John Walton’s latest book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, is focused on setting the first creation narrative within its ancient context. By doing so, Walton comes to some conclusions that help the current ‘debate’ on origins in our society.
Walton’s main thrust in this book is that Genesis 1 is not concerned with material origins. Rather, it is focused on functional origins of the cosmos. God creates, which does not mean creatio ex nihilo, and gives that which was created a function. The refrain ‘And God saw that it was good’ is not a statement regarding the aesthetics of the item(s), but of the item(s) ability to function properly within the cosmos. Walton gets to these conclusions through the reading of cognate literature and understanding the ancient Near Eastern worldview from their perspective, not from our modern perspective which is more focused on material origins and views functions as a consequence of those origins.
This reading of Genesis 1 opens the door for those who hold Scripture as their authority to also hold to views of origins that science promotes because the two viewpoints are not in competition with one another. Genesis is concerned with functions and with the telos of creation, not with the material origins of creation. In saying this, Walton is quick to point out that other portions of Scripture teach that God is ultimately responsible for material origins, but that Scripture does not teach how this process occurred. That God created all things was something that was assumed in the mind of the ancient Israelites, not something that needed to be explained to them. One could hold to evolution or old earth creationism or ID or evolution or any other dominant theory of origins while still acknowledging that God is behind everything, even the evolutionary process.
I found the idea of creation as being functional and not material, and the scientific and theological implications of this viewpoint, to be the strongest and most helpful part of Walton’s book. For these reasons alone I would encourage people to read it. It is written at a level where anyone can read it and benefit from it (a more scholarly version of this book, which will be entitled Genesis One as Ancient Cosmology, will be published by Eisenbrauns later this year). I think if more people took this viewpoint, which Walton argues for persuasively, believers would be much less nervous about watching the Discovery Channel and stop wasting their time attempting to get Creationism or ID taught in our public school systems (Walton includes a chapter on science in the classroom that I think is very balanced).
The one thing that I am still not convinced of, which is another major part of Walton’s viewpoint, is the idea of Genesis 1 being a ‘temple inauguration,’ with God creating the cosmos as his ‘cosmic temple’ and resting on the seventh day as a sign that his temple was complete. I’ll hold off saying that I am shut off from this viewpoint until I read the scholarly version of this book, but there are a lot of holes in this theory, although it has gained traction in some quarters where people seem to use it as a dodge when it comes to questions about inerrancy and Scripture promoting a false cosmology. Some of the biggest holes in this theory are that other ANE texts that it relies on for its basis have a creation narrative and then a narrative about a temple being built for the reigning deity. The two are not coterminous; they are distinct. Another hole is more of a question: if the Israelites truly believed the entire world to be God’s ‘cosmic temple’ which he filled with his glory, then why did they build a tabernacle/temple for him to dwell in? Furthermore, why is this connection not made more explicit in the OT? It seems to be based on a few texts which state that the earth is God’s footstool and that he is reigning and controlling the earth, but there are other explanations that seem less of a stretch than saying those verses are based on a view of God’s ‘cosmic temple’ being the entire created order. Walton draws some great theological observations from this viewpoint that almost make me hope that this view is correct, I’m just not convinced at this point. That is not to say that there is not some temple imagery in the creation narrative. Just that I’m not sure it qualifies as a dominant paradigm through which to view the creation narrative.
With that said, this should not detract one from reading the book. It is extremely helpful and offers some great insights that were new to me. It also offers a good solution for those who want to take the Bible seriously as God’s authoritative communication to his people as well as understand science. To view them as not being in competition with one another offers a way to appreciate science as opposed to be scared that it will undermine one’s faith.
Has anyone else read Walton? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
18 July 2009 at 10.20 am
Riding on James Spinti’s coattails, and now yours, I ordered a copy of The Lost World of Genesis One and received it the other day. However, I am forcing myself not to read it until I’ve finished my book review of Tryggve Mettinger’s The Eden Narrative. Walton will be my reward.
18 July 2009 at 12.42 pm
I’ll finish reading it tonight and hopefully put my own thoughts up on Monday.
Do you have an alternate understanding why God would go for a garden in Genesis? I do admit that it seems a little odd of an image for a temple – because it’s not. It’s a garden. But why a garden? And what’s up with the rivers?
18 July 2009 at 1.06 pm
@v02468: Walton talks about the idea of a garden and rivers as being associated with the temple. Building gardens was what kings did after their temple was complete. Rivers flowing from the temple was also something that wa part of the thought world of the ANE (he cites a few ANE texts for this). The issue is that those are both part of the second creation narrative, not of P’s creation narrative. So even if they are images associated with the temple (which they seem to be…at least images related to the temple or kingship), they are features of a different narrative. As such, I’m not sure they can add much to his theory of P’s creation narrative.
Art.
Sent from my iPhone.
18 July 2009 at 1.29 pm
I would agree with you as to the books usefulness. I am actually holding a forum for my church tomorrow on this very issue and am glad I was able to read Walton before tomorrow because now I have something to recommend to them.
I do say though that I am still unconvinced that we should be so adamant about reading the two creation narratives so distinctly. They are side-by-side in the text we have for a reason and they don’t seem to be of the same literary genre (cosmology vs etiological, for lack of a better term at the moment). I am not sure if I am even comfortable calling them two creation narratives as if they originally had the same purpose and a later redactor just stuck both of them next to each other.
I guess this begs a historical question: Which version of the creation account(s) are we referring to when we speak of Genesis 1-3? Because it seems that during Second Temple the two weren’t so readily torn apart for interpretation purposes, even if they were recognized as two accounts. Does that make sense?
18 July 2009 at 1.46 pm
@jbyas: I understand your point and it is well taken. I think differentiating between historical readings, canonical/literary readings, and theological readings may help. When it comes to the latter two, I have no issues reading both narratives together. When I comes to historical readings, I can’t help but separate the two.
Most of my books are in boxes, but I think that Levenson and Bouteneff (sp?) can help us here. Levenson points out how both creation narratives don’t seem to become the preferred idea of creation until the second Temple period. Before that we see a very hectic primordial chaos in the glimpses of creation (i.e., Job and Psalms). Bouteneff, in his book Beginnings, comes to a similar conclusion. I’ll have to check them when I get moved into my new apartment to see what conclusions they draw from this and if they mention reception history as reading the narratives as distinct or together. Again, though, I think it depends on what type of reading one is aiming for: historical, canonical, or theological. Does that make sense?
Art.
Sent from my iPhone.
18 July 2009 at 2.17 pm
It certainly does make sense and I think it does come down to what type of reading is intended. But I might also add that we should be hesitant to add value judgments or hierarchy to those different types.
Bouteneff does argue your point – “The evidence presented blow will support the theory that this redaction took place quite late or, at any rate, that its entry into Israelite consciousness as a normative creation account did not take place until the first and second centuries BCE” (2).
18 July 2009 at 2.18 pm
Sorry, that should say “below,” oops…
18 July 2009 at 11.47 pm
Thanks for this debrief, Art.
19 July 2009 at 9.19 pm
John Walton explains, “In the same way that a garden of the palace would be adjoining the palace, Eden would then be the source of the waters and the presence of God, and the garden would adjoin God’s residence.” This is in the IVP dictionary for the Pentateuch under “Eden, Garden of.” This makes some sense to me. I remember reading during my time at WTS that garden imagery was associated with kings, that the image evokes royalty. Here the king would happen to be YHWH himself and where he lives would also be called a temple, by definition. Walton makes another connection in his book. The deity rests on day 7 and where else would he rest but in the temple? This makes some sense, don’t you think, Art?
19 July 2009 at 9.24 pm
I absolutely think that it makes some sense. Like I said, I think there is some temple imagery in the first creation narrative, but I don’t think there is enough to make it a dominant paradigm or main feature of the narrative. I’ll hold out until I read the scholarly version. But I’m not convinced right now.
19 July 2009 at 10.05 pm
Yes, there’s something more to it than JUST temple. Is there a connection to suggest further here between royalty and temple? Perhaps Adam as vice-gerent ruling over creation, at God’s right hand as it were, while YHWH rests in his temple? This is what I see at least, well with Walton’s helpful notice of the number 7 and references to David and Solomon. This is not much different from what I’ve read and heard OT profs who were dispensationalists talk about many years ago, come to think of it.
20 July 2009 at 4.27 pm
I appreciate the idea of a functional rather than material focus to the concept of creation, but I am a little suspicious that it may be a strategy for maintaining a form of inerrancy. Arguing, for example that Gen 1 only describes the function of the heavenly bodies (giving light, marking seasons, etc) could imply that Gen 1 does not teach something concrete about the structure of the cosmos and the place of the lights in it (i.e. embedded in a solid firmament). Just a thought.
23 July 2009 at 9.32 am
I haven’t read this book yet but I have read Walton argue similar points in other works. G.K. Beale’s work, The Temple and the Churches Mission and many writings by J.D. Levenson are also helpful for getting a grasp on the cosmic temple imagery in the creation narrative and the ANE. Even if some of the arguments are a bit far-fetched I think once a cumulative case is built it becomes difficult to deny.
Art, regarding some of your objections, remember that the nature of disclosure of God’s presence changed after the Fall. He could no longer dwell unrestricted in the cosmic temple like he could at creation and again at new creation. So there was need to build temples. Also if temples were saturated with Garden imagery, etc. then it makes sense for the author(s) of Genesis to think of Genesis 1-2 in such terms.
23 July 2009 at 10.29 am
Nathan is probably right. Walton might have been looking for a way to be faithful to ancient culture AND to hold on to inerrancy. He may even feel quite a bit of relief that his interpretation allows so much play with the opening chapters of Genesis. But that does not mean that non-inerrantists can’t use interpretation and its emphasis on function in whatever way they see fit. If a reader wants to say that the opening chapters of Gen announce the inauguration of a temple and that the whole account is mythical and further that humans are evolutionary descendants in the same way every other living form is, there is little in Walton’s book that would forbid it (even if Walton himself would be dead against it). I bet conservatives will begin complaining and even start blaming Walton for “opening the door” for these kinds of “unbelieving” interpretations.
23 July 2009 at 10.37 am
I had one inerrantist try and build a case that the opening chapters of Genesis are a suzerainty treaty, akin to Klein’s work in Deuteronomy.
23 July 2009 at 11.37 am
@Aaron: I should have made this more clear in my rules for this blog: no Yankees talk and no Kline talk. Both of those topics make me sick!
24 July 2009 at 8.12 am
Aaron,
Thats-right-on-this-blog-referrences-to-the “One-who-shall-remain-nameless” are-a-bannable-offense.
Let-that-be-a-lesson-to-you
Nick
24 July 2009 at 8.58 am
ROFL.
I’m new enough into deeper biblical studies at the moment that I didn’t realize that the-one-who-shall-not-be-named was the-one-who-shall-not-be-named, LoL. Lesson learned! ;-D
24 July 2009 at 9.37 am
It is a great little book. I am personally convinced of the temple inauguration concept by reading Mowinckel et al on the Autumnal enthronement festival. Almost a year ago I noted on my blog:
27 July 2009 at 2.16 pm
Question: Im reading ANETOT and Walton seems to argue that to a large extent Israel adopted ANE cosmology (with the obvious exception of the gods). He further argues that the Hebrew Bible is full of ancient views of the world, which is some extent we now know are false. So in a sense he seems to push back against one view of inerrancy. At the same time he believes there is temple imagery in Genesis 1. But I from what I read I doubt he would reduce all of these types of texts (like GK Beale does!) to either (1) phenomenological language (2) temple imagery. Im sure Walton would agree these are in he Scripture but that there is also evidence of how everyone in that time period viewed the world. Is that fair to Walton?
Also if isnt there a difference when we say:
(1) “the sun rises and sets”, even though we know in the backs of our minds that this is not cosmologically accurate and when the ancients/Israelites said (2) “the sun rises and sets” and truly believed this was cosmologically accurate?
27 July 2009 at 4.42 pm
Brandon,
From what Walton says in his previous book which you mention (ANETOT) it is not so much that he reduces all the language to temple imagery (ala Beale) but that he moves to say the texts speak of creation as functionality, rather than existence. I do think this is a sweeping view in Walton’s discussions in his previous book – a way of allowing the Bible to sit in the midst of the ANE evidence and at the same time avoiding problems of how the cosmology of scripture corresponds to the cosmology of modern empirical science. This moves, which strikes me as a similar (although not identical) as that of Beale’s or even Kline’s I think has a tendency of sidestepping the question.
Take the story of Noah. Every ancient person held to a flood narrative in their respective mythos. It might become very hard for a modern person to believe in a worldwide flood (indeed from an evidentiary standpoint it is currently impossible.)However, that’s precisely what every Hebrew, Sumerian, Babylonian, etc. really believed once happened in the physical world. They all literally believed in a worldwide flood and they were all wrong. To claim that the Hebrews didn’t “really” believe this but were speaking of a flood as a metaphor for how sin envelops the earth or something is simply to eisogete the text to suit a modernist assumption about inerrancy.
That’s my concern with Walton. It’s true that functionality was very important in ANE cosmological thought– things needed to have purpose to be talked about as existing – but this doesn’t get us away from the fact that the ancient Hebrew really believed in a literal creation in 7 literal days – a tiered universe, a worldwide flood, a place called sheol literally existing beneath cosmic waters, a literal raqyia, etc, etc, etc…
Admittedly, however, I haven’t read his latest book (Im waiting for the second edition to come out). It could be he highly nuances his use of function so that he allows the writers/redactors to have operated from errant views of cosmology and for God to still be God – although if this is the case I wonder what his career at Wheaton is going to look like in a year or two.
Pax Christi…Nick
27 July 2009 at 9.34 pm
But what does scripture “teach”? Isn’t that the moving goal post for inerrantists? What one concludes to be an irreconcilable “error” they simply claim is not what scripture “teaches”. Invoking functionality conveniently removes every facet of “material creation” from what scripture teaches, doesn’t it? I think it’s a deft move on Walton’s part, but will conservatives go for it?
But like Nick says, let’s see how Walton’s faring at Wheaton after they have some faculty discussions on what might be identified as the book’s fundamentally non-inerrantist implications. But, hey, Walton’s got Waltke endorsing his book…I mean at least for now…
27 July 2009 at 10.55 pm
Good points. Although the last time I saw Waltke’s name on the back of a book, the professor eventually left WTS. Who knows, perhaps the recommendation is a bad omen… Incidentally, Waltke’s own literary framework view, defended in his Genesis commentary, has much in common with Walton’s points.
Nick you say Walton focuses on a functional (as opposed to material) view of the cosmos in the ANE. I agree. But, perhaps I am mistaken, but several times in reading ANTOT Walton appeared to argue that these the functional and material bump into each other and that the Hebrews breathed the air of both:
-”Egyptians, Mesopotamians….Israelites all thought of the cosmos in terms of tiers” (166). Then after a long discussion of the material view of the ANE (tiers, waters, dome, etc)… Walton writes “the language of the OT reflects this view, and no texts in the Bible seek to correct or refute it.” (167) In fact, in the footnote and then throughout the chapter (viz. Biblical Term. Related to Cosmic Geogaphy, 174-175) he argues that the Hebrews literally believed in things such as pavement sky holding back waters, which were opened through “windows” during the flood.
Unless I read Walton wrong, he seems to argue that the cosmos and its ontology were thought of primarily in functional terms, “but” this cannot be altogether divorced from their prescientific/ANE view of the cosmos. Indeed, we understand the functional view of Mesopotamia by looking at the Babylonian world map and reading how their texts describe the earth. That is, these material descriptions (which are secondary to their myths) set the context for us to understand their functional cosmology (cf. Israel). I think Walton would say you need both even if one has priority.
Do you agree?
27 July 2009 at 11.03 pm
Brandon,
Perhaps I am being overly rash – but I have a feeling that somehow this move is a backdoor inerrancy movement something like beales. I guess a smoking gun for your reading of Walton would be something like “the writer(s) of genesis 1 thought the world was tiered, and while scientifically in error they were theologically revealing Gods will.” If your reading is correct (and it very well might be), then I would bet walton is in for a world of hurt at wheaton. I guess the verdit is still out for me as to precisely what Walton is on about. I suspect he will do something like “it was functionally tiered, but not literally oh and wink wink, the author of Genesis 1 knew this…” I sincerly hope I am wrong on this.
As for Walke’s glowing reviews, just wait for the second printing. Apparently the world of blurbs is almost as shifty as futures in the stock market.
Pax Christi…Nick
27 July 2009 at 11.14 pm
I can’t remember who here read the book and who hasn’t, but in the q & a Walton says, “In my judgment, there is little in the text that commends its as a material account and much that speaks against it.” And more explicitly on p 96, he writes: “Viewing Genesis 1 as an account of functional origins of the cosmos as themple does not in any way suggest or imply that God was uninvolved in material origins–it only contends that Genesis 1 is not that story.”
This is going to come across like suggesting that Bart Ehrman should become the new president at Wheaton!
27 July 2009 at 11.21 pm
Nick:
Exactly. Perhaps Walton would sidestep the implications of his view. But I bet he believes that the Hebrews scientific view of the universe (I.e. solid sky, p. 169), which we now know is errant, helps give us a proper context for understanding their functional cosmology (see P. Seely who he quotes with acceptance several times).
Of course, like you mention, Walton does not tease out the implications for our understanding of inspiration and inerrancy, which was one of Peter Enns’ chief critiques of ANETOT… Interesting.
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