How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

This is equally true when we look at how God communicated the creation story to the ancient Israelites. He used the worldview they had and knew. God wasn’t seeking to communicate scientific truths as we understand them today. He was communicating truth about who he was in a way they could understand. When the opening verse of the Bible in Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” certain things would come to mind to those hearing the words “heavens” and “earth.” We think of “heavens” and think of the solar system, the Milky Way, and the amazing images of space that the Hubble Telescope captured. When we think of “earth,” we imagine the whole earth as a sphere orbiting around the sun. However, Old Testament scholars wisely remind us that unlike what comes to mind when we think of the “heavens” and “earth,” the ancient Israelites would have thought of something very different.6 If an ancient Israelite saw the image of the earth shown in image 11.2, one we are so familiar with today, they would have had no idea what it was. Remember, this image was first seen when a photograph of earth was taken from space in 1946. We didn’t have this view of earth in our minds prior to that time. Three thousand years ago, an Israelite’s understanding of the earth and heavens would have been consistent with their specific culture and how that culture saw the world.