R Evans, Genesis in Context - Preface
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Preface: The Importance of Context
At the end of 2015 I attended a Bible study camp in New Zealand. The first study topic was the Song of Solomon. The speaker giving the series — a respected scientist — opened and approached the topic from an analytical perspective.
It was, he said, traditional wisdom to interpret the Song as a spiritual, prophetic presentation of Christ and His bride, despite their earthy, overtly sexual language. However, he pointed out, support of this view involved the suppression of a nagging unease, which he termed “cognitive dissonance”.
He argued that if we could set our prejudices to one side, and take an objective approach to the text, we would see that the book was not a prophetic account of a spiritual relationship. Instead, internal evidence showed it to be a portrayal of progressive seduction from faith accompanied by loss of self-control, with the groom ultimately deserting his place, and following the bride to hers.
In attempting to subjectively force a spiritual understanding on to the Book, he pointed out that we falsify genre; we make it a prophecy when it is not. Consequently, we completely misunderstand the text and its message.
Immediately my thoughts turned to the book of Genesis, a text that in my experience is almost always approached with dogmatic and traditional preconception, and subconsciously expounded in modern Western contexts.
Opening the first chapter, we intuitively read it in terms of our modern heliocentric cosmology, and attempt to comprehend it through a cultural mind-set of literal material fabrication. We battle through cognitive dissonance, “explaining away” the “problems” of light before sun, a vaulted firmament containing entrained stars, and the existence of upper waters. Convinced that the second Creation account is an expansion on the first, we shrewdly juggle words and ideas to “resolve conflict” between the narratives in the first two chapters. Then, having wrestled with and wrested ancient Scripture, we emerge triumphant, having suppressed all nagging doubt and unease.
Kicking painlessly against the goads, we wield this “understanding” as a two-edged sword against all challenges, doubly convinced that we stand on God’s side, and that we are infallibly correct. Disregarding genre, we studiously read the subsequent chapters as inspired literal history; invoking miracle on a grand scale to harmonise ancient narrative with modern knowledge, while rejecting all discoveries of science which conflict with our interpretative paradigm.
Strangely, we never seem to notice that our “literal” reading of Genesis 1 does not correspond at all with the literal portrayal of ancient cosmology which pervades the Biblical text. It rests instead upon eighteenth century astronomical science. It is the heliocentric paradigm postulated by Copernicus and Galileo, mathematically underpinned by the calculations of Kepler, and modified by the gravitational theory of Newton, to which we have force-fitted Genesis 1 under the illusion of a literal, sola scriptura reading of the text. What we fail to realise — and what I missed for forty years — is that this “Biblical literalism” and its opposition to modern science is in fact an unconscious hypocrisy.
This small book consists of a series of short lay studies which focus on the text in its contemporary context, and on its place in Scripture as a whole, to enquire into what Genesis really tells us about God’s Plan. This is undertaken in the hope of promoting open study, and fostering an objective, listening, and prayerful search of His Word, to prove from Scripture “whether these things be so”.
To clear one’s mind utterly of all preconceptions, attune to the cultural contexts in which God spoke to His people, and receive His Word in those contexts, is the necessary first step to such a course.
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