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

by John H. Walton

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.

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.

We must take the text on its own terms-it is not written to us. Much to our dismay then, we will find that the text is impervious to many of the questions that consume us in today's dialogues. Though we long for the Bible to weigh in on these issues and give us biblical perspectives or answers, we dare not impose such an obligation on the text. God has chosen the agenda of the text, and we must be content with the wisdom of those choices. If we attempt to commandeer the text to address our issues, we distort it in the process.

This is a helpful perspective way beyond Genesis 1!

In the ancient world, what was most crucial and significant to their understanding of existence was the way that the parts of the cosmos functioned, not their material status.