I’ve found myself in a bit of a quandary when trying to help other believers see Genesis the way that I have come to see it after years of studying culturally relevant Ancient Near Eastern creation and flood stories, culminating in my Doctoral Dissertation on the subject. You see, modern American readers are accustomed to looking at Genesis through a scientific lens even though that lens was not ground until the early 1600s and polished through the subsequent centuries. It is so natural for them, in fact, that any other reading, like a contextual Ancient Near Eastern reading, seems blasphemous to them, seems like a rejection of inspiration and a diminishment of the value of Scripture. The very idea that it is they, and not I, who have imported a foreign lens for reading the creation stories rings ludicrous in their ears.
If I say that the book of Revelation and portions of the book of Daniel use imagery in imaginative ways to tell their own stories about the future and sometimes the past, most will, more than likely, say, “Of course they do, that’s the nature of Apocalyptic genre.” But if I make similar claims for Genesis 1-11, and more particularly for Genesis 1-3, all in the name of special genre considerations, these same well-meaning folk will baulk and cry foul.
If I reject a scientific reading of the creation stories because these stories were pre-scientific and Ancient Near Eastern and, thus, written to answer a different set of questions than modern scientific debates ask, then these earnest and devout believers imagine that I am siding against them on the scientific questions of Genesis 1-11— i.e. if I reject a literal seven day reading of Genesis 1, they assume I am supporting evolutionary theories about the origins of the universe, that I reject a real Adam and Eve, and that I posit billions of years for us to evolve from single cell organisms to our present state.
For the official record, I do not, am not, and am not likely too going forward. In point of fact, I think modern scientific enquiry is hindered by a commitment to theories developed by people with a huge philosophical axe to grind, who knew nothing about DNA or molecular biology, and that Darwin would have abandoned his own contributing theory had he stayed on those islands for five years instead of five weeks.
I can also say for the official record that I believe Genesis was inspired to address the issues on their own philosophical table—demanding an ANE reading in which similarities orient the reader and radical changes highlight the messaging. They wrote in a pagan context to people struggling with a pagan worldview… to a people who will continue to struggle with a pagan worldview in spite of Genesis for at least another millennium. The pagans surrounding Israel wrote sophisticated myths that gave pagan answers to the most fundamental questions of existence and, thus, formed the philosophical foundation for pagan nations in every area of life. Just so you know, pagan was bad… like really bad.
The biblical creation texts, therefore, while history are not the kind of history that we are accustomed to reading in our own day, or even the kind of history we are accustomed to reading in Exodus through Kings and Chronicles which used eye-witness testimony and available literary sources. Genesis is a history that includes powerful imagery, insights into the intentions and private musings of the Creator, knowledge of events with no human witness, and of other events known only through the passing of oral traditions from generation to generation, funneled through the memory of Noah’s family and expanding out again through more generations of oral tradition as the peoples of the world are scattered by divine design to multiply and fill the earth.
Genesis 1-11 is a portal to another time & place with radically different histories, languages & cultures. While Genesis IS history as Ancient Near Eastern people measured history, and NOT myth (it has little in common with ANE Myths beyond subject matter) it is a sophisticated sacred & prophetic interpretation of events many of which precede human memory. So, the important thing at each stage of history is to figure out the rules of the telling, the way that each telling delivers inspired messaging, and to remember that the inspired message is found in the telling and NOT by using the telling to recreate events in our imagination so that we can look for truth in those recreations.
Let me illustrate with a car accident and then a burgeoning cult classic movie.
News Report: At approximately 8:13 PM last night, while traveling southbound on South Worchester Street in Norton, a dark green Volkswagen Beetle slammed into a sizable oak, ejecting the driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, and breaking both legs of the front passenger before coming to a rest a short distance from the collision. One other passenger sitting in the back seat was unharmed. The names of the victims are being withheld by police until all families can be notified.
Wisdom Tale: Driving down the road one night, peering helpless through a thick fog, I watched as a car full of fools rushed to death. Exceeding the posted speed limits and ignoring road conditions, they were called up short for their folly by a mighty oak, killing the driver. I said to myself, “Foolish is the exhilaration of youth, a wise son heeds the lessons taught by fools with their own blood.”
Prophecy: Thus sayeth the Lord, the wayward in the land shall be like the passengers of that small and vulnerable car, driving heedless in a deep fog. For yeah, just as the jollity of these youths came to an abrupt halt against the immovable trunk of God’s mighty oak, so shall this nation’s reckless mirth be cut short when the LORD comes in all the fury of His judgement.
Apocalypse: And as I looked where the angel of God pointed, behold, I saw an emerald chariot riding heedless as if upon the clouds of heaven to unwitting battle. A pup, a kitten, and a chick unfit for the challenge came helpless into the maw of a mighty dragon. Its claws held fast the soil and its neck stretched into the stars of heaven. It stood resolute as their chariot struck and offered no more cause for battle as heedless folly met immovable might.
Poetry:
—Master Larson’s Death—
My first death was a friend unrecognized
marred by wounds that proved his mortality
heaving his final breaths at the end of his trail
stretching out into the fog
like a leprechaun’s trick at the end of an all red rainbow.
He was spewed like a cursed Jonah
from the mouth of a broken fish
as it crashed upon the rocks barring its way
unseen in an earth bound cloud
rendering crooked paths straight to a deceived eye
to a distracted child’s mind
rushing unheeding to an early grave.
I watched helpless and grieving
as his heaving
ceased.
Now which one told about the historical event? (The event was historical, for I witnessed the accident at the age of 17, first man on the scene, following a blood trail in the thick fog until I came upon an unrecognized… nay, unrecognizable… schoolmate breathing his last breaths.) So which told the story?
Answer: They all did. Each, however, had a different set of rules and purposes in the telling.
Now, back to the primary question of our topic, How does Genesis 1, 2, 3… 11 tell their events? What are they trying to communicate about reality? What questions are they designed to answer? What are the original readers to do, believe, and become because of what these stories tell them? How did THEY likely understand the images and structures in play in the telling?
Here is my take as a conservative, devout, Christian scholar who has studied ANE backgrounds as well as Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.
I don’t know what I would see if I were back witnessing the events that stand behind the stories of Genesis 1-11 like a fruit fly on the apple tree, or a sentient cosmic speck at the birth of the universe.
When I say “events that stood behind the stories of Genesis 1-11” you must understand that the telling is NOT the event. The telling is an interpretation of the event by an author or authors who made choices to include, exclude, and both arrange and shape data… in this case an inspired interpretation. I don’t know how it would look, but I do know what the inspired author chose to tell me about the nature of reality as he wrapped his story in metaphors of temple, Chaos & Chaoskampf , Kingdom Establishment patterns, and what I have labeled, Helderkampf (Hero battle), using power images of serpent dragons, tehom, tohu vabohu, mighty flood waters, living idols meant to be filled with the Divine Spirit, a world tree granting enduring life, and spontaneous creation of life and order by Divine Word.
I don’t know what I would see if I were there, and literal seven day creationists don’t either for all their bluster, but I do know how these stories preach about the fundamental realities of the created order based on their shared and deviating elements when set beside a decisive body of creation and flood texts known and common among all the peoples of the ancient world… including Israel.
Now, I am not disinterested in the historicity questions for Genesis 1-11, (age of the earth, global flood, historical identities of Adam and Eve, the location of Eden and the lost Ark) and I celebrate those bold enough to push scientifically against the dominating narrative offered by secularists. Even so, I know that our interests were not the authors’ interests, our questions, not their questions, our debate not their debate. Thus, these stories, forming a type of history that employs primary metaphors and power images and knows the secret thoughts of God in His making of the ordered world in the patterns of Temple dedication and kingdom making, should not be bent to answer our questions about how long, what processes, how long ago. Instead, we should focus on Genesis’ messaging given Genesis’ world context, the literary styles, structures, grammar and vocabulary employed.
Genesis is NOT myth, but it does use classical mythic images in its history telling. To explain this, I’d like to consider how this type of storytelling works by using a PG-13 film called Sucker Punch. You didn’t really think I wanted to sucker punch Genesis did you? I don’t think you have to see the movie to understand what I’m saying about it, but if it pleases you to do so, have at it. Spoilers below.
The movie Sucker Punch by Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya has a star studded cast including Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, John Hamm, and Scott Glen. It also has a bizarre storytelling style that illustrates what I am trying to say about the nature of the storytelling in Genesis 1-11. The story is told on three levels.
Level One: A Girl (Babydoll) tries to save her younger sister from the designs of her wicked stepfather after her mother’s funeral. She accidentally kills the sister with a poorly aimed bullet meant for the baddie. The wicked stepfather rushes her off secretly to a lax mental hospital controlled by an easily bribed orderly, who agrees to falsify documents and lobotomize Babydoll before the police can find her and get her story. The rest of the following week, save the tell-all end, is revisited as she stands before the lobotomizer’s chisel.
Level Two: The week leading up to Babydoll’s visit to the lobotomizer is told through the allegory of a brothel/dancing club run by a wicked pimp (played by the wicked orderly), who lends out his girls to perverse high rollers. The girls (all exact representations of the girls in the mental hospital) have given up hope of escape until Babydoll devises a plan to use her own particular dancing skills to conceal a carefully implemented plan of escape for each of them. But they need to steal four special items to succeed.
Level Three: Each mission to steal one of the items needed for escape is told in an allegory of war interspersed as breaks in the story of the unfolding brothel allegory. The girls, who suddenly become highly trained special forces agents must face variously pictured enemies in order to get the needed item for that part of the plan… a map, a source for making fire, a knife, and a key. Their enemies are sometimes ancient Asian gods, mechanical soldiers, and dragons.
Spoiler Alert: At the end, Babydoll, who has gotten several of the girls killed in the brothel scheme, sacrifices herself so that the final girl left alive can make her escape. We return then to the lobotomizer’s chisel in the real world, the destruction of Babydoll, and what we discover is a real world version of all the events played out for us in the brothel and fantastical war scenes. They were versions of the events, every bit true and real, but colored by the artistic telling through powerful images. The one girls escapes in the real world because of Babydoll’s self-sacrifice.
We may wonder if we would have seen a real snake in a real tree in a real garden, maybe so, maybe not, but we do not need to wonder what the snake and tree and garden represent whether literal or not. What did the snake say?
We may wonder whether the whole globe was underwater, maybe it was, maybe it was just as effectual without being global, but we do not need to wonder what the unleashed flood waters preached about God’s plan for creation and man’s place in that plan.
We may wonder about the timing of God’s making of the world and scratch our heads over the establishment of day and night before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, but we do not have to scratch our heads over the messaging of God’s creation of a functioning world with a garden temple set in the midst of it, with man as a living idol set to rule over and bring to fruition God’s reign over the whole of the earth.
If we understand that these unfolding metaphors preach, that these power symbols were readily understood by those struggling with the pagan messaging that was drowning the world around them, then we can set aside, at least for a time, our frets over science questions and get down and dirty with the message of Genesis about the God who made the universe, our place in His plan, and the major challenges that face us in the undertaking. Read Genesis like a pagan would have read Genesis… for it was written for them.
