Even if we never know for sure how genres worked in the ancient world or how long the patriarchs actually lived, we know enough to understand what God expects us to take from the text.
We make it to the time of Noah, and God starts things over again, preserving Noah to carry on the human race. Then the Tower of Babel sends civilization scattering, and God calls Abram to father the Hebrew people through whom all people would be brought back to God. Not everyone needs to get a PhD in Ancient Near Eastern studies in order to read Genesis; but there should be some people in our faith communities who get such degrees and help us to read the text more accurately.
God expects us to use our minds to the best of our ability. He has communicated to us through the Bible and through the created order. Christian communities honor God and enable themselves to proclaim the truth more effectively by studying both of these. Join us to receive the latest articles, podcasts, videos, and more, and help us show how science and faith work hand in hand.
I calculate that number to be very close to. Part Six in the Uniquely Unique mini-series. We take stock of one more distinguishing feature of humans—the image of God. People on all sides of the creation debate are convinced the other sides are doing it all wrong. After taking part in many conversations where people talk past one another, BioLogos forum moderator Christy has noticed a few recurring themes.
In the final part of his four-part series, J. In this excerpt from their new book, geologist Gregg Davidson and theologian Ken Turner shine a spotlight on Genesis One as theologically rich literature first and foremost.
What is BioLogos? Subscribe Now What is BioLogos? Further reading Carol A. If you have access to a research library, you can read a series of technical articles by Dwight W. Arnold and H. Williamson, eds. That's a fact, and if your belief is not aligned to this fact, then you are what we call "wrong. This age is arrived at by several cross-checking lines of evidence , but the great antiquity of the Earth has been apparent for much of human history.
True, scientific progress repeatedly found our home to be much older than previously suspected, but the widespread view that the planet is only a few thousand years old is relatively new, and has no basis in either fact or scripture.
The 6, year age was arrived at by James Ussher, a 17th century Irish Archbishop who counted up estimates of the ages of Abraham's family listed in the Old Testament and calculated that the creation began on the Julian calendar on Saturday, October 22, BC, at 6 pm.
Usher made a lot of assumptions, chose to ignore inconsistencies within even those scriptural sources known at that time, and was unaware of certain, now obvious translation issues, importantly including the way the Babylonians counted, but that's beside the point.
As William Henry Green wrote, "The Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world. In other words, even if Ussher's calculation were correct it isn't it would only tell us when Abraham lived, not when the world was made. But even this doesn't matter, for as Thomas Paine reminded us, the only revelation we can really trust is the creation itself.
When nature disagrees with scripture, scripture must necessarily be wrong. But here's the thing, the dendrochronologic record--last I checked--now goes back 12, years in some parts of the world. You don't trust radiometric dating? Buy a magnifying class and a box of Twinkies and visit a dendro lab. Tree rings form a unique fingerprint as trees across a region are exposed to similar conditions. For this reason, overlapping ring patterns from living, dead, and fossilized trees can be lined up to build continuous series stretching back through thousands and thousands of years.
No fancy science required. And at a certain point, the dendro dates line up with ocean core dates and pack ice dates, both of which go back hundreds of thousands of years--but that might take a little scientific know how. Easier are simple geologic strata:. Those lines are sedimentation lines that form 40 major layers spanning 2 billion years of deposition.
Okay, you might need a degree in geology to tell desert sand deposition from silt and to follow the series around the West to account for disconformities, but even a casual, unbiased evaluation will convince you utterly of two things: 1 The canyon was laid down by erosion through ancient sediments, not cut by any flood, and 2 those sediments were laid down over many, many, many millions of years.
And that's just scratching the surface, so to speak. To use the language of cognitive metaphor theorists G. Lakoff, M. Johnson, and M. That this interpretation reflects a concept far from alien to the ancient Near Eastern theological world-view is evident from a number of other cases which use the language of image with respect to parentage. In addition to these texts which include a clear parental component, there are also a number of Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts which speak of human beings being in the image of a god.
As several of these texts speak with respect to royalty in particular, D. Clines has argued that the image of god terminology is associated with kings and kingship and concluded that the Genesis text represents a democratization of the royal image of god ideology and a reapplication of that ideology to humanity as a whole.
The overlapping terminology of the king who is the son of the god and the king who is in the image of the god affirms the association already observed between the image of the god and the idea of divine parenthood.
Finally, the most explicit connection between the God who is creator of humanity and God the parent of humanity appears in Mal. Has not one God created us? It is evident from these passages that the exilic and post-exilic conception of God in the role of divine parent was connected to the recognition of God as creator of humankind.
For Gen. What that relationship entailed, however, was largely left to texts outside Genesis, and in conclusion we will note a few instances of the metaphor in order to outline what the divine parent—human child relationship was thought to entail.
In Mal. If then I am a father, where is the honour due me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? The God which is described by this parental language is one concerned with the welfare of each person. Similarly Jer. As already noted, Deutero-Isaiah was particularly aware of the concept of God the creator and parent; in addition to the passages in Isaiah 43 and 44 noted above, the implications of God as parent are articulated in Isa.
On metaphor, see also below. Likewise, there persists a strong tendency to date the priestly component of the Pentateuch in the exilic or early post-exilic period.
Reviews of major recent proposals regarding the priestly document or editorial layer, as the case may be may be found in E. Westermann for an extensive review of the history of exegesis on Gen.
Barth, The Doctrine of Creation , Pt. For discussion see P. See also L. The two exceptions, where a less clearly physical referent may be in view, appear in Pss. Cognate languages, of course, may or may not always be significant for determining the meaning of Hebrew terms, but the obvious—if not indeed overwhelming—overlap in the semantic fields in this case tends to support appeals to Akkadian and Aramaic as affirmations of a primarily physical meaning also in Hebrew.
For discussion of these issues, see especially J. For additional interpretations see, among others, J. Biezais ed. Abraham, Eve: Accused or Acquitted? Abon-Assaf, P. Bordreuil, and A. For discussions see A. Millard and P. Greenfield and A. Pardee and R. In light of the following proposal, it is worth note that the appearance of the idea of dominion on the heels of the statement about the image may well be an elaboration on the parent-child concept, insofar as a parent might be ultimately expected to turn over land and property to his or her child, who would then undertake the responsibilities of governing and caring for them i.
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