DARE WE REINTERPRET GENESIS?
adapted from articles by
David C.C. Watson
M.A.
Used with the kind permission of the Creation Science Movement, 50 Brecon Avenue, Cosham, Portsmouth, England, P06 2AW.
“Tracing the future of the Universe from the present onward is not nearly as hard as tracing the past: we do not need any new way of looking at the world. All that we really need to plot out our future are a few good measurements.” James Trefil, Smithsonian, June 1983.
So runs a challenge from the humanist camp. Completely self-assured about the origin of the world within the framework of their Big Bang theory, they now trumpet with equal confidence their predictions about the world's end. God is not invited, nor is He involved - even as a spectator! But at least they are logical and consistent: the godless overture is matched with a godless finale. A much stranger phenomenon is the Christian who professes to believe what God says about the end of the world (the Last Judgment, Heaven, etc.), but refuses to accept what He has said about its beginning.
Historical Precedents
It is important to remember that the finessing of Scripture is an old game. “[Y]ou hold the tradition of men.... All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition... making the word of God of no effect” (Mark 7:8-13, NKJV). We find this attitude of Christ toward the Old Testament consistent throughout His ministry - when answering the Devil; when responding to inquiries about divorce, the Sabbath, and eternal life; as well as on a dozen other occasions. He never reinterpreted Scripture. He simply quoted the words as being perspicuous, intelligent and meaningful in the plain sense of everyday speech. Why did this offend the Pharisees? They believed in an inerrant Book. But they had reinterpreted the words to suit their own philosophical ends and lifestyle choices.
As we move through the New Testament, again and again, we find a resistance to the new truth; or rather, to old truths rediscovered. “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25, NKJV). Notice that the Lord did not blame them for failing to understand dark and difficult passages. He blamed them for failing to believe prophecies like Isaiah 53, wherein the sufferings of Christ are clearly foretold. Once again, those who said they believed what the Bible said were blind to Biblical truth because of a popular, non-Biblical belief - in this case, the expectation of a conquering Messiah.
We can follow the same theme through church history. As has often been pointed out, the Pope believed 95 percent of what Martin Luther believed, including the plenary inspiration and authority of the Bible and the tenet that “the just shall live by faith.” But the schoolmen had reinterpreted Paul's words to fit the medieval ecclesiastical system. It was “all a matter of interpretation.” So it was in the days of John Wesley. Anglican prelates disapproved of open-air preaching, despite the obvious precedents in the Acts of the Apostles. Baptist elders tried to discourage Carey: “God can take care of the heathen without your help, Master William!” - in spite of the injunction of Mark 16:15. They reinterpreted Christ's command to suit the laissez-faire philosophy of eighteenth-century England. When George Muller and Hudson Taylor affirmed that it was possible for Christian work to be supported “by prayer alone to God alone,” Christian businessman laughed them to scorn. The promises had always been there, in Matthew 6, but “little faith” had allowed them to the reinterpreted as being contrary to experience.
Thus, we see the pioneers of spiritual truths are often ridiculed in their own generation. Uncomfortable doctrines are jettisoned to prevent them from rocking the boat. An outward profession of conformity to Scripture is retained, even when practice and teaching differ widely from it. Not infrequently, there is heavy reliance on tradition: “old So-and-So was a great man of God and he believed ... so I must be OK for us too!” We are reminded of Kipling's brilliant satire, “The Disciple”:
He that hath a gospel
For all earth to own -
Though he etch it on the steel,
Or carve it on the stone -
Not to be misdoubted
Through the after-days -
It is his disciple
Shall read it many ways.
Yes, the Fourth Commandment was carved in stone - “Six days you shall labour.... For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth ...” (emphasis added) - but twentieth-century disciples have “read it many ways.”
Origins of the Nonliteral Interpretation of Genesis 1-11
Lord Macauley wrote of John Milton: “His attacks were directed against those deeply-seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded: the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation.” One of the eminent men most often quoted by writers of the “God-worked-through-evolution” school is Augustine of Hippo. The claim usually goes something like this: “Augustine argued that the Biblical author structured the passage [Genesis 1] as a literary device.” The picture presented to the unwary layman is of a learned bishop sitting down to write his commentary on Genesis, just as Calvin and Luther did twelve centuries later, each arguing that his own interpretation was the correct one. But this construction is wholly imaginary. Where Augustine deals with Genesis 1 in his Confessions (Books XI, XII, and XIII) he is meditating; in fact, the whole passage is an extended prayer to God. In no sense was he setting out his own exegetical view as opposed to that of someone else; nor does the word structure or the term literary device appear anywhere. What he does is , allegorize the chapter, discovering esoteric meanings that (perhaps) no one else ever thought of.
Consider the following equations:
the firmament is allegorized as the Bible itself.
the waters above the firmament are allegorized as angels.
the clouds .... as preachers.
the sea ........ as unbelievers.
the dry land ..... as believers.
bringing forth fruit........ as works of mercy.
the stars ......... and saints.
the fishes............. as sacraments.
the whales............ as miracles.
Luther lamented, “Augustine resorts to extraordinary trifling in his treatment of the six days.” Also, Augustine knew hardly a word of Hebrew: neither was he a Greek scholar. As the anchorman of the nonliteral team, he is a lightweight.
Benjamin Warfield is another eminent man whose words have hardened into an evangelical tradition over the last 100 years. He wrote, “The question of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance ... the Bible does not assign a brief span to human history.” What Warfield seems to have overlooked is that the veracity of God is a matter of profound theological significance.
Theologically speaking, it is a matter of indifference whether Christ rose from the dead on the third day, the thirty-third day, or after three years. Even if it were three years, not one word of Paul's letter to the Romans would have to be changed. But God chose to do it on the third (literal) day, and every reference in the Gospels to Christ's resurrection includes phrases such as “after three days,” ;on the thirdday or observes that only one day, the Sabbath, intervened between His death and His rising. Why? Because God knows that we require every possible assurance and reassurance to have faith, and the details of time and place are what makes a story interesting, memorable, and trustworthy.
The same is true of the Biblical account of creation and the genealogies of Genesis. Theologically it may be of no consequence whether Adam was created six thousand or six million years ago, or whether the universe was made in six days or sixteen billion years. But the veracity of God cannot be so easily dismissed. By all the laws of language, it is certain that Genesis tells of a six-day creation some six thousand years ago. There is as little reason to doubt the six days of Genesis as to doubt the three days of the Gospels.
We shall now call witnesses to show that this has been the view of the greatest scholars, ancient and modern, for 1900 years.
Supporters of the Liberal Interpretation
Flavius Josephus, a Jew of the first century A.D., was reckoned by Scaliger, the great Reformation scholar, to be a better historian than all the Greek and Roman writers put together. He certainly had unequalled opportunities for investigating and understanding the culture and traditions of the Jews, for they were his own people. How does he handle the early chapters of Genesis?
1. “Moses says that in just six days the world and all that is therein was made.... Moses, after the seventh day was over, begins to talk philosophically...” In other words, Josephus says there is no mystery to the Creation account of chapter 1. He obviously takes the days to be literal.
2. “The sacred books contain the history of 5000 years...” This is strong evidence that the Jews of Josephus' day added up the figures in Genesis 5 and 11 to make a chronology. He later states, “this flood began in 2656 years from the first man, Adam.” (Both computations are based on the LXX text.)
What C.S. Lewis has so trenchlantly written about critics of the New Testament surely applies no less to reinterpreters of the Old: “The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages is, in my opinion, preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.” In other words, it seems unlikely that Englishmen or Americans of the twentieth century will understand Moses better than a Hebrew - and Greek-speaking Jew of the first century A.D.
St. Ambrose (d. 397 A.D.) was no more infallible than other Church Fathers, but his treatment of Genesis 1 is grammatical and objective: “In notable fashion has Scripture spoken of 'one day', not 'the first day'... Scripture established a law that 24 hours, including both day and night, should be given the name of 'day' only, as if one were to say that the length of one day is 24 hours in extent.”
I do not think anyone disputes that the great Reformers accepted Genesis as literal truth, but two brief quotations are memorable: Calvin said, “God Himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating His works to the capacity of men”; and Luther wrote: “We know from Moses that the world was not in existence before 6,000 years ago.”
Modern Scholars
James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, ridicules the nonliteral interpretation espoused by Inter-Varsity Press: “... the biblical material is twisted to fit the various theories that can bring it into accord with [evolution] science. In fact the only natural exegesis [of Genesis 1] is a literal one, in the sense that this is what the author meant.... he was deeply interested in chronology and calendar.”
Samuel R. Driver, another professor of Hebrew at Oxford, published his commentary that Genesis in 1904, and it is still a standard reference work. “There is little doubt that the writer meant 'days' in the literal sense, and that Pearson was right when he inferred ... that the world was created '6000 or at farthest 7000 years;' from the 17th century A.D.” (John Pearson, Bishop of Chester, was the greatest English theologian of the seventeenth century.) The same interpretation is maintained by Keil & Delitzsch, Gerhard von Rad, and (so far as I am aware) by every major commentary on Genesis. In fact, we have never heard of any professor of Hebrew in any of the world's great universities who believes that the original writer did not intend his words to be taken literally. Let the Interpreter's Commentary speak for them all: “There can be no question but that by DAY the author meant just what we mean - the time required for one revolution of the earth on its axis. Had he meant aeon he would certainly, in view of his fondness for great numbers, have stated the number of the millenniums each period embraced.”
Lastly, Dr. John C. Whitcomb has pointed out that a close parallel to Genesis 1 can be found in Numbers 7. No expositor would dare to affirm that the extended and metaphorical use of day in Numbers 7:84 (Authorized Verion) negates the literal 24-hour days of verses 12, 18, 24, etc. No more should any expositor try to maintain that the extended and metaphorical use of day in Genesis 2:4 negates the literal days of the first chapter.
The Tyndale Commentary on Genesis
Another eminent scholar is Derek Kidner, whose commentary bears the illustrious name of Tyndale House Publishers. He writes: “Our present knowledge of civilization, e.g., at Jericho, goes back to at least 7000 B.C., and of man himself very much farther.... the chapter neither adds its figures together nor gives the impression that the men it names overlapped each other to any unusual extent.... note the three fourteens and Matthew 1” (emphasis added). Three points invite comment:
1. Kidner dignifies with the term of “knowledge” the notorious uncertainty that characterizes so much archaeological dating. Fifty years ago the Great Pyramid was dated at 4,800 B.C., yet now it is said to date from 2,600 B.C. True knowledge would not allow such flexibility.
2. “Impressions” are highly subjective. A totally different impression was made on Sir Isaac Newton (who worked for years on Old Testament chronology) and on almost every commentator before Darwin. S.R. Driver noted: “If the language of Genesis 5 had been simply that A begat B, and B begat C, etc., it might be conceivable, as in Matthew 1, that links were omitted: but when the age of each patriarch at the birth of his firstborn is expressly stated, such a supposition is manifestly out of the question” (Driver's emphasis).
3. As for the addition, why should Moses do for us what we can do for ourselves? Note that in chapter 11 he does not add up the total lifespan of each patriarch, as he did in chapter 5. Does this mean, say, that Shela did not live to be 433 years of age? Obviously he did; but Moses does not need to tell us the obvious, because the principle of addition has already been established in chapter 5. Also, Moses does not tell us the age of Jacob at the birth of Joseph, but he very neatly works it into the story (Genesis 41:46-7, 45:6, 47:9), so that by simple addition and subtraction we find it to be 91. We are left to do the sums ourselves. There is no reason to doubt that Moses was working on exactly the same principle when he did not give the grand totals in chapters 5 and 11. In the Bible, long dates are given only when there is no other way of checking the spans of time (Exodus 12, 1 Kings 6).
Therefore, we may safely conclude with H.C. Leupold (Commentary 1972): “The claim that the Scripture do not give a complete and accurate chronology for the whole period of the Old Testament.... is utterly wrong, dangerous and mischievous.”
Biblical Creation and the Theory of Evolution
Our last well-known advocate of nonliteral theory is Douglas Spanner, Professor Emeritus of Biophysics. His book (1987) is a desperate attempt to squeeze Genesis 1-11 into the parameters of evolution science. We will consider just two points here:
1. The creation of Eve. Spanner contends that this was only a dream in which God told Adam how Eve was to be treated, not how she was made. The objections to this theory are obvious: First, Genesis records seven famous dreams; why on earth did Moses not call this a dream, if that is what it was? Second, Spanner ignores 1 Corinthians 11, which confirms that Eve was physically made from Adam. The God of the Bible is the God of miracles!
2. The Flood. Spanner advances a local flood theory which, like its many predecessors, is not supported by one shred of evidence: historical, geographical, or geological. It is fair to say that if the account of the Flood (Genesis 6-9) had been written in any book other than the Bible, no one would doubt the writer meant to convey the idea of a worldwide deluge. For example, compare the account of the same event by the Latin poet Ovid: “'Wherever old Ocean roars around the earth, I must destroy the race of men....' says Jupiter. He preferred to destroy the human race beneath the waves.... and now the sea and land have no distinction. All is sea, and a sea without a shore... Here [on Mount Parnassus, 8,000 ft.] Deucalion and his wife had come to land - for the sea had covered all things else. Deucalion addresses his wife: 'O only one left on earth.... we two are the only survivors; the sea holds all the rest.'” Any scholar suggesting that Ovid did not intend to depict a universal flood would be ridiculed. The language of Genesis 6-9 is at least as clear and comprehensive as Ovid's, but Spanner calls it “the sort of impressionistic language the reader is expected to take in his stride.”
He completely ignores God's promise of Genesis 8:21 (repeatedly eight times in chapter 9) to never again destroy all flesh with a flood, and he fails to expound on 2 Peter 3:5 and 6, which unquestionably refer to the whole globe.
It is his Disciple
Who shall tell us how
Much the Master would have scrapped
Had he lived till now
Amplify distinctions,
Rationalize the claim;
Preaching that the Master
Would Have done the same.
Refer again to Macaulaey, we may note how “deep-seated” is that error which compels Christian scholars and scientists to turn the Bible upside down rather than abandon evolution.
Too Complicated
Our final objection to the nonliteral theory is that it is far too complicated. Every teacher knows that you begin with the simple and move on to the complex. This principle can be clearly seen in the Bible, too. Prose in the historical books leads to poetry in the Psalms, philosophy in Ecclesiastes, prophecy in Isaiah, and finally the unusual “visions” in Ezekiel and Daniel. Yet the nonliteral school would have us believe that right at the beginning of His revelation God has placed a conundrum as hard to solve as any in the whole Bible. Consider this comment about Genesis 1: “The writer has given us a masterly elaboration of a fitting, restrained anthropomorphic vision, in order to convey a whole complex of deeply-meditated ideas” (Henri Blocher, In the Beginning, 1984). How strained his view is.
Anyone who has tried to teach the elements of Christianity to uneducated people will recognize the utter impossibility of explaining to them why God's first words should be gobbledegook, rather than plain statements of fact easily understood in every language to all nations - as the pioneer missionaries believed. The Literary Framework Hypothesis in a house of cards carefully constructed by academics in the rarefied atmosphere and artificial light of the theological library. We need to open the windows and allow a strong blast of common sense to blow it down.
And what about the children? Of all the books in the Bible, Genesis has the most appeal for children. Who can doubt that these fascinating stories were designed by God to allure innocent children and lead them gently to faith in Christ? (“From childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures,” Paul wrote to Timothy.) But now, inevitably, questions will be asked: “Dad, did God really make everything in six days?” “Mom, did the Ark really hold every kind of animal?” Parents taking the nonliteral approach are compelled to make excuses: “well, no, not really. You see, the scientists say...” In view of Christ's solemn words about causing little ones to stumble, I would not like to stand before Christ in the shoes of anyone who taught a child that God does not mean what He says.
Darwinism Today
Of all the crooked so-called for parallels adduced to justify reinterpreting Genesis, the Galileo-Darwin equation is the worst. Some 129 years after Galileo, what was the status of the Copernican system? Answer: every astronomer in the civilized world accepted it as a fact. It fitted every observation; it clashed with none.
Predictions made on a heliocentric basis were found to be accurate. What about Darwin? Today, 129 years after The Origin of Species, Sir Karl Popper's statement still stands: “Neither Darwin, nor any Darwinian, has so far given an actual causal explanation of any single organism or any single organ.” The whole theory is falling apart, as Michael Denton (who does not claim to be a Christian) has so clearly demonstrated in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985).
One of the “signs of the times” is Darwin's dogmatic pronouncement: “[W]e may feel certain ... that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of ... inappreciable length.” Another is the Times Atlas of the Bible (1987), which does not even show Mount Ararat - the place where the Ark came to rest after the Flood - on any map. The religious publishing world has decided to expunge every trace of the uncomfortable story that thunders God's wrath against sin. The Apostle Peter predicted just such a time: “[S]coffers will come in the last days ... [who] willfully forget ... the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water” (2 Peter 3-6). The way to help such people is to warn them of the peril of disbelief, not to be ambivalent about their dangerous claims regarding an easy, miracle-free route to Heaven.
Conclusion
Martin Luther's challenge is right up-to-date: “If I profess with the loudest voice every Bible doctrine except that one truth which Satan is attacking today, I am no soldier of Jesus Christ.” You don't have to be a reader of the Smithsonian to know that today's target for ridicule is Noah's Ark, Ussher's chronology, and the six-day creation. That is why God is calling for real disciples who will not “amplify distinctions” or “rationalize the claim,” but will stand up and tell the world that He means what He says in Genesis 1-11. The scientific establishment will never take seriously the Christian doctrine of Last Things until they see that Christians take seriously the biblical doctrine of First Things. Unbelievers will recognize their dreams of the future as wholly delusive only when they are shown that their picture of the past is completely chimerical. The “good measurements” that James Trefil is looking for are found in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: “[W]e shall be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Evolution at last! Instantaneously!