An Unbeliever Explains Creation (Part 13): Three Things the Bible Doesn't Say about Creation

Submitted by Ken Watts on Sat, 10/13/2007 - 11:52

In the first 12 parts of this series we've looked at the elaborate and fascinating literary structure of the creation story in the first two chapters of Genesis, and how it would read to you, if you were an ancient Israelite. Now we're ready to ask some questions about the meaning of the story.

So what would you, as an ancient Israelite, fully aware of all the parallelism and literary structure in this passage, have understood it to mean?

Let's begin with three things you wouldn't have thought it meant.

  1. You wouldn't have thought that it was historical—that it was a description of an event in the past.

    Ancient humans were not simple or unsophisticated. They had, as we have just seen, elaborate intellectual and literary traditions, and they understood how literary conventions worked.

    In this case we have a sort of double telling of the same themes, in which each half perfectly parallels the other. Each half is an historical account on the surface. But if the surface accounts are taken literally they contradict each other at almost every point.

    One account takes six days; the other, only one. In one account humanity is created last; in the other, first. In one account the chaos before creation is described as a dark, formless sea; in the other as a dry, uncultivated wilderness. On the surface, they couldn't be more different.

    The ancient author, and the ancient audience, would have understood immediately that the six days, and the one day, were both literary devices, used for the purpose of structuring the story, and, in the case of the six days, carrying a part of the theme.

    Precisely because the two tightly paralleled versions contradict each other historically, you would have known that the passage was not addressing history—you would have laughed indulgently at a child or simpleton who thought the passage was talking about a specific, single event in the past.
  2. You wouldn't have thought the passage was an anti-evolution tract.

    To begin with, of course, you wouldn't have even heard of evolution, so it wouldn't have come up. But if you had—if, say, a time-traveler had shown up on your doorstep, explained the theory of evolution to you, and asked you to evaluate it on the basis of this passage, you would not have found anything in the passage to contradict it.

    On the contrary, you would have found much in the passage to back the theory up.

    In the second half, Yahweh gods "makes the trees spring from the ground". That is, while the ultimate causer is divine, it's the trees that do the springing. In the first half, gods commands the earth to produce the plants: again, the ultimate cause is a divine command, but the actual producing is done by the earth. And immediately, in this context, the passage describes the nature of plant life as based on the production of seeds, and consequent reproduction "after their kind".

    Remember, these people were farmers. They understood how to select the plants which produced the best crop and breed them. They knew that "after their kind" didn't mean "without variation". They knew that, after a great many generations of selection by a breeder, a plant or animal could become fantastically different from the original stock. And they didn't use the modern, scientific, concept of "species", which plays such a large role in the older fundamentalist objections to the theory.

    The theory of evolution depends upon just two things—that there is a certain amount of variation from one fig tree to the next (something they would have known in their bones), and that fig trees reproduce "after their kind", so that these variations can be handed down. The rest is selection—something else they would have known all about.

    If you had been one of them—not hogtied by a modern, scientific world-view and the consequent habit of reading ancient poetry as though it were a science text—you would have quite possibly greeted the idea of evolution with an enthusiastic recognition that it fit the passage perfectly. "Ah! That's what it's talking about!"

    The same is true of animal life. The second passage tells us that Yahweh gods formed animals out of the earth, and the first tells us that gods did this by commanding the earth to bring them forth—gods does the commanding, but the earth does the bringing forth. And once again the passage immediately mentions the means of reproduction (and of evolution)—"each according to its kind", in parallel to the the plants.

    And, beyond that, you will remember that the first passage created a certain puzzle in your mind. Quite suddenly, at the creation of humans, gods said let us create humans in our image. But the word "gods" had been previously used as a singular straight through the passage—in spite of its plural form. On the parallel day, day three, gods told the earth to bring forth plant life, involving the earth in the process of creation, and the element on day six that is parallel to the earth is the land animals.

    So the perfectly obvious reading of this passage is that gods is inviting the animal kingdom to participate with gods, in creating humans in their joint image. And the passage is explicitly aware of how life creates life—by reproducing after its kind. And, in fact, it is quite obvious that we are formed in the image of animals—with skin, bones, lungs, hearts, brains.

    This interpretation, by the way, would fit perfectly in the world-view of the passage, even without any reference to evolution. The theory of evolution would simply be a further elaboration of the ideas already here.

    If the passage has anything at all to say about evolution, it must be taken to endorse the idea—or, at the very least, present a world-view that is completely compatible with it. Modern fundamentalists who object to the theory are not interpreting this passage on its own terms. Any conservative Christian has, in this passage, a Biblical foundation for the concept of evolution.
  3. You wouldn't have thought there was anything wrong with thinking of humans as primates.

    I bring this up because I often think that the anti-evolution sentiment has more to do with "don't call me a monkey" than it has to do with "that's not what the Bible says".

    This passage doesn't call anyone a monkey, and it does say that there's something special about humans (which we'll get to in the next part), but it definitely classes humans with other animal life.

    It does that in two ways. In the second half, Yahweh forms both humans and animals out of the ground, giving them a common origin. In the first half, it divides kinds of life into categories, assigned to different days, and based on how they move around. Plants, which don't move, are assigned to day three. Birds, which fly, and fish, which swim, are assigned to day five. Land animals (including humans) who walk or crawl on the land, are assigned to day six.

    These are the basic categories of life, according to the first chapter, and humans are seen, along with apes, as belonging to the category of land animals. Beyond that, the reason has to do with the way they walk. So if we are related to all land animals by the fact that we walk, we must be even more closely related to those who can walk on two legs, like us.

    As an ancient Israelite, you would have found this obvious, based on the the themes and structures of the passage.

But of course, these are questions that an ancient reader wouldn't have asked. In the next part we'll talk about what they would have asked.

If you would like to read the whole series: