MISREADINGS IN GENESIS 1-3: ORDER IN THE MIDST OF CHAOS(1)

 On a popular level it is believed that God created a perfect world, and that it was ruined by the “Fall.”  This is not what one finds when reading the opening Genesis texts closely.  A perfect world was not created; and, the “Fall” is not even a biblical term (except where editors who supply headings add the term).

Genesis 1 follows a typical ancient Near East (ANE) story pattern: a title/summary statement (1:1), the opening, pre-actions conditions that function like a stage setting (1:2), and the start of the action (1:3).²  One must understand the opening conditions (1:2).  The text presents three symbolic elements of chaos that all function contra life: a) land with indistinguishable features encased in b) watery deep and all in c) darkness.  Into that chaos, God’s creative activity brings order: initiating light and separating it from darkness (1:3-5), separating the watery deep into waters above the heavens/firmament and below it (1:6-8), and gathering the waters below to form dry ground (1:9-10).  As a result, order that can support life exists within chaos.

This start of creation with unexplained chaos is typical of ancient creation stories.  It makes perfect sense phenomenologically.  This is our life setting.  Human survival – the survival of all life – is about overcoming the forces of chaos that are contra life.  For example: if one wants to have a garden, one first brings order out of chaos, but then, also must constantly labor to prevent chaos from encroaching on the plants until they are harvested.

A problem with such a beginning to the Bible is that modern people do not like matters like unexplained initial chaos – or any problematic biblical text.  They want to make the Bible answer all our questions and fill in all the blanks.  Therefore, people have come up with speculations to provide answers.  (One popular answer to our text is: 1:1 is a first creation that was ruined (1:2) by the “fall of Satan” – a matter of misreading a text in Isaiah – which is followed by a second creation (1:3).  However, the reality is that our first biblical narrative begins with unexplained chaos.³  As a creation account, it made perfect sense to a person in the ANE as it does to many today who do not experience the conveniences of modernity.  That is life!

Application:
Although there are many possible points of application, one speaks loudly to me about the nature of God’s role in the difficulties of life.  What is sometimes called surd evil, the chaotic and destructive forces of our natural world, is something all humans face daily from birth to death to one degree or another, from weeds to hurricanes, from sniffles to cancer, etc.  Life is hard.  It is a constant struggle against chaos.  Most importantly to me is the realization that God’s activity in our lives does not suddenly make everything idyllic for us.  A Christian conversion does not create a life free from chaos.  Rather, like the portrayal in Genesis 1 in which God breaths order into chaos, so God breathes order into our daily chaos, holds it at bay with God’s life-giving Presence.  Moreover, biblical eschatological texts promise us a new heavens and earth (e.g. Isa 66:22; 2Pet 3:13; Rev. 21:1.  In our world, chaos and order co-exist, but Divine Order will ultimately defeat all chaos.

An example comes to mind.  A pastor friend had a physician sister who ridiculed him for his faith and vocation.  She thought of herself as a scientist who knew better than foolish Christians.  However, as she worked in a hospital among dying patients, she observed Christian patients who met their deaths differently than others.  They had a sense of peace, a kind of peace that she wanted.  Seeing the Presence of Order in the chaos of their deaths led to her conversion.

Lord, whenever I suffer defeat, depression, disappointment, or disease, enable me to know your Presence, to know your order and your peace in the midst of that chaos.  You are my Rock; all else is ephemeral.
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1. See the previous post “Misreadings in Genesis 1-3: Background.”
2. For those who know Hebrew discourse grammar, these three parts are set apart by their clause types.
3. A practical perspective from physics about the chaos of nature in our current world is that we could not exist without it.  The very forces of nature that result in suffering from the micro-level on up to earthquakes are also necessary for life.  A cosmos of total randomness could not support life, but neither could a cosmos of total, crystal-like order.  Life in our cosmos is due to a balance of chaos and order.

MISREADINGS IN GENESIS 1-3: BACKGROUND

[Note: I am writing a short series on a few things that are often misread in Gen 1-3 and how better readings speak to me.  Some of these thoughts have been mentioned in earlier devotionals, but I hope it is helpful to bring those thoughts together.]

How should we read the opening texts in Genesis?  Instead of projecting modern expectations on these texts, in particular reading them as historical or scientific accounts, we should ask how the ancient Israelite audience would have understood the nature and function of these texts.

The primary helpful step is to recognize that the first few chapters in Genesis are closely related to the ancient Near East (ANE) genre of myth.  By “myth” I mean explanatory narratives.  Rather than the Greek philosophical style of systematic, propositional statements, people in the ANE, as in some cultures today, used stories to explain the nature of reality.  They functioned in much the same way as fairy-tales and parables can teach real truths about life.  Such myths were “historical” in the sense that people supposed that something like the story’s events must have happened in the past to account for the current situation.  These stories explained relationships between the gods and kings, the material world, and the general populace.  They explained political and social roles and power divisions.  They explained why people are mortal and why life is hard.  Etc.  That is, these stories shaped the people’s worldviews and ideologies for how to live skillfully in the world.

The Hebrews/Israelites were late comers in the world of the ANE.  Moreover, like all people groups, Israel picked up the language system and cultural symbol systems of their environment as well as the arts and technologies of their world.*  For example: they adopted the Canaanite temple structure of gradated holy space that is still found in church architecture today.  They adopted and adapted with new meaning sacrificial systems of the ANE.

So, too, the Israelites adopted some of the pre-existing ANE stories and adapted them.  In doing so – I would add, under the inspiration of God – they created a new, unique view of reality from that of their neighbors.  To some degree, they demythologized the ANE stories by excising multiple gods and demonic forces as well as mimetic magic that allowed people to manipulate the gods.  Instead, they asserted the reality of one God and Creator, who created people to be in a relationship of obedience, and who could not be manipulated to magical influence or coerced by sacrifices.  Etc.  These adapted stories functioned to present a new worldview and how to live in this world.

Main Points:

·       The stories in the opening chapters of Genesis are not histories in the modern sense, although they project explanations back to the past.

·       These stories are not scientific explanations in the modern sense.  That does not make them unreasonable.  Rather, those that describe the world are based on common-sense, phenomenological explanations of the ANE as described in their language’s symbol systems.  For example, the “heavens” appear to be solid since they hold up rain that comes down when the “windows” of the heavens open.

·       Although each story can each speak in its own right, we learn more about the new worldview the biblical texts present by comparing them to the older ANE stories that they modified.

·       In this short series of devotionals, I am reflecting on a few, often misunderstood aspects of these biblical, explanatory stories, in which my point sometimes reflects on their ANE context.
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 *This observation about cultural borrowing should not be surprising.  Wherever Christianity has spread, it too has been expressed in the language and symbol systems of the recipients.  One might also think about contemporary Christian symbols and look at their origins: fish design, candles, Christmas trees, Easter eggs, butterflies, peacocks, Borromean rings and the Triquetra, Easter lilies and Christmas poinsettia, etc.

“THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING”?

(Perhaps my thoughts are too personal for a devotional blog today?  I am struggling of the recent election and direction already being taking by the forthcoming administration.)  This morning, I was struggling with Jesus’ words on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

As I observe my culture, I see “people calling evil good and good evil, appointing darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20).  (I can certainly be wrong in my discrimination of good and evil, but sometimes it seems clear.)  And I say, “But, Jesus, they know what they are doing!  Some are after power no matter what it costs; some in your Name, are ignoring all you said about becoming servants and practicing righteousness!  OK, some are doing the best they can based on what they know.  But, what about the others who know what they are doing!”

Then I thought about the Cross.  The people who tortured and crucified Jesus and who callously cast lots for his clothes did not know what they were doing.  That is obvious.  However, it is too superficial to think, “I see.  They did not know they were killing the Holy One, the Messiah.”  No.  Their ignorance went deeper.  They were hardening their hearts, destroying their consciences/consciousness (of God).  They were rejecting their high calling of being a creation in the image of God.  They were usurping the role of the Creator to be a Presence in their lives.  They were cutting themselves off from Life.  And, Jesus, hurt for them – on the Cross!

Then I looked at myself.  Woe to me that I can walk through much of my day without listening to Jesus.  Woe to me that I am quick to judge others.  Woe to me that I do not hurt for those who are turning aside from the One who loves them.  Woe to me.

Lord, not only do I need to be closer to you, but moreover, I need for you to create in me a heart that hurts for those who are turning away from you.  Amen.

NOTE: Blog renamed

 On 11/8/2024 the blog name was changed from Duke's Devotional Bible and Theology.

WHICH JESUS DO I FOLLOW?

If I am comfortable with Jesus, something is wrong.

I teach a class on the life and teachings of Jesus.  One of the things we study is how in the history of biblical scholarship, historians using the same source materials – primarily the Gospels – and supposedly the same historical-critical methodology, end up with very different portraits of Jesus.  The spot-on critique of such quests for the historical Jesus, is that each one has dissected the story threads of the Gospels and then woven them back together to create a Jesus that suits them.

An example, albeit an extreme one, is that at the time of Nazi Germany, Jesus had been reconstructed as a nationalistic, social revolutionary, who had rejected his Jewishness, had also become quite Aryan, and who would call “Christians” to restore their country to its former glory.  And so, Hitler advocated (racially pure) Positive Christianity.  (I said “extreme,” however I must note that I see this Aryan Jesus resurrected today in rising political circles in America by who believe that they will bring about God’s rule by political coercion, mainly on behalf of white “Christians.”)

Of course, from Constantine (4th cent.) on, we have numerous examples of Jesus and Christianity being co-opted for the sake of political power – something that cannot be reconciled with the biblical Jesus.  Jesus calls his followers to give up authority over others, not to seek privileges or even equity for themselves, but to become servants/slaves to others instead (e.g. Mark 10:35-45).  The Kingdom (rule) of God of the biblical Jesus cannot come about by political coercion; is it not of this world.  Moreover, the biblical Jesus – reconstructed across the sources and historical criteria – radically broke with the racial, sexist, political, political, and economic social stratification of his culture.  He had a diverse range of disciples and followers, touched a leper, allowed himself to be anointed by an “unclean” woman, ate with tax collects and with Pharisees, etc.

This biblical Jesus left those who met him uncomfortable.  The disciples were.  I find a psychological narrative comment in Mark quite telling.  As Jesus is headed south from Galilee to Jerusalem, he tells his disciples about his pending death and resurrection, “but they did not understand him and they were afraid to ask him” (Mark 9:32).  That is to say, they were not sure that they wanted to understand.  Still, they followed him.  Others were too uncomfortable to let him live.

So, the issue for me is this: Is the Jesus I follow one created in my image who serves my purposes?  Or, am I uncomfortably following the Real Jesus who is changing me into his image?
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Come Lord Jesus.  I am too aware that I want you in my image for my purposes.  Still, more deeply I want the real you.  Help me to follow you, even if confounded, like a true disciple.  Amen.