The Bible is supposed to be accessible to children. This is one reason the various tortured interpretations of Genesis 1 are so painful. No child would ever read Genesis 1 and come away with the Day-Age, Gap, or "It's-all-just-poetry-so-it-doesn't-really-mean-what-it-sounds-like-it-means" interpretations.
Contrast this with Genesis 2. Read Genesis 2, then ask a child to draw a picture of Adam and Eve. What do Adam and Eve look like? Invariably, the child draws a picture of two adults. The child realizes that although Adam and Eve are less than a day old, they are created with the appearance of age. In other words, they look older than they really are. And the great thing about this is that you don't have to read it into the text. It is obvious, right on the surface (unlike the gruesome gymnastics to which Genesis 1 is so often subjected).
Why is it reasonable to conclude that Adam and Eve are made with the appearance of age? Because they are given adult tasks to perform. Naming the animals, tending the garden, having children, and defending Eve from the serpent - all of this dominion labor requires a grown-up body.
Now is God being deceptive by making Adam and Eve look older than they really are? Is he like the fraudulant craftsman who specializes in making fake antiques? Or does God have good and necessary reasons for giving our ancestors the appearance of age? And if God had good reasons for giving Adam and Eve the appearance of age, is it not possible that he could have good reasons for giving the world (and universe) around them the appearance of age as well?
This is no way denies that God could have taken 14 billion years to create the universe. The question is why God would take 6 days to make a creation that looks 14 billion years old? What are his reasons for doing this? What advantages does he obtain that could not be achieved any other way?
Do not fight the obvious. The most straightforward interpretation of Genesis 1-2 is that we live in a young universe that has been given the appearance of great age. The fun comes in meditating on why God created it this way!
Showing posts with label bible interpretation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bible interpretation. Show all posts
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Five Rules for Interpreting the Bible
Five Rules for Interpreting the Bible:
1) What type of literature is the passage? The simplest division is prose or poetry.
2) What is the context of the passage? Look at what comes before and after.
3) How would the original audience have interpreted the passage?
4) Scripture interprets Scripture. The unchanging triune God wrote every word of the Bible.
5) It's all about Jesus. The Bible is relentlessly Christocentric.
Let's apply these rules to Genesis 1.
1) Genesis 1 is historical narrative or prose. Its language should therefore be taken literally rather than figuratively or symbolically. This means one cannot escape the Young Earth interpretation by calling Genesis 1 poetry. It is not poetry.
2) The immediate context of Genesis 1 is Genesis 2. Gen 2 recaps the events of Day 6 in much greater detail. Since the events of Genesis 2 do not take an age or epoch to occur, Day 6 back in chapter 1 must also not take a long period of time.
3) The Israelites wandering in the wilderness (sometime between 1446 to 1406 BC) were Moses' original intended audience for Genesis. There is no way this nation of ancient near-Eastern slaves heard Genesis 1 and thought of any of the modern fanciful interpretations (Day-Age theory, gap theory, etc.).
4) Exodus 20:11, the fourth of the ten commandments, refers back to the days of creation in Genesis 1. God says that we should work six days and rest on the seventh because that is what he did. Because Moses wrote Genesis and Exodus, and because Ex 20:11 equates the days of Gen 1 with the days of our current work week, the days of Genesis 1 must be six literal, consecutive 24-hour days.
5) If we live on a young Earth (about 6000 years old), then the way we find the planet today is not the way God made it. He did not make a world with death, decay, misery, entropy, etc. He made a world radically unlike the one we experience. But when we fell into sin, the creation (placed under our dominion) fell with us. And if the sin of the First Adam is the cause of everything that is wrong in the universe, then the obedience of the Last Adam is the solution for everything that is wrong in the universe. Young earth creationism therefore exalts the Son of God by magnifying the comprehensiveness and efficacy of his redemptive work - strong correlative support that the six days of Genesis 1 are six literal, consecutive 24-hour days.
1) What type of literature is the passage? The simplest division is prose or poetry.
2) What is the context of the passage? Look at what comes before and after.
3) How would the original audience have interpreted the passage?
4) Scripture interprets Scripture. The unchanging triune God wrote every word of the Bible.
5) It's all about Jesus. The Bible is relentlessly Christocentric.
Let's apply these rules to Genesis 1.
1) Genesis 1 is historical narrative or prose. Its language should therefore be taken literally rather than figuratively or symbolically. This means one cannot escape the Young Earth interpretation by calling Genesis 1 poetry. It is not poetry.
2) The immediate context of Genesis 1 is Genesis 2. Gen 2 recaps the events of Day 6 in much greater detail. Since the events of Genesis 2 do not take an age or epoch to occur, Day 6 back in chapter 1 must also not take a long period of time.
3) The Israelites wandering in the wilderness (sometime between 1446 to 1406 BC) were Moses' original intended audience for Genesis. There is no way this nation of ancient near-Eastern slaves heard Genesis 1 and thought of any of the modern fanciful interpretations (Day-Age theory, gap theory, etc.).
4) Exodus 20:11, the fourth of the ten commandments, refers back to the days of creation in Genesis 1. God says that we should work six days and rest on the seventh because that is what he did. Because Moses wrote Genesis and Exodus, and because Ex 20:11 equates the days of Gen 1 with the days of our current work week, the days of Genesis 1 must be six literal, consecutive 24-hour days.
5) If we live on a young Earth (about 6000 years old), then the way we find the planet today is not the way God made it. He did not make a world with death, decay, misery, entropy, etc. He made a world radically unlike the one we experience. But when we fell into sin, the creation (placed under our dominion) fell with us. And if the sin of the First Adam is the cause of everything that is wrong in the universe, then the obedience of the Last Adam is the solution for everything that is wrong in the universe. Young earth creationism therefore exalts the Son of God by magnifying the comprehensiveness and efficacy of his redemptive work - strong correlative support that the six days of Genesis 1 are six literal, consecutive 24-hour days.
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