Scan barcode
A review by erikars
The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John H. Walton
4.0
The premise of this book is that reading the first chapter of Genesis as an account of physical creation is, in fact, misreading it. A more textually accurate -- and in that sense, a more literal reading -- would be to read it as a functional account of creation.
Walton starts by comparing Genesis 1 to other ancient cosmologies. He does not claim that it is based on those other cosmologies. Rather, his claim is that Genesis 1 serves the same basic function as other ancient cosmologies because that is what the listeners would have expected and because it allowed the listeners to understand how their cosmology differed from others around them. Ancient cosmologies spend very little time worrying about physical creation and most of their time working to convey the function and purpose of creation. Genesis 1 does not seem to be an exception.
The second line of reasoning is looking at how some of the key Hebrew terms in Genesis 1 are used elsewhere in the Old Testament. This most important is how the word commonly translated as create is generally used for granting purpose, not physical creation elsewhere in the Bible.
The final line of reasoning starts to merge more with Walton's view of the consequences of taking a functional view of creation. This line of reasoning focuses on how many of the difficulties of reading the creation account as a physical account of creation go away if you interpret them as a granting of function instead. This, in turn, highlights that the key point to take away from the creation narrative is not that God created all -- that was a given in the ancient world -- but that all has purpose in the created universe.
There are two things I like about this reading. While we can never know the worldview of the people who first passed along the account in Genesis 1, we do know that many of the problems with modern readings of that account come from worldviews developed in the last 500 years. To put it another way, we don't know what exactly the right worldview is, but we know that the one we have isn't it. Thus, any alternate viewpoint can provide an interesting perspective shift.
This view in particular is interesting because, as mentioned above, much of what is problematic about the Genesis one account -- even if you ignore what we've learned through science and just look at internal consistency -- goes away with this alternate reading. This perspective just seems like it fits better.
Overall, a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in the debates about creation.
Walton starts by comparing Genesis 1 to other ancient cosmologies. He does not claim that it is based on those other cosmologies. Rather, his claim is that Genesis 1 serves the same basic function as other ancient cosmologies because that is what the listeners would have expected and because it allowed the listeners to understand how their cosmology differed from others around them. Ancient cosmologies spend very little time worrying about physical creation and most of their time working to convey the function and purpose of creation. Genesis 1 does not seem to be an exception.
The second line of reasoning is looking at how some of the key Hebrew terms in Genesis 1 are used elsewhere in the Old Testament. This most important is how the word commonly translated as create is generally used for granting purpose, not physical creation elsewhere in the Bible.
The final line of reasoning starts to merge more with Walton's view of the consequences of taking a functional view of creation. This line of reasoning focuses on how many of the difficulties of reading the creation account as a physical account of creation go away if you interpret them as a granting of function instead. This, in turn, highlights that the key point to take away from the creation narrative is not that God created all -- that was a given in the ancient world -- but that all has purpose in the created universe.
There are two things I like about this reading. While we can never know the worldview of the people who first passed along the account in Genesis 1, we do know that many of the problems with modern readings of that account come from worldviews developed in the last 500 years. To put it another way, we don't know what exactly the right worldview is, but we know that the one we have isn't it. Thus, any alternate viewpoint can provide an interesting perspective shift.
This view in particular is interesting because, as mentioned above, much of what is problematic about the Genesis one account -- even if you ignore what we've learned through science and just look at internal consistency -- goes away with this alternate reading. This perspective just seems like it fits better.
Overall, a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in the debates about creation.