The Lost World of Genesis One: Session 12

Other Theories of Either Go Too Far or Not Far Enough

Previous chapters have made passing reference on a number of occasions to other theories concerning . In this chapter each one will be briefly evaluated to identify the points of comparison with the theory proposed here.

Young Earth Creationism (YEC)

The YEC position believes that the days in are consecutive twenty-four-hour days during which the entire material cosmos was brought into existence. Proponents of this view therefore believe that everything must be recent (the origins of the universe, the earth and humankind). Some variation exists as to whether the cosmic origins go back 10,000–20,000 years as some would allow, or only go back about 6,000 years from the present (as promoted at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky). The challenge they face is to account for all of the evidences of great age of the earth and of the universe. They do this by offering alternative theories allegedly based on science. For example, they typically account for the visibility of the stars by suggesting that light was created in transit. Most propose that the geological strata were laid down by the flood, and some contend that continental drift has all taken place since the flood. They commonly use the idea that God created with the appearance of age to account for some of what is observed.

Though each of their proposals could be discussed individually, it is more important here to address the foundation of the approach. I would contend that this view goes too far in its understanding of what we need to do to defend the biblical text. It goes too far in its belief that the Bible must be read scientifically, and it goes too far in its attempts to provide an adequate alternative science. It uses a particular interpretation of the biblical text to provide the basis for scientific proposals about rock strata, an expanding universe and so forth. The YEC position begins with the assumption that is an account of material origins and that to “create” something means to give it material shape. It would never occur to them that there are other alternatives and that in making this assumption they are departing from a face-value reading of the biblical text. In fact they pride themselves on reading the text literally and flash this as a badge of honor as they critique other views. Reading the text scientifically imposes modern thinking on an ancient text, an anachronism that by its very nature cannot possibly represent the ideas of the inspired human author.

I would contend that while their reading of the word “day”

(yôm)

as a twenty-four-hour day is accurate, they have been too narrow in their reading of words such as

“create” (bārāʾ) and “made” (ʿāśâ)

It is not that they have considered the merits of a nonmaterial understanding of these words and rejected it. They are not even aware that this is a possibility and have therefore never considered it. In the functional view that has been presented in this book, the text can be taken at face value without necessitating all of the scientific gymnastics of YEC. Their scientific scenarios have proven extremely difficult for most scientifically trained people to accept. When the latter find YEC science untenable, they have too often concluded that the Bible must be rejected.

Old Earth Creationism (OEC)

One of the more prominent voices supporting the OEC position is found in the writings of Hugh Ross and his associates (Reasons to Believe). Ross believes that the Bible is not characterized by the limited scientific knowledge of its time and place.2 So, for example, he suggests that in the presence of light is evident through the “dense shroud of interplanetary dust and debris” that prevents the heavenly bodies from being seen. He sees day two as the beginning of the water cycle and “the formation of the troposphere, the atmospheric layer just above the ocean where clouds form and humidity resides, as distinct from the stratosphere, mesosphere, and ionosphere lying above.” He looks to tectonics and volcanism to explain day three. Ross believes, along with many others, that the old age of the earth and the universe can be easily accommodated to once we realize that the days can represent long eras.

One may not be inclined to dispute the science that underlies this approach, and Ross’s desire to validate the text of Genesis, as in the YEC camp, is commendable. The question is, Is that what the author of Genesis is trying to say? We might be able to make the claim that there is some sort of compatibility between the scientific sequence and the textual sequence, but that is not proof that the text should be interpreted in scientific ways with advanced scientific content (latent in the text). One could do the same thing with Babylonian or Egyptian creation accounts. It is proof of our ingenuity rather than evidence of some ingrained underlying science.

If those from this camp were to consider the merits of the functional view proposed in this book, they would not have to give up all the scientific correlations proposed, but such an approach would no longer be of interest or carry any urgency, necessity or significance. They would only have to admit that the text makes no such claims and requires no such validation. Taking the text seriously is not expressed by correlating it with modern science; it is expressed by understanding it in its ancient context. If the text is interested in functional origins, it need not be evaluated against material claims and material knowledge. Its validation would come in answer to the question, Is this really how God set up the world to run, and is he the one who set it up? This stands in stark contrast to the validation that asks, Is this a scientifically accurate account of how the material universe came into being?

Framework Hypothesis

The framework hypothesis represents a literary/theological approach to . On the literary side it recognizes that the account of the seven days is highly structured, with the first three days defining realms of habitation and the second set of three filling these realms with inhabitants. Parallels exist between days one and four, days two and five, and days three and six. From this literary structuring conclusions are drawn about the account.

We may simply conclude from this high level of patterning that the order of events and even lengths of time are not part of the author’s focus.… In this understanding, the six workdays are a literary device to display the creation week as a careful and artful effort.

Discussion then typically follows that draws out the theologically significant points of the passage on which all agree: God as Creator of all, the sovereignty of God, the power of the spoken word, the “goodness” of creation, the image of God in people and the significance of sabbath.

The question to be posed to this group is whether they have gone far enough with the text. Is there more to it than theological affirmations expressed in a literary way? While no objection can be raised against the literary structure and no disagreement with the theological points, one has to ask whether Israelites thought of this text in only literary/theological terms. This view risks reductionism and oversimplification, and should be only a last resort.

For those who have in the past adopted the framework hypothesis, the theory proposed in this book does not require them to discard that interpretation, but only to accept the functional perspective alongside it. This does not require replacement, but would add value.

Other Theories

Throughout much of the twentieth century, a popular view was known as the

“gap theory”

or the

“ruin-reconstruction”

theory, promoted in the Scofield Reference Bible. It suggested that recounted a prior creation ruled by an unfallen Satan. It had the advantage that it allowed for the universe and earth to be old, but the days of Genesis to be recent. Anything that did not fit into a recent earth (e.g., geological strata, dinosaurs) could just be shoved back into the first creation. In this view, at Satan’s fall that first creation was destroyed—this is the gap between and . The second verse was translated, “The earth became formless and void.” Response to this theory demonstrated that the Hebrew text could not be read in that way and the theory has been gradually fading from the scene.

Others have suggested that the accounts in and are separated by many millions of years. In this view the old earth can be supported along with the mass appearance of hominid species in the first account. The second account is then associated with something like the Neolithic revolution in relatively recent times and associated with the granting of the image of God on two individuals that leads to Homo sapiens. The problems with this position are largely theological. Were the previous hominid species in the image of God? Were they subject to death? How do they relate to the Fall? Are they biologically mixed into the current human race? These are questions that need to be answered by those promoting this position.

In conclusion it should be reemphasized that all of these positions have in common that they are struggling to reconcile the scientific findings about the material cosmos with the biblical record without compromising either. They all assume that the biblical account needs to be treated as an account of material origins, and therefore that the “different” scientific account of material origins poses a threat to the credibility of the biblical account that has to be resolved. This book has proposed, instead, that was never intended to offer an account of material origins and that the original author and audience did not view it that way. In fact, the material cosmos was of little significance to them when it came to questions of origins. In this view, science cannot offer an unbiblical view of material origins, because there is no biblical view of material origins aside from the very general idea that whatever happened, whenever it happened, and however it happened, God did it.

Are there Dinosaurs in the Bible?

A few years ago I saw Jurassic World, which was reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise based on the Michael Crichton novel by that name. The novel and the films center around the idea of bringing dinosaurs back from extinction by means of genetic engineering. It’s a fascinating premise, especially since some paleontologists and geneticists are working on real-world procedures for accomplishing the feat. If you want a glimpse of the real science, I recommend the book How to Build a Dinosaur, by paleontologist Jack Horner, the inspiration for Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist in Jurassic Park.

One of the more interesting background elements in Horner’s book is the story of Dr. Mary Schweitzer, who now teaches at North Carolina State University. When she began her journey into what would become her career, Schweitzer was a substitute teacher and mother of three. She gained Horner’s permission to audit his vertebrate paleontology class at Montana State. The rest is history. Schweitzer got hooked and soon became Horner’s protégé, earning a PhD in biology. She is now world-famous for discovering soft tissue in dinosaur bones that were 68 million years old. Young earth creationists thrilled to the discovery, touting it as incontrovertible proof that the earth is actually only thousands of years old, not millions since (they argue) soft tissue could never have survived that long.

There’s just one problem with this picture. Schweitzer is an evangelical Christian—and doesn’t agree with the young earth use of her research. By her own testimony, she learned that a lot of what she’d heard about her field and scientists in church wasn’t true. But the experience didn’t harm her faith; it made it stronger. Schweitzer is now an old-earth creationist. This is no secret in the paleontological community. Her faith is as well-known as her discovery. Schweitzer is living proof that serious Christians can be serious scientists.

Mary Schweitzer is also living proof that honesty and integrity in letting the Bible be what it is and doing science matter. She isn’t disputing the science behind the age of the bones she works on. She knows her field as well as anyone in the world. She isn’t pretending that we need a young earth to believe in the authority of Scripture. She understands that the Bible is an ancient work inspired by God not to give us science, but to give us truth about things that can’t be put under a microscope, like the spiritual world, our spiritual need, and our spiritual destiny if we believe God’s plan for salvation. Those truths transcend science and aren’t dependent on it. The Bible has a pre-scientific cosmology because God chose writers who lived in a pre-scientific age. He knew that would be no obstacle to communicating what he wanted communicated.

Schweitzer’s testimony is useful for framing another example of how the Bible gets interpreted out of context to address a modern controversy: the teaching that there are dinosaurs in the Bible. The alleged evidence comes in the form of words like

Leviathan (לויתן, lwytn; e.g.,

Rahab (רהב, rhb; )

and

“sea monster, dragon” (תנין, tnyn; )

This flawed notion isn’t as disastrous as the “Bible teaching” that arose to account for newly discovered races from the 16th century onward that produced “biblical” racism. No one is going to be enslaved or die because people believe it. Its harm is less discernible. It gets filed with other ideas that are falsifiable and, once Christians learn that it isn’t true, their faith in the Bible’s inspiration will be damaged when it doesn’t need to be.

How is this idea falsifiable? Context. As the Lexham Bible Dictionary (LBD) notes:

Leviathan is mentioned by name six times in the Hebrew Bible (; ; ; ; ). Most of these passages assert or allude to Yahweh’s power and control over the sea monster. The mythological background of the deity battling and defeating a sea monster (i.e., the Chaoskampf [“chaos struggle”] motif) is most evident in and . . . . The mythological background of the Bible’s references to Leviathan became apparent with the discovery of Ugaritic references to a sea monster called “Litan” (ltn).-Lexham Bible Dictionary (LBD)

The Baal Cycle from Ugarit offers particularly precise parallels. LBD continues:

The Baal Epic recounts how the storm god Baal displaced El as the chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon. The story involves Baal defeating Yam, the sea god . . . . In this exchange, Mot refers to Baal’s defeat of Litan (or Leviathan), apparently equating Yam and Litan (KTU 1.5, col. i, lines 1–8). . . .

When you killed Litan, the Fleeing Serpent, Annihilated the Twisty Serpent, The Potentate with Seven Heads, The heavens grew hot, they withered. But let me tear you to pieces, Let me eat flanks, innards, forearms. Surely you will descend into Divine Mot’s throat, Into the gullet of El’s Beloved, the Hero.

The description of Litan in the first lines of this tablet from the Baal Epic use almost the exact words as the description of Leviathan in .

Readers are invited to consult the LBD entries for “Rahab” and “Dragon and the Sea” for parallels an ancient texts from Ugarit and elsewhere to those biblical terms. The point I’m making here is that Leviathan and other “dinosaurs” are well-known mythological figures from uninspired texts outside the Bible contemporary with the biblical world. Pagan texts have their gods defeating these creatures to show their superiority or assert that their gods brought order over chaos at creation. But the Baal myth isn’t literally true. Baal didn’t really battle a dinosaur and become the god of all gods. These creatures are metaphors for the forces of chaos. and 89:9–11 use this same metaphor to argue that it was Yahweh who subdued Leviathan / the sea dragon / Rahab to bring about creation order.[1. Note that uses combat creation imagery to also describe God’s victory in the wilderness—i.e., the parting of the Red Sea and the conquest of Pharaoh.] The point of these passages isn’t that God was killing literal dinosaurs to transform the formless and empty world at creation. Rather, it was a polemic strategy to assert that Yahweh—not Baal or any other deity in the ancient world—was the lord of creation and Most High God. Interpreting these terms in their original context means we don’t have to fabricate “biblical meaning” to defend the Bible.

NEXT WEEK: Israel and its neighbors??

Technical Support

Blocher, Henri. In the Beginning. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984.

Carlson, Richard. Science and Christianity: Four Views. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000.

Moreland, J. P., and John Mark Reynolds, eds. Three Views on Creation and Evolution. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999.

Ratsch, Del. The Battle of Beginnings. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996.[1]

[1] Walton, J. H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (pp. 107–112). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.