Video Transcript: Reading Genesis, Creation not Creationism

We're now going to take up a good example of an interpretation of Scripture that does not follow the advice that I was giving you last time I said, scripture, our  Christian religion, the Scripture does not hand us the answers to theoretical  questions. So, how to explain this or that I gave you the example. Last time of  putting red paint into a trough of blue paint the trough, and we mix them in paint  turns purple, it doesn't tell us how it does that. We have to invent a theory to  explain that. It's also true that it doesn't give us a theory about mental stress, or  any number of other things. It's not there. But because Genesis starts out by  saying God created humans, this led a lot people say, hey, wait a minute, now  we're gonna get we're gonna get some real information here. It's going to tell us  how God made humans, it's going to tell us when he did it, we're going to find  out a whole lot of stuff about things that happened so long ago, there's no way  to find out about them. But don't we have hints in Scripture? Isn't it okay to just  take this account, and run with it and see if it doesn't give us scientific truth? And I'm saying no, it doesn't. The Scripture is a book of redemption it's a history of  God's redeeming grace, in action, as God comes into his own creation to rescue people from sin and death. It's not there to give a science and it doesn't do that.  So I want to go through some of this account in early Genesis, which many  people want to insist does do that. I call that that desire, the encyclopedic  assumption, what they want to do is treat Scripture as though it's an  encyclopedia. So if they're worried about some problem, why the God must  have answered this. One of them. Creationists, who writes in this way, is Henry  Morris, he says, he was worried about a number of things, he solved those to  his satisfaction, but there was still the matter of the age of the earth. And then he says, Surely there must be an answer in God's word. Why? Why must there be  an answer God's word to how old the planet is? I mean, in one important  respect, who cares how old the planet is, I can understand people might want to  know how to cure a disease or avoid it. But why would have never mind. We  won't go into that. Let's take what they do with this story, and start with this.  They want to claim that it's a scientific truth that the world as we know, it was  created by God in six days. And I want to show you that there's plenty in the text of Genesis that to make us to lead us in the direction of thinking of the six days,  and the seven day that Genesis talks about are to be taken, both literally, and  metaphorically. It's not one or the other. And only one of them is literal meaning.  But Genesis does is a little more complicated than that. There's a sense in  which the six days and the rest of the seven is literal, it's 24 hours. They also at  the same time, metaphorical in another respect. Let me show you why I think  that the text suggests is that suggests that to us, day, one, two, and three, what  does God do on day one, he separates light from darkness. On day two, God  separates the atmosphere from the seas. And on day, three, he creates plants  and animals. Now, what does God do on day four? He creates the sun, moon,  and stars. You see a correspondence? What is he do in day two? He creates 

birds and sea life? And what does God do on day three? I'm sorry, at this. Five,  what does he do on day six? He creates humans. No, the days are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,  6, rest the 7th. And in that sense, it's literal. Because that's what this covenant  with Moses is going to tell the people of Israel to do work six days and rest the  seventh. In that way, you model yourself on what God did. But in another way, it  sets it up to show us that this, what's buried in here and the thrust of the  message, the heart of it is purpose, rather than time. This is a teleological order  an order of purpose. This is, in order to have this, this is in order to have this,  this is in order to have this so that the end product is what God wanted, we're  religious beings in His image will have fellowship with them. That's why it comes to the end. But this is an order of purpose. So you have two things going on at  once actually very clever writing, rather than a lot of people will say, you have to  take it strictly, literally when by which they ignore the purpose. And other people  will say, well, that's supposed to be science, it's pretty stupid. That's neither one. But it is a six day workweek, that expresses how God that God accomplishes  His purposes in creation. This is one of the things that makes Genesis so  different from all of the creation myths. In the others, it you get a history of how  the God came into being or what powers he had to overcome, to do what he  wanted to do and what limitations he worked under, no, here in Genesis, God's  in the beginning, and he creates everything, and there are no opposing powers  that he is overcome. It's all his will and purpose. Now there's one more thing in  Scripture that leads us to see that the days have a metaphorical meaning as  well as a literal workweek. And that's what it says about the seventh day.  Because Hebrews 4, tells us that the seventh day of God's rest is still going on.  So it's not in that sense a 24 hour day, it's still going on and believers as they  die, and they go to be with the Lord and join God in His Sabbath rest. That  means seventh day rest. That's what Sabbath means. So it's very clear that the  seventh day is viewed in Scripture as still taking place. In fact, one interpreter of  this suggested to me one time that the days build on one another, they don't  ever go away. Think of day, a talking about the day of the Pony Express was  replaced by the railroad. And that day is now replaced by instantaneous  communication through radio and television. In other words, day one has day  two build upon it. Day three, build upon that, day four, and they're all going on all the time and still are. So is it does it speak of a 24 hour work week? Sure it does because it wants to tell people of Israel how to conduct their work week, and  does it have a metaphorical meaning about God accomplishing His purposes.  That looks almost undeniable to me, this isn't an accident, right? The way one  corresponds to four and two to five,and three to six. And the way Hebrews, the  book of Hebrews speaks of a seventh, I think we've got most things going on  here. There's another issue, then, how about the origin of humans. And here it is a little more complicated. So I'll have to take some time to give you background.  The original Hebrew text of the entire Old Testament had no chapters and no 

verses. It just, there were books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,  Deuteronomy, and so on. But they weren't divided into chapters and verses.  That was done in the 13th century by an archbishop of Canterbury named  Stephen Langton. He was bored on a long trip. So he sat and put chapter and  verse divisions into the text. And when he did that, he didn't put the chapter  break between Genesis one and Genesis two in the place where the Jews had  always put it in, always read it. He shortened up chapter one, in the Jewish  reading, the first reading of the Torah, ends at what is now chapter 2:4 for us.  Because there, there's a formula that occurs. It goes, these are the generations  of the heavens and the earth in the day in which the Lord God created the  heavens and the earth. That formula occurs 10 times Genesis, and each time it  does and introduces a new story, a new topic. So the in the Jewish reading of  the Torah, the first reading ends prior to that, or with it, and then you start a new  story in 2:5. So, a lot of Bibles that I pick up, have printed above chapter two, a  second creation story. That's not in the original translation. It doesn't say that.  And what it does do is repeat this formula so that you know we're done talking  about creation. What Genesis 1 has said about the creation of humans is and  God created human beings. In his image, male and female created he them,  period. That's what it says. You come to 2, people who don't know about the  chapter break and don't know about the formula indicating a new story, ignore  that go on. And they read Genesis 2:7, as though it's a description in greater  detail of how God created humans, and it's not. That verse is usually translated  this way. And the Lord God created man of the dust of the ground and breathed  into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul. That's how it  reads. And for a lot of people, that's how humans originated on the planet. They  take that as a description of how God created. And it's quite literal. And they  think that if you think otherwise, you must be denying what the text says, and  you're being unfaithful to the scripture. But actually, they've made a mistake  here, which the Jewish reading did not. If you look at the rabbinical  commentators on this seems to me they have something from which we can  learn. First of all, that verse speaks of God having already created humans, and  God had already created humans, of the dust of the earth. That expression,  everywhere it occurs in the Old Testament refers to death. God created humans, mortal. Death didn't begin when Adam and Eve fell. God had already created  animals and plants, they already ate each other. He now creates human beings  and they are created mortal, according to that verse. It says, God had created  the mortal, and now breathed into this individual person, Adam, his God's own  life giving spirit and made him a redeemed human being. This is not the your,  the origin of the race it's the origin of redemption. That's what's going on. When I checked in the writings of the leading orthodox rabbi, in the US in the 20th,  century, Joseph soli Soloveitchik. It's a wonderful book called The Lonely Man of Faith. And he says, the Adam of Adam of Genesis 1 is the Adam of creation, it's 

the whole race, in God's image, the Adam of Adam two, the Adom of. Chapter  Two is an individual with whom to whom God gives His own Spirit, and makes it  his own. That's the beginning of redemption. In other words, the breath of life is  the Holy Spirit of God, which he gives to Adam. The term there indicates it, you  might expect if it meant Adam's own respiration, put breath in his lungs, the term would be ruach the term for a breath or spirit. But it's not. It's neshama. It's the  term for God imparting His Spirit to someone inspiring them, making them a  prophet, or making them one of his people. And that's what's happened in  Genesis 2:7, it has an exact parallel, in John 20, where the risen Jesus appears  to his disciples. And this is what the text says. And he breathed on them and  said, received the Holy Spirit. That's an exact reenactment of what God did in  Genesis 2:7 with Adam, he made him his own. He's now a redeemed person.  He's rescued in principle, he's rescued from death, God had made him mortal,  but now gives him immortality, if he stands in proper relation to God. So that's  the second piece of this. And it's a very old interpretation. It isn't Soloveitchik's  alone by any means. He quotes a great commentator on the Jewish Talmud of  the 13th century Nachmanides, giving the same thing God imparting His Spirit to Adam. It's a very important point. So what we have done is shift from chapter  one about creation. Chapter Two is the beginning of redemption. And the whole  rest of the book is about redemption. It's about God offering one redemptive  covenant after another, to rescue his people from death. And finally, when  nobody keeps that covenant, he comes incarnate in his own son and fulfills the  covenant for everyone. A good comment on the age of the patriarchs too,  because many of the people that I know who want to take this as a kind of  scientific account rather than a preludes to redemption and redemption. What  points are the ages of the patriarchs and say, but look, nature was all different  than picking up people living 600, 700, 800, 900 years. Now, ladies and  gentlemen, this is one of those things that really pains me to have to report. But  it has been known for 200 years by archaeologists and people who study  ancient Mesopotamia that between 1000, roughly 1000-2000 BCE, 2000 or  3000, there was a common literary practice that was accepted of assigning to an important person, an age, which was symbolic of that person's character and  accomplishment that had nothing to do with how many years they have lived.  One of the kings in the Sumerian King List is said to have reigned for 28,800  years. And Genesis carries on that tradition. One of the systems was the base  60. So, 60 was a good guy 120 was a doubly good guy. And there's a place in  Genesis where God says, My Spirit will not always strive as men, he should be  120 He should be doubly good he's not. Noah, however, is the only person left  on Earth, who along with his family, keep God's covenant. So Noah is 600.  That's the base 60 system. But that wasn't the only one there were other  systems. And they get mixed in, in early Genesis. So when Jacob goes down to  Egypt, Joseph arranges for his family to come there and escape the famine. So 

the Pharaoh says, Jacob, how old are you? And he says, 130, because I've  seen a lot of trouble and sorrow. That's what that symbolizes. So those ages are not to be taken the way people who want to regard this as an encyclopedia take  it. In fact, there's an old tradition that I know of no reason to doubt it, that Moses  himself, wrote Psalm 90. And that's the Psalm that says, our years are  threescore and 10 and if by strength, we live longer, and we just meet more  sorrow and trouble. Moses knows how long people live. Even though the  Genesis ascribes an older age to him, it's symbolic of his accomplishment and  power. Finally, there's the bit about the flood. I want to go back to Genesis 2:7.  And God breathed into Adam, the breath of life, breathed into his nostrils the  translation says, the Hebrew says, breathed into his face, the spirit of life, the  Holy Spirit. And now when you come later in Genesis, God is angry with all in  whom is the breath of life. All the people that God had made Himself known to  and given his spirit to, are the ones he's angry with. They're the ones that have  turned around, turned our back on God. They knew the truth, God revealed as  he goes, he gave them a spirit, but, and the text blames intermarriage, they  intermarried with pagan women, and resumed pagan practices. So the flood  wipes out all in whom is that breath of life, same expression is used in Genesis  2:7, it's all who believed and turn their backs on God and only Noah didn't. It's  not everybody on the whole earth. It's not the planet. Remember when you read  this, that there's a word in Hebrew for Earth. And it meant dirt. It meant the field  you plant your crops in, it meant the ground to stand on. It didn't mean a planet,  they didn't have a word for that. So when it covers the whole earth, it's whatever, Noah could see. As far as he could see, we're getting flooded. Just some  comments, about warnings about not using Scripture as a kind of shortcut to do  science. It's not encyclopedia. It's focused on God's redemptive activity. The  occasions on which he meets his creatures and attempts to redeem them at  times that culminated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.