Genesis: Is it Really About Human Origins?

Alice C. Linsley

The more I study Genesis, the more convinced I become that the book isn't about human origns. It is about the origins of Messianic expectation. Genesis is about the ruler-priests of Abraham's Horite caste and their faith in the promise that the Creator made to their ancestors in Eden.That said, Evangelical scientists are still trying to use Genesis to develop a model that reconciles current scientific (read evolutionary) understanding of human origins with the Genesis creation stories. 

Denis Alexander, Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge recently gave a talk in which he stated this:

Building models to relate biblical texts to science requires no concordist interpretations of the text (in the traditional sense of the word ‘concordist’). The disciplines of both science and theology should be accorded their own integrity. The Genesis texts should be allowed to speak within their own contexts and thought-forms, which are clearly very distant from those of modern science. We can all agree that the early chapters of Genesis exist to convey theology and not science. The task of models is then to explore how the theological truths of Genesis might relate to our current scientific understanding of human origins.

Read more here.

There is a great difficulty here since the very notion of evolution is contradictory to understanding of creation held by those who gave us the Genesis material. They viewed the creation as having a fixed geometry, exhibiting a fixed order, with fixed boundaries between species.

Further, African origin stories can't be forced into an evolutionary mold. The idea that humans evolved from apes is considered an insult. Dr Mathole Motshekga, Executive Director: Kara Heritage Institute (IKS), has written: "The Custodians of African heritage, the Amakhosi and Izinyaka do not know or accept that humanity and Africans in particular descended from the baboons of Maropeng (Sterksfontein), they regard this as an insult visited on them by archeologists and paleontologists. They want the same amount of resources given to these so-called experts to be given to IKS researchers and custodians to research and document the African Genesis (i.e. the true story of our origins)."

In the West, people believe that change over time is progress. That's an illusion because nothing changes. This existence is one unchanging Reality, and prayer is a spiritual nod to this single Reality.

This is why the debate continues between anthropologists who are willing to admit that there is no physical evidence for macro-evolution and biologists who have taken Darwin as their religion.

Related reading:  "Q and A on Creaton vs. Evolution";  "Genesis and Genetics"; The Genesis Creation Stories; Overview of Human Origins

Paul H. Sheely on YEC Dogma and Concordism

Alice C. Linsley

Paul H. Sheely is a member of the American Scientific Affiliation. He lives in Portland, Oregon. I agree with him on many points, especially his perceptive and sound arguments against Young-Earth Creationism.

Paul is a fine biblical anthropologist and I agree with most of what he has written. However, I want to respond to some things he says here.  My comments (in brown) follow what Sheely has written.

Sheely: With regard to the historicity of Genesis 1–11, we can learn something from creation science. It also claims to believe that the history in Genesis 1–11 is accurate history that agrees with the historical/ scientific facts. Most readers of this journal are well aware that the way creation science squares the biblical account with the historical/scientific facts is by rejecting the overwhelming consensus of the best-trained scientists in the relevant sciences and substituting in its place private interpretations of the scientific data. In addition it finds evidence in Scripture for items which Old Testament scholars do not find there, like multiple volcanoes exploding at the time of the flood.

Genesis 1-11 contains both myth and genealogical (kinship) information. These genres are so distinct that we can hardly consider chapters 1-11 as a unit. Old Testament scholars are largely influenced by rabbinic thought and are far from scientific in their approach to Genesis. Extrusive volcanism in the Bible is not mentioned in relation to Noah's flood. However, it is mentioned in reference to the production of land masses. The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth;by understanding hath he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew. (Proverbs 3:19, 20)

We can imagine a great sea with steam rising from deep underwater fissures in the earth. Now imagine volcanoes rising up from the sea. These are the "pillars of the earth" described in Job 9:6 which says, "Who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble." These are called God's pillars according to I Samuel 2:8 - "For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s and he had set the world upon them."The emergence of dry land from a cosmic sea is described in the oldest religious narratives. One of the oldest creation accounts is found among the ancient Egyptians. They envisioned the first place in the world as a mound emerging from the waters of a universal ocean. Here the first life form was seen as a lily, growing on the peak of the primeval mound. The emerging mound was named TaTJaNuN, a reference to TT (twin peaks) and nun (water). TTJNN likely means the "pillars of God in the water" and is a reference to volcanic peaks emerging from the universal ocean. I Samuel 2:8 states that these "pillars of the earth" belong to God. (Also see Psalm 75:2,3; and Job 9:6.)

Sumerian commercial records, the Egyptian Coffin Texts, and the Hebrew Scriptures all point to the belief of the ancient Afro-Asiatic peoples that the dry land earth emerged from a watery chaos. In the Coffin Texts we read these words from the Creator, "I was the one who began (everything), the dweller in the Primeval Waters. First Hahu emerged from me and then I began to move."

Ha-hu is the wind that separated the waters above from the waters below and caused the erosion of the dry land so that it spread out. In Hebrew the Spirit that moved over the water at the beginning (Genesis 1) is called ruach, and ruach also means breath or wind.


Sheely: Is concordism any different? Despite the honesty of the concordists with regard to the relevant sciences, concordism squares the biblical account with the historical/ scientific facts primarily by rejecting the overwhelming consensus of the best-trained Old Testament scholars and substituting in its place private interpretations of the biblical data. With regard to pre-Adamites, it finds evidence for them in Scripture in places where Old Testament scholars do not find them.

Adam appears to be the founder of the lines of archaic rulers who are listed in Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 25 and 36. Before Adam's time, humans had already widely dispersed out of Africa. Adam and Eve are representative first parents and must be understood as the literal first created humans.

Sheely: As for a local flood, which has become a standard staple of concordism, the overwhelming consensus of Old Testament biblical scholars is that the Bible is saying that the Flood was anthropologically universal and that during the Flood the entire earth was virtually returned to its pre-creation state described in Gen. 1:2.

Noah's flood was a large, yet local event in the region of Lake Chad during the Gurian Wet Period or the Aqualithic (500 years of monsoonal rains in the Sahara). From Noah's perspective in the region of Lake Chad, the flood waters covered the entire world and destroyed his civilization. Was his the only civilization on Earth at that time? No. By Noah's time the Rib peoples had dispersed into Anatolia, Bactria, Brittany, Northern Spain and the southern British Isles.

One need not take my word for it. Go to a good theological library and find twenty commentaries on Genesis by qualified Old Testament scholars. Carefully read the sections supposedly supporting pre-Adamites and the section on the flood. You will be lucky to find even two Old Testament scholars who think Scripture is speaking of pre-Adamites or a local flood. Concordism is not resting upon any firmer a foundation than is creation science. It simply prefers a private interpretation of the Bible to a private interpretation of science.

I agree that the assumptions of concordism are as dangerous as those of Young-Earth Creationism. Private interpretation is a problem, but that's not what we have in the case of either concordism or young Earth creationism. Both attempts to reconcile Genesis with science are examples of uninformed contemporary group-think.

Despite its sincerity, effort, and hopeful thinking, concordism’s Day-age, pre-Adamites, local flood, and local language at the Tower of Babel are rejections of the historical accuracy of Genesis 1–11. Concordism replaces the history offered in Genesis 1–11 with a different history based on private interpretations which are determined not by the context of Scripture, but by the findings of modern science.

Assumptions about what Genesis says are dangerous no matter who makes them. Assumptions, not science, are the problem. Young-Earth Creationists filter the Biblical information through their preconceived and racist template. They find dinosaurs under Neolithic rocks and make Adam and Eve white Europeans.

This does not mean that creation science gets off scotfree with reference to its interpretation of Scripture. For one thing, as Dick Fischer pointed out in his paper (PSCF 55 [Dec. 2003]: 222–31), the “fountains of the great Deep” (Gen. 7:11) are fresh water terrestrial fountains; and it is they along with rain that supplied the water for the flood.4.

The ocean, which is not fresh water, cannot be employed as a means of flooding the globe (or half the globe à la Godfrey/Aardsma) without doing the same thing that concordists are doing: replacing the history in Genesis 1–11 with a private interpretation.

Calvin’s doctrine of accommodation, which I believe should be followed in principle, has a great advantage over creation science and concordism in that it allows both the Bible and the scientific data to freely say what they say. Concordism and creation science with their private interpretations have replaced the reality of Scripture and science with an illusion.
 
Calvin wasn't a scientist either. There is no conflict between Genesis and science when both are allowed to speak in their own languages. Anthropological research has demonstrated that Genesis presents an accurate and verifiable picture of Abraham's Nilotic ancestors to whom God made a promise that the Woman's Seed would be born of their ruler-priest lines (Gen. 3:15). The Bible is their story and it is foremost about the origin of Messianic expectation, not human origins.


Notes


1It would be just as misleading to say Genesis 1–11 is either “fiction” or “myth” as to say that the early geology books which explain the results of the Missoula floods as being due to glaciers were either fiction or myth. Genesis 1–11, like those early geology books, is the outmoded history/science of those times.

Geological evidence appears to be the obsesssion among both Young Earth Creationists and condordists. They make strange claims about dating of earth and moon rocks and about the age of the Grand Canyon. They tend to stay away from human origins because they cannot reconcile discoveries like that of 77,000 year old mattresses and 100,000 stone tools with their Young-Earth interpretations.

2The fact that New Testament writers accept Genesis 1–11 as historical only proves that modern history/science was not revealed to them any more than to the Old Testament writers.

New Testament writers accept as historical the promise made to Abraham's ancestors that the Son of God would be born of their ruler-priests lines. That promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ whose mother was the virgin daughter of a Hebrew ruler-priest, Joachim.

3My book, Inerrant Wisdom, develops this thesis. 4Cf. Gerhard F. Hasel, “The Fountains of the Great Deep,” Origins 1, no. 2 (1974): 67–72.

Paul H. Seely
Portland, OR


Related reading:  Dating Adam: Paul H. Sheely Proposes a solution; Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists; The Pillars of the Earth

The Creation Museum

The Creation Museum, near Cincinnati, is a large facility with petting zoo, gardens, and an exhibit hall and planetarium.  It is a favorite destination of home schooling groups and students from Christian schools. To see everything you should plan to spend the day. Visit the official website for current news on events. The staff are friendly and helpful and I especially enjoyed the petting zoo.

Sheep shearing at the petting zoo

The Museum is committed to young-earth creationism. As a Biblical anthropologist I found the scheme forced. The exhibits are well constructed but often portray a picture contrary to what the Bible actually says about Abraham's ancestors going back to Eden. The scheme seems unaware of what the Bible tells us about the Afro-asiatic Dominion, the flood of Noah's time and Abraham's kingdom-building ancestors, and claims to represent the only biblical view of creation and the flood. People who believe that the earth is only 6000 years old, based on Ussher's (flawed) dating, will enjoy it more than those who accept that the earth is about 4 billion years old.

Dinosaurs and humans are shown co-existing. The dating assumes that God created things to appear old. I found no explanation for why God would do this and find none in the Bible either. The scheme assumes the accuracy of Bishop Usher's dating for the earth based on the age spans assigned to the patriarchs from Adam to Abraham. It assumes that the people listed in Genesis 4 and 5 are the first humans on the surface of the earth, a claim that Scripture does not support.

The Museum is an example of what happens in attempts to force concordance between Genesis and earth science. This is called concordism. John H. Walton, Old Testament professor at Wheaton College, points out the danger of such an approach.  He has written: "If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that it never said. It is not just a case of adding meaning (as more information has become available) it is a case of changing meaning. Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say." (From here).

The Creation Museum is located 7 miles west of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (about a 30-minute drive from downtown Cincinnati).  For tickets call 1-888-582-4253, ext. 376.  Ticket Information (not including tax):

• Adult (13-59 yrs) $21.95
• Senior (60 yrs up) $16.95
• Children (5-12 yrs) $11.95
• Children (under 5 yrs) Free
• Planetarium (with admission) $7.00

2-Day Passes are available


Related Reading:  YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; False Assumption #1 of Young Earth Creationists; False Assumption #2 of Young Earth Creationists; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Kentucky to Get Noah's Ark Theme Park

The Danger of Concordism

"If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that it never said. It is not just a case of adding meaning (as more information has become available) it is a case of changing meaning. Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say." -- John H. Walton, Ph.D (From here.)

Dr. Walton received his Ph.D from Hebrew Union College and is professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College.


Related reading:  Review of Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate; Genesis One as Ancient Cosmology