Why genesis is not literal

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. Privacy Policy Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message. Woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", By: Tara Isabella Burton. March 22, August 20, Share Tweet Email Print. In an article published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Frye explains that: The mainline denominations today have just as low an opinion of these cultural ghosts [ie, young earth creationism] as does the scientific mainstream.

As Thomas Aquinas put it: The use of metaphors…befits sacred doctrine…Poetry uses metaphors to depict, since men naturally find pictures pleasing. And in cases like Genesis 1 where translation obscures genre? Learning to read according to genre takes training and practice. Ultimately, this is what concerns me about Mr. A lot more time, it seems, than Mr. Ham has.

There are tons of resources out there that help us, and we can all become students of the ancient world in which the Bible was written. You can learn to understand biblical genres.

There are a couple of great resources for helping us understand the genres early in Genesis — I highly recommend:. Learning to read genres in the Bible is a lot like how we learn to read genres in our world today.

We easily distinguish more or less unconsciously among science fiction, legal code, novels, short stories, letters, emails, tweets, and dozens of other kinds of literature. So too with the genres of the ancient world. The more time we spend reading them, immersing ourselves in the ancient world, the more these make sense to us. We can also spend time reading other ancient documents, learning how people then saw the world. Uses of the numerology of 12, like 7, abound throughout the Bible: the 12 tribes of Israel, as well as the 12 tribes of Ishmael, the 12 districts of Solomon, and Jesus' selection of 12 disciples, along with a miscellany of references to 12 pillars, 12 springs, 12 precious stones, 12 gates, 12 fruits, 12 pearls, and so forth.

We, of course, continue the biblical and ancient Near Eastern division of the day and night into 12 hours and the year into 12 months. And the grouping of stars into 12 constellations and signs of the zodiac into 12 periods also derives from ancient Mesopotamia, along with the belief that the body was composed of 12 parts or regions.

Though in the modern world numbers have become almost completely secularized, in antiquity they could function as significant vehicles of meaning and power. It was important to associate the right numbers with one's life and activity and to avoid the wrong numbers. To do so was to surround and fill one's existence with the positive meanings and powers which numbers such as 3, 4, 7 and 12 conveyed. In this way one gave religious significance to life and placed one's existence in harmony with the divine order of the cosmos.

By aligning and synchronizing the microcosm of one's individual and family life and the mesocosm of one's society and state with the macrocosm itself, life was tuned to the larger rhythms of this sacred order. For us the overriding consideration in the use of numbers is their secular value in arithmetic. We must therefore have numbers that are completely devoid of all symbolic associations. Numbers such as 7 and 12 do not make our calculators or computers function any better, nor does the number 13 make them any less efficient.

Our numbers are uniform, value-neutral-meaningless and powerless. What is critical to modern consciousness is having the right numbers in the sense of having the right figures and right count.

This sense, of course, was also present in the ancient world: in commerce, in construction, in military affairs, in taxation. But there was also a higher, symbolic use of numbers. And in a religious context, it was more important to have the right numbers in a sacred rather than profane sense. While we give the highest value, and nearly exclusive value, to numbers as carriers of "facts," in religious texts and rituals the highest value was given to numbers as carriers of ultimate truth and reality.

Those, therefore, who would attempt to impose a literal reading of numbers upon Genesis, as if the sequence of days were of the same order as counting sheep or merchandise or money, are offering a modern, secular interpretation of a sacred text—in the name of religion. And, as if this were not distortion enough, they proceed to place this secular reading of origins in competition with other secular readings and secular literatures: scientific, historical, mathematical, technological.

Extended footnotes are appended to the biblical texts on such extraneous subjects as the second law of thermodynamics, radiometric dating, paleontology, sedimentation, hydrology, and so forth. These are hardly the issues with which Genesis is concerning itself, or is exercised over.

The attempt to do a literal reading of Genesis cannot, in fact, be consistently pursued. And it is not, in actual practice. Creationists are literalists up to a point, but when their particular line of interpretation runs into an insurmountable difficulty they take that particular item "metaphorically," or concoct some fanciful explanation which is far more symbolic than the interpretation they are attempting to avoid.

The rule of thumb seems to be to take everything as literally as possible: give in only as a last resort. Thus the assumption is that religious truth equals literal meaning, when in most contexts the opposite is the case: religious truth equals symbolic meaning. The first questions in interpreting the text are never clearly asked: What kind of literature and linguistic usage is involved, what did the author intend, and what issues are being addressed?

In the case of the Priestly account, a literal reading is, at several critical points, impossible, contradictory, or simply unwanted. For instance, the imagery of days is used in the main body of the text, but the account concludes with the very different imagery of generations. The same word is used again in Genesis to apply to the genealogy of Adam, and these generations are calculated as being in the neighborhood of years per generation—obviously not the equivalent of single days.

Clearly both the term days and the term generations cannot be taken literally. If one moves on to the Yahwist account in Genesis b, the literalist encounters greater problems. If the two creation accounts are interpreted chronologically, they hardly agree in details or sequences.

In Genesis 1 the order given is vegetation day three ; sun, moon, and stars day four ; birds and fish day five ; land animals first half of day six. In Genesis 2 the order is quite different. Sun, moon, and stars are already presupposed, and therefore are before vegetation rather than after: "when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up.

Adam is created also before any of the animals, rather than after as in Genesis 1. Eve, on the other hand, is created after vegetation and animals, not at the same time as Adam, as in Genesis 1. One would think that these glaring differences would be a sufficient indication that literal historical sequences could not be the original concern or intent. The treatment of water in the two accounts is also quite different.

Genesis 1 begins with watery chaos, and with the problem of separating this water into the waters above and the waters below day two , as well as the problem of separating the earth from the engulfing waters day three. In other words, the setting of Genesis 1 is one in which there is so much water that "the dry land" must be made to "appear" Genesis 2, however, begins with the opposite problem: no water at all. The order is therefore quite the reverse of Genesis 1: first there is dry land, then water is introduced.

Rather than formless earth needing to be separated from the embrace of the waters, the barren earth needs water in order for vegetation to appear: "for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground" , 6.

The differences between these two ways of organizing the issue of origins is the result of two contrasting life-settings in the history of Israel, the agricultural-urban and the pastoral-nomadic. Genesis 1 has drawn upon the imagery of the great civilizations inhabiting the river basins and areas adjacent to the sea, while Genesis 2 has drawn upon an imagery more in accord with the experience of wandering shepherds and goatherds living on the semiarid fringes of the fertile plains.

There is precedent in the history of Jewish experience for both. For the shepherd nomad in search of green pastures, and moving between scattered springs, wells, and oases, the primary problem in life and therefore in creation is the absence of water.

Water must be diligently sought out and is a scarce and precious commodity. What is in abundance is dust, sand, and wilderness rock. Thus the Yahwist begins quite naturally with a barren earth onto which water must be introduced. If there is an equivalent to the imagery of an initial chaos, it is not a watery chaos but a desert chaos. The literalist, attempting to synchronize these two accounts with each other, and then with modern science and natural history, faces an impossible task.

This is further substantiated by observing the inability of a literal approach to handle the puzzling imagery with which Genesis 1 begins. If one tries to take a literal interpretation, one immediately encounters the curious difficulty that none of the three realities mentioned in this introductory verse is referred to as created by God, either here or in the subsequent days of creation.

On the first day darkness is presupposed, while it is light that is created and separated from the darkness. On the second day. And on the third day the formless earth is presupposed, being separated from the waters "under the heavens" which are "gathered together into one place, letting the "dry land appear. This being the case, if one is determined to take the account literally, one achieves a very awkward and unwanted result: God created everything but darkness, water and earth, which are therefore co-eternal with God.

It is also totally contrary to all scientific evidence, whether geological or astronomical, that either water or earth existed before light day one , sky day two , or sun, moon, and stars day four. Darkness perhaps, but not water and earth. These difficulties can only be resolved by a different interpretative approach which clarifies the literary form of the account, the reasons for selecting this particular form, and the reasons for developing the content of the passage in this particular order and manner.

The basic literary genre of Genesis 1 is cosmological. And, inasmuch as it is dealing specifically with origins, it is cosmogonic. In order to interpret its meaning one has to learn to think cosmogonically, not scientifically or historically.

This does not mean that the materials are, in any sense, irrational or illogical. They are perfectly rational and orderly, and have a logic all their own. But that logic is not biological or geological or paleontological or even chronological.

It is cosmological and theological. Cosmogony is a common literary form in the ancient world, though the monotheistic content of Genesis 1 is certainly different from the highly mythological, polytheistic content of other cosmogonies. There was an established cosmogonic vocabulary with which the Priestly author could work.

The motif of a primordial chaos, characterized by a combination of "chaotic" features, such as watery deep, darkness, formlessness, boundlessness, is a familiar theme in ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies. In Egyptian myth this original reality is described in terms of four primordial pairs of divinities, representing the qualities of this relatively undifferentiated cosmic brew.

Nun and Naunet are the Primeval waters; Kuk and Kauket are the primeval darkness; Huh and Hauhet are the boundless primeval formlessness; and Amun and Amanunet are the obscurity and indefinability of this mysterious source of that which now has clear definition and place.

Out of this beginning rises the primeval hill, like a muddy, fertile hillock from the receding waters of the Nile. Subsequently come the appearances and separations of the sun Atum , air and moisture Shu and Tefnut , sky and earth Nut and Geb , and so forth. The logic of the. And water is a natural candidate for depicting this formless beginning. Sumerian cosmogony, similarly, began with the primeval sea Nammu which gave birth to the cosmic mountain, with earth Ki as its base and heaven An as its peak, Earth and heaven then begat air Enlil who, like Shu in Egyptian myth, separates and stands between them.

Likewise the Babylonian Enuma elish depicts a beginning in which there was only water. The primeval ocean, in this case, is pictured as the confluence of the fresh lake and river waters of Apsu male and the salt sea waters of Tiamat female , whose commingling begets the gods. Or as another, hymnlike version, found at Sippar, paradoxically phrased the beginning: "All lands were sea; then there was a movement in the midst of the sea.

Such aboriginal waters not only were seen as the source of life and fertility, but as having the potential for taking back and destroying what they have given. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead , Atum warns of the possibility that "the earth will return to the floodwaters, as in the beginning.

In Canaan the god of rainfall and fertility, Baal, subdues Yam, god of the sea, and defeats Leviathan the serpentine , also called Rahab the ferocious. He thus gains control of the weather and seasons, and brings about order. Similarly, the Hittites to the north celebrated at the New Year the victory of the weather god who had conquered the primeval waterdragon, thus placing rainfall under his dominion and regulation.

In the Mesopotamian plains, with the greater irregularity of flooding along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—as instanced in the extreme with the Great Flood accounts in Genesis and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, whose details are quite similar—this invasion of the waters is a perennial threat.

Sumerian myth recounts a sinister plot to inundate the plains, which was subverted by the god Ninurta or goddess Inanna who channeled the subterranean waters through the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. Both Genesis and the Gilgamesh epic, of course, recount a "sinister plot" that was carried out. And much of the Babylonian epic of Enuma elish is taken up with the conflict between the water goddess, Tiamat, and her progeny, as she threatens to destroy the cosmos to which she had given birth.

When Genesis 1 calls upon similar images in describing the initial state of things, they are well-known images found along a great cultural arc that runs from Egypt in the south and Greece in the north through Palestine and Mesopotamia to India.

And they have a venerable antiquity—in several cases, an antiquity of one or more millennia earlier than the Priestly account. While the imagery has presented problems for a modern interpretation, it was, and had been for many peoples for a long time, a perfectly natural way to begin a cosmogony.

In this cultural milieu which Genesis 1 broadly shares, the primary cosmological problem to be addressed was the problem of water. Actually water presents a double problem: its abundance and its formless "chaotic" character. Water has no shape of its own, and unchecked or uncontained, as in flood or storm, can destroy that which has form. Similarly, the earth, engulfed by formless unformed water is inevitably formless. Darkness, also, is dissolvent of form.

These problems, therefore, in the logic of the account, need to be confronted first. The ambiguousness of water, darkness, and formless earth must be dealt with in such a way as to restrain their negative potential and unleash their positive potential. The ensuing organization of materials is best understood by seeing this initial verse as describing a three-fold problem the ambiguous potential of formless darkness, water, and earth which is then given a solution in the first three days of creation.

The first day of creation takes care of the problem of darkness through the creation of light. The second day takes care of the problem of water through the creation of a firmament to separate the water into the waters above rain, snow, hail and the waters below sea, rivers, subterranean streams. The third day takes care of the problem of the formless earth by freeing earth from the waters and darkness and assigning it to a middle region between light and darkness, sky with its waters , and underworld with its waters.

This then readies the cosmos for populating these various realms in the next three days, like a house readied for its inhabitants. Augustine offers this advice: In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received.

Thomas Aquinas , 2nd ed. London: J. Fry, , , quoted in Falk, Coming to Peace , Mark A. Noll and David N. Livingston, eds. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, What is BioLogos? Subscribe Now What is BioLogos? Common Question. Is Genesis real history? How should we interpret the Bible? Did death occur before the Fall? How should we interpret the Genesis flood account? Is Evolutionary Creation compatible with biblical inerrancy?