Taking Joseph and Brigham's Advice with Genesis

I have a key by which I understand the scriptures. I enquire, what was the question which drew out the answer or caused Jesus to utter the parable? -- Joseph Smith

Do you read the Scriptures, my brethren and sisters, as though you were writing them a thousand, two thousand, or five thousand years ago? Do you read them as though you stood in the place of the men who wrote them? -- Brigham Young

Biblical inerrancy is a Christian doctrine that Mormons have always rejected. However, in practice we sometimes replace biblical inerrancy with our own brand of prophetic inerrancy, especially when it comes to Joseph Smith's revelations. This puts us in a similarly uncomfortable position as that of evangelical Christians when scientific, historical, archaeological, linguistic, textual--whatever--evidence clashes with scripture. A number of evangelical Christian scholars argue that the key to resolving at least some of these tensions is to realize that (i) God accommodates himself to our level of understanding, and (ii) that things that make sense in an ancient culture/worldview may not make sense in ours.

An introduction to this approach to scripture is Inspiration and Incarnation (2005), by Peter Enns. I learned of the book from a post at FAIR Blog, where it was highly recommended. Enns uses an analogy to the incarnation of Jesus: just as Jesus was both human and divine, so the Bible is both a work of humans and inspired. He then applies this analogy to three Biblical difficulties: (i) similarities between the Old Testament and broader ancient Near Eastern culture and literature, (ii) theological diversity within the Old Testament, and (iii) the use and interpretation of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Enns clearly believes in the divinity of the Bible, but apparently his suggestion that the Bible bears marks of humanity was too much. In 2008 he was forced to leave his 15-year professorship at Westminster Theological Seminary.

There are several things that one should know about the world of the ancient Near East--the world in which the ancient Israelites lived. First, their view of the cosmos was something like this [1]:


If the ancient Israelites and their neighbors thought of such expressions as "pillars of the earth" or "windows of heaven" as exclusively figurative, as we do, they apparently did not indicate it.

Other things to know include:

• The ancient Israelites were surrounded by polytheism, where elements of nature were considered gods that were related to one another in various genealogies. Compared to the gods of the surrounding mighty empires, Yahweh was considered a small and insignificant tribal god.


• Other ancient Near Eastern creation myths have similar elements to that of Genesis, including overcoming chaos, division into seven periods, and resting at the end.


• In some Near Eastern creation myths humans are created as slaves to serve the gods.


• In addition to their numeric value, numbers also served symbolic purposes in ancient cultures.

Tie these things together and you can begin to see how the scriptural creation accounts deal with very different issues than we think of. For more information I recommend the resources below. Unfortunately, these issues seem to have largely gone untouched by LDS scholars. The few that I know of are noted.

Further Reading:

First let me highlight some of my own blog posts. I suggest reading all of my scriptural concordism posts, but especially see Genesis in Context and Rejecting Concordism.

Books:

Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, by Peter Enns. The book only spends a couple of pages on Genesis and creation. It is really more focused on developing the general argument.

The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, by Conrad Hyers. Actually I haven't read this book yet; it's in the mail. But if his writings available on the internet (see below) are any indication, it should be well worth reading.

Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Dana M. Pike, and David Rolph Seely. This recent book published by Deseret Book describes the context of the Old Testament with LDS sensitivities. For the purposes here, its value is in background information. It does not synthesize the information in the same way as the other listed sources do.

Online Articles:

Creation according to Genesis: Literary Genre, Cultural Context, Theological Truth (PDF), by Daniel Harlow, professor of religion at Calvin College. This is a very nice treatment of the above issues. If you read nothing else, read this.

by Conrad Hyers:

Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance
The Fall and Rise of Creationism
Dinosaur Religion: On Interpreting and Misinterpreting the Creation Texts
The Narrative Form of Genesis 1: Cosmogonic, Yes; Scientific, No
Comparing Biblical and Scientific Maps of Origins

LDS:

Adam's Navel, by Keith Norman. Originally published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 1988.

[1] A Mormon Midrash? LDS Creation Narratives Reconsidered, by Anthony Hutchinson in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought Vol. 21, No. 4, Winter 1988.

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