The four acts of the Early World set the stage for the story of Israel, of all nations and
peoples, indeed the larger story of Scripture. Unless we understand the foundational
narrative
of the Early World, we will struggle to grasp the meaning of Israel’s story and
the meaning of the story of our own lives.
A
CT
1:
C
REATION
Textbook or Poetry?
One of the challenges of reading Scripture is that it comes from a time, place, and
culture starkly different from our own, employing storytelling techniques with which we
are no longer accustomed. In Genesis 1, we are jostled by a text in which light is made on
the first day, but the sun, moon, and stars are not created until day four. In Psalm 104, we
are confused by the psalmist, who describes God setting the
earth on its foundations,
covering it with the deep as with a garment, laying the beams of his chambers on the
waters, and stretching out the heavens like a tent.
If we simply read such texts in a modern literalistic or scientific manner, we might
dismiss them as a primitive view of reality and conclude that the Hebrews believed that
the earth literally possessed pillars below and a dome above. Such conclusions are an
example of a kind of myopia that keeps the modern reader from making sense of the story
of Scripture. The great Christian apologist C. S. Lewis gave a name to this myopia-causing
affliction, in which modern readers view what is most recent as most
relevant and what
is previous as primitive; he called it “chronological snobbery.”
Before we write off the biblical creation story, we need to recognize that our culture
is accustomed to straightforward, linear writing. While such writing can
p 7
help us
understand much about the sun, moon, and stars, it does little to teach us about the Love
that made and moves these celestial wonders. Too often we wrongly insist
on reading the
opening chapters of Genesis as if it were a scientific textbook; by doing so, we miss the
theological poem that it is. As one theologian has described, the author of Genesis wrote
“after the manner of a popular poet.”
2
Yes, the creation story is a wonderful prose poem; its purpose is not to report
scientific data but to communicate a profound theological meditation on the act of
creation. The creation account and Psalm 104 both envision the
heavens as a dome and
2
Frederic Seebohm,
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