Unlocking the Bible

If we take this segregated approach to Genesis we will be forced to treat the narrative as myth. Genesis 3 becomes a fable entitled ‘How the snake lost its legs’, and Adam becomes ‘Everyman’. The book becomes full of fictional stories teaching us values about God and about ourselves, and showing us how to think about God and about ourselves – but we must not press them into historical fact.

Just as Hans Christian Andersen wrote children’s books which taught moral values, according to this approach Genesis has stories with moral truths but no historical truth. Adam and Eve were myths, and Noah and the Flood was also a myth. This outlook extends beyond the Genesis narratives, of course, for once one questions the historicity of one section of the Bible it is a small step to question others also. This approach therefore leaves us with no history left in the Bible: plenty of values but few facts.

As with repudiation, then, the attempt to segregate science and Scripture also has its problems. In fact, Scripture and science are like overlapping circles: they do deal with some things that are the same and so apparent contradictions must be faced. And it undermines the whole Bible if we pretend that it is factually inaccurate but still has value. How then are we going to resolve the problem? Can the third approach help us bring science and Scripture together?

INTEGRATION

In trying to understand how to integrate the two, we need to remember two basic things, both equally important: the transitional nature of scientific investigations, and the changes in our interpretation of Scripture.

1. Science changes its views

Scientists used to believe that the atom was the smallest thing in the universe. We know now that each atom is a whole universe in itself. It was said until very recently that the X and Y chromosomes decide whether a foetus becomes a male or a female human being. Now this view has been overturned. The discovery of DNA has revolutionized our thinking about life, because we now know that the earliest form of life had the most complicated DNA. DNA is a language passing on a message from one generation to another – and because of that it must have a person behind it.

A generation ago most people would have understood that nature ran according to fixed laws. Modern science now asserts that there is a much greater randomness than we ever imagined. ‘Quantum’ physics is much more flexible.

Geology too is changing and developing. There are now many different ways of finding out the age of the earth. Some new methods are claimed to have revealed the age of the earth to be much younger, with 9,000 years at one end of the spectrum and 175,000 years at the other – much less than the four and a quarter billion years calculated previously.

Furthermore, anthropology is in a state of disorder. The prehistoric men thought to be our ancestors are now seen to be creatures which came and disappeared with no link with us. Biology has changed also, and today fewer people believe in the Darwinian concept of evolution.

All this means that while we should not discount the conflicts between scientific discovery and the biblical accounts, we would be foolish to try to tie our interpretation to a particular scientific age, given that scientific knowledge is itself always expanding.

2. Interpretation of Scripture changes

Just as developments occur in scientific understanding, so the traditional interpretations of Scripture can also change. The Bible is inspired by God, but our interpretation of it may not always be. We need to draw a very clear distinction between the Bible text and how we interpret it. When the Bible talks about the four corners of the earth, for example, few people today interpret that to mean the earth is a cube or a square. The Bible uses what is called the language of appearance. It talks about the sun rising in the east, setting in the west and running around the sky. But that, as we know, does not mean that the sun is moving around the earth.

Once we understand that scientific interpretation is flexible and that our interpretation of the Bible may change, we can then seek to integrate science and the Bible and make balanced judgements where contradictions seem to exist.

THE ‘DAY’ IN GENESIS 1

Such an ‘integrated’ judgement is much needed when we come to consider the arguments regarding the days in Genesis 1, a traditional battlefield in the science versus Scripture debate.

The problem of the days described in Genesis 1 and the real age of the earth was heightened by the fact that some Bibles used to be published with a date alongside the first chapter, namely 4004 BC. This was calculated by an Irish archbishop called James Ussher (another scholar went on to claim that Adam was born at 9 a.m. on 24 October!) All this despite the fact that there are no dates in the original until Chapter 5.

Ussher made his calculations based on the generations recorded in Genesis, unaware that the Jewish genealogies do not include every generation in a line. The words ‘son of’ may mean grandson or great-grandson. It is easy to discount Ussher’s date, but we are still faced with a conflict between the apparent biblical assertion that creation took six days and the scientific assertion that it took much longer.

What was meant by the word ‘day’ in the original language? This is the Hebrew word Yom, which does sometimes mean a day of 24 hours. But it can also mean 12 hours of light or an era of time, as in the phrase ‘the day of the horse and cart has gone’.

Bearing these alternative meanings in mind, let us consider the different views of the day in Genesis 1.

Earth days

Some take the word ‘day’ literally as an earth day of 24 hours. This conflicts with the scientists’ assessment of the geological time it would take to create the earth, given its apparent age.

A gap in time

Some suggest a gap in time between verse 2 and verse 3. They argue that after we read that ‘the earth was formless’ in verse 2, there is a long gap before the six days when God brings everything else into being. So the earth was already in existence before God’s work began in the six days. That is a very common theory, found in the Scofield Bible and other Bible notes.

A second way of finding more time is to explain it by reference to the Flood. There have been various books published, notably connected with the names Whitcome and Morris, which have said that the geological data we have all comes out of the Flood, the ‘apparent’ age of rocks the result of this inundation.

The illusion of time

Others suggest that God deliberately made things look old. Just as Adam was created as a man, not as a baby, so some believe that God made the earth to look older than it really is. God creates genuine antiques! He can make a tree look 200 years old with all the rings in it, and he can create a mountain that looks thousands of years old. It is a possible theory – God could do that.

The ‘gap’ and ‘illusion’ views both assume that we take the ‘day’ literally and therefore need to find more time to make sense of the geological record.

Geological eras

Another approach is to take a ‘day’ as meaning a ‘geological era’. In this case we are not talking about six days, but about six geological ages, i.e. days 1–3 are not solar days (in any case there was no sun!). This is seen as an attractive theory by many, but it fails to account for the morning and evening refrain which is present from day 1, or for the fact that the six days do not correspond to geological ages.

Mythical days

We have already seen that some interpreters have no problem with the length of the days because they assume that the text is mythological anyway. For them the six days are only the poetic framework for the story – fabled days – and can be overlooked. The main thing is to get the moral out of the story and forget the rest.

School days

One of the most intriguing approaches has been put forward by Professor Wiseman of London University. He believes the days were ‘educational’ days. God revealed his creation in stages to Moses over a seven-day period, so the record we have is of Moses learning about the creative process in the course of a week’s schooling. Others agree but suggest that the revelations took the form of visions, rather like the way John was given visions to record for the book of Revelation.

God days

The final possible interpretation is that these were ‘God days’. Time is relative to God and a thousand days are like a day to him. It could be understood from this that God was saying that the whole of creation was ‘all in a week’s work’ for him.

This serves to emphasize the importance God attaches to mankind in the scheme of creation, since human life can lose all significance if you take geological time as the only measure. For example, imagine that the height of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames Embankment in London represents the age of the planet. Place a 10 pence piece flat on top of the needle and a postage stamp on top of that. The 10 pence piece represents the age of the human race and the postage stamp civilized man. Man is seemingly insignificant from a chronological perspective.

Maybe God wanted us to think of creation as a week’s work because he wanted to get down to the important part, us living on planet earth. Out of all creation it is we who are most significant to him. He spends such little space in Genesis detailing creation and so much on mankind.

This theory can be extended. The seventh day has no end in the text, because it has lasted centuries. It lasted all the way through the Bible until Easter Sunday, when God raised his son from the dead. All through the Old Testament there is nothing new created; God had finished creation. Indeed, the word ‘new’ hardly occurs in the Old Testament, and even then is in the negative, as when in Ecclesiastes we read, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’. So God rested all the way through the Old Testament.

There is, therefore, a strong argument for seeing the days in Genesis 1 as God days – God himself wanted us to think of it as a week’s work.

Man at the centre

Turning to Chapter 2, it is immediately obvious that there is a great difference between this and Chapter 1. There is a shift in style, content and viewpoint. In Chapter 1 God is at the centre and the account of creation is given from his point of view. In Chapter 2 man is given the prominent role. The generic terms of the first chapter give way to specific names in Chapter 2. In Chapter 1 the human race was simply referred to as ‘male’ and ‘female’. In Chapter 2 male and female have become ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, two particular individuals.

God is also given a name in Chapter 2. In Chapter 1 he was simply ‘God’ (Elohim), but now he is ‘the LORD God’ (as translated in English Bibles). When we read ‘the LORD’ in capital letters in our English Bibles it means that in the Hebrew his name is there also. There are no vowels in Hebrew, so his name is made up of four consonants, J H V H, from which the word ‘Jehovah’ has been coined. This is actually a mistake, because J is pronounced like a Y and V is pronounced like a W. In English pronunciation the letters would therefore be Y H W H, from which we get the word ‘Yahweh’. In the New Jerusalem Bible that word is included just as it is – ‘The Yahweh God’. We saw earlier how the English word ‘always’ conveys the meaning of the Hebrew (the participle of the verb ‘to be’) and it is a helpful word to bring to mind when thinking of God.

Chapter 2 explains more of the relationship between man and God. Chapter 1 included the reference to male and female being made in his image, but in Chapter 2 we see God interacting with man in a way which is unique among all the creatures he had made. There is an affinity between human beings and God that is lacking in every other part of his creation. Animals do not have the ability to have a spiritual relationship with God as humans do. In that sense, humans are like their creator in a unique way.

But we are also told of the differences between God and man, for although man is made in God’s image, he is also unlike him. This is an important truth to grasp if we are to have a relationship with God. The fact that he is like us means that our relationship with him can be intimate, but the fact that he is unlike us will keep the relationship reverent and ensure that our worship is appropriate. It is possible to be too familiar with God on the one hand, or overawed by him on the other.

The importance of names

The name God gave to Adam meant ‘of the earth’ – we might call him Dusty. Later in the chapter the woman too is given a name: Eve, meaning ‘lively’.

It was normal for names to be descriptive, or even onomatopoeic (like ‘cuckoo’), so when Adam names the animals he uses descriptions which then become their name. Names in the Bible are not only descriptive, they also carry authority in them. The person who gives the name has authority over whoever or whatever receives the name. Thus Adam names all the animals, signifying his authority over them. He also names his wife, a feature still remembered today when the woman takes the man’s surname when they marry.

This chapter also includes names of places. The land is no longer merely ‘dry land’: we are told of the land of Havilah, Kush, Asshur and the Garden of Eden. The water is named too. There are four rivers mentioned, and the Tigris and Euphrates are still known today. This puts the Garden of Eden somewhere near north-eastern Turkey, or Armenia, where Mount Ararat stands and where some believe Noah’s ark is buried.

Human relationships