Genesis Assassinates Religion

In America, many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the creation story in the bible. It tells how God created everything in six days. I cannot think of a piece of literature more debated, ridiculed, cherished, mocked, or disagreed on than this one. Honestly, I’ve changed my mind about it several times. It doesn’t seem to reconcile with science. It is ordered oddly. And it says odd things.

Some of you reading this think Genesis is wrong and totally silly.  If the first few pages of the bible are ridiculous, how can we take serious anything that follows? It is right here that some decide: “This is bullshit. There is no God.” I understand that logic. Unfortunately, it is a conclusion based on not understanding what Genesis is actually saying.

The main problem with Genesis is not what it is saying. It is that we read Genesis assuming the author is writing to us. The author of Genesis is not writing to you. He was writing to his contemporary culture. And that audience was near-east people in possibly 4,000 BCE.

We, however, are 21st century people. Our world is a little different. Shockingly, ancient near-east people didn’t have cellphones, Instagram, Facebook, airplanes, Walmart or McDonalds. And they looked at the world differently. Naturally, we read Genesis assuming a host of ideas about the world. And that makes it very hard to understand. Look, this literature is INCREDIBLY old.

Let’s say someone recorded you saying, “I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse.” Now you and I both know this is an expression meaning that you’re very hungry. But imagine someone reads this far in the future. They know that horse meat was commonly eaten in Europe and Asia. It is not ridiculous to imagine this person might conclude that you probably DO eat horse meat on a regular basis. But living in the United States, we know that is not true. One cannot even find horse meat in a grocery store here.

Language is complex and stems from culture. To understand ancient writings, we need to be familiar with ancient people and how they view the world. So let’s try an experiment. Read this excerpt from Genesis and think about what it is saying:

Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.¹

Before continuing have you made a couple conclusions about what this is saying? Reading this, you might be thinking several things. Perhaps that God made the stars, sun, and moon. Or that it happened on the 4^th day. These observations are not wrong. However, the ancient people who heard this, even people during Roman times, would have been thinking something very different. They would have gotten hung up on the fact that you just said the sun, moon, and stars are just lights that give us our seasons. The author in fact had to repeat it twice (probably because no one would believe him). He just demoted what you worship as a god to a mere light, made by some being of unimaginably more power.

The sun, moon, and stars were so ubiquitously worshiped that Moses later says this to the Jews (who had this nifty book we call Genesis):

And when you look up into the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars—all the forces of heaven—don’t be seduced into worshiping them. The Lord your God gave them to all the peoples of the earth.²

We blow by the fact that the sun, moon, and stars were gods that were worshipped because you already agree with what the bible teaches. It took thousands of years for human culture to accept that the moon, stars, and sun are not supernatural godly beings. Genesis, whether you like it or not, has already been shaping our own worldview. It made a correct assertion that science couldn’t prove until thousands of years later. And it did this without the benefit of any modern tools or technology.

The creation account in Genesis methodically and carefully assassinates the beliefs behind every single religion of the ancient near east.³ It so thoroughly does this that it is not surprising that the ancient Israelites struggled to believe what it says. Genesis, is incredibly radical, beyond expectation. But, as this passage shows, probably not in ANY of the ways you imagine.

So, I’d like to invite you on a journey. This series of blog posts aims to remove our cultural eyesight and look at the ideas of Genesis anew. It will explain our assumptions when reading the text and hopefully illuminate ancient man’s assumptions, so we can see what it is really getting at! My hope is that you will look at this ancient work in a new way.

1. Genesis 1:14-19
2. Deuteronomy 4:19
3. Genesis may possibly be the most anti-religious writing ever recorded. Not because it rejects spirituality or God, but because its claims and ideas directly oppose all of it’s contemporary religions and religious practices. Subsequent posts in this series will expound on this idea.