1. This introduction is intended to meet the needs of the student and pastor rather than to address scholars. Thus, it is highly selective and attempts to remain on the conceptual level rather than to provide detailed argumentation in the areas addressed. My intention is to make it practical for the reader who does not have the time or inclination to wade through sophisticated treatments but needs orientation to the book of Genesis. For those who want or need more, I would recommend the commentaries by Wenham, Hamilton, and Mathews.
3. Some would attribute this cohesiveness to a later editor rather than the author. In Genesis, even the most conservative position of Mosaic authorship sees Moses as involved in some amount of editorial work, so the line between author and editor becomes a very fine one, if discernible at all. I am therefore not concerned with trying to distinguish between author and editor but will use the term author to refer to the one who gave the book its final shape.
4. Pinnock, “Climbing Out of a Swamp,” 153.
5. R. A. Simkins, Creator and Creation (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), 35–36, based on F. R. Kluckhohn and F. L. Strodtbeck, Variations in Value Orientations (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1961; reprt. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1973), 81–89.
6. W. R. Catton and R. E. Dunlap, “A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology,” American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980): 15–47; cited in Simkins, Creator and Creation, 38.
7. Simkins, Creator and Creation, 41.
8. Ibid., 42.
9. J. Pilch, Introducing the Cultural Context of the Old Testament (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1991), 97.
10. Translations of these can be found most conveniently in S. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991).
11. Chart adapted from J. Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of the Old Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 80–81.
12. Ibid., 84.
13. G. Rendsburg, The Redaction of Genesis (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1986); D. Garrett, Rethinking Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991); D. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999).
14. Full presentation of this view can be found in J. Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994).
16. From another perspective, if the eleven are considered together, the narrative of Abraham is in the center. While this is not insignificant, the absence of correlation in any of the rest of the pieces (e.g., 1 to 11, 2 to 10) undermines the validity of this perspective as the organizing principle of the book.
17. This has led D. Garrett to conclude that the toledot sources in Genesis are also strictly genealogical, with the narrative material being provided in other ways; Rethinking Genesis, 91–106. See also the excellent presentation of the various suggested structures of Genesis and how they interpret the toledot sections in K. Mathews’ commentary, Genesis 1–11:26 (NAC; Nashville: Broadman, 1996), 26–35.
18. A colophon is a short inscription that gives information about the work to which it is connected, see Eccl. 12:9–14. It may not be a suitable designation for the toledot formula because a colophon usually is placed at the end.
19. Additional examples include the use of the name “Dan” in Gen. 14:14 (cf. Judg. 18:29) and mention of Israelite kings in a chronological context in Gen. 36:31.
20. P. Sampson, Six Modern Myths about Christianity and Western Civilization (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001), 27–46.
21. M. V. Fox, Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina, 1991), 148–49.
22. For a full discussion of primitive as well as ancient societies, see R. R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1977).
23. Studies on biblical narrative abound. Some of the basic works include P. Miscall, The Workings of Old Testament Narrative (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press, 1985); R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic, 1981); and S. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible (JSOTSup 70; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989).
24. Pangea is the name given by scientists (originally Alfred Wegener) to the single landmass that preceded the breaking and drifting apart of the continents.
25. Disregarding the spurious interpretation suggested by some of Gen. 10:25.
26. For another example that is clearer still, see the discussion about the use of “heart” on p. 88.
27. For instance, K. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1966), 35–78.
28. J. Bimson, “Archaeological Data and the Dating of the Patriarchs,” in Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives, ed. A. R. Millard and D. J. Wiseman (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 53–89.
29. B. Beitzel, Moody Atlas of Bible Lands (Chicago: Moody, 1985), 85.
30. For instance, in T. E. McComiskey, The Covenants of Promise (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985).
31. Israel’s election should be seen as a revelatory election (i.e., elect to be God’s instrument of revelation), not a soteriological election (i.e., elect to be saved).
32. Notice that this statement follows right on the heels of the election statement in Ex. 6:6–7; see also Deut. 4:32–40; Ezek. 20. All of this is developed in detail in my book Covenant.
33. For example, W. C. Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978).
34. Ishmael, 21:18; Rebekah, 24:60; Jacob (as Esau), 27:27–29; Esau, 27:39–40; Jacob, 28:13–15; Jacob, 35:11–12; Joseph, 48:15–16; Jacob’s sons, 49.
35. G. K. Chesterton, Heretics/Orthodoxy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 157 (from Orthodoxy).
1. J. Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 1996), 38. Detailed discussion may be found in Sailhamer’s “Genesis,” a contribution to the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. F. E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 2:20–23, and a summary by B. Arnold in the article on reʾšit in NIDOTTE, 3:1025–26.
2. Distinguishing syntactical features in Gen. 1:1 include the use of the preposition without the definite article; the sequence of a verbal form following reʾšit rather than a nominal form; and the masoretic use of a disjunctive accent to separate this first word from what follows. For discussion of these technical points, see the commentaries, especially G. J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15 (WBC; Dallas: Word, 1987), and V. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990).
3. The text is found on Papyrus Leiden I:350, dating to the time of Rameses II in the 13th century. It is translated in COS, 1:24–25.
4. S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithaca, N.Y,: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973), 166–68. Morenz discusses the phrase across its wide usage in Egyptian literature.
5. Compare the use of Greek arche (used in the LXX of Gen. 1:1) in contexts such as Mark 1:1 and John 1:1.
6. Genesis Unbound, 40.
7. This would result in this sense: First God created heaven and earth, resulting in a formless and void situation; this was then rectified by creating light, etc., over a seven-day period.
8. This would result in a summary/title for the chapter: God created heaven and earth. Now let me explain how he went about it. The earth was formless, etc., then God created light.
9. See especially Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 11–13; Hamilton, Genesis 1–17, 103–8; K. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 136–44; Sailhamer. “Genesis,” 21–23; A. P. Ross, Creation and Blessing (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 718–23; C. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, trans. J. J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 93–98.
10. Typical is the change of the verb from a finite verb to an infinitive.
12. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 96–97.
13. This inclusio was first pointed out to me by one of my students, Marco Castillo.
14. We may be tempted to call it an exclusively divine activity, but forty-eight occurrences are too few to be confident about that inference by extrapolation.
15. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 128.
16. The whole discussion of the doctrine of creation out of nothing assumes that the text is addressing manufacture of matter. In fact, the Old Testament is content to use baraʾ even when materials are known to have been used (Gen. 5:2; people were not formed out of nothing).
17. With most interpreters, I agree that “heaven and earth” is a merism—together they represent the entirety of the universe or cosmos. I have chosen to employ the second term since it seems to me a less scientific designation.
18. Fixing destinies was the means of regulating roles and functions.
19. W. G. Lambert, “Ninurta Mythology in the Babylonian Epic of Creation,” in K. Hecker and W. Sommerfeld (eds), Keilschriftliche Literaturen: Ausgewälte Vorträge der XXXII. Rencontre assyriologique internationale (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 6; Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1986), 55–60.
20. By now it has been long recognized and widely accepted that the Hebrew text will not accommodate the idea that there was a separate creation in v. 1 that was destroyed and that a new creation is initiated in v. 2. This Gap Theory (or Ruin and Reconstruction Theory) would require the translation “the earth became formless and void.” If the author had intended this, he would have put the verb first in the sentence and attached a preposition to the word “formless.”
21. J. Barr, “Was Everything That God Created Really Good?” in God in the Fray, ed. T. Linafelt and T. K. Beal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 62.
22. Also true of the Bible canonically; notice the reversals in the later chapters of Revelation: no sea (21:1), no night (22:5), no death (21:4).
23. A hendiadys is the use of two independent words connected by “and” to express a single concept (e.g., “nice and warm” means “nicely warm” [from Webster’s dictionary]).
24. D. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2 (JSOTSup 83; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 31.
25. A. Ross clearly would agree: “The following narrative shows how God brought this world from its primitive condition of desolation and waste to its fullness and order” (Creation and Blessing, 106).
26. For discussion, see R. J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (CBQMS 26; Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univ. Press of America, 1994), 101–4.
27. Bohu occurs only a couple of other times and always with tohu (Isa. 34:11; Jer. 4:23).
28. C. Hyers, The Meaning of Creation (Atlanta, John Knox, 1984), 67.
29. The debate is summarized in Hamilton, Genesis 1–17, 111–14; Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 16–17.
30. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 106.
31. Darkness // wind-spirit; darkness is over the surface (ʿal pene) of the watery deep (tehom), and the wind-spirit is over the surface (ʿal pene) of the waters.
32. This is the basis on which evangelical interpreters typically reject “mighty wind”; see Sailhamer (“Genesis”), Mathews (Genesis 1–11:26), Ross (Creation and Blessing), Hamilton (Genesis 1–17), and Wenham (Genesis 1–15).
33. Enuma Elish, 1.105–10.
34. In the Exodus narrative the wind is primarily associated with the breath of God. The connection of ruaḥ as the breath of God in creation can be made most easily through Ps. 33:6. For fuller discussion, see W. Hildebrandt, An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995), 41–42.
35. See Clifford, Creation Accounts, 103–4, and the discussion he references in E. Hornung, Conceptions of God (London: Routledge, 1983), 172–84.
36. It is intriguing, however, that there is no clear reference to the Holy Spirit having the role of Creator in the Old or New Testaments. See S. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), 18–21. L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1939), 129, offers the traditional affirmation that each of the members of the Godhead were explicit participants in creation, though he has no New Testament references to offer in support of the Holy Spirit’s role.
37. Hamilton, Genesis 1–17, 114.
38. M. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983–1985), 866.
39. So, for instance, Peter sees the action of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel concerning the Spirit of the Lord being poured out (Acts 2:16–17). This does not mean that Joel’s audience understood the ruaḥ of the Lord (“my Spirit”) as a reference to the third person of the Trinity, but it does mean that in the case of Joel 2:28, the Holy Spirit was behind the activity attributed to the spirit of the Lord.
40. This same conclusion is reached by J. I. Packer, Keep in Step With the Spirit (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1984), 59; but he appropriately qualified this conclusion by insisting that this does not suggest God was only unipersonal during the Old Testament. The question is the nature of revelation, not the mode of God’s being. Likewise we are not suggesting that the Holy Spirit is or ever was an “it” not a “he”—we are simply trying to understand the Hebrew concept of the ruaḥ of God. For a concise treatment of this phrase from a biblical-theology perspective, see W. Dyrness, Themes in Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1979), 201–9.
41. This form of the verb (Piel) occurs in only one other passage (Deut. 32:11). There it refers to the behavior of a mother bird with regard to her young. It is parallel to stirring up its nest.
43. Tale of Aqhat 4:20–21 (see ANET, 152). Ugaritic is more likely to be helpful than the Syriac in that both the language and the literatures are closer in time to the biblical narrative. Since the root is also used to describe bird behavior in Ugaritic, there is a good chance that Ugaritic usage and Hebrew usage had not developed in disparate ways. Nevertheless, even the Ugaritic uses are few and not as clear as would be desired to identify the nuance precisely.
44. W. Vogels, “The Cultic and Civil Calendars of the Fourth Day of Creation (Gen 1,14b)” SJOT 11 (1997): 178–79, comes to similar conclusions, though he draws different conclusions from it.
,” 46. A more thorough discussion of these issues is presented in my introductory article, “Principles for Productive Word Study,” NIDOTTE, 1:161–71.
48. Bibliographic note: In my experience the most helpful books for gaining an understanding of the integration of the ancient Near East, the Bible, and science are: H. J. Van Till, The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us About the Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986); Simkins, Creator and Creation; Hyers, Meaning of Creation; Clifford, Creation Accounts; and Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil. Though I would find points of disagreement with each, they are filled with valuable insights.
49. In the hermeneutics literature, this is referred to as the “sense of communicative action”; see K. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 312.
50. Simkins, Creator and Creation, 31.
51. H. Van Till, in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, ed. J. P. Moreland and J. M. Reynolds (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 166.
52. See the excellent discussion of O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World (New York: Seabury, 1978 [reprinted by Eisenbrauns, 1996]), 16–60.
53. J. P. Allen, Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation (Yale Egyptological Studies 2; New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1988), 56.
54. Papyrus Insinger, a copy of a composition judged by Lichtheim to date to the Ptolemaic period (AEL, 3:184).
56. L. Bronner, Biblical Personalities and Archaeology (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), 85; see also Clifford, Creation Accounts, 7.
57. Memphite Theology, line 55.
58. J. M. Plumley, “The Cosmology of Ancient Egypt,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. C. Blacker and M. Loewe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), 38.
59. For discussion and examples, see P. Seely, “The Geographical Meaning of ‘Earth’ and ‘Seas’ in Genesis 1:10,” WTJ 59 (1997): 231–55; see also Keel, Symbolism, 28–60.
60. An intriguing and detailed discussion of this can be found in P. Seely, Inerrant Wisdom (Portland, Ore.: Evangelical Reform, 1989), 1–21. Typical assertions that the text supports, for instance, a spherical earth in Isa. 40:22 cannot be sustained. The term there only indicates a disk, not a sphere.
61. W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 4–11.
62. As such, it was left in the body in the mummification process.
63. I am indebted to H. C. Brichto for the analogy (Names of God [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998], 56).
64. For the context of this contention see C. Colson and N. Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1999), 375.
65. D. Ratzsch, The Battle of Beginnings (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), 128.
66. For elaboration of this concept see Van Till, The Fourth Day, 59–61.
67. N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1985), 22–23.
68. B. Anderson, Creation Versus Chaos (New York: Association, 1967), 14.
69. Hyers, Meaning of Creation, 13.
70. Pinnock, “Climbing Out of a Swamp,” 155.
71. Brichto, Names of God, 397.
72. I use Evolutionism to refer to the naturalistic philosophy of origins, as opposed to evolution, which refers to a science of random change over time. For a clear differentiation of four uses of the term evolution, see Moreland and Reynolds, Three Views on Creation and Evolution, 24–26.
73. M. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 177–208.
74. Ibid., 181. On p. 178 Noll defines Baconian science as the belief that “strict induction from verified individual facts to more general laws offered the best way to understand the data of any subject.”
75. R. Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil (Dallas: Word, 1996), 52.
76. See the very helpful discussion by H. Van Till in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, 166–78.
77. Hyers, Meaning of Creation, 6.
78. S. J. Gould, “Dorothy, It’s Really Oz,” Time (Aug. 23, 1999), 59.
79. For their technical advice and expertise contributed for the development of this illustration, I am grateful to Phil Murchie and Terry Huttenlock.
80. It shows the difference between function and structure. There is no manufacturing of parts; there is no writing of software; there is no discussion of how they got in the packages or came to be on the workbench. In the same way the creation account in Genesis focuses on function and organization rather than on physical structures. It shows that the activities of the seven days focus on assembling and installing. It treats the seven days as literal but, by the nature of the activities, indicates that there are limits as to what takes place in those seven days. One cannot determine the age of the chip or the monitor or how long ago the software was written. It shows the relationship between functions (hardware, days 1–3) and functionaries (software, days 4–6), and even matches up a little between 1–4, 2–5, 3–6.
81. See Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 186–200.
82. Most would call this empiricism, and I have no quarrels with that term. I have adopted atheistic premise so as to bring the issues into sharper relief. Brichto, Names of God, 397, calls it “scientism” and insists that it is not prerequisite for or a necessary outcome of the scientific spirit or scientific method. In the Bible and science literature it is referred to as “methodological naturalism.” For one of the best discussions, see the introductory chapter of Moreland and Reynolds, Three Views on Creation and Evolution, 7–37.
83. See discussion of R. Bube in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, 259–61.
84. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 192–93. For an excellent example of this approach, see H. Morris’s commentary on Genesis, The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976).
85. So, for instance, Morris unhesitatingly declares “the firmament referred to in this particular passage is obviously the atmosphere,” which he later identifies as “thin, stretched-out space” (Genesis Record, 58–59). For a thorough discussion of this approach with ample examples, see P. Seely, “The First Four Days of Genesis in Concordist Theory and in Biblical Context,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 49.2 (June, 1997): 85–95.
86. P. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1991).
87. H. Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1993).
88. M. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: Free Press, 1996).
89. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 199.
90. D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 201.
91. R. H. Bube, The Human Quest (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1971), 26.
92. Ibid., 26–27.
93. See Carson, The Gagging of God, 200–201. Even the eighteenth-century Immanuel Kant had concluded that everything in and about the universe could be accounted for by laws of mechanics; see the discussion of Ross, Creator and Cosmos, 43–45. This concept has not only been accepted by a wide range of philosophers and theologians; it is represented in the popular views of physicists such as Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), 12–13.
94. Bube, The Human Quest, 27–28.
95. Ibid., 28. For a theologian’s comments along the same line, see V. Poythress’s response in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, 150–51.
96. Van Till, The Fourth Day, 63.
97. Ibid., 65.
98. Gould, “Dorothy, It’s Really Oz,” 59.
99. For a brief refutation of this view, see Moreland and Reynolds, Three Views on Creation and Evolution, 22–23.
100. For a summary of the various models by which science is seen in relation to theology, see ibid., 9–11.
101. Van Till, The Fourth Day, 66.
102. Ibid., 84.
103. Ross, Creator and Cosmos, 70.
104. R. Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective” in The Openness of God, C. Pinnock et al. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994), 16.
105. Ibid., 36.
106. Carson, The Gagging of God, 230.
107. As summarized by Ross, Creator and Cosmos, 67.
108. Ibid., 75.
109. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, viii.
110. Ibid., 87.
111. Ibid., 155–56.
1. H. Ross, Genesis One: A Scientific Perspective (Sierra Madre, Calif.: Wiseman Productions, 1983), 7.
2. P. Seely, “The First Four Days of Genesis in Concordist Theory and in Biblical Context,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 49 (1997): 88. Seely’s comprehensive and persuasive demonstration of this point can be found in his “The Firmament and the Water Above,” WTJ 53 (1991): 227–40 (esp. 234–37) and 54 (1992): 31–46. See also D. Tsumura’s brief treatment in NIDOTTE, “
,” 3:1198.
3. Seely, “The First Four Days of Genesis,” 89.
4. L. I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1970), 46–47.
5. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 266.
6. Ibid., 170.
7. Ibid.,146–47.
8. Ibid., 114–15.
9. Gen. 1:20 and 1:17 respectively. Notice that birds fly across the surface of the raqiaʿ, suggesting it has a surface, while the stars are set in the raqiaʿ.
10. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World, 120–24.
11. As argued, for instance, by J. Dillow, The Waters Above (Chicago: Moody, 1965). Since the waters above are above the raqiaʿ and since, according to vv. 14–17, the heavenly bodies are in the raqiaʿ, such a canopy would have to be farther away than the sun to fit the qualifications. See Seely, “The Firmament and the Water Above,” 54:43.
12. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 117–18. It is also worth noting that in one of the Babylonian god lists, the first deity to exist was Duri (“Ever and Ever”), referring to time. See W. G. Lambert, “The Cosmology of Sumer and Babylon,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. C. Blacker and M. Loewe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), 53.
13. T. Longman III and D. Reid, God Is a Warrior (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).
14. M. de la Cal et al., “Up From the Apes,” Time (Aug. 23, 1999), 58.
15. Ibid.
16. I would like to acknowledge my colleague Rosalie deRosset for the lead to Shelley’s novel and the ideas in this paragraph.
17. Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, 113.
18. N. M. de S. Cameron, Discernment 6.3 (Newsletter of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics: Wheaton, Ill.: Wheaton College, 1999), 9.
19. Ibid.
20. B. R. Reichenbach and V. Elving Anderson, On Behalf of God: A Christian Ethic for Biology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 219.
21. J. B. Nelson and J. Smith Rohricht, Human Medicine: Ethical Perspectives on Today’s Medical Issues (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 141.
22. Reichenbach and Anderson, On Behalf of God, 220.
23. De S. Cameron, Discernment 6.3, 9–11.
24. Hyers, Meaning of Creation, 158–59.
1. This is indicated by the repetition of the preposition before each element.
,” 3. Vogels, “Cultic and Civil Calendars,” 163–66.
4. Clifford, Creation Accounts, 67; Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, 147.
6. Vogels, “Cultic and Civil Calendars,” 175.
7. Most of my treatment has been aided by the research of Weston Fields, Unformed and Unfilled (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1976), 53–74, though his study is aimed in a different direction, asking different questions and arriving at different conclusions.
8. Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound, 132–33.
9. The purely material existence is not addressed in the context.
10. Translation of the text can be found in ANET, 4–6; see discussion in J. D. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 56–64. This is not a consistent element in Egyptian thinking for in other creation texts, creation proceeds through the bodily fluids of the god (saliva, semen, or tears).
11. Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 165.
12. A. Hayward, Creation and Evolution (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1995), 167–72.
13. See also Isa. 27:1; 51:9.
14. The potential of the animal world to function in that capacity can be seen in the Bible (e.g., the plagues, or Ezek. 5:17) and in the ancient Near East (e.g., as early as the Gilgamesh Epic in Mesopotamia, the god Ea reprimanded Enlil for not sending lions to ravage the people rather than using something as dramatic as a flood). The gods used wild beasts along with disease, drought, and famine to reduce the human population.
16. See comments on “Spirit of God” in 1:2.
17. The clearest example is found in 1 Kings 22:19–22. Other references include Isa. 14:13, “mount of assembly,” and Job 1, where the sons of God, usually members of the council assemble before God.
18. E. Theodore Mullen, The Assembly of the Gods (Atlanta: Scholars, 1980); see also his article, “Divine Assembly,” in ABD, 2:214–17.
19. Enuma Elish, 1.15–16.
20. The Instruction of Merikare, ca. 2050 B.C., translation by M. Lichtheim, AEL, 1:106.
21. Those attributes are not conscience and self-awareness, but love, faithfulness, justice, wisdom, etc.
22. See 2 Sam. 8:11; 2 Chron. 28:10; Jer. 34:16; Mic. 7:19.
23. This can be expressed by the paraphrase “subdue it [with the result that you will] rule over the fish, etc.”
24. See Lev. 25:43; 1 Kings 4:24; Ps. 72:8; 110:2; Ezek. 34:4.
25. It is important to notice that the animal groups specified in 1:26–28 do not include the wild, predatory animals.
26. Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound, 134.
27. Cf., e.g., tablet 2, col. 1, lines 1–19. For discussion of the issue, see A. D. Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Concept of Overpopulation and Its Solution As Reflected in the Mythology,” Or 41 (1972): 160–77.
28. Brichto, Names of God, 60–61.
29. A. M. Wolters, Creation Regained (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 36.
30. E. Hemingway, in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (written in 1933); see The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigid Edition (New York: Scribner, 1987), 288–91 (quote on p. 291).
31. These last few sentences were part of an introduction to a sermon preached by Stuart Briscoe at Moody Church during Founder’s Week, 1999.
32. Colson and Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live? 427–28.
33. G. K. Chesterton, The Commonweal 19.8 (1933): 203.
34. T. Campolo, How to Rescue the Earth Without Worshiping Nature (Nashville: Nelson, 1992), 9–10.
35. I. Bradley, God Is Green (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 12. It should be noted that Bradley does not advocate either this interpretation of Genesis or the careless attitude toward the environment that it is used to support.
36. R. B. Chisholm Jr., From Exegesis to Exposition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 46.
37. T. S. Derr, “The Challenge of Biocentrism,” in Creation at Risk? ed. M. Cromartie (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 89.
38. For an excellent development of the stewardship model, see L. Wilkinson, Earthkeeping (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), esp. 224–38.
39. Campolo, How to Rescue the Earth, 127.
40. T. Nash, Loving Nature (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), 93–161.
41. Derr, “The Challenge of Biocentrism,” 91–97.
42. Nash, Loving Nature, 106–7.
43. Campolo, How to Rescue the Earth, 199.
44. Reichenbach and Anderson, On Behalf of God, 308–9.
45. B. Greene, “Why Is Patience No Longer a Virtue?” Chicago Tribune (Sept 5, 1999), I:2.
1. I am grateful to my colleague, Jon Laansma, for much of the stimulation that helped me to develop this section, this both from our discussions as well as from his careful and comprehensive book, I Will Give You Rest (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1997).
2. G. Robinson, “The Origin and Development of the Old Testament Sabbath” (Ph.D. diss., Hamburg, 1975), 177.
3. Brichto, Names of God, 397.
4. Vogels, “Cultic and Civil Calendars,” 176.
6. Note that the Genesis context does not enter into discussion about human observance of the Sabbath—it only addresses it with regard to God.
7. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 37.
8. The land is given to Israel for their rest in the theology of the historical narratives; see the discussion in Laansma, I Will Give You Rest, 18–38.
9. Levenson, “The Temple and the World,” 275–98. See also his treatment in Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988), 90–99.
10. M. Fishbane, Text and Texture (New York: Schocken, 1979), 12, The function of Genesis 1 and Exodus 40 as an inclusio around Genesis and Exodus show the text’s self-awareness of the connection between cosmos and sanctuary. I am grateful to my colleague Andrew Schmutzer for bringing Fishbane’s comments to my attention.
11. Pointed out by Levenson, “The Temple and the World,” 289.
12. Ibid., 288.
13. M. Weinfeld, “Sabbath, Temple and the Enthronement of the Lord—The Problem of the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:1–2:3,” in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, ed. A. Caquot and M. Delcor (AOAT 212; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981), 501–12. See discussion of this and other accounts of temple building connections with rest in V. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House (JSOTSup 115; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), Appendix 5, 330–31. For text see J. Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1977), 6.3.18–19, p. 78.
14. Enuma Elish, 1.35–40; trans. by Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 234.
15. Enuma Elish, 6.51–58; trans. by B. Foster, From Distant Days (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1995), 40.
16. Extensive treatment in Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 100–111.
17. J. Lundquist, “What Is a Temple? A Preliminary Typology,” in The Quest for the Kingdom of God, ed. H. B. Huffmon, F. A. Spina, and A. R. W. Green (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 208. See also D. Callender Jr., Adam in Myth and History (HSS 48; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 39–54.
18. Cyl. B, 14.21–23; T. Jacobsen, The Harps That Once . . .: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1987), 438.
19. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 44; Cyl. B, 17.19; Jacobsen, The Harps That Once, 440.
20. The functionaries are described in Cyl. B from the end of col 6 through col 12; Jacobsen, The Harps That Once, 430–36.
21. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 40 n.5.
22. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 78–99.
23. Robinson, “The Origin and Development of the Old Testament Sabbath,” 92–95, notes the correlation between the Sabbath and coronations in Israel.
24. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 298.
25. Laansma, I Will Give You Rest, 68. So Lev. 23:3 calls for sacred assembly; Num. 28:9–10 directs the offering of sacrifices (see also Ezek. 46:4–5).
26. It is intriguing that at the dedication recorded in Ezra 3, an important issue is also the operation of the evening and morning sacrifices. Is this a possible connection to the refrain about evening and morning in the creation narrative?
27. S. Parker, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Atlanta: Scholars, 1997), 6.16–38 (pp. 133–34).
28. M. Cohen, Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1993), 405.
29. Translated by Levenson, “The Temple and the World,” 287, from M. Weinfeld’s Hebrew article.
30. Brichto, Names of God, 69.
31. D. Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 183.
32. L. Anderson, Dying for Change (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1990), 81–108.
33. G. Barna, The Second Coming of the Church (Nashville: Word, 1998), 18.
34. The switch from the seventh day to the first day is justifiable as we seek to include in our gratitude the resurrection of Christ, which provides us salvation. This has some similarity to how Israel used the Sabbath to recall the great deliverance from Egypt (Deut. 5:15).
35. C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, 1964), 4.
1. M. Grisanti, “
,” NIDOTTE, 3:1217–19; D. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2 (JSOTSup 83; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 87–89.
2. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters, 88.
3. For methodological discussion, see Walton, “Principles for Productive Word Study,” 1:161–71.
4. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters, 110–16.
5. Ibid., 111–12.
6. Clifford, Creation Accounts, 28.
7. Atrahasis Epic 1.223–234.
9. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament, 70.
11. Gen. 7:22, though admittedly this is not the exact same phrase.
12. If there is a difference, it is in the possibility that God breathes the breath of life into Adam and that Adam in turn passes it on to his offspring.
13. K. Gleason, “Gardens in Preclassical Times,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, ed. E. Meyers (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 2:383. For an excellent summary of the use of gardens including many photographs of the relevant data, see L. Stager, “Jerusalem As Eden,” BAR 26.3 (2000): 36–47.
14. Gleason, “Gardens in Preclassical Times,” 2:383. All of these elements are also discussed by I. Cornelius, “
,” NIDOTTE, 1:875–78.
15. A. R. Millard, “The Etymology of Eden,” VT 34 (1984): 103–6; see full discussion in Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters, 123–37.
16. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters, 137.
17. Ibid., 148–53.
18. Ibid., 153. Compare also the Hittite version of the Canaanite myth Elkunirsa and Ashertu where Elkunirsa (the Hittite spelling of El) is found dwelling at the headwaters of the Euphrates (H. Hoffner, Hittite Myths, ed. G. M. Beckman [SBLWAW 2; Atlanta: Scholars, 1991], 69).
20. The Hebrew term that NIV translates “headstreams” is simply the word roʾšim (lit., “heads”). The Akkadian cognate is used to describe the sources of the rivers.
22. Concepts like the tropic of Capricorn are parts of our cosmic geography. It is real but not in the same topographical category as the Thames.
23. For photographs, see Stager, “Jerusalem as Eden,” 38, 41.
24. J. Sauer, “The River Runs Dry,” BAR 22.4 (1996): 52–57, 64.
25. Today the dried river bed is called Wadi al-Batin. The ancient river has been dubbed the Kuwait River.
26. Sauer, “The River Runs Dry,” 57. It was rediscovered in 1932 and produces five tons of gold each year.
27. That is, the waters of chaos that they believed surrounded the land. D. Neiman, “Gihon and Pishon: Mythological Antecedents of the Two Enigmatic Rivers of Eden,” in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1973), 321–28.
” 29. Jouon § 49d, though this requires ignoring the mappiq in the sufformative. Furthermore, this longer form is used primarily with stative verbs. See discussion in U. Cassuto, From Adam to Noah, trans. I Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961), 122; R. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), 44.
30. This direction is also chosen by Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 67, and Sailhamer, “Genesis,” 45. Callender, Adam in Myth and History, 59–65, favors the royal role based on the imagery in Mesopotamia of the king as gardener, but it must be recalled that the king also had priestly functions.
31. J. M. Plumley, “The Cosmology of Ancient Egypt,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. C. Blacker and M. Loewe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), 36.
32. For an understanding of Israelite rituals in this light, see F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual (JSOTSup 91; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 28–29.
33. E. Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, 183.
34. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 68.
35. See summary in Erickson, Christian Theology, 614.
36. B. F. Batto, Slaying the Dragon (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 53–54.
37. Many examples could be given in English; consider, e.g., “special effects” or “party whip.” For elements built into one word, consider the word “paralegal.”
38. As implied by R. Ortlund’s treatment in “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1–3,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. J. Piper and W. Grudem (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991), 102.
39. In English we do this more with adverbs than with prepositions, such as “nevertheless” and “furthermore.” We use paired prepositions more than compound prepositions, e.g., “over against,” though we do use compounds such as “into.”
40. IBHS §11.2.9a–b.
41. Also in Prov. 8:6, though there it only comes into the text through emendation. A substantive is any word that can serve as subject of a verb.
42. A. Spencer’s attempt to connect the preposition (neged) to a putative noun form (nagid = “leader”) is an example of the abuse of lexical semantics that occurs when diachronic approaches are not distinguished from synchronic (Beyond the Curse: Women Called to Ministry [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985], 24–26). It is interesting that Ortlund attempts to use “helper” to prove that man is the leader, and Spencer uses kenegdo to try to prove that woman is the leader.
44. B. F. Batto, “Paradise Reexamined,” in The Biblical Canon in Comparative Perspective: Scripture in Context IV, ed. K. L. Younger, W. W. Hallo, and B. F. Batto (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1991), 53.
45. The preposition le is never used with bnh to indicate “building into,” though traditional translations take it as the Lord building the rib into a woman.
46. See also the Niphal occurrences in contexts such as Gen. 30:3, where the wife is built up.
47. This suggests that the lamed preposition is syntactically related to the verb lqḅ (“to take”) rather than to the verb lqḥ and therefore explains God’s purposes for taking it.
48. One is tempted to wax eloquent about his “better half,” but it will suffice to cite the eminently quotable Rabbi Brichto, “Every marriage is a union; not a union of two strangers, but rather a reunion, a reconstitution, so to speak, of the primordial unity” (Names of God, 79).
49. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters, 91; Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 43–46. For the most extensive discussion see G. Castellino, “The Origins of Civilization According to Biblical and Cuneiform Texts,” in “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11, 75–95.
50. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters, 91.
51. Seen as early as the Sumerian myth Enki and Ninmah (Clifford, Creation Accounts, 39–41), this motif is more familiar from the larger Akkadian Atrahasis Epic.
52. The history of scholarship shows that this literary question is of extreme interest, but data are insufficient to draw firm conclusions apart from one’s presuppositions.
53. Jacobsen, The Harps That Once, 182.
54. Batto, “Paradise Reexamined,” 33–66.
55. Ibid., 45–46.
56. G. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), 19.
57. Neiman, “Gihon and Pishon,” 324.
58. Lundquist, “What Is a Temple?” 208. See also Callender, Adam in Myth and History, 39–54, who cites a bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian text that refers to the temple in Eridu with these words: “In its midst are Shamash and Tammuz in between the mouths of the two rivers.”
60. Again notice the functional rather than structural approach—planting the garden would have involved using seeds or saplings, or even full-grown shrubs and trees. Making things is not at issue here.
61. If one still has trouble with the thought that the order of ch. 2 contradicts the order of ch. 1, Brichto’s suggestion, Names of God, 76, may help: “Man as a species is only viable as both male and female. The creation of man as a ‘him’ in 1:27, and then immediately thereafter as a ‘them,’ male and female, may be viewed as the synoptic version of which this section in Chapter 2 is the resumptive expansion. Thus it turns out that in both chapters even the chronological order is the same: man was not truly created until after the production of the birds and beasts.”
62. M. Erickson refers to this as “conditional immortality” in Christian Theology, 613.
63. Old Testament wisdom literature, especially Ecclesiastes, brings this issue into sharp relief.
64. A news story in April 1999 reported that foods such as blueberries, strawberries, spinach, and kale produce a high ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity) value, which has been successful in slowing or even reversing aging in laboratory rats.
65. Wilkinson, Earthkeeping, 209.
66. “If Eden is seen then as an ideal sanctuary, then perhaps Adam should be described as an archetypal Levite” (Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” 21).
67. Clifford, Creation Accounts, 61.
68. See the discussion in Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 219–20.
69. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 45–46, though he points out that in the Gudea cylinders, it is unclear what role Gudea has in the sacred marriage ceremony.
70. Brichto, Names of God, 78–79.
71. Colson and Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live? 392.
72. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 42.
73. Ibid., 10.
74. L. Dorsett, A Passion for Souls (Chicago: Moody, 1997), 141.
75. Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God, Conversation 1, August 3, 1666.
76. J. White and K. Blue, Healing the Wounded (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1985), 21.
77. Ibid., 70, citing a Time article from March 26, 1984.
78. Ibid., 23–24.
79. Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God, Conversation 2.
80. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 90.
81. D. McCullough, The Trivialization of God (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1995), 27–28.
82. J. Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 173.
83. Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God, Letter 1.
84. C. S. Lewis, “Prayer,” in Poems (London: G. Bles, 1964), 122–23.
85. C. Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 93.
1. N. Sarna, Genesis (JPSTC; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 24. For a brief summary of some of the supporting archaeological finds, see J. Scullion, Genesis (Collegeville, Minn.: Michael Glazier, 1992), 47; for more detail see K. R. Joines, Serpent Symbolism in the Old Testament (Haddonfield, N.J.: Haddonfield House, 1974), 19–29.
2. T. Jacobsen, “Mesopotamian Gods and Pantheons,” in Toward the Image of Tammuz, ed. W. Moran (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970), 24. See also Joines, Serpent Symbolism, 114–19.
3. I thank my colleague Andrew Schmutzer for pointing this out to me. Cassuto, From Adam to Noah, 145–46, also addresses this detail in similar terms.
5. H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 344 note c.
6. Mathews admits the likelihood of this as well, Genesis 1:11–26, 238.
7. So, for instance, demons that are referred to in the Bible include groups such as the šedim and the śeʿirim. Named demons include Lilith (Isa. 34:14) and probably Azazel (Lev. 16); see J. Walton, V. Matthews, and M. Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 2000), loc. cit.
8. For an excellent semantic analysis with similar results, see M. Weiss, The Story of Job’s Beginning (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983), 35–41.
9. Pseudepigraphic literature refers to many Satans, e.g., the list of five Satans in 1 Enoch 69:4–12 (first c. B.C. at the earliest). See D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), 254–55.
10. Cf. Wenham, “Early Jewish and Christian commentators identified the snake with Satan or the devil, but since there is no other trace of a personal devil in early parts of the OT, modern writers doubt whether this is the view of our narrator,” Genesis 1–15, 72.
11. Translation from J. E. Goodspeed.
12. N. Forsyth, The Old Enemy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), 224. Perhaps the earliest reference to Satan as the tempter (through the serpent) is the Apocalypse of Moses 16–19 (properly titled The Life of Adam and Eve), contemporary to the New Testament. This text also links Isaiah 14 to Satan’s fall (see Forsyth, ibid., 232–38). In the writings of the church fathers, one of the earliest to associate the serpent with Satan was Justin, First Apology 28.1 (ibid., 351).
13. Sarna, Genesis, 24.
14. Cf. J. Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985).
15. E. J. Young, Genesis 3 (London: Banner of Truth, 1966), 22.
16. Ibid., 22–23.
17. Received in an email from my colleague Jon Laansma.
18. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 246–47.
19. Ibid., 246.
20. Gilgamesh Epic, 1.202.
21. Ibid., 1.214.
22. The idea that the fruit gave them a sense of morality could be rejected on the logic that God could not have expected them to obey his command or to understand the nature of their decision if they had had no sense of morality.
23. Simkins, Creator and Creation, 184.
24. If the tree of life could be associated with antioxidants, the tree of knowledge of good and evil could be associated with hormones.
25. Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 98.
26. Simkins, Creator and Creation, 185.
27. See Locke’s “Essay Concerning the Principles of Human Understanding” and “Second Treatise on Government.”
28. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: G. Bles, 1960), 76.
29. This synopsis is by Tremper Longman. His use of this example in his commentary introduced me to the film and gave me the idea of using it here (T. Longman, Daniel [NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999], 302–3).
30. D. N. Fewell and D. M. Gunn, “Shifting the Blame: God in the Garden,” in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies, ed. T. K. Beal and D. M. Gunn (London: Routledge, 1997), 25, summarizing the work of Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987).
31. For a documented summary of this reading, see P. Jones, Spirit Wars (Mukilteo, Calif.: WinePress, and Escondido, Calif.: Main Entry, 1999), 126–30.
32. C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 183.
33. Jones, Spirit Wars, 256.
34. Colson and Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live? xi.
1. Written in 1912 by C. Austin Miles.
2. See defense and discussion in J. Niehaus, God at Sinai (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 155–59.
3. J. Collins, “A Syntactical Note (Genesis 3:15): Is the Woman’s Seed Singular or Plural?” TynBul 48 (1997): 139–48, collects a database to demonstrate that when zeraʿ (“seed”) refers to posterity it invariably takes plural pronouns. Unfortunately, (1) most of his examples are in situations where the text is speaking of several people’s posterities, thus demanding a plural (cf. Gen. 9:9; this is similar to English where the collective “people” can be pluralized when referring to several people groups), and (2) there are examples in which singular pronouns are used even though “seed” means posterity (Gen. 22:17; 24:60, discounting as special pleading T. D. Alexander’s attempt to argue that they do not refer to posterity, TynBul 48 [1997], 363–67).
4. This has not always been the case. Even the venerable lexicon BDB attempted to draw the second one from the root šʾp. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 259–60, attempts to hold on to both. Hamilton has the best discussion (Genesis 1–17, 197–98). The LXX translated them as the same, while the Vulgate differentiated them.
5. For discussion of extended complex merism, see H. C. Brichto, Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992), 42.
7. Brichto, Names of God, 90.
8. Cf. J. Scharbert, “
,” TDOT, 1:409. Consider Deut. 28:15–28. In vv. 16–19 the curses designate those things that will not enjoy the Lord’s blessing and favor. Then vv. 20–28 speak of negative actions of the Lord. These are different things.
9. For comments on Adam’s naming of Eve (v. 20), see Bridging Contexts section.
10. J. Pilch, Introducing the Cultural Context of the Old Testament (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1991), 97.
11. Cited in Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 7.
12. Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 112.
13. Robert Frost’s Poems (New York: Washington Square, 1971), 227.
15. For an excellent survey of the history of interpretation from the LXX translation through New Testament, rabbinic, and patristic literature into modern times, see ibid., 299–319. A balanced treatment defending a messianic interpretation can be found in T. D. Alexander, “Messianic Ideology in the Book of Genesis,” in The Lord’s Anointed, ed. P. E. Satterthwaite, R. S. Hess, and G. J. Wenham (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 19–39.
16. There is some confusion about the terminology of prescriptive/descriptive in the literature. Some use prescriptive to refer to that which should be as opposed to descriptive, referring to that which is (Trible). I am not using the terms this way. Instead, I am using prescriptive to refer to that which is because it is imposed as judgment by God, and descriptive to that which is as a result of the natural consequences of the situation (same as Hamilton, Genesis 1–17, 201).
17. See Gen. 9:25–27; 24:60; 27:27–29; 48:15–16; 49:1–28.
18. This does not suggest that the land outside the garden was not good. The proper function of vegetation is evident even in the thorns and thistles. But the functions of the blessing (Gen. 2) were impeded outside the garden.
19. Jones, Spirit Wars, 254.
20. Ibid., 251.
21. Ibid.
22. Carson, The Gagging of God, 13–19.
23. Jones, Spirit Wars, 254.
24. Carson, The Gagging of God, 19.
25. Ibid., 32.
26. Jones, Spirit Wars, 253.
27. S. P. Huntingdon, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993). I want to thank my colleague Michael McDuffee for bringing this article to my attention.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. A. L. Griffith, God’s Time and Ours (New York: Abingdon, 1964), 83.
31. C. Thomas and E. Dobson, Blinded by Might (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999).
32. Colson and Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live? 369.
33. Ibid., 371.
34. Quoted in Chicago Tribune (Feb. 27, 1983),
35. As reported in Chicago Tribune (Nov. 10, 1983).
36. J. Seligmann with K. Hamilton, “Husbands No, Babies Yes,” Newsweek (July 26, 1993), 53.
37. Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, x, quoting sociologist James Dawson Hunter. I have benefited greatly from Plantinga’s book for many of the ideas in this section even beyond the multitudinous quotes.
38. Ibid., ix.
39. This is a paraphrase of Barth’s famous definition from his Church Dogmatics, vol. 4, pt. 1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 493.
40. Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, 173–74.
41. Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 111, at the end quoting Joseph Butler’s sermon entitled “Upon Self-Deceit.”
42. From a review by Julian Hawthorne in The Atlantic Monthly (April 1886).
43. Colson and Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live? 190.
44. Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 64.
45. Ibid., 67.
46. Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, 66.
47. A. MacLeish, J.B. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1958), scene 9, 127.
48. Augustine, Enchiridion 27.
1. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 267, suggests alternatively that the naming is in the context of giving birth.
2. For examples in Genesis see 5:29; 16:11; 21:2–6; 25:24–26; and many examples in chs. 29–30.
3. See Gen. 14:19, 22; Deut. 32:6; Ps. 139:13; Prov. 8:22.
4. The strongest Ugaritic evidence is that Asherah, wife of El, is referred to by the title qnyt ilm, “creatrix of the gods.”
5. zi-ir ameluti ittišu ibtanu, “She created the seed of humankind with him,” CAD, Z, 96; Clifford, Creation Accounts, 63.
6. J. D. Fowler, Theophoric Personal Names in Ancient Hebrew (JSOTSup 49; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), 128.
7. For rare exceptions, consider Shealtiel (Hag. 1:1), but these cluster in the postexilic period and appear to have come over from Mesopotamia.
,” 10. The second-century Greek translator Theodotion translated as “burned up” the verb that the NIV translates “looked with favor,” thereby suggesting that the Lord’s favor was shown by sending fire. There is, however, no support for the verb to be translated in this way.
11. In 3:16 the one who was addressed (“you” [the woman]) has the desire and will be mastered by a third party (husband). Here it is the third party (“sin”) that has the desire and should be mastered by the person addressed (“you” [Cain]).
13. These are the only two contexts in which this verb is modified by a min clause.
14. This story is told in his book, Unholy Matrimony: A True Story of Murder and Obsession (New York: Macmillan, 1986), and was brought to my attention in Plantinga’s book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 96–97, from whom I have adopted most of this description.
15. Ibid., 96–97.
16. Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, 175.
17. R. Jordan, The Eye of the World (New York: Tom Doherty, 1990), 312.
18. T. Stafford, Knowing the Face of God, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 122–29.
19. From chapter 1.2.6 in a slightly abridged form.
1. Taken from Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, 34–35.
2. COS, 1:522–23. There are probably more than 94, but the text is broken and about 80 lines are missing before the narrative continues.
3. S. Gevirtz, Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel, 2d ed. (SAOC 32; Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1973), 25–34. Gevirtz still only calls it pre-Solomonic, but most critical scholars are unwilling to date anything but a few poetic pieces that early.
4. Gevirtz, ibid., 30–34, presents extensive evidence for military leaders in the ancient world being teenagers.
5. If the “sons of God” in 6:2 are kings (see discussion there), this would be another instance of avoiding specific reference to kings. Additionally, 6:4 refers to the gibborim, “mighty men of old,” who certainly were kings, but once again, they are not called kings in Genesis.
6. For example, the Flood hero is a king, and early Near Eastern history is marked by the king lists.
7. The lexeme ʾl is generic in Semitic languages for “God,” so it is impossible to be more specific about the language source.
8. There are no known alphabetic scripts prior to the early second millennium.
9. See discussion of this word in 3:16. This word only occurs here and in 3:16, 17.
10. It is only the Piel forms of this root that are translated “to curse,” so our study is limited to those forms.
11. Ps. 37:22 should not be considered in the discussion since it is textually suspect.
12. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 129.
13. The Sumerian sexagesimal system is a combination of base ten and base six. The same symbol that represents 36,000 in the sexagesimal notation is known to represent 1,000 in the decimal notation. See J. Walton, “The Antediluvian Section of the Sumerian King List and Genesis 5,” BA 44 (1981): 207–8.
14. Ibid.
15. A third option might be that the tracking of years was done differently in ancient societies—that is, that the ancients simply did not keep track of years the same way we do and ages were understood differently. Since, however, we have no data to support such a suggestion, it must be simply set aside.
16. So, for instance, if a base is chosen to reduce numbers like Methuselah’s 969 years to something more like today’s life spans, Enoch’s age of 65 when he became a father would also have to be comparably reduced and would yield unacceptable results.
17. Be sure to consult the interesting comments by R. Hess, “The Genealogies of Genesis 1–11 and Comparative Literature,” in Hess and Tsumura, “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11, 63–64. See also the lengthy and helpful discussion in R. R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1977), 148–54.
18. Hess, “The Genealogies of Genesis 1–11,” 68–69.
19. For discussion of this issue see Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Concept of Overpopulation,” 160–77.
20. Chesterton, Heretics/Orthodoxy, 192 (from Orthodoxy).
21. R. Van Houten, ed., Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves: Christians in China Tell Their Story (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1988), 32–33.
22. P. E. Kauffman, China: The Emerging Challenge (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982), 173.
23. J. Chao, ed., The China Mission Handbook (Hong Kong: Chinese Church Research Center, 1989), 25.
24. Ibid., 26.
25. Ibid., 29–32.
26. Van Houten, ed., Wise As Serpents, Harmless As Doves, 128.
27. Cited by C. Lawrence, The Church in China (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985), 143.
28. C. S. Lewis, “Is Progress Possible?” in God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 311.
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