). Now the focus is narrowed down from the universe to the creation of humanity (vv. 4b-7), the establishment of a home for humanity, in the garden (vv. 8-17), and provision in need of the human being for an appropriate partner. The way the second creation narrative starts, with “In the day that …,” indicates that a temporal clause is used. This is the way several creation narratives of surrounding cultures also start, including the Enuma Elish and the Sumerian Flood Story.32 It was also argued that Genesis 1 starts with a temporal clause as well. Here it indicates that a new narrative starts; the previous one ended with God completing the creative work and resting from work, and now a narrative is presented how God acts after creating the earth and the heavens. In the discussion of the first narrative, it was mentioned that the order is inverted in this narrative, from “the heavens and the earth.” The reason for the inversion is to be found in the different perspectives represented by the two narratives, with the first narrative emphasizing God’s creative acts while the second provides a perspective from the earth, in this case, a garden. However, the second creation narrative is also set off from the first narrative through the chiastic structure of the beginning of both narratives that is deliberate. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” of the first narrative reflects in the opening words of the second narrative, “In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.” The two verbs, “create” and “make” are the terms repeatedly used in both narratives.33 Gordon Wenham makes the interesting observation that the second narrative in Genesis 2 was probably not intended by the editor of Genesis to serve as a second, alternative creation narrative but rather to give the background for the events described in Genesis 3.34 Wenham illustrates the remark by describing the seven scenes that form Genesis 2-3: 32

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 48. Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 19. 34 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 20. 33

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2:5-17 2:18-25 3:1-5 3:6-8 3:9-13 3:14-21 3:22-24

35

Narrative describing the creation of the garden and humanity’s role in it Narrative describing the creation of animals and the woman Dialogue between the snake and the woman Narrative about the woman and the man’s conversation Narrative describing the dialogue between God, the man, and the woman Narrative describing the disruption of creation relationships Narrative describing the human couple leaving the garden in Eden35

In the past centuries, a lot of theological endeavors concentrated on discussing the biblical creation narratives. Augustine formulated the doctrine of original sin, the belief that all human beings after Adam are born in a state of sin and total depravity due to the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, without the ability to please God in any way. It is partly based on Romans 5:18-19, that states that because of one man’s transgressions, all human beings are condemned and made sinners. The creation narratives contain no such implication. Paul was responding to a debate raging in Jewish circles about the significance and implications of the disobedience of the first human couple. For instance, 4 Ezra 7:48 blames Adam for what he did and explains that the fall was not concerned with Adam alone, but all people who are his descendants. In response, 2 (Syriac) Baruch 54:15 accepts that Adam’s sin brought untimely death upon all people but denies the accountability of each individual person for their own sin. Adam was responsible for himself only, and each person is to be his or her own Adam. Genesis does not even refer to a fall. The garden narrative has paradigmatic value as it emphasizes that the temptation to eat forbidden fruit is typical of human experience because the inclination to sin is inherited in each generation. However, guilt for sin is not transmitted automatically to the following generation or any other people, as it is also not transmitted genetically. It is also an unbiblical idea that Eve is actually the one responsible for the fall, as Sira 25:24 asserts. The idea is repeated in the New Testament, in 1 Timothy 2:14 that states that Adam was not deceived; it was the woman who transgressed. Adam has to bear the primary responsibility for what happened; Eve did not act behind his back. And the command not to eat from the fruit of that specific tree was given to Adam, before Eve was created. The snake was also invested with theological meaning. In traditional terms, Catholic spirituality views Mary as the woman, Jesus as Eve’s seed, and Satan in the manifestation of the snake. Genesis 2 is then a prophetical prediction of the fall and destruction of Satan at the hand of Jesus and the church, as portrayed by statues that show Mary trampling a snake. Nothing of this is implied by the narratives. The snake rather plays an etiological role, to explain why snakes bite people, and people kill (or should kill) snakes

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These seven scenes are then seen as a mirror image of the seven days of the first narrative. Important is to note that the seven scenes also represent a chiastic structure, with the first and last scenes matching, the second and second last matching, and the third and third last scenes matching. Scene 4 stands alone and represents the turning point in the extended narrative with a high point when the human couple realizes their nakedness due to their decision to eat the forbidden fruit. This contrasts with the seven days of Genesis 1:1-2:4a with the first and fourth, second and fifth, and third and sixth days in conjunction with each other, while the seventh day serves as the climax of the narrative. Phyllis Trible emphasizes that the narrative is carefully structured and designed.36 The story can be considered as consisting of four scenes: 2:4b-17 2:18-25

the placement of the ‘adam in the garden the formation of a “helper” 3:1-7 the disruption of the garden 3:8-24 judgment and expulsion

The first and last scenes belong together because they are concerned with moving into the garden, and out of the garden. The second and third scenes belong together because they represent the establishment of community and its disruption. The garden exists for the community, and when the community is disrupted, the goodness of the garden gets lost. In this analysis, verses 10-14 are omitted. In referring to four rivers flowing from the garden, it is clear that it an intrusion in the text and does not play any role. It might suggest that all life originated in the garden and exists as a gift of God, but the rivers play no part in the narrative. It is taken up in (Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 75-6). What these narratives emphasize is that the Creator has a purpose and a will for creation; creation exists primarily because of God’s will. To realize the Creator’s purpose, God reveals Godself to human beings, calling them to faithful response and glad obedience to God’s will. God does not implement God’s will on human beings; the Creator is not a tyrant. The narratives also emphasize that the creation has the freedom to respond to the Creator, although it only exists because of and for the sake of the Creator’s purpose (Brueggemann, Genesis, 12). These emphases explain the dramatic tensions that the text reflects, with on the one hand the Creator’s faithful and respectful approach toward human beings, including anguish at human disobedience and, on the other hand, the mixed response of obedience and recalcitrance from the side of human beings. 36 Trible, God and the Rhetoric.

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Ezekiel 47:1-12 with the rivers serving as a source of food and healing, as is the case in Revelation 22:1-2 as well. The new narrative is characterized by a new designation of God in Genesis 2:4b, as “YHWH God” (yhwh ‘elǀhim).37 The first narrative uses consistenly the plural form, “God” (‘elǀhim). The designation, YHWH God, is never used anywhere else in Genesis, and never outside the Pentateuch, and casts doubt on whether the second narrative is the work of the Yahwist.38 Another consideration is that J is normally dated as generally pre-Deuteronomic, while the creation narratives clearly reflect and echo Babylonian literature, while the argument is that Judah was first introduced to these myths during the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE. This cannot, however, be stated as a fact; it is most probable that some individuals among the people of Israel would have known about the myths and in some cases even the detail of the narratives. The stylistic argument for ascribing the narrative to the Yahwist who used the depiction of an anthropomorphic presentation of God and a lively style is still strong.39 Perhaps the designation, God, was chosen by the editor as a way to designate God in Genesis 1, and YHWH God in Genesis 2, as a means to ensure that the reader would read these two narratives together, in binocular fashion.40 However, this does not explain why the rather strange designation is used in the second narrative; an explanation for its use is not possible, given the current state of knowledge about the narrative.

Genesis 2:5-6 There are seven clauses in 2:4b–6 that are related and they form an extended introduction to the first main action of this narrative, which comes in verse 7. The introduction provides the setting for the action. The seven clauses’ relation to each other can be illustrated as:[NL1-7] 1 In the day that the Lord God made …

time setting

2 no plant of the field was yet …

two parallel statements

3 no herb of the field had yet …

describing the earth

37 The union Yahweh-Elohim occurs only in Gen 2:4–3:24 and Exod 9:30 in the Pentateuch (Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 191). 38 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 76. 39 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 78. 40 Arnold, Genesis, 56.

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4 for the Lord God had not … it to rain

two reasons for

5 and there was no man to till …

2 and 3

6 a mist went up from the ground

two further statements

7 and watered … the ground

describing the earth (6 and 7 are linked in a negative-to-positive way to 4)41[/NL1-7]

Genesis 2:5-6 describes the situation that existed that is referred to by the temporal clause; it serves to qualify the conditions that existed before the creative process was started by YHWH God (v. 7). The conditions are very different from the first narrative, where the earth was depicted as a formless void characterized by the deep, and with darkness hanging over everything. The land before the creation of the first man (2:7) is depicted in terms of: there was “no shrub of the field” (v. 5a); “no plant of the field” (v. 5b); and “streams came up from the earth” (v. 6). Some suggest that “shrub” refers to perennials, that is, plants that continue to live year after year, while “plant” refers to annuals or plants that last for only one growing season. The trees that characterized the Near East were, inter alia, the tamarisk and date palm, the acacia and cedar, fig and olive, cypress and oak, pomegranate and willow. Shrubs included the oleander and juniper. The principal cultivated grains were wheat, barley and lentils.42 The two classes of plants should be seen in terms of the context, which refers to the conditions of the earth before the creation of animals and human beings, and their need to be fed in order to survive. For the moment, there is nothing that can sustain animals and people; that is the reason for the statement.43 Why plant life is absent is explained in terms of two reasons in verse 5cd: “YHWH Elohim had not sent rain,” and “there was no man to work the ground.” Although there does exist a subterranean source of water (v. 6), by itself, it cannot support plant life because no farmer is available to work the land. This is necessary to understand the purpose of the description found in v. 7, consisting of the creation of humanity, whose occupation is to be agriculture.44 Genesis 1:6 also implies that the earth was flooded by water, necessitating the separation of waters from waters. In Genesis 2, it is depicted as a dry wasteland because the earth had not received any rain, and no one was available to till the 41

Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 60. Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary, Ge 2:5. 43 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 61. 44 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 192. 42

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ground. Rainfall as essential for the growth of vegetation and the possibility of cultivating the fields effectively is significant to this narrative, betraying its origins in the rain-based, dryland farming that is characteristic of SyriaPalestine. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, agriculture is limited mainly to the areas around the great rivers, where irrigation forms the heart of agriculture. John Kselman makes a provocative remark, that Genesis 1 might have reminded Judeans listening to the narratives of the early Israelites’ passing through the sea after their liberation from Egypt (Ex 14-15) and that Genesis 2’s wasteland might have reminded them of the Israelites’ travel through the wilderness in Exodus 16-16.45 It is important to note that neither creation narratives leave room for “creation out of nothing.” In both cases, there was prior material. In the second narrative, the narrator starts with a dry wasteland, and God brings life to it. The expression in 2:5 that YHWH God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, leads to the remark in the next verse that a stream (ed) would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground. Some older translations (KJV, RSV, JPS) translated the word “stream” as “mist,” leaving the impression that it reflected a greenhouse effect.46 This picture is in accordance with Genesis 2:5-6.47 More recent translations prefer to translate the term with “stream” rather than “mist” (NRSV, NAB, CEV, NIV). Other translations use “flood,” “spring,” or “moisture.” The Hebrew ed probably refers to an underground source of water that comes up to the surface, and it corroborates with a similar word in Sumerian, Akkadian, or north Mesopotamian. Mesopotamians believed that streams, personified by Enki, were connected to the deep water below, personified by Apsu. It might even be possible that ed refers to another Mesopotamian god of the great waters of the deep, Id. Then the author 45

Kselman, “Genesis,” 88. Some Creationists connect with this idea and explains that before Noah’s flood there was no rain, but mists created a green house effect. Then the canopy collapsed at some stage, causing the Noahic flood and drowning all dinosaurs. Only after the flood normal rains started to occur. 47 The Hebrew ’êd is a word found elsewhere only in Job 36:27. The meaning is not certain, as the versions (LXX ʌȘȖȒ; Lat. fons) reflect. The Babylonian êdû refers to a “flood” or “overflowing,” implying that “spring” or “stream” may be more accurate than “mist.” Job 36:27’s ’êd may denote the “source” of the waters above the heavens. The word does not explain the origin of rain (Ryle, Book of Genesis, 29). 46

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repeats the argument in the reference to tehom in the first narrative; the idea that a god of chaotic waters reigns was reduced to a natural flow of water found in any fountain.48 The reference in verse 10 to a river that flows out of the garden of Eden may be identified with the stream referred to in verse 6. In both cases the idea is that this river or stream was connected to the source of all water and produced the whole earth’s water, resulting in four branches that served all the inhabitants of the world. The idea is connected to the great cosmic ocean that ancients believed was below the earth and also found in the oceans where it surfaced. For that reason, some exegetes prefer to translate the word with “flood” since it suggests the source of all water and the possibility that it might become destructive.49 However, in the light of the author’s clear intention to critique the polytheistic view of the surrounding world that saw divinity in many natural phenomena, the idea is not viable that the term refers to waters that might become chaotic and destructive and that it had to be mastered by God. Ezekiel 31 also utilizes the idea of a cosmic ocean under the earth that was accepted widely among the people of the ancient Near East. The prophet refers to an oak in Eden, nourished by the waters and with the deep waters causing it to grow tall (v. 4). Its roots go down to abundant waters (v. 7), referring to the depths of the ocean below the earth. The Canaanite high god, El, was supposed to dwell at the source of two cosmic rivers which nourished the earth. The fresh water on earth was due to these waters. This is most probably the association the author intended the first listeners exposed to the cultural and religious ideas of their neighbors to create by referring to the deep waters.

Genesis 2:7 Next, YHWH God formed humanity from the dust of the ground (v. 7); the implication is that God used God’s hands to do so. God breathed into their nostrils the breath or wind of life, the condition for humanity to become living beings. The expression again presents the formative agency of God in an anthropomorphic form, with the mouth of God and the nostrils of the man as he comes into existence. John Lange says it is as though God had

48 49

LaCocque, Trial of Innocence, 59. Fritsch, Genesis, 28; Simpson, “Book of Genesis,” 493.

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waked him into life with a kiss.50 Isaiah 42:5 uses the same concepts when it states that God YHWH created the heavens, spread out the earth and continues to give breath to the people upon it. The difference with the narratives of the surrounding world is that God undertakes the task of creating humanity without outsourcing the manual labor and the connotation of dirtying one’s hands with the dust of the earth to a fertility goddess. Israel’s greatest temptation to become involved with the idolatry of their neighbors was probably connected to the fertility goddess, whether she was called Asherah, Anat, or Astarte in Canaan, Ishtar or Inanna in Mesopotamia, or Isis in Egypt. The need for a feminine deity seemed to have been rather universal among people, and its attractiveness was strengthened by the sexual connotations that the fertility goddess held for worshippers attending places of worship where temple prostitution played an integral part. The portrayal of YHWH God is of a creator who is close and personal with the created order, forming or shaping (yƗ‫܈‬ar) humanity out of the dust. “Forming” refers to the shaping and forming with the hands, as when a potter shapes the clay to suit his needs. The artisan of the first narrative is now a potter and gardener. The physicalness of the act depicted by the verb implies that Israel’s God was directly involved in the creative act. Now God is not speaking a world into existence, as in the first narrative, but soiling God’s hands and clothes, working in the dust of the ground. Humanity consists of “dirt-people” as the result of their Creator’s handiwork. The personal and intimate involvement of God with people is continued in the narratives found in the rest of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers. Previously scholars argued that the narratives’ portrayal of God in anthropomorphic terms, with human hands and emotions, reflect a primitive mindset. However, today most scholars accept that it does not reflect primitive thinking but rather sophisticated thinking. They did not see God in a literal sense as a human being but they used these concepts to describe God’s close, personal relationship with creation and the only way to do so was to portray God in such terms.51 Traditionally Jews rejected icons or images of God, portraying God in terms of the empty space represented over the ark of the covenant, the throne of God. Their aniconic view contrasted Israel from its surrounding neighbors.

50 51

Lange, Genesis, 204. LaCocque, Trial of Innocence, 53-6.

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In Mesopotamian myths, fertility goddesses formed clay figures that were enlivened by a divine force that was essentially evil. Their live force came from a slain evil god and they were created as slaves for the sole purpose of providing in the daily needs of the gods. The myths served priestly ideology, explaining the necessity of providing the priests with sacrifices and gifts. In some myths, the surrounding lands were characterized as a “temple manor” that belonged to the gods, and administered by their priests, shifting priests into a powerful class in society. It is clear that not all businessmen believed priestly propaganda; a lot of private property and trade existed outside the bounds of temple jurisdiction. By bringing the prescribed gifts and taxes to the temple, the temples became centers of tremendous wealth that served as banks, loaning money to business people. Many loans to peasants turned them into middle-class people or, when the economic tide turned, into debt slaves. At times the temples owned half of the land around the cities. The God of Genesis 2 did not make people from an evil and defeated god but quickened and enlivened them by the breath of the good deity. Life in nature is the result of God’s life imparted to it. The implication for human beings is clear, that people are equal to each other. They are also free. They are not trapped in castes of social systems. And they can stand in a relationship with God that differs from that envisioned in the ancient Near Eastern world. They are not created to be slaves of God but to be children of God, another anthropomorphic concept utilised to attempt to portray the relationship of love and respect that exists between God and human beings, respectively. People are free, moral agents but at the same time, they are morally responsible for their deeds and accountable to their Creator God. The Genesis creation narratives undercut and undermine the authority and prerogatives of the king and priests that dominated in their world and the assumptions of the ruling political and economic functioning. In the second narrative, humanity appears on the scene very early and dramatically, already in the first main sentence, leading Derek Kidner to conclude that humanity forms the pivot in this narrative, in contrast to humanity as the climax in the first narrative.52 The “breath, spirit, wind” of God refers to the life force that makes living beings alive. When their breath leaves, they die. Gnuse refers to the view 52

Kidner, Genesis.

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that the breath refers to moisture, observed in the condensation of people’s breath in cold periods and used by potters working with clay. In the Mesopotamian myths, the goddesses used saliva to bring life to human beings. Verse 7 contains a wordplay that is decisive in understanding biblical anthropology. Wordplay is an important device to crystallize the importance and significance of the event that is described. God formed man (ha’ƗdƗm) out of the dust (‘aphar) of the ground (ha’ƗdƗmă). The same word is used for “human being” and “ground,” implying that people come from the earth, are made from the same elements of the earth, and explains why they return to the earth when they die. They are one with the earth, tied with an inseparable link. The Hebrew ‘aphar is to be translated as dust, or clay and lumps of clay, connecting it to ‘adam as earth or dirt.53 Later, Christian eschatological expectations refer to new heavens and a new earth, and that heaven will be established in the midst of the earth, emphasizing the important link between human beings and the earth, even in the expected eschatological future. The term ‘adam refers in verse 7 not to an individual but to humanity in general. The term also does not carry the gender nuance of a male.54 “Adam” is rather a poetic personification of humanity in the generic sense.55 The person created by God remained to be referred to as “adam” until the woman is created, and then the person is referred to as “man” (‘ish). The creature that God created became masculine only once the female is created.56 And man was not created prior to the woman; humanity in the generic sense existed until the woman was created.

Genesis 2:8-9 The next step is that YHWH God planted a garden (more strictly “an enclosure”)57 in Eden, in the east, where the man was put (v. 8). God is 53

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 55. “Adam” is also related to “Edom,” the country to the southeast of Israel, and “Edom” refers to red clay or red man. The red dirt of Edom gave a red hue to the skin of its people. When Esau was born, his hair was red, covering his body like a hairy mantle, and he was called Edom for that reason (Gen 25:25). 54 Alter, Genesis, 22. 55 Richardson, Genesis 1-11, 59. 56 Bal, Lethal Love, 112-8. 57 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 30.

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represented as the first planter, the founder of human culture.58 In the garden, YHWH made trees to grow, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v. 9).59 Kings, according to Mesopotamian myths, were thought to be responsible for establishing exotic gardens with beautiful trees and imported animals. It might be inferred that the narrative about the garden of Eden reinforces the Mesopotamian image and Iranian association of the garden, providing necessary associations for listeners with the world in which they found themselves. The kings placed plants from various parts of their empire, including exotic plants indigenous to regions unknown to the local people, as a statement of the wide extent of their reign. Temples in Babylonia also had gardens around them. John Walton explains that the Jerusalem temple reflects many elements of the garden of Eden. The temple was seen, not only as YHWH’s residence but as a divine garden on earth. In the same way, the author of the second narrative reflects temple symbolism, as is also the case in the first narrative. The garden is not simply farmland but an archetypal sanctuary, a place where God dwells, and humanity should worship God. The parallels between the garden and the temple include God appearing in the garden and temple; cherubim guarding the gates of the garden and temple; various trees, including a depiction of the tree of life in the temple; and the priestly duties of Adam that are linked with those of priests in the temple. Adam and Eve are clothed especially, as the priests wear designated and special garments; water, gold, and precious stones are present in both; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil shows similarities with the description of the Torah, which was kept in the holy of holies in the temple (and tabernacle); and touching or eating certain restricted items are prohibited, with the warning that its violation would lead to death.60 The Mesopotamian myth Enki and the World Manor relates how the gods created humanity on the island of Dilmun, which is present-day Bahrain. From this island, all freshwater springs issued that were responsible for the fertility of the earth. Enki created the world on the island in eight creative acts. The myth relates how Enki enjoyed the fruit of the garden. Enki also 58

Lange, Genesis, 204. The tree of life metaphor is common in Wisdom literature (e.g., Prov 3:18), the Apocrypha (e.g., 2 Enoch 8:3), and the New Testament (e.g., Rev 2:7) (Mangum, Custis and Widder, Genesis 1–11, Gen 2:4–25). 60 Walton, Genesis 1, 184-5. 59

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told how the goddess Nintu or Ninti came from his rib and she is called the “lady of life.”61 The parallels with the second creation narrative in Genesis is clear, suggesting that the Genesis narrator might have been exposed to these older myths. The idea that Eden is the name of a garden is still persistent, although it is clear from verse 8 that God planted a garden in a region called Eden. The Septuagint translates “garden” by a word meaning “paradise” (as ʌĮȡȐįİȚıȠȢ; the Vulgate: paradisus) but this word carries with it popular associations that distort the biblical picture.62 In John Walton’s opinion, the garden serves as a symbol, as is also the case with the two trees and the serpent, and I agree with him.63 Symbols are transcendent and play a far more important role than the physical realities to which they refer. The implication is that garden is more a sacred space than a green space. It serves as a center of order, but not perfection. Its significance lies in the divine presence found in the garden rather than in human enjoyment in a paradisical sense. In Ezekiel 47 as well as in the literature of surrounding cultures, gardens are portrayed as sacred spaces as evidence that fertility emanates from God’s presence. They provide fruit that is offered to the gods. Kings built gardens landscaped with exotic trees and stocked with wildlife for their enjoyment and to impress important visitors to the court.64 Kings replicated for themselves the prerequisites that the gods enjoyed.65 Where Genesis 1 designated the cosmos as the sacred space where God dwells, Genesis 2 portrays the garden as sacred space, the place where God has fellowship with human beings. Eden symbolizes the tabernacle or temple in that sense. The temple is the virtual garden of Eden.66 “Eden” may refer to the Sumerian or Akkadian word that refers to a steppe or plain while others think the term refers to “luxury, delight, pleasure, or paradise.” The Hebrew term for Eden, ‘edhen, is close to ‘eden, meaning “delight.” The word may also come from the Ugaritic or Syrian word ‘dn, which refers to a place of abundant water.67 Eden is not the name of the garden, but of the country or district in which the garden is planted.68 The 61

Tsumura, Creation and Destruction, 37. Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 64–65. 63 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 116. 64 See, e.g., the discussion in Dalley, Mystery of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. 65 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 117. 66 Bloch-Smith, “Solomon’s Temple,” 88. 67 Tsumura, Creation and Destruction, 40-41. 68 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 30–31. 62

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name of the garden sounds like the name for the stream mentioned in verse 6.69 Where did the narrator locate Eden? The expression “in the east” implies somewhere in Mesopotamia, east of Palestine. The point of view is not that of the Babylonian, but of the Israelite, who regarded the east, and, in particular, Babylonia, as the cradle of man’s earliest civilization.70 Various sites in the area qualify for such a garden, e.g., the area where the Euphrates and Tigris come within twenty miles of each other, or an isthmus south of Babylon. Ezekiel 28:13; 31:9 suggests that Eden as the “garden of God” is located on the “mountain of God,” which does not refer to a literal location. The narrative should be read for its symbolical and metaphorical value, implying that looking for the specific place where four rivers originated is an idle task. In the ancient world, temples were supposed to be built on top of the cosmic mountain.71 The top of the cosmic mountain represented the heavens where the divine beings had their abode and its base was in the underworld, serving as a link between the three dimensions of existence, the heavens, earth and human life, and the world of the dead. The cosmic mountain was the center of the world and the source of water and fertility. The garden situated in Eden shows similarities with this concept. God is present in the garden in a specific way, walking in the cool of the day. The garden is also the source of water for the whole earth. In a Scripture passage that refers to the garden, in Ezekiel 28, the king of Tyre is said to have been placed in Eden on the mountain of God, placing the garden in a way that Genesis 2 does not do. Eden is pre-eminently the place where God dwells.72 There are also similarities between the garden in Eden and the Israelite sanctuaries of the tabernacle and temple. Their main entrances faced the east, implied by the stationing of the cherubim with the flaming sword on this side of the garden. Cherubim served as the traditional guardians of holy places; they guarded the entrance of the garden to ensure that humanity could never return to the garden to eat of the tree of life, and cherubim over the ark and woven into the temples of the sanctuaries perpetuated the motif. 69 One also finds references to this garden in Ezek 28:13; 31:9, 16, 18; 36:35; Isa 51:3; Joel 2:3, all coming from the sixth century or later, implying that the garden tradition originated rather late in Israelite thinking. 70 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 30. 71 Morales, Tabernacle Prefigured. 72 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 27.

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Cherubim were usually perceived as being human in form with human heads, but at times their human form was combined with an eagle’s head or another animal’s head. Sometimes they were viewed as personifications of the winds. They serve as the living chariot on which YHWH rides (Ps 18:11), they are denizens of the garden of Eden (Ezek 28:14, 16) and they serve as guardians of sacred things and places generally.73 Gold and precious stones located in the garden referred to in Genesis 2:12 reminds of the adornment in the Jerusalem temple with these gemstones. Water flowed out of the garden, and according to Ezekiel 47:1-12, also from the Jerusalem temple. That a river flowed out of Eden, means that the river rose or had its source and headwaters in Eden; “a river began to flow from Eden.” This refers to the main river and is not named.74 The tree of life also reminds of the menorah that provided light in both sanctuaries. The menorah represented a tree-like structure according to Exodus 25:31-40 and 37:1724. The same verb referring to God “walking” in the garden is applied by Leviticus 26:12 and 2 Samuel 7:6 to refer to God’s presence in the tabernacle. The last similarity can be found in Adam being put in the garden to till and keep it (Gen 2:15), the same combination of verbs used to describe the work of the Levites in die tabernacle, as Numbers 3:7-8; 8:26 and 18:56 explains. “Through this comparison the garden is portrayed as the archetypal sanctuary, where God and man should dwell together in harmony. And Adam is the archetypal priest in this primeval temple.”75 By creating trees in die garden, God takes care of the need of humanity. God is the life-giving source behind those trees that serve humanity as an important source of food. Two trees are referred to apart from the others.76 The reference to the tree of life might be understood as God’s guarding of eternal life, although it should be added that Adam was not initially

73

Skinner, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, 90. Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 66. 75 Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 28. 76 It is incidental to Genesis 2 that there are two trees and the initial story probably only knew about one tree. Whatever the case, the story is not concerned with the character of the different trees; they are incidental to the main point, that is concerned with God’s command and human beings’ disobedience (Brueggemann, Genesis, 45). Calvin (Commentary on the First Book, 116) makes the interesting remark that it is uncertain whether the author has two individual trees, or two kinds of trees in mind. Either opinion is probable, but the point is by no means worthy of contention. He agrees that it is of little or no concern to us which of the two is maintained. There is more importance in the epithets, which were applied to each tree from its effect, and that not by the will of man but of God. 74

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forbidden to eat from the tree of life.77 Genesis 2 suggests that the tree of life was in the middle of the garden and the other tree located elsewhere. However, Genesis 3:3 states that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is also in the middle of the garden, raising the question of whether the earlier traditions knew of two separate trees. The tree of life is mentioned only two times, in Genesis 2:9 and 3:22, implying that the motif might have been added to the original narrative. Then it becomes comprehensible that the woman is unaware of the tree of life, referring to the tree in the middle of the garden (Gen 3:3), not knowing that the tree of life is also supposed to be standing there. Mesopotamian myths only refer to a tree of life that may have been connected to divine kingship and immortality. However, it seems rather that the present account makes good sense with two trees.78 The image of the tree of life was prevalent in ancient near Eastern literature and the biblical author used it, but the image of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not play any known role in existing mythical literature and indicated that the biblical tradition created the image. It is not clear what the author meant with “knowledge of good and evil.”79 Various proposals were made in time; it may refer to a kind of cognitive enlightenment, that at the same time implies moral culpability.80 It may refer to moral discernment, consisting of the ability to know the difference between good and evil. The implication is that by knowing what evil is, humankind would be enabled to do evil, as the narrative in Genesis 3 demonstrates. Good and evil, tob and ra, have a much wider meaning here than what later use of the term implies. It refers to an ultimate split in humanity, with tob meaning something like “pleasurable” and ra “painful.”81 There is nothing that is pleasurable/good/beautiful, without its being always already immersed in that which is painful/evil/base/false. That the first human beings experience shame when they partake in evil implies that they are aware of what they did because they knew the moral categories that distinguish between good and evil. Now they experience nakedness (‘ărǎmmim) as something inappropriate. Previously nakedness and shame were not thought to be naturally linked in cause and effect (3:7); this is now the result of what happens in the garden. Nakedness among the Hebrews was shameful because it was often associated with guilt. It is related to 77

Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 71. Steck, Paradieserzählung, 27. 79 The Hebrew term for evil is ra, which means “to break up” or “ruin,” implying that the act and its consequences are combined (Utley, How It All Began, 48). 80 Arnold, Genesis, 59. 81 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 88–89. 78

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“shame” (ʺ ʓˇˎ), particularly public ridicule (e.g., 1 Sam 20:30; Isa 20:4; Mic 1:11), and often serves as a metaphor for judgment against sin (as in Isa 47:3; Ezek 16:7, 22, 37, 39; Lam 1:8).82 Dietrich Bonhoeffer thinks that shame expresses and results from the human reality of people who are not accepting each other as God’s gift but instead are consumed with an obsessive desire for the other, and the accompanying awareness that other people are driven by the desire to get something from us. Shame then becomes a cover to hide oneself from others because of the reality of evil because of the dividedness that has come between people. “Where one person accepts the other as the helper (ˣː ʍʢʓʰ ʍ˗ ʸʓʦˆʒ )83 who is a partner given by God, where one is content with understanding-oneself-asderived-from and destined-for-the-other, in belonging-to-the-other, there human beings are not ashamed.”84 Shame exists because of a split-apart world. Another proposal is that the knowledge of good and evil refers to the knowledge of everything from good to evil, implying knowledge about a wide range of things.85 Others propose that it refers to knowledge or wisdom by which one lives daily, required for a person to be self-sufficient. Some think in terms of the knowledge of sex, associated with the experience of shame at their nakedness. They link the tree with its “knowledge of good and evil” with sexual initiation; however, Genesis 4:1 states that immediately after their expulsion from the garden of Eden, Adam had sex with his wife and Cain was born, while nothing is said about any sexual relations in the garden.86 The verb “to know” is often linked to sexual relations in the biblical idiom.87 The sexual connotation given to the narrative does not take into account that God says that with this knowledge the man and woman have become “like us” (3:22), and sexual awareness is not ascribed to God.88 It may also refer to knowledge of pleasure, pain, life, and death, the knowledge that adults have. Then the shame of the couple is 82

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 225. It translates literally “a help as his opposite or a help as over against him” (a difficult phrase). ʣʓʢʰʓ means “opposite, corresponding to” (Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew Step by Step, 25). 84 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 101–102. 85 Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 243. 86 Later Jewish scholars are certain that such sexual relations would have been inappropriate to engage in within the garden because it was a holy place, serving as a temple (Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 72). 87 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 71. 88 Hamilton, Book of Genesis, 164. 83

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not to be associated with moral categories but rather with the positive gaining of maturity in adulthood. Adult people understand what havoc might be caused when people run around naked. The connotation with “wisdom” connects with the reference in Ezekiel 28 that states that the man is “wise,” implying wisdom of a range of things. The prostitute in the Gilgamesh Epic tells Enki that he has become wise like the gods.89 Proverbs 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4 refers to wisdom for living a successful life in terms of the metaphor of the “tree of life,” connecting the tree of life with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Genesis narrative. It may be that the two trees were identified in Israelite thinking and the author of the second creation narrative separated it for the sake of the plot, as William Brown suggests.90

Genesis 2:10-14 There was a river in the garden that divided into four streams, called Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and the Euphrates that flowed from the garden. Of the four rivers, two are known, the Tigris and Euphrates which define the Mesopotamian valley. The ancient Hebrew name for Tigris is chiddeqel.91 Some suggest that the four rivers represent the four major rivers of the ancient Near East; the Gihon and Pishon are therefore to be identified with the Nile and the Indus rivers. This is only a conjecture and it does not align with the description in Gen 2:10–14 of four rivers branching from a single source.92 The Gihon flows around the whole land of Cush, sometimes translated “Ethiopia” since that is how it was translated in the Septuagint. Egyptian inscriptions mention a people by that name as living somewhere south of Egypt. Ancient Ethiopia included much of the area that is today Sudan and because the Nile runs through Sudan, the Gihon was identified with the Nile. However, it is also possible that Cush refers to an area in Iraq that cannot be identified any more. Because the location is uncertain, it is best to translate the text as “Cush.”93 No rivers fit the criteria of Genesis 2, suggesting that the author intended to state something about the location of 89

Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 247. Brown, Ethos of the Cosmos, 154-5. 91 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 68. 92 See, however, David Guzik’s, Genesis: Verse by Verse Commentary, Gen 2:1014 ingenious way of explaining why some of the rivers are not be found today. It is because Noah’s flood dramatically changed the earth’s landscape and “erased” these rivers! 93 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 68. 90

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the garden that contemporary readers do not comprehend.94 The mentioning of the four rivers warns contemporary readers not to look for historical facts in the narrative but to understand it as a description with symbolical value. From the garden that God establishes for humanity to live in, all water originated that provides in the needs of the rest of the world because the garden also represents the communion between God and human beings, an aspect that the narrator emphasizes as an important motive for establishing the garden. Why the narrative uses considerable space to refer to these rivers is not clear to us anymore. It probably served an association that made sense to the first listeners. The narrative is also not clear about whether the four rivers flow into or out of the garden in Eden, implying an area where four rivers come together, like in southern Mesopotamia or where four rivers find their origins. That it divided and became four rivers implies that the division took place in Eden before reaching the garden, or that there were four tributaries in Eden that flowed into the main stream, or that the main river divided into four streams somewhere in the garden, or that the main river flowed through the garden and upon leaving the garden divided into four streams. The last view is accepted by most exegetes. “Four rivers” literally refer to “four heads,” which refer to the parting points where the smaller streams separate from the main river.95 For the sake of understanding the narrative, however, it is not important to locate the garden because the narrative serves another function, to inform its listeners about the human predilection for sin that separates humanity from God.96 The garden serves a symbolic function that refers to God creating the earth as an ideal place for humankind to exist, but that was interrupted by a catastrophe of worldwide size. The garden served as the place where God and humanity enjoyed fellowship without any hindrance.

94

Mangum, Custis and Widder, Genesis 1–11, Gen 2:4–25. Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 66. Lange (Genesis, 205) agrees: it refers to four flood-heads (not “rain-streams,” nor “brooks”), which as four rivers part themselves in all the world, the stream-heads become head-streams. 96 Suggestions for its location are that the four rivers are the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile and Indus and Eden comprise the lands of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and western India (present-day Pakistan); or an area comprising Turkey down to Egypt; or in the Mesopotamian Valley; or the area around Jerusalem and the southern wilderness of Judea; or represented in the cities of the plain that was destroyed, Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma, Zeboim, and Bela or Zoar (Gen 13-14; 18-19), that is, the area around the Dead Sea that was once fertile; or a cosmic mountain found in Sinai, or Zion in Jerusalem. 95

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Verse 12 states that the gold of that land is good and that one can find bdellium and onyx stone there. Bdellium (Heb. b’dôla‫ۊ‬, probably a foreign word; LXX ਙȞșȡĮȟ) refers to an aromatic transparent resin, obtained from balsam (balsamodendron mukul), found in Arabia as well as in India, Bactria and Africa.97 The Septuagint translates bdellium in Numbers 11:7 as “manna” (țȡȪıIJĮȜȜȠȢ). Another rendering is “pearls,” found abundantly in the Persian Gulf area. The translation of the word is necessarily a conjecture. The “onyx stone” or “beryl” translates the Hebrew shoham, also mentioned in Exodus 25:7: Job 28:16. It refers to a precious stone of some kind. The onyx was one of the twelve stones on the breastplate of the High Priest (cf. Ex 28:9).98 Assyriologists have identified the Hebrew word with an Assyrian word samdu, but it is now known what the content of the reference of samdu is.99

Genesis 2:15-20 The next part of the narrative, Genesis 2:15-20, relates that God puts humanity in the garden to till it and permits them to eat freely from any tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Should they eat from that tree, they would die the same day. In the ancient world, kings possessed gardens with exotic plants and animals, as already stated. The garden of Eden is, however, not a testimony to the royal empire but it is pictured as an ideal place for human beings to exist. This garden is characterised by its simplicity and usefulness, not its extravagant representation of the most exotic plants from all parts of the empire. God places humanity in the garden to till the earth and rule the world, as symbolized by the names they give to animals and birds, “and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (2:19). In the Sumerian and Babylonian mythologies, humankind is always created to serve the gods. That is the sole reason for creating them. In the biblical account, Adam and Eve are made in the image of God and they are given dominion over creation. This is the only work they are assigned to do and it has nothing to do with God’s needs.100 Humankind follows in God’s footsteps; God is the first gardener or shepherd, as the words “till and keep” demonstrate. The reference in verse 18 that God put humanity in the garden to till it and keep it (both are Qal infinite constructs) is rather out of sync with the reference in verse 16, that humanity may freely eat of any of the trees in the garden, implying that 97

Ryle, Book of Genesis, 33. Utley, How It All Began, 47. 99 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 33. 100 Utley, How It All Began, 47. 98

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they are fruit pickers rather than farmers. Gnuse’s argument makes sense that it serves as a critique of the economic and religious systems of the ancient world.101 The reference to tilling the ground does not play any further role in the plot of the narrative but it does occur here in the Mesopotamian myths. In terms of the biblical narrative, it would have made more sense to have removed it to the events after the fall. Then humanity is burdened with laboring hard to produce food, as part of humanity’s judgment (Gen 3:17-19). YHWH’s instruction is a positive expression of God’s goodness rather than a harsh restriction (v. 16b). The Hebrew clause “from any/every tree of the garden” proves God’s broad provision, a generosity followed by the Hebrew construction, “you are free to eat” or “you may eat freely.”102 Does that imply that in God’s “ideal world” human beings do no work and that physical work was a curse related to sin? Supralapsarians like many Dutch Calvinist theologians who believed in predestination, argued that God willed human sin as a way that humanity would have to leave the garden and engage in agriculture as a requisite for developing human culture. This was a condition that God could manifest grace to forgive sins in the death of Jesus. The fall was predestined by God and led to the total depravity of humanity. The narrative rather suggests that humanity did (or was meant to do) agricultural work in the garden, even if it was only limited to taking care of the existing trees in the garden. But agricultural activities became much more difficult after leaving the garden, because in the words of Genesis 3:17-19 the ground is now cursed because of humans, bringing forth thorns and thistles, causing people to earn their bread by the sweat of their faces. The Hebrew word that is translated as “till” or “work” (ҵƗbad) is used commonly for tilling the soil (e.g., Gen 3:23; 4:2, 12) or for other labor (e.g., Isa 19:9). It can also refer to “service” to another (e.g., Isa 29:15; 31:6). It is also often used to refer to worship (e.g., Ex 3:12). The verb and its noun derivative, “service” (ҵăbǀdâ), is used to describe Levitical duties in tabernacle and temple worship. It is also used to refer to the “work” on the tabernacle that was completed (Ex 39:32, 42). “Take care” (šƗmar) probably specifies the nature of Adam’s labor. “Take care of” and “work” are terms used regularly in terms of human service to God rather than as a description of agricultural tasks, in John Walton’s opinion.103 The problem is that in Hebrew the two infinitives, “to work” and “to take care of,” have 101

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 76. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 211. 103 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 104. 102

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feminine singular suffixes, used in conjunction with “garden,” a masculine noun. This is in itself not an insurmountable problem. It may be translated as infinitives without a pronominal suffix, “for serving and for keeping” without making a specific reference to the garden. In that case, it is not necessary to amend the text to masculine pronouns or to look for a feminine form earlier in the passage.104 “Work” can refer to agricultural tasks (as in Gen 2:5; 3:23), but in those contexts, the verb is conditioned by a direct object, the ground. When the verb does not take a direct object, it refers to work connected with one’s vocation (as in Ex 20:9). The sense of the word is frequently connected to religious service (as in Ex 3:12) or to priestly functionaries serving in the context of the cult (as in Num 3:7-10). The object of the verb in some cases refers to the one who is worshipped (as in Ex 4:23; 23:33). Whether “work” in the context of the second creation narrative refers to agricultural tasks or worship is difficult to decide because the object of the verb is neither the ground nor God but the garden. Does “garden” refer to a place where human beings have to work to provide food or where God holds communion with humanity? The verb “to take care of” is the contextual partner and decides the case. In the case of Abel (4:9) “to take care of” is used to refer to the attending of property and flocks (e.g., 30:31); it is also used for protecting persons (28:15, 20), and frequently for “observing” covenant stipulations and guarding sacred space, as a Levitical responsibility. In some cases, “to take care of” and “work” are used together in terms of Levitical service (as in Num 3:8-9). It seems that “to take care of” in the context of the creation narrative refers to sacred service. That “work” is not objectified in terms of “ground” also suggests that it is more likely to refer to sacred service than agriculture. This leads Walton to conclude that the tasks given to Adam are of a priestly nature. He has to care for sacred space.105 The relationship between Eden, worship and the tabernacle/temple becomes clear, a theme that has been referred to already in terms of both creation narratives.106 In ancient thinking, this is seen as a way of upholding creation and preserving order, that keeps non-order at bay. In the first- or second-century CE book of Jubilees (Leptogenesis), Adam is also presented as offering incense when he leaves the garden, indicating that later literature interprets Adam’s role in the garden in terms of priestly work and the garden in terms of sacred space.107 Origen who lived in Alexandria 104

Ross, Genesis, 46. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 106. 106 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 209–210. 107 VanderKam, “Adam’s Incense Offering,” 141-56. The priest’s task was defined as instructing people regarding the cult in the sacred space, offering sacrifices in the sactuary, guarding the sacred space and sacred objects, keeping out anyone or 105

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in Egypt in the middle of the third century CE also views Adam as a high priest.108 That humanity would die the very day they eat the forbidden fruit (v. 17) reflects a formula found many times in the Hebrew law codes in conjunction with capital crimes that require the immediate execution of the guilty party. The form in which the verbs occur is important. It is the infinitive absolute that consists of the infinitive that is immediately followed by a conjugated form of the same verb. The effect of the repetition is to add emphasis to the verb, as the reading of the Hebrew text demonstrates. Keeping in mind that this term is used regularly in the Bible for the issuing of the death sentence, Robert Alter suggests that it should be translated with “doomed to die.”109 Eventually, that did not prove true and it did not happen, leading to various explanations. This is one of the inconsistencies in the narrative, which is not explained. Either in a fuller version of the narrative YHWH God was described as “repenting” of the sentence of immediate death because God changed God’s mind, or the words are to be regarded as metaphorical,110 or it refers to the origins of human mortality; human beings would then become mortal.111 They would become aware of their human finitude and the pain of life. Does that imply that the narrator thinks that humanity was initially inherently immortal, as Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon imply? Another suggestion why the first people did not die immediately is that it refers to spiritual death, even though they would initially remain alive physically. However, nothing in the text suggests such an interpretation, that sounds rather Christian. The best explanation is probably that which Westermann suggests, that God has a change of heart and decides not to kill the guilty parties.112 That God is a gracious God is a theme that repeatedly recurs in the following narratives. In verse 18, God realizes that humanity needs a partner because they are alone. For that reason, God created animals and birds. Humans give the animals names but do not find a helper as their partner. The remark that man needs a partner to help (v. 18) is odd. It is not good for man to be alone (Gen anything that might compromise the sanctity of sacred space, and serving as mediators between God and God’s people so that God’s people may enter sacred space without danger of dying (Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 108). “Sacred space” is defined as the manifest presence of God. 108 Anderson, Genesis of Perfection, 122. 109 Alter, Genesis, 31. 110 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 36. 111 LaCocque, Trial of Innocence, 182. 112 Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 224.

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2:18). The Hebrew reads literally, “not good the man being alone” that can be translated as “for the man to remain alone is not good for him” or “being alone does the man no good.” It is important to realize that to be alone is not a momentary state but a permanent one, to live alone.113 John Walton in his comparison of the biblical creation narratives with those of the surrounding world opines that the context does not refer to a negative assessment of the man’s craftsmanship or moral purity, it should rather be defined in terms of proper functioning. The same is true of the assessment that God’s creation is good; it does not refer to the absence of flaws or corruption but rather to its evaluation as a functioning whole.114 Should the God existing outside time not have known that exactly that would be the case? The narrative creates the impression that God is making up the plans while busy with the creative acts, that God is experimenting with what would work the best. Man does not seem pleased with God’s first plans and when the woman is created, at last, responds with, “This, at last, is bone of my bones” (v. 23), as though in exasperation. That God’s behavior may seem odd is, however, based on readers living in another world that view God in terms of their theological speculations about the divine and their anthropomorphic depiction of God. Any interpretation of the narrative should take into account that this is a Hebrew narrative functioning in a world where the relationship between God and humanity was pictured in a meaningful religious fashion and in a way that entertained and grabbed listeners’ attention, although that is not necessarily true of contemporary readers.115 The creator God in this narrative is portrayed as soiling God’s hands in the mud and making animals in the hope that they might become soulmates for humanity. The narrative as symbolic discourse communicates that God loves the creation and human beings and is involved in their daily chores and experiences.116 Noticeable is that God creates animals in like manner as humanity, out of the ground (v. 19). The impression created by the narrative is that God formed each individual animal, showing the same care as when God created

113

Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 71. Walton, Genesis 1, 170. 115 Good, Genesis 1-11, 27. 116 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 76-7. Contemporay process theology functions somewhat in this way, emphasizing God’s close relationship to the universe and humanity and suffering with humanity rather than the theological assertion that pain and suffering result from the will of God. 114

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humanity.117 The common origins between animals and humans are illustrated excellently.118 And the argument for humans’ superiority is blown up. In Genesis 2, humanity is created first, not because they represent the ultimate creative act but because God wanted their assistance in naming the animals and birds. Verse 19 is a translation problem when “living creature” (nephesh hayya’) that refers to animals can also be translated as “living souls.” Genesis 2:7 uses the same phrase to refer to ‘adam, humanity. Most translations try to transcend the problem by translating the phrase as “living being,” making a difference between people and animals but it is important to remember that in the narrative’s jargon people and animals are kindred. Why does the naming of animals take up so much space in the narrative (vv. 19-20)? For ancient people, naming was significant because it gives an object, animal or person identity and helps to bring them into existence. To a certain extent, something does not exist until it can be called by name. By involving ‘adam in die naming process, YHWH God graciously permitted ‘adam to share in creative activities. It should be kept in mind that in the first narrative, God created things in the universe by naming them. By naming them, God called them into existence.119 It might also be that by naming animals and birds ‘adam was given dominion, authority and power over them, a concept that closely links with the first narrative’s assignment to humanity, to subdue the earth and to have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, and everything that moves upon the earth (1:28).120 The power to name a person also defines the relationship between the one giving 117

Utley (How It All Began, 49) refers to a remark of Rich Johnson, Professor of Religion at East Texas Baptist University, that corresponds to the NET Bible’s interpretation, that the meaning of the imperfect with a waw conversive (“YHWH God formed or fashioned out of the ground every living being”) refers to the simple past tense. It is used to structure a sequence of events and a series of this kind of verb tell of events in the order in which they occur. The presupposition of some translators (such as the NIV) led them to mistranslate this verse and also 2:8, “Now the LORD God had planted a garden…, had formed animals.” Such translators assume that Gen 2 must match Gen 1; it does follow the rules of reading Hebrew narrative to accommodate that assumption. This verb is translated as a simple past by the KJV, ASV, ERV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, ESV, NEB, REB, NET Bible, Youngs’ Literal translation, the Jewish Publication Society translation, the TANAKH, the NAB, and the New Jerusalem Bible. 118 As the theory of evolution emphasizes. 119 Stratton, Out of Eden, 38. 120 Richardson, Genesis 1-11, 67.

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the name and the person being named, giving the one responsible for giving the name specific access to the one named.121 The narrative poses the question, what does it say for our relationship with animals? Do we have the animal realm at our disposal to do as we want? It certainly does not imply that human dominion over the animal kingdom includes contributing to the extinction of animal species, as happened during the past centuries and is still happening at alarming speeds. Francis of Assissi’s custom of referring to the animals as “brothers and sisters” rather reflect the narrator’s reminder that we all come from the dust of the ground and share in receiving life (or “soul”) from God. The second creation narrative emphasizes that humans and animals have a common kingship; both are created from the same material and in the same way. The difference is that the narrator recounts that God breathed into the nostrils of humanity the breath of life,122 something that is missing in the description of the creation of animals and birds. It might imply that humanity has the unique opportunity to stand in a personal relationship with God.123 The author uses the less common Hebrew word neshamah to describe the type of “breath” that animated the first man—nishmath chayyim, or “breath of life” in Genesis 2:7.124 Normally the term ruach (often translated as “spirit,” “breath,” or “wind”) is used in similar expressions. The term is used only to refer either to YHWH or to humankind. Here it implies a special connection between humanity and God since only human beings from all living beings become alive after receiving the divine breath.125

Genesis 2:21-23 The creation myths of the ancient Near East do not contain any stories about the creation of women. In describing the creation of man, it is implied that women are also created at the same time. It seems that the patriarchal ideology did not leave room for referring to women as separate from men. The myths do refer to goddesses and their productive capacities. One such myth is the Sumerian Enki and Ninhursag from around 2500 to 2000 BCE that describes the creation of the different gods. Enki impregnates Ninhursag, 121

Lim, Grace in the Midst, 121. ʭʩ ʑ˕ ʔʧ life occurs in the plural form only, even when it refers to one life (Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew Step by Step, 20). 123 Richardson, Genesis 1-11, 67. 124 Most other places in the Old Testament prefer the word ruach for “breath, wind, or spirit” (e.g., Gen 6:17; Ezek 37:5) (Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 14). 125 Mangum, Custis and Widder, Genesis 1–11, Gen 2:4–25. 122

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who gave birth to Ninkurra. Enki then impregnates Ninkurra, who gave birth to Uttu. At one stage, Uttu removed Enki’s semen which Ninhursak used to generate eight plants. Then Enki ate the eight plants, causing severe illness. Ninhursag next helped Enki to give birth to eight separate deities. These deities healed the eight parts of the body affected by the illness.126 The deity that healed Enki’s rib was Ninti or Nintu, the “mother of all living beings.” Nintu is also the goddess that formed seven pairs of people from clay that were inspirited by the slain evil god in the Atrahasic Epic. The epic dates from the early second millennium BCE and begins with the creation of humankind, continues with several plagues sent by the gods to limit the human population’s growth and the noise they create, and climaxes with the sending of a flood to extinguish all humanity. Only Atrahasis and his family survived the flood by escaping with a boat, which eventually landed on a mountain like Noah’s boat also did. Atrahasis offered a sacrifice to the gods when he left the boat, and the hungry gods crowded around the sacrifice because they had realized their mistake in extinguishing human beings who were responsible for taking care of the gods’ daily needs. The many similarities with the Genesis narratives are clear, leading to the conclusion that Genesis 2-9 is the retelling of a story of primaeval times that originated in the ancient Near East from about 2000 BCE, or even before.127 In Genesis’s second creation narrative, Eve is made from Adam’s rib and she becomes the mother of all human beings. A snake was associated with Enki while Nintu as the patron goddess of pregnant women was depicted as a bare-breasted woman with outstretched arms that had snakes wrapped around them.128 It is clear that some associations with these myths might have been made by the earliest listeners to the narrator’s tale, although a direct influencing is denied. Some elements of the myth were transplanted into another theological context and for different purposes. Something was lacking in the beautiful and fruitful garden. The man was alone, needing a helper as a partner.129 “Aloneness is not part of God’s 126

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 82; Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 37-41. Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 23. 128 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 82. 129 The term “helper” (‫ޏ‬ezer) is tradionally the translation of a noun that does not suggest any subordinateness. It rather refers to a sustainer (Alter, Genesis, 23). When the Bible introduces God as “helper,” the idea is of one who does for humans what they cannot do for themselves by meeting their needs. Perhaps the term rather suggests a companion without which one cannot reach one’s fullest potential, “an aid fit for him,” meaning one “alongside” or “corresponding to him.” The woman provided in what man was lacking. The expression “partner” (kenegdo) literally 127

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creation intention.”130 In Calvin’s words, the commencement involves a general principle, that man was formed to be a social animal.131 After the first man named all living beings, he did not find someone suitable for his needs. The LORD God saw the shortcoming and caused the man to fall asleep and then formed a woman from one of the man’s ribs. According to Genesis 2:18, YHWH God sees Adam’s need for a helper (‘ezer) and created animals that Adam may choose one of them as a helper. But none of them qualifies, necessitating God to take other steps. The Hebrew ‘ezer kenegdo is according to Robert Alter “notoriously difficult” to translate. The second term refers to “beside him, opposite him, a counterpart to him.” “Help” is too weak to translate the first term because it suggests an auxiliary function. Elsewhere ‘ezer connotes active intervention on behalf of someone, especially in military contexts. This use is found repeatedly in the Psalms. Alter suggests that it should be translated with “sustainer.”132 Calvin agrees and writes that the woman is to be a kind of counterpart (ਕȞIJȓıIJȠȚțȠȞ, ਕȞIJȓıIJȡȠijȠȞ) for the woman is said to be “opposite to” or “over against” the man, because she responds to him.133 God causes Adam to sleep deeply and God formed woman from one of his ribs (or his side; see discussion above). The implication is clear; the woman is made by God differently. God needs other material than for humanity, the animals, and the birds. The woman qualifies to fulfill the needs of Adam, clearly also for sexual reproduction and fulfillment. What does it mean, that Eve is created as a helper, an ‘ezer for Adam? The noun occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament, and more than sixty percent of the occurrences refer to God’s ability to help God’s people. It has a connotation with protection and is associated with “shield” in poetic texts (Deut 33:29; Ps 33:20). It also refers to people helping each other (Isa 41:6; Josh 1:14).134 The second part of the phrase, kenegdo, is formed from two prepositions combined with a third masculine singular suffix, literally meaning “as opposite him.”

refers to someone who is the opposite of but corresponding to and suitable for one, suggesting a translation such as “corresponding to,” “matching,” or “suitable for” (Myers, Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 480). 130 Atkinson, Message of Genesis 1-11, 73. 131 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 128. 132 Alter, Genesis, 33. 133 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 130–131. 134 Mangum, Custis and Widder, Genesis 1–11, Gen 2:4–25.

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Many Christians accepted that it implies the subordinateness of the woman to the man; the implication is that God created women to serve men. Patriarchy within Jewish and Christian religious circles was partly built on this assumption. The cultures of the ancient Near East, including the Israelites, set men and women apart in dualistic understandings of sex and gender roles. Men were viewed as persons of privilege, power, and authority in a hierarchical arrangement. The patriarch presided over lower-status men, women, and slaves. Women played important roles in the maintenance and survival of the family, but they were subjected to men. The household was patrilineal, with women joining the households of men. The household was identified with the authority of the father. Women were dependent on their fathers, husbands, and sons and they formed women’s legal personae.135 The Hebrew word ‘ezer refers to someone who helps another person in time of need. Some exegetes even argue that the term refers to the superiority of the helper in terms of the one who is assisted, although good evidence for such use does not exist.136 God’s actions are described with the same term when God saves human beings (e.g., Ex 18:4; Pss 33:20; 115:9-11). The word is also used to refer to military assistance to people that are invaded by an enemy. The term ‘ezer comes from ‘oz, “strength” and one finds it in several names of Israelite kings such as Azariah and Uzziah, in both cases meaning “strength of YHWH.”137 When the woman is described as an ‘ezer for the man, it should be viewed in terms of YHWH as a helper of humankind; she is an aide to the man, complimenting him with her unique characteristics, and certainly functioning on equal terms with the man. That man calls the woman in verse 23 “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” also underlines their equality.138 “Bone of my bones” and “flesh of my flesh” emphasize that the relationship between the man and the woman is based on an intimate connection; it is used elsewhere to describe the blood relationships between family members, implying that humanness is not only about being but specifically about becoming.139 The Hebrew word for “rib” is tsela, a term that refers to “side.” That the word refers to Adam’s side does not exclusively imply that it refers to one of his ribs. Other interpretations are also possible, for instance, that God used Adam’s penis bone, a bone found in all other animals except one monkey species, explaining why the penis looks to be stitched on its 135

O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 39. Trible, God and the Rhetoric, 90. 137 Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 32. 138 Van Wolde, Stories of the Beginning, 54. 139 Atkinson, Message of Genesis 1-11, 39; Wenham, Rethinking Genesis 1-11, 26. 136

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underside.140 The association with Nintu that early listeners probably knew about and used as associative background material in listening to the narrative might imply that such an interpretation is not on the spot. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is the word tsela used to refer to “rib” and the only reason for translating it in this way is because the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX), interprets the word in this way. Why was the rib chosen, if that is the case? Matthew Henry, in his 1710 commentary, argues that the woman was not made from the man’s head to rule over him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by man. She was made from his side, showing that she is equal to him, standing by his side, and near his heart, implying that she is to be loved and nurtured. While the man was dust that was refined, the woman was doubly refined dust.141 R. K. Harrison asserts that the Hebrew “rib” here means “an aspect of the personality” which would form an analogy with Adam made in the image and likeness of God also to include aspects of personality.142 Walton discusses whether “rib” is a good translation for ‫܈‬ƝlƗ’, a term used approximately forty times in the Old Testament but never as an anatomical concept. The word is only used architecturally in the passages concerned with the tabernacle and temple (Ex 25-38; 1 Ki 6-7; Ezek 41) to refer to planks or beams, and more often, to one side or the other. The last passage where the term is used is 2 Samuel 16:13 to refer to the other side of the hill. Walton then concludes that ‫܈‬ƝlƗ’ should rather be translated as “one of his sides,” likely meaning that God cut Adam in half and from one side built the woman.143 That the woman was taken from the man’s side illustrates that she was of the same substance as the man. It also serves to underscore the unity of the human family, having one source, made clear by the man’s description of his wife: “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (v. 23).144 As a rule, “bone and flesh” are used figuratively in the Old Testament to refer to kinship. In Genesis 2, however, it is used in a literal sense. The effect of the words is heightened by “my bones” and “my flesh.” “Flesh” translates the Hebrew basar, that means “meat” in contrast to bones. Basar can also refer to animal life (Gen 6:19), all living things, including people and animals (Gen 6:12), kin or brother (Gen 37:27), and humanity in general

140

Sanders, Approaching Eden, 26. Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary, 7. 142 Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, 555–556. 143 Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, 77. 144 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 216. 141

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(Num 16:22).145Adam’s name for the woman, Ҵiššâ (“woman”), represents a sound play on Ҵîš (“man”) (as in the English “man” and “woman”). This demonstrates the close attachment that exists between man and woman. In naming her, the man also names himself Ҵîš. He finds his identity in terms of the woman, with his designation embedded in hers. Adam explains why he uses the term Ҵiššâ: she comes “out of man.” The same type of wordplay is also found between ҴƗdƗm (“man”) and ҴƗdƗmâ (“ground”) at Genesis 2:7 and 3:19. The ending -â of Ҵiššâ indicates feminine gender in Hebrew, but the -â can be used to indicate direction as well, indicating “to” or “toward.” The man moves toward the “woman” (Ҵiššâ) in 2:24; by way of marriage, he is “united to his wife” and they “become one flesh.”146 Especially among early Pentecostals sex was viewed in negative terms, as a necessity for conceiving children but to be avoided as far as possible. In their pietistic terms and serving the otherworldliness that characterized their spirituality, sex was seen as a direct result of sin. Genesis 3 was used to explain that sex was underlying the sin that eventually led to the first people’s banishment from the garden of Eden.147 However, Genesis 2 explains that the differences between the sexes are necessary for sex, and the sexual act as such is created by God and then blessed as a natural human function. “This at last” in Genesis 2:23 provides a strong hint of sexual celebration, according to David Atkinson, with the emphasis on the pleasure and fun of sexual love.148 However, sex always finds its meaning in the context of loving relationships and commitment. For that reason, verse 24 follows immediately on verse 23, the narrator’s comment that a man leaves his parent’s home to cling to his wife in an exclusive relationship.149

145

Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 76. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 219. 147 To correlate the fall into sin with the exercise of human sexuality is not supported by the narratives involved. The test states that sexual activity first occurred when Adam and Eve transgressed the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, although the narrative in Genesis 2, as well as the first creation narrative, do not state it implicitly, theoretically it would have been possible for Adam and Eve to have sex in the garden before the event happened that Genesis 3 relates. Their experience of sinfulness is in no way related to any sexual activities. Sexual activity was not the result of eating from the forbidden fruit. This is a deduction from Genesis 3 that cannot be justified and that for many centuries tainted Western people’s ideas about sex. 148 Atkinson, Message of Genesis 1-11, 73. 149 Atkinson, Message of Genesis 1-11, 74. 146

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Phyllis Trible writes that the creation of woman needs a second full creation story, emphasizing the importance of the woman and her necessity before creation can be completed.150 She asserts that women serve as the crowning event of the second narrative and the fulfillment of humanity. Another view that Pentecostals shared with many Protestants, and many Jews, is that the male was created first and the woman second, implying that men are superior to women. Because the woman was taken from man, the woman is supposed to be subordinate to man. This was true in biblical times, and it is, to a certain extent, still true in the Middle East today, where it is assumed that women should defer to males.151 However, if these arguments are correct, then animals are superior to man because they were created first, and man is subordinate to the ground because the man was created from it. The argument was also used that because humankind was created on the sixth day in the first narrative, as the last creative act, they are the crown of God’s creation. If that is true, then women are the crown of creation because they were created after men in the second narrative. It is important to note the propensity to use biblical data for one’s own ideological purposes, demonstrated by these remarks. It has been remarked that the man is called ‘adam in Hebrew, a generic term that indicates humanity as such. For that reason, the word was translated as referring to human beings in the discussion of Genesis 2. This is also the case in Genesis 3 when the narrator states that the man is expelled from the garden, using ‘adam, referring to the man and the woman. However, the moment the woman is created, the narrator uses another word for “man,” ‘ish (2:23, 24; 3:6). Now the man becomes masculine, in distinction from the feminine ishshah. The implication is that the male that did not exist before the female finds his identity in his sexuality. This is also the case in the first narrative when 1:27 states that God creates humankind as male and female. Important to note that Adam is not given the assignment to name Eve. He does not have the mark of authority over her as in the case of the animals. The man’s body gave birth to another human person without his active involvement. It implies that the man was responsible for reproducing living beings until the woman is commissioned to become the ‘eve, the mother of all living human beings. According to Genesis 4:1, she states at the birth of

150 151

Trible, God and the Rhetoric. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 71.

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her firstborn, Cain, that she has produced a man with the help of YHWH. Now the continuation of human life becomes dependent on her. Verse 23 contains the first case of reported speech by a human being. The first human speaks for the first time when another human being is there to respond to him. And the first speech is a verse, a poem to describe how the human views the woman presented to him by YHWH Elohim. The embedded poem is peculiar in the narrative flow and by itself draws attention to the importance of this creative event.152 Each of the two lines begins with the feminine indicative pronoun, z’ot, to be translated as “this (feminine) one.” And this is also the last word of the poem, clinching it in a tight envelope structure, in Robert Alter’s words.153 Calvin asks a willful but important question that was discussed earlier in another context. Where did Adam, and later the author, derived the knowledge of how God created Eve since Adam was at that time buried in deep sleep? Calvin solves the problem by stating that God made the whole course of the affair manifest to Adam, either by secret revelation or by God’s word. God showed Adam that it was not from any necessity on God’s part that God borrowed from man the rib out of which God might form the woman, but God designed that they should be more closely joined together by this bond. It was important for Adam to know this; otherwise, the close bond could not have been affected. Indeed, the author does not explain by what means God gave Adam and Eve this information. 154 However, to answer the question in such a way illustrates the literalist way in which Calvin interpreters the creation narratives, requiring him to accept certain assumptions that cannot be proven.

Genesis 2:24-25 The narrative ends with the explanation, “For that reason, a man leaves his father and mother and becomes one flesh with the woman and both of them were naked without experiencing any shame.” The word “therefore” introduces his inference. As in Genesis 10:9; 26:33; 32:32, a sentence beginning with “for that reason, therefore” supplies the application, or relation, of the ancient narrative to later times.155 The Greek interpreters of the LXX have expressed the statement even more forcibly: “They two shall 152

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 218. Alter, Genesis, 32. 154 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 134–135. 155 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 39. 153

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be into one flesh.”156 These words are not the continued speech of the man but the commentary of the narrator.157 In ancient Israel, however, women left their parents’ homes to live with their husbands, regularly in the parental house of the father. It might be that the Genesis reference reflects a time when this was not the custom. Or perhaps it just emphasizes the importance that the loyalty of the husband shifts to his wife, taking precedence over his loyalty to his parents.158 Many Christians (and Jews) accept that reference is made to the institution of marriage, serving as an aetiology of marriage. Something similar happened in the Atrahasic Epic that tells of seven pairs of males and females that were created out of clay, called husbands and wives. In this way, it asserts that marriage was instituted in the creative act of human beings. The aetiological motif does not seem to me to be definite. On the contrary, the becoming of one flesh rather refers to the sexual act.159 It might also be used to demonstrate that intimacy and fellowship are at the heart of the relationship between a man and woman that are closely linked to each other through the sexual act.160 If the Hebrew word for “side” is used here as in some other cases, as a metaphor for the male penis, then the image of becoming one certainly refers to the sexual aspect of the union between man and woman.161 The man “clings” to the woman, a Hebrew term (dabak) with a strong sexual connotation, in the sense that man and woman cling together in their sexual passion. It can also carry the meaning that they cling together for mutual protection against danger or a challenge. The relationship between the man and woman consists of a tight union. The union between the man and the woman is not only concerned with the fulfillment of sexual desires but also their psychological health.162

156

Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 136. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 222. 158 Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 71. 159 Gunkel, Creation and Chaos, 41. 160 Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 232. 161 Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 88. 162 While the narratives about Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden are seldom referred to in the rest of the Old Testament, one verse from Gen 2 received more attention than any other in the New Testament, and that is Gen 2:24. Mangum, Custis and Widder, (Genesis 1–11, Ge 2:4–25) describe the appropriation of Gen 2:24 in terms of three different purposes: to argue against divorce (Matt 19:3–9; Mark 10:2– 12), to argue against sexual immorality (1 Cor 6:12–20), and to be an analogy for Christ and the Church (Eph 5:29–32). Jesus appeals to Gen 1:27 and 2:24 to show that divorce was not part of God’s ideal for marriage, while Paul invokes Gen 2:24 157

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It might seem that the text advocates matrilocal marriage, with the husband moving to the house of the bride’s father and her extended family. The marriage custom of some nomadic people living alongside the Israelites was matrilocal. Moses married into such a clan and moved to live with the extended family of his wife. However, it is not necessary to argue for a matrilocal marriage as the preference of the narrative. It can also be interpreted as that the man leaves the house of his father and with his wife sets up a new home of their own. What is important, though, is the implication that the husband’s familial allegiance is transferred from the existing commitment to the mother and father to a commitment to the wife and, in time, the children.163 The significance of “leave” is that marriage involves a new pledge to a spouse that supersedes all former familial commitments. Marriage requires a new priority by the marital partners; the obligations to one’s spouse supplant a person’s parental loyalties.164 The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (v. 25). “Ashamed” renders the reflexive form of the Hebrew verb “to have shame,” and it suggests a reciprocal action: they did not feel ashamed of each other. They were not embarrassed with each other, or they did not have any feeling of shame towards one another. “Shame is the painful consciousness of having done or thought something that is recognized as wrong or unacceptable; it is generally most intense in the presence of other people.” 165

Calvin explains that the nakedness of humanity is normally deemed indecorous and unsightly, while that of cattle has nothing disgraceful about it. Most people are ashamed of their own nakedness. The cause of this sense of shame, according to Calvin, is to be explained in the next narrative. The author explains that in their uncorrupted nature, there was nothing dishonorable.166 Reference to the Calvinist way of reading Genesis 3 that led to the formulation of the doctrine of total depravity has already been made. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic illuminates certain aspects of the narrative about Adam and Eve in its reference to Enkidu, the companion of Gilgamesh, when he appeals to Christians to avoid sexual immorality (1 Cor 6:12–20). In Ep 5:31, Paul uses Gen 2:24 to emphasize the mutual nature of the marriage relationship. 163 LaCocque, Trial of Innocence, 132. 164 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 223. 165 Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 76–77. 166 Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 137.

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who roamed with the wild beasts and ate grass. He was then tamed by a harlot, who captured him at a water hole. Enkidu coupled with her for six days and seven nights before he returned to his friends, the animals. They, however, ran away without him. In returning to the harlot, she explained what was happening, saying, “You have become like a god! Why should you roam the open country with the wild beasts?”167 The implication is clear, that Enkidu’s sexual initiation opened the divine to him. He lost his natural strength but became like a god. The harlot now taught him to eat the food and drink the alcohol that humans enjoyed, dressed him and taught him the human customs. Eventually, he set out to find Gilgamesh and they undertook many great adventures together, among them killing the Bull of Heaven. For this infringement, the gods condemned Enkidu to die. Someone warned him in his dreams that he would die and then Enkidu cursed the harlot who had changed him from his natural state and condemned him to live as a human. Shamash, the sun god, heard the curse and reminded him of the benefits he had started enjoying since meeting the harlot, of food, wine, garments, and friendship with Gilgamesh. Enkidu relented and turned his curse on the harlot into a blessing. Both Enkidu and Adam make a transition to some form of self-consciousness that is reflected in the shame they feel about their nakedness. Both become conscious of impending death. Both aspire to become as wise as the gods, but in the process, they discover that they are without clothes and that they will die. On the other hand, while Enkidu gains a richness found in human life that is unknown among the animals, Adam’s action deserves a greater punishment. The woman is told that she will bear children with pain, and her husband will rule over her (Gen 3:16). And the man hears that the ground is now cursed because of his disobedience when he listened to his wife’s advice. And after earning his living with hard work, shall return to the cursed dust from which he was formed when he dies (Gen 3:19). Adam and Eve are then expelled, not only from the garden but also from the tree of life that would have led to eternal life. There is no hint of any meaningful life after death in the narrative, an observation that is true for the better part of the Old Testament. While the Babylonian epic simply presents death, as a matter of fact, the Genesis account uses its narrative in an etiological sense, to explain why death entered the world, blaming it on human beings.168

167 168

Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 56. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 72-5.

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Conclusion It was argued that Genesis 2:4b-25 represents a second narrative that complements and supplements the first narrative. The first narrative is concerned with the creation of the heavens and the earth with emphasis on the ordering of the earth. As part of the ordering, life forms are also created and as a climax, human beings as well. The narrative ends with the Creator resting after completion of the work. The second narrative concentrates on human beings. Nature is ordered for the sake of the human being; life forms are created by God in search of a suitable companion for him. Eventually, the woman was made to fit this need. Human beings are made first, and in the same way as the animals, out of the ground. Human beings are given the responsibility to designate the different animals, illustrating their dominion over nature. When the woman is made, however, another means is used. She is made from the man’s side, implying that his body is split into two, emphasizing their equality. The human being becomes a male when the female is created, showing that human sexuality was created by God and enjoyed God’s blessing. When the male sees his wife, he speaks for the first time, and his words form a song of joy for her creation. The narrative ends with two remarks, that the narrative about the female’s creation shows that a man shall leave his father and mother to cling to his wife, illustrating the transferral of loyalty from the parental home to a new life with a wife and children of their own. That the two become one flesh implies their sexual union. The last remark is that human beings were naked without experiencing any shame, commenting on the goodness of God’s creation of human beings and linking to the continuation of the narrative in the next chapter. Another link with the next narrative is found in the remark that the human being is installed in the garden of Eden with the explicit purpose to serve God; see the discussion above about the potential meaning of “to till and keep the garden.” In the next narrative, about the fall into sin, God would come to visit the human couple in the garden to have fellowship with them, demonstrating that the garden was a dwelling place of God, established to meet the purpose of the creation of human beings, consisting of a relationship of friendship between God and humanity.

CHAPTER 6 CREATION NARRATIVES AND A VIABLE THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE

Introduction In reading Genesis 1 and 2, Pentecostals are confronted by the discussion between scientists and Christian religious people about the way the world was created. Did it originate during the Big Bang, a theory that explains the origins of the world in terms of matter as an infinitesimally small ball that was ever-expanding and that is existing today as the universe, billions of years later? The theory asserts that the universe resulted from the sudden appearance of a single particle out of an absolute vacuum ca. 12–20 billion years ago, as Kenneth Mathews explains.1 This particle or “singularity” consisted of all space, time, and matter that were crushed together and that experienced an explosion or rapid development (“Big Bloom”) that produced the hydrogen and helium gases necessary for the formation of stars in an expanding universe. Inside these stars with their superhot furnacelike interiors, the heavier elements were eventually fused, and when the stars exploded, the chemical elements were spewed out into space as a cloud of gas and dust called a nebula. When the clouds collapsed, it led to planetary formations. The earth was formed in this way ca. 4.6 billion years ago. When the earth’s surface cooled enough, it generated an atmosphere and surface features. In time, the surface gases of the cooling earth at ca. 3.5 billion years ago, along with solar radiation, permitted the formation of various organic compounds that experienced the necessary chemical concentrations for producing the first protocells. They developed into a diversity of life that over a long period led to more complex life-forms, and eventually human beings, by way of natural selection and random mutation (variation). Richard Dawkins thinks this is the only “parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution: and workable alternative” to chance that has even been suggested.”2 Chance and intelligent design as ways to explain 1 2

Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 102–103. Dawkins, God Delusion, 120.

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irreducible complexity are not solutions due to the riddle of statistical improbability, in his opinion. There is another solution, found in natural selection. It is clear that the authors and editor(s) of Genesis 1 and 2 did not envision a reality in this way but rather employed images and philosophical ideas that made sense to their listeners in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to communicate effectively.3 If they had used images known to modern people, their message would have been lost on their first listeners. Was the universe created as an entire entity by God as it now exists, as Genesis depicts?4 Today’s rapid advances in technology are the results of scientific research that fed a vast field of applications. Three thrusts revolutionized the understanding of the physical world that can be observed by scientific means: particle physics, concerned with the very small,5 astrophysics and cosmology, that investigates the realm of the very large, and the recently emerging studies of the dynamics of complex structures. The combination of these insights is called New Physics, and it brought the sense of a vast intricately ordered universe that is tightly knit at all its levels,6 and seemingly designed for the development of life, or at least conducive to the development of life.7 When thinking believers interpret the archetypal 3

Gnuse, Misunderstood Stories, 18. Calvin (Calvin, Commentary on the First Book, 86), living in the sixteenth century, already wrestled with the issue of the relation between biblical data and the discoveries of science, writing that the author of the Genesis narratives (Moses) discoursed in a popular style things which, without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued with common sense, were able to understand, while astronomers investigate whatever the sagacity of the human mind can comprehend. Astronomical study is not to be reprobated or condemned, because some frantic persons are wont boldly to reject whatever is unknown to them. Astronomy unfolds the admirable wisdom of God. Because Moses served to teach both “the unlearned and rude” as well as the learned, he had to use a “grosser method of instruction.” “Had he spoken of things generally unknown, the uneducated might have pleaded in excuse that such subjects were beyond their capacity.” 5 The complexity that exists in the universe is explained by Dawkins in terms of the amoeba that has as much information in its DNA as a thousand complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica (quoted in Petty, Science & God, 56). 6 Paul Davies (“Universe in Reverse,” 27) in referring to the orderly cosmos notes, “The greatest puzzle is where all the order in the cosmos came from originally. How did the universe get wound up, if the second law of thermodynamics predicts asymmetric unwinding towards disorder?” 7 Barrett, Science & Theology, 5. 4

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narratives in Genesis, the universe pictured by the New Physics form the context for such discussions, with cosmology and biology as important conversation partners. In the discussions contained in this chapter, I acknowledge my lack of scientific training, that reflects Archbishop William Temple’s confession: “My ignorance of science is so profound as to be distinguished,”8 and acknowledge my debt to the contribution of Prof Frik van Niekerk, a good friend and colleague.9 The new scientific world-picture raises the same longstanding questions that people asked through the ages, and religion tries to answer. These questions lie beyond the competence of science, as Peter Barrett explains, because they are metaphysical in nature, concerned with the existence, creation, and destiny of the universe, the nature of divine action, and the meaning of human life and becoming. The discussion about possible answers to the questions forms the contents of natural theology (science was previously referred to as “natural history”).10

Pentecostal contribution to theology’s debate with science This research accepts that the Spirit reveals God through the Bible as well as nature, with the Bible serving as primary and nature as secondary means of revelation. Science and theology complement each other. In the words of Pope John Paul, faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit ascends to contemplation of truth. It also accepts that human knowledge about God is qualified in terms of 1 Corinthians 13:12 that it is not possible to see clearly but only dimly, as though we look into the mirrors devised in ancient times. While on earth, believers can only understand something about the economy of God’s love and grace for human beings and repeat what God revealed about God’s essence without clearly understanding it. They know in part and see dimly, while they await the realization of the promise that Christ will reveal God when he returns to the earth, and then believers will know fully.

8

Blanchard, Has Science Got Rid, 9. Van Niekerk has postgraduate training in physics, applied mathematics, and nuclear reactor physics. He was a systems engineer in complex systems and university manager for seventeen years when he served as deputy vice chancellor for research, innovation, and technology of North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. He is presently professor of energy at NWU. 10 Barrett, Science & Theology, 5. 9

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Believers accept that spiritual things are beyond the scope of scientific investigation and that scientific endeavors can benefit from such spiritual perspectives to provide a more balanced view of reality. Theology and science need to take hands and cooperate in order to explain reality in terms of how things are, why things are that way, and how they should be.11 While science investigates phenomena of the natural world, theology theorizes about the purpose of nature and those phenomena. Science addresses mechanistic processes; theology addresses ultimate causes. It is not necessary to choose between science and theology; truth exists about both God and nature, and the knowledge of both nature and God serves to complement each other. Studies about both can inform and enlighten each other, and in this way contribute to a clearer and more complete picture of ultimate truths. In both theology and science, access to knowledge is moderated by partial knowledge, limited human understanding, and imperfect interpretation of the data. Both enterprises can benefit from healthy amounts of modesty, humility, provisionality in the publication of their results, and even scepticism.12 In the words of Jeffrey Nichols, science concerns itself with ideas about the world that can be tested, at least in principle, while the science of the spirit complements and supplements science of nature. Whenever complex and measurable material structures behave in ways that cannot be explained by the properties of matter, it may be that the theories are incomplete, that natural explanations have not yet been discovered, or to postulate that spirit is at work.13 For Pentecostals, with their emphasis on the charismatic and pneumatic, the science of the spirit obviously plays an important role in their spirituality and theology. They expect the Spirit to reveal God in answer to their prayers and in reading the Bible. And when they make observations of nature and perceive order and complexity that exceed the normal operation of the laws of nature, then they hypothesize that there is something extraordinary or miraculous at work. What they need to do, it is submitted, is to use the scientific method as a tool to organize their thought processes and help them pursue greater understanding in matters of the spirit, contributing to the realization of truth in various disciplines.14 Science of the Spirit needs to devise testable hypotheses about the complex nature of spirit/Spirit that can control matter.

11

Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 337. Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 395. 13 Nichols, Scientific Method. 14 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 395. 12

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Pentecostalism is a newcomer in the science-theology discourse, only starting to contribute at the beginning of the twenty-first century.15 It is defined by a supernaturalism (or supranaturalism) that values nature and the natural, the domain of science, and emphasizes that God’s grace and revelation come through nature and divine revelation.16 It also recognizes that the real source of conflict for theology is not science but philosophical naturalism17 and reductive materialism,18 that is, a materialist view that claims in absolute terms that nature is all there is.19 Richard Dawkins describes the naturalist as somebody who believes that there is “nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe,20 no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand.”21 He calls the God of the Christians an interventionist, miraclewreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God and contrasts it to the God of the physicists, a metaphorical or pantheistic God that is light-years away.22 Most Pentecostals’ sentiments are with young-earth creationism and oldearth creationism, although several Pentecostal scholars favor evolutionary 15 The most important contributors are Smith and Yong, Science and the Spirit; Yong, Spirit Renews the Face; Spirit of Creation; and Science for Seminaries, a curriculum development project funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of Theological Schools in 2016. 16 Ware, “Theology and Science,” 458. 17 Also called normative methodological naturalism that is based on the assumption that science has to explain everything by undirected, purely materialistic processes. The observable universe is then a “lucky cosmological accident driven by gravity” that is followed by an unguided, random process of mutations and adaptations of organisms that is driven by natural selection (Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 4). 18 See the remark by Barr (Believing Scientist, 3) that there is no real conflict between science and religion, but rather between religion and materialism, although materialism (even when it is referred to as “scientific materialism”) does not constitute science. It is rather a school of philosophy defined by the belief that nothing exits except matter. 19 Smith, Thinking in Tongues, 40-43. 20 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 1038 asserts that the only alternative to creative intelligence under serious consideration within the evolutionary biology community is the transpermia theory, which explains that the building blocks for life came to earth from somewhere else in the universe, a theory that transgresses Occam’s Razor that entities should not be multiplied without necessity, or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. 21 Dawkins, God Delusion, 14. 22 Dawkins, God Delusion, 19.

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creationism. The old alignment with fundamentalist attitudes is certainly not favorable to a robust engagement with modern science, as Frederick Ware states it, given fundamentalists’ evasion of scientific conclusions.23 The pentecostal contribution to the discourse between science and theology is focused on the origins of creation, divine action within creation, with the emphasis on miracles and the charismata, eschatology, and moral and ethical action informed by scientific findings. The two primary concerns at the center of the distinctively pentecostal engagement with the sciences are the question how religious experience is interpreted and articulated theologically, with the emphasis on the encounter with God and concern for the authority of the Bible existing in the creative tension of pentecostal theology, and the importance of “spirit” as a category for study and interpretation of creativity, purpose, and mind.24 The last emphasis facilitates the foundational pneumatological basis of pentecostal theology, and should also serve as the angle of incidence when a pentecostal engagement with the sciences is undertaken. William Turner emphasizes that Pentecostals have a contribution to make to the discourse; he calls the pentecostal hermeneutic with its distinct pneumatological emphasis a prophetic version of Christianity.25 It is submitted that the science-theology discourse needs an axiom, or axioms that will link a scientific world-picture to Christian theology’s understanding of God.26 The depiction of the two natures of Jesus, as divine and human, describes God’s simultaneous transcendence and immanence. Translated into scientific terms, it serves as a model to think about God’s relation to the created universe, defined in terms of matter, space, and time.27 God exists outside the universe, implying that God is not subjected to the restrictions that space and time impose on everything existing in the universe. The theological contribution to the debate with science is inhibited by the discovery of successively higher levels of the complexity hierarchy in physics and cosmology, biology, studies of consciousness and the brain, and artificial intelligence (AI)). The existence and influence of complexity in, inter alia, the realm of quantum phenomena, consciousness, and genes

23

Ware, “Theology and Science,” 461. Vondey, “Holy Spirit and the Physical Universe.” 25 Turner, “Pneumatology,” 169. 26 Ellis, Before the Beginning. 27 Houghton, Search for God, 133, 149. 24

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determine science’s investigation into a multi-layered universe.28 It places high demands on theologians participating in the debate. It is essential to the distinctive of Pentecostalism that only someone who has personally experienced God’s presence and activity qualifies to formulate a theological contribution. Their pneumatological emphasis distinguished Pentecostals from other faith traditions. It is submitted that such robust pneumatology is a co-determinative to a coherent theological response, including the questions raised by the religion-science discourse. Their pneumatological emphasis implies that their spirituality is christocentrically configured because the Spirit is tasked to reveal Christ. At the same time, their high view of Scriptures constantly challenges, enlarges, transforms, or exposes the pneumatological imagination that determines their lifestyle, worldview and spirituality.29 Their “pneumatological imagination” is the result of a charismatic experience of God through the Spirit that results in a specific way of seeing God, self and the world, in contrast to other imaginations, such as sacramental, apocalyptic and prophetic, among others. Pentecostal theology, thanks to its hermeneutic, represents a paradigm shift that consists of a different point of departure, consisting of an emphasis on the significance of encounters with the Spirit. The Spirit serves as a symbol of the presence and agency of God in the universe, inhabiting believers and the natural world as a present and active force.30 Pentecostal pneumatological emphasis on the Spirit revealing God in the universe can serve as a corrective to a scientific perception that may exist of nature as a “passive woman to be subdued” rather than as a “nurturing mother to be revered.”31 This perspectival shift has become critical in our days as nature avenges itself on man's misuse of natural resources by the challenges that global warming poses for man's survival.32 In traditional Christian theology, the view of nature as enlivened in some sense by the Creator Spirit prevailed. Science in the business of serving commercial capitalism subjected a relational symbiosis with nature to a pragmatic relation, and the objectification of nature eventually led to several ecological challenges. It is suggested that postmodern humankind needs to personify nature and regain the image of nature as a living organism that nurtures life, as explained by her current avenging on humankind because 28

Barrett, Science & Theology, 167. Yong, “On Divine Presence,” 185. 30 Yong, Spirit of Creation, 175. 31 Gelpi, Divine Mother. 32 Pimentel, “Global Warming, Population Growth, and Natural Resources.” 29

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she was not revered. At the same time, although God cannot be identified with nature, the close relationship between the Creator and the created reality has to be emphasized. Pentecostalism can contribute to the debate with their embodied pneumatology that represents nature as inspirited by the Spirit of God. The last contribution that pentecostal pneumatological thought can make to the agenda of the discourse between science and theology is with their theology of nature and creation, needed to counter a scientistic-positivistic reductionism of the world that ignores the realm of spirit in its materialisticnaturalistic misrepresentation of reality. It underlines the necessity that scientific enterprise should include a metaphysics of spirit. Modernity saw the material and spiritual in dichotomic terms, ignoring the spiritual; postmodernity is obsessed with a reenchanted world and prejudiced toward an over-evaluation of the spiritual at the cost of the material. Pentecostals are ideally situated to provide a balance between an inspirited world filled with spirits, angels and demons and aspiritual scientific enterprises. Pentecostal theological endeavors act as an anthropological protest against modernity by providing a medium for encountering the supernatural and fusing the natural and supernatural, the emotional and rational, and the charismatic and institutional in a decidedly postmodern way.33 Pentecostalism places the occurrence of the miraculous on the agenda of scientific debate. Bradley Noel argues that Pentecostals’ openness to deny the hegemony of reason, their openness to narratives, and the essential function of experience in their epistemology serve to explain what they share with the postmodern thinkers of the twenty-first century.34

Four ways of thinking about creation and science35 Atheism Before looking at attempts to confront the paradox of seeming contradiction between the Bible and science, it is necessary to look carefully at the claims 33

Poloma, Assemblies of God at the Crossroads, xix. Noel, Pentecostal and Postmodern Hermeneutics, 9. 35 “Science” is defined as “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (Oxford Dictionary of English, 1580), referring to the ongoing process of learning things about the natural world. “Scientism” is not science in the true sense of the term but a system superimposed upon scientific endeavors when scientists asserts that “what you see is what you get,” and only what 34

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of atheistic materialism, represented by proponents like Richard Hawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. They call themselves “New Atheists” and propagate that in accepting the theory of evolution, one is compelled to accept atheism. Amir Aczel thinks that the New Atheism movement was launched as a direct consequence of the attacks of September 11, 2001, that illustrated the power of religious fundamentalism to disregard life and property for ideological reasons.36 New Atheists argue that there is no connection between religion and morality; in fact, in many cases, it is people’s adherence to a religion that contributed to their failure to stop extreme cruelty such as rapes and murders of young people, genocide, tortures, and other heinous crimes.37 Weak atheism as the absence of belief in any god’s existence should be distinguished from strong atheism, the firm conviction that no gods exist. Although some mention is made in texts before the eighteenth century CE about atheism and atheists, the rise of materialism with the discovery of natural laws led to the widespread distribution of the ideology. It was supported by the rebellion against the oppression that church and state engaged in, with a climax in the storming of the Bastille in 1789 that initiated the French Revolution and illustrated the church’s and state’s insensitiveness to the desires and needs of people who were not a part of the privileged aristocratic classes. God was equated and identified with the church, both were rejected by the masses, and they threw off the yoke of both God and the church. Sigmund Freud also contributed to the atheistic debate with his speculation that belief in God is nothing more than wishful thinking. Our wishes for God stemmed from our early childhood experiences, and for that reason, people formed God in the likeness of their fathers. He concludes that God

can be known and proved by science is rational and true. Blanchard (Has Science Got Rid, 27) argues that such a doctrine is irrational since it cannot be proved scientifically as required; in other words, it cannot be verified or falsified, a basic requirement in all scientific reasoning. 36 Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 11. Aczel concludes that the God of the New Atheists and the God of religious fundamentalism turn out to be remarkably similar entities, referring to James Wood (Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 19). The relation between literalism in the interpretation of religious texts and radical fundamentalist behavior threatening the well-being of other persons needs to be recognized and treated for what it is, a dangerous ideology that states need to address urgently. 37 Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 13.

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is nothing other than an exalted father.38 And then Charles Darwin, with his theory of evolution, dismantled the last part of the “argument from design” that theists used to prove the involvement of a creator in creative processes of the universe. Stephen Barr describes how the debate evolved.39 At first, the religious cosmology based on faulty scientific theories and a literal reading of biblical texts containing a cosmology was overturned by Copernicus. Then mechanism triumphed over teleology, implying the absence of design and any purpose in the created world. Phenomena were explained in entirely mechanistic ways while in biology, what was perceived as the apparent design was seen as the result of the undirected mechanism of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations. The disappearance of purpose implied the idea that nature was designed did not hold water. The overturning of the religious cosmology and the triumph of mechanism over teleology led to the dethronement of humankind, as Stephen Jay Gould refers to it. The human race was now seen as a chemical accident living on a planet that functions as an infinitesimal speck of flotsam in a limitless ocean of space, implying that they were not unique or important enough that everything was created to accommodate their well-being. The next step consisted of the discovery of physical determinism, based on the laws of nature that represented a closed and complete system of cause and effect. This led lastly to the emergence of a completely mechanistic view of humankind, with the processes of life viewed in terms of chemistry and the brain seen as a complex biochemical computer. In recent times, Richard Dawkins writes that evolutionary variation and natural selection necessarily led to the annihilation of the “evil” of faith in God. Evolution fully accounts for all biological complexity and the origins of humankind, so there is no need for any god, he argues. In any case, religion is antirational because it requires people to make a leap of faith into what can never be known for sure. It serves as a “great cop-out, the great excuse to avoid the need to think and evaluate evidence … faith is not allowed to justify itself by argument.”40 Dawkins defines faith as “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”41 He claims that faith is comparable to the smallpox virus, but harder to eradicate. 38

Freud, Totem and Taboo, 132. Barr, Believing Scientist, 11-12. 40 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/46350-faith-is-the-great-cop-out-the-greatexcuse-to-evade; accessed 2020-10-29. 41 Dawkins, Selfish Gene, 198. 39

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Religion as a “virus of the mind” is a meme, an idea or word passed from mind to mind somewhat as a gene is passed from generation to generation.42 He calls it the principal vice of any religion.43 Dawkins’ greatest objection to religion is that it has done great harm. Although that is true, it should be considered within the wider perspective that the church consists of people, and that religion requires of loyal people to fulfill the biblical injunction to love God and other people, with many good effects; that people in every context participated in harming others and nature, including religious as well as irreligious people; and that the church has simultaneously partaken in great acts of compassion, such as the provision of medical help and education to many people. Evil acts that may be committed in the name of religion does not disprove the truth of the faith, but rather prove the nature of humanity who, despite having received the truth, many times struggles to choose light over darkness. Genesis 1-11 explains this fact of human beings’ behavior skillfully. Dawkins’ arguments emphasize that God was not responsible for multiple acts of special creation for which evolution took the responsibility. However, that does not imply that God did not work out a creative plan, employing evolution, as will be argued later. Evolution implies that all living species are descended from a small set of common ancestors, perhaps just one. Variation within a species occurs randomly. The survival or distinction of an organism depends upon its ability to adapt to the environment, a principle called natural selection. Dawkins’ argument that religion is antirational and does not deserve serious attention from any thinking person represents, in the words of Collins, the setting up of a straw man that he quickly and effectively shoots down.44 His definition of faith is not accepted by serious believers who founded their faith upon the moral law enshrined in each person so that the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among all members of the human species, the hunger for the t(T)ranscendent that all people experience during their lives, the existence of orderly laws that the universe obeys and that can be expressed in mathematical terms, the existence of remarkable “coincidences” that allows

42

Barr, Believing Scientist, 34. Dawkins, “Is Science a Religion?,” https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA30073968&sid=googleScholar &v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00187402&p=AONE&sw=w; https://philpapers.org/rec/DAWISA; accessed 2020-10-29. 44 Collins, Language of God, 164. 43

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the grandeur and sublimity of laws of nature that bespeak design45 and support life, and more.46 Dawkins’ atheistic evolution confers “blind pitiless indifference” on all of nature, including humankind. The next moment, however, he advocates “pure, disinterested altruism” for those humans who he describes as far enough advanced to be able to rebel against their genetic imperatives. He writes that altruism has no place in nature and has never existed before in the history of the world.47 It is interesting that he calls on the moral law that God enshrined in all people, and then calls on people to commit their lives to do right, including altruism, although he ascribes the moral law to the advanced moral progress that evolved only among some individuals. The observation of a moral law operating in human beings shows, however, that it is universal and widespread across the human population, with some exceptions.48 The biggest problem with Dawkins’ atheism is that it asserts that science can disprove God, and in this way goes beyond the evidence. If God were limited to nature, science could have investigated the phenomena associated with divine revelation and essence. However, because God as Creator exists outside and beyond the creation, science can make no conclusive statements about God, to prove or disprove God’s existence and involvement in the world. Atheism is nothing more than blind faith, ascribing more to Dawkins’ definition of “faith” than religion does because it is based on a “belief” in something that cannot be defended based on pure reason, for the same reason why religion falls outside the parameters of science’s investigations. To quote the remarkable words of Stephen Jay Gould on the subject, “Science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists … Science can only work with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny other types of actors (like God) in other spheres (the moral realm, for example).”49 Gould then refers to many scientists who were (and are) committed Christian believers, and adds, “Either half my colleagues are enormously

45

Barr, Believing Scientist, 20. Collins, Language of God, 219. 47 Dawkins, Selfish Gene, 200-201. 48 Peck, People of the Lie as a psychiatrist discuss these exceptions extensively. 49 Gould, “Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge,” 118. 46

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stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious belief-and equally compatible with atheism.”50 Another problem is that atheism asserts that life first appeared through purely natural processes, without any intelligent guidance, intervention, or creative acts. In the words of Eric Anderson, it implies that if conditions were just right, non-living molecules can give rise to the building blocks of life and, eventually, to life itself. At some point on the early earth, it suggests, the conditions were just right, and it happened that the first simple life form evolved into life itself. Human beings are the descendants of that first organism that originated in the chemical soup that characterized the early life of the earth.51 This theory is called abiogenesis, consisting of the claim that non-living molecules, by themselves, came together to form the building blocks of life, and eventually life itself. It was the result of nothing more than the laws of chemistry and physics, and the random distribution of molecules and chemical reactions. To argue that a natural process that demonstrated an accident of chemistry or a lucky draw of the cosmic lottery is all that is required for an organism to become alive, characterized by immense complexity, functionality, and information-richness is difficult to accept for many thinking persons.52 In deciding about the hypotheses of evolution, however, they are not limited to naturalism and Creationism. As believers, they may also consider other alternatives, of which the theory of intelligent design and theistic evolution have become the most important.53 Next, these perspectives are discussed, and problems are pointed out in each case from a pentecostal angle. It is accepted here that the origins of the universe and life point toward a planned, purposeful, carefully designed intention that illustrates that it was intended, and carefully orchestrated by a divine Being whose intention with creating the earth and human beings is revealed not only in the pages of the Bible but in the works of the Creator’s hands as well.

50

Gould, “Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge,” 121. Anderson, “Information and the Origin of Life,” 38. 52 Anderson, “Information and the Origin of Life,” 63. 53 In popular parlance, “theory” is sometimes used in ways that contradict the accepted scientific definition of the term. Scientists do not agree that it refers to a speculative or conjectural view of something, but rather to the fundamental underlying principles underlying a science. To refer to the theory of evolution implies that biologists accept it as basic to their work. If there were uncertainties about its applicability, they would have referred to it as a hypothesis. 51

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Atheism or Scientism that consists of a combination of adherence to natural science and an atheistic worldview represents a “fundamentalist” position because it accepts certain suppositions without thinking critically about its own views, even in the light of contrary evidence.54

Creationism55 Most people who read the Bible in fundamentalist-literalist fashion support Creationism.56 Creationism (with a capital letter) should be distinguished from creationism; creationism refers to the belief that a God exists who was directly involved in the creation of the universe, and humanity. Probably most Christian believers support this viewpoint. The term Creationism is limited to those who use a literal reading of Genesis 1-2 to conclude that the six days of creation were literal twenty-four hour days and that the earth is less than ten thousand (or at most six thousand) years old (also called Young Earth Creationism). All species were created by individual acts of divine creation, implying that the theory of evolution is rejected that requires millions of years and with species evolving from each other.57 Adam and Eve were historical figures created by God from dust, and they lived not more than six thousand years ago. They are not descended from any creatures, notoriously not from apes.58 Some use the genealogies provided

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Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 767. In the discussion of the various ways to think about creation and science, I acknowledge my debt to Collins’ The Language of God. 56 They also read the 1611 King James Version like other more conservative Christian believers. Morris (Biblical Basis, 13) calls it “the most beautifully written, spiritually powerful, and generally most reliable” of all translations. He also argues that Bible authors claim to have written the very Word of God (Morris, Biblical Basis, 11), without providing any proof of such an assertion by biblical authors. The presupposition is that the translators of the KJV had access to the most reliable text of the Bible. 57 Evolution can mean different things, such as the change over time in the plants and animals that have existed on earth, to relatively small changes within species, the origin of fundamentally new species from earlier forms, or the theory that natural selection acting on small variations over millions of generations explains the origin and diversity of life (Waltzer, “Irreducible Complexity and Evolution,” 87). The discussion is limited to the last, also referred to as the Darwinist or neo-Darwinist theory of evolution. 58 The theory of evolution never states that people descended from apes but that human beings share the same ape ancestor with chimpanzees that lived 6 to 8 million years ago, and all apes and monkeys share a more distant relative, which lived about 55

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in the Bible to calculate the age of the earth, as Bishop Ussher concludes in his Annales Veteris Testamenti, a Prima Mundi Origine Deducti ("Annals of the Old Testament, Deduced from the First Origins of the World"), which appeared in 1650, and its continuation, Annalium Pars Posterior, published in 1654.59 He calculated the date of creation at the hand of biblical genealogies to nightfall on 22 October 4004 BC. Most Young Earth Creationists accept the idea that micro-evolution occurred, leaving room for small changes that can occur within species that demonstrates variation and natural selection. This principle is applied in agricultural practice with the breeding of domesticated animals. However, they reject macroevolution that requires one species to evolve into another.60 They motivate their perspective by the perceived gaps in the fossil record that supposedly shows that Darwin’s theory is fallacious.61 They assert that the geological strata and the fossils within the various layers were the results of a worldwide flood described in Genesis 6-9. It was not deposited over millions of years. For that reason, no intermediate fossil records exist for birds, turtles, elephants, or whales. They also assert that the consistent application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that everything in the universe tends towards increasing disorder, resulting in entropy or chaos, leaves no room for the evolution theory.62 Radioactive dating of rocks and the universe, used universally to determine the age of the earth and universe,

twenty-five million years ago (https://humanorigins.si.edu/education/frequentlyasked-questions; accessed 2021-01-03). 59 https://www.loc.gov/item/21002221/; accessed 2021-01-03. 60 E.g., Guzik, Genesis: Verse by Verse Commentary, Gen 1:20-23 argues that evolutionists often give convincing examples of microevolution, the variation of a kind within its kind, adapting to the environment. The ratio of black to white peppered moths, e.g., may increase when pollution makes it easier for dark moths to escape detection. Or finches may develop different beaks in response to their distinctive environment. However, he emphasizes that there has been no change outside of the kind. Microevolution does not prove macroevolution. 61 The ideas of Young Earth Creationism were promoted effectively by the Institute for Creation Research (formerly Christian Heritage College), founded by Henry Morris. That the promotion was effective can be seen in a survey that shows that forty-five percent of Americans supported it (Collins, Language of God, 172). 62 The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time, and is constant if and only if all processes are reversible; all isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium, the state with maximum entropy (Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 1).

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is wrong because it can be shown that decay rates changed over time.63 Dinosaurs also did not become extinct before humanity appeared on the scene; they existed together and dinosaurs were extinguished along with humanity during Noah’s flood, except for one righteous family.64 Their problem was also with the fixity of species that was contradicted by Darwin’s theory because it proves that one species can be transformed into new ones.65 After all, Genesis 1:24 states that God commands the earth to bring forth living creatures, each according to its own kind. Darwin argued that in the struggle for survival and existence, favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of a new species.66 Creationism asserts that the theory of evolution is a lie because the relatedness of all organisms as illustrated by DNA studies is the result of God’s multiple creative acts of the special creation of each different species, using some of the same ideas across species barriers. That the chromosomes between different mammalian species show a similar ordering of genes is dismissed as part of God’s special creative acts. That humans and mice share repetitive “junk DNA” in shared locations show that the same God designed and created both. In contrast, Darwin based his theory of evolution on three “reasonable” assumptions.67 The first assumption is hyper-productivity or super-fecundity, 63

The discovery of radioactivity provided a means to determine the age of various rocks on earth. It rests on the known half-lives by which three radioactive chemical elements, uranium, potassium, and strontium, steadily decay and transform into different, stable elements, uranium into lead, potassium into argon, and strontium into rubidium. By measuring the amounts of any of these pairs of elements, it is possible to estimate the age of a rock. These figures point to an earth that is 4.55 billion years old, with an estimated error of only about one percent. The oldest rocks are approximately four billion years old, and some meteorites and moon rocks are 4.5 billion years old. 64 Dinosaurs started life on earth around 230 million years ago and they suddenly died out approximately sixty five million years ago, at the same time as when an asteroid fell in the Yucatán peninsula that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea. It is theorized that the collision generated enough fine ash to eventuate in climactic climate changes, leading to the demise of all mammals. 65 Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 12; Barrett, Science & Theology, 85. 66 Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 3; Barbour, Issues in Science & Religion, 85. 67 Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 2 argues that it is normally forgotten that the idea of evolution was not an original thought of Darwin’s, although no scientist before him had proposed a mechanism (natural selction) underlying the phenomenon of evolution (except perhaps Alfred Wallace).

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that refers to organisms that produce more offspring than can reach maturity. The second assumption is variability, that refers to a range of difficulties that exist within any species in anatomical details which can determine its ability to see, hide from predators, digest, and move, among others. The last assumption is natural selection, that states that the combination of environmental changes, food shortages, and the presence of predators create a struggle for a species to exist, that gradually weeds out the less well-adapted members through successive generations while the better adapted survive to the stage of procreation. It is their favorable characteristics that are then passed on through reproduction.68 The theory implies that the many slight differences within a species are highly significant. They afford the material that natural selection needs. Individuals with an advantage of any kind over others, however slight, would have the best chance of surviving and procreating.69 It also implies that life could have evolved naturally without the need for the direct intervention of a divine Designer.70 In answering the objections that irreducible complexity poses to the theory of evolution, Darwin writes that if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, the theory of evolution would break down. However, he did not find any such cases.71 Creationists also use several theological arguments to explain their antiDarwinian sentiments. The first argument is that Darwin’s theory was clearly incompatible with a literal translation of the biblical creation accounts and the general worldview developed in the Bible and that it questioned biblical authority72 and traditional exegesis of the church. Some It did provide an ingenious and alternative interpretation of scientific observations and explains the seeming phenomenon of creating order out of disorder. 68 Darwin, On the Origin of Species, xx. 69 Barrett, Science & Theology, 92-3. 70 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 67. 71 Quoted by Dawkins, God Delusion, 125. 72 Charles Darwin struggled with this issue for many years. In a letter to the American naturalist, Asa Gray, Darwin wrote: “The theological view of the subject (the accusation that he was an atheist) is painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. I own that I cannot see as clearly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me to be too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae

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such arguments are supplied by Henry Morris.73 The first chapters of Genesis refer ten times to “after his kind” and although the biblical term cannot be replaced by “species,” this restriction certainly limits all variation only to variations within the kind. Genesis 2:2-3’s statement that God ended God’s work and rested presupposes that present-day biological processes of variation, mutation, and even speciation could not be processes of creation or development. God’s pronouncement that all the work of creation was good, and at the end of the sixth day that the work was “very good” is inconsistent with a system ruled by tooth and claw, a grinding struggle for existence, and the survival of only the fittest. Jesus affirmed the literal truth of the Genesis creation narratives, according to Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9. And the God of the Bible did not create a world based on the “most wasteful, inefficient, and heartless process” ever devised by man, as the hypothesis of evolution suggests for some scientists.74 Another theological objection is concerned with the perception that it undermined the idea of design in nature and in this way brings the very existence of God into question, and eventually might lead to the loss of religious belief altogether. It also objects to the suggestion of randomness that the natural selection process implied that allows no place for divine will and intervention. Natural selection in time indeed came to be seen as a rigorous naturalism75 and materialism76that did not require any external with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice … I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel mostly deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton …” (quoted in Stone, Origin, 678). 73 Morris, Biblical Basis, 97. 74 Morris, Biblical Basis, 97. 75 Naturalism assumes that nature is all there is (referring to observable material that constitutes the cosmos), exluding the idea that God exists except in the minds of religious believers. The doctrine of naturalism probably underlies natural science as well as most other intellectual work (Blanchard, Has Science Got Rid, 19). Morris (Biblical Basis, 23) calls naturalism an additional, extraneous postulate that evolutionary scientists arbitrarily superimposed in their current definition of science. By doing so, they banished by definition even the possibility of a divine first cause. Naturalism can also be referred to as scientism. 76 Materialism refers to the idea that all that exists is matter and energy. Everything results from, and can ultimately be explained by, the purely material interactions of energy and particles of matter. The term is to be distinguished from the use in popular parlance, where a materlist refers to someone who chases after money and possessions (Lo, “Introduction,” 17).

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agency to direct the course of development or to guarantee that a higher purpose would be served when species changed over time.77 Literalists that support Young Earth Creationism are motivated by the fear and concern that naturalism is threatening belief in God among human beings.78 They react by rejecting all the conclusions of naturalism and they are hostile toward all scientific endeavors.79 However, it does not live up to its claims since examples of intermediate fossil forms for birds, turtles, elephants, and whales have since been found since Young Earth Creationism staked their claims that intercepts and answers one of the most important elements of Creationism’s argument. The theory of evolution is underlying and essential to the sciences of biology, physics, and chemistry, and if creationism is correct in its assertion, it implies that these sciences would collapse. That literalists are trying to protect the Bible from any assertions that might imply that it is not true is understandable. They fear that non-literal interpretations would eventually undermine the authority of the Bible, which serves as the bedrock of their faith. To defend the Bible against any non-literal interpretations, they claim that scientific explanations of the origins of the universe and life forms on earth cannot be believed and accepted because it does not conform to “the truth” revealed by God in the Bible. The authority and truth of biblical “propositions” are valid for all scientific research as well. That these narratives are taken literally as scientific facts imply that all biblical references require the same treatment without considering that some genres applied by biblical authors require a specific reading, that may include accepting that it does not represent facts. “The assumption that the inspired record must be literally accurate has led to much misinterpretation of Scripture as well as to great mental confusion and religious distress.”80 77

Barrett, Science & Theology, 96-100. Barr, Believing Scientist, 179 suggests that the creed of naturalism includes the suppositions that nature is all in all, an ancient, autonomous creative force, the efficient provider and source of life, and man is but part of nature. The supposition is that the only way to understand the meaning of human life is to understand nature more fully and that human beings find their proper fulfillment in nature. 79 For instance, Morris (Long War Against God) writes, “Evolution’s lie permeates and dominates modern thought in every field…evolutionary thought is basically responsible for the lethally ominous political developments, and the chaotic moral and social disintegrations that have been accelerating everywhere.” 80 Ryle, Book of Genesis, 8. 78

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Then the Song of Songs, many of the Psalms that speak anthropomorphically about God, and the imagery in the book of Revelation need to be read in a literalist way as well. However, the Bible does not intend to supply medical, biological, sociological, or other scientific data; it intends to reveal the nature of God and humankind to its readers. When the Bible is used (abused) to answer questions that it never asked, then one should expect that believers might have difficulties reconciling biblical “facts” with the findings of sciences. The Bible does not refer to radioactive decay, geological strata, DNA, or chromosomes for the benefit of twenty-first-century readers; it was directed at people living in an age when such information would have proved useless and misleading. The Bible speaks about the issues that science cannot address, that concerns the human spirit and God’s Spirit. In trying to explain the wealth of scientific observations that support evolution and the age of the universe as fourteen billion years, Young Earth Creationists argued that the evidence analysed by the sciences is deliberately misleading and seemingly false for a good reason. All this false evidence had been designed by God to test humanity’s faith in God. The implications are clear, that scientific evidence supported by radioactive decay clocks, fossils, and genome sequences were designed intentionally to create the impression that the universe was very old, while in fact, it was less than ten thousand years old.81 The scientific implications if such a viewpoint would be true are disastrous. But it also creates insurmountable theological difficulties because of its view of God as a trickster and deceiver, behaving in ways that are not consistent or logical.82 It also implies that believers need to reject science’s view of the natural world and the practice of science as a waste of time and even dangerous. Another challenge is that (especially young) people who accept the Creationist view may lose their faith in God when they are eventually confronted with the scientific evidence of an ancient universe

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Collins, Language of God, 176. It is submitted that Creationism should revisit the question of the logic of their reasoning. Basic logic can be grasped by understanding the fundamental law that underlie it. The Law of Identity says that something is true if and only if it is true. The Law of Non-contradiction says that contradictory statements cannot simultaneously be true while the Law of the Excluded Middle says that one of two mutually contradictory statements has to be true; there is no third, or “undecided” option. The Law of Rational Inference says that if A = B, and B = C, then A must be similar to C (Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 460). 82

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and the relatedness of species due to evolution with its principles of the survival of the fittest and natural selection.

Intelligent design The theory of intelligent design (ID) was first considered in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a group of scientists, including Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olson, as a possible way to explain the enduring mystery of biology, that consists of the origin of the digital information encoded along the spine of the DNA molecule.83 They asked the question, where does the mysterious and complicated information present in the cell originate?84 Phillip Johnson argues that the primary flaw in the story of macroevolution as presented by naturalism is that all plants and animals are packed with information that contains the complicated instructions that coordinate the many processes enabling the body and brain to function. Science has not as yet discovered how that vast amount of necessary information could originate. The way that information is structured can be compared to a computer’s software that directs it. Without such a demonstrated creative process, the supposed mechanism of evolution can neither be duplicated in a laboratory nor observed in nature.85 Evolution’s only mechanism consists of a combination of random variation and natural selection that has never been shown to be capable of creating new genetic information or new complex body parts such as wings, eyes, or brains.86 The theory of intelligent design is based on the concept of “irreducible complexity” that “proves” the statistical improbability of the spontaneous origins of life, and human life in particular. It claims to be an evidence-

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Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 2. Barr, Believing Scientist, 26-7 suggests that the ID movement exacerbated conflict between science and religion because it supported three strategies: it did not explicitly dissociate itself from creationism; it claimed at times that it was provable that natural explanations will never be able to account for certain biological facts; and it accounced as one of its goals a redefinition of science to include types of explanation that most people view as religious or quasi-religious. He advises the movement to consider the lack of wisdom in such strategic moves to advocate its viewpoints. 84 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 793 explains that a living cell is only onethousandth of an inch long, yet it contains about one meter of DNA with enough information to fill thirty volumes of an encyclopedia. 85 Johnson, “Evolution: Fact or Fantasy?,” 7–8. 86 Johnson, “Evolution: Fact or Fantasy?,” 8.

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based scientific theory about life’s origins that challenges a strictly materialistic view of evolution.87 Intelligent Design theory (ID) as a concept was reintroduced in 2004 with a peer-reviewed article that explicitly advanced the theory of intelligent design in a mainstream scientific periodical housed at the Smithsonian Institution,88 although it was already defined by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century as part of the five “proofs” of God.89 The idea that led to the theory already exists from early times. For instance, Minucius Felix wrote in the third century CE: “If upon entering some home you saw that everything there was well-tended, neat, and decorative, you would believe that some master was in charge of it and that he himself was superior to those good things. So too in the home of this world, when you see providence, order, and law in the heavens and on earth, believe there is a Lord and Author of the universe, more beautiful than the stars themselves and the various parts of the whole world.”90 The 2004 article was followed by the announcement of Anthony Flew, a renowned atheist British philosopher, in December 2004 that he had repudiated a lifelong commitment to atheism. He cited, among several things, that the evidence of the intelligent design in the DNA molecule convinced him of the theory of intelligent design.91

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Barr, Believing Scientist, 5 states that in popular form, it can be explained that if upon entering a home one observes that everything is well-tended and near, one knows that someone takes care for the order in the home. When one observes order, providence, and law in the universe and upon earth, then one knows that there is a Lord of he universe that takes care of it. 88 Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 1. 89 Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 1. The “proofs” were the unmoved mover, where nothing moves without a prior pover, and God is the first mover or Prime Mover; the uncaused cause, where nothing is caused by itself and God serves as the first cause; the cosmological argument that there must have been something non-physical to bring the physical things into existence, which is God; the argument from degree, implying that things in the world are judged by degrees of goodness and perfection, with God serving as the maximum standard for perfection; and the teleological argument or argument from design, that states that everything in the world, especially living things, look as though they have been designed, and the designer is God (Dawkins, God Delusion, 77-79). The first “proof” is based on the so-called Kalam cosmological argument, using the logic of cause and effect, reasoning that anything that begins to exist has a cause (Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 263). 90 Minucius Felix, Faith in the Early Fathers, 109. 91 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/professor-antony-flew-philosopher-ptjlxp2rv2 j#:~:text=Flew%20returned%20to%20public%20attention,than%20an%20active% 2C%20personal%20agent; accessed 2020-12-16;

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The complicated structures found in living organisms that possess numerous essential parts, all of which must be present and in place for the system to function, suggest an irreducible complexity. Even such a well-known atheistic neo-Darwinist as Richard Dawkins accepts that living systems give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose, but that appearance is entirely illusory. Wholly undirected processes such as natural selection and random mutations, as Darwin’s theory of evolution suggests, can produce the intricate design, like structures in living systems.92 Many contemporary Darwinists use this way of reasoning to explain the “seeming” irreducible complexity found in the DNA molecule. Darwin already argued in this manner, admitting that living things display organized structures that give the appearance of having been deliberately arranged or designed for a purpose but it can be explained in terms of a purely undirected process with natural selection working on random variations. That it mimicked the power of a designing intelligence was a powerfully suggestive illusion, but still only an illusion. In the words of Stephen Hawking, as quoted by Amir Aczel, “If one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that has produced life like ours are immense.”93 Another leading cosmologist, Roger Penrose, addressing only one of the many parameters necessary for a universe that would support life, has put the probability of the emergence of our universe as 1 over 1010.94 Besides, many of these systems must work together with other irreducibly complex systems for the organism to survive, suggesting the existence of an irreducibly complex system of irreducibly complex systems.95 It states that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection, as the theory of evolution proposes.96 The theory was proposed in 1968 by Michael Polyani.97 Michael Behe defines “irreducible complexity” as a single system that is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/arts/17flew.html, accessed 2020-12-16. 92 Dawkins, “Blind Watchmaker,” 1, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Navehtml/Faithpathh/dawkins.html; accessed 2020-12-16. 93 Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove, 5. 94 Quoted in Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove, 5. 95 Waltzer, “Irreducible Complexity and Evolution,” 117. 96 Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 2. The debate was stimulated again in 2012 with the publication of Thomas Nagel, an atheist philosopher of science, with the title, Mind and Cosmos – How the Neo-Darwinian Materialist View of Reality is Almost Certainly False. 97 Polyani, “Life’s Irreducible Structure.”

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that contribute to the basic function, and the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to cease to function effectively.98 The English molecular biologist, Francis Crick, who co-discovered the double-helical structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 along with James Watson, writes about the character of this first, simple life form as follows, although he was scornful of religion:99 “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”100 Watson and Crick proposed that there are four types of nucleic acids, representing a four-character chemical alphabet and abbreviated as A, T, C, and G. They theorized that the four acids would always line up exclusively in A-T and C-G pairs. This elegant mechanism functions as a possible copying mechanism for DNA, with the long DNA molecule containing numerous possible sequences of A-T and C-G pairs. These carried hereditary information. “Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions, the information, for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive.”101 Further research confirmed that DNA and other molecules in the cell respond somewhat like a microcomputer executing machine instructions, not randomly but purposefully. And the cell has repair systems to fix DNA that was damaged by external forces, like an error correction algorithm in a computer software program.102 The question remains, how did the information in DNA arise? What does the presence of information in even the simplest living cell imply about life and its origins? Who or what encoded that information in the cell? The gene is a package of information, not an object. To build a living cell, assembly instructions stored in DNA or some equivalent molecule is needed. The Human Genome Project heightened public awareness of the importance of information to living things when Francis Collins and his colleagues deciphered the message of the genetic text.103 98

Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 39, 257. Watson called religious explanations “myths from the past” and told the Daily Telegraph, “Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely” (quoted in Blanchard, Has Science Got Rid, 21). 100 Crick, Life Itself, 88. 101 Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 15. 102 Lo, “Introduction,” 13. 103 Jim Watson led the Genome Project during its first two years and when he left at short notice, Collins was approached to take over the leadership. Craig Venter was 99

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In the meantime, exciting discoveries about genomics have been made. For instance, while biologists affirm that DNA contains specified information, they also discovered that the system for storing and processing this information is even more complex than they previously thought. They discovered that the information for building a given protein is not to be found in just one place along the DNA molecule. They also found that a single gene is enough to produce thousands of different proteins and other gene products. Biological information beyond and not even resident in DNA plays a critical role in the development of organisms so that the gene is no longer understood to be singular, linear, and localized on a DNA strand. The gene, the basic physical and functional unit of heredity made up of DNA with some acting as instructions to make molecules called proteins, is now understood as a distributive set of data files available for retrieval and context-dependent expression by a complex information-processing system. The similarity between the cell’s information-processing and storage system and intelligent engineering systems has also become more clear. We now know that functionally specified information is densely concentrated in DNA and that the genome is hierarchically arranged to optimize access and retrieval of information. The organism provides an informational context that determines the expression of lower-level genetic modules.104 Neo-Darwinists assert that the mechanism of natural selection that acts on random variations mimic the effects of intelligence, although the mechanism is blind, impersonal, and undirected.105 The ID movement, however, finds it difficult to accept the supposition of neo-Darwinism, the modern form of Darwin’s theory of evolution, that natural selection acting on accidental genetic mutations can work creative marvels, leading to new life forms.106 However, the evolutionary theory cannot explain the origin of life until it can explain the origin of the genetic information found in DNA. While the discovery of the double-helical structure of the DNA molecule proves that the foundation of life can be found in a four-character digital code stored in DNA, ID does not focus on how the first self-replicating the leader of a competing private undertaking with the same purpose. They joined President Bill Clinton in the White House when the announcement was made of the success of the Genome Project that, in the words of the USA president, taught humans the language in which God created life. Craig Venter was a self-proclaimed atheist while Collins was a Christian believer (Du Rand, God’s Mystery, 149) 104 Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 458-59. 105 Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 17. 106 Waltzer, “Irreducible Complexity and Evolution,” 118.

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organisms originated, but rather on what is perceived as the failings of the evolutionary theory to account for what exists today as subsequent stunning complexity that marks earthly life forms. Important proponents such as Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, and William Dembski base the theory on some assumptions, of which the first is that theistic believers should resist evolution that promotes an atheistic worldview. Their mission is to defend the faith against a purely materialistic worldview that denies the existence of anything that cannot be scientifically investigated.107 The Discovery Institute, established to promote their mission, attempts to influence public opinion with the purpose to show the shortcomings of an atheistic worldview and benefits of a theistic understanding of nature. It assumes that the theory of evolution is fundamentally flawed because it does not account for the intricate complexity of nature and life. The argument for the complexity of life that requires a designer goes back to William Paley in the early nineteenth century (1743–1805). Paley wrote his Natural Theology while suffering a debilitating disease in which he compared nature’s intricate design to the complexity of a watch. He uses an analogy of a person walking in a field who stumbled upon a timepiece. Even if the person had never seen a watch before, it would be assumed that it had a designer. He then asks, how much more should those who examine the exquisite craftsmanship of objects such as the eye infer a Master 107

Meyer (Signature in the Cell, 36) explains that one can distinguish between an idealistic worldview that views mind as the primary or ultimate realilty, with reality issuing from a preexisting mind or reality shaped by a preexistent intelligence, and a materialistic worldview that sees the physical nature or universe as the ultimate reality. Either matter or energy, or both, are the hinges from which everything else comes and they are self-existent, implying that that they do not need to be created or shaped by any mind. Natural interactions between simple material entities governed by natural laws eventually produce chemical elements from elementary particles, then complex molecules from simple chemical elements, then simple life from complex molecules, then more complex life from simple life, and finally conscious living beings. Life had arisen from simpler chemical precursors, called the protoplasmic theory that equates vital function with a single, identifiable chemical substance called protoplasm, or evolutionary abiogenesis that envisions a multibillion-year process of transformation from simple chemicals to a complex metabolic system (Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 43, 46). In contrast, idealism sees the cosmos as an autonomous, self-existent, and self-creating system. The first worldview this was supported by the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, the Roman Stoics, and Christian theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Most founders of modern science held this worldview in mind during the scientific revolution of 1300-1700 CE. Theism is a version of idealism that holds that God is the source of the ideas that eventually gave rise to and shaped the material world.

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Craftsman?108 At first, Darwin found Paley’s argument convincing before he arrived at his own explanation for complexity, in the hypotheses of evolution by natural selection. In his 1802 treatise, Natural Theology, or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, Paley develops the “teleological argument,” today known as the “argument from design” or the Goldilocks Principle.109 He insists that the appearance of “design” in nature—seen in “the complexity, order, purposefulness, and functionality of living organisms”—can only be explained by the existence of a “designer” (typically of the supernatural variety).110 He argues, In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.111

For instance, the inner workings of the cell show the intricacies of the molecular machines that reside in it that translate RNA into a protein, help the cell move around, and transmit signals from the cell surface to the nucleus. Another example is the human eye, a complex camera-like organ of enormous sophistication. The question is asked, how could such machines have arisen based on natural selection, without any intelligent guidance? Another instance is the bacterial flagellum, little “outboard motors” or nano-motors with a thirty-part rotary engine and whip-like propeller that propels cells in various directions in a highly functional 108

Cabal, “Notable Christian Apologist,” 58. Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 877. 110 Gregory, “Argument from Design,” 601. 111 Paley, Natural Theology, 1-2. 109

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way.112 The flagellum consists of thirty different proteins that include the equivalent of a base anchor, a drive shaft, and a universal joint that drive a filament propeller. If any of the proteins is deactivated by a genetic mutation, the system will cease to function. Such complex devices could never be explained based on inanimate evolutionary processes alone, but it requires a designer like Paley’s watch on the heath.113 The last ID assumption is that if evolution cannot explain irreducible complexity, it implies that there must have been an intelligent designer involved in these processes. If such a designer did not step in at crucial times in the evolutionary development of life forms, it would have gone awry. Although the proponents of the theory of Intelligent Design does not specify who the designer is, their faith commitments show that they prefer God as their candidate.114 By January 2010, more than eight hundred scientists with PhD’s argued that evolutionary theory could not claim that it basically accounts for everything to do with life and human existence. They signed a public declaration that states, “We are sceptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”115 They agree with Frederic Burnham, who writes that the idea that God created the universe is a more respectable hypothesis in today’s world than at any time in the past hundred years.116

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Lo, “Introduction,” 15; Meyer, Signature in the Cell, 4.. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box; Johnson, Darwin on Trial. 114 The argument of Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 5 that Reformed theology provides the best solution from a Christian viewpoint is not accepted here. The author argues that the apparent flaws in reality and the brokenness that the world of phenomena display are the result of the “fall” of humankind that goes back to the sin of the first two human beings. It cannot be attributted to errors made by God during the creation process. This is an easy answer that abuses the narrative about Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden to formulate a universal definition of sin and total depravity, and applies it to all human beings of all ages. All people share in the total depravity as the result of Adam and Eve’s sin. A more nuanced theological perspective of sin, the meaning of the first human couple’s disobedience to God’s clear command, and the basic goodness still existing in human beings need to be defined in its stead. 115 www.dissentfromdarwin.org, accessed 2020-10-28. 116 Burnham, “Science, Religion, Are Discovering Commonalities”. 113

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Some scientists find at least three reasons why the idea that every species that ever existed has evolved from the first one-celled organism presents problems.117 Despite many efforts of scientists, it has not been possible to produce a new species from an existing one. It represents a “genetic homeostasis,” implying that science hit a wall or limit beyond which species struggle to vary or adapt. At least at the moment, it cannot be proven that one species transform to another, although it is true that they survive by adaptation. A second argument is concerned with the lack of the existence of in-between species and the question of how any in-between species would survive to evolve more. In a prehistoric world filled with many predators and where only the fittest survived, the question is how such species ever would survive long enough to reproduce effectively and further evolve into other species that are known. The last objection has been discussed above, the lack of fossil evidence. Darwin already referred to the lack of any intermediate links in geological formations and, as he referred to it, in-between species.118 He states that it is the strongest argument against his evolutionary theory and expresses the hope that sufficient evidence would be found in the coming years. Since Darwin’s time, more than a quarter of a million of fossils have been unearthed and what becomes clear from existing fossil records is that species appeared suddenly and fully formed, and remained largely the same until they became extinct, argues ID. In theological terms, the theory of Intelligent Design represents a much older argument, that proposes divine intervention as the solution in cases which science cannot (yet) explain. Many thinking believers accepted the theory gratefully because it explains the role of God as the designer of evolutionary processes. Charles Darwin, after all, had acknowledged that if someone could demonstrate that any complex organ existed which could not have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, his theory would break down.119 However, there are several objections from the scientific fray to the theory of evolution. The biggest objection is that it proposes a “God of the gaps” that serves to fill those lacunae in our understanding. In time, when scientific advances fill those lacunae, believers who attached their faith to their theories find their faith discredited.120 It also depicts the creator as clumsy – the theory pictures the creator as regularly intervening in the 117

Petty, Science & God, 67-73. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 227. 119 Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 39. 120 Barrett, Science & Theology, 101; Dawkins, God Delusion, 125. 118

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creative process to fix inadequacies that have since originated. Some scientists argue that fundamentally the theory does not represent a scientific theory because it does not make sense of all experimental observations, does not predict other findings, or suggests approaches for further experimental verification.121 The theory cannot prove its proposal for the intervention of divine forces to account for complex biological entities. It also does not provide any mechanism by which the postulated divine interventions would give rise to complexity. Since 1991 when the theory was advocated, scientific discoveries found that many examples of irreducible complexity are not irreducible after all, implying that proponents of Intelligent Design confused the (presently) unknown with the unknowable and the unsolved with the unsolvable.122 The problem is that ID’s version of intelligent design is hostage to every advance in biological science.123 For instance, Kenneth Miller discusses three examples of such discoveries, in the human bloodclotting cascade, the design of the eye that does not appear to be completely ideal, and the bacterial flagellum that shows that several aspects of the flagellum are related to a different apparatus used by certain bacteria to inject toxins into those bacteria that they are attacking, as discussed above.124 John Polkinghorne represents a scientifically justifiable conclusion when he asserts that it is premature to conclude that essential irreducibility has been firmly established.125 However, one has also to admit that a minimal reductionist materialism is not the only intellectually respectable option.

Theistic evolution The presupposition used in theistic evolution, another reaction to contemporary scientific theories from a religious viewpoint, is that if the Christian religion reveals the truth, then it must be reconcilable with the truth that scientific enterprises discovered. Truth defined by one cannot disprove the truth discovered by the other.126 Is there then a way to harmonize the findings of science as far as the origins of life on earth (biogenesis) are concerned with religious truth? Can Christian biologists and evolutionary scientists reconcile their work with their faith? And can Christian believers live with 121

Collins, Language of God, 187. Dembski and Ruse, Debating Design. 123 Barr, Believing Scientist, 71. 124 Miller, “The Flagellum Unspun,” 81-97. 125 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 77. 126 At the same time, the impossibility of finding “truth” in theological and scientific terms is acknowledged, as 1 Cor 13:12 explains vividly. 122

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the information provided by sciences about the descent by modification from a common ancestor? A literal interpretation of Genesis 1-2 clearly precludes it. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), English poet and enthusiastic naturalist, struggled with these questions and concluded that Scripture says that God created, but it nowhere defines that term. The means, the how of creation is never specified. He writes that of old we knew that God was so wise that God could make all things, but now believers are learning that God is even wiser than that, that God “can make all things make themselves.”127 It is a theological mistake to take too narrow a view of God’s means of creation, as Creationists and proponents of intelligent design did. Theistic evolution creates room for continuity of the outworking of the divinely ordained laws of nature, finding expression in continuous creation.128 Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist, asks the question, where do physical laws come from, when their orderly fruitfulness is taken into consideration?129 To answer the question requires a deeper level of understanding than the laws of physics and not to accept David Hume’s manner of treating matter and its given properties simply as given brute facts. Davies proposes the answer in the arguments for a necessary being, rather than a necessary world, although he qualifies his remark by stating it explicitly that it does not imply that the postulated being who underpins the rationality of the world has any relationship to the personal God of religion.130 Theistic evolution (TE)131 (or evolutionary creationism) is preferred by many believing scientists (and believers) as a viable alternative.132 It rests upon the same premises as evolutionary science and accepts its findings but adds some new perspective.133 The website of the BioLogos Foundation states that it accepts that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God, that God is the creator of all life, including all human beings created 127

Russell, Cross-currents, 167-68. Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 68. 129 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 188. 130 Davies, Mind of God, 191. 131 Creationist Henry Morris (Biblical Basis, 95) thinks it is impossible to use “evolution” and “theistic” together because evolution is an atheistic philosophy. It represents in his opinion a contradictio in terminis. However, this betrays Morris’ prejudiced use of a definition for evolution that theistic evolutionists do not use. 132 Van Til, The Fourth Day, 249-58; Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 202; Alexander, Creation or Evolution. 133 The BioLogos Foundation with Francis Collins as its founder and head hosts a website with material about theistic evolution. 128

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in God’s image, and it accepts the science of evolution as the best description for how God brought about the diversity of life.134 Francis Collins explains theistic evolution in terms of some statements. Theistic evolution built on the assumption that the universe came into being out of nothingness; that the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life, although it seems highly improbable; that when life arose, it was the process of evolution, driven by natural selection, that led to the development of biological diversity and complexity, even though it is not known how life on earth originated; that once evolution got underway, no special intervention was required; that human life originated in the same way and that they share a common ancestor with the great apes. At the same time, it asserts that human beings are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation. Everything points to the spiritual nature they share with the divine.135 Homo divinus represent some Neolithic farmers, in the view of Denis Alexander, that God chose to whom God specially revealed Godself, calling them into fellowship with God. This marks the time at which God chose to reveal Godself and God’s purposes for humankind for the first time; Adam and Eve serve as the symbol used by the biblical narrator for these people.136 N.T. Wright shares the same view, referring to Adam and Eve as representative of the first pair of early hominids chosen by God for a special, strange, and demanding vocation.137 To understand TE, Stephen Meyer argues that it is necessary to distinguish between three distinct meanings of the term “evolution.”138 It can refer to change over time, implying that the life forms found today differ from those that existed in the distant past or that minor changes in features of individual species occur over a relatively short period. It can also refer to the assertion that all organisms are related by common ancestry, referred to as the theory of common descent, implying in Darwin’s words the probability that all the 134

“How is BioLogos Different from Evolutionism, Intelligent Design, and Creationism?” BioLogos. http://biologos.org/commonquestions/christianity-and-science /biologos-id-creationism; accessed 2020-12-17. 135 Collins, Language of God, 200. 136 Alexander, Creation or Evolution, 390-91, 303. 137 Wright, “Excursus on Paul’s Use,” 177. 138 Meyer, “Defining Theistic Evolution,” 11. It should be noted that although Meyer’s definition of TE is helpful, he contends negatively that TE is based on atheistic suppositions because it accepts the theory of evolution in a qualified sense, and that it indicates that TE agrees that the processes of evolution are undirected. This is, however, not correct.

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organic beings which have ever lived on earth have descended from one primordial form.139 This is a monophyletic view of the history of life with all organisms ultimately related as a single connected family. Lastly, “evolution” is used to refer to the cause, or mechanism, that produces the biological change depicted by Darwin’s tree of life. This mechanism is natural selection acting on random variations or mutations. Mutations represent random changes in the chemical subunits that convey information in DNA. The implication is that mechanism of selection and mutation has the power to produce fundamental innovations. Theistic evolutionists agree that God causes change over time, corresponding to the first definition of evolution. They also affirm that God causes continuous and gradual biological change such that the history of life can be represented by a tree, corresponding to the second definition. Lastly, they believe that God initiated the creative processes that are continued in the biological processes characterized by natural selection and mutations. Whether the mechanism of natural selection is divinely directed or undirected is not clear.140 However, what they assert is that God works through these various evolutionary mechanisms and processes to produce the forms of life known on the planet. They identify and equate the evolutionary processes with the natural creative work of God. Theistic evolution accepts that the universe came into being, approximately fourteen billion years ago from a singularity. To the question, what came before the Big Bang, it acknowledges the limits of science to answer the question. Steven Weinberg answers in an interview with Amir Aczel in a 2010 article in Scientific American to a question by Amir Aczel, “How was the Big Bang caused, and what happened before it?” by stating, “This we don’t know, and have no way of knowing.”141 There is a preexisting substance, a kind of medium from which the universe emerges. Scientists often refer to that medium as quantum foam, a dense collection of bubbles of space and time in which space-time is highly interlinked and strongly mixed because of the effects of both general relativity and quantum mechanics.142 It is a highly turbulent, condensed medium in which space and time are highly curved and in which quantum effects, and the effects of 139

Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 484. Meyer, “Defining Theistic Evolution,” 11. 141 Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 75. 142 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 366 refers to the progress from Newtonian physics to relativity theory and quantum mechanics as a paradigm shift or thought revolution, altering concepts like gravity, time, and space in the process. 140

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general relativity, are very strong. Four forces in nature exist, namely gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and the strong nuclear forces that act inside nuclei. Theoretical advances in supersymmetry have led physicists to argue that the four forces of nature were probably once unified in a single force right after the Big Bang, called the super force. This super force was an immensely powerful force of nature that governed the universe when it was very young. Some might call it God.143 The chemistry professor, Peter Atkins, asserts that there is no more reason any more to suppose that religion is needed to explain anything. Science can deal with every aspect of existence144 , and humanity should just accept the fact that science has eliminated the justification for believing in cosmic purpose.145 The mistake that Atkins makes is that he thinks that because he cannot see God but can understand how parts of the world operate without God showing them, this implies that God does not exist.146 However, scientists are unable to interpret the very earliest events in the Big Bang, occupying the first 10-43 seconds. Only after that, it becomes possible to make predictions about the annihilation of matter and antimatter, the formation of stable atomic nuclei, and eventually the formation of atoms, which consisted primarily of hydrogen, deuterium, and helium.147 Science also cannot explain what comprised the material from which everything came. Robert Jastrow writes that some aspects of creation remain a mystery for scientists. He concludes that it implies that astronomical evidence points to, or at least accommodates a biblical view of the origin of the world. Although the details differ, the astronomical and biblical accounts are the same in their essential elements.148 It is clear that the universe had a beginning, and scientific evidence shows that it might have an ending, whether in the great crunch with a whimper in a fiery climax of gravitational collapse or the fading out of endless expansion and cooling.149 Stephen Hawking asserts that almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.150

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Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 76. Atkins, “Limitless Power of Science,” 125. 145 Atkins, “Will Science Ever Fail?,” 34. 146 Petty, Science & God, 29-30. 147 Collins, Language of God, 65. 148 Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 107. 149 Polkinghorne, Science and Christian Belief, 162-75. 150 Hawking and Penrose, Nature of Space and Time, 20. 144

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Science also cannot give an answer to the question of why there is a universe and why it came into being, and why human beings are living in it. The search for a cause remains outside the bounds of science.151 For this reason, Amir Aczel argues that spirituality, religion, and faith have important roles to play in our lives.152 I agree with him that science and spirituality are both integral parts of the human search for truth and meaning; they provide us with possible paths of comprehending and appreciating the vast cosmos and our place in it. Natural science usually deals with the causa materialis, causa formalis, and causa efficiens, but never with causa finalis which represents the teleological idea of purposefulness.153 In this regard, René Descartes (1596-1650) wrote that when dealing with natural things, one can never derive any explanations of the purposes which God or nature may have had in view when creating them and for that reason, the search for final causes is to be banned from science. Otherwise, one’s arrogance is demonstrated in supposing that one can share in God’s plans.154 And although science depends on the laws of nature, it cannot explain why they are there nor why they are so consistent and dependable. To the question why the universe is so amazingly fine-tuned to support intelligent life on our planet, why we are persons with consciousness and not merely objects, why the mind exists and functions as it does, or where ethical questions and answers come from, science is also not equipped to provide answers.155 The parameters of the universe seem to be too “fine-tuned” to have arisen by chance. Since all their values are set at the exact levels required for the existence of life, it implies that the universe was designed for life.156 Polkinghorne describes one such distinctive: Scientific endeavors approach the subject in the style of “bottom-up thinking” when it considers the evidence while traditional theology approaches its subject in a “top-down 151

Petty, Science & God, 44. Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove, 7. 153 Du Toit, “Interpreting Nature Naturalistically,” 3. 154 Quoted in Ruse, “Robert Boyle and the Machine Metaphor,” 589. 155 Blanchard, Have Science Got Rid, 36-46. 156 However, many scientists use this argument to sidestep the issue by stating that it only proves that there must be other places, other universes (multiverses), where these parameters are not right. Especially New Atheists embraced the idea of multiverses, arguing that infinitely many universes exist, implying that ours is of infinitesimal importance, requiring no divine powers to create it (Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 104). The main problem with the idea of a multiverse is that there is absolutely no way in which we can validate such theories through experimentation or through any data obtained or derived from the real world (Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 105). 152

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thinking” approach, by motivating belief and doctrines in terms of the revelation of God found in the Bible as the highest authority.157 Theology is here used in terms of Anselm’s dictum, as “faith seeking understanding.” The earth is tuned to maintain life, which might not seem to be probable. The biggest discontinuity is the origin of life itself because there is an extraordinary complexity gap between mere chemical reactions and processes that are observed in living organisms. Izak van der Walt refers in this connection to complex molecular machines and DNA containing digital code within a complex information storage and retrieval system.158 Another discontinuity is found within the fossil record with the Cambrian explosion, also referred to as biology’s Big Bang, the unparalleled emergence of organisms between 541 million and approximately 530 million years ago with the appearance of many, between twenty and thirty-five, of the major phyla that make up modern animal life, being the most prominent.159 Remarkable fossil sites in China and Canada were discovered that testified to the astonishing diversity and suddenness of the Cambrian explosion. Evolution, according to mainstream theory, should be a slow, gradual process involving millions of accidental mutations and intermediate steps over a myriad of generations, making such an explosion of biological life forms highly improbable and very difficult to explain.160 In this period, organisms with completely new body plans arose without any discernible connection to any previous organisms. They have no precursors below them in the fossil record other than some extremely distant related sponges and the like. Now, most living forms on earth arose discontinuously, and the question arises: “Where did the information come from that was needed to build new organisms in DNA?” Some scientists speculated that sudden seawater warming during that period could have expedited the mutation rate, accelerating the evolutionary process, but that cannot be proven.161 The precise mechanism that led to the origin of life on earth is, in other words, not known but once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of a diversity and complexity of life and life forms over long periods. In contrast, the evolutionists claim that new mutations and natural selection can also produce new forms of life. The implication is clear, that the new information necessary to result in the vast 157

Polkinghorne, Science and Religion, 1. Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 3. 159 Lo, “Introduction,” 16. 160 Chien, “Biology’s Big Bang,” 121. 161 Lo, “Introduction,” 16. 158

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number and variety of novel life forms came about by chance, a conclusion that many scientists do not accept any more.162 This is the crucial question: “What is the origin of the information necessary for new life forms?”163 Natural selection is by definition mindless and undirected; it cannot be used to explain structures, systems, informational features, or appearances of design that require foresight to assemble, requirements posed by the DNA molecule. It seems farfetched to suppose that evolution inevitably leads to intelligent life and consciousness. TE accepts that divine intervention was responsible for the origins of life and the establishment of evolution, but once it got underway, no further divine intervention was required. Humans share a common ancestor with the great apes (they did not come from the apes!). The further one goes in time, the more the ancestors of human beings and apes look alike. The line between apes and humans, however, grew apart approximately six to seven million years ago.164 But they are also unique in several ways and their uniqueness cannot be fully explained by evolutionary principles. One of the views of humanity that developed among some molecular biologists since the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, a reductionist view is not accepted because it sees humans, like all animals, as nothing more than a survival machine, programmed to preserve the genes.165 Stephen Barr quotes in this regard Francis Crick who said that human life is no more than the behavior of nerve cells and their associated molecules, Marvin Marinski described people as machines made of meat, Guilio Giorelli thought the human soul was made up of many tiny robots, and Charles Zuker said that in essence, the human beings were nothing but a big fly.166 Collins postulates that human beings 162

Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 3. There are approximately 1065 atoms in the Milky Way, the local galaxy. To find a new functional sequence that contains the necessary information for building specific proteins and micro-machines needed by living organisms can be compared to finding one specific atom in 1 trillion (that is a million million, 1012) galaxies the size of the Milky Way (Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 3). To state that it is the product of random mutations is far-fetched, to say the least. Evolutionists proposed several theories as hypothetical mechanisms that lie behind the success of random mutations, such as the theories of punctuated equilibrium, Natural Genetic Engineering, and the Ribonucleic acid (RNA) world thesis, but it does not provide a solution to the problem of the origin of initial information, according to Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 4. 164 Van den Brink, En de Aarde Bracht Voort, 209. 165 Barrett, Science & Theology, 122. 166 Barr, Believing Scientist, 159. 163

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presumably have a spiritual nature that established a need for the transcendent and the personal search for God as well as a moral law that allows them to distinguish between right and wrong. All human cultures share these unique characteristics of human beings. The moral law represents practical reason that seemingly exists among all people that includes denunciations of oppression, treachery, murder, and falsehood and emphasizes impartiality, honesty, almsgiving, and kindness to the weak, sick, young, and aged.167 The basis of the moral law is altruistic behavior (agape love) that consists of giving oneself to others with absolutely no secondary motives, demonstrated in kenosis, even at the cost of personal suffering, injury, or death, without any evidence of benefit. The observation of such behavior leads universally to reactions of awe and reverence.168 Several attempts have been made to explain such behavior in terms of an indirect reproductive benefit, as that its repetition may be recognized as a positive attribute in mate selection, that it provides indirect reciprocal benefits that provided advantages to the practitioner, or that such behavior benefits the whole group. C.S. Lewis argues that its source is to be found elsewhere, in a controlling force outside the universe, working inside people as an influence or a command that tries to change our behavior in a certain direction.169 Theistic evolutionists also argue that some apparent coincidences in the natural world had been discovered that enabled the universe and eventually the origins of life. Does the universe have to be the way it is? Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke noted in the 1960s that several remarkable “coincidences” amongst a huge number (1 from a total of 1040) are associated with the ratios of certain constants of nature. Many scientific parameters must have been incredibly fine-tuned at the moment of the Big Bang for the universe and life to exist at all, such as the strength of nuclear, magnetic, and electrical forces; the speed of light; and configuration of mass-energy.170 It implies that the universe has just the right properties for its long and fruitful development. Not any universe will allow the emergence of life. The existence of observers of the universe implies that the nature of the universe must be such as to allow their appearance on the scene at some time and

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Collins, Language of God, 24. Collins, Language of God, 25. 169 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 21. 170 Van der Walt, “Reformed Theology and Natural Science,” 5. 168

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place. This is the weak version of the anthropic principle.171 It started with the observation that the receding galaxies that generate the redshift implied a beginning moment of the universe,172 followed by a series of discovery in physics, chemistry, and astronomy that suggested that the laws and constants of physics and chemistry are narrowly fine-tuned to allow for life in the universe. The precise degree that these fine-tuned laws showed gave it the appearance of intention behind it.173 Ron Cottrell argues that nine specific attributes of the planet earth make it habitable. They are the earth’s distance from the sun, weight and diameter, atmosphere, magnetic field, twenty-four-hour rotation rate, axial tilt, only natural satellite (the moon), crust, and liquid water.174 However, the anthropic principle is also supported by marks of design presumably found in the solar system. For instance, Saturn and Jupiter, the gas giants in the outer region of the solar system, are close enough to protect the earth from incoming earth-bound comets and asteroids, but not so close that it would disturb the earth’s fragile orbit around the sun. The sun, earth’s star, also has the correct size, brightness, and age to support life on earth. The location of the solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy is also suitable for life, far away from the densely-crowded, high-radiation, productive star-forming regions closer to the center but not so far away to lack the heavy elements necessary for a terrestrial planet.175 William Paley in 1802 already showed that if the law of gravity had not been a so-called “inverse square law,” then the earth and other planets would 171

The controversial version, the Strong Anthropic Principle, is not accepted by most theistic evolutionists. It asserts that the laws of nature must be such as to allow the existence of observers in the universe at some stage, the underlying assumption being that without their observations the idea of a universe would be meaningless. It is not accepted because it cannot be proven that we live in the only existing universe. There may be other universes with exactly the same parameters where life does not exist, or where life that exists has not developed to the extent that it can observe the universe of which it is a part (Barrett, Science & Theology, 184 footnote 282). 172 The farther away a galaxy was from the earth, the more the color of its light was shifted to red. This suggested to Albert Einstein that these galacies were moving away from the earth. The farther away they were, the faster they were moving away. The implication was clear to Einstein, that the universe was expanding, not contracting (Alston, “Big Bang and the Fine-Tuned Universe,” 19-20). 173 Lo, “Introduction,” 11. 174 Cottrell, Remarkable Spaceship Earth. 175 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 981.

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not be able to have remained in their stable orbits around the sun. In the 1950s, it was discovered that most of the chemical elements in nature would have occurred in only minute quantities that would have dimmed the prospect of life if the very precise relationship satisfied by the energy levels of the Carbon-12 nucleus did not exist.176 The principle is that the observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and that the universe is old enough for it to have already done so.177 It is based on the recognition of the astonishing specificity that is required of the fundamental physical laws of a universe if it is to be capable of evolving carbon-based life,178 implying a universe that is amazingly hospitable to human life.179 One observation that supports the anthropic principle is that in the first moments after the Big Bang occurred, matter and antimatter originated in almost equal amounts and that the cooling effect of the universe led to quarks and antiquarks condensing out, with the result that matter, as well as antimatter, were completely annihilated with the release of a photon of energy. If the amounts of matter and antimatter had been equal, it would have annihilated all matter.180 However, a small asymmetry did exist; for every billion pairs of quarks and antiquarks, there was an extra quark that led to the existence of the entire universe. Why did this asymmetry exist? How the universe expanded also depended on the total mass and energy that existed, and the strength of the gravitational constant, implying an extremely high degree of fine-tuning of these constants. Why did the universe have just the right properties to undergo the correct expansion to ensure the existence of matter? The same is true of the way heavier elements formed from protons and neutrons. It can be concluded that the forces were tuned just correctly to ensure the existence of the universe, making it a highly

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Barr, Believing Scientist, 17. Hougthon, Search for God, 38. 178 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 68. See also Polkinhorne’s (Faith, Science & Understanding, 68-76) arguments for the anthropic principle’s acceptance by a larger group, with the re-entry of some biologists into the teleological conversation. They argue that biochemistry poses problems that conventional Darwinism is incapable of solving. 179 Barr, Believing Scientist, 17. 180 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-there-more-matter-thanantimatter/; accessed 2020-11-03. 177

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improbable occurrence, a singularity.181 The conclusion is that the universe was tuned to give rise to humans, a view that is called the anthropic principle. Another observation is that the complex structures of biological life came into existence through an extraordinarily intricate set of conditions and processes and a delicate balance is required in the appropriate development of the cosmos, planets, and eventually life forms. It seems as if the universe is fine-tuned to produce life.182 Fred Hoyle estimates the odds of getting just the basic enzymes together that are necessary for life to be one chance in 1040,000.183 Most statisticians assert that probabilities of anything less that one chance in 1050 are statistically impossible. The odds of creating one functional protein molecule is one chance in 1060.184 Hugh Ross asserts that the universe has a just-right gravitational force.185 If it were larger, the stars would be too hot and burn up quickly and too unevenly to support life. It is were smaller, the stars would have remained so cool that nuclear fusion would never have ignited, implying that there would have been no light or heat. The universe also has a just-right speed of light, 299,792,458 meters per second. If it were larger, stars would send out too much light; if it were smaller, stars would not have sent out enough light.186 The universe has a just-right average distance between the stars. If it were larger, the heavy element density would be too thin for rocky planets to form, resulting in only gaseous planets. If it were smaller, planetary orbits would become destabilized because of the gravitational pull from other stars. And lastly, the universe has a just-right polarity of the water molecule. If it were greater, the heat of fusion and vaporization would be too great and life would not have originated. If it were smaller, the heat of fusion and vaporization would be too small for the existence of life.187 Hugh Ross

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The universe is governed by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force (Alston, “Big Bang and the Fine-Tuned Universe,” 28). 182 The idea that evolution is a delicate balancing act designed superbly and expressly to produce human beings is discussed comprehensively in Denton, Nature’s Destiny. 183 Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space. 184 Thaxton et al. Mystery of Life’s Origin. 185 Ross, Fingerprint of God. 186 https://www.space.com/speed-of-light-properties-explained.html; accessed 2020-11-07. 187 Ross, Fingerprint of God, 119-139.

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concludes that there is no chance that such a universe could create itself, apart from an intelligent designer.188

Implications for worldview The anthropic principle is an integral part of a new world-picture that has developed over the past fifty years, that consists of four features. The first feature is the principle that emphasizes the interplay between noveltyproducing “chance” and law-maintaining “necessity.” Secondly, the worldview comprises the degree of correspondence between mathematical theories and the physical reality they describe. The third feature is the emergence of a broad spectrum of levels of complexity,189 and the last is the anthropic principle that describes the fact that the properties of the universe are such as to allow for the emergence of biological life seemingly.190 The central features of the new science (New Physics) are an organismic model of nature instead of a mechanistic model, the emphasis on unprejudiced observation, and the deliberate setting up of experiments designed to focus on a limited aspect of nature and seek answers to precise questions. It attempts to formulate nature’s phenomena in mathematical formulae and does not ask questions about the notions of first causes or ultimate purposes, which are metaphysical in nature.191 This led to a change in worldview, as H.F. Cohen explains.192 Modern science is at once the expression and the fruit of a worldview. The new worldview represented an intellectual mutation that changed the movement from a goal-oriented process to the conception of the universe as a value-neutral state of a body.193 The image of nature also changed, from a nurturing mother to be revered to a passive woman to be subdued and used, resulting in the planet’s environmental problems that threaten the survival of life forms on earth through the 188

Ross, Fingerprint of God, 140. Despite these levels of complexity, mathematics is “unreasonably” effective to describe the universe and its operation in detail. Between pure mathematics and the basic structure of the material world there exists an intimate connection that is taken for granted, and yet it is amazingly surprising. Wigner (“Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics,” 1) asserts that the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift that we neither understand nor deserve. 190 As discussed above; Hougthon, Search for God, 33-46 discusses these principles in greater detail. See also Barrett, Science & Theology, 125. 191 Barrett, Science & Theology, 15. 192 Cohen, Scientific Revolution, 86. 193 Cohen, Scientific Revolution, 75. 189

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products of technological developments,194 that include nuclear armaments, environmental pollutants, biochemical weaponry, genetic manipulations, and other products of scientific research.195 As a result of the scientific revolution, the perspective on anthropology also changed. Now newly self-conscious human beings emerged who saw themselves as autonomous. These persons are curious about the world, confident in their own judgments and sceptical of intellectual systems that claim to be correct. They were rebellious against all forms of authority and responsible for their own actions and beliefs. Eventually, their behavior led to the demise of kingly rule and the aristocracy. They were enamored of the classical past but even more committed to a greater future, as Richard Tarnas explains.196 Each individual was seen as an individual creator in their artistic powers and less dependent on God. This being developed from the Reformation (sixteenth century), Scientific Revolution (seventeenth century), and the Renaissance (eighteenth century). Combined with the anthropic principle, the cosmologist George Ellis argues that a theistic cosmology includes the area of human values and aspirations.197 To reach the goal, it is necessary to put the anthropic principle into the context of a view of the highest good in human life and construct a model, or framework of understanding, of creation’s purpose. Underlying his arguments is the statement that there is a transcendent God, the Creator and sustainer of the universe, that made the universe with a purpose in mind, “to make possible high-level loving and sacrificial action by a freely-acting self-conscious individual.”198 He asserts that the universe is excellently matched to this fundamental assumption. He acknowledges that the universe consists of a hierarchy of levels of complexity but adds that it also contains meaning. He finds the clues to the meaning of the universe in the vivid human experience of moral action as a way of knowing. Morality consists primarily for him of kenosis, which also sums up the Creator’s work. Kenosis is a Greek word that has entered the theological language from Philippians 2:7, referring to Jesus who “emptied himself.” It is used as a technical term for the humiliation of the Son in the incarnation, and in recent years also of the Son’s emptying himself of certain attributes that he

194

Barrett, Science & Theology, 38. Morris, Biblical Basis, 12. 196 Tarnas, Passion of the Western Mind, 282. 197 Ellis, Before the Beginning. 198 Italicized by the author; Ellis, “God and the Universe,” 1. 195

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possessed as God, to become a human being.199 The self-emptying and selfgiving nature of God is then applied to human beings created in God’s image, as an essential element of the reflection of God through their lives and lifestyles.200 In the words of William Temple, it refers to “power in subordination to love.”201 The phrase “kenosis of God” demonstrates the limitlessness, vulnerability and precariousness of authentic love.202 Ellis argues that morality is a more fundamental strand in the foundation of the universe than the material, although both realms lie within the purposes of a designed universe. There are three conditions necessary for high-level kenotic behavior to occur: the ordered anthropic nature of the universe; the hiddenness of God, which allows humans the freedom to make their own moral choices; and the possibility that divine revelation would take place that contains knowledge about ultimate reality to believers in God. Peter Barrett shows that Ellis’ argument reflects the hypothetico-deductive approach that also characterizes Darwin’s theory of evolution.203 Ellis’ informed imagination created a principle and then deduced practical consequences that are tested at the hand of available evidence and data by experiment or observation. Scientific philosophers responded to the anthropic principle by stating that an infinite number of universes may exist (multiverses, referred to above) and that human beings can only exist in such universes where all the physical properties work together to permit life forms on one planet, including the development of intelligence and consciousness among some life forms. Another response is that there may be only one universe, and it just so happened that all the right characteristics existed in this universe to give rise to human beings. That human beings are in this universe can only be ascribed to the improbable chance that such a universe exists. The last response is that there exists only one universe, and the precise tuning of all the right characteristics to give rise to human beings is the result of divine

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Easton, “Kenosis,” 1792. Barrett, “Interpreting Creation Theologically,” 199. 201 Temple, Readings in St John’s Gospel, xxxi. 202 Velli-Matti Kärkkäinen refers also to the kenosis of the Holy Spirit because the Spirit never calls other divine persons to the Spiritself but points to the Son. The Spirit does not show people the Spiritself but rather the face of the Father and the Son (Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology, 8). 203 Barrett, Science & Theology, 150. 200

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creation. To avoid a religious conclusion, one has to opt for the manyuniverses explanation.204 It is clearly not in the domain of scientific observation to decide about the issue. Even Stephen Hawking argues that the odds against another nature like ours to emerge out of something like the Big Bang are enormous and that it holds clear religious implications.205 Roger Penrose, Hawking’s associate, writes that the highly ordered initial state of the universe is something that could not have just randomly occurred even by the slimmest chance, implying a finely orchestrated process of beginning.206 For instance, Fred Boyle calculates the probability that carbon atoms, necessary for life, would have precisely the required resonance for abundant production in nuclear fusion, and concludes that a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.207 The last response requires a divine being; the Big Bang itself seems to point strongly toward the involvement of a creator. Otherwise, it is not possible to theorize about the questions about what came before the Big Bang and where what was used as the material for the universe originated. The hypothesis of a creator solves the questions about what existed before the Big Bang and why the universe seems to be so exquisitely tuned for the existence of human life. TE is also compatible with what the Bible teaches if the biblical creation accounts are read in terms of the genre in which it was written and not literally. It is submitted that theistic evolution provides the best alternative for a spiritual and scientific worldview to coexist in a believer’s life. Pentecostal hermeneutic that reads biblical passages in terms of their genre and context is also compatible with the implications of such a viewpoint because it is not fettered by bondage to literalism in interpreting the Bible. It is further discussed in chapter 7.

An alternative way of thinking It is submitted that Pentecostals need an alternative way to think about creation and evolution; none of the other ways of reasoning accommodates their emphases. Their expectation of spiritual experiences and God’s

204

Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 85. Quoted in Barbour, When Science Meets Religion. 206 Penrose, Emperor’s New Mind. 207 Hoyle, “Universe,” 12. 205

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intervention in their lives, including the miraculous,208 cannot be accommodated by the concepts of intelligent design or theistic evolution while their hermeneutic does not leave room for the literalness of creationism’s Bible reading strategies. It sees Creationism and intelligent design as escape routes from the confrontation with science that is required of believers. It is suggested that the theory of evolution is supported by enough evidence to accept that it fits into God’s creation plans. However, the theory should then be viewed in a strictly scientific sense, without any of the philosophical baggage that some scientists and many believers carry, such as naturalism and materialism, that views evolution in terms of an unplanned, unguided process. Theistic evolution’s conciliation with macroevolution accepts that the process of evolution is unplanned, unguided, and random. It poses the question, if the human mind is the product of such an unguided and random process, can it be trusted for rendering the truth? And how is the process guided, if not intelligently guided? A word of warning by Stephen Barr is in order.209 Theology’s task is to render faith intelligible and plausible in the context of the knowledge available in the contemporary world. In the process, it is also confronted by scientific knowledge. The danger exists on two sides: when theology is wedded to scientific ideas of an earlier era that turn out to be false and leads to a crisis of credibility for theology (as happened when the church supported a geocentric view that Galileo disputed), and when new ideas in science are accepted without distinction, leading to red faces when new evidence shows the speculative and ephemeral essence of some scientific theories. Theology needs the gift of discernment to tread carefully where even well-known seasoned scientists had made some mistakes. The first question to ask is: Why do many believers and theologians reject the theory of evolution out of hand? Stephen Barr suggests that if one accepts natural explanations for the formation of stars and planetary systems, then it is, or should be, natural to accept such explanations for plants and animals as well.210 The problem is the view that God’s role in creation is that of some physical force that acted in the creative acts that led to the formation of the universe as it is known today, a force that started everything off. Another problem is that God is regularly viewed as in competition with natural explanations, implying that as science progresses in understanding natural processes, the need for God as the explanation of 208

See discussion in next subsection, “Pentecostal emphasis on miracles. Barr, Believing Scientist, 138. 210 Barr, Believing Scientist, 146. 209

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things diminishes. Another related problem is when the theory of evolution is accepted as an explanation for the origins of species, it is accepted that the existence of chance or randomness in life processes suggests that God is not in control and that God does not know where things are headed. These related beliefs lead to the opposition one finds in ecclesiastical circles when the idea of genetic mutations driving evolution is discussed. Evolution, as defined by neo-Darwinism, is based on the principle of natural selection that acts on random genetic variations or mutations. Pentecostals need to define “randomness” carefully since biologists (and other scientists) use a different definition from the one used in everyday language. “Random” in scientific terms does not necessarily refer to “unguided,” “unplanned,” “uncaused,” “meaningless,” “inexplicable,” or “pointless” as people use the term.211 One frequently finds that in ecclesiastical discussions of the theory of evolution, it is asserted that neo-Darwinism implies that the processes of evolution are unplanned and unguided, implying that it falls outside the bounds of divine providence. “Random” as used in science does not mean uncaused, unplanned, or inexplicable; it rather means “uncorrelated.” Events in the natural world are characterized by statistical randomness and a lack of correlation because these events do not follow some simple formula; they are part of a vastly complex web of contingency.212 Contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence because divine causality and created causality differ in kind and degree. The outcome of a purely contingent natural process can form a part of God’s providential plan; in fact, believers confess that almost all contingent natural processes fall in this category. Stating that life is the result of random genetic variation and natural selection does not imply that the process of evolution is unguided; scientists who come to that conclusion move outside the realm of their scientific field of authority to do so. The putative randomness of genetic variation does not imply an unguided process. Scientific arguments based on statistical randomness and probability do not necessarily imply a denial of the existence of God. Nor does it deny the control of God over what happens in creation. In the terms used by Francis Collins, if God exists outside time and space, God could in the 211

See the 2004 document of the International Theological Commission of the Roman Catholic Church, headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, entitled Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cf aith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html; accessed 2021-01-05), as discussed in natural selection in Barr, Believing Scientist, 46-47. 212 Barr, Believing Scientist, 51.

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moment of the creation of the universe also know every detail of what is perceived from within the created world as the future.213 What is needed is that one does not apply human limitations in one’s thinking to God. Evolution could appear to us as driven by chance, but from God’s perspective, the outcome would be entirely specified. On the contrary, if an evolutionary process can produce such intricate life forms as anthropic “coincidences” show, it implies a universe with structure, matter, processes, and laws that have a special character. Some biologists also opine that certain evolutionary endpoints are built into the rules of physics and chemistry, as demonstrated by “random variations” that consistently end up at the same destination. At the same time, human powers of intellect, rationality, and spirituality illustrate that the idea of life as an unguided process does not make sense. The argument is that if evolution was driven by random mutations and variations, believers cannot adhere to the biblical vision of a divine plan with creation. Then human life exists by chance, and not by design and intention. On the one hand, Creationists argue that God is in charge of the world, and for that reason, there does not exist any randomness or chance in the world. On the other hand, more discoveries revealed that it is not only the human species or animal life that exist as a result of random processes, but so did the entire galaxy, including the solar system (Milky Way) of which the earth is a part. To solve the problem, an analogy may be helpful. In a play that is performed, a woman murders her husband. Within the play, one thing causes another. The different characters act and react to each other. This can be called horizontal causality. However, the playwright is the cause of the play in all its aspects, penning every character, event, and word that occur within the play. This can be referred to as vertical causality. To ask the question, who killed the husband, does not make sense. It is clearly the woman who is the murderer. But should the playwright not be held responsible? In the same way, God willed by one timeless act, before the creation of time, the universe, and life forms, that all things exist, wherever and whenever in time they do exist. God is the source of vertical causality or primary causality. God created human beings as well, with their potentialities and powers. God is the cause of the play. Scientists examine the causes in nature. 213

Collins, Language of God,

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To ask whether a species exists because it evolved or because it was designed and created by God does not make sense. It is to confuse the vertical and horizontal causality of what happens and exists on earth, or in the universe with what happens in the Creator’s realm. God wrote the script and “creation” happens through the ages. The analogy breaks down, however, in terms of God’s responsibility for what the individual actors do and say. As the prime cause, God oversees a universe that exists but God’s involvement with human beings is to be considered in other terms. God is the direct cause that anything exists. However, in terms of God’s relationship with human beings, God allows human beings the freedom of moral decision-making but at the same time shows God’s love for and interest and involvement in human beings by sending the Son to declare God’s love. How people behave toward each other and themselves and react to Jesus Christ is not determined by God; human beings order their own private lives and relationships and have to take responsibility for their behavior and decisions. That God wrote the cosmic play does not imply causal dependence between God and what happens on earth. Whatever happens, is not rigged and determined by God. This is only a problem when horizontal and vertical causality are confused with each other. Scientists investigate how things in nature relate to each other; their interest is not in terms of how these things are related to God. Evolutionary biologists look for natural causes and mechanisms. When these natural causes are independent of each other in terms of natural randomness, it does not imply that they function independently of God. Evolutionary history unfolded according to some natural laws that consist of natural selection and leading to natural probabilities and natural randomness, exactly as known and willed by God from eternity. Randomness in genetic mutations implies that no mechanism exists that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur. In the same terms, the fundamental laws of nature are concerned with horizontal causal relationships. These laws hold for nearly all occurrences because, in terms of vertical causality, God causes things to happen in accordance with the laws that God built into creation. As an exception, God may choose to cause events that contravene these laws, as, for instance, in the case of divine healing. In all cases, it is God who causes all things to happen, in a vertical sense, whether they happen according to the laws of nature or (as the exception) not. God can be written out of the script of nature only when vertical causality is ignored, as ID proponents explain. For that reason, the complementing of science and theology is necessary to form a better picture of the world.

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In the same vein, some theologians speak about mediate and immediate providence. When God takes care of God’s creation through natural and secondary causes, they refer to it as mediate providence, in terms of the process of natural growth and development.214 This does not exclude God’s immediate intervention, called miraculous acts and viewed by believers as the answer to their prayers. To state that something evolved through the ages does not exclude God’s providence at all. In fact, God completes God’s work in creation primarily and mostly by way of natural causes. God’s planning of creation is so perfect that God doesn't need to intervene regularly on an ad hoc basis to provide for God’s purpose to be reached. Before discussing a pentecostal emphasis on miracles, that refers to immediate providence, it is necessary to make some last comments about the issue of randomness. It is possible to use tests of randomness to look for suspicious correlations in cancer deaths, for instance, but randomness in empirical science consists of some significant statistical correlations that may appear but without certainty that it would. Statistical randomness is determined by the multiplicity of independent causal chains that intersect and impinge on each other, leading to the observation that sequences or juxtapositions arise that exhibit the lack of correlation that represents statistical randomness. The chains of causality can, at any moment, give rise to “chance” events that were not foreseen by an observer. The event may cause the disruption of what may seem to be the normal course of development. Barr refers to the asteroid that was supposed to strike the earth sixty-five million years ago near the Yucatan peninsula, and that probably caused the extinction of dinosaurs.215 The bodies encircling the sun had been moving in elliptical circles around the sun for billions of years without any effect on life on earth until everything changed when one such body’s path intersected with the earth, leading to a “chance” event. Such events do not exclude God’s providence; in the terms that believers use; God is not caught off guard when such “chance” events happen because, in God’s planning process of creation, the necessary room was left for it. The Creator God exists outside of creation and is not limited by what defines creation, namely space and time.216 God established natural laws that govern 214

The argument of Barr, Believing Scientist, 56-7 is used here. Barr, Believing Scientist, 58. 216 The term “holiness” used regularly in the Bible in terms of God refers, inter alia, to God’s being totally different from anything God created, explaining God’s state of being outside creation of the universe that is defined by matter, space and time. 215

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the universe when God created it, and these laws can be discovered. God populated a part of creation that we know of and chose the mechanisms of evolution to create life on earth that started with microbes and developed over long periods into plants, animals, and human beings. When God decided to create creatures with intelligence but also a sense of the moral law, free will, and the desire to fellowship with the transcendent, God chose to use the same mechanism, of evolution. They all mediate God’s intervention. This view is, for the most part, compatible with what science teaches about the origins of the universe and life on earth. Neither religion nor science can prove that God exists and intervened in creating the universe and life; no logical argument can ever achieve that and science cannot weigh the evidence for such an argument. The reason is clear, that God’s unknowable essence and state of being cannot be investigated by human observation or measurement because God exists outside the work of God’s hands, even though Christians know that God revealed Godself in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.217 He showed God’s face of love and grace to human beings.

Pentecostal emphasis on miracles “Miracles” have been used in contemporary times in various ways, not only to describe events that cannot be explained apart from divine intervention but also in terms of “miracle diets” and “miracle drugs,” making it necessary to define how one defines a miracle. As it is used here, and by most Pentecostals, it refers to events that cannot be explained by the laws of nature; believers look for its origins to divine intervention, frequently in answer to prayer. The Scottish scepticist David Hume (1711-1776), responsible for the British empirical tradition, already stated that the only genuine miracle was that any people believed in miracles. John Polkinghorne, an English theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest, however, argues that the question of miracles is not primarily scientific, but theological. Science can simply tell us that miracles are against normal expectation, but it cannot exclude Augustine worried about the question of what God was doing before God created the universe. His answer was surprisingly close to that provided by modern physics. According to Augustine, time itself was created when God made the universe, so the question is moot: before the creation of the cosmos there was simply no time (Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 34). 217 See John 14:7, “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” The implication is that Jesus revealed God.

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the possibility, on particular occasions, that God does particular unprecedented things. If God exists outside creation and is the ordainer of the laws that determine the nature of the cosmos, then God is not subject to those laws and can suspend them for God’s own purposes.218 The laws of nature represent humanity’s assessment of how God normally causes things to happen, but that does not imply that the one who instituted the cosmos according to those laws cannot be at liberty to suspend them.219 In this regard, thirteen prominent scientists of which most were professors at universities wrote in a letter to The Times in 1984, stating that it is not logically valid to use science as an argument against miracles. One requires faith to believe that a miracle happened but on the other hand, to believe that miracles cannot happen also requires faith. Miracles are unprecedented, and their occurrence falls outside the parameters and competency of scientific investigations.220 The critical question concerning the miraculous is that of divine consistency. This principle requires that miraculous events must be capable of being understood as signs of a deeper insight into God’s relation to creation, and not simply as the mere tours de force if the “miraculous” is to be deemed theologically credible.221 Jesus Christ presents for Christian believers the deeper insight into God’s relation to creation. For that reason, a study of the miraculous must always start with Jesus’ miracles and his resurrection, and use it as the standard for current claims of miraculous events. Most Protestants accept either a hard or soft cessationism. Hard cessationism rules out, for example, even the Lord’s Supper for this dispensation, accepting only what is taught in Paul’s prison epistles, the passing away of the charismata at the end of the apostolic age, and the impossibility that supernatural events take place because God ceased all divine interventions when Christ died on the cross. Soft cessationism accepts that regular supernatural giftings have ceased but leave room for special divine activity as an exception.222 On the other hand, most (if not all) Pentecostals accept continuationism, and their testimonies witness to the perception of their experience of such divine interventions.

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Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos and Christianity, 82-3. Blanchard, Has Science Got Rid, 84. 220 The Times, 13 July 1984, p. 1. See also Dawid and Hartmann, “No Miracles Argument.” 221 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 191. 222 Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics, 321. 219

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It is a truism that one’s experience is tainted by the way one interprets it and that previous experiences contribute to the way we experience and describe new experiences. Each person applies a “philosophy of experience” to describe what they experience. When someone ascribes to a materialist philosophy that excludes anything else to exist or occur than what can be observed and defined in terms of cause and effect and with the tools of the sciences, the possibility that anything can happen that can be described as a miracle ceases or diminishes dramatically. At most, the event can be described as something rare that may occasionally happen in the natural world, that we cannot explain it with our present knowledge, but the chances are great that further observations and discoveries will provide a scientific explanation for it. On the other hand, a believer in a transcendent being that exists outside nature and observable reality may at times ascribe an event that intervenes in their reality to the divine being, especially when they perceive the event as an answer to their prayers. Quantum theory and chaos theory that shook the scientific worldview in the last half of the twentieth century eventually accepted that the world is not a piece of cosmic clockwork, as Deism argued for several centuries, and that a merely mechanical materialist view of the universe is inadequate. The new theories demonstrate and portray a more subtle and supple structure than the mechanistic perspective.223 The strangeness of quantum theory (including the Copenhagen, standard, or orthodox interpretations) has led several other quantum pioneers like Bernard d’Espagnat and John Bell to conclude that the theory cannot tell us what is but rather only shows us some shadow of the reality we cannot reach.224 We cannot understand what truly happens in the world of the very small. All that we can observe are shadows on the wall, cast by a mysterious “veiled reality.”225 It is probably true that the wide pentecostal interests in miracle (wonders and signs) can benefit from a healthy scepticism because some unwarranted claims of miracles “witnessed to” have brought its integrity and rationality into question. Evolutionary theists do not leave the room that God can, on rare occasions, intervene and that the event cannot be explained in any other way. Mainly for that reason, it is submitted that an alternative theological way of responding to the challenges of contemporary astrophysics and biochemical theories is necessary, as argued above.

223

Polinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 21. Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 90. 225 Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 90. 224

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It is acknowledged that miracles would be the exception to ensure that the order in which God established the creation would not degenerate into chaos. Especially in supposed cases of physical healing, care must be taken to credit medical science for its contributions and our present incomplete knowledge of the origins and course of an illness should keep us from attempting to view every healing in miraculous terms. At the same time, healing as the result of medical interventions should also be ascribed to the abilities God placed in some gifted individuals. Amos Yong defined miracles as noninterventionist objective (special) divine actions in which the laws of nature are not suspended or intervened. God, as the biblical narratives witness, actually does things in the world which are not just matters of subjective interpretation but objective actions.226 The purpose of miracles will never be to benefit people but to bring honor to God. Miracles do not represent divine tours de force in which God shows off divine power (or miracle workers show their abilities!). They rather serve as windows into a deeper view of reality than would otherwise be visible.227 They are not designed for amazing people or for bringing relief to some selfishly defined needs but as more profound revelations of the character of the divine relationship with nature. It should be kept in mind that the laws of nature are expressions of God’s will; miracles cannot be explained as suspensions of those laws because it would imply a contradiction in the way God deals with human beings and nature.228 When miracles are depicted as the result of a human being’s manipulating God, as appears to be the case in some evangelistic services where the supposed miracles are used to shine the limelight on the evangelist as the one “performing” the miracle, it should also be rejected out of hand. Using “signs and wonders” to attract unconverted people to evangelistic services is a practice that betrays a lack of honesty and integrity of its organizers because it capitalizes on people’s real needs and promises in most instances what it cannot deliver. The climax and highlight of miracles is the expectation that Christians would share in the resurrection of Christ. John Polkinghorne develops what he calls a “credible eschatology” essential for the coherence of the Christian

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Contributions of Oliverio and Yong, “Review Symposium.” See also Russell’s “Miracles and Science: A Third Way.” 227 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 59. 228 Polkinghorne, Science and Theology, 93.

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belief.229 His view of the resurrection is interesting as the basis for Christian hope. He defines the human soul as “the almost infinitely complex, dynamic, information-bearing patterns” that the animated body carries and that continuously develops throughout the constituent changes the body experiences through its lifetime. When the person dies, the body decays, but its pattern is remembered by God and reconstituted in the new environment that awaits Christians. Although death is a real end, it can never be the final end because only God is ultimate.230 And the suffering and disaster that precede death are also explainable for believers. Suffering is seen, not as gratuitous but a necessary contribution to some greater good which could only be realized in the “mysterious way” through the creation continua of the present “vale of soul-making.”231 Creatio continua refers to God’s kenosis in suffering patience for humankind demonstrated in God’s waiting, expecting, inviting, attracting, alluring, and enticing of human beings into a relationship with God.232 It is differentiated from the creatio originalis that refers to the original creation and the creatio nova that awaits the believer, in the eschatological anticipation and expectation of the end. The last remark is that Pentecostals may never forget the miraculous nature of the cosmos in which they live. It is a universe whose rational beauty, in John Polkinghorne’s doxology, represents a world “shot through with signs of mind and that from the beginning was pregnant with the possibility of carbon-based life.”233 The order of the world is perceived by believers as being a reflection of the mind of its Creator, illustrated in the interconnectedness of all processes of the physical world. An evolutionary universe is a creation allowed to make itself according to the laws established by its Creator, and that is discoverable. This was an integral part of the first and immediate reaction to the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, as expressed by Charles Kingsley and Frederick Temple, two prominent contemporaries of Darwin, one a professor at the University of Cambridge and the other the future Archbishop of Canterbury.234 229

Polkinghorne, Science and Theology, 56; Scientists as Theologians. Polkinghorne, Science and Christian Belief, 163. 231 Polkinghorne, Science and Providence, 63. 232 Moltmann, “God’s Kenosis,” 149. 233 Polkinghorne’s (Science and Christian Belief, 22) book is to an important extent a doxology about the universe as a reflection of its Creator. 234 The Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, proclaimed after Darwin's funeral in Westminster Abbey, “It would have been unfortunate if anything had occurred to give weight and currency to the foolish notion which some have diligently propagated, but for which Mr Darwin was not responsible, that there is a necessary 230

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Conclusion It was argued that Pentecostals with their distinctive theological pneumatological emphases have a contribution that may be valuable to make to scientific endeavors and the discourse between science and theology about origins. In reading Genesis 1 and 2, they are confronted by theories of astrophysics about the origin and age of the universe as well as biochemical theories of the origin of life; they need to discount these theories in their exegetical labors that attempt to make sense of the ancient creation narratives found in the Bible. The diversity of life and complex lifeforms are explained as the products of evolution through the mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation (variation). The vision of reality that the narrators and editors of Genesis 1 and 2 used did not envision such a reality. The images and philosophical ideas they employed were written for and made sense to their first listeners. However, Pentecostals need not choose between believing either the Bible that describes the creative acts of YHWH or scientific theories such as particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology, and the dynamics of complex structures. New Physics depicts a universe that is vast and intricately ordered, tightly knit at all its levels, and seemingly designed for the development of life, implying that cosmology and biology can be important conversation partners for theology. What is necessary is that the distinction should be kept in mind between the purposes and methodology of science and the purpose of theology that concerns itself with the destiny of the universe, the nature of divine action, and the meaning of human life. The chapter described various ways for theology in its conversation with science. Creationism and intelligent design seemed to serve as escape routes for theology because they do not confront the challenges posed by the theory of evolution. At the same time, it is admitted that the “theory” of evolution should rather be seen as a “hypothesis” that requires further qualification, in the light of more recent challenges to macro-evolution. Theistic evolution, on the other hand, accepted the challenge of evolution but does not allow for any direct and mediate divine interventions, a condition for Pentecostals with their emphasis on the pneumatic and charismatic. An alternative was sketched, consisting of the acceptance that God chose and directed evolution as the means to create life forms although the necessary room was conflict between a knowledge of Nature and a belief in God.” Berry, “Darwin Respected by His Religious Contemporaries,” https://www.nature.com/articles/462411b; accessed 2021-01-04.

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left for God to intervene in the process in an immediate way, by way of an exception. God’s knowledge (or foreknowledge) of the universe and its development through the billions of years of its existence was ascribed to vertical or primary causality and immediate providence that should be distinguished from horizontal or secondary causality and mediate providence.

CHAPTER 7 GENESIS 1-2 INFORMING PENTECOSTAL HERMENEUTICS

Introduction Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church leader, said that God as Creator of all entities, including all life forms, chose to use the Big Bang to establish the universe and evolution that presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.1 The well-known deceased evangelist, Billy Graham, remarked that the evolutionary process does not contradict the Bible because the Bible states that God created humanity but it does not explain how God did it; it is rather concerned with why God did it. And because the Bible is not a book of science but redemption, whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what human beings are and their relationship to God.2 A previous pope, John Paul II, said the same thing in other words, that the Bible declares that God created the world, and it uses the cosmological model of its day to express that truth. In its narratives about creation, the Bible teaches that human beings were not created to serve the needs of gods and that the world is not the seat of those gods but that they were created for the service of humankind and the glory of God. The Bible is not concerned primarily with how heaven and earth were made but with how one goes to heaven.3 This research is based on the premise that the Neo-Darwinist theory of evolution, stripped of the philosophical baggage of materialism and naturalism, serves well to explain the origin of life and life forms scientifically, and that it is reconcilable with the biblical accounts of the creation. It was submitted that a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic exists that is defined by Pentecostals’ emphasis on pneumatology, existential charismatic encounters with God, and the work of the Spirit in the reading community 1

Pope Francis, “Plenary Address.” Quoted in Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 790. 3 Pope John Paul II, “Cosmology and Fundamental Physics.” 2

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that define the way they interpret the Bible. In reading the Bible, the guidelines that Gordon Fee provides may be helpful to Pentecostals to read biblical texts in a way that does justice to their pentecostal heritage.4 It is important that the central core of the biblical message should be determined and that the core should be distinguished from what is dependent on that core, or even peripheral to it. The reader should also note whether the matter under discussion in the text is inherently moral or non-moral, theological or non-theological. When the reader ascertains that the text is discussing a moral issue, it is important to determine whether the text is providing a normative prescript or describes a cultural and social custom with limited applicability when cultural boundaries are crossed. If this is not done the culture reflected in the text is made normative for contemporary people. In some cases, cultural differences between the first century CE such as the ban on female participation in the public discourse and our day are not immediately obvious, and care should be taken that one’s perspective should include the opinions of other people, especially biblical scholars. It should also be noted whether the Bible provides a uniform witness on a given point or whether other opinions in the Bible differ from this viewpoint. It is also important to remember that different interpretations of various biblical issues exist among believers and that one should remain humble in one’s own interpretation while looking graciously at the interpretation of those who differ from one.

Reading Genesis 1-2 from a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic The Pentecostal reader interpreting Genesis 1-2 is faced with several challenges, including the relationship between the biblical creation narratives and the creation myths of surrounding nations that seemingly influenced the way the biblical narratives developed, probably serving as a critique of some aspects of these myths. Another challenge to face is the question of whether Genesis 1-2 presents one or two narratives, and if two narratives, what the relation between them is. The biblical creation narratives also seemingly represent a cosmological model of the universe and life on earth that differs radically from the contemporary scientific worldview. Pentecostal readers must address the challenges presented by astrophysical theories of the origins of the universe some fourteen billion years ago as a result of the Big Bang, and biochemical theories that life originated from an amoeba, implying that all life forms are descended, share 4

Fee, Gospel and Spirit, 12.

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the same descendants, and evolved in the same way. The implications for the theological message of Genesis 1-2 about humanity and the worth of human beings are at stake in considering these issues. Theology as the first-order investigation of religious phenomena evaluates the validity of claims being made in the domain of human religious experience. Science, in contrast, investigates the natural world. However, instead of competing with each other, insights from both science and religion can and should be used to complement human knowledge of reality. The problem is, however, concerned with their different methodologies, with science using clear-cut evidence for its conclusions while theology may seem to ignore evidence to accommodate the authority of the Bible in all matters. However, science and religion share the burden of never attaining absolute truth. Neither biblical interpretation nor scientific enterprises comply with the requirements of a Baconian method or a Cartesian modernist program. Science and theology recognize that it can never attain more than a verisimilitudinous grasp of reality (that is the essence of “critical realism”). At the same time, a significant distinctive of the pentecostal hermeneutic and spirituality is that God at times may intervene in the existing order. Although scientific theories do not, and cannot leave room for such interventions, Pentecostals acknowledge their existence, as an exception. In its discussion with scientific theories, this distinction should be held in mind by Pentecostals. In contrast to a fundamentalist-literalist interpretation of the Bible which claims to discover absolute truths, including historical facts in Scripture, the pentecostal hermeneutic acknowledges that its interpretation of the Bible can never be more than provisional. At the same time, its hermeneutic does not oblige Pentecostals to read the biblical creation narratives as literal historical facts. The pentecostal hermeneutic is not limited by the biblicist constraint to accept it as word-for-word descriptions of how creation took place, on a par with scientific theories of creation and implying that believers should choose between two widely divergent accounts of the origins of the universe and life forms. When one accepts that the narratives serve a theological purpose by coveying truth through an imaginative narrative that links with the creation narratives of surrounding nations rather than provide scientific theories, it frees the reader to appreciate the narratives for their literary excellence. The purpose was to explain to the people of Judah experiencing the crisis brought on by the Babylonian exile that was threatening Judah’s survival and identity that Israel’s God created

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the universe, the earth, all life forms, and human beings, using several literary strategies to convey the message to its first listeners effectively. If their God created the world, Judeans could trust God to free them from their bondage and establish a new future for a people without a country and a king. That the two narratives utilize different genres, discourse, grammar, syntax, and lexicality to convey different emphases betray that they do not intend to convey scientific truths or theories but a significant theological message about God and humanity in a way that the first listeners found digestible. It was presented in terms that its listeners and readers could understand because it connected to the world they were living is, using images and analogies known to Babylonians but also providing a critique on their cosmogonies. The creation narratives present historically conditioned accounts of certain significant paradigmatic theological truths that explain that the earth is intended to be God’s dwelling place, among human beings. God created the earth as a temple and human beings as priests serving in this temple. It reflects on God’s intention with the earth and human beings, although history shows how human beings deliberately thwarted this intention.

Informing the pentecostal hermeneutic from the theological perspectives that Genesis 1-2 provide Augustine’s writings repeatedly refer to his fascination with the biblical creation narratives that include five extensive analyses of these texts in The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Confessions, and The City of God. It tells that he posed more questions than answers. Augustine’s example serves to warn contemporary readers against finding quick answers and solutions to complicated scientific questions that the original authors did not address. The warning of John Calvin is still valid, that the Bible was not intended to answer the questions posed by contemporary readers but to show the way back to God for human beings who had lost their way. Existing literature about the biblical narratives attests to diverse interpretations of Genesis 1-2, lying on a continuum from a completely literal interpretation that reads the narratives as containing historical and scientific facts to a completely symbolic interpretation that sees, at most, allegories about human and divine behavior in these narratives. This research does not lie at the edges of the continuum but finds itself among interpreters who relate to the narratives’ metaphorical character. At the same time, it emphasizes the provisionality of its proposed answers about the possible meaning of the

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narratives for contemporary people, acknowledging that other proposals may be better.

A literal reading of Genesis 1-2 It is acknowledged that most Pentecostals read and understand the biblical creation narratives literally. The observation that the archetypal narratives of Genesis 1-2 can and has been abused to oppress people in terms of gender, race and religion should provide enough reason for Pentecostals to reconsider the hermeneutical implications of reading the text in such a biblicist and literalist manner. One finds the argument among literalists that because the woman was created after the man, it implies that women are inferior to men, not only in terms of their physical strength or mental abilities but also their spiritual capacities. At times the argument is used to exclude women from any ministry in the Christian church. Another argument is that God created man and woman as naturally immortal; they lost their immortality when they ate the apple (a fruit that does not feature at all in the biblical narrative!). The supposition in many cases is that the curses that God put on the snake, the woman, and the man are binding and unchangeable for all people and all times, that it resulted in the absolute depravity of all humankind, disqualifying them from anything good, and that these curses prescribe the nature of present reality as well. The Genesis narrative was used to oppress people of color, as well. For instance, that Europeans caught 12.5 million Africans without considering their dignity or rights and sold them as slaves were theologically justified by the curse of Noah on Ham; African people were meant to be slaves.5 In South Africa, a previous regime used the theologically loaded concept of “creation ordinances,” based on the observation of the narrator that God created each according to its kind, to justify the policy of apartheid and suppress all forms of black nationalism.6 When the Bible is abused as a tool to oppress people and make them inferior to others, it becomes an evil and insidious process that cannot be accepted by any believers. Then the church should urgently revise the way it reads and interprets the Bible.

5

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/howmany-slaves-landed-in-the-us/; accessed 2020-10-15. 6 Loubser, “Apartheid Theology;” Manavhela, “Analysis of the Theological Justification of Apartheid;” Baskwell, “Kuyper and Apartheid.”

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The six days of creation A trademark sign of a literalist reading is found in the emphasis that the biblical creation days refer to twenty-four periods of time. Pentecostal readers of Genesis 1-2 have to face the challenge about the limit span of the universe’s existence (is it ten thousand or fourteen billion years?), and of life forms on earth (is it six thousand or 530 million years ago)? In his book about Genesis, Augustine states that God exists outside of time and God is not bound by it, as 2 Peter 3:8 symbolically states. Then Augustine asks, what does it imply for the seven creation days?7 Are they supposed to be seen as consisting of periods of twenty-four hours, also given that the sun and moon were only created on the fourth day? He concludes that it is extremely difficult, and probably impossible for readers of the narratives to conceive what a day is. He warns that Genesis was written deliberately obscurely to stimulate the imagination and thought of its readers and that one should not brashly take a stand on one side against a rival interpretation which might, in the end, appear to be better. The length of the creation days is only an issue when the narratives are read literally; if they are viewed as metaphorical, it does not make sense to speculate about the length of the days. Adam and Eve as historical figures Another one of the challenges a literalist reading of the Bible has to do with concerns the identity of Adam and Eve. Were they historical persons that were created by God as the first of the human race? Modern humans (homo sapiens) originated approximately two-hundred-thousand years ago, probably in East Africa, and fifty-thousand years later the capacity for a language was developed amongst them.8 Genetic analyses have suggested that approximately ten thousand ancestors gave rise to the entire population of eight billion people that live today on earth. How does one reconcile this view with the information provided in Genesis 1-2? What about the description of the 7

Augustine, Literal Meaning, 20:40. Khan Academy, “Home Sapiens and Early Human Migration,” https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/world-historybeginnings/origin-humans-early-societies/a/where-did-humans-come-from; accessed 2021-01-07. Compared to the Neandertals and other late archaic humans, modern humans generally have more delicate skeletons with more rounded skulls, brow ridges that generally protrude much less, relatively high foreheads, smaller faces, and pointed chins (https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm; accessed 2021-01-07).

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creation of the first human being from the dust of the earth, and subsequently the creation of the woman from man’s side (or rib)? It was submitted that the two creation narratives are different symbolic allegories that explain the entrance of the spiritual nature into an animal kingdom without such a facility. Adam and Eve serve as symbolical figures of a lesson of the human capacity to sin, addressed to pre-exilic and exilic Judeans that faced the possibility of the loss of their identity and potential extinction as a separate people. It is not accepted that Adam and Eve represented a historical couple that was biologically different from all other creatures that had walked the earth. It is clear that biologically taken, humankind was the result of biological processes that took millions of years, but theologically it is also clear that the creation narratives are poetic allegories of God’s plan for the introduction of the spiritual nature and the moral law to humanity. These narratives were presented in a form that was understandable to the listeners, using poetic and allegorical material used by their neighbors to explain the creation of humankind, but the biblical authors commented on the “myths” by denying the random involvement of the gods and goddesses of the surrounding cultures. It is submitted that the authors did not intend the narratives to be literally understood, since they used material about the myths of the creative activities of the gods of the surrounding cultures, and reapplied it to incorporate faith in Israel’s God. It is clear that to the mind of the narrator, the man and woman were not the only figures living on earth at the time when they were expelled from the garden of Eden. That there were other people becomes clear when Cain married in the land of Nod where the family had settled (Gen 4:16-17). If Cain and Seth’s wives were not their sisters, a view that the biblical authors clearly would not hold to in the light of the cultural injunction against incest, their wives had to be descendants of other inhabitants of the area. It should be kept in mind that the narratives suggest that there were other human beings present at the time that Adam and Eve were supposed to have lived on the earth. This is the kind of problem that occurs when one reads the archetypal narratives of Genesis 1-11 literally. C.S. Lewis describes the origins of the human being from an animal whose physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends into an organism with a consciousness of “I” and “me,” that could look upon itself as an object which knows God, make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and distinguish past and present from the future. Genesis 2-3 describes how these first beings heard the whisper that

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they could become gods, that they acted independently of the awareness of the Creator within them. In what way they established their independence is not important. Lewis acknowledges that it might have been concerned with the literal eating of a fruit, but the fact is that their self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression.9 It explains to sixth-century Judeans the origins of the challenge they faced, judged as the punishment of YHWH for Israel’s repeated failure to fulfill their side of the covenant.

Fear of consequences of a non-literal interpretation of the Bible Understandably, conservative readers wish to establish a literal reading of the Bible to protect the Christian faith from those whom they perceived as subverting the foundations by undermining the authority of the Bible. A non-literal reading of biblical narratives might imply the assertion that they are not true. They fear that non-literal interpretations would eventually undermine the authority of the Bible, which serves as the bedrock of their faith. If Genesis 1 and 2 are accepted as allegories and metaphors with a symbolical value for its readers, will such reasoning not ultimately result in the denial of the truth that faith is built upon, including the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, and God’s involvement in the world? Especially for Pentecostals with their emphasis on God’s miraculous involvement in their daily lives that they view in continuity with the experiences of biblical characters of such miracles, the truth of biblical narratives must be defended. It is accepted that “liberal theology” in unrestrained forms might threaten what is important for believers, especially if it is combined with postmodern views that no absolute truth exists and that “truth” can only be defined in terms of personal experience. It is also accepted that many biblical texts exhibiting the marks of eyewitness history are to be accepted, including the biographical information about Jesus’ ministry, life and death. However, there are narratives in the Bible that their authors intended to be interpreted as allegorical and symbolical representations of important elements of a theological message. It is also important to remember that when these narratives are interpreted as literally as possible, it might result in the loss of the theological message that the author intended to convey while at the same time the interpretation is being made without discounting the historical circumstances in which the narrative originated and conveyed a message to specific listeners. It is submitted that the narratives of the creation of 9

Lewis, Problem of Pain, 68-71.

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humankind and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden fall into this category as allegorical and metaphorical, serving effectively as means to relate to the situation of Judeans challenged by the Babylonian exile. Believers who build their position in the evolutionary debate on the biblical creation narratives that they interpret in a literalist way are not doing especially young people any favor. By ignoring scientific evidence and arguments for the influencing of these narratives from the surrounding cultures that imply that they were not written to be literal, they set thinking persons before the challenge that they have to choose between science or religion. This is, however, not only unnecessary but also undermining the essence and distinctive of pentecostal hermeneutics. As stated, truth is truth, all truth speaks with one voice, and the truth of God as Creator revealed in the Bible is the same truth as that revealed by scientific evidence. If God created reality, and science investigates and describes it, then God’s reality will be portrayed by scientific discoveries, even if only in provisional form. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) saw this and in embracing Copernicus’ (14731543) heliocentric model of the cosmos, celebrated his own scientific discoveries, among which were that the earth’s motion lay in the existence of the tides, by praising the creator God.10 He wrote, “I do not feel obliged

10

The church, on the basis of such biblical texts as Pss 93:1; 104:5; Eccl 1:5, warned Galileo at first not to teach or defend his views. He was initially tried before the Roman Inquisition in 1633, and forced to “adjure, curse, and detest” his own work. The Catholic Church in its attempt to preserve a literalist interpretation of Scripture and promote the central role played by the earth within the wider universe, chose to follow the ideas of a nonscientific, pre-Christian philosopher, Aristotle (fourth century BCE). His philosophy was based on reason rather than experimentation, resulting in errors such as his belief that heavy objects fall faster than light ones (disproved by Galileo centuries later). Aristotle’s geocentrism, and his insistence on the immutability and constancy of nature became pillars of Catholic belief that would stand in the face of scientific developments from the late sixteenth through the seventeenth century, culminating in the trial of Galileo (Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 39). The infamous trial took place in February 1633. Under threat of torture, Galileo publicly recanted his heliocentric heresy, perhaps muttering sotto voce “Eppur si muove” (“Still, it moves!”) as some assert (Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God, 56). He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life in his villa at Arcetri, outside Florence, and the church banned all his publications. In 1992, at last, Pope John Paul II issued an apology, acknowledging that Galileo sensed in his scientific work the presence of the Creator who stimulated and assisted his intuitions (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13618460-600vatican-admits-galileo-was-right/; accessed 2020-10-26). The anti-Copernican decree of the Roman Catholic Church against Copernicus was revoked much earlier,

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to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”11 The Pentecostal hermeneutic, with its emphasis on the role experience plays in the interpreting process, leaves room for interpreting texts in terms of God’s extra-biblical revelation, including the discoveries that science produce. It provides the solution to the invalid choice that some believers create when their perspective implies that a true believer should deny the obvious truth of the natural world that science had discovered, in order to remain loyal to the God of Adam and Eve. Such Christians should rather claim their God as Creator of the universe, not as an outmoded superstition as materialists argue that has become irrelevant by many new discoveries of science.

Contribution of religion to scientific endeavors John Polkinghorne argues that theology has a natural and essential role to play, even in the age of science, because it shares with modern science the quest for intelligibility.12 He suggests that no university is complete without a theological faculty. The search for knowledge needs to include in its aim the gaining of knowledge of the Creator combined with its endeavors to attain knowledge about the created beings and things. The unity of knowledge would be fractured if theology should be excluded. Scientists’ picture of the world does not represent a universal and unitary epistemology. The everyday world is understood in Einsteinian clarity, while the quantum world is determined by Heisenbergian uncertainty. To establish a more balanced and representative picture of the world, all possible perspectives should be considered; theologians’ work in picturing the world utilises other perspectives that bring meaning to many people’s lives and should be considered for inclusion to complement the universal epistemology.13 It is accepted and acknowledged that science’s methodology of selfrestriction to impersonally describable phenomena are efficient to show the nature of the cosmos. The methodology consists of making observations, in 1757, by Pope Benedict XIV. Galileo’s Dialogue remained on the church’s Index of Prohibited Books until 1831 (Barrett, Science & Theology, 35). 11 Galileo, letter to Grand Duchess Christina, 1615 (http://web.stanford.edu/~jsabol/certainty/readings/Galileo-LetterDuchess Christina.pdf; accessed 2020-10-26). 12 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 5. 13 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 7.

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formulating hypothetical explanations, making predictions at the hand of enough information, doing experiments to provide evidence for the hypothesis, checking the results, modifying the hypothesis as and when required, and creating models or theories to answer questions about nature (implying an inductive process). It attempts to understand the wide variety of nature’s effects as resulting from the action of a relatively small number of basic causes or forces, acting in a virtually unlimited variety of combinations.14 However, it is also limited by its methodology. It can only produce a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty, and some subjects are beyond the scope of scientific investigation.15 Its methodology seeks to know how things are; it cannot answer the questions why they are that way nor how they should be.16 The Enlightenment’s presuppositions excluded other styles of thinking in its emphasis on rationality; because the impersonal is not to be given precedence over the personal, or the quantitative over the qualitative, other encounters with reality must also be accommodated. As the universe cannot be limited by reductionist particle physics, so the totality of understanding also needs the input of theological reasoning about reality. Theology represents an insightful enquiry into questions that arise from science but goes beyond science’s circumscribed and limited field of investigation. “Reality is too rich to be taken in at a single glance; it must be viewed from many perspectives.”17 Polkinghorne uses the example of the “scientific definition” of Bach’s Mass in B Minor (1749) as “neurological responses to vibrations in the air,” explaining the necessity of other perspectives to explain the phenomenon of human reaction to beautiful music. John Houghton in this regard suggests helpfully that we think about God’s relation to the universe as if God were present in an extra dimension in the four-dimensional world (interval, square, cube, tesseract) of space and time in which we live, a fifth or spiritual dimension.18 God exists outside and apart from the bounds of the material universe defined by space-time. However, God is not only “outside” the bounds (whatever that means) but also all-seeing and all-knowing regarding events in the universe, with the ability to be present anywhere within it. Rather than speaking of God “outside” space and time, Houghton suggests that we rather refer to God as

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Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 323. Stewart, Science and Religion in Dialog, 261. 16 Wickham, God of the Big Bang, 337. 17 Polkinghorne, Faith, Science & Understanding, 11. 18 Hougthon, Search for God, 123. 15

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transcending space and time.19 Such an analogy based on a scientific model is, however, limited because God falls outside the frame of reference of human beings, forcing them to seek images from a lower level to serve as pointers to things of a higher level. A consequence is that God is depicted in anthropomorphic terms since that is the only way human beings know how to speak about the essence of being and living. At most, our language can make suggestions about God while we should always remind ourselves that we lower God in referring to God, necessarily changing God into an idol.20 The theological contribution to the current discourse is especially evident in the realm of ethical decision. The objections of many conservative Christians, including Pentecostals, against various ethical issues concerning medical technologies related to, inter alia, euthanasia, abortion, and cloning explain the importance of theological involvement in bioethical debates. As a result of the moral law that Christians believe God implanted in all human beings, four ethical principles are widely accepted as undergirding bioethics.21 These include respect for the autonomy of an individual, defending the freedom in personal decision making, without undue coercion; the fair and impartial treatment of all persons; the importance that all people should be treated in their best interests; and the Hippocratic Oath’s principle not to harm any human being. Such principles do not answer all the questions posed by complicated ethical issues such as the destruction of lots of stem cells to enable the process of cloning. Each stem cell contains the potential to develop into several different types of cells. Some “adult stem cells” such as in bone marrow can, for instance, give rise to red blood cells, white blood cells, bone cells, and heart muscle cells. When an embryo is formed by the union of human sperm and egg, it signifies potential human life. Deriving stem cells from an embryo destroys the embryo, posing the question, when does life start? Does it begin at conception, implying that the destruction of an embryo is murder, or does it start with the fetal development of the “primitive streak,” as the earliest precursor of the spinal cord is called, which generally appears at about the fifteenth day? Or does it coincide with the development of a nervous system?22 Debates about such issues are extremely complicated, requiring specialists to participate who are able to formulate possible 19

Hougthon, Search for God, `18. For fuller discussion, see Nel, “Pentecostal Talk about God.” 21 Beauchap and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 22 Collins, Language of God, 250. 20

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solutions that are acceptable to the majority of people and lawmakers. While the participation of medical experts is undeniably critical in the debates, however, their contribution should be supplemented by the opinions of informed ethical specialists. Theologians dedicated to the subject should participate in the discourse to represent a Christian theological response. A parable told by Arthur Eddington illustrates the cooperation that is required between experts from different disciplines.23 An ichthyologist caught with a net an assortment of sea creatures to do some scientific observations, using a scientific methodology to describe the findings. In this specific case, the scientist concluded with two generalisations, that there were no seacreatures that were less than two inches long, and that all sea-creatures had gills. The conclusions were made based on observations, and they were true of the catch. The problem originated when the scientist generalized and assumed tentatively that the conclusions were valid in all cases, however often the observations would be repeated. It illustrates the necessity that the net of ethical deliberations should include scientific, ethical and religious experts to ensure that it is representative of human interests. While most scientists, theologians, believers, and lawmakers agree that reproductive cloning of a human person should not be done under any circumstances, other issues are still outstanding. Clearly, ethical debates about genetic research fall outside the exclusive domain of medical specialists, although it is agreed that they provide special expertise essential to the debates. Believers who support the creationist viewpoint disqualify themselves to a large extent from inclusion in debates about such issues because of their hostile attitude towards science as such and their prejudiced way of reading the Bible.

Conclusion The purpose of this research was to suggest a viable way for Pentecostals to interpret the creation narratives found in Genesis 1-2 in such a way that their interpretation does not alienate them from the discourse between science and religion about the origins of life but to accommodate scientific origin theories for which consensus exists. The twofold purpose of the research was to inform a reading of the archetypal narratives in Genesis 1-2 from a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic that has been developing since the 1990s in pentecostal scholarship and to inform 23

https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Eddington/quotations/, accessed 2020-10-26.

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the theological perspectives that Genesis 1-2 provides from such a hermeneutic as well as from relevant scientific insights. The pentecostal hermeneutic recognizes that the Bible contains various literary genres and types and that they should be taken into consideration when the text is interpreted. A postmodern evaluation of “history” emphasized that “historical facts” are always interpreted by the narrator, sometimes for ideological reasons, and that such “facts” provided in the Bible should also be viewed as prejudiced to the intention of the biblical author. It is accepted that the genre of Genesis 1-2 can be described variously as myth, saga, story, folk-lore, and mytho-poetical literature but not history. For the sake of argument, it is accepted that the genre is narrative, to emphasize that it should not be read as essentially historical or scientific. Its intention was not to provide readers with facts about the creation of earth and life but rather to address an existential crisis that God’s people experienced when they were exiled to a faraway country and exposed to another religious and philosophical world that confronted their beliefs and value system. Genesis 1-2 should for that reason not be read literally, as the quasi-fundamentalistliteralist hermeneutic of many Pentecostals suggests, but as metaphorical and allegorical. A distinctive feature of pentecostal spirituality is that in continuationist manner and as a consequence of its restorationist urge it leaves ample room for charismatic-pneumatic experiences that contain life-transforming elements. The implication is that its emphasis on the role experience plays in the interpreting process leaves room for interpreting texts in terms of God’s extrabiblical revelation. For that reason, Pentecostals emphasize the contribution of charismatic words to their spirituality in the form of prophecy, words of wisdom and knowledge, the interpretation of tongues, etc. However, the possibility that extra-biblical revelation may supplement the revelation found in the Bible on condition that it accords to the biblical witness implies that the discoveries and theories of science may supplement the theological endeavors of Pentecostals. It is submitted that some believers establish an invalid choice when they contrast the “facts” found in Genesis 1-2 with the obvious truths of the natural world that science had discovered. Their motive is to remain loyal to the God of Adam and Eve and honoring the Bible as the word of God. It is suggested that Pentecostals should rather claim their God as Creator of the universe and all life forms, within the worldview established by modern science, instead of following the example of the church in the medieval period that persecuted scientists for their “nonbiblical” scientific theories, only to denounce their own

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theological views that they had thought were based on the Bible as outmoded in the light of new discoveries in science.

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