Bible Archaeology: The Corrupting Influence Of The Ancient Near East On The Book Of Genesis

Rick Lanser, MDiv, bible archaeology.org, 2011

At many Bible colleges and seminaries today, students are told to understand the book of Genesis as typical ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literature, sharing many features in common with them. Representative of scholars teaching this view is John H. Walton of Wheaton College. He has proposed that, following a pattern scholars detect in ANE literature, Genesis 1 presents a cosmology that bypasses entirely the creation of the initial raw materials of the universe. Instead, it regards them as preexistent, with their origin never addressed. This concept is probably most accurately reflected in his 2009 work, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. He asserts that things—by which he apparently means material “stuff”—are not the focus of Genesis 1 at all. Rather, he declares, “Genesis one is about God bringing order (functionality) out of disorder (nonfunctionality).” In his book he elaborates on this:

Analysts of the ancient Near Eastern creation literature often observe that nothing material is actually made in these accounts…Scholars who have assumed that true acts of creation must by definition involve production of material objects are apparently baffled that all of these so-called creation texts have nothing of what these scholars would consider to be creation activities. I propose that the solution is to modify what we consider creation activities based on what we find in the literature. If we follow the senses of the literature and its ideas of creation, we find that people in the ancient Near East did not think of creation in terms of making, material things—instead, everything is function oriented (2009: 35, emphasis added).

The emphasized phrases show Walton is primarily concerned with understanding Genesis 1 in the light of ANE literature. This is confirmed in a blog comment by Walton himself: “I am attempting to understand the text of Genesis as an ancient Near Eastern text—wherever that leads” (2008). This marks a departure from the time-tested principle of using Scripture to interpret Scripture. It forces him to view the ancient Israelites as a typical ancient Near Eastern people, including embracing common cosmological ideas. He apparently does this because the Israelites’ overlapped in time and geography with other ANE cultures.

Walton further holds that, since ANE cosmologies assume preexisting matter, this also underlies the ancient Hebrew cosmology in Genesis 1:

The evidence in this chapter from the Old Testament as well as from the ancient Near East suggests that both defined the pre-creation state in similar terms and as featuring an absence of functions rather than an absence of material. Such information supports the idea that their concept of existence was linked to functionality and that creation was an activity of bringing functionality to a nonfunctional condition rather than bringing material substance to a situation in which matter was absent (2009: 53, emphasis added).

He thus views Genesis 1:1, following a typical ANE pattern, as referring not to the beginning of all things in this universe, but only to the onset of a specific, metaphoric seven-day “creation” period. He sees the “days” of Genesis not as a literal sequence of events, but as a literary structure in which functions are assigned to preexisting raw material of unspecified age.

The Hebrews 11:3 Problem

By contending God does not address the initial creation of the material universe in Genesis 1, however, Walton runs into a major problem posed by Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (NIV). The straightforward meaning of this verse is that God created all that is seen from what is not visible; for all intents and purposes, from nothing. If this concept was not derived from Genesis 1:1, from whence did the writer of Hebrews get it? Walton insists that God has chosen to be silent on this important matter. But the writer of Hebrews tells us that “by faith,” we understand that God “commanded” the visible universe to come into existence from no visible precursors. For us to know that God had issued such a command and to place faith in it, that command must have been recorded somewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. Where? Genesis 1 is the obvious choice.

A strong grammatical case can be made that all of the statements that declare, “And God said, ‘Let there be,’” are commands that are summarized as a whole by Genesis 1:1. Stephen C. Meyers correctly observed:

The Masoretic punctuation of בראשת [bereshith] with a tipha [an accent mark] favors verse one as an independent clause. Ancient translations like the LXX imply that verse one is an independent clause. The New Testament in John 1:1 also understands verse one as an independent clause (2008).

Walton also appreciates this fact, and wrote:

If the “beginning” refers to the seven-day period rather than to a point in time before the seven-day period, then we would conclude that the first verse [Gn 1:1] does not record a separate act of creationthat occurred prior to the seven days—but that in fact the creation that it refers to is recounted in the seven days. This suggests that verse 1 serves as a literary introduction to the rest of the chapter (2009: 45, emphasis added).

For such reasons based on the text itself, we should be satisfied Genesis 1:1 is an independent clause summarizing the end result of all of the individual creative commands that follow it in Genesis 1. It does not describe a separate creative step or a temporal dependent clause. If the various “Let there be” commands are not aspects of an overall event summarized by Genesis 1:1, there exists no reasonable antecedent to which Hebrews 11:3 refers. Thus, the Bible teaches Genesis 1:1 includes creation of the visible matter of the universe, notwithstanding that ANE literature does not.

Striking a Biblical Balance

The biblical concept of inspiration should be fresh in our minds before we continue. Perhaps the single most important verse is 2 Timothy 3:16, “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” In the KJV, the last five words are an English rendering of a single Greek word, theopneustos. Of this Scripture Erich D. Schwartz observed:

Breath is the sign and substance of animal life (i.e., life that animates, vitality powered by the spirit). As God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul (Gn 2:7), as Jesus breathed on the disciples for them to receive the Holy Ghost (Jn 20:22), so the LORD breathed upon holy men, and they wrote the Holy Scripture (2 Pt 1:21). The breath of God, His Spirit, was in those writers and continues in His Holy Word today, so that inspiration imparted a quality to Scripture that has acquired no tarnish over the millennia separating Yahweh’s original expression and our modern reading (2010: 18).

This understanding of theopneustos is confirmed by the way the ancient Greek writers similarly used the term:

[Theopneustos] occurs in Ps[eudo].-Phocylides and some of the Sybilline oracles and some other obscure Greek inscriptions. In the NT it only occurs in 2 Tim. Whether we like it or not, I think that the word is used by the author to denote his idea that God “breathes” into his writer that which he wishes to have said—just as in Greek thought the Muse breathes the idea into the mind of the poet or writer…(West 1999).

Understanding that Scripture is “God-breathed” in this manner leads inevitably to a critically important conclusion: it makes God the ultimate Author of the Bible. God did not merely prompt men of so-called “religious genius” to take an interest in a biblical subject and then apply their own imperfect knowledge and skills to writing about it, with the potential of introducing errors. Rather, He actually had the very words of His own choosing—words nevertheless consistent with each writer’s personal style—present themselves to the writers’ minds as they wrote. In some cases (e.g., the Ten Commandments), God even appears to have dictated the specific words used. So we must conclude that, although He utilized many individuals with individual writing styles, at different times and places, the Bible nonetheless is truly His book. It is not without reason we call the Scriptures “the Word of God.”

This definition of inspiration has a crucial implication when one considers the question of how ANE literature might have influenced the writing of Genesis. Since the human writers of the Bible were merely tools to record the divine Author’s choice of words, and it is inconceivable that He would be influenced by deluded humanistic cosmologies, we must categorically deny that the human writers of Scripture were influenced by the false worldviews or religious beliefs of the pagans around them while writing the inspired text. This is why we not only assert the inspiration of Scripture, but also its inerrancy. If as Christians we are not willing to question the inspiration of 2 Timothy 3:16 itself, we must wholeheartedly embrace the idea that God is the ultimate Author who superintended the writing and preservation of Scripture—all of it, not some of it—and He was not obliged to accommodate human error in its writing.

The Reinterpretation of Inspiration

By taking a “wherever that leads” approach in applying ANE standards to Genesis, however, Walton and those with similar views effectively discard the biblical definition of inspiration in favor of a looser one allowing for the expression of erroneous ideas. By insisting Genesis reflects an ANE cosmology, they necessarily assume that

The Bible cannot be inerrant in everything, especially in those details of history, geography or science, etc., which were only “incidental” to its spiritual message…So even when producing the Bible, the authors, not being perfect, would of necessity include something of their own fallible ideas in the text (Wright 1999).

If we say Genesis reflects false views of cosmology in common with ANE literature, it cannot be without error. The scriptural definition of inspiration has effectively been set aside. Those who give hermeneutical preeminence to the ANE cultural milieu justify this by saying that to not do so opens one to the accusation of cleaving to an outmoded theology the modern world holds up to scorn.¹ Supposedly, dropping this “anti-scientific” viewpoint will give the Church fresh relevance in today’s culture. This is highly doubtful, however, so long as the stumbling block of the Cross exists (1 Cor 1:23), regarded as foolishness by worldly people.

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