[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.
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