West of Eden

Hearing Past our Intellectual Colonialism to the Voices of Wisdom in our Ancient Origin Myths

(9 PAGE SAMPLE PDF)

By Shawn Birss

Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Part 1 Reading Genesis Again for the First Time . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Genesis and Moral Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Genesis and Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Genesis and the New Testament. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Unified Text of Genesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Themes and Motifs of Genesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Part 2 Genesis 1 and 2 The Creation Accounts. . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Comparing the Creation Accounts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Creation as Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 The Six Days of Creation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 The Day of Rest Gods Temple in Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Creation of Man and Woman Priests in Gods Garden. . . . . . . . . . .42 In Gods Image - Human Sexuality and Environmental Stewardship.46 Applications and Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Part 3 The Fall, the Flood, the Dispersion, and the Promise . . . 53 Adam and Eve - The Trees, The Serpent, The Seed, and The Curse. .54 Cain and Abel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 No gods. No kings. From Adam to Noah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Adam and Noah - The Parallel Structure of Genesis 1-11. . . . . . . . . .61 The Nephilim Sons of god and daughters of man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Noah and the Flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 The Family of Noah (the Table of Nations) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 The Tower of Babel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Gods Promise to Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Part 3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Bibliography and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86

Part 1 Reading Genesis Again for the First Time Welcome to Genesis, an ancient and beautiful epic book of creation, rebellion, judgment, restoration, forgiveness, lust, power, poverty, and wealth. In my recent enriching exploration of Genesis, I have discovered and rediscovered a beautiful story that has for much of my life remained hidden. This book in the eyes and hands of many has collected a great deal of baggage, paintings and repaintings that obscure its delicate and detailed forms. In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are as follows: (1) The popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales. (2) Pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book. (3) Reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written. I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. Consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isnt. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text. Genesis and Moral Instruction First, I no longer believe that Genesis is intended to be a collection of morality tales. If it were so, it would be a bad one. No moral explanation or direction is given regarding Abraham lying about his wife Sarah being his sister (or any other of the many deceptions in Genesis), Lot choosing the plains, Isaac's preference of Esau, or Joseph's imprisonment of his brother, Simeon. Were these right or wrong things for the characters to do? The text is unclear. In the case of Abrahams deception regarding his wife, if Genesis were moral instruction we could easily interpret the story as Gods approval of

Abrams prostitution of his own wife. She enters the kings harem, and he likely sleeps with her. Upon discovery of Abram and Sarahs real relationship, the king sends them away with animals and great wealth. This is, in fact, the beginning of Abrams wealth in scripture. Was God blessing Abram through the king? Why? Was he right in what he did? Once again, the text is unclear. Genesis does not display heroes whose lives we are to emulate or simple stories of their mistakes and what came of them. Sometimes the patriarchs did things that are clearly prohibited in scripture, without the text necessarily explicitly or even implicitly pointing out their error. Immoral behaviour by the characters in this book may lead to Godly ends. By no means should we follow their example. In a text as old as Genesis, written and read by an ancient people in another part of the world, the gap between its cultural understanding of ethics and ours is vast. In the thousands of years that Genesis has been read, every new culture in every new age has an opportunity to read into the text its current understandings and teachings about right and wrong. This can easily amount to isogesis, a sort of reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture. We should be very careful not to interpret scripture according to our own whims and worldviews. At best, this obscures or muddies the intended meaning of the book, at worst this leads to outright unbiblical interpretations and heresy. Let us respect the ancient cultures and the Word enough to leap past this cultural boundary. The Bible does often teach morality, both explicitly and implicitly. If we find moral instruction elsewhere in scripture, we should teach that morality from that same scripture, and allow Genesis to stand alone to teach us what its author actually intends. Moral lessons are not the primary purpose of the text, and a most correct interpretation of Genesis should reflect this. When Genesis does not clearly and explicitly teach a moral, we should not assign one. If we are to understand Genesis, we should look elsewhere. Genesis and Science (Approaching Genesis as Ancient Cosmology) As Christians, its important when we read Genesis or any scripture that though we may believe that it was written for us, it was not written to us. Genesis is an ancient book, written to a people many degrees removed from us in culture, worldview, language, and (by at least one degree, but probably

Immediately I see the new beginning, not of material substance, but of the creation. Its the beginning of the creation process. The material substance is already there. The New Testament books of Colossians, Hebrews, and John, written hundreds of years later have taught us that God created the world ex nihilo, from nothing. But this teaching is not the story of Genesis. Nowhere in these chapters does it insist that Gods creative act begins with something created from nothing. Of course, the assumption is made that some time before this beginning, the substance from which the Creator will form the world was also made by him. But this beginning is later. We do not know how much later, and we need not ask. The text does not consider this important to its message. The substance of creation is already present with the Creator, and that is all we need to know. This understanding of the word beginning is consistent with the original Hebrew. The beginning need not be the absolute beginning of all time, but the commencement of the event. Just as the audience, instruments, and musicians (and sheet music) all exist before an orchestra begins to play, and weeks or years of preparation may have preceded the performance; it is not until the conductors wand first falls after the expectant hush that the concert has begun. THE VOID In what state does the substance of creation exist? It is formless. It is void. Some have suggested that God would not create something in such a state, and have therefore suggested a period of time between the first and second sentence. But the language of the passage does not allow this. The beginning is the commencement of all that follows. It is an introduction to the story we are about to read. The answer to what the text means when it describes the natural world as void exists in the context of the chapter and the cultural context from which the book emerged. In my bedroom is a chest that Kate affectionately refers to as the void. I am a bit of a collector. Im not too bad, I think. I have it under control. But I just have a lot of trouble throwing away magazines. Sometimes I just like a single article, and Ill rip that out and hold onto it for a while. If someone gives me a business card, I just cant bring myself to toss it. I start a lot of books that I dont finish, and sometimes they begin cluttering up my side of the bed, each one with a bookmark that shows my good intentions. With each of these and countless other little gathered things, Kate has filled the void. This is her way of allowing me my little quirk without feeling as though she needs to find a proper filing system for five hundred random and

DAY 1 On day one, God separates light from darkness. He gives them both names, calling the light, day, and the darkness night. There is evening and morning, the first day. It is important to notice a few things in the word usage here. First of all, the English word day used both for the name of light and the period of time is without a doubt, a twenty-four hour period of time. This is the only way that the word is ever used in scripture. Secondly, if light is named day, then it follows that when he creates light by his word in verse three, it is day that he is creating. Light in this case is the period of light that we call day. Darkness is the period of darkness that we call night. Thirdly, we remember that we are reading this text as Gods creation of function, not material. We can assume that both day and light existed before this moment. In naming them, God has by his authority given them a purpose, and claimed them as part of his design. In conclusion, on Day One, God functionally creates time. DAY 2 On the second day, God creates what some translations call firmament and other translations call sky. To be quite literal in our translation, we must understand that the Hebrew words are specifically referring to the ancient understanding of the formation of the sky. The firmament is a large solid dome over the flat earth, held up by the furthest mountains. Beyond the dome are the waters of heaven. In the dome are windows or floodgates from which the rain falls. If it rained or was dry, the ancients believed that whatever water they received came from the firmament. Modern translations interpret this for us with the word sky, but I would like to suggest that this literal interpretation is actually more correct. We obviously do not believe that such a firmament exists, but this is not a problem if we read the text as creation of function, rather than material. In language and imagery that the ancients would understand, Genesis communicates that God has created the systems by which weather is created. By his word, he names weather, and directs it according to his design.

Adam and Noah - The Parallel Structure of Genesis 1-11 Genesis is a beautiful book of rich and deep theology. It is also a beautiful and sophisticated piece of literature. Like the beautiful balance that is revealed in the six days of creation, or the poetic mirror that connects the two Creation accounts in Genesis 2:4, the narrative continues to find balance, order, and intention in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. These first chapters form a prehistory to the biographical stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph in chapter 12-50. This second (and larger) section of Genesis also has a beautifully balanced literary structure, which we will explore later. The first section of Genesis reveals itself in two sets of parallel stories, each showing the sovereignty of God, the downfall of mankind, Gods judgment, and Gods redemption. Here is the parallel structure of Genesis 1-11. This will begin to form our study of the narrative of the Flood, Gods uncreation and re-creation. A - Creation (Gen 1-3) B - Sin of the sons of Adam (Gen 4:1-16) C - Human Development (Gen 4:17-26) D - 10 Generations Adam to Noah (Gen 5) E - Total Human Downfall Sons of God/Daughters of Man (Gen 6:1-7) Focal Event God says he will save only Noah Genesis 6:9-22 A2 - Flood - un-creation and re-creation (Gen 7:1-9:17) B2 - Sin of the sons of Noah (Gen 9:18-28 C2 - Human Development (Gen 10) E2 Total Human Downfall The Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-8) D2 - 10 Generations Noah to Terah (Gen 11:10-32) (We will allow the author licence to switch the last two parallel events) In this, and many other examples of literary unity and balance throughout Genesis, we see a story in the very structure of the book itself that speaks of a Sovereign Creator God who sustains all Creation according to his divine purpose. There are no accidents, no coincidences. God is behind it all. (I acknowledge my debt to the incredible scholarly contributions of Gary Rendsburg of Rutgers University, New Jersey.)

I believe the most personally applicable doctrinal theme of Genesis is God's sovereign will and glory demonstrated in his choice of the most obscure, least likely, misfit people and chaotic circumstance. From these chaotic and misspent lives and circumstances, he creates order, purpose, and value. By his word, he creates form and purpose from the void in Genesis 1. Under and by his authority, a man created in his image names all the rest of the animals in his creation in Genesis 2. By the seed of sinful humanity he will destroy the evil one in Genesis 3. Chaotic and violent humanity is unmade, judged, and redeemed through the flood. God does what he wills with his own creation. What was made from a watery void may be unmade and returned to a watery void, yet he may turn it all back according to his purpose from the void, as he wills. While humanity devolves toward violence and chaos, God consistently turns the random and unlikely mess back toward redemption and peace. Abram is plucked from his family and culture and made a patriarch of faith. Infertile women produce sons, the ancestors of the Messiah. God chooses and uses second born sons and second married wives. Abram is a liar, possibly a pimp. God patiently reveals his will to Abram over a lifetime, slowly turning him into a blessed man able to bless others. Jacob is also a liar, a runaway, and a sneak, and may even dabble in witchcraft and superstition. God pursues him to the ends of the world, despite his rebellion. His own wickedness toward his brother becomes an opportunity for God to demonstrate grace, forgiveness and reconciliation. Joseph, the youngest of eleven brothers, is taken from the depths of hopelessness in prison and slavery, up to the highest position of authority and power. His life foreshadows the history of Israel, and the plan of salvation. Through the once enslaved and imprisoned Joseph, God blesses all the starving and impoverished nations of the world. In a reversal of the reconciliation story between his father Jacob and Uncle Esau, Joseph is also reconciled to his brothers in his generation through radical forgiveness. God is the ultimate dumpster diver. From waste and detritus he creates his whole world.