John H. Walton

A challenging book. Worth reading, but challenging on multiple levels. For one, it's not the easiest read. You definitely want to follow the details and argument, and do not get confused about locution vs. illocution whatever you do.

But more importantly, the content is challenging. For those of us with a particular view of how scripture works and where its authority lies, you really have to wrestle with the implications. I come from a background that more-or-less assumes that Isaiah sat down one day and wrote sixty-some chapters (with near dictation from the Holy Spirit), signed his name at the end, and sent it off to the publisher, without any errors. There had been cracks in that model showing for a while, and this book systematically dismantles it.

A few major insights: There's a whole lot less writing going on, and a whole lot more speaking. There's also some amount of editing and variation. Authority is tied to the aut-, uh, excuse me, *speaker*'s intent and not to the words or style themselves. And the style of the words needs to be interpreted from the way that style worked in that time, not the way it works in ours.

And let's be clear that this is not an excuse to throw out scripture. The authors take a high view of scripture. They are not heretics. Scripture remains God's communication to humanity and is without error in what it affirms. They just use a whole lot more nuance than normal in saying that, including the importance of figuring out what is or is not being affirmed (the intention or "illocution") and observing that generating scripture was a much longer process than is often assumed (i.e. years of oral repetition, transcription, editing, and not just Samuel writing a book one afternoon).

It was badly needed, but uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, I want my view of scripture be based on reality rather than what is most comfortable. I'm not sure exactly what the implications will be over the long term, but I very much appreciate the adjustments coming from authors who still hold to the value of scripture even with the changes.… (more)

The premise of this book is that reading the first chapter of Genesis as an account of physical creation is, in fact, misreading it. A more textually accurate -- and in that sense, a more literal reading -- would be to read it as a functional account of creation.

Walton starts by comparing Genesis 1 to other ancient cosmologies. He does not claim that it is based on those other cosmologies. Rather, his claim is that Genesis 1 serves the same basic function as other ancient cosmologies because that is what the listeners would have expected and because it allowed the listeners to understand how their cosmology differed from others around them. Ancient cosmologies spend very little time worrying about physical creation and most of their time working to convey the function and purpose of creation. Genesis 1 does not seem to be an exception.

The second line of reasoning is looking at how some of the key Hebrew terms in Genesis 1 are used elsewhere in the Old Testament. This most important is how the word commonly translated as create is generally used for granting purpose, not physical creation elsewhere in the Bible.

The final line of reasoning starts to merge more with Walton's view of the consequences of taking a functional view of creation. This line of reasoning focuses on how many of the difficulties of reading the creation account as a physical account of creation go away if you interpret them as a granting of function instead. This, in turn, highlights that the key point to take away from the creation narrative is not that God created all -- that was a given in the ancient world -- but that all has purpose in the created universe.

There are two things I like about this reading. While we can never know the worldview of the people who first passed along the account in Genesis 1, we do know that many of the problems with modern readings of that account come from worldviews developed in the last 500 years. To put it another way, we don't know what exactly the right worldview is, but we know that the one we have isn't it. Thus, any alternate viewpoint can provide an interesting perspective shift.

This view in particular is interesting because, as mentioned above, much of what is problematic about the Genesis one account -- even if you ignore what we've learned through science and just look at internal consistency -- goes away with this alternate reading. This perspective just seems like it fits better.

Overall, a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in the debates about creation.… (more)