Ancient Biblical Cosmology

Transcript

I'm going to start off with how often have we been presented with this view of science and faith in the modern world, whether it's creation versus evolution, just science versus religion in general. People say it's reason versus superstition, all this. And there's at least an apparent conflict. Maybe we all have our ideas about whether or not there is a conflict, but it can be a big challenge for a lot of people's faith. And yeah. So what are some solutions to this? I think a common solution, what Ken Ham does with Answers in Genesis and the Ark encounter and all that is the science is wrong and the Bible is right. I think a lot of other people will go and try and reinterpret the Bible to make it fit the science. And I think most people kind of just ignore the issue. I heard a lot of people say it doesn't matter how God created the earth. The important thing is the gospel message in Jesus. And yeah. So these are all different solutions people try and bring up to the apparent conflicts between religion and science. But what if there's a fourth option? What if the problem isn't with the Bible or with science? What if the problem is with our expectations? Are we approaching our interpretations from the wrong angle? Here's a quote from a Bible scholar that got me started on this, looking into this topic. If we try to turn our modern cosmology, if we try to turn Genesis into our modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that's never said. So how can we try and faithfully interpret the Bible? There's a lot of different interpretations. I think a lot of people sort of think the Bible is God's word written to me today. And it can be plainly and easily understood. A lot of people in the world might say the Bible is just a collection of old myths and there's no relevance to us. And the interpretation that I would lean towards, the third one, is that the Bible is God's word written for all people and all ages, but is only written to the ancient Israelites. So the Bible is written for us, but not necessarily to us. So there are several different, these are several different ways we can approach Bible study. But how can we, so how can we as Christians faithfully interpret the Bible? I lean towards the fourth option, but there are plenty of Christians that disagree. I know a lot of people who think, you know, looking into the Hebrew words and the ancient history is just like distracting from the message and a waste of time. And maybe in the broad sense, they're kind of right. Like you don't need a PhD in Bible scholarship to understand the good news of God's kingdom or to understand Jesus's teachings. That being said, when we run into deeper questions and conflicts like this apparent science religion conflict, it might be a good idea to start looking a little deeper into the text. And in my opinion, based on the third way of interpreting here, I think that requires we need leave all of our like modern cultural baggage at the door when we go into the Bible. This is a lot easier said than done, but there's a lot we can learn from trying. So here's, so this class is basically going to be about our, one of many of our cultural, pieces of cultural baggage that we bring to the Bible that if we let it go and let the Bible speak for itself, we can learn a lot of interesting stuff. So here is sort of our modern understanding of the universe. I know this is not properly to scale or whatever, and the planets are way further apart, but this is kind of the picture we have of our universe, like the stars, the planets, the sun, versus this is something like a rough drawing of more what people in the ancient world would have thought of the earth. There's the firmament as this solid dome, the pillars of the earth, the underworld, the waters below, the waters above. In most of the ancient world, like Babylon, Egypt, Canaan, Israel, everyone kind of shared this same basic cosmology of the universe. In the scripture, we can only really kind of roughly piece this together from different references, but when you approach it with this picture in mind, the whole kind of world begins to solidify in this cultural context, because there's outside sources of this too. So biblical evidence, start Job 38, verses 4 to 6. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth, and what were its bases sunk? So we could think of this as like, you know, this poetic language about how God is more powerful than us, and it is, but also if you picture of the Bible that a lot of people had. Another example, Genesis 1, verses 6 to 8, and God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the water. Sorry, I think I mistyped that in. Let it divide the waters below from the waters beneath. And God made the firmament and divided the waters, which were under the firmament, and the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so, and God called the firmament heaven, and in the evening and the morning were the second day. So the word firmament is really interesting. This Hebrew word translated as firmament, it derives from the verbal root raqwa. Dad can probably help me pronounce these. I'm not going to pretend I know any Hebrew, but it means, the root of the word means to beat out or to stamp out or spread out. In the Hebrew Bible, this word was specifically used to describe the process of beating out metal into thin solid plates. So that's an interesting way to describe the sky, as this solid beaten out thing, and not how we would normally think of it if we're thinking about the world from our modern idea of a rock floating through space with gas surrounding it. So here's another example. In Genesis 7 verse 11, in the 600 year of Noah's life, in the second month on the 17th day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of heaven were opened. So this is specific language here. Why would they use the word windows? I'm going to present not like dogmatically, but I think it's because they actually believed in literal windows and the solid firmament that kept the waters above out. And when God opens the windows, it floods the earth. Here's kind of one more drawing that kind of gives you an idea of a picture that the ancient people would have in their minds. When we read Genesis from this perspective, it kind of radically changes what kind of creation we're picturing. We traditionally kind of picture God speaking outer space and the stars and existence. But when we take away like our cultural lens of how we view the world, the Bible kind of presents God cutting through the chaos and ordering the formless void into the formless void of the universe into something good where humans can dwell. So I'm aware a lot of people think this is just all poetic language and that Genesis is perfectly understanding of the earth. And you're definitely free to think that I'm not saying I'm right here for like everything I present, there's going to be counter arguments of people interpreting this under like a round earth perspective. You know, some people point to the circle of the earth in Isaiah 22 as evidence. But remember, none of this changes the core message of salvation, it just changes how we interpret the details. So in any of these discussions, we should treat each other gently and try and discuss seeking to understand rather than to be understood. And we can have a good time. So here's another interesting thing is the historical contrast. So in this Babylonian epic myth that was found on some clay tablets, there's a very similar creation or there's a similar creation story in that it's a similar world, but very different in how it's created. So in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, it describes this story where the storm god Marduk kills the sea monster Timah and rips it in half and uses the monster's body to create the firmament. And so the biblical account uses the same cosmology, they still viewed the world as like a firmament separating waters below from waters beneath sitting on foundations, but it uses radically different theology. Rather than the world being born out of violence of many gods and monsters, it's simply spoken into order by one all powerful God. So built into the Israelite creation story is a direct contrast to the pagan creation myths. And in the process, it reveals something about God's character. So what's the significance to us? In the ancient world, gods rested in temples and when God rests on the seventh day, he isn't tired. He is taking up residence in the universe. Genesis one is the story of God building a cosmic temple. So why does this matter to us? Genesis one is about God establishing the earth as his temple so we can dwell with humanity. Then, sorry, if Genesis one is about God establishing the earth as a cosmic temple so he can dwell with humanity, then God's ultimate goal has always been about the earth. This is kind of one more line of reasoning to support the idea of the kingdom on earth. The story of the Bible isn't about humanity trying to escape the earth and go to heaven as disembodied souls. The story of the Bible begins with God coming down to dwell with humanity in the garden. When that is lost, the rest of the Bible is God's rescue plan to restore the earth so he can dwell there again. And we look forward to one day that happening. Revelation 21 has, says, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people and he will dwell with them. So that's the future that we all look forward to. So conclusion, we don't need to choose between taking the Bible seriously and accepting modern science. We don't even have to work to make them fit. When we let go of our modern ideas about the world and read scripture as a message from God to people, then we open up a whole new world of beautiful interpretations. So yeah, now we can open it up to some discussion if anybody has questions and we can talk about it.