Introduction
1. Creation and Evolution: Are the Bible and Science in Conflict? 1
How Do We Interpret the Bible? 4
What Is Genesis 1–3 Teaching Us? 25
EXCURSUS: Creation from Nothing? 48
EXCURSUS: Does Genesis 1:29–30 Undermine Evolution? 54
Evolution and the Historical Adam and Eve 60
EXCURSUS: Critiquing a Last-Gasp Effort to Undo Evolutionary Creationism 73
Conclusion 76
Solo esto, por ahora. xd
Introduction
I became a Christian during the “Jesus Revolution” of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Those of us who were teenagers or young adults at the time remember the period as turbulent, occasionally frightening, but also exciting. God used the social unrest of the moment to attract many of us to the message of the gospel. I had grown up in a rather liberal church that was interested in the social gospel but not so much in encouraging members to cultivate a personal relationship with God through Jesus. The Bible was read during services, but there was no real encouragement to study it or to treat it as the Word of God. Thus, with my newfound faith came a new deep interest in the Bible. In my sophomore year in college I decided to be a religion major, thinking that studying the Bible and theology in college would deepen my faith. And it did, but perhaps not in the way that I had imagined. My religion professors did their best to undermine my fledgling faith as well as that of my friends. They thought we were naive, and in many ways we certainly were. But they were more interested in questioning our faith than helping us build a more mature faith. Readers today have their choices in Bibles (the New International Version, the New Living Translation, The Message, the English Standard Version, and on and on) and a plethora of books written by committed Christian scholars. But younger readers may not realize that this wealth of resources is a recent phenomenon. Back in the early 1970s we had only the Revised Standard Version (a high-style translation that for various reasons, good and bad, was not acceptable to the evangelical church), the King James Version (a seventeenth-century translation), or the Living Bible (a paraphrase).
In terms of evangelical scholarly material on the Bible and theology, there wasn’t much. Our college fellowship did not have any real support from local churches either. They were either not evangelical and, like our professors, frowned on our passionate yet to-them-naive faith. Or they were conservative and did not support us because we were hippies. Looking back, it is hard to believe today, but when our college fellowship approached one pastor about our going to his church, he refused to let us in. He said that if we showed up with our long hair, he would be fired the next day! Though support was hard to find, we did have help from a new college ministry in the area called the Coalition for Christian Outreach, a ministry that is still going strong in western Pennsylvania and Ohio. About once a month we got a visit from a young theologian named R. C. Sproul, who came from his home base in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. Don’t get me wrong. Some other resources were available to us from authors like Francis Schaeffer, Watchman Nee, and a young theologian named J. I. Packer, who was just starting to write. And there were others writing for a more scholarly audience, but I would not be exposed to them until I got to seminary. I mention all this only to indicate why I decided to pursue an academic and writing career. I wanted to help provide the resources that would benefit people like me who wanted to learn more about the Bible. At this point I wasn’t sure what field I would go into, and I needed to start with a general master of divinity degree anyway, so I decided to make the decision about what specialty I would pursue while I was in seminary. Early in my seminary career I took classes on the Old Testament with a young professor of the Old Testament named Ray Dillard, and I was hooked. Ray had the ability to open up the biblical text in ways that not only illuminated the ancient meaning but also demonstrated the ancient text’s continuing relevance for Christian life today. Through his influence, I decided to get a doctorate in ancient Near Eastern languages and literature and pursue a teaching and writing career in Old Testament. Ray not only inspired me; he also hired me even before I finished my degree. We worked together at Westminster Theological Seminary from 1980 until his untimely death from a heart attack in 1993. I continued to teach at the seminary until 1998, when I accepted the Gundry Chair at Westmont College, from which I retired in 2017. As Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, I continue to write and lecture. I share this brief and selective life story with you to tell you how much I love the Old Testament and value its continuing significance for my life today. One of the reasons I went into the field was that I knew that Christians struggled with the Old Testament both in interpretation and in application. Our attention is naturally drawn to the New Testament because of its explicit focus on Jesus. Some Christians wrongly believe that that renders the Old Testament secondary, but the truth is that it is an integral part of the canon of Scripture (the standard of our faith and practice). Truth be told, we can’t understand the New Testament without the Old Testament. The present book, the first written after my retirement from full-time teaching, intends to help Christians appreciate the continuing relevance of the Old Testament in the light of current controversies over its teaching. All of these controversies have been around for a long time. The reason I am writing now is that they have a new dimension: some within the evangelical scholarly community are arguing for nontraditional interpretations of the text, and these new interpretations need evaluation. Let me begin by saying that this book is written for the church and not the broader culture. I say this because at least some of these controversies have been taken up by some outside the church, notably the so-called New Atheists, in order to discredit the biblical text. This book does not “take them on” but rather addresses these issues among those who take the Bible as the Word of God. There is a place and there are resources for countering the attacks of people like Richard Dawkins, perhaps the best-known New Atheist,1 but this book has a different purpose. It evaluates attempts from within the evangelical church to reinterpret texts in a way that is more culturally acceptable. We will look at what I consider to be the four most controversial issues in the Old Testament.
Creation and Evolution. Darwin published his theory of evolution in the mid-nineteenth century, so the issue of the relationship between the biblical teaching on creation and the scientific theory of evolution has been around a long time. That acknowledged, the past twenty years have brought powerful new evidence in favor of evolution, primarily in the field of genetics. Thus, many evangelical scholars, including myself, have suggested recently that the Bible is not in conflict with science, not even with the growing evidence that human beings go back to an original population of some thousands of individuals, not an original couple named Adam and Eve. I will make this case in the first chapter of the book.
Historicity. Non-evangelical scholars have questioned the historical veracity of the patriarchal narratives, the exodus, and the conquest since the early nineteenth century. In the past three decades, a group known collectively as “the minimalists” have argued that the entire history of the Old Testament from start to finish is largely fictional. What is new in the past decade is that some evangelical scholars have taken a position very similar to minimalism. Is it important that events like the exodus and conquest are historical? Or is the message of the story sufficient to establish its theological significance? In this section, I will argue that when the Bible intends the reader to understand an event as historical, the event’s theological contribution depends on its being so.
Divine Violence. Divine violence in the Bible became a widespread matter of controversy after 9/11. When Islamic terrorists supported their violence with language that seemed to echo Old Testament warfare theology, people not surprisingly began to question the trustworthiness, relevance, and even the morality of the Old Testament. Some evangelical scholars have recently revisited the Old Testament texts to see if they can mitigate or even do away with the idea that God brings physical harm against his enemies. Here, I will make the case that such attempts are wrong-minded even if well intentioned.
Sexuality. Perhaps the most controversial issue of all has to do with sexuality, in particular homosexuality. Until the past few decades, the Bible was pretty much universally understood to prohibit homosexual activity, and even today the vast majority of the global church holds that view. However, some evangelical scholars in the Western church have reconsidered their opinion. Civil society recognizes same-sex marriages, and many churches, typically non-evangelical churches, welcome openly gay people into membership and even the clergy. What is new and what is addressed in this book are recent evangelical arguments that go along with the non-evangelical viewpoint and support affirmation of this new cultural trend. I will defend the long-standing and widely held traditional view. But I won’t stop there; instead, I will go on to ask how we might show our love toward same-sex-attracted men and women. ———
At this point, let me say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with reconsidering traditional interpretations in the light of new cultural questions. As I will explain in more detail in chapter 1, while the Bible is faithful and true (inerrant, if you prefer), our interpretations are not as certain. Indeed, when it comes to traditional interpretations of creation, I am in large agreement with the view that creation and evolution can be compatible. But I will differ from those who want to do away with any sense of historical background to Genesis 1–3, particularly those who deny a historical fall and deny that there is anything like what we call “original sin.” That said, I will explain and critically engage attempts to reinterpret the biblical text in a way that denies the historicity of events presented as historical, divine violence, and traditional understandings of sexuality. I desire and intend to be irenic in my critique of those with whom I disagree. There is way too much bombast in these inter-Christian debates. Labels like “heretic” or “fundamentalist” are used to stifle honest questions and discussion. Sometimes our theological discussions sound like the worst of political rhetoric these days, trying to ridicule and belittle opponents rather than grappling with their ideas and presenting our own. I may be able to be irenic more than many because I personally know most of the people I critique. Indeed, Peter Enns, one of the people I critique in these pages, is one of my closest friends. He’s a former student and colleague and a frequent drinking companion (maybe that is another controversial issue—no, the Bible is clear about that!). I know his heart and his love for Jesus and the gospel. I don’t see people and scholars like Peter on a mission to undermine truth. Like me, they are trying to discover the truth in the Scriptures.2 I hope that attitude comes through in my writing. But still, as well intentioned and godly as these dialogue partners are, their ideas require a thoughtful response. This book is written for a broad audience and in a rather familiar style. The footnotes go a bit further in engaging the scholarly issues, and I hope they give the sense that I have reflected long and hard on these subjects. Finally, at the heart of these controversies is the nature of the Bible and, related to this, the interpretive approach we adopt to read the Bible. I will address these issues throughout the book, but I will do so particularly in the first chapter as we consider the topic of creation and evolution.
1 Creation and Evolution Are the Bible and Science in Conflict?
After teaching all day at a church retreat in the fall of 2009, I was tired. Don’t get me wrong. I was enjoying my weekend assignment to open up the grand narrative of the Bible to a group of bright young professionals from the San Francisco area, and the setting at a resort on Lake Tahoe was amazing. But still, I was hoping to get away that evening and fallow my mind by watching some football. In a moment of weakness, however, I agreed to allow one of the attendees, a professional filmmaker, to ask me questions on film. I didn’t know what he would ask or what he was doing with the film. But once we started, I enjoyed the time. He asked a number of questions about the Old Testament, and then came the one that ended up affecting my research and thinking agenda for the next decade. “Is it necessary that Adam be a historical individual for the early chapters of Genesis to be theologically important and true?” I’ll be honest. At this stage I didn’t know that evolutionary biology provided overwhelming evidence that humanity did not emerge from its primate past through a single couple but rather through a population of some thousands of individuals. I didn’t even know that in some circles the question of the historical Adam was already a raging controversy. I was just thinking of the nature of Genesis 1–11 when I replied that, because of the highly figurative nature of the description of actual events in this first portion of Genesis, it was not necessary that Adam be a historical individual. I didn’t think much about this filming, and I went off and watched some football. About five days later, I got a call from an administrator of a seminary where I was going to teach a course in two weeks. While the following is not a verbatim recounting of our conversation, it is my best remembrance. The administrator, a friend, said, “Tremper, our school has become aware of the clip that you did on Adam on YouTube.”1 “What’s YouTube?” (Remember it was 2009, and I am technologically challenged.) “Do you really believe what you said about Adam on that video clip?” “Of course, or I wouldn’t have said it.” “If that is what you believe,” he said, “you can’t teach at our school. We have an unwritten policy, based on our understanding of the Westminster Confession of Faith, that people who hold that opinion can’t teach for us.” “Really? I did not know that. Well, then, I’ll teach this class and we’ll part ways.” “No, you can’t even teach that class.” “I have twenty-five students in that class who are expecting me to teach them!” “Sorry, my hands are tied.” “Well, you are going to have to fire me, because I don’t want you walking into class to tell them I resigned.” “Sorry, Tremper. It’s not my decision. But because of the position of our seminary, I have to fire you.” I had violated an unwritten policy. Though my class had nothing to do with Adam, creation, or the book of Genesis, I was out. I’m not looking for pity here. Though I enjoyed the job, I was being fired from a part-time adjunct teaching position. My day job (as the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College) was quite secure, and I had a lot more adjunct opportunities as well. Indeed, as word got out, I got even more speaking opportunities. Also, I want to be clear that I maintain my friendship with the administrator and also appreciate the school that fired me (though they have a blind spot here). I am telling this story to highlight how I discovered just how controversial the issue we are about to discuss is. Passions flare on all sides. Let’s dive in. The issue of creation and evolution has to do with the nature of the biblical witness, the relationship between science and faith, the theological impact of certain contemporary scientific theories, and much, much more. As I said, this issue evokes a lot of passion. Particularly in the present political atmosphere, there is a tendency on the part of both sides to demonize others. “What a fundamentalist!” or “Are you even a Christian?” are not arguments but rather attempts to silence what is an important discussion. Recent surveys show that an alarming number of young people are abandoning the faith because they feel that they must make a decision between what they learn in their science class and what they hear in church.2 Others decide not to go into the science field even though they find it intriguing. I believe that we must learn from science but that it is more important that we maintain our fidelity to God and Scripture than to what scientists may be telling us at any given time. But does the Bible actually teach that God created two humans from a nonorganic past?
How Do We Interpret the Bible?
Before we talk directly about creation/evolution, historicity, divine violence, and sexuality, we need to begin with a subject that will be important throughout all four topics: how we interpret the Bible. Everyone has a strategy for reading the Bible, even if it is just to pick it up and read it as if it were written yesterday, looking for what is relevant to one’s life. God can use that type of reading in our lives, to be sure, but our desire should be to adopt the best possible interpretive approach to hear God’s voice speaking to us from his Word rather than imposing our own meaning on the text. This attention is particularly important as we discuss controversial issues, as I do in this book. With these issues especially, it is essential that we pay attention not only to what the Bible says but also to how we are arriving at our understanding of it. In each of the four areas we are investigating here, people who hold to the authority of the Bible and agree about what the Bible says still have widely divergent views about what the Bible means, so it is important to look clearly at how we interpret the Bible. Hermeneutics is the technical term for the science of interpretation, which sounds a little sterile. But everyone who reads the Bible has a hermeneutic, even if they don’t know it. Perhaps it will be clearer if we simply think of hermeneutics as principles of interpretation that lead to a strategy for reading the Bible.3 This book is not the place to do a full hermeneutics,4 but I will focus on those issues that are particularly important to the questions of cosmic and human origins, historicity, divine violence, and sexuality. In this chapter I will look at the nature of the Word of God (canonicity, inerrancy, and clarity), the nature and goal of interpretation (how we find meaning in texts), and the role that genre plays in how we read—issues that are important for all four of the topics in this book. I will then look at the relationship of science and the interpretation of Scripture, an issue that has special bearing on the question of creation and evolution. In each subsequent chapter I will likewise bring in additional principles of hermeneutics that are relevant.
The Nature of the Word of God
As we begin our strategy for reading the Bible, we start by asking, Why do we, as Christians, care what the Bible says about these subjects? We care because the Bible is the Word of God, and that means we, the church, treat it as canon and believe that it tells us the truth.
CANONICITY
The church has recognized the Old and New Testaments as its standard of faith and practice from the very earliest times. But we must be careful not to confuse the church’s long-standing recognition of the canonicity of the books of the Old and New Testaments with the reason they are canonical (the ground of canonicity).5 The church does not define the canon; the canon defines the church. God reveals himself through the Scriptures; the Holy Spirit speaks to the church through these books; and the Spirit that dwells in the church hears and recognizes that authoritative voice. In short, by saying that the Old and New Testaments are canonical, we mean that the church looks to the Scriptures as the source of authoritative teaching about God (doctrine) as well as for guidance for how we should live our lives (praxis). Though people can point to the occasional question about whether this or that book should have been included or excluded, the church’s recognition of a stable canon through the centuries is remarkable. (One notable exception to this is Marcion, who questioned the canonical status of the Old Testament, and eventually much of the New Testament as well. Since his objections were specifically tied to the issue of divine violence, we will take up this example in more detail in chap. 3.) Two important comments need to be made concerning the Old Testament canon. First, we acknowledge the difference that exists between the three great Christian traditions on the extent of the canon. Protestants affirm a narrow canon that does not include the apocryphal books recognized as canonical by Catholic and (with differences) Orthodox communities. But what is remarkable is that these three communities all recognize the same core books (those included in the narrower, Protestant canon). In addition, we should realize that recognition of the so-called apocryphal books does not result in significant doctrinal differences—and, most important for our purposes, no difference on the subjects on hand (creation/evolution, historicity, divine violence, and sexuality). Doctrinal differences, of course, do exist between these communities, but they are not the result of the differences of the scope of the canon. Second, as a Protestant I recognize only the narrow canon as authoritative and, in keeping with Protestant beliefs, treat the apocryphal books as edifying, helpful books, though not canonical. We inherit our Old Testament from the Jewish community, in particular from the Pharisees. As Roger Beckwith thoroughly documents, Jesus disagrees with the Pharisees about a lot of things, but not about the extent of the canon.6 But let me emphasize again the fact that, particularly as concerns the four topics we are covering in this book, even if one accepts the Apocrypha as canonical, it will not change the perspectives advocated here.
INERRANCY
By saying the Scriptures are the Word of God and therefore canonical, we are also making a statement about their reliability and veracity. After all, if we hear the voice of God in Scripture, then we can be assured that these words will not mislead us but, on the contrary, will be truthful, despite the fact that God used human beings to speak and write his words on his behalf. On this basis, evangelical Protestant scholars have generally used the term inerrancy to refer to the idea that Scripture is “without error.” Here is a classic definition of inerrancy taken from the often-cited Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: “We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.” The term inerrancy, however, has been much abused in recent years, both by people who want to make it claim more than it does and by those who believe it claims too much or does so crudely. Those who want to make it claim too much confuse hermeneutics and inerrancy. In other words, they assert not only that Scripture is true but also that their interpretation of Scripture is true. Thus, if someone disagrees with their interpretation of Scripture, then that person must be denying the truth of Scripture. This difference between inerrancy of Scripture and inerrancy of interpretation is extremely important for our study of controversial issues, which by nature will involve interpretive decisions. Thus, discussion of inerrancy also necessitates discussion of the clarity of Scripture, which we will take up below. While some claim too much with inerrancy, others object to the word and even the very concept of inerrancy. This perspective has been growing in recent years, and I will be interacting with evangelical Protestant scholars who adopt this criticism of inerrancy in a way that affects their treatment of the issues of creation/evolution, historicity, divine violence, and human sexuality. Let’s first of all admit that inerrancy is not a perfect term. It has its liabilities. It is a term that focuses in on propositions: Is a proposition true or false? But the Bible is not all about propositions. Take the Song of Songs, an anthology of love poems. How is a love poem true or false? Certainly not by way of propositions. We could perhaps think that these love poems rightly express the emotions and desires for physical intimacy that reflect God’s intention for human flourishing. More could be said, but my point is that the term inerrancy has its awkwardness, though if it is understood as saying that the Scriptures as the Word of God are true in all that they intend to teach or affirm, then the word still has utility. But there are those who think that more than the simple word inerrancy is misleading. We will observe this in the writings of Gregory Boyd, Peter Enns, and Eric Seibert, for instance, who argue that the God depicted in parts of the Bible is not the actual God (and thus there are parts of the Bible that are wrong, even on so central a thing as what God is like). We will note this particularly in the chapter on divine violence and interact with their ideas in a more detailed fashion there, but for now let me just say that such a view raises important theological issues, most significantly how we can tell the actual God from the depicted God.
CLARITY
Even as we recognize that God’s Word is inerrant, we must also recognize that not everything in Scripture is clear. This admission does not infringe on the so-called doctrine of the clarity (or perspicuity) of Scripture. The Protestant church has always taught that the information and ideas that are essential for our salvation are clearly taught in the Bible but that this clarity does not extend to disputed issues such as the nature of the days of Genesis 1. We should pay attention to what the Westminster Confession of Faith, an influential Reformed creed from the seventeenth century, says on the matter: “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” The bottom line is that when it comes to the important main message of the Bible (“those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation”), there is clarity. OK, the Hebrew and Greek (and a smattering of Aramaic) still have to be translated, but as the confession says, these things “are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other” that it would take a really bad translator to mess it up. All the translations typically used by evangelicals (NIV, NLT, NKJV, KJV, ESV, Message, CEB, NRSV) do a more than adequate job communicating the central message that is clearly taught by the Bible. But what is necessary to know for salvation? Well, that would be “I am a sinner and I need help. Jesus died and was raised to save me from sin and death, and I must put my faith in him.” Yes, that’s pretty basic, and it is so clearly taught in Scripture that one must work really, really hard to miss the point. This is the gospel, and it fits in with the big story of the Bible, which I think is also clear: creation—fall (into sin)—redemption—consummation This is the basic plot of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. In Genesis 1– 2, God creates all things, including human beings, whom he creates morally innocent. In Genesis 3, humans choose to rebel against God, thus explaining the presence of sin and death. In the bulk of the Bible, Genesis 4 through Revelation 20, God then pursues reconciliation by redeeming his human creatures from their sin. Finally, in Revelation 21–22, the biblical account ends with a description of the future consummation. This big picture presented by the Bible is clear. But notice also how the statement in the Westminster Confession begins: “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all.” Not all things are clear in Scripture. We need to remember this when we interact with people with different opinions than ours on subjects that are not essential for our salvation. When someone says that “the gospel is at stake” if one does not take the days of Genesis 1 as literal twenty-four-hour days, or believe that there was a global flood, or take a complementarian view of the relationship between the genders, or hold a particular position on any other matter that is not central to the big story of salvation, they misunderstand the nature of Scripture (or they are simply trying to win their point by dramatic overstatement). I am emphasizing this point at the beginning of this book for a reason. The controversial topics that we will discuss are really, really important, but they are not “necessary for salvation.” There is room for discussion among believers, and discussion only happens when we refrain from demonization. And that is true on both sides. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told I am not a Christian or called a mindless fundamentalist for holding a particular view—and sometimes on the same issue (by different people of course). So we should enter the following discussion with the attitude that these are important issues but not issues that decide whether or not you are a Christian or whether or not you believe the Bible is God’s Word. In summary, as I approach the questions of creation/evolution, historicity, divine violence, and sexuality, I do so on the basis of my affirmation that the Bible is our standard of faith and practice (canonical) and that it is true in everything that it intends to teach (inerrant). I believe that the Scriptures are clear on the matters important for our salvation (perspicuous) but open to debate on many other topics.
Written for Us but Not to Us: The Goal of Interpretation
WHERE IS THE MESSAGE FOUND?
Interpretation seeks to discover the message of the biblical text that we are reading. But where is that message located? A written text—any text, including the biblical text—is composed by an author to readers. Stated this way, the goal of interpretation is clear. Readers want to know the intended message of the author. This seems simple enough until we realize that, particularly with ancient texts like the books of the Bible, we have no independent access to the authors. We cannot interview Moses, David, Jeremiah, or Paul to ask, “What did you mean by that?” And truth be told, even if we did, it might not solve our problem. Authors don’t always remember years later what they meant (and we have no reason to think God gave Paul infallible memory), or perhaps they themselves don’t understand the full import of their words (especially for the Bible; see below concerning divine intention). But we don’t even have the possibility of talking to the human authors of biblical texts, since they are all long dead. Thus, while the author’s intended meaning may be our goal, our only recourse to discover that meaning is through a close study of the text itself. The implication of this is that when we say the interpretation of a certain biblical text is such and such, we are making a hypothesis based on our reading of the text.7 To read the text well, I will argue below, we have to be aware of the literary conventions that the author used to communicate their message, including most notably the genre of the text we are studying. Thus, to reach our goal of proper interpretation of a biblical text, we will need to become familiar with the writing practices of ancient authors. In summary, the goal of interpretation is to discover the intended meaning of the author. We can only do this by doing a close reading of the text itself, since we have no independent access to the author. Thus, we need to be knowledgeable of the conventions of writing through which authors send signals to readers about “how to take” their words.
IT’S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT
So far we have given a rather straightforward and simple account of the model of literary communication: an author writes a text to communicate with readers, and the reader interprets the text in order to reach the intended message of the author. We have already acknowledged some complications with this process. My view is that interpretation (discovering the author’s intended message) is not untroubled or even perfectly achievable, but that recognition does not and should not paralyze us. While interpretation is not perfect, it can lead us to an adequate understanding of the message of the text, one that does indeed represent the intended communication. Literary communication is possible.8 My confidence in getting at the message of the Bible is not diminished even as I recognize that, particularly when it comes to the Bible, the process of communication is more complicated, especially for those of us who affirm that God is the ultimate author of Scripture. Let’s start with the author, the one whose intention in writing we seek to discover. There are two complications here. The first is that—now restricting our comments to the Old Testament—the books typically have a history of composition. That is, the biblical books as we have them were not written by one person in one sitting. Rather, they were written over a period of time by more than one composer. A good introduction to the Old Testament will give the full story of composition, and there are differences among scholars regarding how certain biblical texts were written.9 But most scholars agree that the Old Testament books came to their final form over a period of time. It is that final form that is considered canonical for the church.10 Sometimes the book itself reveals that it was written over time. The book of Jeremiah provides such a case, though all the details are far from clear. Here’s what we can say with a considerable level of confidence. God called Jeremiah to preach his message of judgment starting in 626 BC (Jer. 1:1– 10). A little over twenty years later, God told Jeremiah to write down these prophecies and read them in the temple precincts (Jer. 36:1, the fourth year of Jehoiakim, 605/604 BC). Jeremiah dictates his sermons to Baruch, who reads them in the temple precinct. Some of the king’s men take the scroll to the king, and he doesn’t like what he reads, so he cuts up the scroll and throws it page by page into the fire. What is interesting for our present topic is that the narrator tells us that “Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah, and as Jeremiah dictated, Baruch wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them” (Jer. 36:32). The result? A second, longer version of the book of Jeremiah is written. And that was just the beginning, since we know that there are materials in Jeremiah that belong to at least the early exilic period, which begins in 586 BC. In addition, most scholars believe that there are materials added by disciples of Jeremiah, including Baruch, about Jeremiah. Indeed, we cannot be absolutely certain about when the final form of the book came into being. Even though the case of the book of Jeremiah is complicated, the book gives us some concrete dates to go on. Often we cannot tell precisely when a book was written. Take the book of Daniel. Even granting (as I do)11 the traditional view that the book contains reliable portraits of a historical Daniel living in the Babylonian and Persian courts (chaps. 1–6) and apocalyptic visions that came to him at that time, the book itself does not tell us when it was written or by whom. The stories are about Daniel, and a narrator reports the visions. Is the narrator Daniel himself? We have no reason to think so. We need to acknowledge the fact that, often, we simply cannot precisely date the moment when the final form of a biblical book took shape, nor can we name all the people involved in the book’s production. Yet our goal to discover the “author’s intended meaning” remains intact, even though we can now see that the author is often an anonymous final shaper of a book. After all, we are not looking to interview the author. We are closely reading the text itself to discover the author’s message. But there is a second complication to our understanding of the author of a biblical book. This one is unique to those of us who believe the Bible is the Word of God. And that complication emerges from the fact that ultimately the author of the Bible is God. Perhaps one of the best-known passages in the New Testament refers to the divine origin of the Old Testament, here referred to as “Scripture”: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). This passage and others (Gal. 1:12; 2 Pet. 1:20–21) remind us that the ultimate author of biblical books is God himself, raising the question of whether passages in the Bible have a “deeper meaning” (sensus plenior) than the human authors would have been aware of. I believe the answer is clearly yes. And though he is not a biblical author, John the Baptist provides a good example of how a prophet speaks words whose meaning surpasses his or her understanding of their import. In the wilderness, John baptized those who accepted his message of repentance. He announced the coming of one who was more powerful than he was. This one would cut down the rotten wood and throw it into a fire and would separate the chaff from the wheat and burn the chaff with “unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:10–12). When Jesus appeared at the Jordan River, John recognized him as the expected one and baptized him. After the baptism, Jesus began his ministry, and John was later put in prison. In prison John received what he took as disturbing reports. Rather than burning the rotten wood and the chaff, Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and proclaimed the good news to the poor (Matt. 11:4–6). John sent two disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matt. 11:3). Jesus was not acting in accordance with John’s prophetic expectation. But John, our example of a human author of a divine word, did not have full understanding of what he was saying. In this case, he did not realize that Jesus was coming not just once but twice. The book of Revelation, as well as other apocalyptic portions of the New Testament, makes it clear that Jesus will return to render judgment against those who resist him. John provides a good example of an instance where the human spokesperson does not fully understand the importance of the words spoken (or written) on behalf of God. In spite of rather tortuous attempts to say otherwise,12 the unexpected ways New Testament authors often use Old Testament passages (in ways that their original authors could never have anticipated) also illustrate our point. Thus, in the Bible we have human authors speaking the divine message, and this complicates the picture of discerning a biblical author’s intended meaning. That said, we must admit we can see beyond the human author’s intention (and thereby presume that there is a meaning that transcends that intention) only if later Scripture itself brings out the deeper meaning. In other words, sensus plenior is not an excuse for assigning a meaning to a text that cannot otherwise be gained through normal interpretive method (the “ordinary means” of the Westminster Confession of Faith). In terms of the text, we already mentioned above that no, or almost no, biblical books were written at one moment by one author. But we resolve this complexity by simply putting our focus on the final form of the text. And that leaves the reader. The complication involved in the receiving end of the process of literary communication is quite simply that while the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us. In other words, it is absolutely imperative that we remember that the biblical books were written to a specific ancient audience and not to those of us who are reading them in the twenty-first century. Thus, it is critical that we recover what my friend John Walton calls the “cognitive environment” of any passage that we read.13 In this regard, I like to tell my students that they don’t call the book of Romans “Romans” for nothing (yes, I occasionally use New Testament examples). Paul wrote this letter to a specific church to address their particular issues. Reading a Pauline letter can be like listening to half a conversation—we occasionally wonder what issue or controversy he is explicitly addressing. An Old Testament example is the history of Israel provided by the books of Kings and Chronicles. I like to use this example because these books recount comparable history but give us quite different takes on it. In a word, Chronicles gives a much more upbeat portrait of the history compared to Kings’ emphasis on the sin of Israel and its leaders. To ask which is true misunderstands the purpose of these histories and does not recognize the importance of the first readers. While neither Kings nor Chronicles explicitly mentions its original audience, we can identify their audiences by noting the last event narrated in each of their accounts. In Kings, the last event is the release of King Jehoiachin from house arrest in Babylon during the reign of King EvilMerodach (known in Babylon as Amel-Marduk, the son of Nebuchadnezzar; 2 Kings 25:27–30). Amel-Marduk ruled a brief time (562–560 BC), but what is significant for us is that this event took place in the middle of the exile (586–539 BC). In other words, we can surmise that the author of Kings chose to point out the sin of Israel and Judah in order to explain to his exilic audience why they are in exile. Chronicles, on the other hand, ends with the mention of the so-called Cyrus decree, which allowed the Jewish people to return to Judah. That means Chronicles comes from the postexilic period (after 539 BC). The Chronicler’s audience is not interested in why they were in exile (because they aren’t any longer) but rather in questions like What is our connection with the past? (thus so many genealogies!) and Now what do we do? (among other things, rebuild the temple, which explains why there is such an emphasis on the first temple). Every biblical book had an original audience. In short, the biblical books are not addressed to us, and we need to remember that. We are later readers living in a vastly different cultural context. To read the biblical books correctly, we must first of all read them as if we were living at the time of the original audience. Otherwise, we run the risk of imposing our meaning on the text. And one more comment on readers. To read well, we have to remember that our reading is shaped by who we are as individuals. We are not blank slates who approach the text from a neutral perspective. Our reading is affected by who we are. I will take myself as an example. I am a male, getting up there in years (middle-aged would be too kind; I have four beautiful granddaughters after all). I am financially well-off (particularly if you buy my books). I am well educated (did I mention my Yale PhD?). I live in the twenty-first-century West (the United States, to be exact). And I could go on, but I have made my point. Who I am both helps me and limits me in my understanding of the text. But there is an easy solution to my limited perspective, though one not taken by many readers of the Bible: reading in community. I need to listen to a variety of voices (female and male, non-Western and Western, lay and clergy, poor and rich, young and old), especially of those who are different from me, as I interpret the text. These other voices can encourage or challenge my reading. They may correct my misapprehension, or I may conclude that they misunderstand the text. Where do we hear these voices? They are readily available in commentaries, other writings, Bible study groups, sermons, and elsewhere. What keeps us from listening? Our pride. We need to be willing to listen to others (even those with whom we will eventually disagree) and question our own understanding if we are to grow in our interpretation. The Bible is inerrant, but our own interpretation is not. We need to be constantly open to changing our opinion.
GENRE TRIGGERS READING STRATEGY
Let’s remember that our ultimate goal is to hear the author’s message in a literary text. Similarly, an author’s goal is to be understood by readers. Thus, authors write in ways that are familiar to their readers, sending signals to the reader as to “how to take” their words. A genre of literature is a group of writings that share features in terms of content, style, or form. The recognition of a genre raises expectations on the part of the reader, who then adopts an appropriate reading strategy. Let’s consider a well-known type of text that occurs outside the Bible. If a text begins with “once upon a time,” readers hear the author telling them that the text is a fairy tale. Fairy tale is a genre. If we recognize a text as a fairy tale, then we will not be surprised to encounter dwarves, dragons, witches, and elves and will “suspend our disbelief,” because we know that it is not the purpose of the author to recount actual events but rather to entertain us or perhaps to impart a moral lesson. Let’s examine an example from the Bible to demonstrate how readers’ identification of the genre of a text shapes their interpretation. While the king is on his couch my nard gives off its scent. My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh lodging between my breasts. (Song 1:12–13)14 Here, near the opening of the Song of Songs, the woman describes the object of her affection as sitting on his couch. She then expresses her affection and desire for intimacy by depicting him as a sachet (a small bag of perfumed powder) between her breasts. How has this passage been interpreted and why? Most readers today (scholarly and lay) would see this as the expression of a woman’s desire for physical intimacy with a man, because we identify the genre of the Song of Songs as love poetry. After agreeing on the broad recognition of the Song of Songs as love poetry, there may be differences over a narrower genre identification that also triggers a certain reading strategy. Is the Song an anthology of love poems, which encourages the reader to unpack the metaphors and explore the emotional intensity of the speeches?15 If so, then in Song of Songs 1:12–13 the woman expresses her desire to be as physically intimate with him as a sachet of myrrh between her breasts. The sweet smell of myrrh and her lover’s touch are deeply pleasing to her. Or is the Song a narrative about the ups and downs of a couple’s relationship or even the story of the conflicts that emerge from a love triangle?16 If one believes the Song is a narrative rather than a collection of love poems, that shifts the goal of interpretation to focus on the discovery of a plot. Perhaps in this scenario Song of Songs 1:12–13 would be part of the courtship phase of the relationship between the man who might be identified as Solomon and the woman, perhaps the Shulammite. Here we have an example of how differences in genre identification trigger reading strategies that lead to somewhat different interpretations. But compare the even more radical difference presented by readings common in the early church era and the Middle Ages. Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376–444) presents a quite different understanding of the simile in Song of Songs 1:13. He says that the sachet of myrrh is Christ and the breasts represent the Old and New Testaments. The verse thus proclaims that Jesus Christ spans both the Old and the New Testaments. You might say that that makes absolutely no sense. I would agree, but we have to ask how Cyril came to such an incorrect interpretation and why. Put simply, he (and virtually all interpreters during the early church era and the Middle Ages) misidentified the genre of the Song. He saw it as an allegory of the relationship between Jesus and the church (just as contemporary Jewish interpreters saw it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel). Thus, rather than expressing human desire for physical intimacy, the woman (the church) expresses desire to be intimate in her relationship with Jesus. Once the reader identifies the Song as an allegory, there is logic to Cyril’s interpretation of verse 13. That said, we can be certain that Cyril and similar commentators got it wrong. First, there is absolutely nothing in the Song that would give the impression that the author expected the reader to take the text as an allegory (that is, there are no genre signals that point to allegory). Second, analogous love poems from ancient Egypt and the modern Middle East lead us to conclude that the Song of Songs is a love poem, not an allegory. The sensuous and intimate language between the man and the woman are clear signs of the former. And then finally we can see the motivation that early interpreters had for avoiding a sexual interpretation. The church at this time was heavily influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy, which held that the spiritual life was at odds with the physical life, so that things that had to do with the body (particularly sex) had to be subdued for the spirit to grow. Thus, a book that excites sexual passions just has to say something different than what it seems to say on the surface. No matter what your views on the interpretation of the Song may be, however, there is no doubt from this example that one’s genre identification triggers interpretation. Get the genre wrong and you get the interpretation wrong. We will see that genre plays an important, even pivotal role, in our treatment of the controversial issues in this book.
Science and Faith: The Two Books
We now turn to the relationship between science and faith, a topic that bears on creation and evolution. Many Christians and non-Christians alike buy into the “conflict model” of the relationship between science and faith. On the science side, some believe that science disproves the existence of God. On the faith side, some argue that the Bible trumps and undermines the conclusions of science. Historically, though, the church has offered what may be called a “two books” understanding of the relationship between the Bible and nature (the object of study of science).17 Listen, for example, to the Belgic Confession, article 2:
We know Him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even His everlasting power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse. Second, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.
God reveals himself in Scripture and through nature. Both are “books” that involve interpretation. Hermeneutics provides interpretive principles that are applied to Scripture in order to exegete (bring the meaning out of) the biblical text. The philosophy of science yields the scientific method that provides the methodological principle to explore nature in order to support theories from nature.
God is the ultimate author of both Scripture and nature. When both are correctly interpreted, they will not conflict. Since God is the ultimate author of both Scripture and nature, both are true, though our interpretations of either may not be. To be open to a different interpretation than the one we hold is not to betray Scripture but to honor it. The same, of course, is true of our interpretation of nature. Scripture does not trump nature, at least not in the way some people think.18 Some people are so certain of their interpretation of Scripture that when they hear a scientific theory that doesn’t fit with their interpretation, even a theory like evolution that is overwhelmingly supported by not only the fossil record but also genetics and numerous other fields of research, they don’t even blink an eye as they reject it as “anti-Bible.” We should learn a lesson from the “Galileo episode.” I am referring, of course, to the seventeenth-century reaction to Galileo’s arguments in support of a heliocentric solar system earlier presented by Copernicus. Legends have grown up around this story, including the misunderstanding that Galileo was tortured. Indeed, as Kerry Magruder has pointed out, Galileo had powerful supporters within the church (like evolutionary creationism has in the evangelical Protestant church today) and opponents among university physicists.19 Even so, Galileo’s teaching was resisted by the church because some thought the results of his research threatened the Bible’s teaching that the earth was the center of the cosmos and that the sun, moon, and stars revolved around the earth in a celestial sphere. After all, his church critics charged, the Bible says the sun rises and sets, and the Psalms proclaim that God “set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved” (Ps. 104:5). Today we “know better.” The Bible is speaking phenomenologically (that is, from the perspective of how we perceive matters on the surface), not scientifically, about the rising and setting of the sun and metaphorically about the earth not being moved. We even use that language today. We are comfortable with the idea that the Bible is not teaching cosmology but rather assuming an ancient cosmology. The Galileo episode should be an object lesson to the church as it responds to scientific theories that at first glance seem to conflict with the Bible. Christians should not automatically reject scientific conclusions that seem to contradict traditional interpretations of Scripture. As Calvin wisely pointed out in the sixteenth century: “If the Lord has willed that we be helped in physics, dialectic, mathematics, and other like disciplines [we might imagine that today he would add biology], by the work and ministry of the ungodly, let us use this assistance. For if we neglect God’s gift freely offered in these arts, we ought to suffer just punishments for our sloths.”20 I have found Pope John Paul II’s statement in the same vein about the relationship between science and faith wise and illuminating: “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”21 Truth be told, science can help us read the Bible better. In the case of cosmic and human origins, I suggest that science helps us see more clearly what is obvious. The Bible teaches us that God created everything but is not interested in telling us how he created the cosmos or humanity. Even further, as we will see later, science helps us see that the Bible does not claim that humanity goes back to a single originating couple. Indeed, reading the Bible in the light of modern science helps us understand the doctrine of original sin better.
Conclusion
In this section, we have discussed the importance of biblical interpretation. As Christians, we believe that we hear the voice of God in the Bible. Therefore, the church has recognized these books as authoritative, “canonical” to use the technical term, for our understanding of God (since it is his self-disclosure), ourselves, and our world. The Bible, including the Old Testament, is the standard of our faith and practice. We believe that the Bible, as God’s Word, is true in all that it intends to teach us. We then discussed the necessity of interpretation. Yes, as the Westminster Confession of Faith states, the big picture is clear (once the text is faithfully translated), but not everything is obvious, not even some matters of importance. Thus, we must interpret the text. I suggested that the goal is to discover the author’s intention (first that of the human author and then of the ultimate, divine author). As readers, we are finite and thus need to read in community. We must also recognize that the biblical books, while written for us, were not written to us. I also affirmed that our only access to the author’s intended meaning is through a close reading of the text. I also highlighted the importance of genre in order to get at the author’s message. Genre triggers reading strategy. The author sends us signals as to how to take the words, raising expectations in the mind of the reader. To misidentify the genre, either formally or even unconsciously, will lead us to misunderstand what the author is trying to tell us. Then we also considered the relationship between biblical interpretation and the interpretation of nature, which we study by way of science, by understanding that they are God’s two books. When we interpret the Bible correctly, it will never conflict with science if science is correctly interpreting nature.
What Is Genesis 1–3 Teaching Us?
It is time to turn to the main text that talks about God’s creation of the cosmos and human beings and provides the account of humanity’s first rebellion against God. We do so in the light of all that we have said about interpretation in the previous section. The Bible, including Genesis 1–3, is the Word of God and thus true in everything it intends to teach us. We hear the voice of God speaking to us through these chapters. Thus, it is critically important to ask what they teach, and to answer that question we have to ask what genre the author utilizes to communicate the message. In addition, we need to read this passage in the context of the original audience, since it was written to the original audience in a language (Hebrew) and cultural context (ancient Near East) that they understood. In the case of the question before us, the ancient Near Eastern background is connected to the issue of the genre, so we can treat them together.
Genre: Theological History To read Genesis 1–3 correctly (that is, according to the intention of the author, divine and human, whose voice we want to hear), we need to pay attention to the genre. Is it history (and if so what kind)? Myth? Poetry? Legend? Most of the time people throw out these labels without justifying them. In addition, some give the impression that our choice is between a strictly historical approach that extends to the details of the passage (creation in six twenty-four-hour days; God actually breathing on dust to create Adam) or a totally nonhistorical approach. Often the term myth is used to identify Genesis 1–3 as nonhistorical. My view is that a close reading leads us to a third, middle way. Genesis 1–3 does make historical claims, but it describes these past events using figurative language. First of all, let’s set the context. Genesis 1–3 opens the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The book of Genesis as a whole is really not a separate book in its final form but rather the first part of the Torah or Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy). The question of the genre of Genesis 1–3 (which should be considered a component of Genesis 1–11) thus needs to be seen in the context of the book of Genesis and ultimately of the Pentateuch as a whole. The Pentateuch, indeed, is part of the continuous historical narrative that runs from the creation through the postexilic period of Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther. Thus, one important way in which the book of Genesis can be outlined is as follows:
Genesis 1–11 The Primeval History: from creation to the tower of Babel
Genesis 12– 36 The Patriarchal (or if you prefer, Ancestral) Narrative: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
Genesis 37– 50 The Joseph Narrative
Genesis 1–11 is a connected but somewhat distinctive part of Genesis. The connections with the rest of the book of Genesis lead me to conclude that chapters 1–11 are theological history—that is, a narrative that intends to impart information about past events with an emphasis on God and his relationship with his human creatures (that is what makes it theological). There is not a radical shift in genre between Genesis 11 and 12, and most scholars would affirm that Genesis 12–50 is a work of history, in that it intends its readers to understand the narrative to depict actual events in the past.22 But along with shared interest in the past comes an important difference between these two parts of Genesis. Genesis 1–11 covers an extraordinary span of time from creation right up to the time of Abraham. The Bible does not date the creation,23 but from multiple lines of evidence presented by our study of the cosmos (measuring the speed of and distances between galaxies, the length of time that the light of the farthest stars took to reach the earth, and many more), scientists believe the universe to be approximately 13.4 billion years old. Abraham, on the other hand, may be dated to approximately the first quarter of the second millennium BC. Genesis 1–11, after speaking of the creation of the cosmos, focuses on God’s human creatures who are endowed with his image. We will see below that there is some question about exactly when this takes place (at the beginning of Homo sapiens or some later time), but we are talking thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of years ago.24 No matter how you cut it, that is a long period of time to cover in eleven chapters! Compare that with the account of Abraham, which begins in Genesis 12 and ends in chapter 26, and that story doesn’t even start until he is seventy-five years old. It seems the author of Genesis is more interested in detailing the story of Abraham than in recounting events from creation to the tower of Babel. And that is not even taking into account the difference in scope between Genesis 1–11, where the narrative interest extends to the whole world, and Genesis 12–26, where the narrative focuses on one man, Abraham, and his wife, Sarah. Thus, we should not be surprised that the theological history of Genesis 1–11 covers this time period with very broad strokes. To accomplish its purpose, Genesis 1–11 speaks of these events of the deep past using figurative depictions shaped for theological purposes. For our purposes we will focus on Genesis 1–3.25 And here the genre signals are strong, in spite of the desperate attempts of some to treat the depiction of the creation of the cosmos and humanity as a straightforward accounting. Let me give some examples.
THE DAYS OF CREATION
First of all, let’s consider the days of Genesis. An initial and very superficial reading of Genesis 1:3–2:3 might lead one to think that the author intended his readers to believe that God created the cosmos and humanity in a six-day stretch and then rested on the seventh day. After all, the six days of creation each have evening and morning (1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31). But upon even a little deeper reflection, it becomes obvious that the author does not claim that these days of creation are actual twenty-four- hour days. After all, the sun, moon, and stars aren’t even created until the fourth day, and it is these celestial bodies that define days with evenings and mornings. I’m often asked whether God could have created some other means of switching the light on and off in a twenty-four-hour period. After all, there is light and darkness that are called “day” and “night” on day one (Gen. 1:5). Of course he could have, I reply, but they still would not be a literal evening and morning. Others try to convince me that the author is speaking from the perspective of the earth and that the sun, moon, and stars were already existent right from the start but hidden by some kind of cover, which God then removed on the fourth day so that they might be seen. But why would the author write from the perspective of the earth if no one is living on the earth on the fourth day? The insistence that the days of creation are six literal twenty-four-hour days is pretty much a modern idea. Many, if not most, of the earliest Christian readers of Genesis 1–3 recognized that the author was writing figuratively about actual events. Augustine, writing around the year 400, stated that the days of creation were not solar days.26 As Origen (ca. 185– 253) put it, “To what person of intelligence, I ask, will the account seem consistent that says there was a ‘first day’ and a ‘second day’ and a ‘third day,’ in which also ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ are named, without a sun, without a moon, and without stars, and even in the case of the first day without a heaven?”27 Of course, these early theologians did not think that the cosmos was old and that humanity evolved over a long period of time. Indeed, quite the opposite. They believed that creation took place in a blink of an eye (why would God take six whole days?) and that the biblical author used the convention of a regular workweek not to claim that God took six days but as a literary device to proclaim that God created everything and to convey important and rich theological truths about the nature of God and his relationship to his creatures, particularly his human creatures. This understanding of the days of creation has come to be known as the “analogical day” approach. Most recently it has been championed by C. John Collins, who says, “The [creation] days are God’s workdays, their length is neither specified nor important, and not everything in the account needs to be taken as historically sequential.”28 Indeed, to support the idea that the days are not claiming to state the actual sequence of the creation, we can appeal to the insights of what is sometimes called the “literary framework” view of the days (see “Lack of Sequence Concord” below on the clash of sequence between the two creation accounts). To put it succinctly, the first three days describe the creation of realms of habitation, while the second three days describe the creation of the inhabitants of those realms. Day four (sun, moon, and stars) fills day one (light and darkness), day five (birds and fish) fills day two (sky and sea), and day six (animals and humans) fills day three (land), as the following chart indicates:
Creation of realms. Day 1: Light and darkness; Day 2: Sky and sea; Day 3: Land and vegetation
Creation of inhabitants. Day 4: Sun, moon, and stars; Day 5: Birds and fish; Day 6: Animals and humans
FIRMAMENT
Another potential genre marker is the discussion of the “firmament.” This might be slightly different than some of the other genre signals in Genesis 1–3, since it is not clear whether the ancient readers understood the firmament in 1:6–8 literally or figuratively. In either case, though, the mention of the firmament (raqia‘; translated “firmament” in the KJV and NKJV but “vault” in the NIV and NJB and “dome” in the NRSV) indicates that we should not take Genesis 1 as an account of how God actually created the cosmos or humanity. As the name indicates, deriving as it does from a verb that refers to hammering in order to make a metal sheet, raqia‘ refers to a solid dome. The passage depicts God using this solid dome to separate the waters above from the waters below. He also places the celestial bodies created on the fourth day into this solid firmament (1:17).29 Today few, if any, would argue that there is actually a solid firmament in the sky that holds the stars. Again, the Genesis description of the firmament supports the idea that we are not getting a straightforward depiction of creation.
THE THIRD DAY
While we are on the subject of the days of Genesis 1, I want to draw our attention in particular to the third day: “Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.’ And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day” (1:11–13). Notice what takes place during the third day: the land produces vegetation. Now we might imagine it plausible that the land would start the process of growth in an initial twenty-four-hour period, but this passage describes the land producing vegetation that produces fruit with seed in it within that time period. To suggest, as some do, that God produced fastgrowing plants on this day in a kind of miraculous introduction of plant life goes beyond what the text is describing.30 It is much better to take day three as yet another indication that we are dealing with a figurative description of creation.
THE SEVENTH DAY: GOD TAKES A BREAK
Genesis 1 is not giving us a blow-by-blow account of how God created everything but is using the standard workweek, as known at the time the account was written, as a literary device in order to announce that God is the Creator. Just like an Israelite would work six days and rest on the seventh, so God is presented as working for six days and resting on the seventh. The seven-day week itself, like much of the Israelite calendar, is based on the movement of the moon. While the year is based on the revolution of the earth around the sun, the month, made up of four weeks, is connected to the four phases of the moon (new, waxing, full, and waning).31 The figurative nature of the seventh day is highlighted by the fact that God is said to yishbot from his work on that day (Gen. 2:2–3). The verb is from the root shabat, from which the noun shabbat (sabbath) derives, and indicates not just stopping or ceasing from work but resting from work. A human laborer needs to rest after six days to replenish energy, but we cannot imagine that God would need such rest. The conception of God taking a rest on the seventh day is furthered by the reference we find in Exodus 31:17, which looks back on Genesis 2:1–4a and says that God ceased or rested (from shabat) and “caught his breath” or “was refreshed” (NIV; from the verb naphash). Such a description must be taken figuratively, or else we are left with the awkward impression that God has limited energy.32 Collins summarizes the point well:
So God’s activity of preparing the earth as the right kind of place for humans to live is presented to us like an Israelite work week. You will notice that on the seventh day God rests; in Exod 31:17 it even says that on his Sabbath God “rested and was refreshed,” implying that he was “weary” after a busy week. Now, any informed Israelite would first think, “Yes, I know what that is like.” But then he would think, “Wait a second! God does not get tired!” What we are seeing is that this passage is presenting God’s creation activity by way of analogy: that is, it is like human work in some ways—and, of course, it is unlike our work in other ways.33
LACK OF SEQUENCE CONCORD
Yet another indication that we are not getting an account of how God created the cosmos, the earth, and humanity comes with the recognition that the two creation accounts (Gen. 1:1–2:4a and 2:4b–25) do not present the same sequence of creation. To state it baldly, the first account describes the creation of vegetation first (on the third day), followed by the animals (early on the sixth day) and finally humanity (male and female, later on the sixth day). In the second account, the sequence begins with the creation of the first man (2:7), followed by vegetation (2:8–9), the animals (2:19–20), and then the first woman (2:22–23). The lack of sequence concord has been recognized for centuries, and there have been various reactions to it. Those who believe that the creation accounts are trying to tell the reader how God created have adopted two strategies that are based on radically different ideas of the nature of Scripture. First, some scholars have taken the lack of sequence concord as an indication that the two creation accounts come from different time periods and from different hands and were placed side by side by a later editor. Indeed, the lack of concord is taken as evidence that the two creation accounts come from two different sources. Genesis 1:1–2:4a comes from a source often dated to the exilic or postexilic period (the Priestly source [P]), and Genesis 2:4b–25 comes from the tenth century BC (the Jahwist source [J]). This theory is called the Documentary Hypothesis.34 The second strategy adopted by some scholars is to attempt to harmonize the two accounts. They accomplish this harmonization through translating some of the verbs in the second account as pluperfect rather than simple past tense. We can see this approach at work in the NIV. Adam’s creation is described using the vav-consecutive (or waw-consecutive) , and it is rightly translated in the simple past: “Then the LORD God formed a man” (Gen. 2:7). Strikingly, though, in the next verse, when the creation of vegetation is described using the same verbal form, the verb is translated not in the simple past but with a pluperfect: “Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east” (2:8). Then later when the animals are brought into the narrative, the pluperfect is once again used: “Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky” (2:19). Why this shift? There is only one reason—to harmonize the two creation accounts and make it sound as if the creation of vegetation and animals happened before the creation of humanity. Technically such a translation is possible, but it is not likely. That this harmonization is extremely unlikely is confirmed by Genesis 2:5, a verse that points out that before the creation of the first man, “no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth.”35 The translators of the ESV seem to understand this point, which leads them to another strategy of harmonization, to translate the noun ’eretz as “land” rather than “earth”: “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain in the land . . .” (2:5–6).36 Such a translation leaves open the possibility that it had rained on the earth outside the land (the garden) and that there was vegetation on the earth outside the land, thus successfully harmonizing the two accounts. Are the translations provided by the NIV or the ESV possible? Well, yes. The vav-consecutive can indicate English pluperfect, but it is much more likely that it is simple past here. The only reason to translate it pluperfect is to harmonize. Can ’eretz mean “land” rather than “earth”? Definitely, but all other occasions in Genesis 1 and 2 are translated earth, so why “land” here? To harmonize in order to solve a perceived (but not real, in my opinion) theological problem. There is a much simpler explanation than that provided by either those who want to use the lack of sequence concord to provide evidence for different, contradictory sources, like the Documentary Hypothesis, or those who want to use extraordinary grammatical and philological (word meanings, like on ’eretz) arguments to harmonize the sequence of the two accounts. We should simply recognize that neither account is interested in telling us the actual sequence of creation. Other considerations (literary and theological; see the description of the “literary framework” hypothesis above) are at work here. Thus, the lack of sequence concord provides yet another line of textual indication that Genesis 1 and 2 are not interested in telling us the how of creation.
THE LAND OF EDEN
In Genesis 2, God places the first man in a garden named Eden. The name itself means “luxury” or “abundance” and signifies that the man lives in an environment that would meet all his material needs. But would the first readers have understood Eden as an actual location on the map? I seriously doubt it, and I do not believe that the author intended readers to take it that way. Eden is described as having four rivers flowing from it. Granted, three of them would have been well known. The Tigris and Euphrates even today flow through Mesopotamia, from modern-day Armenia through Iraq and into the Persian Gulf. Gihon is the name used elsewhere in Scripture for a spring in southeast Jerusalem that formed a stream (1 Kings 1:33, 38, 45; 2 Chron. 32:30; 33:14). The fourth river is the Pishon, which is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible and so is of uncertain location. While some people take their cue from the mention of the Tigris and Euphrates to locate Eden somewhere in southern Mesopotamia, we must remember that these rivers are said to flow out of Eden, and if we were to take the description of Eden as referring to actual real estate, this would point to Armenia. Rather than resorting to strained attempts to make these geographical references work, it is much better to understand the reference to Eden as not describing an actual place. Rather, the garden of Eden symbolizes that at the point when God endows his human creatures with his image (see “Humans in Genesis 1–3” below), they are living in harmony with creation.
THE CREATION OF ADAM
The creation of Adam comes from the second creation account found in Genesis 2:4–25. In the first account the focus is on the cosmos, in which the creation of humanity finds its place. But in the second account the interest is solidly on the creation of humanity, first the man and then the woman. In terms of the creation of the first man, who is later called Adam, we read that “the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (2:7). Picture the scene. God takes dust and breathes into it. Should this be taken at face value as the means by which God actually created the first human being? Of course not! To do so would violate our understanding of God as a spiritual being, not a physical one. We have here an obvious case of what is called “anthropomorphism,” describing God as if he were human, in this case as if he had lungs. Anthropomorphisms are a way of speaking about God figuratively, and here the creation of the first human being is being described in a figurative manner. The author wants us to know that God created the first human, but he is not at all interested in telling us how God did it. To insist that this passage gives us God’s actual method of creation is theologically incorrect. Soon we will see why the author chose to depict Adam’s creation this way when we consider the ancient Near Eastern setting of the account.
THE CREATION OF EVE
In terms of the creation of the first woman, we read, “So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man” (2:21–22). There are clearly reasons why the creation of Eve is depicted this way, but it is not in order to tell us how God created her. Let’s remember that the reason she is created is because “it is not good for the man to be alone” (2:18). Thus, we are not surprised that the description of her creation highlights her relationship with the man rather than giving us a straightforward description of how God did it. In other words, the depiction of her creation from Adam’s “rib” or “side” is not intended to speak to procedure but rather to her equality and mutuality with the man. This point was well recognized by the rabbis, and it is acknowledged by modern scholars and preachers as well. Gordon Wenham, for instance, quotes the famous English preacher Matthew Henry (1662– 1714): “Not made from out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal to him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”37
THE SERPENT
In Genesis 3:1 we are abruptly introduced to a new character, a walking serpent. This serpent threatens the harmony of the garden by questioning God’s command that Adam and Eve not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While the introduction would have been just as sudden to ancient readers as to modern ones, ancient readers would have had a more immediate understanding of the sinister nature of the serpent. As John Walton has pointed out, serpents, some of them walking as in Genesis 3, were symbolic throughout the ancient Near East of evil in the sense that they are antilife. He cites the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, in which a serpent steals a plant that might have given Gilgamesh eternal, or at least rejuvenating, life. In the Adapa Epic, a tale about how the lead character loses the chance at eternal life, we hear of a serpent-like gatekeeper named Ningishzida. Walton also points to the Egyptian religious idea that the serpent symbolizes death, as well as to the serpent-like representative of chaos named Apophis who threatened the sun god.38 I might add another example in that Tiamat, who represents (along with Apsu) the primordial waters out of which Marduk makes the cosmos, is likely pictured in Mesopotamian iconography as a walking serpent. Thus, ancient readers would have quickly recognized a walking serpent as a symbolic representation of evil, another cue that the genre of these chapters includes highly symbolic language.
CONCLUSION
The Bible is totally true in everything it intends to teach. Genesis 1–3, which contains what we might consider the primary and certainly foundational creation accounts, is totally true in everything it intends to teach. And the determination of genre helps us recognize what a text like Genesis 1–3 intends to teach. We must remember that genre triggers reading strategy. We have attended to the various signals that help us understand what genre the author uses to communicate with the audience. We have taken account of those signals that indicate to the reader that Genesis 1–3, like the rest of Genesis, indeed the rest of the redemptive history of the Bible, intends for us to understand that there is an interest in past events. We have also noticed a number of other signals (lack of sequence concord; figurative language such as days and God breathing life into dust) that inform the reader that these historical events are narrated using figurative language. Below we will see that the relationship between Genesis 1–3 and other ancient Near Eastern creation accounts confirms the idea that here we have historical events described in a figurative manner. The result is that, while the author of the text teaches that God created everything, including humanity, he is not interested in telling us how God did it. This encourages us to turn to God’s “other book,” nature, to discover the how of creation. Before moving on from genre, let me conclude by offering an analogy between the opening chapters of the Bible, Genesis 1–11 (the primordial history), and the closing chapters, the book of Revelation.39 In my opinion, there is a remarkable similarity between how the Bible treats the deep past (from creation to the tower of Babel) and how it treats the far-distant future (when Christ will return at the end of history). Both describe actual events, but both use highly figurative language to describe those actual events. The book of Revelation teaches that Jesus will come again in the future to save his people and judge the wicked. But will he come riding a horse (Rev. 19:11–21) or a cloud (Matt. 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27; Rev. 1:7)? The very question is wrong. These are figurative depictions to communicate that Jesus will come back as a conquering Savior. Genesis 1–11 and the book of Revelation, though different in other respects, both speak about actual events using figurative language.
Genesis 1–2 and Other Ancient Near Eastern Creation Accounts
For well over a century, we have known about creation stories from Israel’s ancient neighbors. We have literature in Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, and Ugaritic that is relevant to our study of Genesis 1–2. The similarities and differences between these ancient Near Eastern creation stories and Genesis 1–2 are illuminating and give the idea that the biblical account was shaped at least in part to serve as a polemical rejoinder to their claims. Such an understanding does not depend on the biblical author being aware of these specific texts but assumes only familiarity with the general ideas that they present. For our purposes we will use three stories, two in Akkadian and one in Ugaritic, to illustrate similarities and differences with Genesis 1–2. We do this comparison because it reveals that the shape of the biblical text is meant in part to highlight the differences between Israelite religious conceptions and those of their neighbors. Enuma Elish is a Babylonian myth composed at least by the twelfth century BC but maybe as early as the eighteenth century BC, since the text concerns the exaltation of Marduk, the chief deity of Babylon, and these are two periods of time when the city of Babylon assumed dominance in Mesopotamia. The myth begins with an account of the birth of the gods: the primordial deities Apsu and Tiamat, representing fresh water and salt water respectively, give birth to numerous deities. The waters are simply there at the beginning, and the gods represent the beginning of the emergence of order in the cosmos. But Apsu, the male deity, grows irate at the noise generated by the younger generation of gods and determines to put them to an end in spite of the protests of Tiamat, his consort. The god of wisdom, Ea, hears about this plot and in a preemptive strike kills Apsu. The death of Apsu is just the beginning of the conflict. Tiamat, who has more power than Apsu had, now takes up her deceased consort’s intention, accompanied by a demon god named Qingu. Ea knows that he is no match for Tiamat, so he issues a call for a hero to step forward. Marduk, his own son, accepts the invitation on the condition that if he is successful, he will become the king of the gods. While the fight is fearsome, Marduk is ultimately successful. The text then turns to a description of creation. Marduk begins by splitting Tiamat’s body (remember she represents the waters). With the upper half he creates the skies (from which rain comes), and with the lower half he creates the waters of the earth. He then pushes back the waters of the earth in order to create land. Finally, Marduk executes Qingu, and “from his blood he made mankind” (Tablet VI, 33–34). The second story, known as Atrahasis, is also Babylonian in origin and is written in Akkadian on tablets from as early as the Old Babylonian period (eighteenth century BC) and as late as the Neo-Assyrian period a millennium later. This text is particularly notable because it combines a creation account with a flood story, but here we are only interested in the creation story.40 In this myth we hear that the lesser gods (the Igigi) work for the superior gods (the Annunnake) by digging irrigation ditches. Eventually, the Igigi tire of their labors and bring their protest to the head of the Annunnake, the god Enlil. Enlil capitulates and commands Belet-ili, the divine midwife, to create humans to take over the menial labor of the lesser gods. Humans are created by killing a lesser god (We-ilu) and mixing the blood with clay from the earth. Finally, all the gods spit into the mixture. The third story, the Ugaritic story of Baal, is only preserved on broken tablets. Nevertheless, most scholars are confident that the narrative was very similar to the Babylonian stories we have just summarized.41 We are interested in this Ugaritic account because it concerns religious ideas that were held by people, perhaps Canaanites or related people, who were in the more immediate neighborhood of Israel. In the relevant portion of this myth, the god Yam (the sea god) makes a play for the kingship of the gods and demands that Baal be turned over as a prisoner. While the council of the gods acquiesces, Baal refuses, storms out of the divine assembly, and goes to the craftsman god Kothar-wahasis, asking for weapons. Kothar provides him with two maces, with which he conquers Yam. It is at this point that the tablet breaks, but we assume, based on analogy with the Babylonian texts, that after the creator god defeats the god of the sea, there was an account of the creation of the world and perhaps of humanity. We should also note in this regard that Yam had allies, one of whom was a seven-headed sea monster known by the name Lothan. This name is the Ugaritic equivalent of the Hebrew Leviathan, a name well known in the Bible as a symbol of the forces of chaos and even mentioned in a creation context in Psalm 74 (see the discussion of this text under “Other Old Testament Creation Accounts” below). Notice, first of all, how order emerges from a watery chaos in all these creation accounts. This point holds even if Genesis 1 explicitly describes a creation from nothing, though I think that is unlikely (see the excursus “Creation from Nothing?” below). If Genesis 1 does depict a creation from nothing, the first move is from nothing to a watery mass (“Now the earth was formless and empty [tohu wabohu], darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” [Gen. 1:2]). From this watery chaos God brings order and functionality. Another more detailed point of comparison may be seen in the creation of humanity in Genesis 2:7. Above we commented on the obviously figurative nature of the description of God blowing on dust (does God have lungs?) to create the first man. This description tells us that humans, though creaturely, have a special relationship with God and, thus, that at their creation they are endowed with dignity. Compare and contrast that with the creation of the first humans in Enuma Elish and Atrahasis. Yes, there is a divine component and an earthly one, but the divine component—in the case of Enuma Elish, the blood of a demon god; in Atrahasis, the spit of the gods—shows that humans were evil from their origin and held in contempt by the gods. More similarities and differences can be named between the biblical account and other ancient Near Eastern stories,42 but my point, I believe, is made with just these. The shaping of the creation account in Genesis 1–2 is not to tell us how creation actually happened but to announce that it did happen. And here is the biggest and most obvious difference from the ancient Near Eastern accounts: it was Yahweh—the one true God of the cosmos—who did it, not Marduk or Baal. And to complete the contrast, there is also quite a different tone as to the why of the creation of humans. Yes, in both sets of accounts humans work, but in the Mesopotamian accounts humanity simply replaces the gods in the menial task of digging irrigation ditches, while in the Bible humans, created in God’s image, subdue the earth and tend and guard God’s garden.
Other Old Testament Creation Accounts43
I have said that Genesis 1–3 contains the primary and foundational accounts of the divine creation of the cosmos, the world, and humanity. But it is not the only place where the creation is described. There are numerous creation texts in the Bible—so many that we cannot adequately discuss them all.44 Thus, I have chosen three examples from the Old Testament (Ps. 74; Prov. 8:22–31; Job 38:8–11) to show that, since there is no real interest in talking about the process of creation, God’s creation work can be communicated using a variety of figurative descriptions.
PSALM 74
Psalm 74 is a communal lament written in the aftermath of the destruction of the sanctuary—presumably by the Babylonians in 586 BC, though they are not mentioned by name. The purpose of the lament is not just to express sadness but also to call God to action to restore his people. In the midst of the appeal the psalmist invokes God’s great creation power: But God is my King from long ago; he brings salvation on the earth. It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert. It was you who opened up springs and streams; you dried up the ever-flowing rivers. The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter. (Ps. 74:12–17) Here the psalmist utilizes the divine conflict myth to describe creation. As we observed above, in the Mesopotamian creation story known as Enuma Elish, the creator god Marduk defeats the serpent-like sea monster Tiamat and forms the cosmos out of her carcass. Closer to Israelite culture, the Canaanites or a people closely related to them described a conflict between their chief god Baal and Yam, the Sea. In the relevant myth, the passage is broken off after the defeat of Yam, but most scholars are convinced that a creation scene follows in the missing portion. Even more interesting is that Baal is also said to fight an ally of Yam, a seven-headed sea monster named Lothan, which is the Ugaritic (the language of the myth) equivalent to Leviathan, who is described as having many heads in Psalm 74. There is no coincidence here—the Leviathan of Psalm 74 is the Lothan of the Ugaritic myth. These sea monsters represent primordial chaos, which the creator subdues and shapes into functional order.
PROVERBS 8:22–31
In the book of Proverbs, Woman Wisdom plays a pivotal role in the creation of the earth. The macrostructure of the book has two parts. In chapters 1–9, we have mainly speeches of a father to his son or of Woman Wisdom to all the implied readers of the book. In chapters 10–31, we find the proverbs, which are short observations, admonitions, and prohibitions that seek to make the reader wise. A major goal of the first part of Proverbs, which has ramifications for how we read the second part, is to encourage the reader to form an intimate relationship with Woman Wisdom. I have elsewhere explained the significance of Woman Wisdom as representing God’s wisdom and indeed God himself,45 but for our present purpose, I want to take a quick look at Woman Wisdom’s role in creation as described in Proverbs 8:22–31:
Yahweh begot me at the beginning of his paths, before his work of antiquity. From of old I was formed, from the beginning, from before the earth. When there were no deeps, I was brought forth, when there were no springs, heavy with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth. At that time the earth and the open country were not made, and the beginning of the clods of the world, when he established the heavens, I was there, when he decreed the horizon on the face of the deep, when he strengthened the clouds above; when he intensified the fountains of the deep, when he set for the sea its decree, wherein the water could not pass where he said. I was beside him as a craftsman. I was playing daily, laughing before him all the time. Laughing with the inhabitants of the earth and playing with the human race. (Prov. 8:22–31)46
What a delightfully playful and imaginative description of creation! Woman Wisdom describes how she observed and participated in the creation. Notice again the role of the sea, which highlights the figurative language and ancient Near Eastern origins of the description of creation. The sea’s material creation is not here described, but rather the sea is depicted as a rambunctious entity that needs to be commanded to assume its proper place. The sea again represents disorder that God whips into shape. It is told to stay where God commands and “not pass where he [God] said” (v. 29).
JOB 38:8–11
Our third example of a creation text treats the waters even more explicitly as a personal force that needs control. At the end of the book of Job, God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind in order to reprimand him for accusing him of injustice (40:6–8). God does not answer the question that Job poses (“Why am I suffering?”); rather, he simply asserts his power and wisdom and compels Job to bow before the mystery of his suffering.47 He begins by leveling a series of questions at Job. He knows that Job has no answer to these questions, but he puts them to Job in order to demonstrate to him who is the Creator and who is the creature. The passage that most interests us here is Job 38:8–11:
Who shuts the Sea with doors, and who brought it out bursting forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its clothes, and deep darkness its swaddling clothes? I prescribed my boundary on it; I set up a bar and doors. And I said, “You will go this far and no more, and here your proud waves will stop.”48
God here is like a midwife to the Sea, bringing the Sea to birth and then putting limits on its natural tendency to cover everything. God created a boundary so that the land would emerge.
CONCLUSION
What are we to make of these alternate creation accounts (and there are more) in the Old Testament? At a minimum, these examples show that the biblical authors had no qualms about describing creation in highly figurative language. Indeed, they also illustrate that the biblical authors have no hesitation to invoke ancient Near Eastern mythological ideas as they do so. While it is conceivable that Genesis 1–2 is an exception, we have already examined these chapters and seen that the most natural reading recognizes the use of figurative language and the interaction with ancient Near Eastern creation accounts. There is no reason we should expect the Bible to provide us with a factual report of the process of creation, and it is a grave mistake to treat the opening chapters of the Bible as such a report.
EXCURSUS
Creation from Nothing?
I want to briefly address a controversial subject that relates to the teaching of Genesis 1–2 on creation by asking whether Genesis speaks about creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). That is, does Genesis 1 in particular talk about God starting with nothing and then creating matter and finally taking the matter and forming it into something organized and functional? Or does Genesis 1 begin the description of creation at the point when there is unformed and unorganized matter that God then shapes into something habitable for humanity? This second view would not explicitly teach that God created everything from nothing. The debate begins at the level of translation. This is not the place to get down to the details of Hebrew grammar, so let me just start by stating that most Hebrew scholars would admit that the Hebrew could support either perspective, as might be illustrated by comparing the NIV translation with the NRSV. The NIV translates Genesis 1:1–2 as follows: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The NRSV takes a different approach: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Notice how the NRSV translation presumes that the earth was in a disorganized state at the point that (“when”) God began the creation process. The emphasis is on bringing this formless void into a functional state. The NIV translation starts the description of creation before the existence of formless matter, so the process moves from nothing to disorganized matter and then finally to a functional cosmos. Since the grammar does not definitively support one or the other of the possible translations, other considerations are operating in the minds of the translators. For those who adopt the NRSV approach, the fact that other ancient Near Eastern accounts all begin with the idea that the creator god utilizes preexistent matter indicates that in the original cultural context, what John Walton calls the Bible’s “cognitive environment,”49 the question of where the original stuff came from was not of interest. For those who instead adopt the NIV approach, later biblical teaching that God created from nothing is determinative. I personally lean toward the NRSV understanding of the opening of Genesis and believe that one cannot dogmatically assert that Genesis 1 presents a picture of creation from nothing.50 But it is important to remember that, after all this, it is not all that significant which approach is correct. Later biblical texts clearly teach that God created everything, so the biblical doctrine of creation from nothing stands secure. It is likely, however, that the author of Genesis 1 was simply not interested in the question of the origin of matter. That becomes a question in the later Greco-Roman environment. I imagine that if the author of Genesis were asked where the matter came from, he would answer that of course God created it.
What Does Genesis 1–2 Teach?
I don’t want to leave the question of what Genesis 1–2 affirms with the impression that it teaches only that God created everything. That in and of itself is extremely important, considering all the ancient rival claims about who was the creator of the cosmos, earth, and humanity. Genesis 1–2 asserts that the creator is Yahweh, the God that Israel worshiped, and not Marduk or Baal or any other. Even so, this momentous claim does not exhaust the teaching of Genesis 1–2. After all, these chapters are foundational to the rest of the Bible. They speak of origins (Genesis means “beginnings”) in a way that has ramifications for the reader’s present life. We do not have space to review the whole scope of the message of Genesis 1–2, so here I will briefly and suggestively present the highlights.51 Genesis 1–2 informs us about the nature of God and ourselves.
GOD
Modern readers often miss the unique nature of God in Genesis when examined within the context of the ancient Near East. Most radical is the revelation that there is only one God: the one God created everything else (see the excursus “Creation from Nothing?” above), and he did so through the power of his word, not through conflict with other gods.52 This one God, the God that Israel worshiped (and identified as Yahweh in Gen. 2:4), is thus sovereign and supreme in a way that other ancient Near Eastern gods are not. He is also described in a way that demonstrates that he is not a part of creation (the creation is not an extension of his being), in that he makes it and pronounces it good. In that sense he is transcendent, but he is also involved with his creation and thus immanent. In other words, right from the start God is described in a way that we would call theistic, not pantheistic (immanent but not transcendent) or deistic (transcendent but not immanent). Further, Genesis 1 and 2 make it clear that this God is neither gendered nor sexually active. Modern Western readers may not appreciate the radical nature of this description of God. In the ancient Near East, however, a nongendered, not-sexually-active deity is unique. That he is nongendered, neither male nor female, is indicated by Genesis 1:28, where we read, “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” In other words, both males and females reflect who God is. Indeed, for this reason later Scripture utilizes both male (king, warrior, etc.) and female (mother, Woman Wisdom, etc.) metaphors for God.
HUMANITY
The first and most obvious teaching about humanity in the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 is the high place that humans occupy in God’s creation. The psalmist captures the same sense when he muses: Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet. (Ps. 8:5–6 NRSV) This point is communicated in a variety of ways. First of all, the sequence of creation in Genesis 1 shows the important place of humanity. While I have noted that the intention is not to tell us the actual order of creation, the depiction of humanity being created last, after everything else is put in place, is significant. Second, humans are said to be made in God’s image and likeness. Though the precise meaning of image-bearing is debatable,53 there is no question that it indicates humanity’s special place in creation. In the second account, God makes the first human from the dust of the ground and his breath, which shows that humans are part of the creation like the animals and also that they have a special relationship with God. In the figurative depiction of the creation of the first woman, we learn about gender and sexuality. Sexual activity, as indicated by the command to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen. 1:28), is an aspect of the creation, not the Creator. The emphasis is on the mutuality and equality of the genders. The woman is made from the man’s side (or rib), not his head or feet. The man proclaims: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23). She is a helper (‘ezer), or better an ally, “corresponding to him” (my translation of the phrase rendered “suitable” by the NIV in 2:18, 20). The term ‘ezer, no matter how it is rendered in English, does not denote subordination, as witnessed by the many times it is used to describe God (Deut. 33:29; Pss. 33:20; 89:18–19).54 Again, sexual activity is an aspect of the creation and not the Creator. We learn from Genesis 2 that marriage was an institution intended for humans from their creation and not a part of the fall. We also learn that God intended for humans to work; they were to “work it [the garden] and take care of [or better “guard”] it” (2:15). While marriage (and relationships more generally) and work can often feel like a struggle, we learn in Genesis 3 that such difficulties are a result of human rebellion, not God’s original creation. Indeed, if it weren’t for Genesis 1 and 2, we would conclude that humans were by their created nature sinful. That was certainly the idea communicated by the Mesopotamian creation stories, in which humans were created from the clay of the earth and the blood of a demon god. Yet the Genesis creation accounts tell us not only that humans were created innocent but also that creation itself was good. “Good” here does not mean perfect, as some commonly believe, nor is it pronouncing a moral statement; rather, it means that God created everything so that it functioned well. Again, our everyday experience would not lead us to that conclusion. Finally, Genesis 1 in particular highlights the importance of Sabbath. The creation account itself does not mandate Sabbath observance, but the choice to describe God’s creation as if it were a regular workweek becomes a strong rationale for Sabbath observance (see Exod. 20:8–11).
EXCURSUS
Does Genesis 1:29–30 Undermine Evolution?
Some people think that Genesis 1:29–30 contradicts an evolutionary scenario because it seems to restrict not only original humanity but also the animals to a vegetarian diet. Evolution, however, as well as the fossil record, makes it very clear that many animals ate a diet that included other animals. Michael LeFebvre points out that it is incorrect to assume that these verses so restrict animal diet. He says that “if the purpose of Genesis 1:29–30 was to restrict all diets to vegetation, one would expect to find restrictive language (saying things like, ‘shall only eat plants’ or ‘I give plants and not meat’). But there is no restrictive language present.”55 He quotes John Calvin, who says, “Some infer from this passage that men were content with herbs and fruits until the deluge, and that it was even unlawful for them to eat flesh. . . . These reasons, however, are not sufficiently strong. . . . I think it will be better for us to assert nothing concerning this matter.”56 Thus, it seems to me that these verses do not provide evidence that the Bible conflicts with the theory of evolution.
Creation and Providence
Genesis 1–2 teaches that Yahweh is the Creator of all things and that he has created human beings in his image to be in relationship with him. Evolution, on the other hand, posits a mechanism for the emergence of life that takes no recourse to the intervention of a creator. If God used secondary causes such as those described in the theory of evolution to create human beings, who needs God? But I think the anxiety about evolution essentially removing God from the equation is unwarranted. Of course, such anxiety is stoked by New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and physicist Stephen Hawking who suggest that the theory of evolution undermines religion.57 But rather than playing into their hands by denying the strong scientific evidence in favor of evolution, we should ignore them by simply affirming that evolution, or God’s use of secondary causes, does not undermine God’s role as creator of humanity.58 Ignoring Dawkins and his ilk is the best strategy of (non)engagement. Think about it. The world would have been a lot better off if Adam and Eve had simply ignored the serpent’s question in the garden rather than trying to provide an answer in order to defend God. Granted I am being a bit overly dismissive here, and I earlier recommended other resources for those who want to reflect on Dawkins’s arguments. But Dawkins’s critiques depend on a conception of Christianity that rejects evolution, and if one understands that the Bible does not address how God created, then his arguments are without merit. But if God used secondary causes to create humans, how do we know that God created humans? Some believe we have to have evidence that can’t be explained by science in order to prove to people that only God could have done it. In other words, if we can’t appeal to some “irreducibly complex” sign of design, then how can we know that God did it? Earlier I invoked the “two books” approach to the question of science and faith and recognized that sometimes science can help us read the Bible better (and I will return to this idea below). Now we come to the other part of the “two books” doctrine, the part that is reflected in Pope John Paul II’s statement that “religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”59 How do we know that God created humans, even though there is no scientific evidence (or gap in the scientific evidence) to support that idea? The Bible. We know that God created humans because “the Bible tells us so.” Calvin, who appreciated the work of even scientists who were not believers, also understood that to get the deepest understanding of the world, we must put on the spectacles of Scripture:
But although the Lord represents both himself and his everlasting Kingdom in the mirror of his works with very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull toward so manifest testimonies, and they flow away without profiting us. . . . Not only the common folk and dull-witted men, but also the most excellent and those otherwise endowed with keen discernment, are inflicted with this disease.60 So Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God.61
Scripture teaches us that God’s involvement in creation is just as real through his providence as through miracles. He uses both, but miracles don’t trump the providential use of secondary causes. As an illustration, let’s look at the book of Esther. The book is the exciting account of how the Jewish people were rescued from a genocidal plot by their enemies. If Haman and his associates had their way, the Jewish people would have been eradicated from the face of the earth. From a Christian perspective, that would have signaled the end of the messianic hope that was realized in Jesus. How were the Jewish people saved? Well, a woman named Esther became queen through a series of events that led to the deposing of the previous queen, Vashti. Esther’s cousin Mordecai became aware of a plot hatched by Haman to pick a day when King Xerxes would allow his people to eradicate the Jewish people. Mordecai convinced Esther to expose Haman’s plot, which she did successfully, and Haman was impaled on the pole he erected to execute Mordecai. On the appointed day when the Jewish people were supposed to die, they defended themselves and killed their attackers. The end of the book announces a celebration called Purim that would be enjoyed every year to commemorate this event. Notice that in this account God is not mentioned. Indeed, the book of Esther never mentions the name of God! However, only the most dull reader can read this book without coming away with the certain sense that, though he is never once mentioned, it is God and none other who is the hero of the day. God worked through the secondary causes laid out in the plot description above, but no one can doubt that the rescue was a divine rescue. Similarly, no one should conclude that God did not create humanity just because of the existence of secondary causes such as those described in evolutionary theory. Many of the church’s most stalwart defenders of biblical authority have recognized that evolution and the Bible’s description of humanity do not conflict in the light of God’s providential workings. B. B. Warfield, the highly regarded theologian who helped define inerrancy, stated, over against those who thought evolution disproved the Bible, that “‘evolution’ cannot act as a substitute for creation, but at best can supply a theory of the method of the Divine providence.”62
Why Then Am I an Evolutionary Creationist?63
Since the Bible does not intend to teach us how God created humanity, we can and should, in keeping with the Belgic Confession’s “two books” doctrine, derived from the Bible, and Pope John Paul II’s statement that “science can purify religion,” turn to science to answer the how question. I want to be clear at this point. I am not a scientist, and it is not my place to put forward the argument and the evidence in favor of evolution. However, I am informed enough as a layperson to know that the evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming. There is no serious doubt among research biologists, Christian and not, that our species emerged not through God literally blowing on dust a few thousand years ago but through a long process involving a primate past that eventually traces back to very simple organisms (common descent).64 Karl Giberson and Francis Collins, devout evangelicals and leading biologists,65 present in a succinct and accessible manner the massive evidence, particularly the genetic evidence, that convinces virtually every research biologist that evolution is the best theory that accounts for human origins. They rightly assert, “When there is a near-universal consensus among scientists that something is true, we have to take that seriously, even if we don’t like the conclusion.”66 Those in the Christian community who suggest that the theory of evolution is in crisis are misleading their audiences. While there are still questions about the details of the process, there is no doubt about the overall theory itself. The theory has been out there for a century and a half, and the evidence, both the fossil and especially the genetic evidence, powerfully attests to its veracity. It’s not going to be overturned in a dramatic way. To try to deny evolution because one is trying to defend the Bible is unnecessary because the Bible is not at odds with evolution. To do so in the light of the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution is putting an unnecessary obstacle to faith. Augustine’s admonition is telling:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth. . . . Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation . . . and [that], to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scriptures are criticized.67
But let’s say that through some totally unexpected happenstance, it turns out that evolution is not the best model to understand the emergence of our species. What would that do to my understanding of Genesis 1–2? Absolutely nothing, or at least not in a substantial way. If the evidence started supporting a sudden emergence of humanity (not likely) or some more complicated understanding of the natural process that brought humans into existence, it would make no difference to our interpretation of Genesis 1–2, since it does not teach evolution—indeed does not teach anything about how God created the universe. That is not its purpose. The Christian has no reason to feel a threat from science at all. We should support and rejoice in the marvelous work scientists are doing to uncover the process God used to bring us into existence. After all, we rejoice in the fact that God brought us into being. We thank God for our life and the lives of those dear to us, even when we can explain quite well the secondary causes that led to our births.
Evolution and the Historical Adam and Eve
As we turn our attention to what God’s two books teach us about human origins, we must remember what we observed above: the Bible has no interest in answering the how question, so we turn to the book of nature to explore that question. We must also remember that the book of nature does not answer the who or why questions, so we turn to the Bible to answer those questions. The answer to who created everything including human beings is absolutely clear according to the Bible. God did it, the God called Yahweh in the Old Testament, whose triune nature becomes increasingly clear as the canon progresses, so that the New Testament speaks of the creative activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 1:1–5; Rom. 1:18–20; Col. 1:15– 20). The why question is not answered as directly. Some theologians make a big point of the fact that God is self-sufficient and does not need anything or anyone (classic theology calls this the “aseity” of God). While it might well be true that God does not need creation, it’s hard to make sense of the biblical narrative without concluding that God delights in his creative work and desires relationship with his creatures. Indeed, the biblical text makes it clear that, while God loves all his creative work, he in particular loves his human creatures, whom he created in his own image. Why else would he have created us? And, more to the point, why would he have continued to pursue relationship with us so passionately after humanity rebelled against him? We now turn to the book of nature to explore the question of how. Science has proposed a theory, evolution, that has been supported by abundant evidence provided by the fossil record and, more recently and pointedly, by genetic evidence. The evidence is so consistent with the theory that only outlier scientists doubt that humanity was created through an evolutionary process that involves common descent. As discussed above, these scientists have an unnecessary and misplaced motive of defending the Bible, which they believe teaches that God created human beings by a special act of creation and not through the providence-guided means of evolution. Of course, we want to ask how these two truths might relate to each other: How can humans who emerge from an evolutionary past be said to be created in the image of God? What about Adam and Eve? Were they actual people? And then there is the biblical claim that humans were “good” or “innocent” at the time of their creation: How does that square with the narrative provided by evolution, which operates through “nature, red in tooth and claw,”68 which also raises the question of death before the fall? And then there is the fall: Was there a historical fall that introduced sin and death into the world as Paul claims (Rom. 5:12–20)? This also leads to the question of original sin: In what way (if any) does Adam and Eve’s sin relate to us today? To answer these many questions, let’s look at what Genesis 1–3 teaches about human beings.
Humans in Genesis 1–3
In my view, the Bible teaches clearly that human beings were created by God and that they were created in the image of God. The Bible also teaches clearly that at the time of their creation as image-bearing creatures, humans were morally innocent and capable of moral choice. And the Bible makes it clear that human sinfulness and death as we know them today are not the result of how God made us but came about because of humanity’s willful rebellion against him. Are any of these important biblical teachings undermined by the theory of evolution? I suggest not. If we see Genesis 1–3 (indeed 1–11) as theological history that depicts the deep past using figurative language, then, indeed, there is more than one way to understand how the theory of evolution is compatible with biblical truth. Let me begin with the perspective that I find most persuasive, followed by certain possible variations of that view. It is not at all important that we have hard and fast formulations for issues that the Bible neither directly addresses nor has strong implications toward. In the first scenario, we might imagine that God used the evolutionary process to produce the first Homo sapiens. Evolution does not work by producing a single couple out of a previous population; rather, a certain group of the previous population becomes isolated from the larger group, and their distinctive gene pool leads to the new species. This process is complex—and it is not as if a new group emerges all of a sudden—but the bottom line is that the genetic evidence is clear that humanity does not go back to a single couple from which all later Homo sapiens descended. The complexity of the emergence of Homo sapiens is not really a problem, since the biblical account speaks not just of Homo sapiens but of humans who have the status of divine image bearers. Thus, we can have Homo sapiens who were not endowed with that status. Here it is important to realize that the image of God is not a quality or an attribute of human beings but rather a status that comes with responsibility. Recent studies have shown that the best route to understanding the meaning of humans’ status of image bearers (which is never clearly defined or described by Scripture) is by examining how the words “image” (tselem) and “likeness” (demut), found in Genesis 1:26–27, are used elsewhere in the Bible and in the broader ancient Near East.69 In the Bible we see the use of the term (actually its Aramaic cognate) in Daniel 3, where Nebuchadnezzar erects a gigantic statue of himself to which he demands that everyone bow. Perhaps the most striking confirmation of this understanding of the image of God can be found in the ninth-century-BC Aramaic-Akkadian inscription on a statue from Tell Fakhariyeh in Syria, which refers to the statue as the “likeness” and “image” of King Hadad-yis’i.70 As Walter Brueggemann puts it, “It is now generally agreed that the image of God reflected in human persons is after the manner of a king who establishes himself to assert his sovereign rule where the king himself cannot be present.”71 At a certain point, then, when humans became capable of moral choice and were morally innocent, God conferred on them the status of being his representatives. Thus, they reflect the divine glory like the moon reflects the light of the sun (see Ps. 8:3–5). This status came with responsibility, as God instructed them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen. 1:28). In other words, humans created in the divine image were to be God’s royal representatives to the rest of creation, acting with benevolence toward the creation, not exploiting it. Neither the Bible nor science has anything to say about the moment that God so endowed humans. Thus, some understand this to have happened toward the emergence of humanity (over one hundred thousand years ago), while others—and this view strikes me as more persuasive—place this moment much later, at the time that humans start showing signs of divine awareness through burial practices, cave paintings, and so forth. Another variation in perspective among those of us who accept the findings of evolutionary creationism has to do with what Adam and Eve represent in the account of Genesis 1–3. One possible view is that they represent the whole population endowed with the image of God. After all, Adam’s name means “humanity.” But another view takes Adam and Eve as a representative couple within the larger population.72 The royal language of Genesis 1:28 suggests that the couple might be considered the kings of this original population, while others point to Genesis 2, which in describing the creation uses language that is similar to the construction of the Israelite tabernacle and also includes the charge to Adam to “work” and “take care of” (Heb. shamar, better “guard”) the garden, and consider them more like priestly figures. We don’t need to decide between these variant scenarios. The Bible is not interested in answering all our questions, but what is important is that what the Bible does teach is not undermined or contradicted by the findings of modern biology. As I have said more than once, God’s two books, Scripture and nature, will not contradict each other when properly interpreted. But what about Genesis 3? How are we to understand the account of humanity’s rebellion against God in the light of evolution? The first point we need to emphasize is that, while the account in Genesis 1–3 describes past events in figurative language, these chapters are talking about past events. Interpretations that assert that human beings created in the image of God were never morally innocent, or state that the sinfulness of human beings is an inherent trait of humanity rather than the result of human rebellion against God (thus denying a historical fall),73 do not take the biblical account seriously, denying an essential theological teaching of the Bible. These interpretations attribute human sinfulness and death to divine creation rather than human willfulness. Such views are typically supported by appeal to science, which only bears witness to “nature, red in tooth and claw.”74 But we would not expect scientific evidence for a period of moral innocence or a historical rebellion. For one thing, if we take the Bible seriously, the period of time between the endowment of humans with the image of God and the rebellion was shortlived, to be sure. We learn about it only from the Bible. Again, remember that while science can help us read the Bible better, the Bible reveals matters that are not accessible through scientific investigation. That said, the figurative nature of the account of humanity’s rebellion in Genesis 3 has been patently obvious to many since the time of the early church. Consider the feisty assessment of the church father Origen:
And who will be found simple enough to believe that like some farmer “God planted trees in the garden of Eden, in the east” and that he planted “the tree of life” in it, that is a visible tree that could be touched, so that someone could eat of this tree with corporeal teeth and gain life, and further, could eat of another tree and receive the knowledge of “good and evil”? Moreover, we find that God is said to stroll in the garden in the afternoon and Adam to hide under the tree. Surely, I think no one doubts that these statements are made by Scripture in the form of a figure by which they point to certain mysteries.75
One does not have to agree with Origen’s overall hermeneutical approach (or his sarcastic tone) in order to agree with his recognition of the figurative nature of the chapter. But again, what is the figurative language pointing to? Whatever we conclude, our interpretation must be consonant with the nature of the figures. Specific figures are chosen for a purpose. These first human beings (or possibly a representative couple among them) endowed with the status of divine image bearers had an intimate relationship with God. They did not have to seek holy (set apart) places in order to meet God or offer sacrifices in anticipation of that meeting. There was no barrier between them and God. But they were called to obey God out of their own volition. God would not compel them to obey him. And rather than obey, they rebelled against him, thus introducing sin and death into the human experience. What many Christian readers, who tend to focus on the New Testament, fail to realize is that this arguably foundational story is never backreferenced in later Old Testament texts to explain Israel’s sin, guilt, and death. There is no concept of “original sin” in the Old Testament, nor did any Israelite think that “sinful nature” was inherited or in any way a result of Adam and Eve’s first sin. Nor does the New Testament, for that matter, though it is true that the New Testament makes more of Adam and Eve’s sin than does the Old Testament. To that topic we now turn.
Romans 5 and the “Historical Adam”
As Christians who take the New Testament seriously, we must pay close attention to passages like Romans 5:12–21:76
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned— To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I have quoted this passage in full because for many people Paul’s statement here constitutes the largest stumbling block to seeing how contemporary evolutionary biology can be compatible with biblical theology.77 Some people today believe that Paul’s statement here is totally incompatible with evolutionary biology’s conclusion that humanity does not go back to an original single pair—there was never a time when there were only two humans, a male and a female.78 But such a negative conclusion involves an overreading (and a rather modern one) of Paul’s words here. In the first place, a common view is that Paul here must understand Adam to be a historical individual.79 He talks as if he is, and he draws an important analogy between Adam and Jesus, whom Paul clearly believes was a historical individual. Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear the charge, which is a non sequitur, that if one does not think Adam is a historical character, then Jesus is not a historical character. This viewpoint is effectively countered by James Dunn, whose insightful comment I largely agree with, though I prefer slightly different language, as I will make clear below.
It would not be true to say that Paul’s theological point here depends on Adam being a “historical” individual or on his disobedience being a historical event as such. Such an implication does not necessarily follow from the fact that a parallel is drawn with Christ’s single act: an act in mythic history can be paralleled to an act in living history without the point of comparison being lost. So long as the story of Adam as the initiator of the sad tale of human failure was well known, which we may assume (the brevity of Paul’s presentation presupposes such knowledge), such a comparison was meaningful. Nor should modern interpretation encourage patronizing generalizations about the primitive mind naturally understanding the Adam stories as literally historical. It is sufficiently clear, for example, from Plutarch’s account of the ways in which the Osiris myth was understood at this period that such tales told about the dawn of human history could be and were treated with a considerable degree of sophistication with the literal meaning largely discounted.80
The first point to make is that Paul here is referring back to the theological history found in Genesis 3,81 which, as a figurative depiction of an event, presents Adam as a literary representative of the first humans who had the status of image bearers. The second point is that an analogy between a literary figure like Adam and a historical individual like Jesus is neither surprising nor unprecedented in the time period in which Paul wrote Romans. The analogy does not depend on them both being historical individuals, but I would say that the analogy does depend on there being a historical reality behind the literary figure of Adam and—at this point I disagree with Dunn—a historical reality behind an act of original disobedience. While Dunn’s citation of ancient precedents is most important, I would also draw our attention to the fact that we too create similar analogies between literary and historical figures. For instance, after a long frustrating day, when my wife asks me how my day went, I might respond, “I’ve been tilting at windmills all day!” Of course, I am drawing an analogy between myself and Don Quixote, a fictional character in Cervantes’s famous novel by that name. My wife, being aware of the analogy, understands the point I am making and still considers me a historical character. She might even give me an encouraging hug. In a critical review of my work in this area, Todd Beall, a self-professed young earth creationist (and, I might add, one of its best and most able proponents), accused me of changing my mind on the historical Adam from the time I wrote How to Read Genesis (2005) to the time of our interaction in Reading Genesis 1–2 (2013).82 Why? Because he believed I spoke in How to Read Genesis “as if” Adam were a historical individual. But actually, as I pointed out to him in my response, I hadn’t changed my mind. I was not addressing the issue of the historical status of Adam as an individual in the earlier book, and if I had, I would have made my view clear. I was rather simply appealing back to the story found in Genesis 1–3. Indeed, if I preached on Genesis 1–3 or Romans 5, I would not make a point of the fact that Adam and Eve are literary representatives of a historical reality rather than historical individuals. It would be unnecessary and distracting to do so. But if I were teaching a Sunday school class on the subject or if the issue came up in some other context where it was relevant, I would make my viewpoint clear. After all, a Sunday school class allows for questions and nuanced answers in a way that a sermon doesn’t.
Romans 5 and Original Sin
Romans 5 is rightly taken to be one of the main texts, if not the main text, that teaches the important biblical truth that all humans are sinful from birth and that we all have some type of connection to the first sin perpetrated by Adam.83 Paul presents Adam (whom we are taking as a literary representation of the first humans endowed with the divine image) as the one who introduces sin and death into the world. Notice, however, that Paul is not explicit about how Adam’s sin affects us, and so theologians have stepped into the breach to explain this. My point in what follows is that the Bible clearly teaches that humanity’s first sin does relate to all subsequent humans including ourselves, telling us that we are all sinners and that we all experience death, but there is room for talking about the exact nature of the relationship between Adam and Eve and ourselves. Indeed, here again I think science can help us read the Bible better, not by undermining the doctrine of original sin but rather in disqualifying certain theological models of original sin, particularly the “inheritance” model (that we inherit sin from Adam like a genetic disease). Such a view necessitates a genetic connection with Adam. But first let’s make one thing absolutely clear, because it is frequently misunderstood. Paul asserts that Adam’s sin introduces sin and death into the world. Notice that he says nothing about guilt. Paul’s point here is not that we are all guilty because of Adam’s sin but that we are guilty because “all [including you and me] sinned” (Rom. 5:12). It is important to point this out, because many have a contrary view that goes back to a grave misunderstanding handed down from Augustine. Augustine, the rightly revered theologian who lived around AD 400, was not so accomplished a Greek scholar. He mistranslated the Greek of Romans 5:12 so that it read (in Latin), “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, in whom [rather than “because”] all sinned . . .” This misunderstanding led to the idea that Paul explicitly stated that Adam’s sin is counted as our sin, that we inherit our sinful nature from Adam’s act.84 As many have pointed out, such a view attributes an alien guilt to us. But if the Greek is translated correctly (as in the NIV and all other modern translations), it is clear that, while Adam (who we believe represents the first humans holding the status of divine image bearers) introduced sin and death into the world (by being the first), our sin is our sin (not his), and our death is the result of our sin (not his). Some people believe that unless one holds a view of original sin similar to Augustine’s, entailing the idea that Adam’s sin is in some sense counted as our sin, then one somehow denies original sin. But the truth is that there are other ways to account for our relationship to Adam’s first sin. Again, remember the Bible is not explicit about the nature of that relationship, so at this point we are engaged in second-order theological reasoning, not something the Bible directly teaches. The view that I find most satisfying in terms of accounting for the biblical material while also recognizing the validity of contemporary scientific understanding (remember, “Science can help us read the Bible better”) is as follows. In the first place, the story of Adam and Eve tells us what we would all do if we were in their circumstance. Indeed, it tells us what we all do from birth. We turn in on ourselves and act out of our own selfish pride and desires rather than out of obedience to God. In this sense, Adam and Eve, whether standing for the first humans created in the image of God or a representative couple in that group, are our representatives. Adam and Eve’s sin was to assert their moral autonomy over against God’s clear command. God said not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit does not represent simply the intellectual apprehension of what is good and evil. In that sense, they already knew what was evil (eating the fruit). By eating, they gained a different kind of knowledge, the experiential type, and evil became part of who they were. They thought they knew better than God, but they were wrong and suffered the consequences. And, in a sense, we all suffer the consequences, not because we inherit Adam and Eve’s guilt for their sin, but because their sin so disrupted the cosmic and social order that it is not possible for those who come after them (who, remember, would do what they did in the same situation) not to sin.85 One frequently hears a specious argument made by those who want to defend the idea that Adam and Eve were historical individuals and the first and sole progenitors of humanity (over against overwhelming scientific evidence) that if Adam was not a historical individual, then there was no need for Jesus to come and redeem humanity. It is certainly not necessary for Adam to be a historical individual for all of us sinners to need Jesus if we are to be reconciled to God. No one I know is trying to make the argument that humans are not sinners in need of a savior.
EXCURSUS
Critiquing a Last-Gasp Effort to Undo Evolutionary Creationism
Just around the time I turned in this manuscript, a massive (almost one thousand pages) critique of evolutionary creationism, the view that I hold, appeared: Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique.86 When I first heard about this volume, I thought, Oh no, I am going to have to rewrite or even change some of my views if the authors came up with new ideas or critiques of the views that I hold and express here (yeah, that is what it is like when you finish a manuscript). I determined, as I told one of the editors in an email, that I would read it with openness. Fortunately (at least for my time budget), I found little new or particularly challenging to what I have already written. Part of this may be because I was one of the editors of the recent Dictionary of Christianity and Science,87 and many of the contributors to Theistic Evolution wrote articles for that work and expressed the same ideas there. Still, from what I can tell, Theistic Evolution is getting a wide hearing in certain sectors of the evangelical church. For this reason, I have provided a short critique for those who might be interested. I do want to admit that Theistic Evolution fairly critiques some ideas held by a few evolutionary creationists, but then again I also critique those ideas in this book (e.g., those who deny a historical fall or original sin). But even while they do this, the authors give the impression that they are imploding the whole evolutionary-creationist approach. Indeed, they associate evolutionary creationism as a whole with some of its, shall we say, more careless articulations. Let’s begin with the false dilemma set up by Wayne Grudem, that we have a choice between historical and figurative interpretation of Genesis 1– 3.88 My previous comments point out that the best reading of Genesis 1–11 is that it is history that uses figurative language. In regard to biblical interpretation, I would also contest what one author claims is a “natural reading of the Genesis account,” which he associates with a reading that takes Genesis 1–2 as a straightforward depiction of how God created things, including the indefensible understanding of the “kinds” of Genesis 1 that precludes the idea that there could be common descent.89 There is nothing natural about a reading that is not aware of the proper genre of the account nor of its “cognitive environment,” as we discussed earlier. We also hear frequently in this volume, for instance from Stephen C. Meyer, that the theory of biological evolution is failing. Such a perspective can only be had if one reads only the intelligent design literature. And the same author makes the astounding charge that evolutionary creationists have entered “a hasty marriage” between the Bible and biology.90 Hasty! It has been 150 years of repeated confirmation of the theory of evolution. Many of the contributors in this volume make much of what they think is a contradiction within the idea of evolutionary creationism. That is, if God is involved as evolutionary creationists insist, then how can the process of natural selection be random as the theory of evolution claims? However, we should not think that though the process of creation appears to us to be random, this means that it is actually random. Remember what we said about the book of Esther. It sure seems “random” or pure chance that on a sleepless night Xerxes had his people read about Mordecai’s efforts to foil an assassination plot, but we all know that a deeper plan was at work. These critics of “randomness” in evolution again show an anemic view of providence. Further, we get the idea from these contributors that whenever a later biblical author refers to Adam and Eve or to the story of Genesis 1–3, they believe they were historical individuals. As I earlier said, this is a patronizing comment on the biblical authors. When they refer to Adam and Eve, they are referring to the characters of the story; they are not commenting on their individual historical existence. I must also say something about the scientists who contribute to the book. Their credentials are impressive, to be sure. They are extremely intelligent people, as are all the contributors to this volume, but it is striking to note how few of them are biologists. Even if one is a brilliant mathematician or paleontologist, one is not in a privileged position to offer special insight into biology. It would be like me, something of an expert in Hebrew and other ancient Semitic languages (and therefore linguistics), offering comments on modern Slavic. The fact that there are hosts of Christian PhDs in biology who are evolutionary creationists and so very, very few who are not is remarkable, if not telling. In my private conversations with a couple of Christian biologists who do not accept evolution (not contributors to this volume), they acknowledge the extent to which they are outliers in their field and how strong the evidence is for evolution. They choose not to accept the theory, however, because they have been told or have come to believe that the Bible teaches otherwise. I commend their faith, but this is a sacrifice I feel they don’t have to and shouldn’t make, because it defends an interpretation of the Bible that is not sustainable. In the spirit of cooperation, let me make a concession of sorts—not about evolution per se, but about the emergence of life out of inanimate matter and the rise of consciousness and a moral sense. Perhaps these will never be explained through secondary physical processes. These may be lacunae naturae causa (gaps due to nature) and not lacunae ignorantiae causa (gaps due to ignorance). But we can’t insist that the emergence of life will never be given a natural explanation, and if such matters are given a scientific answer, it won’t be a problem for what the Bible itself claims.
Conclusion
It is my conclusion that evolution and all its entailments are no threat to the biblical account of creation, which has no interest in telling us about God’s method of creation. In my opinion, to argue against evolution is not a defense of the Bible but rather brings embarrassment to the gospel (in the sense that Augustine describes those who try to argue that the Bible differs from the conclusions derived from the honest research of even nonChristian thinkers). That is not to say that every contemporary Christian, or even evangelical, interpreter who accepts evolution is correct on every account. For instance, those who use science to deny the historical nature of the fall or who believe that Paul was mistaken about the historical character of Adam and Eve go against the grain of what the Scriptures teach. While the Bible does not teach evolution, our awareness that God used evolution to create humanity and also the scientific conclusion that humanity does not go back to a single couple, while not undermining any teaching of the Bible, do lend evidence about certain theological implications from what the Bible teaches. As we saw above, for instance, while evolution does not contradict the idea of original sin nor its effects on all humanity, it does disqualify at least one theory often presented for how we relate to that original sin—namely the so-called inheritance model. In this way, we saw that science can actually help us read the Bible better. Another benefit of understanding that the Bible does not teach us how God created humans is to get readers to really pay attention to what the Bible does teach about God and humanity. Above, we pointed out that Genesis 1–3 is profound in its foundational teaching about the nature of God and who we are as humans. To obsess over something the Bible does not teach makes us blind to what it does teach. The issue of creation and evolution has already in an important sense raised the issue of historical reference in the Bible. I have argued that Genesis 1–11 is neither straightforward historical narrative nor nonhistorical myth but rather is describing actual events using figurative language. We now turn to a continuation of the issue of historical reference in relation to the rest of the Old Testament. As we will see, some evangelical Protestant scholars raise the question of the historicity of redemptive acts in the rest of the Old Testament. We will focus this discussion in what is perhaps the most discussed moment of that redemptive story—namely, the exodus and the related conquest. Did the exodus and conquest happen, and does it matter whether they did?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What were your opinions about creation and evolution before reading this chapter? Have they changed, and, if so, how? 2. Do you think it is fair to say that Genesis 1 and 2 are about the who of creation rather than the how? Why or why not? 3. Does knowledge of ancient Near Eastern creation stories help us understand the biblical account. If yes, how so? 4. What do you think about the “two books” theology of the Belgic Confession, where God speaks truly through Scripture and nature? 5. Describe in your own words what this chapter calls “theological history.” Would you agree that Genesis 1–3 (and even 1–11) is theological history? 6. What do the two opening chapters of Genesis teach us about God? About ourselves? 7. Are you convinced that the description of God’s creation of the cosmos, the world, and humans is largely figurative? Which are the most persuasive examples of figurative depiction? Which examples are not as convincing? 8. What does it mean to be created in the image of God? 9. What is the fall? Is it a historical event according to Genesis 3 or Romans 5:12–21? 10. What is original sin? Does the Bible teach it? Is it compatible with evolutionary theory?
Chapter 2. History: Did the Exodus and Conquest Happen, and Does It Matter? 79
The Controversy 80
The Question of Genre and History 90
The Historicity of the Exodus and Conquest 92
EXCURSUS: The Dates of the Exodus and the Conquest 103
Conclusion 117
EXCURSUS: Levite Origins of the Exodus? 120
Chapter 2. History: Did the Exodus and Conquest Happen, and Does It Matter?
I remember it as if it were yesterday, though it happened a little over fifty years ago. My family was attending a large community church in our rather affluent neighborhood. I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, the age to become a member. A final step in the membership process was a meeting with one of the pastoral staff. My interviewer was one of the older ministers who was nearing retirement. The only specific memory that I have of the meeting was when he asked me at the end, “Do you have any questions before you become a member?” While I forget what led me to say it, I remember saying rather sheepishly, “Well, I am having a hard time believing that the stories that I read in the Bible actually happened.” My minister responded without missing a beat, “Don’t worry about it. We don’t think they happened either.” To be honest, I didn’t worry about it, and I became a member. If it didn’t bother him that the story of the gospel wasn’t historical, then why should I worry about it? When I was seventeen, however, a young Baptist minister who moved into the area befriended our high school football team and presented the gospel to me in a clear way that affirmed the historical nature of Jesus’s life, crucifixion, and resurrection. It was then that I became a Christian. And from that moment on I realized it was important to affirm that the biblical story had a connection with real events and wasn’t “just a story.”
The Controversy
Historicity has become a controversial issue in some sections of the evangelical Protestant church in a way that it hasn’t been before.1 And I think the best way to understand this challenge is to engage with the work of four scholars who make an evangelical case for questioning the historicity of Old Testament narratives such as the exodus and the conquest —Kenton Sparks, Peter Enns, Megan Bishop Moore, and Brad Kelle.2 I will then raise what I believe are theological problems with their views before presenting an argument in favor of affirming the historicity of what I call the redemptive history of the Old Testament. Sparks, Enns, and Moore and Kelle will be my main dialogue partners here, but I think it is important to consider their works within a broader context. When I first began my serious academic study of the Bible in the 1970s, there were essentially two major schools of thought when it came to the question of history and the Old Testament. There were differences among those within these two schools, to be sure, but scholars could generally be divided into those who felt comfortable defending the historicity of the main contours of the biblical story (today this group would be called “maximalists”) and those who questioned the veracity of the early history of Israel (typically until the period of the monarchy) but still felt that later Israelite history was generally reliable, at least in the main points. Evangelical Protestants as well as some conservative Jewish and Catholic thinkers constituted the bulk of the first group, while most other scholars positioned themselves in the second. The difference between the two groups was largely due to their different stances toward the Bible itself. The first group’s perspective was shaped by its belief that the Bible holds a special status as the Word of God and would not mislead its readers. Thus, when it makes historical claims, these statements could be taken as reliable testimony to past events. The other school of thought believed that the Bible needed to be treated as any other ancient document and be subject to the same kind of historical-critical analysis. Since, according to this second group, scholarly analysis of the Bible needed to proceed by means that were acceptable to believers and unbelievers alike, one could neither accept the special status of the Bible’s claim to be the Word of God nor accept the worldview that the Bible itself reflects. Let me offer a personal illustration. I remember distinctly what a very close scholarly friend of mine said when I told him that I was coauthoring a history of Israel during the biblical period.3 He responded immediately, “You can’t believe in God and write history.” Of course, I disagreed with him, but I understood where he was coming from. To take the biblical accounts seriously, accounts that describe God’s intervention in history, one needs to think there is a God who can so intervene. If you don’t think there is such a God (or if you think that you can’t introduce God into the discussion for some other reason), then you won’t write a history that speaks about God’s involvement (and you won’t take a history written with such a presupposition seriously). So again, that was the lay of the scholarly landscape up until about 1980. In the past few decades the situation has grown more complex, and I will highlight two trends that have led to our present intra-evangelical controversy. The first is the rise of what many call “minimalism.” The name rightly implies that minimalist scholars are the opposite of maximalists, asserting that the Bible contains very little reliable historical information.4 Such scholars obviously differ from evangelicals, who tend to be maximalists. But they also differ from many of their historical-critical colleagues, since they think that not only the early history of Israel but also much of the later history is unreliable. After all, they argue, the historical claims made in the Old Testament were fictions created by a people who first came into the land in either the Persian or the Greek period. The purpose of these “histories” was to lay claim to the land by devising a story about their God giving them the land. The Bible is an ideological document that can’t be trusted for historical information, and those who do trust it are themselves ideologues either for religious purposes or, in the case of those who believe that the Hebrew Bible gives present-day Israel the divine right to the land, for political purposes. The second relevant development is the acceptance by some evangelical scholars of the arguments of historical critics and, in the case of some, even minimalists. It is this development in particular that I am responding to in this chapter. So let’s turn to the works of Sparks, Enns, and Moore and Kelle. I will provide a summary of their arguments, and then in the following sections I will engage more deeply many of the topics that the summaries introduce.
Kenton Sparks
In his book God’s Word in Human Words,5 Kenton Sparks, discussing the exodus, chides a number of fellow evangelical scholars (including moi) for our failure to embrace historical-critical scholarship. He provides an argument in favor of doing so. At this point, I want to look particularly at how he views the exodus, as this is a pivotal event in salvation history, a key test case with regard to the historicity of the Old Testament narratives, and a useful window into the broader issues.
Sparks concludes that there is no justification for affirming a historical basis to the exodus story. After all, he says, there is no evidence for such an event. Of course, many of us would point to the Bible itself as testimony to the event, but he challenges the use of the Bible in this way. Should we uncritically accept all ancient testimonies? My response would be, “Of course not,” but we should at a minimum respect the Bible (and other ancient documents) as a testimony, and to reject it we would need to provide arguments against it.6
What concerns Sparks and what constitutes for him an argument against the biblical account of the exodus is that there is no Egyptian evidence. Wouldn’t such a dramatic moment in Egyptian history, as described in the Bible, leave some trace in Egyptian sources? A whole generation of firstborn dead, a defeat at the sea, and the loss of slave labor? We will deal with this specific objection at greater length below. Suffice it to say here that the Egyptians did not mention this moment in their records likely because they weren’t in the habit of recording their humiliating defeats, particularly since most of the records we have of this time period in Egypt are on monumental architecture or steles.
Sparks is aware of this defense, and his comeback is that they had other defeats that we do know about: What about the Hyksos (a Semitic group that came in and took over Lower Egypt for much of the sixteenth century BC)? What about the Sea Peoples who attacked the Delta area around 1200 BC? My response to this rejoinder is that these events are not similar to the situation with the exodus story. We know about the Hyksos because a native Egyptian dynasty eventually booted them out of the land and chased them up into Palestine. We learn about the Sea Peoples because the Egyptians did not suffer a serious defeat at their hands but rebuffed them so that they had to go up the Mediterranean coast to find a place where they could land (heard of the Philistines?). So the exodus account is not similar to these two proposed analogies. There is no happy ending for the Egyptians in the story of the exodus as there is for Sparks’s examples.
That said, it’s not as if Sparks feels that there is no historical background to the exodus story. He writes:
It requires only a little imagination to see how the biblical story might dimly reflect actual events in ancient Egypt. Many of the motifs in the exodus story have an historical flavor—not in the sense of specific events but rather as recurring historical patterns in ancient Egyptian history. Good examples include the motifs of Pharaoh and his Asiatic slaves, of the Egyptian oppression of Palestine, of travel and trade between Egypt and Palestine, and of the great plagues that commonly wreaked havoc in ancient Egypt. These kinds of things certainly did happen. So it is quite possible that the exodus tradition is historical, at least in the sense that it summarizes as one story what were actually the repetitive patterns of life in ancient Egypt and Western Asia. (99–100)
It is my fear, however, that this sense of the historical background of the exodus story cannot carry the weight of the Bible’s theological use of it, as I will argue below. Indeed, that fear is not assuaged when he says, “Nevertheless, even if we grant the possibility of miracles like the Passover and the parting of the Red Sea—as thoughtful Christians should—we must admit that the expected historical evidence for these miracles is wanting” (100).
Let me be clear. Sparks does not deny that miracles and supernatural events happen. He strongly affirms the resurrection of Jesus. He wants to be historical-critical, to be sure, but he rejects the philosophical presuppositions of traditional historical criticism, which denies the possibility of the supernatural.7 But he says that even though there is no direct historical evidence for the resurrection (as he believes there isn’t for the exodus), there is a long historical reverberation for Jesus’s resurrection as evidenced by the growth and dedication of the church (unlike the exodus, which he says left nothing in its wake). But we might ask, What about Israel? What about the impression that the exodus made on Israelites as their founding event as a nation and on the nation’s hopes for the future? We will come back to this question below.
Peter Enns
In his book The Bible Tells Me So,8 Peter Enns says so much that is right and good on the subject of biblical historiography. Much of it sounds very familiar (oh yeah, I was his professor; but so was Raymond Dillard, from whom we both learned a lot about biblical history). Enns is right to point out that accounts of the past are not objective but rather shaped in order to depict the past in ways that are relevant to issues in the author’s present. Historical accounts are always selective and interpretive. Enns appropriately uses the contrast between Samuel-Kings and Chronicles to illustrate this point. But he is wrong to suggest that there are contradictions between them when rightly understood. He is also right to talk about the story-like character of the depiction of the past and to remind us of the power of story. As I said, there is a lot that I like about his treatment of history.
But some elements of his discussion and suggestions and the way he states things make me uneasy, particularly when it comes to early history— that is, the time before the monarchy. I will focus on what he says about the exodus and conquest because that is the period that I am concentrating on here.
Enns, like Sparks, points out the lack of what we will call “direct evidence” for the exodus and conquest. There is no mention of Israel’s presence in Egypt, nor are there remnants in the wilderness of people who traveled there for forty years. Archaeology has not provided evidence of a violent intrusion into the land of Canaan in either the fifteenth or thirteenth century BC (the two possible dates for the exodus and conquest). In his inimitable way, Enns makes light of attempts to understand this lack of evidence. We will deal with these issues later. For now we are interested to see how he deals with the question of the historicity of the exodus and conquest.
In my opinion, he makes a gesture in the right direction when he says, “I feel pretty strongly, actually, that the exodus story has some historical basis; it wasn’t made up out of thin air. A story of national origins that begins ‘we were slaves’ doesn’t sound like the kind of thing people would try to come up with to make an impression. Perhaps a much smaller number of ‘Asiatic’ slaves—a few hundred or so—left Egypt under the leadership of a charismatic figure and made their way to Canaan” (117–18). But, though he feels strongly, he doesn’t develop this point or talk about why it is theologically important that there is a historical core here. And why a “few hundred or so”? Why not a few thousand? The biblical text can be read to support his (and my) idea that it is not describing a couple million slaves making the trip, so one does not even have to appeal to hyperbole, though that is also a possibility. The rest of Enns’s discussion surrounding the exodus and the conquest (on which he has only strong opinions that it didn’t happen as described in the book of Joshua) is about what really matters in the story. As he later states, “Whatever historical echo there is in the exodus story, Israel’s storytellers clearly exerted a lot of effort to dress it up in unhistorical clothing” (119). I will question this below.
Megan Bishop Moore and Brad Kelle
The most mystifying approach to these issues from within evangelical circles9 comes from Megan Bishop Moore and Brad Kelle’s Biblical History and Israel’s Past. Deferring to what they consider to be the scholarly consensus (more on this below), Moore and Kelle point out that there is no direct extrabiblical evidence that supports the idea of an exodus and wilderness wandering, so it is futile to make the case that the exodus and conquest happened as described in the Bible. They “discount” the attempts by some (most notably Kitchen and Hoffmeier) to suggest that the indirect evidence provides support for seeing a historical connection in these stories.
What confuses me is how the authors uncritically accept the consensus approach and conclusions of the historical-critical method. Their whole approach is to present what they say is the consensus scholarly view on matters of history and criticize others simply for not accepting that viewpoint. In the afterword, they conclude, “It will no longer be acceptable for a credible history to proceed with a traditional presentation that discounts positions that have come to occupy a central place in the broader scholarly conversation.”10 They seem to be advocating an uncritical reading of the broader scholarly community, an approach that is unreasonable and a bit naive.
This leads to another criticism of their approach: what they present as the viewpoints and methods of the broader scholarly community misrepresents the situation in the scholarly community. Or perhaps they define as “scholar” only those who operate by their methods and come to certain conclusions with which they agree. If one assesses the viewpoints on these issues from scholars who are teaching at schools across the country (not just Ivy League schools or state universities)11 and who have bona fide doctorates in biblical studies and are engaged in research, my guess is that by head count the “consensus” would go in the direction of finding historical validity for the broad outline of events in the biblical account of Israel’s history, not in the direction of the more skeptical conclusions of Moore and Kelle.
My point here is not to say that such matters are decided by a vote (my apologies to the Jesus Seminar) but to push back on Moore and Kelle when they make it sound like those who have a more appreciative view of the historical reliability of the biblical texts are some kind of minority outliers. My reaction to their comments on the broader scholarly community is similar to that of Kenneth Kitchen, known as one of the greatest Egyptologists of this generation, who wrote about twenty years ago, “Any ‘scholarly consensus’ that ‘early Israel was never in Egypt’ or did not exit Egypt is (on the total evidence available) a palpable nonsense and must be scrapped.”12
And finally, what do Moore and Kelle mean by “it will no longer be acceptable” to write a history that finds historical referents for the key events in the biblical account of Israel? Acceptable to whom? To them and those who agree with them? Again, I would guess that the scholarly consensus is not what they make it out to be, so the teaching in countless schools (and the writings of numerous scholars) doesn’t bear this out. I would have liked to see at this point in their work a robust discussion of the issues of faith and history, but the closest we come is in the afterword. There the discussion is centered on whether the faith of the interpreter ought to affect their approach to the text, but not, as far as I could see, whether one could still claim a theological significance to the exodus and conquest if there were no historical background to the stories. My own view, as I will make clear below, is that if there were no exodus and conquest, then these stories would be theologically uninteresting or irrelevant.
Conclusion
While there are similarities between the evangelical scholars I described above and minimalists, there is also a very important difference between them that we need to bear in mind. While skeptical of the Old Testament’s historical claims, these evangelical scholars fully embrace its theological message. We will return to an evaluation of their thinking in a moment, but first we need to address the question of genre and history, which serves as a background for our discussion.
The Question of Genre and History
Genre triggers our reading strategy. Authors write in such a way as to signal to their readers “how to take” their words and receive the message that they are communicating. I have already introduced the concept of genre in regard to the evolution/creation controversy in a way that anticipates this broader discussion of its relationship to issues of history, and those readers who may have skipped to this chapter before reading chapter 1 would do well to go back and read the relevant section.13 But, in short, not every biblical book or part thereof has an equal interest in or uniform approach to the narration of past events. It’s very important to examine a book’s genre to see what claims the author is making concerning the past and just how important the historicity of a story is to the author’s message.
Evangelicals do have a way of “overhistoricizing” the Bible—that is, treating every book as if it recounts events that occurred in space and time. I think this tendency is the result of a mistaken idea of inerrancy and apologetics. I have already affirmed the concept of inerrancy but again want to note that a proper understanding of that doctrine is that the Bible is true in everything it intends to teach. If a book does not intend to communicate that the story is historical, then to insist that it is historically true is a mistake.
Take the book of Job. The message of the book of Job is not dependent on Job being a real person or the book describing actual events. For one thing, Job’s suffering is didactic—that is, it teaches us about wisdom and suffering—not redemptive, part of the account of God’s work in space and time to reconcile his sinful people to himself. Like a parable, a story can teach us important lessons, but the story of redemption tells us how God actually entered into space and time to save us. The story of redemption, of course, culminates in Jesus’s death and resurrection, which is why Paul makes such a big deal about the necessity of Jesus’s actual resurrection in history (“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” [1 Cor. 15:14]). Job is not historical narrative. It is rather a “thought experiment” using Job’s suffering to reflect on important issues of theology.14
Again, we evangelicals have a tendency to treat the Bible as if it were all one genre. But even evangelicals recognize, in principle, that parts of the Bible are not historical, most especially the parables, which constitute such a large part of Jesus’s teaching. There may be someone somewhere, maybe even a scholar I am unaware of, who thinks otherwise, but the vast majority of readers, and certainly evangelical scholars, do not think that even the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) has to represent an actual event for it to communicate its message to its readers. They may disagree about the message, but they recognize that the genre of parable is best understood as a fictional story that addresses issues of theology and ethics.
But beyond the issue of historical and nonhistorical genres, there is the question of how genres interested and grounded in history portray the past. Here I want to address the misconception that when the Bible talks about the past, it does so objectively and in what we might call plain language. “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”15
Once again, we have already dealt with this issue in regard to the creation/evolution question, where we put forward the argument that although Genesis 1–3 intends to speak about the past, it does so using figurative language since it is covering the far distant past with a worldwide focus. Genesis 12 and following continues to present space-and-time events, but now with a sharper focus and closer attention to detail. As we deal with the issue of historicity in the following section, we will focus on the exodus and conquest, which continue the account of redemptive history begun in Genesis 12–50 and therefore are more closely related to that part of Genesis than to the first eleven chapters. Even so, as we will see concerning the use of hyperbole in Joshua 1–12, we encounter the use of figurative language even here.
The Historicity of the Exodus and Conquest
With this background on genre and history, we return to the controversy over historicity that has recently arisen within evangelical circles. Let’s begin with the exodus from Egypt as an example.
Sparks is very clear that, as historians, we cannot believe that anything like the biblical account of the exodus took place. There is no extrabiblical evidence for it. No Egyptian source or monument talks about it or the presence of Israel in that nation. No archaeological remains of Israel’s wandering are found in the wilderness. And, perhaps most fatally, the archaeology of the conquest, which the Bible says took place forty years after the exodus, does not comport well with the biblical description, whether the exodus is dated to the fifteenth century or the thirteenth century BC. All we have is the Bible with no corroborating evidence.
But Sparks also believes that the exodus retains its power in telling us about the nature of God as a redeemer, one who can rescue his people from slavery. Such a message does not need to be communicated by the account of a historical event—a story will do just as well. Stories are compelling and can tell us something true about God. We should not worry about whether the exodus actually happened because we lose nothing of importance about its message if it didn’t.
But is this really the case? Is the theological message of the exodus independent of its historicity? I would have to answer this question in the negative. If the exodus did not happen, then there would be no theological value to the story. Why? Because the power of the story of the exodus is that it establishes a track record for God. Let me illustrate my point by looking at Psalm 77, a psalm that looks back on the exodus event as a source of comfort in a difficult present and hope for an uncertain future. The composer, identified in the title as Asaph, the Levitical temple musician, starts his lament by explaining his sorry situation to the congregation:
I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands, and I would not be comforted. (77:1–2)
As is typical for psalms, Asaph does not specify his problem. We don’t know whether he or a loved one was ill or he or his community were under attack or threatened in some way. What we do know is that the psalms, while written out of personal experience, were composed so that people who came afterward could use the psalms for their own similar, though not necessarily identical, situations.
John Calvin called the psalms a “mirror of the soul”: “What various and resplendent riches are contained in this treasure, it were difficult to find words to describe. . . . I have been wont to call this book not inappropriately, an anatomy of all parts of the soul; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”16 As we look into a physical mirror, we see how we are doing on the outside. As we read the psalms, we find words that help us articulate what is going on in our hearts. In other words, we find ourselves identifying with the psalmist as he speaks, and his words help give words to what we are thinking and feeling. In the next verses, the psalmist addresses his anger and disappointment directly to God:
I remembered you, God, and I groaned; I meditated, and my spirit grew faint. You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak. I thought about the former days, the years of long ago; I remembered my songs in the night. My heart meditated and my spirit asked: “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” (77:3–9)
The “former days” were the good days of the past. Days of celebration and of singing songs, presumably hymns. After all, those are the types of songs we sing when life is going great. Laments are for times when life is full of difficulties. The psalmist is right. When we are in a time of lament, remembering the times when we sang hymns just makes us feel worse. The psalmist’s angry disappointment then escalates to the next stage, which we see in the series of six questions directed straight at God. When we look closely, we can appreciate the bitterness behind these questions. They are rhetorical questions that aren’t really looking for answers. They are veiled accusations. Words like favor, unfailing love, promise, and compassion, as well as the reference to God’s mercy, are all related to God’s covenant with his people. God had entered into a covenant, a solemn and legal commitment, to treat his people with favor, compassion, mercy, and love. The psalmist is questioning God’s truthfulness. “You said you would be our God and take care of us, but with the way my life is going, I think you were lying!”
But the psalm does more than help readers pour out their feelings to God; it also directs them back to him. Notice how the psalm, like many laments (compare, for example, Psalm 69), ends on a positive note:
Your ways, God, are holy. What God is as great as our God? You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples. With your mighty arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. (77:13–15)
But unlike the bulk of the laments, Asaph informs us about what led to his change of attitude:
Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.” (77:10–12)
“I will remember the deeds of the LORD!”. The psalmist looks to the past in order to live in the present with confidence and to approach the future with hope. But why? Why does remembering the past help us now? At the very end, the psalmist gives us a concrete example:
The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and writhed; the very depths were convulsed. The clouds poured down water, the heavens resounded with thunder; your arrows flashed back and forth. Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind, your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked. Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. (77:16–20)
Asaph, of course, is referring to the climax of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the Reed Sea17 (Exod. 14–15). He pictures the event as a battle between God and the waters of the sea itself. By personifying the waters, the poet evokes the picture of the waters as standing for evil. God fights the waters of chaos in order to open up a path of safety for his people. The Israelites themselves are pictured as God’s flock, whom he, through the agency of Moses and Aaron, leads through “the darkest valley” (Ps. 23:4) to safety.
What is it about the Reed Sea crossing that so encourages the suffering psalmist (and us as we identify with the speaker)? The psalmist can’t sleep because he cannot see any way out of his predicament. There is nothing he can do to help himself. And it is here that he sees the analogy between his situation and that of those who found themselves on the shore of the sea. The Israelites had no possibility of escape from a gruesome fate. They had an impassable sea at their back as a humiliated and furious Pharaoh charged toward them with his army of “six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them” (Exod. 14:7). It was in the face of what looked like certain destruction that God opened up the sea and provided a surprising means of escape. It was in the light of the exodus that the psalmist remembered that his God was a God who could rescue his people even when it appeared humanly impossible. If he did it in the past, he could do it in the present. Life did not appear as impossible to him as it previously had.
The exodus event so imprinted itself on the memory of later Israel that its theme reverberates throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament. Not only do we get echoes of the event in psalms like Psalm 77, but the prophets also refer to it as a paradigm for a future restoration after the coming judgment that is the main focus of their oracles. Listen to the echo of the exodus event in Hosea 2:14–15:
Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
Hosea is writing in the eighth century BC, centuries after the exodus. He envisions the coming judgment, which will be realized in the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom and the Babylonian conquest of the Southern Kingdom as a return to captivity. But that is not the end of the story. God will deliver his people, and they will return from the wilderness (“as in the day she came up out of Egypt”). The Valley of Achor will this time be a “door of hope” (Achor means “trouble” and was named because of the sin of a man named Achan after the battle at Jericho [see Josh. 7]).
While Ezra-Nehemiah reflects an understanding that this second exodus comes to at least a partial fulfillment at the time of the return from the exile, the Gospel writers make it abundantly clear that the ultimate fulfillment of the anticipated second exodus comes in the ministry of Jesus. The Gospels go to great lengths to show us that Jesus’s life and work follow the pattern of the exodus event. We Christian readers often miss it because we are not as familiar with the Old Testament as we should be.
Indeed, the parallels between the exodus and Jesus are so extensive that we can only scratch the surface here. Let’s begin with his baptism. Jesus’s baptism relates to the Israelites’ crossing of the sea; what follows, Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness, relates to what follows the crossing of the sea —namely, Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. Paul, after all, tells us that Israel’s Reed Sea crossing was their experience of baptism (1 Cor. 10:1–6); therefore, Jesus’s baptism can be compared to their crossing of the sea.
At the end of his forty days in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11), Jesus experiences the same temptations that Israel did in its wilderness wanderings. The only difference is that Jesus does not succumb to the temptations. The first temptation for Jesus is to turn the stones into bread. The Israelites in the wilderness were constantly grumbling about food, but Jesus resists the devil’s temptation by citing the book of Deuteronomy: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt. 4:4, quoting Deut. 8:3). The second temptation is for Jesus to test God by throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy a second time: “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt. 4:7, quoting Deut. 6:16). His final test is the call to bend the knee and worship the devil, but quoting Deuteronomy a third time, he responds, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only” (Matt. 4:10, quoting Deut. 6:13). Jesus cites Deuteronomy three times knowing that that book contains Moses’s final sermon to the children of the exodus generation, who had disobeyed God in the wilderness and had died there. Jesus is the obedient Son of God in contrast to the disobedient sons of God.
The comparisons continue throughout the Gospels. Jesus chooses twelve disciples to reflect a new people of God. He gives a sermon on a mountain where he discusses the law (Matt. 5–7), which evokes the memory of God giving the law on Mount Sinai. And the parallels go on and on. This analogy culminates with Jesus’s death by crucifixion on the eve of the Passover, the annual celebration of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. Our point is that the exodus reverberates throughout the Old Testament into the New in a way that shows its pivotal importance not only as a literary theme but as an actual redemptive event that anticipates an even greater redemptive event.
The conquest plays a similar role in later Israel’s thinking in a psalm like Psalm 136, which celebrates the exodus:
[Give thanks] to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt His love endures forever.
and brought Israel out from among them His love endures forever.
with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.
to him who divided the Red Sea asunder His love endures forever.
and brought Israel through the midst of it, His love endures forever.
but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever.
to him who led his people through the wilderness; His love endures forever. (136:10–16)
The psalmist then moves on to the conquest:
to him who struck down great kings, His love endures forever.
and killed mighty kings— His love endures forever.
Sihon king of the Amorites His love endures forever.
and Og king of Bashan— His love endures forever.
and gave their land as an inheritance, His love endures forever.
an inheritance to his servant Israel. His love endures forever. (136:17–22)
Though not as widely recognized, some prophets looked forward to a future conquest as well as a future exodus. By the time of Daniel, Zechariah, and Malachi, Israel had been both the benefactor of the divine warrior and the object of his judgment. These exilic and postexilic prophets lived during a time when Israel lived under the thumb of a foreign oppressor. They looked forward to the intervention of the divine warrior, the God who had fought on their behalf in the past.
In his first apocalyptic vision, for example, Daniel sees four terrifying beasts arising out of the chaotic sea (Dan. 7:1–8). According to an interpreting angel, these beasts represent evil human kingdoms that threaten the people of God. The second half of the vision shifts from the beasts that represent human kingdoms to human figures that stand for the divine realm. Into the presence of a figure that symbolizes God the judge (“the Ancient of Days” [7:9]) comes “one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven” (7:13). While this figure is “like a son of man,” meaning “like a human being,” he rides the clouds, the divine war chariot, thus clearly showing that he is not really human.
This vision with two figures that represent divine beings is quite radical for the Old Testament and explains why this passage is quoted so often in the New Testament in reference to Christ (Matt. 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27; Rev. 1:7). What is clear is that this passage and others in the writings of the exilic and postexilic prophets lead to a strong expectation of a warrior-messiah who will save God’s people from their oppressors. This expectation stands behind John the Baptist’s statement, “After me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:11–12). In the next chapter, on divine violence, we will develop further how Jesus meets John’s expectations in a rather surprising way, revealing himself as the warrior God who fights on behalf of his people. In this way, not only the exodus but also the conquest anticipates Jesus.18
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the biblical authors certainly believed that the exodus and conquest were space-and-time events as well as the conclusion that the historicity of these events is important for their theological significance. Christopher Ansberry gets it right when he says, “If Yahweh never intervened on Israel’s behalf to deliver her from Egypt, then the nation’s identity as the elect people of God is deprived of its foundation. What’s more, if Yahweh never intervened on Israel’s behalf to save her from Egypt, then her hope that Yahweh would again intervene in history to exact her deliverance from exile is largely baseless.”19
Why Do Some Doubt the Historicity of the Exodus and Conquest?
THE LACK OF DIRECT EVIDENCE
As I pointed out above, Sparks, Enns, and Moore and Kelle argue that there is no direct evidence to support the story of the exodus and conquest. They are correct in reference to extrabiblical textual or archaeological attestations. But they buy into the minimalist arguments and wrongly dismiss the Bible itself as an example of direct evidence to these events. The biblical text itself should be taken seriously as historical testimony.20 While even those who think the Bible is just like any ancient text need to reckon with it as testimony, those of us who take the Bible as the Word of God must take it even more seriously. If the Bible is God’s self-revelation, then it is, as the various evangelical Protestant statements put it, true in all that it teaches, including in terms of history. Of course, my comments assume that the books of Exodus and Joshua are works of history, a point widely accepted even among those who think the history is unreliable. But we also need to read these books not as modern history but rather as ancient Near Eastern history. We need to not only explore what I will call “indirect evidence” for the exodus and conquest but also come to grips with the nature of the events themselves as described in the biblical text. But before proceeding further, we must take a moment to do our best to situate the time period in which these events purport to take place.
EXCURSUS
The Dates of the Exodus and the Conquest21
As we turn to the question of the historicity of these events, we must first enter the contentious debate about the dating of these events. This debate, of course, only takes place among those scholars who believe that the exodus and conquest actually occurred in space and time. Among these scholars, the issue is whether these events happened during the Late Bronze Age, specifically the fifteenth century BC, or during the Early Iron Age, specifically the thirteenth century BC. The Bible does not date things the way that we do today (BC and AD), nor does it use any kind of absolute dating system. Instead, it employs a system of relative dates (such and so happened x number of years after such and so; A became king in the third year of King B). One obstacle, then, has to do with converting the Bible’s relative dates into our absolute dates. More on this later.
One problem (at least to us with our present interests) is that the biblical account of the exodus never mentions the Egyptian pharaoh by name. If the story had referred specifically to Ramesses or some other pharaoh, we would immediately be on solid ground in terms of dating the period in which the exodus took place, but it does not. Jim Hoffmeier suggests that the avoidance of the personal name of the pharaoh mimics the Egyptian practice of never mentioning the name of an enemy king. In this way, it discourages the memory of the king.22 But no matter the reason, we do not have the name of the pharaoh, so we have to use more indirect means to situate the story.
As has long been recognized, the most important statement about the date of the exodus is found in 1 Kings 6:1, and here is where the debate begins. In this passage the narrator tells us, “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the LORD.” This verse looks simple enough, at least at first glance. If we can figure out which year was Solomon’s fourth year and add 480 years to it, we would be golden. As it turns out, we can come to a pretty solid date, but first we have to talk about turning those relative dates into absolute dates. The details are tedious, but we can rehearse the basic principles that allow such a conversion.23
We start by realizing that all dating in the ancient Near East, not just in Israel, was relative dating, including in ancient Assyria. The Assyrians kept what they called limmu lists. These limmu (or eponym) lists note each year by the name of a prominent person who was chosen to be the eponym of that year. Some also mention a prominent event of that year. Here is an excerpt from a limmu list that proves relevant for our topic:
(In the eponymate of) Ninurta-mukinnishi, of Habruri, to Hatarikka; plague.
(In the eponymate of) Sidqi-ilu, of Tushan, the king stayed in the land.
(In the eponymate of) Bursagele, of Guzan, revolt in the citadel of Ashur; in the month of Siwan the sun had an eclipse.24
Notice that an eclipse is mentioned in the year in which Bursagele was the eponym. We have two such mentions of eclipses in the Assyrian dating system. The beautiful thing about an eclipse is that we can give it an absolute date, since eclipses happen on a regular cycle. Astronomers can tell us when an eclipse happened in Mesopotamia, and so we can convert this date into an absolute date: 763 BC. Voilà! Since there are relative dates in the Bible that connect the histories of Assyria and Israel (examples include 2 Kings 15:29; 16:7, 10), we have enough to work with to establish a fairly, but not completely, solid chronology for at least the first millennium BC (about the time of the united monarchy and after), while the matter is a little more tenuous for events that take place before the monarchy.
After all the computations have been completed, the result is that Solomon’s fourth year is 966 BC (give or take a year or two). With this datum, it seems that all we have to do is to add 480 (the number of 1 Kings 6:1)25 and presto, we have the date of the exodus: 1446 BC, the midfifteenth century. The conquest then would be forty years later.
Unfortunately, the archaeology of the twentieth century failed to corroborate this date and even, according to traditional interpretations of the remains, provided contrary evidence (more on interpretation in archaeological research later). Jericho (identified with Tell es-Sultan) was not occupied during the Late Bronze Age (1550–1250 BC) according to Kathleen Kenyon, who dug there in the 1950s, nor was Ai (identified with Et-Tell), the second city Joshua attacked. There was precious little evidence in this time period of a violent intrusion into the region, and the pottery typology did not reveal a change that might signal a shift of cultures from Canaanite to Israelite.
There were two reactions to this seeming tension between text and archaeology. The first was to reinterpret the archaeological evidence and maintain confidence of a fifteenth-century-BC date. Like the biblical text, archaeological remains require interpretation. Some methods of archaeology utilize scientific methods (like carbon-14 dating, which is not helpful for our question because the margin of error is too large for something this recent), but, really, archaeology is a soft science and more like an art. Thus, there are those who look at the same evidence as Kenyon did but come to a different conclusion. The most sustained and scholarly reinterpretation of the evidence in support of a fifteenth-century date was given by John Bimson.26 While failing to convince the field at large, Bimson does show that a reading of the archaeological evidence that supports a fifteenth-century date is possible. The other reaction among those who believe that the Bible gives a reliable report of the exodus and conquest is to reinterpret the biblical material in order to arrive at a date that conforms better with the archaeological evidence.27 In principle, I have no problem with this approach. As we discussed in the section on creation and evolution, science can help us read the Bible better, but here I would add the caveat that, as I just mentioned, we are dealing at best with soft science that does not deliver conclusions with the same measure of confidence as the hard sciences (or shouldn’t).
I would hazard to say that the vast majority of evangelical28 (and other)29 scholars of the Old Testament and the ancient Near East would argue as follows. The 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1 is not a literal number but a figurative one. After all, it is divisible twelve times by forty, the figurative number for a generation (presumably because of the forty years in the wilderness in which the adult generation that left Egypt died out). But while forty is a figurative number for a generation, a more accurate number for a generation would be twenty-five years (the average age when adults start having babies). Thus, getting the actual number of years between the exodus and Solomon’s fourth year requires multiplying twelve by twentyfive, which is three hundred years, and now, voilà for a second time, we come to 1266 BC for the date of the exodus, a thirteenth-century date.
The benefit of a thirteenth-century date (Early Iron Age) is that it works much better, though not perfectly (Ai remains a problem, for example),30 with the archaeology. And Ramesses II, who reigned during this time, makes for a good pharaoh of the exodus,31 particularly since one of the two store cites built by the Israelites was given the name Rameses (Exod. 1:11).32
Surprisingly, the debate between those who advocate a fifteenthcentury date and those who adopt a thirteenth-century date can get quite heated. At one point, for instance, Kitchen said that those who accepted an early date as the only option were “mentally lazy.”33 My own view is that those of us who think the exodus actually happened should cool down and realize that at least both schools of thought affirm a historical exodus of some sort. Whether traditional interpretation of archaeology or traditional interpretation of 1 Kings 6:1 needs to be revised (or a combination of the two) is not a matter of certainty. Thus, I personally don’t feel it necessary to decide between the two.34
THE NEED TO READ EXODUS THROUGH JOSHUA CAREFULLY
Next, we must reckon with the possibility that a reason we don’t have direct evidence outside the Bible for these events (and, according to some, even have contrary evidence) is that when we read the biblical text incorrectly, it leads to false expectations. When we read the stories in Exodus through Joshua outside their ancient Near Eastern context, we picture the exodus as the movement of millions of people out of Egyptian slavery, through the wilderness, and then as a massive invading force into Canaan, where the Israelites first encounter Jericho, a Canaanite city with huge impenetrable walls.
A closer reading allows us to see that the number of Israelites leaving Egypt may not have been anywhere near as large. As Colin Humphreys has pointed out, the fact that Numbers 3:46 says that there were “273 firstborn Israelites who exceed the number of Levites” and the fact that ’eleph does not necessarily mean “thousand” in a passage like Numbers 1:46 allow for the possibility that the Israelites leaving Egypt numbered in the thousands and not the millions. This perhaps explains why there is no direct Egyptian evidence of Israel’s presence in the land of Egypt or their departure through the wilderness.35 Also, with Hoffmeier, we must remember that the Egyptians were not in the practice of memorializing those who defeated them, which explains why the Egyptians left no record of the Israelites’ presence.36
When it comes to Jericho, and indeed all of Joshua 1–11, we should recognize the obvious hyperbole used in accounts of these battles. The emphasis in these chapters is on victory, celebrating the beginning of the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise of land. Also, Lawson Younger has reminded us of the use of hyperbole in ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts. This helps resolve some of the difficulties with the archaeological evidence against widespread destruction of Canaanite cities as well as the apparent conflict with Judges 1, which makes it quite clear that many Canaanites remained in the land even after the death of Joshua.37
In addition, Rick Hess has recently helped us arrive at a more nuanced reading of the Jericho account, indicating that the language may point to a sparsely populated military outpost whose main defensive structure was a wall of “‘a single line of unbaked mudbricks’ or better, a small circle of mud-brick houses that form a continuous wall around the center [of the city].”38 Such a wall could have eroded away, not leaving traces for later archaeologists to discover.
BUT WHY NO DIRECT EVIDENCE?
Before looking at the indirect evidence in favor of the exodus and conquest, we need to ask why the biblical text is the only direct evidence that we have of these events. We have already mentioned in response to Sparks above that the Egyptians were not in the habit of recording their defeats (in spite of his unpersuasive attempts to argue otherwise). But still, why aren’t there some remnants of Israelite occupation in the area where they rebuilt the store cities, for instance? Kitchen, the eminent Egyptologist, explains that the Israelites were in the East Delta zone and that “this fact imposes further severe limitations upon all inquiry into the subject. The Delta is an alluvial fan of mud deposited through many millennia by the annual flooding of the Nile; it has no source of stone within it. Mud, mud and wattle, and mud-brick structures were of limited duration and use, and were repeatedly leveled and replaced, and very largely merged once more with the mud of the fields.”39 Thus, Kitchen explains that the lack of direct evidence for Israelites in Egypt is not evidence of there being no exodus.
The Indirect Evidence in Favor of the Historicity of the Exodus and Conquest
Once we do this kind of careful reading of the text to see what the books of Exodus and Joshua actually say about the exodus and conquest, we can then marshal the considerable indirect evidence that would support the direct evidence (testimony) of the Bible for a historical exodus and conquest. A partial list of such indirect evidence would include the following.
THE MERNEPTAH/ISRAEL STELE
The Merneptah Stele, dated to the very end of the thirteenth century BC, contains the first extrabiblical mention of Israel, which is why it is sometimes called the Israel Stele. The name Merneptah Stele comes from the commemoration of a campaign into Canaan by the pharaoh of that name. Among his other victories in the region, he proudly (and hyperbolically) proclaimed that “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.”
A number of scholars, particularly the so-called minimalists, downplay or even dismiss this stele as evidence that Israel had entered the land by this stage. They say that this Israel should not be confused with the later Israel. Their strongest argument is from the manner in which the stele refers to Israel. Egyptian utilizes what are called determinatives to let the reader know how to read signs that follow them. They in essence announce that the next word is, for example, a god’s name or a rock or a personal name. When it comes to the reference to Israel in the Merneptah Stele, the determinative that precedes it indicates a people group, not a nation-state.
In response, it is sufficient to point out that whether the exodus and conquest were early (fifteenth century) or late (thirteenth century), the time period of the Merneptah Stele would have been the biblical period of the judges, a time when there were still lots of Canaanites around and the Israelite tribes themselves are described as politically fragmented. So labeling Israel as a people group at this stage in their history isn’t in conflict with the biblical account. Thus, it seems simply tendentious to dismiss the evidence provided by the Merneptah Stele.
THE AMARNA TABLETS
Discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, the Amarna tablets are among the most important and most discussed cache of ancient texts discovered in the Near East. They are named the Amarna tablets because they were discovered in the ancient Egyptian capital of Amarna, but they were written in Canaan by the city kings from places like Jebus (Jerusalem), Gezer, Lachish, Ashkelon, Megiddo, and Shechem, who were vassals of Egypt. Thus, they are also called the Amarna letters, and we have over three hundred of them. How they relate to the biblical account of the conquest is much debated, but at a minimum they reflect the kind of social and political structure that we also glimpse in the biblical text. For instance, for the most part these city-states were independent of one another and even quarreled among themselves until they faced a common enemy, which caused them to ally with one another to present a unified front.
By the way, the preceding paragraph is true whether the exodus and conquest are fifteenth-century or thirteenth-century events, even though the letters themselves can be dated to the fourteenth century during the reigns of Amenhotep III and his son Amenhotep IV. After all, the cities from which these letters came were not among those taken and occupied by Israel during the time of the conquest.
More interesting, and more controversial, in terms of the connection between these tablets and the biblical conquest account is the role of the socalled hapiru/habiru (hereafter habiru). One reason these kings were writing the pharaoh was to call on Egypt’s aid in the light of the threat provided by the habiru. One tablet says, “Let the king, my lord, learn that the chief of the ‘Apiru [habiru] has risen (in arms) against the lands which the god of the king, my lord, gave me; but I have smitten him. Also let the king, my lord, know that all my brethren have abandoned me, and it is I and ‘Abdu-Heba (who) fight against the chief of the ‘Apiru.”40
We can certainly understand why there was a connection made between the habiru and the Hebrews when these tablets first were translated, just based on the similarity of sound. Many thought that the letters were being written in response to the intrusion by the Hebrews led by Joshua in order to enlist the help of their overlord, the pharaoh. Of course, the Bible doesn’t mention Egyptian involvement in Canaan in this period, but then again, that reflects the frustration that the city kings express because the pharaoh does not seem to heed their request and send any troops to help against the habiru.
The lack of Egyptian response may be explained by the fact that during this time the Egyptians had their own internal issues. Amenhotep IV is better known by his name Akhenaten, and he is the pharaoh who supported the worship of one god and one god only, namely the sun disk Aten (originally an aspect of the sun god Re). While modern readers occasionally marvel appreciatively at a non-Israelite who was a monotheist (or at least a henotheist), the ancient world found such a radical idea unsettling, and there was widespread unrest in Egypt.
In any case, over time it became clear that a simple equation between the habiru and the Hebrews was simply not tenable. The term habiru was found in other ancient sources at time periods when and also in regions where it could not possibly refer to the Israelites. Indeed, today it is well recognized that habiru is not an ethnic term like Hebrew but rather a sociological term designating people who live outside of cities and threaten their inhabitants. They might be bands of outlaws or people otherwise disenfranchised. Though it is probably too positive an analogy (and it has other weaknesses as well), I tell my students to think of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men to get a picture of the habiru. They live in Sherwood Forest outside Nottingham and threaten civilization, represented by that city’s sheriff. A more sinister analogy may be ISIS in the Middle East.
Thus, no one today would accept the reference to the habiru as direct evidence of the biblical conquest. However, I for one am open to the possibility that it provides indirect evidence supporting the general picture of Canaan that we find in the biblical text. I would also remind people that the Canaanites would have described Joshua and his people as habiru in the sociological sense.
EGYPTIAN INFLUENCE ON THE EXODUS AND WILDERNESS WANDERING GENERATION AND BEYOND
Further indirect evidence of the reliability of the exodus story in the Bible comes from the authentic Egyptian flavor of the narrative. Jim Hoffmeier and others have furthered the work of his professor R. J. Williams, who asserted that “the evidence is overwhelming that Israel drank deeply at the wells of Egypt. In a very real sense the Hebrews were ‘a people come out of Egypt’ (Num 22:5, 11).”41
Both Hoffmeier and Hess42 build on the work of T. J. Meek, a scholar of a previous generation,43 that shows that the names of many Levites bear an Egyptian imprint. Hoffmeier also concludes that “Egyptian terms among the priest’s regalia and the word for ‘censer’ in Num 16 all point to the influences of Egyptian religion on the Hebrews.”44 Add to this Benjamin Noonan’s study of Egyptian loanwords, in which he demonstrates that “the exodus and wilderness traditions contain significantly higher proportions of Egyptian terminology than the rest of the Hebrew Bible,” and Joshua Berman’s demonstration of “strong affinities” between the Kadesh inscription of Ramesses II and the account and celebration of the crossing of the sea in Exodus 13:17–15:19 that can’t be explained by “stock formulas,” and we have recent and accumulating indirect evidence for the reliability of the account of the exodus in the Bible.45
EMERGENCE OF VILLAGES IN THE CENTRAL HILL COUNTRY
Archaeologists over the past two or three decades have uncovered some interesting evidence that may well bear on the emergence of Israel at the beginning of the Early Iron Age.46 Of course, if this emergence is associated with the exodus, then that may well push us toward the later date, but the evidence is not so definitive that it confirms that date. Indeed, as we will see, the leading archaeologists who discuss these finds do not associate them with a foreign people coming into the land, but rather see them as an inner-Canaanite development.
The two archaeologists who have been at the forefront of this discussion are Israel Finkelstein and William Dever.47 They describe the collapse of large Canaanite cities on the Mediterranean coast and the resulting appearance of about three hundred small villages in the central hill country. What is interesting is that these villages share a number of features, including the development of olive terracing and the use of plaster-lined cisterns for water collection. What is remarkable is the complete absence of pig bones at these sites. It is the lack of pig bones that constitutes evidence that these villages should be associated with later Israel, which prohibited the consumption of pigs as part of their food laws. To be clear, Finkelstein and Dever agree that there is a connection between the collapse of these Canaanite cities and the emergence of these villages, though they vociferously disagree on why the collapse happened. Thus, they both assert, these new villages were populated by Canaanites who may well have been in transition to becoming what is later known as Israel. In other words, the emergence of Israel was an inner-Canaanite phenomenon. They believe that their thesis is supported by the idea that there does not seem to be a distinctive Israelite or Hebrew pottery type; rather, the typical Canaanite pottery continues. I have two responses to their conclusion on this matter. First, the biblical description of the exodus does not preclude the idea that there was a Canaanite element to it, perhaps a sizable one. One way we distort the story of the exodus and the conquest is by describing it in purely ethnic terms, as if all the people coming up from Egypt were physical descendants of Abraham (notice that the description of the community that confirmed the covenant early in the conquest near Shechem included “foreigners” [Josh. 8:33, 35]) and only the occasional Canaanite (Rahab and those in her room with her) was permitted to escape the sword. From the number of later Israelites with foreign names (the most famous of which are Uriah the Hittite and Shamgar, but there are plenty of others), we should reconsider this perspective. Rahab’s story and perhaps Ruth’s (later) story are illustrative of the means by which Canaanites could escape the judgment God was bringing on that people.
Indeed, as we already suggested, the slaves who escaped from Egyptian bondage could have numbered in the thousands, not the millions. And when they came to Canaan, the underclasses may well have, like Rahab, come over to their side in droves and then ultimately identified with them. Indeed, those who study cultural memory suggest that the descendants of these Canaanites could have made the exodus story their own just as Americans who are not descendants of the Pilgrims and whose ancestors even came to America much, much later still rightly celebrate Thanksgiving every November and claim it as their story.48
Second, the intrusion of a foreign people (the Hebrews) into Canaan would not necessarily require a change in pottery making or other technologies. In a recent essay, Lawson Younger points out that we have a number of other examples of solid textual testimony to a change of peoples in a region but find no change in pottery technology or any other indication of a transition in the archaeological record. He cites, for example, the Aramaean incursions into Syria in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC and also the even earlier Amurrite incursion into Mesopotamia in the middle of the third millennium BC.49 The same may be said, as Alan Millard pointed out years ago, for the Norman invasion of England, which took place as recently as the eleventh century AD.50 Thus, including Israel’s entry into Canaan, we have four examples of incursions of foreign peoples into a region where there is an abundance of literary evidence of the incursion (who doubts the Normans invaded England!) but no significant archaeological marker.
Indeed, according to the account of Joshua, there was little property damage in the Israelite invasion. Most of the fighting took place on the open battlefield and only three cities were said to be burned (Jericho, Ai, and Heshbon). Perhaps most significant in terms of this question is what we read in Deuteronomy 6:10–12:
When the LORD your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (NRSV)
In the light of the biblical text itself, which implies that the Israelites took over the use of existing structures, it is no wonder there is little direct evidence of widespread destruction and reconstruction in the archaeological remains that have so far come to light. Again, we do have direct evidence, the testimony of the biblical text itself, and significant indirect evidence that supports the biblical picture. In addition, there is no insurmountable contrary evidence. It is reasonable to believe that the exodus and conquest accounts preserve authentic historical memory that is essential for the theological message of these narratives.
Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter is to enter into the controversy within evangelical Protestant circles concerning the reliability of the historical record found in the Bible. The debate is recent in these circles, though we acknowledge that outside these circles the Bible’s historical reliability has long been questioned; but then again, evangelical Protestants have affirmed a different view of the nature of biblical revelation, believing that the Bible is true in all that it teaches.
We have noted the tendency among evangelicals to overhistoricize the Bible as well as to treat the Bible as if the description of historical events is devoid of figurative elements (like hyperbole). Even so, few would doubt that it was the intention of the biblical authors to reference historical events in connection to what we might call the history of redemption from creation (Gen. 1–2) through the postexilic period (Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther). Though we are interested in the whole of this redemptive history, we have focused on the exodus and conquest as examples, since they are often among the most questioned parts of that history.
Some authors (we have cited Sparks, Enns, and Moore and Kelle as examples) have recently suggested that there is little, if any, reliability to the history given in Exodus through Joshua, but even so they still attempt to preserve important theological teachings in these stories. They personally believe that the historicity of these events has no effect on their theological message.
They do affirm, by the way, the historical nature of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and are thus not denying at all Paul’s assertion that “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14). I would wholeheartedly agree that the exodus and conquest stories do not hold the same critical importance to our faith as the events surrounding Christ’s work do. Indeed, this insight led to George W. Ramsey’s witty chapter title “If Jericho Was Not Razed, Is Our Faith in Vain?”51 He answered no (and I would agree, though I think our confidence in Scripture would be damaged), but as the reader can see, I disagree with his conclusion that it didn’t happen.
My point here is that there is a significant inconsistency in the affirmation of the historicity of the cross and especially the resurrection and the denial of the historicity of the exodus and the conquest. Why do some evangelical scholars doubt the historicity of the exodus and conquest? Because of a lack of direct evidence to support the Bible’s testimony. But where is the direct evidence of the resurrection? There is none, and we wouldn’t expect any.
I once asked one of my evangelical friends who holds the views I am pushing back against about the apparent inconsistency on this matter. I won’t reveal his name because it was a private, spontaneous (and irenic) conversation. He responded by appealing to the tremendous and powerful influence on later generations. How can we explain the rapid growth of the church if this great event did not actually happen? How can we explain Christians willing to die for their faith otherwise? I agree wholeheartedly, but I responded by saying that that is not at all different in principle from, say, the exodus, which, as we can tell from later Scripture, had such an impact on the faith and theological beliefs of later Israelites. Though I know I did not convince him, he did not have a good comeback to that point.
The question we have addressed in this section has to do with the relationship between history and theology in the history of Israel. We have approached this issue in the light of recent evangelical attempts to separate the two when it comes to events like the exodus and the conquest. Is the theological message of the exodus and conquest related to the history of these events? My answer—and this would be my answer to all questions related to the redemptive history of the Bible—is yes, it does matter. I agree with Paul when he tells the Corinthians about the exodus and wilderness wanderings, saying that “these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11; italics mine). True, our faith does not depend on our proving the historical reliability of these events beyond a shadow of a doubt (which is good, because we never will) any more than our proving that the resurrection is a historical event, particularly to those who do not share our worldview, which includes a belief in a supernatural universe.
The apologist Josh McDowell wrote a still-popular book (now in its fourth edition and coauthored with his son Sean) with the provocative title Evidence That Demands a Verdict.52 It is a bold statement, but untrue. There is no evidence that demands a positive verdict from every reasonable person. This is not surprising, because our faith does not depend on our ability to prove it to ourselves or to others (we do not “understand in order to believe,” but we “believe in order to understand”). Our faith is not proved by reason, but it is not contrary to reason either.
EXCURSUS
Levite Origins of the Exodus?
Just as I was wrapping up this book, Richard Elliott Friedman published a fascinating book on the exodus with interests similar to mine (as you can tell from his subtitle, How It Happened and Why It Matters) that is well worth mentioning along with brief interaction.53 He argues, similarly to me, that the exodus did indeed happen but that the escape from Egypt involved a much, much smaller group than is usually imagined. He wonders how else you could explain the exodus as the founding story of the nation if there were nothing behind it. He also agrees with the plausibility of the exodus based on what we are calling indirect evidence. I resonate with much of his argument. His most distinctive idea has to do with the identity of the ones who escaped from Egypt. He points out that it has long been recognized that Levites tend to have Egyptian names. All eight people who have Egyptian names in the exodus account (Moses, Merari, Hophni, Hur, Mushi, Pashhur, Phinehas [times two]) are Levites. Thus, he argues that the Levites escaped from Egypt, encountered the Israelites in the land (the Levites could have come into the land after the Merneptah Stele mentions Israel), and introduced the worship of Yahweh. The Israelites were worshiping El at the time, and for a while both El and Yahweh may have been worshiped before Yahweh took sole place. I don’t accept the details of Friedman’s thesis. We differ in our understanding of the date of the biblical source materials and other matters. Still, it is a fascinating thesis that shows that the exodus could very well have a historical connection and also demonstrates the importance of such for what I would call its theological significance
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario