The Long Ascent

Genesis 1–11 in Science & Myth, Volume 1

Sheldon

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532612152
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The first eleven chapters of Genesis (Adam, Eve, Noah) are to the twenty-first century what the Virgin Birth was to the nineteenth century: an impossibility. A technical scientific exegesis of Gen 1-11, however, reveals not only the lost rivers of Eden and its location, but the date of the Flood, the length of the Genesis days, and the importance of comets in the creation of the world. These were hidden in the Hebrew text, now illuminated by modern cosmology, archaeology, and biology. The internet-friendly linguistic tools described in this book make it possible to resolve the mysterious "firmament," to decipher the "bird of the air," and to find the dragonflies of chapter 1. Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Sumerian, and Sanskrit mythology are all found to support this new interpretation of Genesis. Combining science, myth, and the Genesis accounts together paints a vivid picture of the genetic causes and consequences of the greatest Flood of the human race. It also draws attention to the acute peril our present civilization faces as it follows the same path as its long-forgotten, antediluvian ancestors. Discover why Genesis has never been so possible, so relevant as it is today.

PART 1

When we come to relate that part to the whole, the divined glimmer to the fire we suppose to be its source, we see why Hermes is the patron of so many other trades besides interpretation. There has to be trickery. And we interpret always as transients—of whom he is also patron—both in the book and in the world which resembles the book. For the world is our beloved codex. We may not see it, as Dante did, in perfect order, gathered by love into one volume; but we do, living as reading, like to think of it as a place where we can travel back and forth at will, divining congruences, conjunctions, opposites; extracting secrets from its secrecy, making understood relations, an appropriate algebra. This is the way we satisfy ourselves with explanations of the unfollowable world—as if it were a structured narrative, of which more might always be said by trained readers of it, by insiders. World and book, it may be, are hopelessly plural, endlessly disappointing; we stand alone before them, aware of their arbitrariness and impenetrability, knowing that they may be narratives only because of our impudent intervention, and susceptible of interpretation only by our hermetic tricks.

Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy

Hence one must say that there is a right and wrong in the interpretation of Rom 7, and a right and wrong in a theological system. However, it is not necessarily easy for human beings to arrive at what is right. Larger frameworks or disciplinary matrices have an influence. In part, the influence is a good one. An effective, fruitful disciplinary matrix regularly steers researchers towards fruitful ways of looking at a passage and fruitful ways of analyzing and solving theological difficulties. But any disciplinary matrix, by suggesting solutions primarily in one direction, can make people almost blind to the possibility of solutions in another direction. Such, surely, is one of the lessons to draw from the history of interpretation of Rom 7.

Vern Poythress, Science and Hermeneutics

Figure 1.0: Hermes/Mercury after Greco-Roman sculpture. (Albino Magno)

chapter 1

Hermes

1.1 The Garden of Children

My Daddy had a new job, and so did we. We used to live in Korea, where he was a missionary, but now he was going to be pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church of Washington DC. It was very important, and we were going to help him; we were going to Sunday School, me, my three brothers, and my sister. In McLean, Virginia where we used to live on furlough, I didn’t go to school, because I was in kindergarten, and they didn’t have kindergarten. So I played school with my little brother. He was four, and sometimes he didn’t like school. But now we’d moved to Washington. I was going to first grade Sunday School and was going to learn about God from the Bible.

Sixth was a big stone church with tall stone columns on the inside. It had a tower and behind a locked door, a secret metal ladder that went all the way up to the top. There were lots of pigeons living in it, so you had to be careful where you stepped. On top of the tower was the bell room with tall narrow windows, just like a castle. I was glad my Daddy worked there. Lots of grownups said they were glad too. They laughed when I asked if it had been a castle. “No,” they said, “it isn’t even a hundred years old. It’s just copied from an older church.”

Mrs. Merrill was my Sunday School teacher and Paul was my best friend. Paul knew lots about the Bible because Mrs. Merrill was his mother. She taught us the 23rd Psalm and I memorized it just as fast as Paul. She said Jesus was our shepherd and we were his sheep. I didn’t know what sheep were, but she showed us pictures—sort of fuzzy dogs. Mommy wouldn’t let us have a dog, she said she had enough pets to take care of. Mrs. Merrill said sheep were very cute and dumb, they needed a shepherd to take care of them, lead them out and bring them home. I wasn’t going to be a sheep, when I got to first grade next month, I was going to walk home from Lafayette Elementary school all by myself. “No,” said Mrs. Merrill, “we are all like sheep, even I am his sheep because the Lord is my shepherd.”

She also told us about Adam and Eve and Noah’s ark. She said Adam and Eve didn’t wear anything because God didn’t make clothes for them yet. That seemed dumb, but Paul showed me his comic book Bible, where they had pictures of everything. I couldn’t tell if they wore clothes or not, they were always standing in a bush, but Paul said they weren’t. Noah had clothes, but it was a dress. Paul said that everybody wore dresses back then. They all had beards too, so people would know they weren’t girls.

We turned the page. Noah was building a boat in his back yard. We were going to have an amazing tree fort in our front yard. My older brothers had already climbed the big oak tree, with a first branch so high they needed a ladder, but once you got up on it you could climb higher than the roof of the manse. You could see the whole neighborhood! We were going to build a fort big enough to sleep in. Noah was going to sleep in his boat too. But it didn’t have very many windows. “Are you sure that’s what an ark looks like?” I asked Paul, “It doesn’t look like the one they have in the nursery with a giraffe sticking out. I don’t think the giraffe would fit without a window.”

“All the animals fit in the ark,” Paul said.

“Even a blue whale?”

Paul laughed, “A whale isn’t an animal, it lives in the ocean. Noah only put in the animals that couldn’t swim.”

I looked at the picture again. It was much taller than Noah, even if it didn’t have many windows. Maybe the whole Zoo could fit in it. Daddy said he would take us to the Zoo someday. They had an elephant house, a monkey house, a lion house, even Smokey the Bear. “If lions or bears or, or elephants fought each other, who would win?”

“No,” said Paul, “they each have their own room, like the Zoo.” I didn’t have my own room. I always shared it with my little brother. Noah’s ark was bigger than my house, but just for animals.

Sunday School was fun. I learned a lot about the Bible. But I didn’t want to be a sheep, even if Mrs. Merrill wanted to. Mrs. Merrill said we needed to obey the Bible if we wanted to be a member of Sixth. I wanted to help Daddy, but I wasn’t going to be a sissy and wear a dress. “No,” said Mrs. Merrill, “you just have to learn it, you don’t have to copy it, because people back then didn’t live like we do today.”

I’m glad I’m big enough to go to Sunday School and learn about people back then, but you shouldn’t just copy them.

1.2 The Garden of Eden

In this chapter I want to discuss the importance of language and the core problem of interpretation—the hermeneutical circle. Without realizing it, that was the problem I was struggling with as a child. After exploring the concept and the importance of the hermeneutical circle, I hope to suggest a way forward.

In our early lives, there is a point when we are suddenly aware of the wide, wide world that holds our small vulnerable self and we ask “What is the meaning of it all?” Psychologists were astounded to find that even small babies who have not yet learned to talk expect causes or reasons for every event. For example, in one study babies were astonished when the stuffed animal disappeared from behind the screen.1 Teleology is hard-wired into our brains; just as we are born curious, so also we are born for purpose. Aristotle famously categorized the four kinds of causes that might explain the stuffed animal: the material cause explains what it is made of (pink fur); the formal cause explains what it looks like (a baby bear); the efficient cause explains how it arrives (the funny man pulled it from a box); and the final cause explains why it is there (Daddy wanted me to have it). The final cause is so unlike the other three, that the twentieth century sages refused to permit the question even to be asked, on the grounds that “If it isn’t material, it isn’t science!” Many attributed the rise of Western technology to the abandonment of the final cause with its stifling dogma. One of the many ways that final causes differ from the others, is that they cannot be answered without a mess...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Bibliography