by Angus Harley

I really enjoy the history of the book of Genesis. Abram at the trees of Mamre. Determining where Eden might have been. Looking at the geography and archaeological evidence for people, towns, and events. Genesis ‘wants’ to be read as history. It just does. It’s that type of writing.

However, many Evangelicals consider Genesis 1-3, and some go beyond this, as not real history. It has connections with history, but is full of ANE images that are not meant to be taken literally as history. Or, if there is history, it is not to be interpreted too rigorously as to its appearance. So, the days of Genesis 1 are not indicating that God did create all things in 6 twenty-four-hour periods. Adam was not real. Or if he was real, and Eve, too, he was just one guy of many, albeit with a special link to Israel. Satan wasn’t really a snake. This is Evangelicals speaking!

Accepting it at face value

Funnily enough, my old prof, a Liberal theologian, would not agree with many of these Evangelicals. He would accept that Genesis 1 was conveyed as real history, albeit in a highly-structured, poetical form. He would tell you that the writer of Genesis wanted the reader to accept his account as what really happened in history.

Let me take a different example of the Liberal attitude. My prof understood 1 Corinthians 15 as teaching actual history and a real historical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He didn’t mess with this is any way. He didn’t need to, of course, because he dismissed all of this ‘textual history’ as mere myth. Yet, he didn’t feel compelled to twist the text, read into it, or argue that it was full of hints of not being historical, and so on. The ‘textual history’ must be allowed to stand, he taught. Yet, he did conclude that 1 Corinthians 15 was, nonetheless, fully farcical as a real history.

Fascinatingly, back in the day, James Barr (1924-2006), a Scottish Liberal theologian, and a world-renowned (secular) expert in OT studies, came to the same conclusion about Genesis 1:

“Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.”

What’s his point? The accounts in Genesis 1-11 are meant to be read as real history in its parts and whole. It violates the text to suggest otherwise. Barr was accepting the text ‘as is’, as a ‘textual’ account of real history- ‘textual history’. Nonetheless, Barr rejected all of this ‘textual history’ as myth.

Following on from Barr, we may conclude that the so-called discrepancies as to genre and to the text are not there in the text to undermine the text’s historical content, for everything written in the text is there to support the content as historical. The writer of Genesis is fully striving to communicate total history, as it were, and not a poetic, mythologized version of a few true events that bear really no relation at all to that which is in the text.

The truly bizarre thing was that hundreds of years ago, the first Liberal scholars read Genesis 1 to destroy its content, and at the level of the text, they said that it did not teach true history and was total myth. Meaning that the text itself was obviously not conveying itself as history. Fast-forward 150 years, and Liberal scholars were now taking the text of Genesis 1 and its history at face value. Of course, they denied all of this ‘textual history’ as farcical, but, nevertheless, unlike their Liberal fore-fathers, they were happy not to force the actual text to say things it did not. Amazing, really.

Illustrating the point

Let me illustrate the new Liberal approach. If you read a Marvel comic, it is a version of history- the history of the world of Marvel and its superheroes. The comic is to be read in that way. One is not to read into it other mythologies, comics, sciences, or the like. The content and ‘history’ of the Marvel stories stand all by themselves as a completed history and story. ‘Textual history’ meant to be read as a whole, without discrepancies, and with no contradictions.

Modern OT scholarship (at least in the secular world) is content to leave the ‘text’ of Genesis alone. It allows it to speak. It doesn’t fiddle with it any more, or, at least, nothing near as much as it used to. It doesn’t need to. Because, it simply pronounces all of that ‘history’ as myth, such as the stories in the Marvel comics.

Refusing the text

Why, then, do modern Evangelicals resort to the very old-school Liberal methodology that not even your modern Liberal theologian accepts? For, to many Evangelical, OT scholars, Genesis 1 is riddled with obvious myth, has many hints of non-historicity, and some say that it does not even attempt to present itself as history. My Liberal prof and Barr would simply not agree with them!

Where they would agree is with arguing that Genesis 1-3 is myth. Even though Evangelicals flee this term, it is an exact fit for much of Evangelical scholarship today and its account of Genesis 1-3.

Reading Genesis 1 as history

I will now describe how Genesis 1 may be read as history. Of course, I accept this history not only as ‘textual history’ but as real history, too. In doing this, I will deal with a couple of the so-called ‘discrepancies’ in the text. The point to bear in mind here is that the text is conveying six, twenty-four hour days of creation, and a real seventh day of twenty-four hours for God to rest on. Everything happens in those seven days. In describing Genesis 1, I’m going to lean heavy on the illustration of a modern potter. Here goes.

Imagine a potter making a short promo video for his product. The video begins with the finished product and the announcer announcing that is completed. This is the equivalent of v1 and its pronouncement that God created the heavens and the earth.

Then the video, going back to the process of making the product, starts to relate how the pottery was made. The very first step starts off with a lump of clay. It is shown in the video as part of the first step. The video is not interested in discussing the lump of clay. Why not? Because it’s sole purpose was to provide the raw material for his pottery. The clay is ‘just there’, waiting to be manipulated. Nor is there any attempt by the video to give the impression that the clay existed forever, or was bought six months earlier. The very first stage required the clay, and so it was crucial to mention it. The observer assumes that the potter provided his own material. Once the first stage was completed, there was no need to mull on the clay. Similarly, in v2, the void, darkness, and deep were the ‘material waiting there to be shaped’. Moreover, the assumption in Genesis 1:2 is that God provided the ‘clay’ of the deep and formless void, for the whole text of Genesis 1 is locating all events, materials, and processes within the days of creation. Thus, even the ‘material’ of the dark and formless deep is itself to be accounted for solely as being provided in day 1. The assumption is that God himself put the ‘clay’ there on day 1 itself.

This brings us to a major objection. ‘Surely, if God ‘provided’ the material, this must have been an extra day, or time, preceding the creation of light on day 1′, it is said.

Two responses to this. 1) As already stated, the text is to be read in such a way that the raw material for creation is provided by God on day 1. 2) More importantly, it entirely misses Moses’ point to focus on the ‘clay’ and to call it an act of ‘creation’. How so? Because it is plain from the context, and from Genesis use of the Hebrew term bara (‘to create’) that ‘creation’ always refers to a whole, and formed ‘product’. In Genesis, we do not read that God ‘created’ chaos or the deep, or that God created confusion, or any incomplete, unformed thing. Creation as a concept is entirely devoted to the completion of form, of something that is identifiable, and is not just a lump, or blob, of something. In other words, ‘to create’ is a specialist term, and is not generic for God providing something.

Let’s go back to the illustration of the video. The potter goes through each stage, six of them, until he completes the pottery at stage 6. But there’s one more stage, stage 7. It depicts how the potter himself has finished his product, is staring at it in delight, resting from his work.

Another objection arises, ‘What about the open-ended day of Genesis 2:3? It goes on and on. It has no creation formula of ‘evening and morning’. And it is followed by Genesis 2:4 and its obvious reference to a ‘day’ that exceeds 24 hours.’

We may answer this way: the presence of “evening and there was morning” in Genesis 1 was a marker of the ongoing nature of creation and its stages. Once creation was finalized, there was no more need to refer to “evening and there was morning”. The last day is there to put the capstone on what God has done, and to show that he rested from his labor, enjoying what he did, sanctifying the day itself unto himself. Now, as the text is ‘wanting’ to be read as conveying that all things are contained within the 7 days, it is presumptuous to assume that day 7 is anything other than a twenty-four hour day. It’s just that it is not a ‘creative’ day, but is a divine ‘rest’ day. As to the ‘day’ of Genesis 2:4, it might be a 24 hour day; it might not be. Is it possible that it is day 6 from a different angle? Isn’t that the day God completed all of his creation? Didn’t it end with man? But even if it is a broader ‘day’, this should not take away from the account of the seven days that precede. In other words, it is possible to use the word ‘day’ in different ways.

I know none of this will persuade some Evangelicals. However, I’m hoping, at the very least, that they will pay more attention to the text as to how it wants to be read.