Problems in interpreting Genesis: Part 1
by Noel Weeks
Please note:
This article was originally prepared by Noel for the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical
Students. It was published in the Theology Review vol. 8, 1972 and is reprinted
by permission. The articles have been specially modified for use in Ex Nihilo.
Like any discipline, interpretation methods (hermeneutics) can suffer from being
used to solve problems which lie outside its sphere. Much of the modern discussion
of interpretation methods is inconclusive because it involves an interchange between
men who differ not at the level of method but at the more fundamental level of religious
beliefs. Hence to put this paper in its proper context it must
be stated that my investigation begins by assuming that the view of Scripture associated
with evangelical Christianity is valid.1
Interpreting Scripture from outside
In considering the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis it is important
that our own historical situation be clearly in view. We are not the first Christians
to be troubled by the teaching of Genesis. Simply because the Bible has a different
view of origins to those put forth in human philosophy there is a period of conflict
whenever the church comes under the influence of a human philosophical system. Thus
any defender of the beliefs of Plato in Augustine’s day or of Aristotle in
the late Middle Ages found himself in trouble with Genesis. It is a gross oversimplification
to act as though we alone face a problem here. Nevertheless the problem for most
Christians today is generated by a specific challenge, namely that of biological
evolution and related theories. I believe that there are deeper problems than merely
the problem of Genesis. If we take the theory of evolution as established and modify
our interpretation of Genesis accordingly, then we introduce a problem for the doctrine
of Scripture. It is nonsense to speak of the unique and total authority of Scripture
at the same time as we change our interpretation of Scripture to accord with theories
drawn from outside Scripture. Hence evangelicals have tended to seek for principles
within Scripture itself which will allow them to interpret Genesis in a way that
is compatible with evolution. If Scripture itself forces us to such an interpretation
then we are not subjecting Scripture to evolutionary theory. It is with these attempts
to find such principles within Scripture that this paper is mainly concerned.
Religion and science
However, there is need to establish first that the basic problem can really be reduced
to methods of interpretation. Particularly this must be demonstrated
when there has been a tendency2 to solve the problem
by regarding the Biblical and the evolutionary descriptions as complementary rather
than conflicting. This may be expressed in many different ways but the basic idea
is a distinction between religious, theological and/or naive explanations as distinct
from scientific, technical ones. It is argued that there is no conflict because
the two approaches are in separate spheres or on separate levels. It must be emphasized
that this in itself does not solve the basic problem. It merely shifts the point
to be proven. If we interpret Genesis in terms of this religious/scientific distinction
we may be just as guilty of imposing an alien authority upon the Scriptures. We
must first establish that such a distinction is warranted by Scripture. The distinction
itself looks suspiciously like Kant's distinction between the realm of ideas (noumena)
and the realm of sensory experience (phenomena). It makes little difference in principle
if the foreign authority is that of Kant rather than Darwin. In saying that the
distinction must be demanded by Scripture itself before it can validly be employed
one misconception must be avoided. If someone approaches the Scripture already accustomed
to seeing things in terms of the Kant's categories, then the basic question has
already been decided. Is Scripture a book of religious truths or a textbook of geology?
We naturally tend to say it is the former. Yet this question may pose a false dilemma.
There is always the possibility that it is a book of religious truths which lays
down basic principles which are relevant, even mandatory, for geology. If the question
is posed so as to exclude this last alternative, and Kantian philosophy so poses
the question, then the basic problem has been solved not by appeal to the explicit
teachings of Scripture but by a philosophical presupposition drawn from outside
the Scriptures.
General revelation
A second way in which an attempt is made to solve the problem, without having to
resort to the difficult task of establishing internal guidelines for the interpretation
of Genesis, is by appeal to general revelation. It is claimed that since the creation
is itself revelatory of God we do not impose an outside authority when we interpret
Scripture in terms of science. However, once again, the basic problem is not solved
but merely camouflaged. Is our concept and use of general revelation a valid one
or is 'general revelation' merely a label which allows us to ignore or destroy Biblical
teaching? The question can only be decided by establishing a correct view of general
revelation on the basis of Scripture. One may say categorically that a Biblical
view of general revelation gives no support to the common use of science to determine
our interpretation of Genesis.
First there is no indication in the Bible that general revelation tells us about
the means God used in creating the earth and life upon it. The passages which theologians
appeal to in establishing a doctrine of general revelation, such as
Psalm 19; Romans 1,
etc., tell us that creation reveals the nature of God. We may argue that the creation
reveals the glory and power of its creator. We have no basis for saying that it
'reveals' scientific theories.
Secondly Romans 1 is adamant that sinful man suppresses and distorts the revelation
of the creation. Any view of the creation that commands a consensus among non-Christians
must be suspect. The appeal to certain scientific theories as though they are to
be treated as revelation is completely invalidated by the Biblical teaching on general
revelation.
Finally, even if one were to grant that the creation does clearly reveal the manner
in which God created the heavens and the earth, we would have to maintain the distinction
between what the creation reveals and what people say it reveals. This is equivalent
to the distinction between infallible Scripture and fallible later theologies. Thus
we would have to decide whether evolution etc. was actually what was revealed by
creation. Discussion of this question lies beyond the realm of this paper but a
few remarks may be made. In order to conclude that a scientific theory is a correct
interpretation of general revelation one must be certain that the method by which
it was established was not in any way contrary to Biblical teaching. We certainly
cannot say this for a science which systematically excludes any supernatural factors.
There is no logical alternative to evolution once the intervention
of God has been excluded.3 Furthermore
even among those who metaphysically accept evolution there is no certainty that
it has been proven.4
‘The Thought-forms of the Day’
Another of the attempts to solve the problem is that which claims
that God expressed himself in the thought-forms of the day.5
It would therefore be wrong to attempt to make these categories authoritative for
our scientifically sophisticated age. The same reservation is valid here as previously.
This assertion about the way in which God revealed the history of creation must
itself be justified by Scripture.
Parenthetically it should be noted that this argument is formally identical with
that used by Bultmann in his appeal for the demythologization of the resurrection
narratives. He similarly argues that the resurrection narratives are expressed in
terms of concepts held in that day which cannot be taken literally today.
Here evangelicals typically maintain a great inconsistency, being ready to accept
a form-critical method when it applies to the Old Testament but not to the New Testament.6
To return to the main point, the argument being considered has a number of serious
weaknesses. In order to apply it consistently one must first make some sort of a
distinction between the cosmology implied in the terms used and the theological
truth conveyed by the use of those terms. That is to say, unless one wants to remove
the whole of Genesis
1:11 from the Bible, one argues that theological truths can be separated
from the views of the physical universe implied. Such a distinction is just a variant
on the Kantian noumena/phenomena distinction discussed above.
It would greatly help the discussion if this supposed use of concepts common to
the era was more carefully specified and defined. One would like more than the bare
assertion that the Bible employed the common concepts of the day. For the argument
to be valid this would have to be carefully established. Once again this lies outside
the main subject of the paper but a few remarks are necessary. One must first reckon
with the fact that certain ideas or stories may be shared by the Bible and surrounding
cultures because they are both based on a historical event. For example it would
be rather ridiculous to argue that God chose to convey certain theological truths
in terms of the flood concepts already possessed by the Mesopotamians. Obviously
both Bible and Sumerian traditions mention a flood because there was a flood.
As in the case of evolutionary theory there is a problem created by the fact that
much work in the ancient Near Eastern field specifically excludes God’s activity.
Hence the ideology and concepts of Israel must be considered as derived from its
neighbors. As long as this view is prevalent the uniqueness of Biblical thought
is depreciated and denied. A more mundane problem is the fact that when the ancient
Near East History was a younger study it was natural to use the known to illuminate
the unknown. Problems were solved by the use of Biblical analogies
and the impression thus created of a greater degree of common ground than was warranted.7 More investigation has a tendency
to remove this false overlap.8
If supernatural intervention in the history of Israel is rejected, the most plausible
explanation for the religion of Israel derives it by a process of ideological evolution
from Israel’s neighbors. It follows then that the concepts of Israelite thought
must be those common at the time. However, if we do not make this assumption, and
Scripture will not allow us to make it, then we must carefully investigate the thought
of the ancient Near East in order to see if the same concepts are used as in the
Biblical text. Even this search is fraught with problems of personal bias. Some
version or other of the flood story was known in Mesopotamia. There was also a memory
of the fact that at one time man had a common language though to my knowledge the
confusion of tongues was not connected with the tower of Babel.
One resemblance which is often referred to is that between the creation of the heaven
and the earth in Genesis and the splitting of Tiamat to form the heaven and the
earth in the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish legend.9
The tree often depicted on cylinder seals has been connected with
the tree of life.10
These last two examples raise another set of problems. When it is said that God
employed symbols common in that day is it meant that both the symbol and what is
symbolized were already known or that only the symbol was known with a completely
different connotation? The distinction is an important one. For this argument to
be convincing the former must be the case. Otherwise one is saying that God gave
the symbol a completely new meaning. And if he did that we are no longer dealing
with symbols common at the time, but with new symbols. Then the necessity of interpreting
them against the Near Eastern cultural background is removed.
Whether there is any ultimate relationship11 between
Biblical and Babylonian accounts as we now have them they belong to different ideological
worlds. The symbols are not the same because the ideology is different. The goddess
Tiamat defeated in a war by the god Marduk, if she may be called a ‘symbol’,
must be seen as a symbol within the context of Babylonian polytheism whereas the
creation of heaven and earth belongs within the context of Biblical thought. It
is meaningless to say that God used the same symbol but changed its meaning. It
is then no longer the same symbol.
Furthermore there are important elements in the early chapters of Genesis with no
real counterpart in contemporary thought. Of course it is quite possible that such
a counterpart existed and has been lost. However, the onus of the proof lies on
those who confidently affirm that Genesis employs the common symbols of the day.
There is no real counterpart to the fall into sin in literature
of that time.12
‘Naive cosmology’
Sometimes it seems that those who claim that the Bible used the symbols of its day
are merely trying to say that it used a naive as opposed to a scientific cosmology,
or, to put it more popularly, it did not bother to correct the prevalent three-story
cosmology. If we assume for the sake of the argument that this is the case, then
it should be clearly recognized that all we have established is that scientific
dogma should not be made out of Biblical cosmology. The argument has no relevance
to other parts of the account like the creation of animals, man, etc. Unfortunately
this argument is generally used without this careful delimitation. Generally it
is argued that the fact that one element shows the use of nonscientific concepts
proves that the whole uses naive ideas whose details may not be pressed.
Yet once more the validity of the basic premise must be questioned. Was there ever
a pure ‘three-story universe’ idea in antiquity? For the pagan contemporaries
of the Bible writers, cosmology was theology. The heavens expressed and were controlled
by the various divinities. The sort of abstract spacial/mechanical interest involved
in the idea of a three-story universe is a product of the demythologization of Greek
rationalism and Euclidian spacial concepts. One should not try to project a late
idea back into Biblical times in order to explain the Bible. In its rejection of
polytheism Biblical cosmology is of necessity radically different to its surroundings.
It is not popular cosmology.
Secondly, what is so wrong about a ‘naive cosmology’? It is probably
as close to the ultimate truth as modern cosmology. If we had not defied modern
science we would not be embarrassed by those points in which Biblical thinking diverges
from prevailing modern ideas. Certainly Biblical cosmology fits into a different
structure of thought from modern cosmology, but it is the validity of that very
structure of thought that is at issue. We tend to assume that the assumptions underlying
modern physics are unquestionable. If we assume the validity of
the structure of physics from any period with its philosophical presuppositions
and concomitants13 we run the risk of accepting a
structure which, because of its ultimate origin in a total humanistic philosophy,
must clash with a Biblical worldview. What has generally happened is that the structure
and method of modern science has been accepted as truth. When the conflict between
this and a Biblical view has been appreciated, an attempt has been made to give
the Biblical view a validity in some sort of restricted religious sphere. The basic
question is whether our interpretation of the Bible is to be determined by the Bible
itself or by some other authority. Once science has been set up as an autonomous
authority it inevitably tends to determine the way in which we interpret the Bible.
From the point of view of this discussion the outside authority may be Newton or
Hoyle just as well as Darwin or Kant. The issue involved is still the same.
Somewhere in this sort of discussion poor Galileo is always dragged in. Yet, if
we want to learn from history we should at least begin with good history. There
is nothing particularly Christian about Aristotelian cosmology. In fact there are
points at which it cannot be reconciled with the Bible. How did the church find
itself in the position of defending Aristotelian cosmology against the new Copernican
cosmology? It found itself in that position because it accepted the argument of
Aquinas that the Biblical texts which contradicted Aristotle should not be pressed
as the Bible was not written in technical philosophical language. Moses spoke the
language of his day. This is not to say that the church should have accepted readily
the new astronomy. In its neo-Pythagorean mysticism14
it was no more Biblical than Aristotle was. Those who want to say that the Bible
is written in the popular language of its day and should not be pressed where it
differs from modern philosophical-scientific structures cannot claim to have learnt
from the Galileo affair. They are merely repeating the arguments that helped to
put the church in that situation.
Related articles
References
- For the classic statement of the viewpoint that underlies this
paper see Warfield, B.B., The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964). Return to Text
- E.g. Jeeves, M.A., ‘Towards the
Recovery of Harmony Between Science and Christian Faith’, Theolog Review
3(2):15-23, McKay, D.M. (Ed.), Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe
(IVP, 1965). Return to Text
- Lest this strike the reader as fundamentalist rhetoric I would
draw attention to the very important symposium, Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian
Interpretation of Evolution, (Eds.) Moorhead, P.S., and Kaplan, M.M. (Philadelphia:
Wistar Institute Press, 1967). On page 79 C.H.Waddington answers M.P. Schutzenberger’s
argument that evolution according to Neo-Darwinian principles is statistically impossible
by arguing that it must be possible because the only alternative would be special
creation. Return to Text
- As well as the symposium referred to in the preceding note see
Kerkut, G.A., Implications of Evolution (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1960).
Return to Text
- E.g. Thompson, J.A., 'Genesis 1-3, Science? History? Theology?'
Theolog Review 3(3):16. Return to Text
- This is far from being a new situation. Many techniques of literary
and form criticism were used first in the Old Testament field and later created
much greater opposition when consistently applied in the New Testament. Gunkel himself
was moved to the Old Testament field from New Testament when it was realized that
his methodology could be applied there and incur less opposition. Return
to Text
- To use a trivial example, Philadelphia University Museum used to
caption the well-known offering-stand from Early-Dynastic Ur which shows a billy-goat
standing with its forelegs on the branches of a tree. (Frankfort, H., The Art and
Architecture of the Ancient Orient [Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1954] p. 31
and pl. 28) as the 'ram caught in a thicket'. Saner minds seem to have prevailed
and this caption has been removed. Return to Text
- Similarly the tendency of research is often to emphasize the discontinuity
rather than the relatedness of animal groups (Kerkut, op. cit., p. 149).
Return to Text
- See Pritchard, J.B., (Ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 67 for translation of this text.
Return to Text
- For discussion see Frankfort, H., Cylinder Seals (London:
Macmillan, 1939), pp. 205ff. He argues that on Assyrian seals it is a symbol of
the god Assur. It is hard to see any connection between this symbol and the trees
of Eden. Return to Text
- It is possible that the Mesopotamian parallels are the results
of distortions of the original creation narrative to fit a polytheistic system.
If that is the case they would then belong to the same category as the flood account.
The argument that the Mesopotamian accounts must be the originals because our extant
documents of the Mesopotamian versions are older than the extant Biblical texts
(Speiser, E.A., Genesis [Garden City: Doubleday, 1964] p. 10) is utter
nonsense. Return to Text
- It is significant that Speiser who is convinced that the Biblical
story was derived from Mesopotamian prototypes (ibid., p. 1v) cannot find
a better parallel than the ‘Civilization’ of Enkidu by a prostitute
(ibid., pp. 26f. For translation of this supposed parallel see Pritchard.
op. cit., p. 75). Return to Text
- For discussion of the philosophical presuppositions of physics,
old and new, see Capek, M., The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics
(Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961). Return to Text
- Kuhn, T.S., The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1957). Return to Text
| Anthony P said “Thanks for your … website, it’s really easy to navigate and it is a massive bonus to be able to read back-issues of your magazines … without your ministry I probably wouldn’t be a Christian today. Thank you so much and keep up the good work.” So help us do just that!  | | |
|
