Edgework

It soon becomes obvious when immersed in the Bible that the worldview emerging from the biblical text is not that of most modern readers. Instead it reflects the worldview common to the world of antiquity within which the Bible is rooted.

In, The Hebrew Conception of the Universe, Michael Paukner notes that, “The ancient picture of the universe portrays a world in which the Earth is a disc surrounded by water, not only on the sides, but underneath and above as well. A firm bowl (the firmament) keeps the upper waters back but has gates to let the rain and snow through. The Sun, Moon, and stars move along a fixed track on the underside of this fixed bowl. From below the disc, the waters break through as wells, rivers and the ocean, but the earth stands firm on pillars sunk into the waters like the pilings of a pier. Deep below the earth is Sheol, the abode of the dead, which can be entered only through the grave.”

This presents a challenge to modern readers of the biblical text. From our own observations we know that this worldview is scientifically incorrect. We know without a doubt that the earth is one planet circling around one sun in a universe full of suns and planets, and that the sky is not a “firmament” complete with gates to let waters through to form rain and snow.

So what do we do with such discrepancies? This question is particularly troubling for those who insist on an error-free Bible, true in every respect. Their task is to show that the Bible does tell the truth about our universe as we now understand it to be; that, when properly understood, the Bible actually corrects the ancient worldview and brings it into line with modern scientific discoveries. A difficult task, indeed!

In his recent book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (2009), John H. Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, helps us think through this issue. He insists that, “The Old Testament does communicate to us and it was written for us, and for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was written to Israel” (9). He goes on to say that, “… when we read a text written in another language and addressed to another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully” (9).

The problem with translating a culture, however, is that we tend to super-impose our modern biases on texts that reveal an ancient culture. And so we run the risk of making the text say something it never intended to say. Therefore Walton suggests that, “Rather than translating the culture, we need to try to enter the culture…We must make every attempt to set our [modern] categories aside…and try our best to understand the material in its cultural context without translating it” (11). In other words, we must suspend our modern worldview temporarily if we want to understand what the text might have meant to ancient Israel in their language, culture and worldview.

If we don’t do this we will simply miss what the Bible meant to the ancients in their time and place. Walton says, “Through the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science beyond their own culture. No passage offers a scientific perspective that was not common to the Old World science of antiquity” (19).

Archie Penner agrees with this assertion. In, Scientific Creationism in Perspective: Biblical Creation Defended, he states, “To consider the Bible a textbook of science, as scientific creationists have done, I conclude, was a serious misconception. This necessarily includes the first eleven chapters of Genesis…To use the Scriptures to control science and science to control the Scriptures, God’s ancient revelation, …is an ill-advised understanding of both the Scriptures and science” (5).

Michael Paukner adds that, “The Bible is not a book of science. It was written in a pre-scientific era and its main purpose was to communicate moral and spiritual lessons. The children of Israel had no advantage over their neighbors when it came to matters of science. In fact [their] erroneous concept of the cosmos was quite common for that era.”

So we must conclude that modern Bible readers should not be trying to extract scientific information from the text in order to prove its veracity. Walton supports Penner and Paukner by stating ,”…that people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties [as does modern science], but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system” (26). And, indeed, when one reads the creation accounts in Genesis, for example, with this in mind, it is readily discernible that this is the case. Instead of providing information about the generation of matter, it offers a perspective about what roles the various parts of the universe play in God’s scheme of things.

Walton suggests that with respect to science we should abandon the concept of a “pie” and replace it with a “layer cake” (115-118). In the pie concept, when science explains a phenomenon formerly attributed to God, God’s portion of the pie gets smaller. This invariably leads to a secularization process as God is needed less and less to explain reality.

Using the image of the layer cake, the lower level represents all the processes of scientific investigation. The top layer represents the work of God but also covers the entire bottom layer. Neither layer tries to interpret the other. When science cannot find explanations for certain phenomena, that simply demonstrates its limitations. But in the end, God is still God over all.

It seems to me that when we free the biblical text from the burden of having to serve as a modern science textbook we are in a better position to hear what God was communicating to ancient people of faith and so discover what that might mean for us today.