My friends at Rivendel have been mulling over the Book of Genesis for the last few weeks, and I have been a small part of their conversation. Recently Br. Tobias Haller had a good post touching this story, and an excerpt follows. (italicization and emphasis my own.)
The inspired recipients of God’s word in Genesis believed the sky to consist of a dome, in which the sun, moon, and stars were set, and which had windows to admit the rain stored in the pool of waters above. God, of course, knew that this was not true, literally or in any other sense, but the minds of those God inspired could have no place to hold such concepts as gravity and freely floating planets, stars and moons — or that the earth was not stationary at the center of a revolving universe.
They had the evidence of their senses to the contrary, and would not, as Jesus would later say, have been able to “bear” the truth (John 16:12-13). So God communicated to them in a language that did not seem outrageous to them, that met their expectations, and explained and ratified what they perceived. The primary truth God intended to convey, after all, was not a literal account of the composition of the cosmos, but the theological principle that God is the creator of all that is.
This seems to make a lot of sense to me, and humbly recognizes that like the story of the tree of Knowledge, we don't know everything! How could ancient Hebrews even have words anything like our modern understanding of "the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home"?
Nonetheless, God knew all things, all along, and this book contains the truth that He brought forth the human race from the primal elements, we are the created, He the Creator. What do you, my readers think?
I suspect that our later questions of: "did it actually happen like this?" were not in the minds of the editors of Genesis.
Genesis 2 tells a quite different story, with a differently named deity, different processes, different order to the Genesis 1 poem which calls its verses "days" prior to the creation of that which determines a "day"!
Trying to find science in Genesis is an anachronism - it is confusing the genre.
The editors of Genesis had no issue with stories "contradicting" each other because they were involved in something other than science & history.
Posted by: Rev Bosco Peters | July 18, 2008 at 06:56 PM
Right! I agree. I don't see this as progressive revelation...God's universe was always revealing the reality of it's functioning and existence. I see God's action, as described by your friend, as a progressive understanding (by God's people, Hebrews, Gentiles, Americans, etc.). God doesn't try to communicate a misunderstanding, but he may allow it.
The fact that there is a documented change/development in understanding of other things...like death, the grave, the afterlife, angels, demons...throughout scripture from Genesis to Revelations may not guarantee Tobias Haller's opinion, but it certainly warrants it.
Posted by: nate | July 17, 2008 at 08:15 AM