I'm in the middle of reading John H. Walton's The Lost World of Adam and Eve. In it Walton attempts to explain how the ancient Hebrews would've originally read Genesis. This reading happens to say very little about science and evolutionary theories. I'm finding the book both fascinating and eye-opening. While I don't agree with all of Walton's conclusions, he has enlarged my views of Genesis and the bible.
I'd like to share the book's propositions and problems through several blog posts. This being the introduction.
In The Lost World of Adam and Eve, John H. Walton argues that the creation account in Genesis is not a narrative of how God brought things into existence. Rather, it is an account of how God put things in order. Both the author of Genesis and the audience came from an ancient culture that didn’t read narratives like Genesis as scientific documents about how things came to be.
While Walton does believe that God created the physical world “ex nihilo”, he claims that Genesis is not the foundation for that understanding. Rather, Genesis explains how God ordered, separated, and named all that exists to work in a certain way for a certain reason.
Walton likens this way of reading Genesis to how we might talk about our homes. We might talk about when our house was built and what kind of pipes it has. Then we might talk about our home in relationship to the process of buying the property and how we made it our own space. The first way of describing the house is more about origins and data. The latter is more about purpose and function. Walton argues that Genesis was intended as a book about purpose and function, not origins.
In the following blog posts, I’ll try to outline some of his points and voice my own thoughts as well.
In The Lost World of Adam and Eve, John H. Walton argues that the creation account in Genesis is not a narrative of how God brought things into existence. Rather, it is an account of how God put things in order. Both the author of Genesis and the audience came from an ancient culture that didn’t read narratives like Genesis as scientific documents about how things came to be.
While Walton does believe that God created the physical world “ex nihilo”, he claims that Genesis is not the foundation for that understanding. Rather, Genesis explains how God ordered, separated, and named all that exists to work in a certain way for a certain reason.
Walton likens this way of reading Genesis to how we might talk about our homes. We might talk about when our house was built and what kind of pipes it has. Then we might talk about our home in relationship to the process of buying the property and how we made it our own space. The first way of describing the house is more about origins and data. The latter is more about purpose and function. Walton argues that Genesis was intended as a book about purpose and function, not origins.
In the following blog posts, I’ll try to outline some of his points and voice my own thoughts as well.
More Chapters Summaries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13
Walton, John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2015. Print.
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