Reading Genesis

“You crazy flat-earthers!”

Do you believe the earth is flat? Could anyone be a flat-earther these days?

Well, according to more than one Muslim website the answer should be, “Yes”, if you’re a Christian and claim the Bible is true.1 These Muslim critics say that although scientific knowledge tells us the earth is a spherical globe which spins on its axis and rotates around the sun, the Bible clearly says that the earth is flat, with four corners (e.g. Rev 7:1), on foundations (e.g. Job 38:4). Further, they say the Bible stupidly claims the earth does not, indeed cannot, move (e.g. Ps 104:5), and that the sun moves around, or rather, across the (flat) earth (Eccl 1:5).

We’ll think about how to respond to such claims below. But we note that it is not just atheists who claim that science contradicts the Bible, but also some Muslims. The accusation becomes most pressing when modern people read Genesis. Can we really believe the world was made in six literal days? What about evolution? And isn’t the earth much older, geologically speaking, than Genesis seems to say? Is there any evidence to support its claim that a giant flood covered the whole earth? What about the talking snake and those incredibly long life spans of more than 800 or 900 years?!

These questions come naturally enough to people raised in an era of science and scepticism. We cannot answer them all in this article. What I particularly wish to do is think about how we read Genesis, because it is there that many of the battles are waged.

As I do so, please be clear that I am not defending neo-Darwinism. Some parts of some version of the evolutionary theory may have some merit. I have neither the space nor the competence to assess this. Of course, the claim that this would do away with God is totally wrong. However, even the most basic and populist understanding of neo-Darwinism raises big questions for our reading of the Bible. For if we understand nothing else of evolutionary theory, we know that it asserts that that the earth is billions of years old, and that life on earth developed slowly over an enormously long period of time—not that the earth is quite young (say, 6,000 or so years old) and that life was created suddenly by God in just six 24-hour days, as many Christians read the Bible to say. What are we to do with this?

Genesis and genre

Many Bible-believing Christians would reply that the answer is simple. We should read the Bible literally, and believe what it says. After all, aren’t Christians supposed to take every word of the Bible literally? The answer, of course, is, “No, not necessarily!” It all depends on the genre, or literary style, of the literature.

We take note of genre quite effortlessly in our daily lives. For example, we know that we shouldn’t take Road Runner cartoons literally, whereas the weather report pretty much means what it says. We take weather reports literally because we know that they contain factual reports and straightforward predictions; on the other hand, we make allowances for the conventions of cartoons, where little black rain clouds can appear over one character’s head.

We do the same with the Bible. For example, Psalm 19:4-5 says God has “set a tent for the sun” from which it emerges “like a bridegroom leaving his chamber” and races across the sky like a champion athlete. We instinctively know not to take this literally, as if the sun had legs, or there was a canvas tarpaulin in the sky. It’s figurative speech, telling of the glory and power of the sun—imagery common in the genre of poetry.

‘Proto-history’/’Figurative-history’?

So what is the genre of Genesis—in particular, the genre of the early chapters of Genesis?

Genesis is structured around a series of sections each beginning with the words, “These are the generations of …”:

  • Gen 2:4, “the heavens and the earth”;
  • Gen 5:1, “the generations of Adam”;
  • Gen 6:9, “the generations of Noah”;
  • Gen 10:1, “the generations of the sons of Noah”;

and so on.

In each section, after these headings, what you get is a ‘family tree’ of each key person’s descendants, along with tales of some of their activities. In Genesis 12, we arrive at the main focus of Genesis: the account of Abraham and his son and grandson, as the main ancestors of Israel. This is where the history of Israel proper begins. And this nation is the main topic for the rest of the Old Testament.

In a sense, then, Genesis 1-11 is the ‘introduction’ to the whole Old Testament. It introduces God, humanity and sin in general. Perhaps we could describe the genre of the early chapters of Genesis as ‘proto-history’—a kind of preliminary history which is somewhat different in style to the historical narratives of Israel that follow.

At the very beginning of this ‘proto-history’, coming even before all the ‘these are the generations of’ bits, is the creation week of Genesis 1. It’s like an overture to a musical or opera—it gives the backdrop to the story and previews the themes. The style of Genesis 1 is certainly not like the historical narratives later in the Bible, with their more concrete details of time and place. It is not everyday history; but neither is it quite like the Hebrew poetry we meet later in the Psalms. It utilises repetitive formulas like, “And God said … And it was so”, and contains lots of number symbolism. Everywhere you look there are ‘sevens’—the number of completeness and perfection in the Bible: the seven days; the first sentence has seven words in Hebrew; the second 14; the words ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ each appear 21 times in the chapter; God is mentioned exactly 35 times.2 In other words, the style is highly structured and rhythmic and numeric. And we don’t observe these features together in other more straightforward historical narrative in other parts of the Bible.

This is not to say that early Genesis is untrue or non-historical. But we need to recognize it as a different type of history. Perhaps we could call it ‘figurative history’—that is, history which has artistic figurative elements which do not necessarily need to be taken literally. It is rather like Jesus in Matthew 21 telling the story of Israel’s rejection of the prophets, culminating in its imminent rejection of him. He tells this story using the parable of the tenants, which is clearly a made-up story with symbolic elements. However, it is a profoundly true story with a clear historical reference. It describes the history of Israel’s apostasy and rejection of God, as well as her rejection of Jesus, but it does so using figurative, symbolic language.

Stained-glass windows offer a similar example. They often portray Jesus with a dinner plate behind his head, or with trumpets coming out his ears. These are figurative, artistic, stylized representations of something very true and very historical—the holiness and majesty and power of the Messiah. That the representation is figurative and symbolic makes it no less true or historical!

The creation days: options

So what are we to make of the creation days? Many Christians insist we must take them literally, as six 24-hour periods. And this is certainly the common use of the word ‘day’, especially when numbered, as in Genesis 1. God certainly could have created the world in 144 hours. He is powerful and wise enough. And if I get to heaven and discover that’s how it was, I won’t be upset!

All the same, this certainly contradicts a massive amount of evidence accumulated by scientists as to how the world developed—over a period of millions or billions of years. And so the six days have become a laughing stock amongst many of them. However, this ignores two other ways that Bible-believing Christians interpret the ‘days’.3

One is to say that the days represent eras or ages, often quoting the Bible references which say that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8). People who take this view note that there are many interesting parallels between the order in which creation happens in Genesis 1 and the order of the various ages through which scientists think the world developed.

A second view of the ‘days’ says that the arrangement of days is primarily a literary framework, and not necessarily chronological, scientific or historical in intent. This view notes that the language of Genesis 1 is not like other historical narratives in the Bible (as we noted above), and that the chapter’s clear purpose is to introduce the unique Sovereign Lord of All who creates all things effortlessly by his powerful word—in opposition to the various pagan ‘creation myths’ of the time, which saw the world arising as a result of bloody battles between various godlike beings.

This second ‘literary’ view of the days treats them like the details of the story in Jesus’ parable of the tenants in Matthew 21. Just as we wouldn’t ask the whereabouts of the ‘other country’ into which the master went, or how much he leased the vineyard to the tenants for—as if this was what the story was trying to tell us—so we shouldn’t press the details of the creation account for information it’s not designed to tell us.

The creation days: evidence

When we take a close look at Genesis 1 itself, there are certainly aspects of the text that should make us pause before insisting that the only possible way to take the ‘days’ is as literal 24-hour periods.

We’ve already noted its highly stylized literary structure that is not typical of ordinary historical genres. There is also the example of Genesis 2:4, where the word ‘day’ means something other than a literal 24-hour period. In more word-for-word translations (like the ESV or NASB), you’ll see that Genesis 2:4 says,

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and the heavens (my emphasis).

Here the word ‘day’ is being used to refer to the entire period of creation, which chapter 1 clearly says lasted more than 24 hours. This at least shows that ‘day’ does not always mean a literal 24-hour period. This ‘day’ is an ‘age’, even if the numbered days of chapter 1 are not.

We also should recall that Genesis 2 corresponds to day 6 of chapter 1, when God made the animals and both man and woman. This should cause us to ponder: if, as Genesis 2:20 asserts, “man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field” (emphasis mine), how did he manage to do that in just one part of one day, before God also then made the woman as man’s helper? This presents a problem for the six-day creationist, who wishes to read all details of the text literally, because there are many thousands of species of birds and animals, and it is difficult to imagine how Adam could have named each one in a few short hours. Some attempt to resolve this difficulty by suggesting that “all” livestock doesn’t literally mean “all”. But this is a strange expedient for those wishing to defend the literalness of the text.

A similar problem emerges in accounting for the existence of literal days before the creation of the sun and moon on day four. People who take the days literally have to speculate that God used some temporary non-solar light source to delineate morning and evening for the first three days. Again, it’s possible, but sounds strange.

We also get a hint in Genesis 2:5 that God actually used at least some natural processes in his work of creation. It says,

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land … (Gen 2:5)

That is, God designed plants to work in line with the water cycle; they needed rain to grow. This suggests that God could quite easily use natural processes in his work of creation. It’s not as if God could only use miracles, but is barred from using what we call the more regular ‘laws of nature’. After all, we believe that the ‘laws of nature’ are just a label we give to the regular, orderly, predictable way in which God sustains and upholds his creation.

Now, I am not asserting that the days must not be taken literally. I am simply pointing to evidence, not from pagan scientific theories, but from the text of Genesis itself. Some sincere Bible-believing Christians have found this suggestive that we are not obliged to take the words literally.

Three final observations

Science and the Bible

It’s well and truly time the so-called competition between science and the Bible was called off! That is, science and the Bible should be seen as complementary rather than as opponents. To put it very simply, science investigates “How?”, whereas the Bible asks “Why?” They are answering different questions, and it is silly to try to make Genesis 1 speak with the language or precision of modern scientific thought. It is just as silly as for scientists to pretend that they can really answer the big meaning-of-life questions!

In fact, most experts in the history of science agree that in large measure, it is the Christian world view—of the orderliness and beauty of creation—that allowed modern science to develop. Pagans often believed that the world was chaotic and confusing. But Christians saw purpose. And so Christians believed that God would generally act in orderly and reliable ways. They saw one of his characteristics was to be a law-maker. This meant you could investigate the world and expect to make sense of it. So you could make predictions and develop natural laws and theories to describe how things were, without diminishing the idea that God was behind it.

Of course, many mistakes have been made in the development of science. Its technologies have been used for evil purposes, and its theories have been wrongly used to justify blind philosophical leaps into atheism. But we can learn from science, for all truth is God’s truth. Psalm 19, for example, indicates that there are two forms of God’s revelation: the ‘book’ of nature is God’s general revelation; the book of the Bible is God’s special revelation. General revelation does not save anybody. Special revelation is God’s specific words about his character and dealings with humanity; his plan of salvation culminating in Jesus. This you cannot discover by looking at a sunset or into a test-tube.

Nevertheless, what we discover by the scientific method about nature really is true. Of course our interpretation of the data might be wrong. But the book of nature itself will not contradict the book of the Bible. Likewise, although the Bible is our final authority, the Bible will never contradict true science, properly understood. And so we should not be afraid to be instructed by science.

A good example is how we learned that the world really is spherical and not flat with corners and foundations. Historically, it is true that some humans reading, and possibly even writing, the Bible believed the world was flat. But God, the ultimate author of Scripture, never did. Scientific advances merely suggested not that we should change what the Bible said, but that we should revise how some people had erroneously interpreted what the Bible said.

And so I hope you do not believe the earth is flat, or that the sun somehow rotates around the earth rather than vice versa. And how would you answer such people who say you should because that’s what the Bible says? I hope you would at least be able to say that this language is figurative poetic imagery, in some sense, rather than scientific. Perhaps more particularly, you could note that that Bible writers sometimes use the ‘language of appearance’ (phenomenological language), as we still do today when we talk of the sun rising and setting, because that’s how it appears to us. And the language of appearance does not need to be taken as making specific scientific claims.

Genesis and the gospel

Christians who prefer to read the opening chapters of Genesis literally have a genuine and important concern regarding the gospel. Since the doctrines of creation and the sin of Adam are foundational to the gospel, are we not selling out the literal truth of the gospel if we take Genesis 1-3 as being anything other than literal? If there is no literal Adam, can there be a literal sin and fall? And without the “trespass of one man”, does the free gift of righteousness “through the one man Jesus Christ” make any sense (see Rom 5:12-21)?

There are certainly some who read Genesis as ‘myth’ and who discount any historical reality to the stories that it tells. But that is by no means the position of many evangelicals who read early Genesis as ‘figurative history’. They would point out that figurative language is still very capable of referring to real, historical happenings (as Jesus’ parable of the tenants does). Some details may be symbolic and figurative rather than literal, but the narrative makes little sense if the creation and the fall of humanity weren’t real events in space and time. This is an issue requiring further discussion than is possible here. But it is important to note this point: that many of those who read Genesis 1 as ‘figurative history’ are totally committed to the reality and historicity of Adam and Eve and the Fall. Where they differ from the literal readers of Genesis is that they do not feel compelled to affirm that the creation events happened within a 144-hour period only a few thousand years ago.

A request for humility

I finish with a request for humility. Yes, we should still oppose atheism and scientific materialism that says ‘matter is all that there is’. The world gives us plenty of evidence that God is there, and above all, the Bible tells us so. So I oppose the arrogance of some neo-Darwinists who dogmatically claim that evolution is a proven fact and that any need for God is removed.

But I also conclude that Christians ought to be a little less dogmatic about their particular interpretations of the opening chapters of the Bible. I am not speaking of the clear, main points of early Genesis—like that it was God who created the world according to his plan by his word; and that he gave humanity a unique and special place; and that sin is rebellion primarily against him and his rule by his word. All Bible believers agree that these things are clear. But perhaps we could be less dogmatic about the particular interpretations of some other features of early Genesis, and a little more charitable to Bible-believing Christians who think differently, especially when they point to evidence within the text of Genesis itself.

Perhaps the best way to finish is with this quote from Old Testament expert, Gordon Wenham:

The Bible-versus-science debate has, most regrettably, sidetracked readers of Genesis 1. Instead of reading the chapter as a triumphant affirmation of the power and wisdom of God and the wonder of his creation, we have been too often bogged down in attempting to squeeze Scripture into the mold of the latest scientific hypothesis or distorting scientific facts to fit a particular interpretation. When allowed to speak for itself, Genesis 1 looks beyond such minutiae. Its proclamation of the God of grace and power who undergirds the world and gives it purpose justifies the scientific approach to nature. Genesis 1, by further affirming the unique status of man, his place in the divine program, and God’s care for him, gives a hope to mankind that atheistic philosophies can never legitimately supply.4


1. For example, http://www.answering-christianity.com/earth_flat.htm.

2. I am grateful to John Dickson for alerting me to these features.

3. See David G. Hagopian (ed.), The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation, Crux Press, Mission Viejo, Ca., 2001.

4. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary, Nelson Reference, Nashville, p. 40.

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