The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

by John H. Walton

The Old Testament does communicate to us and it was written for us, and for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was written to Israel. It is God’s revelation of himself to Israel and secondarily through Israel to everyone else.

Language assumes a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to communicate into the framework of a culture. Consequently, when we read a text written in another language and addressed to another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully.

We should therefore not speak of Israel being influenced by that world—they were part of that world.

Mythology by its nature seeks to explain how the world works and how it came to work that way, and therefore includes a culture’s “theory of origins.”

they thought about the cosmos in much the same way that anyone in the ancient world thought, and not at all like anyone thinks today.[1] And God did not think it important to revise their thinking.

Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say.

Another problem with concordism is that it assumes that the text should be understood in reference to current scientific consensus, which would mean that it would neither correspond to last century’s scientific consensus nor to that which may develop in the next century. If God were intent on making his revelation correspond to science, we have to ask which science.

So if God aligned revelation with one particular science, it would have been unintelligible to people who lived prior to the time of that science, and it would be obsolete to those who live after that time. We gain nothing by bringing God’s revelation into accordance with today’s science. In contrast, it makes perfect sense that God communicated his revelation to his immediate audience in terms they understood.

there is no concept of a “natural” world in ancient Near Eastern thinking. The dichotomy between natural and supernatural is a relatively recent one.

Creation thus constituted bringing order to the cosmos from an originally nonfunctional condition.

Consequently, to create something (cause it to exist) in the ancient world means to give it a function, not material properties.

Would they have believed that their gods also manufactured the material? Absolutely, for nothing can be thought to stand apart from the gods. But they show little interest in material origins.

All of this information leads us to conclude that the “beginning” is a way of talking about the seven-day period rather than a point in time prior to the seven days.

The proposals of this chapter can be summarized by the following expanded interpretive translation of verse 1: “In the initial period, God created by assigning functions throughout the heavens and the earth, and this is how he did it.”

While the Hebrew term could be used in any of those ways, the context indicates a different direction. We can find out what the author means when saying all of these things are “good” by inquiring what it would mean for something not to be good. Fortunately the near context offers us just such an opportunity: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This verse has nothing to do with moral perfection or quality of workmanship—it is a comment concerning function. The human condition is not functionally complete without the woman. Thus throughout Genesis 1 the refrain “it was good” expressed the functional readiness of the cosmos for human beings.

All of this indicates that cosmic creation in the ancient world was not viewed primarily as a process by which matter was brought into being, but as a process by which functions, roles, order, jurisdiction, organization and stability were established.

If “light” refers to a period of light in verse 5 and in verse 4, consistency demands that we extend the same understanding to verse 3, and here is where the “aha!” moment occurs. We are compelled by the demands of verses 4 and 5 to translate verse 3 as “God said, ‘Let there be a period of light.’ ” If we had previously been inclined to treat this as an act of material creation, we can no longer sustain that opinion. For since what is called into existence is a period of light that is distinguished from a period of darkness and that is named “day,” we must inevitably consider day one as describing the creation of time. The basis for time is the invariable alteration between periods of light and periods of darkness. This is a creative act, but it is creation in a functional sense, not a material one.

Instead of objectifying this water barrier, we should focus on the important twofold cosmic function it played. Its first role was to create the space in which people could live. The second and more significant function was to serve as a mechanism by which precipitation was controlled—the means by which weather operated.

So on day one God created the basis for time; day two the basis for weather; and day three the basis for food. These three great functions—time, weather and food—are the foundation of life. If we desire to see the greatest work of the Creator, it is not to be found in the materials that he brought together—it is that he brought them together in such a way that they work.

The difference when we get to the creation of people is that even as they function to populate the world (like fish, birds and animals), they also have a function relative to the rest of God’s creatures, to subdue and rule. Not only that, but they have a function relative to God as they are in his image. They also have a function relative to each other as they are designated male and female. All of these show the functional orientation with no reference to the material at all.

This archetypal understanding applies also to Genesis 2. An individual named Adam is not the only human being made of the dust of the earth, for as Genesis 3:19 indicates, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” This is true of all humans, men and women. It is an archetypal feature that describes us all. It is not a statement of chemical composition nor is it describing a material process by which each and every human being is made. The dust is an archetypal feature and therefore cannot be viewed as a material ingredient. It is indicative of human destiny and mortality, and therefore is a functional comment, not a material one.

The role of the temple in the ancient world is not primarily a place for people to gather in worship like modern churches. It is a place for the deity—sacred space. It is his home, but more importantly his headquarters—the control room.

Sometimes people have raised the question, What did God do on the eighth day? In the view being presented here, on the eighth day, and on every day since then, he is in the control room from where he runs the cosmos that he set up.

In summary, we have suggested that the seven days are not given as the period of time over which the material cosmos came into existence, but the period of time devoted to the inauguration of the functions of the cosmic temple, and perhaps also its annual reenactment.

This is not a conclusion designed to accommodate science—it was drawn from an analysis and interpretation of the biblical text of Genesis in its ancient environment. The point is not that the biblical text therefore supports an old earth, but simply that there is no biblical position on the age of the earth.

Viewing Genesis 1 as an account of functional origins of the cosmos as temple does not in any way suggest or imply that God was uninvolved in material origins—it only contends that Genesis 1 is not that story.

Reading the text scientifically imposes modern thinking on an ancient text, an anachronism that by its very nature cannot possibly represent the ideas of the inspired human author.

For those who have in the past adopted the framework hypothesis, the theory proposed in this book does not require them to discard that interpretation, but only to accept the functional perspective alongside it. This does not require replacement, but would add value.

Instead of offering a statement of causes, Genesis 1 is offering a statement of how everything will work according to God’s purposes. In that sense the text looks to the future (how this cosmos will function for human beings with God at its center) rather than to the past (how God brought material into being).[9] Purpose entails some level of causation (though it does not specify the level) and affirms sovereign control of the causation process.

Obviously, God is not asking us to imitate his sabbath rest by taking the functional controls. I would suggest that instead he is asking us to recognize that he is at the controls, not us. When we “rest” on the sabbath, we recognize him as the author of order and the one who brings rest (stability) to our lives and world.

Sabbath isn’t the sort of thing that should have to be regulated by rules. It is the way that we acknowledge that God is on the throne, that this world is his world, that our time is his gift to us.

I have proposed that the most careful, responsible reading of the text will proceed with the understanding that it is ancient literature, not modern science. When we read the text in the context of the ancient world we discover that what the author truly intended to communicate, and what his audience would have clearly understood, is far different from what has been traditionally understood about the passage.

The position that I have proposed regarding Genesis 1 may be designated the cosmic temple inauguration view.

They had little concern for the material structures; significance lay in who was in charge and made it work.

We must keep in mind that we are presumptuous if we consider our interpretations of Scripture to have the same authority as Scripture itself.

We overrate eyewitnesses in our culture. The Bible is much more interested in understanding what God did rather than what an eyewitness would see.