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

But here is our guiding principle: even as we acknowledge the sad and horrific results of the fall and how it impacted the relationship of man and woman, we also see that God did not abandon women by endorsing the cultural patriarchy. It was never God’s intention, and as with slavery, he was working through time, changing hearts to overturn the effects of human sin.

Miriam wasn’t just a leader, she was also a prophet. Here we have a female leader who is also a prophet and you never see any qualification that Miriam was allowed to prophesy only to women. She was prophesying as a spokesperson for God to both men and women, and her words are now part of Scripture for us to learn from today.

In Judges, chapter 4, we meet a woman named Deborah who was a prophet, a judge, and a military leader for Israel. She led them as a woman and a prophet of God, and she is spoken of with respect and honor in the Scriptures. There is nothing mentioned about her stepping into roles that she wasn’t supposed to be in.

My good friend and Bible scholar Scot McKnight writes about Huldah and says, “Huldah is not chosen because no men were available. She is chosen because she is truly exceptional among the prophets.”2 There were other prophets that could have been chosen, such as Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk. But Josiah did not ask for help from any of those men. Instead he chose Huldah. We see that Huldah took the Scriptures and taught what they meant and prophesied. Her prophecy was fulfilled thirty-five years later.* Huldah spoke on God’s behalf and was an instructor, teacher, and prophet. Prophets were seen as mouthpieces for God, so this shows that God was not placing women in subservient roles. In Isaiah 8:3, we also see Isaiah’s wife listed as a prophet.

I include these brief observations from the Old Testament to remind us that when we see the negative, horrible-sounding Bible verses, we should remember there is more happening during this time period than what we read, often taken out of context. Yes, most of the leaders and voices were men due to the world being patriarchal. The Bible is telling us the story of what was happening in this world with the progression of fallout from human disobedience and God’s plan to fix that. So there will be stories about men leading and men as central figures. But the amazing thing is that in the midst of this male-dominated world we see God bringing in women to represent him with authority as prophets, teachers, and leaders.

The prevalent attitude toward women among most Jewish people at that time was not super positive. Jesus lived in a culture where women were generally not treated with the same respect, worth, and value as men. We know this from prayers from this time. For example, here’s an actual prayer the rabbinical leaders would recite daily: “Praise be to God that he has not created me a Gentile [a non-Jew]! Praise be to God that he has not created me a woman! Praise be to God that he has not created me an ignoramus!”3 Another version of this prayer included thanks to God that the men praying weren’t created to be a dog . . . or a woman. Jewish culture was patriarchal and often kept women in subordinate roles to men. In marriage, the male had the advantage. If a wife displeased her husband, he could divorce her—a wife was not granted the same right. We see this prejudice and negativity toward women throughout the Jewish religious writings going back to the time of Jesus. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, wrote, “The woman . . . is in all things inferior to the man.” Other rabbinical writings at the time of Jesus say, “Four equalities are ascribed to women: they are gluttonous, eavesdroppers, lazy and jealous.”

But these feelings about the roles of men and women weren’t limited to the Jewish culture during the time of Jesus. They were just as common in Greek and Roman culture. The Greek poets wrote how women are the source of evil in the world.5 Roman law placed a wife under the absolute control of her husband, who had ownership of her and all her possessions. He could divorce her if she went out in public without a veil. A husband had the power of life and death over his wife, just as he did over his children. With the Greeks, women were not allowed to speak in public.6 There were, of course, exceptions to this. But the exceptions seemed to be women who were born into a wealthy home or had achieved higher social status. Because of their wealth, they avoided some of the discrimination.

Jesus is called a “rabbi” several times in the New Testament,* a word that means “teacher.” In our culture today, “rabbi” refers to someone trained professionally for religious leadership in a synagogue, but at the time of Jesus, the term was one of dignity given by the Jews to their spiritual teachers. Jewish rabbis at the time of Jesus were encouraged not to teach or even speak with women. Jewish wisdom literature says that “he that talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the Law and at the last will inherit Gehenna [hell].”7 With this as the general feeling about who a male rabbi should and shouldn’t be hanging out with, what does Jesus do? He does the exact opposite of what was expected.

When you read the biblical account, you also find that the Samaritan woman is the one to whom Jesus first reveals that he is the Christ.‡ Jesus chose to first reveal the core of his mission and identity to a woman. He ended up staying with the Samaritan people for several days. For Jesus to lodge there, eat Samaritan food, and teach Samaritans is roughly equivalent to defying segregation in the United States during the 1950s or apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s—shocking, extremely difficult, and somewhat dangerous.8 But Jesus is more concerned with what the truth of Scripture teaches about people than human opinions and cultural prejudice.

This may not sound like an important point, but we see Jesus breaking from norm in the way he traveled as well. He was not only accompanied by male followers but also several female followers.* Normally, to have these women traveling with the group would have been viewed as scandalous.9 Ironically, the women in this traveling group are the ones supplying the financial means for them to be traveling together.†

Jesus could have appeared to anyone after his resurrection, but he chose to reveal himself first to women.§ Having women as the first ones to discover that his body was missing and to report it is highly unusual. The Scriptures tell how the resurrected Jesus commissioned them (women) to be the ones to tell the other disciples he was alive. According to Jewish law, women were not allowed to bear legal witness. Yet Jesus gave them the honorable task of being the very first to see him resurrected and the very first to tell others about it.

Paul describes Phoebe as a deacon in Romans 16:1–2: “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.” The way in which Paul commends Phoebe is consistent with the manner in which the writer of a letter would commend the person charged with the assignment of delivering the letter. Cultural practices of that time would have the one who delivered the letter read it and then answer the recipients’ questions. Anyone who has ever read the letter Paul wrote to the Romans can only imagine the questions that would have arisen during that initial session. This significant responsibility was entrusted by Paul to a woman. Think about that: in all likelihood, the first ever exposition of Paul’s letter to the Romans was done by a woman.

We see Paul listing Priscilla first, before her husband, Aquila, when describing their teaching relationship with Apollos. It would not have been common for a wife to be named before her husband. Nearly always, husbands were named before their wives, and when they were not, the author had a reason for reversing the order. It seems likely that Priscilla was a leader and teacher for Paul to address them like that.

Paul uses a title when he describes Andronicus and Junia as “apostles.” Andronicus is likely a man, but most scholars believe Junia is a woman. Some translations list “Junias” rather than “Junia,” and Junias would be a masculine name while Junia is feminine. But there is no record of anyone with the name Junias in first-century Greek writings. Junia, however, was a common woman’s name, and the writings of the early church refer to Junia as a woman. The best and most reliable manuscripts, as well as the writings of the early church leaders, indicate that the person Paul is commending as an apostle is a woman named “Junia” and not a man named “Junias.” So we very likely have a woman listed as an apostle here.

Now, saying that, we do see differences in the contemporary church’s beliefs about whether men and women both can serve in what are called the “offices” of the church. These are specific and formally titled roles of “pastor” and “elder.” It is widely agreed that in the New Testament, the words “pastor” and “elder,” along with the word “overseer,” are interchangeable terms for those who are assigned to shepherd, care for, guide, and teach a local church.

Deuteronomy 22:28–29 is another wicked-sounding Bible verse that is increasingly being used to suggest that the Bible commands evil things and teaches that women are property. These verses were being spoken into a specific culture more than three thousand years ago, a world we are unfamiliar with today, so it’s very difficult for us to fully grasp the significance and rationale for what is being taught. This was a single verse amidst hundreds of other specific guidelines, given to an ancient people group in response to a very despicable and desperate situation. And it was given in order to protect the woman. First, we are looking at a time period when male patriarchy did, unfortunately, exist. A woman who was not married and had been sexually involved with a man was seen as lesser in value. This was a wrong belief, yes, but not one God had taught—it was human beings who developed this. At that time, a woman couldn’t own property, and if she had no father, husband, or son, she would have no one to care for her and no legal protection. A woman’s options were limited to selling herself into slavery or prostitution. God did not create this patriarchy; it was human beings and their sinful selfishness that created it. Here we see God instructing the Israelites at that time to give dignity and respect to women in an existing patriarchal culture. Rape was seen as evil in that culture, and God elsewhere states that rape is a serious crime deserving capital punishment. In Deuteronom...

Here God equates rape with murder, and anytime you see stories of rape in the Bible, it is always shown as an evil act of violence. However, when rape did happen, there was an important difference in determining the best way to respond in that culture at that time. Put yourself, as best you can, in that time and culture. If a woman was raped, she was seen as no longer desirable for marriage. And if she remained unmarried, her life was virtually over. There were few options available to a woman at that time, and without a husband and family of her own, she had little hope for a future. In some cases, being married was a matter of survival. Without marriage she would likely end up neglected and impoverished, an all too common hardship for women in that culture. We see a heartbreaking and gut-wrenching example of this in the Old Testament when a woman named Tamar was raped by her half brother. Not only did she suffer the pain of the rape but there was the even greater danger that if others knew of it, they would not want to marry her. So in this case, she asks her half brother, the one who raped her, to marry her. This is all evil and wrong, but it was a cultural norm back then. Essentially, she was calling her half brother to account for his wrong done to her, making her unmarriable and cutting off her future, by asking him to now provide for her through marriage. It was likely her only option.

This law provided for a raped woman; her rapist would now have to financially provide for and support her. In our world today, this sounds unbelievable because women are not as dependent and have more options. It seems horribly cruel to even consider that whoever raped a woman would stay in relationship with her. But in that world, it was the equivalent of being sued by the victim and having to financially support the woman you had harmed. If the woman became his wife and part of his family, it meant he could never divorce her. This was God’s way of creating accountability to prevent and deter crime.

With all of this in mind, it is important to note that the law requiring a rapist to marry his victim was not forced on the woman. It was the woman’s legal right, if she chose, to pursue the law and request marriage or to reject it. What we read here is the command given to the rapist (not the woman), that he must pay fifty shekels, which was the normal bridal dowry for a wedding at that time, demonstrating that her value hadn’t decreased due to the rape. These commands are given to the man, not the woman. This is what he must do; it does not say it is what she must do. We read in other parts of these early books of the Bible* that the woman could communicate through her father, who was the one responsible for her care, and choose not to marry her violator.

Where did the practice of polygamy and concubines originate, and why is it included in the Bible’s timeline? When you look at the Bible story, you need to see what God’s original plan was from the beginning and then the fallout from human beings going against God’s original plan. So we start at the beginning. When Jesus was asked about marriage, this is exactly what he did. Jesus went back to the creation story in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, and affirmed that God’s plan for marriage was two people, not many. He spoke about Adam and Eve becoming “one flesh.”† In speaking about the reality of divorce, Jesus said that divorce began because of the hardening of human hearts, but then reminded everyone that this was not God’s original plan. Following the fallout, we immediately see the downward spiral of human beings rejecting God’s original design. In Genesis 4, Cain’s son Lamech takes two wives, not one. On and on it goes, with men taking not only multiple wives but having concubines, women treated as property for a man’s pleasure. Polygamy becomes the norm in the ancient world of the Near East. Even the Israelites stray from God’s original design and adopt these cultural norms. At times, we see God working within these fallen cultural practices (like polygamy and concubines), but we never see God endorsing them as good. The practices of polygamy and concubines became ingrained in the culture. Some have suggested that because these practices were so widespread, if God had ordere...

The Bible offers a subtle commentary on these practices. Note that every time you see polygamy mentioned or a man who takes concubines, these things do not play out in their lives in good ways. Often, the characters who had multiple wives also had conflict, discord, competition, heartbreak, and messy relationships.

How do we address the constant barrage of criticism against the Bible that it is sexist and misogynist? And the mother-of-all (pun intended) crazy-sounding Bible verses: women must be silent and submit. The Bible seems to say that women can’t speak in church or it’s a disgrace. That women can’t teach men and are under the authority of men. To understand these verses, I want to remind you to “never read a Bible verse,” but instead ask the questions we have been asking and modeling for you in this book. Let’s start by looking at who wrote the books (letters) that contain these Bible verses.

Some of the people following Jesus were from Jewish synagogues, and they may have understood the Old Testament law but were now being taught a new way of relating to God through Jesus. They might find some of the teaching confusing since they were used to the older ways of worshiping God in the temple and synagogues. People were coming into these churches from pagan backgrounds, having been immersed in the worship of other gods and goddesses. Paul wrote several letters to these churches during this dynamic, chaotic time period, a time filled with change and confusion about how churches should best function and operate. He wrote to instruct them in what to do as they met for worship and how to live their lives as followers of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 14:34–35 The letter to the Corinthian church was written by Paul around the year 55 AD. Four years prior to writing this letter, Paul spent a year and a half in the city of Corinth. He knew the church and he knew the people, and in the letter he indicates he had received a disturbing report of fighting and quarreling within the Corinthian church. From his letter we learn that all types of disruptive things were happening in their worship gatherings.* Before he tells women to “be silent” in this letter, Paul instructs the church about these sad divisions. Some were taking the Lord’s Supper (sometimes called communion), while others weren’t allowed to take it. Some were coming to the church meetings hungry because they were not included in the meal being served. Some were getting drunk on the wine used in the Lord’s Supper. Some were going to the meetings while participating in ongoing open sin, with no evidence of sorrow or repentance. Paul tells them they are taking the Lord’s Supper—a sacred and holy remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus—“in an unworthy manner.” In other words, there were some pretty crazy things going on in the Corinthian church meetings. Paul was writing to correct these abuses and guide the people to unity.

Timothy was living in Ephesus when this letter was written, and much like the letter to the Corinthian church, the church in Ephesus had significant problems. Remember, there was no “New Testament” and these churches were all new. Much was being figured out, and many of the people in these churches were coming from pagan backgrounds that included the worship of other gods. In Ephesus, the main religion was the worship of the goddess Artemis, and this posed a serious challenge to the new church, even leading to riots against those who were telling others about Jesus.† Many women in Ephesus were leaving the worship of Artemis and learning an entirely new way of relating to God through Jesus. The Temple of Artemis (whom the Romans called Diana) was an all-female religion with castrated men serving as priests. Artemis was a fertility cult where worship involved sexual rites, including prostitution, practices that would shock people today. But the people of Ephesus, and many others at that time, believed these practices were what it meant to worship a god. All of this forms the backstory to the letter Paul is writing to Timothy. Some women in Ephesus were now part of the new faith, part of the worship gatherings of this new church, following Jesus, a man who died and returned from the dead.

In other parts of Paul’s letter to Timothy, he addresses the issue of sensuality among younger widows. Why? Because this was the world they were living in and the culture of Ephesus.* We also read that these young widows, because they have nothing to do, become “busybodies” who talk “nonsense” (Paul’s word). Paul was concerned for these women and wrote what he counsels them to do. In his letter to the Corinthians he mentions dress codes. All of this gives us the context to better understand what was happening in Corinth and Ephesus as we try to understand the verses that tell women to submit and be silent.

When we read these verses telling women to be “silent,” we should read them in the context of other things Paul has said. Paul cannot literally mean that women should be totally silent, because just a few chapters earlier in the same letter, he acknowledges (with no sense of disapproval) that women prophesied and prayed aloud in the church.† We also see Paul talking about both men and women (with no distinctions made) singing, praying, and sharing with each other in the church meetings. So unless Paul is contradicting himself in the same letter, he doesn’t intend for women to never speak a word. It must mean something else. In the same letter, Paul also writes about how God’s Spirit gives out spiritual gifts that are special skills the Holy Spirit provides, enabling people to serve the church and others. Yet we see no instruction that men and women should be using these gifts differently.* Many of the gifts he mentions would involve speaking in church worship meetings. Unless Paul is contradicting himself, the verse cannot mean for women to be totally silent. As mentioned in the last chapter, Paul worked alongside women who had leadership roles of influence in churches. He also refers to a woman who is very likely an apostle. This passage cannot be saying women must be “silent” in church, as these tasks involved some speaking. It must mean something else.

A common custom during that time period was that when you had not been educated on a topic, it was disrespectful to interrupt the teacher and ask questions. Question asking or commenting during a teaching wasn’t accepted etiquette and the norm. Isocrates, a popular Greek orator and teacher, required his students to remain silent when he taught. Rabbi Akiba, a contemporary of Paul, and Philo, who was a first-century Jewish leader, also commended silence during teaching.2 The “silence” mentioned here doesn’t mean an absolute tape-over-your-mouth not speaking. Instead, it likely means to adopt a “quiet demeanor” appropriate for students of that time period who wished to learn.3 Also, when you see the words saying a woman “must be in submission,” in this context it is talking about a posture of learning, not being in a lower or lesser position. There may have been a problem in Ephesus if women who were worshipers of Artemis, a deity with an extremely different approach to worship and learning, were not seeking to follow Christ. Paul may be giving some instruction to preserve order for learning. In that time and culture, men generally were more educated, so this helps us understand why Paul speaks to those with husbands. These women may have had questions, but instead of disrupting the teaching time in the worship gathering, Paul felt it was best for them to first ask their husband later.

Paul’s two comments about silence are actually consistent, then, with the story and plot of the Bible. Women, who have always been gifted by God to speak for God and lead God’s people, were doing those things in Paul’s churches. But women who had not yet learned Bible or theology or had not yet learned to live a Christian life were not to become teachers until they had learned orthodox theology. What drives 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 is a principle that much of church tradition has nearly smothered when to comes to women: “learning precedes teaching.”

In Jewish worship at that time and as is still common today in the more conservative branches of Judaism, women and men sit separately. This is done in Islamic mosques today as well. Within Judaism this is just a custom, not directed in the Bible. Some have suggested that this “separate seating” was happening in these early church meetings, and this practice may have led to problems. If women who weren’t educated (due to the way women were treated at that time) had questions, they might try asking their husbands, possibly shouting across the room. This would understandably cause distractions for others in the worship gathering. Or if the women were on their own or unmarried and they were confused about the teaching, they might begin talking among themselves, disrupting the worship gathering. If option 2 was the case, it makes sense why Paul would be asking them to stay quiet and wait until later to ask questions. This is all speculative. We don’t know what the situation was in these cities. In the churches Paul was writing to, however, I am sure they did know the situation.

Among all the major world cultures and major religions, Christian men and women have often been the ones working to empower women and set them free from the cultural institutions that entrap them. For centuries in China, a common cultural practice was to cripple the feet of young girls for life through the horrid practice of “foot binding.” This was done to supposedly make them more pleasurable for men later in their lives. Christians were instrumental in ending this practice. In India, widows were required to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the fire of their late husband’s funeral pyre (when they burned the husband’s body). Efforts of Christian missionaries put an end to this cultural practice.

I realized that all my life I had been reading Genesis from the perspective of a modern person. I had read it through the lens of a historically sophisticated, scientifically influenced individual. I assumed Genesis was written to answer the questions of origins that people are asking today. But I had never asked the most important vital question of all: What did Moses mean when he wrote this text? After all, “my Bible” was Moses’ “Bible” first. Was Moses acquainted with Charles Darwin? . . . Was he writing to discredit any modern theory of evolution? Were his readers troubled by calculations of the speed of light and the distance of the galaxies from earth? Were they puzzling over the significance of DNA? Were they debating a young earth versus an old earth? Would they have had any inkling about a modern scientific worldview? If you agree that the answer to these questions is obviously no, then the logical question is, what was on their minds? How would they have understood Genesis 1?. . . What did Genesis mean to the original author and original readers?3

All Scripture is 100 percent God-breathed, authoritative, trustworthy, and useful for many, many things.* But just as we do with any part of the Bible, we need to put effort into looking at the original recipients and the original purpose of what is written. This isn’t an attempt to lessen our respect or reverence for the Bible’s absolute authority or to doubt the sacred God-inspired Holy Scriptures. Instead, it takes the Bible more seriously, forcing us to dive deeply into it. When we study and ask these questions, we can make better sense of what God wanted his original readers to do and know and what or what not he may be saying for us today to do and know. As

As time passed, Abraham and his descendants multiplied and became the people of Israel. In the story, the Israelites went down to Egypt to escape a famine up north. As more centuries passed, they became slaves of the Egyptians. The story has a twist at this point, as God’s chosen people were no longer in the land God had promised them. They were slaves living in the land and culture of the Egyptians. Keep in mind this was not just for a few years, but for around four hundred years.‡ Generation after generation of God’s chosen people were being immersed in a world controlled by the Egyptians, learning the Egyptian origin stories, their values, and their religious beliefs. There is debate on the exact years, but scholars believe the Israelites were in Egypt for the approximately four hundred years in slavery either in the 1200s BC or the 1400s BC.

While living as slaves in Egypt, the Israelites would have passed down oral traditions and remnants of stories about Abraham and the promises God made to them. But this was still a long time to live in slavery, hundreds of years immersed in Egypt. Day after day they would wake up to see Egyptian statues of Egyptian gods, living in the Egyptians’ world with Egyptian values. The Egyptians didn’t worship the God of the Israelites, instead worshiping many different types of gods including the sun, the moon, several animal-like gods, a few goddesses, and even some people. The Egyptians had creation stories to explain how their gods had created everything. This is the world the Israelites lived in—not just for ten years or fifty years or a hundred years—but for four hundred years. The Israelites’ understanding of the world was inevitably affected by their time living in Egypt. Remember, at this time there was no written Bible for them to read. There were no Ten Commandments, no Psalms to read for comfort or to remind them of God and his promises. Day after day they lived in a pluralistic Egyptian world of many different gods and religious practices.

Here is the reason why all of this matters: Genesis was written to the Israelites after they had lived in a land that worshiped many gods to remind them of who the one true God was—not to explain the science and details of creation. Genesis was written to tell the Israelites the story of the covenant he made with their forefather Abraham, not to explain when dinosaurs were around and how to view the fossil records.

After four hundred years of slavery and life in Egypt, God decided it was time to rescue his people, the descendants of Abraham. He chose Moses to lead “the chosen people” of Israel into “the promised land.” God punished Egypt with a series of ten plagues to knock down the arrogance and confidence of Pharaoh, the Egyptian leader, and force him to release Israel from slavery. The plagues God chose were not random events—they were quite intentional. Each of the ten plagues was a direct assault on one of the gods of the Egyptians. For example, Egyptians worshiped the god Hapi, the Egyptian God of the Nile River, and it was believed that the god Osiris had the Nile River as his bloodstream. God demonstrated his power over the river—and the Egyptian gods—by turning the river water blood red. The Egyptians also worshiped the goddess Heqet, who had the head of a frog. God demonstrated his power over this Egyptian goddess by causing frogs to appear everywhere, showing that the God of Israel is the true God, not Heqet. The Egyptians worshiped the god Ra, the sun god and one of the most revered gods in Egypt. So the God of Israel caused the sun to go dark, showing he is the true God and has power over the mightiest of the Egyptian gods. After Pharaoh relents and releases the people, Moses leads them into the desert outside of Egypt, where they live for forty years before entering the promised land. Consider that for a moment. You have people who have been immersed in Egyptian cultur...

Questions Israel Likely Had That Genesis Was Written to Answer • Are we going to survive here in the desert? Are we safe here? • Is there really only one God? What about all the Egyptians gods? Are they angry we left Egypt? • Is this God who rescued us still here, or are we alone? • What do we have to do to please this one God so we will have crops that won’t fail and have food for our families? • Should we worship the sun? Should we worship the moon like the Egyptians? Or worship like the Canaanites, who are now nearby? • Is the Egyptian story of how the world was made the true one? Newly freed from four hundred years of living in the polytheistic world of Egypt, God was about to give them a new story, a new history.

In Genesis, God had Moses write what the Israelites needed to know about him to answer their questions about him. It was not written to answer many of the questions we have today.

For example, at the time Genesis was written, the ancient Israelites didn’t know that the brain was the part of the human body that was the source of thinking, learning, and controlling other parts of our body. They believed the control center was the heart, since the heart muscle pumps masses of blood around our bodies. When you see the word “heart” in Genesis (Genesis 24:45; 34:3), you should know that it is referring to the source of our emotions and thinking. Today we would likely refer to this as our brain, not our heart. But they didn’t have a word for the brain back then, and they believed the physical heart was the source of thinking. They also believed our emotions and thinking came from our entrails, or our “gut.”5 The people of that time thought the human intellect came from the actual heart and abdominal organs.

So did God lie to them when he didn’t correct their improper usage of the “heart,” even using it himself? Not at all! God simply chose not to correct them in their incorrect understanding of heart physiology. God didn’t provide science lessons on the function of the brain. He spoke to them in the context of what they already believed. God used what they were aware of and the assumptions in their existing worldview to communicate the truths he wanted them to know at that time. He didn’t feel it was necessary to correct their “scientific” understanding of how the brain and heart worked. He wanted to make sure they got the point of what he was saying, so to communicate he used what they knew and believed.

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.

The other creation stories portray the gods as violent deities, fighting each other and not caring at all for human beings. This is one of the unique aspects of the Genesis story. It tells of an amazingly wonderful God, who is entirely unlike the Egyptian or Babylonian gods and goddesses. • Only in Genesis do we meet a single God (not multiple gods) who has a covenantal (committed with promises) and personal relationship with people • Unlike other narratives, the God in the Genesis creation story doesn’t need assistance from other gods to create. He is all powerful and can do it all with just his word. • The God in the Genesis creation story creates human beings with dignity and beauty, and they are created in his image. None of the other creation stories reveal a god or gods who treat humans with such love and care. • The God in the creation story entrusted human beings with the task of caring for the creation, rather than creating them as servants to serve the whims of that god. Put yourself in the place of an ancient Israelite.

As we saw earlier, the Hebrew word in Genesis 1:1 we translate with the English word “earth” can also be translated as “land.” The Israelites would have heard this and immediately thought: God created the land, the land they could see in front of them. This was what they thought of as “the earth”—not a planet orbiting in space.

The third tier was referred to as sheol and was thought to be the area under the land, an area that held more water. Think about it from their perspective. What happens when you dig down deep enough? What do you find? Water seeps through. You can see why ancient people assumed there was more water present under the ground, why they believed the earth was a land mass above even more water. In the Old Testament we see the word “sheol” used often to refer to the place under the earth where all who died went.9 It wasn’t until later in the Old Testament that the understanding of a future resurrection developed. This idea of a bodily resurrection became even more clear in the New Testament. But the ancient Israelites saw this area under the earth as a third level, a third tier in their understanding of the world around them.

It may feel awkward or even confusing to think that God didn’t scientifically correct the incorrect views of the earth being flat or the sky as a solid dome with water held above it. Remember, God used what was familiar to the people at that time to communicate so they could understand what he wanted to say to them. God’s purpose in writing Genesis was not to give them a twenty-first-century science textbook to counter evolutionary teaching. God’s point in having Genesis written was to communicate the truth about himself and what he had done in creating the world to a people who were coming out of Egypt, a place that worshiped many different gods. God wanted the Israelites to know that he was the one true God who had made everything—the universe, the heavens, the earth, and its inhabitants. He wanted them to know there is no other God but the God of Israel.

It’s important for us to first understand the world of the people Genesis was written to and to recognize that Genesis was not written to us, but for us. As we do this, many of the perplexing verses that don’t make sense to our scientific understanding of the world will make sense. God wasn’t communicating science according to our modern standards; he was communicating truth about who he is and how and why he created all that exists. Knowing this makes the Bible even more amazing as we study it. Even though it is God’s Spirit who helps us understand the Bible,* we still need to consider the original readers and their context.

Looking at these Bible verses today, we understand that God was not speaking or communicating with scientific accuracy in these verses. God was not saying the earth stayed physically motionless and the sun orbited around it. This is an assumption that is being read into the interpretation of this verse, something added beyond what was implied in the original communication. God was simply using common, everyday language to communicate truth about the world—but not making a scientific statement about the orbital patterns of planets. Though they had good intentions, the church imported additional meaning into these verses, going beyond God’s intentions. They were seeking to defend the Bible, assuming that the common language God had used necessarily implied a specific way of understanding the relationship between the sun and the earth. They held that not believing that the sun moved around a stationary earth meant not believing the Bible. Over time it became clear scientifically how the earth and the sun related in orbit. We realized that this scientific way of speaking and thinking about the relationship of the sun and earth was different and distinct from how the Bible was speaking of the relationship. This is just one example of why we need to carefully study a verse to understand what it is saying in context and not importing scientific meaning or drawing scientific conclusions from the Bible when it isn’t meant to be read that way. As Galileo said, “The Bible teaches us ...

Remember, the Israelites were not asking how photosynthesis works or details about the physics of light and darkness. They weren’t wondering how you can have “night” and “day” if these are dependent on the earth’s rotation around the sun. They were wondering if the God who had rescued them from slavery was powerful enough over other gods. They were learning that their God didn’t battle other gods to make the world. This God speaks and it happens.