Reclaiming Genesis

A scientific story - or the theatre of God's glory?

Melvin Tinker

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857213709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Some argue for a literal treatment of the first 12 chapters of Genesis; others accept some form of deistic evolution. But what is its real message? Melvin Tinker argues that we should focus on the intended meaning of the text. Genesis challenges the nations surrounding Israel to a different view of the world. For example, God has no genealogy, unlike gods of surrounding nations. 'The two great lights' are so described because the words 'sun' and 'moon' referred to regional deities. When God rested on the seventh day, the day of contemplation of his good creation, this would have upset the Babylonians who considered seven an unlucky number. This is just the start. Genesis is pregnant with meaning and challenges to both the ancient world and the world today. Here are the foundational themes of the Christian faith: God's mercy; human dignity and purpose; God's mission to heal the nations.

CHAPTER 1

PUTTING DOWN PAGANISM

GENESIS 1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night”. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse “sky”. And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land”, and the gathered waters he called “seas”. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.”

And it was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

(Genesis 1:1 – 2:4)

Let me introduce Dr Pedant of Secular University. He is a physicist by training and is so absorbed in his subject that everything has to be seen through the lens of his beloved “hard” science. To be frank, this makes Dr Pedant something of a nerd. How so? Let me illustrate how by relating what happened to him one day. He received through the post a rather affectionate letter written by a young lady who had admired Dr Pedant from afar. Her heart had been captured by the young scientist. How handsome he looked in his white laboratory coat. His horn-rimmed glasses sent her into a swoon. The high forehead was obviously a sign of super-intelligence, and she liked that in a man. All these things she set forth in her epistle, wearing her heart on her sleeve in the hope that Dr Pedant might feel the same way about her. You had to hand it to Ethel: she was not backward in coming forward!

How did Dr Pedant respond? He responded as any scientist of his ilk would. He became excited when he opened the letter and noticed the quality of the paper which had been used. He took it along to the laboratory to examine its cellulose and water content. Yes, he was right, this was a most interesting chemical composition indeed: he might write an article on it for the next issue of Scientist’s Weekly. Then there was the ink. He subjected it to chromatographical analysis, separating out the different pigments which composed it. The results were fed into a computer, which produced some very interesting figures. But later on that day a friend said to Dr Pedant, “I see you received a letter today: who was it from and what did it say?” Being the hard-nosed scientist he was, of the old “positivist” school, he replied, “Don’t ask me, I am a scientist. Take it to the linguistics department if you want to ask those sort of questions. As far as I am concerned they are just random marks on a page.”

Our apocryphal scientist is obviously an extreme case, but he does help make the valid point that in a similar way modern-day scientists can offer their views about the origin of the universe, the beginnings of humankind, and the biological nature of human beings by analysing such things in scientific terms, using scientific methods, and still not be able to answer the most vital questions of all, which are to do with the meaning and purpose of humankind: Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? How are we meant to behave? Is there a mind behind this universe? However, when scientists do attempt to answer such questions they can no more give an answer as scientists than Dr Pedant could, with the result that they miss out on the most important thing: in his case, that someone was trying to establish a relationship. If they do speak about such things – as the famous Professor Dawkins has done at length – they are going beyond science and their views are not necessarily any better or worse than anyone else’s. As the distinguished biologist Francisco J. Ayala has said, “The scientific view of the world is hopelessly incomplete,” and there are “matters of value, meaning and purpose that are outside science’s scope”.26

In order to find answers to these more profound questions about the meaning of life, rather than the origin of life, we need another source of knowledge, one which cannot be gained by looking through a microscope or peering through a telescope. In fact we need something akin to a letter, a form of correspondence from the “outside”, coming from the Maker. That is exactly what the Bible claims to be, not least the early chapters of Genesis. (“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” says the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16.) These chapters primarily deal with the “Why?” questions – what is the purpose of this world – rather than the “How?” questions – the means by which it came into being. More to the point, they answer the “Who?” question – who the one is that brought this universe into existence by whatever means he saw fit. How are we to relate to him? What does he expect of us and what can we expect of him?

Turning to the first chapter in Genesis, we hear what God says about himself and the world he has made.

The exclusivity of God

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This verse may not have blown you away on reading it, but it would have caused anyone in the nations surrounding early Israel to have apoplexy! There are several reasons for this.

The first thing that is so surprising about this statement is that in a book all about beginnings and “begattings” God has no beginning: he is devoid of a family tree. That, however, was not the view of the other nations, which were steeped in paganism. For example, in Mesopotamia, where Abraham came from (modern-day Iraq), there was a mythical account of creation called Enuma Elish. According to this, the original divine couple were stuck in some sort of matter, the male god being called Apsu and the female god Tiamat, and from them came little “godlets” such as Marduk, Nebo, and Bel. Therefore, there was a whole divine family tree. Not so in Genesis. While Genesis is a book of cosmogony (the origin of the universe), it is not a book of theogony (the origin of gods). God is presented at the outset as the self-existent One. God exists contented and fulfilled within his own being of love as Father, Son (the Word), through which he created all things, and the Spirit or “breath” which in verse 2 we are told was instrumental in bringing the universe into existence, hovering like a bird, which shows that God is intimately involved with and close to his creation. The true God is not locked into some sort of cosmic “stuff” from which he has to struggle to release himself, as in Babylonian theology, in fact he is as free as a bird. Neither is there some “Mrs” god with whom he has to have sex in order to produce offspring. God just is! He has always been and will always be. The Bible begins with God the infinite one, transcendent, holy, self-existent, and personal, who is to be worshipped, trusted, and adored. Only to observe the universe and analyse it without recognizing the God who made it is as sad and impoverished as Dr Pedant failing to recognize a love letter when it drops on his doormat.

Our writer makes the same point about the exclusivity of God in several different ways throughout the chapter.

For example, verse 16 speaks of God creating two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. Why not simply call them the sun and the moon? After all, that is what they are. It is for the very good reason that the Semitic languages, of which Hebrew was one, had words for the sun and the moon which were also the names of gods, and unsurprisingly people worshipped them. But by speaking of the sun and the moon in this way, the writer is attacking idolatry. He is saying that it is nonsense to think of the sun and the moon as gods, for they are nothing more than functional lights provided by the Creator, giant lamps which on a smaller scale you might use to light your house – no more and no less. That is all they are to him, and that is all they should be to us. Humans were not made to serve these lights; the lights were made to serve humans as light sources and calendar markers (verse 14). At this very early stage in the history of Israel we have the basis for astronomy and the debunking of astrology!

We notice too that the verb “create” (bara) occurs on only three occasions, in verses 1, 21, and 27. This is a verb which in its active form is only ever used of God’s creative activity. It occurs at the beginning as a programmatic statement that God is the ultimate Creator of everything: “God created [bara] the heavens and the earth.” That is an understandable introduction. In verse 27 it is used to describe the pinnacle of his creation, humankind: “So God created [bara] man.” That too makes sense, as it emphasizes the special place of human beings in God’s world and his relationship to them. But why does it appear in verse 21 with reference to the creation of giant sea monsters (“So God created [bara] the great creatures of the sea”)? The answer is that it could well be because the Babylonian myth mentioned earlier, Enuma Elish, describes how the world was brought into being through a battle with a sea monster. It says that one of the offspring, Marduk, fought with his mother Tiamat, who was also a sea monster (the leviathan), and that he killed her with a flat sword and from her two halves made the earth and the sky. Not so, says Genesis: whatever sea creatures there are, that is all they are – big fish, not gods. The one true God doesn’t have to do battle with anything to bring about his creation: he is in sovereign control over everything, as indicated by the fact that like a monarch he speaks and his will is immediately enacted.

Whatever Genesis 1–3 is, it is at least a vigorous polemic against paganism.

“But,” you may say, “that is all very interesting but not terribly relevant. No one today believes in such myths involving gods struggling with matter or monsters to bring things into being.” Granted, we may not have myths in that form, but myths are being presented today in books and on the TV as an alternative to the biblical account nonetheless. For example, here is the atheist biologist George G. Simpson: “Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was n...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Praise for RECLAIMING GENESIS
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Preface: Creation, Evolution, and Genesis
• Chapter 1. Putting Down Paganism: Genesis 1
• Chapter 2. The Creator’s Masterpiece: Genesis 2
• Chapter 3. Origins and Evil: Genesis 3
• Chapter 4. Ashes to Ashes: Genesis 3:8–24
• Chapter 5. The Serpent Seed: Genesis 4
• Chapter 6. Mess and Mercy: a Family Tree: Genesis 5:1 – 6:8
• Chapter 7. “Arktheology”: Genesis 8
• Chapter 8. What a Promise: Genesis 9
• Chapter 9. Confusion and Grace: Genesis 11
• Chapter 10. Grace and Glory: Genesis 12