BioLogos and the ANE Context of Genesis

Among the features of BioLogos are a collection of "Scholarly Essays." Two that I want to highlight here, and that I think should be read together, are: "The Biblical Creation in its Ancient Near Eastern Context" by Joseph Lam, and "Biblical Creation and Storytelling: Cosmogony, Combat and Covenant" by Brian Godawa (see link above). These essays are similar to resources I highlighted in my earlier post, Taking Joseph and Brigham's Advice with Genesis.

Both essays address the themes, motifs, and purposes of the creation account in Genesis 1, particularly in relationship to the Ancient Near East (ANE). I am not going to re-hash them; go read them. But I do want to comment on something from the Godawa essay.

First I should say that it makes sense to me that Moses and the Israelites were not prepared to hear about many of the scientific facts and ideas that we take for granted. They weren't dumb, they simply lived in another world. A crash course in physics, geology, and biology probably would not have been that helpful. But even if we accept this, why would God make up the particular story we have in Genesis and the Book of Moses? I think Godawa may have hit on part of the answer.

One of the functions of ancient creation narratives is to literarily encode the religious and political overthrow of one culture by another. When a king or kingdom would rise to power in the ancient world, they would often displace the vassal culture’s creation stories with their own stories of how their deities triumphed over others to create the world in which they now lived....

God was preparing Israel to displace the pagan Canaanites and their gods both physically and literarily, so He inspired this authorship of the creation account to express that ancient Near Eastern motif of justifying transcendent authority and land ownership with a creation story.

I think this is a significant idea for understanding why God would give a less-than scientific/historical account of the creation. It wasn't just that the people would not understand much of what we take for granted, although that was probably part it. God's people needed a creation story that would help to give them a sense of identity and explain why the God of their small nation was superior to the gods of the surrounding empires, and worthy of worship. It was also going to have to compete with the stories of the gods of those surrounding empires. Since they lived in the ANE, it makes sense that God would use the surrounding themes and motifs and re-formulate them into a new creation story with its own theology. A creation account involving millions of years and impersonal, poorly understood laws of nature just wouldn't cut it--and given the culture, it might sound plain crazy.

Obviously I don't know whether this is actually correct, but it seems plausible to me.

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