By Alan Reynolds

November 2008

If so, then you do not believe the Bible – at least you don’t accept the scientific understanding of the universe, the world view, given us in the Bible.

Genesis

The picture we have in the opening chapter of Genesis – the cosmogony of Genesis – is typical of the Old Testament as a whole.  

The earth is not exactly flat, but shaped somewhat like a saucer or bowl, with hills (towers) around the edge. The earth itself rests on pillars, while over the earth, God placed “the firmament” (really a very solid sky  –  the Hebrew word means “to beat out with a hammer,” like sheet metal).  

In the firmament, God attached the sun and the moon and the stars.  Each evening, God “brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name” (Isaiah 40:26).  

Over the firmament and under the earth are the salt seawaters of primeval chaos.  

In the story of the Great Flood, the waters came from both under the earth and from over the firmament (Genesis 7:11).  Creation was a little pocket of order in an eternal chaos of darkness and swirling saltwater, “without form and void.” (For the Hebrews, fresh water was a blessing, salt water a symbol of primeval chaos.)

Picture of the universe

If we read the Bible simply as a science book, it is true that, simply as science, modern theories of  the Big Bang or evolution do conflict with the biblical account of creation. We simply do not have the same worldview, the same understanding and picture of the universe today.  

As a result, so very many people have come to reject the Bible as untrue.

The Bible is not a science book.  Any attempt to reconcile the ‘science’ of Genesis with present scientific theory is bound to be fruitless.

The words of God?

Most of us have come to believe the Bible is ‘The Word of God.’ But often, this has come to mean the Bible is the words of God. This is not what the Bible means.

In popular understanding, the Bible was written by God, who dictated to people (men) who acted as scribes – and who wrote down, word for word, everything that God said to them.  Therefore the whole Bible is ‘literally’ (letter for letter, word for word) true and must be ‘believed from cover to cover.’  

Such an understanding of inspiration is ancient, going back beyond Christian times – for instance, to some Pharisaic beliefs.  

It is truer of Islamic understanding, of how the Qur’an is inspired, rather than the Christian understanding of how the Bible is inspired. In Islamic understanding, God (Allah) spoke to Muhammad the prophet and instructed him to “recite” exactly what God spoke to him. For Muslims, then, the Qur’an is exactly ‘the words of God (Allah).’

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Scientific age  

I believe any attempt to understand the Bible literally, as the words of God, raises more problems than it solves.   Certainly it raises difficulties for people in this ‘scientific age.’

Anyone who has taken a high school science course is aware that there seems to be a major conflict between the creation story in the Bible and contemporary scientific theories – evolutionary theories – of life’s origins. Students in grade school ask: “Who came first – Adam and Eve, or the cave men?”

We reject the view that the Bible is ‘the words of God’ – not because it raises scientific problems, or because God must then be said to be self-contradictory, but because such an understanding of the Bible misses completely what it means to call the Bible ‘the Word of God.’

What the Bible means

To understand what the Bible means by ‘the Word of God,’ we go to the Bible itself.

First of all, recall the 27th chapter of Genesis.

Notice in this account how important it is to Esau to receive his father’s blessing.  

Esau and Jacob were twins, but Esau was first-born and therefore could claim the right of the first-born, the right of primogeniture.  

Jacob (the name means ‘usurper’) was born with his hand clutching the heel of Esau, the first-born. This story tells how Jacob (who was later called Israel, and hence the father of the ‘children of Israel’) usurped the father’s blessing.

A few simple words

Esau, the rough and ready man of the fields and mountains, wept like a baby because he had been deprived of his father’s blessing, a few simple words of an old man. And Isaac, the father, having spoken the blessing on Jacob, could not repeat it for his first-born son, Esau. It was Jacob he had blessed: “yes, and he shall be blessed!”  

Next, turn to the book of Numbers, chapters 22 – 24,  the story of the prophet Balaam.  

In this strange story, Balak, king of Moab, placed more confidence in the power of the spoken word of the prophet (Balaam) than he did in his own army.

Notice also that Balaam, who was a true prophet, could speak only what was given him by God to speak.  He couldn’t pronounce a curse on Israel as Balak wished, he could only bless them.  “How can I curse whom God has not cursed?”

The power of words

What seems to be the outstanding feature these stories have in common?  Isn’t it that in both stories words are understood to have a power in themselves?  

The Hebrews, you see, held the belief that words did have power in themselves, power to accomplish what they said.  Words of blessing did indeed bless, and the expression “God damn you!”  –  so common in our society  –  would have been considered a most dangerous and terrible thing to say.

Why? Because to the Hebrews, a person’s spirit resided in his or her breath.  

November 2008