In a previous post, I detailed President McKay’s explicit, published, written approval of a very pro-evolution LDS magazine article. This served as evidence that President McKay did not understand Genesis 1 to prohibit an old earth, evolution, etc.
I’m not sure either of these merit reading today, but I’ve skimmed both in order to understand how they represented McKay’s views and why he liked them so much. In general, both are pro-evolution, pro-old earth, and assume the validity of general scientific research, all things in conflict between McKay and Joseph Fielding Smith. I won’t go into further details here, (I do in my book) but want to highlight an interesting point from Noüy.
Noüy makes this concordism explicit on p. 113, where he states that he will try to “analyze the sacred text as though it were a highly symbolic and cryptic description of scientific truths.” If you’ve read any kind of older treatment of Genesis, such a statement creates the expectation that the next bits would include things like “‘darkness was over the surface of the deep’ means the atmosphere was still too thick and humid to allow sunlight through.”
Instead, Noüy gets quite original. He turns to Genesis 2-3, and reads the partaking of the fruit of the tree to represent the point in evolution where human(oid)s develop free will, “the birth of conscience.”
From then on, god can forbid this creature to obey certain intransgressible orders given to all the others, the physiological orders, the animal instincts. He can do this because this new being is free, which signifies that his endocrine bondage can cease if he wishes. Man, henceforth, has the choice either of obeying the orders of the flesh and consequently of rejoining his animal ancestors, of regressing; or else, on the contrary, struggling against these impulsions, these animal instincts, and of affirming the dignity he won when he acquired the last and highest liberty. If he chooses to play the part of Man, at the price of physical suffering and privations, he leaves the animal behind, he progresses as a Man, he continues evolution in the moral plane and is on the road which will eventually lead him to the spiritual plane…. The importance attributed by the sacred text to this event, the fact that it develops it and in reality makes it the first human event, the fact that, in spite of his disobedience, this guilty man is chosen as the founder of the human line, proves the henceforth preponderant importance of the liberty of choice.
This is one of the books pushed by David O. McKay in contrast to Smith’s Man, His Origin and Destiny, which, combined with the previous post about McKay, shows that he read Genesis very differently than Smith.
Speaking of the animal instincts, Noüy here evokes Robert Alter’s condemnation of Esau.
“Esau, the episode [in Genesis 25] makes clear, is not spiritually fit to be the vehicle of divine election, the bearer of the birthright of Abraham’s seed. He is altogether too much the slave of the moment and of the body’s tyranny to become the progenitor of the people promised by divine covenant that it will have a vast destiny to fulfill.” Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 41.
For more readings on Genesis and science, see my posts here and here.
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One part of my book on Genesis 1 (trying to finish this summer) addresses the question “Why can’t we just believe what our Church leaders have said about Genesis 1?” Well, that presumes two things, first, that a unified interpretation of how to read Genesis has existed among them, and second, that such a unified interpretation (if it existed) had come about via revelation.
I examine three Church presidents to demonstrate the variety of views. On one extreme is Brigham Young, and on the other sits Joseph Fielding Smith. In the middle is David O. McKay. His position was that Genesis was indeed revealed scripture but, contra Joseph Fielding Smith, that status did not mean it was historical/scientific in nature. Genesis was therefore not an obstacle to belief in evolution.
One piece of evidence for this is an article in The Instructor (July 1965, 272ff), written by BYU botany prof. Bertrand Harrison, “The Relatedness of Living Things.” Framed as a conversation between a biologist and his dairyman neighbor, the article addresses Genesis, special creation, natural selection, the fixity of the species, DNA, Charles Darwin, and the recentness of much of our scientific knowledge on these topics.
“What you say, and the way you put it, seems logical. It might even be true that plants and animals in general have come about through evolutionary processes, but I can’t accept the idea that man arose by such a process.”
“And why can’t you. Brother Scott?”
“Because I can’t understand how to reconcile an evolutionary origin of man and the Biblical story of Adam.” [We have a much better handle on this now, I think, though it’s not entirely solved. See below -Ben]
“I don’t understand it, either; neither do I really understand the hereafter nor the preexistence. But where knowledge ends, faith must take over. Still I see no great problem; there are so many explanations. For example, evolution might account only for man’s physical body; the addition of that ‘divine spark’ that sets man apart from the other animals might have been the final step that created the man, Adam. Whichever way it came about, I am willing to wait until some future time for the details.”….
“Well, Brother Nielsen, you have given me some interesting ideas to think about, but don’t think you’ve convinced me that evolution is true—I’m not ready to accept that!”
“Do you think I expected you to abandon the convictions of a lifetime as the result of an hour’s discussion? Each of us must interpret life in the light of his own information and background. One must have a broad understanding of biology to be competent to judge whether evolution is true or not. I have been studying biology for a quarter of a century—how could I expect you to see things as I see them, anymore than you could expect me now to be an expert in the dairy industry?” [ My italics.]
Now, how is this evidence for McKay’s view of reading Genesis? The beginning of the article includes a little box with the text,
This article by Brother Harrison has been read and approved for publication by the editor and associate editors of The Instructor. Like other articles in this series, it is presented not as Church doctrine but as a statement worthy of serious study, written by a faithful Latter-day Saint who is competent to speak as a scholar in his field.
Who was the editor of The Instructor? On the 6th page of the issue (p. 261), it says “Editor: President David O. McKay.”
This was not merely a rubber-stamp in McKay’s name, but an actual approval by McKay.
In 1985, Harrison was interviewed privately about this article (copy in my possession, thanks to Gregory Prince), partially reproduced below.
Harrison: I was trying to diffuse the concept of evolution somewhat by pointing out that we had built up a great fear of the word and what we’re really talking about is change, and the change is perfectly evident around us in domestic animals. So I thought that the best approach would be to start with something that everybody knew something about, and I thought that by using a conversational format I could introduce certain things that I wanted to introduce, particularly the right of a person who has a background in biological science to believe in evolution, and for the person who doesn’t have such a background not to believe in evolution, and that there is room for both of us in the Church. This was kind of the purpose I had in mind.
Miller: Who authorized publications in The Instructor?
Harrison: When I completed the article, I took it over to President Crockett and told him about the situation. President Ernest Wilkinson was ill with a heart attack at home and Earl Crockett was the acting president, and he said, “Well, for your own protection, I think you should insist that this be read by one of the General Authorities.” So I handed it in to The Instructor Committee, that is to Lorin, and I said, “I’m submitting this for publication only if it is approved by a responsible member of the General Authorities.” And Lorin just kidded me and laughed about it ever since, “Who did I think was not a responsible member of the General Authorities?” But he says, “I think I know who you’re talking about.” Lorin submitted this to the superintendency of the Sunday School which was Brother [George] Hill, Lynn S. Richards, and David Lawrence McKay and they approved it. But then Lawrence McKay took it to his father President McKay and read it to him, and President McKay suggested that I delete one example which I had included, and other than that approved publication for it verbatim as I had written it.
Miller: That is implied in the—when your article was printed, there was an insert.
Harrison: There was a footnote there that it was approved by the Editor of The Instructor. [Vol. 100:272-276, 1965]
Miller: That would have been President McKay.
Harrison: And then it specified that the Editor is President McKay. Lorin Wheelwright was the Managing Editor.
While I read this episode for President McKay’s views on how to read Genesis (my book is about Genesis 1, after all, not evolution), it demonstrates pretty clearly that President McKay’s understanding of Genesis did not in any way preclude evolution. However, he was characteristically reluctant to impose those views on the Church as a whole. He was similarly reluctant to allow Joseph Fielding Smith to impose his even stronger anti-evolution views upon the Church as a whole. (If you haven’t read it, Prince’s David O. McKay and the Rise of the Modern Mormonism is excellent, and has a short section on McKay and evolution.) Nevertheless, Smith’s views generally prevailed in popular Mormon understanding and among CES teachers, in spite of official statements that the Church had no formal position on evolution.
It pays to read the Church magazines, current and past.
*I noted that we now have a much better handle on how to read the early chapters. I’ve written about that fairly extensively, and of course, it’s my book topic, but see here for some other reading suggestions.
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Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge; Screencap from the Muppet Christmas Carol
We’re in a new ward, and with the new meeting changes, talks sermons are assigned 6-8 minutes length. I was in the anchor spot, and so prepared to stretch or compress my remarks. I tend to prepare an outline (so there’s plenty of ad-libbing), with my stories, scriptures, or anything I want to read printed in full, so there’s no fumbling between papers or flipping through scriptures looking for the right page. One other speaker and I were on the stand early, the other came in about 10 minutes after Sacrament began. I spent those ten minutes reorganizing an expansion out to about 20 minutes, then had to contract when said speaker appeared. Here’s my written adaptation of remarks I made after I introduced us to the ward.
When Jesus was on the cross, he looked down on his physical tormentors and prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) This is an example of divine forgiveness, given how painful the crucifixion must have been.
But how do we forgive someone who does know exactly what they are doing? Who deliberately causes us harm or offends? Someone who knows just what buttons to push and mashes them hard? Those people who know us best are capable of hurting us the worst, and they are often family.
In Genesis 25, Jacob gets his twin brother Esau to sell him the birthright for a bowl of lentils. Among other things, this meant Jacob would receive 2/3 of Isaac’s possessions and Esau 1/3. Jacob “doubles his money” with that sly move. At best, that’s an expensive bowl of soup. At worse, it’s taking serious advantage of someone in a weakened position, a sin condemned repeatedly by Deuteronomy.
Further, in chapter 27, Father Isaac offers Esau a dying blessing, but first wants a bowl of his favorite goat stew, prepared by Esau. Now, Jacob and Esau were not identical twins. Esau was hairy and reddish (which is probably something like what Esau means), whereas Jacob was apparently smooth and baby-faced. Esau was an outdoorsy hunter-type, and Jacob more of an indoorsy nerd (to the extent that such terms apply to nomadic herders). While Esau goes off to hunt a goat, Jacob quickly slaughters one, makes the stew, puts goat skin on his arms so he will feel and smell more like Esau, and, in perhaps the earliest recorded case of identify theft, passes himself off as Esau to steal his blessing. (Genesis 27:19) [This is part of a series of deceptions over generations. See here for further discussion of “patriarchs acting badly”]
Esau reacts like any of us would when so “wounded in the house of friends” and family (Zech 13:6). He “lifted up his voice and wept…. and hated Jacob” and thought of killing him. (Ge 27:38, 41.) Jacob pushed Esau’s buttons in a case of family betrayal for personal gain, tale as old as time.
In scripture, forgiveness often appears as a financial metaphor. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers as a model of prayer, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matt 6:12-13)
This is a useful metaphor to explore. Do we keep track of who owes us, morally speaking? Who has wronged us and exactly how much?
We’re not too far off the Christmas season, and I assume many of us watched some version or another of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, in which Ebenezer Scrooge plays the central role. My favorite version is the Muppets, with Gonzo playing the narrative role of Charles Dickens, accompanied by Rizzo the Rat (who is just there for the food.)
Gonzo Dickens describes Scrooge as “a tight-fisted hand… a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” He intends to evict a number of his customers on Christmas Day.
Are we like Scrooge with those who wrong us, hoarding and carefully counting every penny of offense taken out against our account? Gleefully ready to avenge and foreclose on our debtors when they least expect it? Do we covet having people in our moral debt?
If so, like Ebenezer, we need to be visited by the spirit and repent.
Now, while Scrooge has become emblematic of miserly accounting, moral and otherwise, Ebenezer is ironically named. You may know the puzzling line in the popular song Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come.”
Ebenezer’s name goes back to 1 Samuel 7:12, and the idea even earlier to Jacob at Bethel, who sets up a memorial stone for God. éven-ēzer means “stone of help,” and refers to the Rock of Israel, the God described as “merciful and gracious… forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex 34:6–7). This is Ebenezer Scrooge’s namesake. Ezer or “help” is a divine attribute, found in such names as Ezra and Azriel, “God is (my) help” and also in the Genesis narrative, where it tends to be mistranslated and misunderstood; Eve is there described as a “help,” the only single mortal so described in the Old Testament, but I digress. Forgiveness, mercy, and generosity are divine attributes. Ebenezer Scrooge repents and begins to embody his namesake more after listening to the spirit(s) sent to him.
How do we forgive when we see God as the culprit responsible for our troubles?
In the epic poem and greatest parable of the ancient world, Job first loses his livelihood, then his family, then his health, and then in a sense, his friends and his wife. His friends accuse him of divinely deserving his misfortune due to secret sin, and his wife’s advice is to “curse god and die.” (Job 2:9) Job’s response is one of steadfast but uncomfortable faith. Psalms make it clear that it is ok to be angry at God, to protest what we see as His actions. This anger coincides with faith instead of undermining it, as we question the divine calculus.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD! (Psalm 13)
One Psalmist consoles himself by seeking peace in holy places.
as for me, my feet had almost stumbled;my steps had nearly slipped.For I was envious of the arrogant;I saw the prosperity of the wicked….It was for nothing that I kept my heart pure! and Washed my hands in innocence! seeing that I have been constantly afflicted,that each morning brings new punishments….I applied myself to understand this,but it seemed a hopeless task, till I entered God’s sanctuary (Psa 73)
To take a more recent story, look to Hugh B. Brown, counselor to President McKay in 1968. He had been afflicted in life by Trigeminal Neuralgia, an extremely painful nerve disorder of the face sometimes described as “being stabbed with an electric shock knife.” Brown tells this story [paraphrased/edited/modified below]
“I found myself in Europe. I had made some progress in the First World War in the Canadian army. In fact, I was a field officer, and there was only one man between me and the rank of general, which I had cherished in my heart for years. Then he became a casualty. And the day after, I received a telegram from London from General Turner, who was in charge of all Canadian officers. The telegram said, “Be in my office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”
I puffed up. I called my special servant. (We called them “batmen” over there.) I said, “Polish my boots and my buttons. Make me look like a general, because I am going up tomorrow to be appointed.”
He did the best he could with what he had to work on, and I went to London. I walked into the office of the general. I saluted him smartly, and he replied to my salute as higher officers usually do to juniors—sort of a “Get out of the way, worm.” Then he said, “Sit down, Brown.”
I was deflated. I sat down. And he said, “Brown, you are entitled to this promotion, but I cannot make it. You have qualified and passed the regulations, you have had the experience, and you are entitled to it in every way, but I cannot make this appointment.”
Just then he went into the other room to answer a phone call, and I did what most every officer and man in the army would do under those circumstances: I looked over on his desk to see what my personal history sheet showed. And I saw written on the bottom of that history sheet in large capital letters: “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.”
Now at that time we were hated heartily in Britain, and I knew why he couldn’t make the appointment. Finally he came back and said, “That’s all, Brown.”
I saluted him, less heartily than before, and went out. On my way back to Shorncliffe, 120 kilometers away, I thought every turn of the wheels that clacked across the rails was saying, “You’re a failure. You must go home and be called a coward by those who do not understand.”
And bitterness rose in my heart until I arrived, finally, in my tent, and I rather vigorously threw my cap on the cot, together with my Sam Browne belt. I clenched my fist, and I shook it at heaven, and I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I’ve done everything that I knew how to do to uphold the standards of the Church. I was making such wonderful growth, and now you’ve cut me down. How could you do it?”
I was driven to my knees, where I prayed for forgiveness for my arrogance and my ambition.”
Like Job, Brown was “doing everything right” and felt God had deeply wronged him. He humbled himself enough to recognize that although his life had not gone as he felt he deserved for “doing everything right,” God was nevertheless God, and ultimately had his best interests at heart, painful though the intervening mortality might be. Like Scrooge, Brown had to experience a change of heart, which lead him to forgive God.
Returning to Jacob and Esau, Jacob knew he had done wrong. Years later, when he encounters Esau, fully grown and with a family, so deep is his fear of retribution that he sends Esau gifts, divides his family in half, and hides them in two groups, lest Esau find and kill them all.
How does Esau react?
“Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” (Genesis 33:4)
We do not know what had happened with Esau in the intervening time, but he had apparently arrived at a place where he could forgive his twin brother. For his part, Jacob’s catharsis of being forgiven of such devious harm to a family member left him (and me) in a deeply emotional, spiritual state. To Esau he says, “to see your face is like seeing the face of God, [because] you have received me favorably.” (Genesis 33:10)
Jacob sees in Esau the divine face of forgiveness, of mercy, of letting it go.
I’m a history guy and a language guy, and so I did a little research. As it turns out, the earlier uses of English forgive, a thousand years ago, include more broader meanings like, to give up, cease to harbor (resentment, wrath); give up resentment, pardon (an offender), let go. And as it turns out, the Greek word translated as “forgive” in the New Testament also has broader meaning. Gr. aphiēmi means, generally, to release, to let go. As I read that in my Greek lexicon, I couldn’t help but smile and hum a popular Disney tune about letting it go.
To conclude. Forgiveness is divine. When we forgive, we become a human proxy doing the work of a merciful God. We become better disciples of Jesus, whose entirely earthly mission was to enable forgiveness. May we repent like Jacob and forgive like Esau. May we recognize the face of God in those who forgive us of our deliberate, calculated offenses. May we change like Ebenezer Scrooge, and become a “rock of help” to those around us, to those who need our forgiveness. May we wipe the ledger clean, and let it go.
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BYU’s Late Summer Honors offered a course recently called, “What Does it Mean to be Human? A Scientific and Spiritual Journey into Human Origins.” I was invited to take a 3-hr class period to talk about what Genesis has to say about evolution and the place of humanity in creation. I’ve presented much of what I said before, in other venues, but virtually everything was new to these freshman honors students. By necessity, I tried to keep it simple and use some humor.
Eleven of twelve were science majors and familiar with evolution, but none had seen this kind of “professional” approach to scripture before. This is not surprising (since Mormons are not taught or modeled this kind of thing) but it is problematic (see at the very bottom). I plugged BYU’s ANES Major and minor, which does model this approach.
Here’s a long outline, with links. Bibliography link here and at the bottom.
Evolution and Humanity: “Reading” Genesis like an Ancient Israelite
How we read and how they understood are probably quite different. We suppose our worldview is “natural” and shared by people throughout history, but this isn’t the case at all.
Why is Genesis important to Mormons?
Echoed in Moses, Abraham, Temple, etc.
No time to cover relevant questions out of the Book of Mormon, D&C, or Pearl of Great Price, but I address it somewhat at the Joseph Smith Papers Conference (and will again, TBD).
Because of time constraints, I had to lay some groundwork, then jump to conclusions, skipping over the work in between. So we need to do some 2+2=4, skip the calculus, but then show the conclusions of the calculus. So if it seems like there’s a gap between points A and C, please understand that this is my area of training and expertise, ask me questions, and trust me that B is solid.
Lastly in our intro, let’s note that D&C 101:32-33 implies that how the earth was made has not yet been revealed.
Framing of Science vs. Religion
In the late 1800s, Draper and White each published polemical books popularizing the “warfare” or “conflict” model of science and religion. Watch this short clip
At one far end, Brigham Young: Genesis is “baby stories,” not revelation, not facts.
At the far other end, Joseph Fielding Smith: Genesis is scripture, and that means it must be scientific and factual. Smith committed to young-earth creationism throughout his life. (See here and here.)
In the middle, David O. McKay: Genesis is scripture, but that doesn’t entail what Joseph Fielding Smith thinks. (See here and here.)
No one has claimed revelation for their views on Genesis and evolution, they just have different interpretations of the relevant scriptures, stemming from different, unstated interpretive assumptions.
The one exception is Elder Packer, who listed personal revelation as his sixth reason for rejecting evolution; however, he said, “I have asked, but not how man was created; I have asked if the scriptures are true.” He extrapolated from his positive response that if scripture is true, evolution cannot be. I agree with the answer, “yes, the scriptures are true” but disagree with his interpretation of what that means, which gets us right back into the question, how do we interpret scripture?
Groundwork and Interpretation
I used this Dilbert cartoon to illustrate common (but incorrectunderstandings of what “literal” means and when you interpret, i.e. “literal is the face-value ‘obvious’ meaning, and you only engage in interpretation when you want to avoid what it ‘obviously’ means.”
In reality, interpretation, or the assignment of meaning, is happening all the time, consciously or unconsciously, whenever you read.
Interpretation is both 1) unavoidable and 2) contingent on our individual knowledge and assumptions.
I reused several slides from a related paper to illustrate that since human assumptions and knowledge are just as involved in interpreting scripture as they are in interpreting nature/science, the rhetorical contrast between “the theories of men” and “the word of God” is not very strong. That is, interpretation of both nature and scripture is filtered through human minds; for example, Joseph Smith received repeated verbal inspiration in D&C 130:14-16, and then explicitly had to interpret it.
I may also have pointed out that if you accept the earth as a globe rotating around the sun, you’ve rejected clear scriptural teachings in favor of human reasoning and science. (A point I made at the FAIR conference.)
President Hugh B. Brown quoting Elder Anthony R. Ivins, “It is our misinterpretation of the word of the Lord that leads us into trouble.” From “What is man and what may he become” in The Instructor, June 1958, 174. (Audio, PDF)
What does “Literal” mean?
“When someone insists that Genesis 1 should be interpreted literally, it is often an expression of their conviction that the interpreter rather than the author has initiated another level of meaning.” Walton, Lost World of Genesis One
But “literal” as commonly used doesn’t reflect its actual meaning.
When Augustine wrote his multi-volume Literal Meaning of Genesis, he used the term deliberately and clearly. “To distinguish his approach… from highly allegorical or moral readings of Genesis that were common during this period, Augustine sought, in his literal meaning, to establish the sense intended by the author.” Peter Harrison, in this volume.
Indeed, numerous Protestant and Catholic authors, including Pope Pius XII and the Catechism of the Catholic Church define “literal interpretation” as “the sense intended by the author.”
Is it likely that reading Genesis in translation, without any contextual knowledge, with a radically different worldview and cultural lens, will accurately capture what it meant to ancient Israelites? No, it’s not.
“We ofttimes read our Bible as though its peoples were English or American and interpret their sayings in terms of our own background and psychology. But the Bible is actually a Near Eastern book. It was written centuries ago by Near Eastern people and primarily for Near Eastern people.” (Terminology modified.) Sidney Sperry, “Hebrew Manners and Customs” Ensign May 1972.
“To read the Bible fairly, it must be read as President Brigham Young suggested: ‘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?’ This is our guide. The scriptures must be read intelligently.”- Elder Widtsoe, published in Evidences and Reconciliations, but first in The Improvement Era, 43:6 (June 1940), 353.
There are different kinds of interpretation, and our concern today is on the literal (and therefore contextual) interpretation of Genesis. To do so, we need to talk about a few interpretive assumptions: Adaptation, Accommodation, Concordism, and Genre in Scripture.
Adaptation is the idea that revelation often creatively adapts, updates, reinterprets, recontextualizes, or integrates elements of the prophet’s culture and environment, giving these elements new meaning and significance in the process. God rarely seems to create meaning ex nihilo. There are a ton of examples in scripture and history. To choose a few,
Abraham saw circumcision in Egypt before it was adapted and transformed as the sign of the covenant in Genesis 14.
Mist surely refracted light into rainbows before it was transformed into the sign of the covenant in Genesis 9.
The Israelite temple adapts from Egyptian, Canaanite, and Mesopotamian architecture, ritual, implements, covenantal structures, language, etc.
The Sacrament is an adaptation and transformation of the Passover ritual.
In the D&C, “early Latter-day Saint converts were heirs to an ecclesiastical language inherited from the Christian tradition that the revelations routinely assumed, appealed to, and utilized to both reinforce old ideas and communicate new ones.” Source.
Genesis adapts both Israelite and non-Israelite creation ideas for a particular purpose.
Accommodation is the idea that “divine revelation is adjusted to the disparate intellectual and spiritual level of humanity at different times in history.” – Benin, The Footprints of God.
God adopts “the human audience’s finite and fallen perspective. Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumes them in order to communicate with us.” Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words.
That is, even when directly revealed from God, revelation may not be eternally strictly “correct” in a scientific, factual, doctrinal (remember “line-upon-line”?), moral, or ethical way. Accommodative revelation is how Jesus explains the divine tolerance of divorce in the Torah, even though God doesn’t actually want divorce (Matthew 19:8.)
Accommodation is found in the Old and New Testaments, D&C, Book of Mormon, throughout Jewish and Christian history, and also in the mouths of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and others. Compare these.
“The Torah speaks in human language” (Talmud)
“scripture speaks according to the notions of the people” (Aquinas, Summa)
God “speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding” (2 Nephi 31:3)
“these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.”(D&C 1:24)
I’ve talked at length about accommodation in a New Testament context here, and in a Genesis context here.
Accommodation means that we shouldn’t expect an ancient creation text like Genesis to reflect modern scientific or doctrinal truths, even in poetic or veiled language. God adopted ancient cosmology to answer important questions relevant to the Israelites’ needs at the time (more on this below.)
This means, to return to a previous point, that scripture comes to us already incorporated with the philosophies and assumptions of ancient people, not as a purely divine and coherent encyclopedia of facts and ethics.
Concordism is the idea that scripture and science must be in concord with each other, because God inherently speaks in scientific/historical/factual terms. This is a very common assumption, one that drives creationism and opposition to evolution. It also happens to be an assumption that is wrong. It is countered by accommodation, for example. I have a 45-minute conference presentation on concordism, where it came from, and why many believing scholars reject it today.
To introduce this idea, I showed students the creation sequence from Noah, written and produced by a Jewish agnostic/atheist. I asked them how the clip showed that he had something in common with Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham, who runs the Creation Museum and Ark Adventure. The answer is concordism, as Noah mashes up modern cosmological/evolutionary imagery with ancient scriptural language. The result of seeing that kind of thing is that you return to Genesis with a visual reaffirmation that Genesis is really talking about solar systems and evolution when it’s not doing so at all.
“While art and artists are often credited with making historical, and particularly religious, ideas come alive and plainer to understand, an inherent problem enters when the language of religious art becomes translated into the language of history by its viewer. What we see becomes what we believe, and often, therefore, what we think we know about facts and details of history. And when we learn religious facts and history (from scholars or historians) that contradict what we think we know (through artistic renderings), a state of cognitive dissonance—and in the case of religious art, spiritual dissonance—can often be the result.”
(See here at the bottom for source and discussion in terms of Joseph Smith’s seerstone and Book of Mormon translation.)
Concordism is a scientific wresting of scripture and scientific interpretations of Genesis (whether young-earth, old-earth, or otherwise) are not literal interpretations.
I then showed a slide of how ancient Israelites conceived of the cosmos, what Genesis and the rest of the Hebrew Bible envision, very similar to their ancient Near Eastern neighbors. This is the “inverse-snow-globe” model:a flat earth protected by a solid dome from the cosmic waters which surround it above and below. This is well-established by, e.g. Evangelical scholars, who certainly don’t hate the Bible or want to destroy it. God accommodated this cosmology in Genesis, as what was being taught was not cosmological/physical in nature.
The last assumption was about the presence of different genres in scripture, and how the “literal/figurative” interpretive dichotomy misleads us. I’ll point you to my discussions of this elsewhere: LDS Perspectives podcast, part 4 of my Sperry Symposium paper, this post, this post, this post, this post on Jonah… and I’ll stop there. A literal interpretation requires knowledge of genre and context.
Ancient Genesis, Evolution, and Humanity
Finally, then, what did Genesis mean to the Israelites?
I opened by asking what Batman reboots and Genesis had in common. The answer was “origin stories”! We think that “Who We Are” is dependent in some sense on “where” we come from, which is why Batman reboots ALWAYS have to show/tell about the tragic origins of Batman, even though we all know it. Similarly, as LDS Sidney Sperry wrote,
the writer of Genesis (in its present form) is more interested in showing to Israel who its great ancestors were than to tell about the origin of life and its institutions. This is readily seen in the fact that the origins of life and its institutions are briefly and concisely handled in the first [three] chapters, while thirty-nine chapters are required to tell about Abraham, the father of the faithful, and his immediate family.
As with Batman, what we’re concerned with is not so much *physical* origins as much as social, psychological origins. Genesis is not recounting a natural history of the earth’s physical creation for a modern reader with assumptions about the primacy of material (i.e. concordism). The material aspects of creation were not what mattered to the Israelites, anymore than the manufacturing process of Batman’s toys matters to us.
“The position of the creation story at the beginning of our Bible has often led to misunderstanding, as though the ‘doctrine’ of creation were a central subject of Old Testament faith. That is not the case.”- von Rad, Genesis, 45.
A toddler given a birthday present often ignores the actual present to focus on the box or wrapping paper. Similarly, what WE seize on as significant in Genesis is not what was significant to the Israelites. (Here is where I had to skip over a lot and offer several points to just assume for the rest of the lecture.)
Genesis 1 and 2-3 were separate Israelite creation stories from different time periods.
Genesis 1 was given its form as we know it today in Babylon, by Israelite priests during the Exile. It reflects priestly concerns, uses priestly terminology, and embodies priestly concepts. (On this and other points about Genesis 1, see my podcast here.)
They adapted from both Israelite and Babylonian material to produce Genesis 1 in support of Israelite doctrines of monotheism and the elevated place of humanity in creation, over against Babylonian ideas and “doctrine”.
Q: Are the days of creation about the age of the earth?
Not at all, and it’s concordist assumptions that drive incorrect interpretations like the day-age reading, where “day” just means “a really long time.” See my draft paper from the Mormon History Association here.
The priestly creation account of Genesis 1 uses a 7-day structure to emphasize both 1) sacred time (the Sabbath) since sacred space, the Israelite temple, has been destroyed and 2) the construction of God’s cosmic temple. These may be actual 24-hr days, but that doesn’t mean they are real, historical days. On this point, see my old post here and the clarifications in the comments. On God’s cosmic temple, see my review of Walton here.
Is creation even physical/material in Genesis?
Maybe. But I think there is a good argument to be made (following Walton) that for ancient Israelites, existence was not defined materially, but functionally. That is, to exist meant to have a name and a function in an ordered system. You could touch something that didn’t exist.
At the turn of the century, just as the similarities between humanoid fossils and humans suggested a close relationship, so too the similarities between newly discovered non-biblical and biblical creation stories strongly suggested a relationship between them.
Here, I introduced the Babylonian Enuma Elish, and pointed out several ways Genesis seemed to be implicitly responding to it and other ancient Near Eastern creation ideas. (I used the Star War prequels and the Phantom Edit to convey this point.) This includes
circumlocutions to avoid the names of other deities like sun (“greater light”), moon (“lesser light”), and sea (singular.); See post here.
paralleling the set-up of battle in Enuma Eliš with the presence of a deity, the Deep/waters, and wind/spirit, but having the God of Israel create only by speaking, not by battle. (This is particularly interesting, since elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, God is indeed portrayed as doing battle with the primordial waters before creation. See the same post here )
How Genesis portrays the God of Israel as superior to the polytheism of Babylon. This was a serious and devastating question since, theologically, Marduk had defeated Yahweh/Jehovah and destroyed his temple. Polytheism made a lot of sense to ancient peoples, see my post here. This, in fact, may have been the question of Genesis, which deity or deities are really in control of the universe.
We briefly compared the role of humans in Akkadian thought (as slaves to a sub-class of gods) with that of humans in Genesis, where creation is repeatedly said to be good, human creation is VERY good, and all humanity is said to be in the image of God, a description reserved for royalty elsewhere in the ancient Near East.
How “Adam” and “Eve” are mistranslated in the KJV, and ought to be understood as the more typological “Human” and “Life.” See my chapter in this book.
We touched on a few other points briefly, including whether Lehi’s discussion of “all things being a compound in one” reflected priestly ideas about creation through separation/definition/naming. (I think we misuse that passage frequently. “Opposition in all things” doesn’t mean “resistance, pushback” but “opposite, counterpart” the same way light and darkness are distinguished from each other in Genesis through being named. That is, I translate Genesis 1:4-5 as “God saw that the light was good, and established a distinction between the light and the darkness by designating the light as Day and the darkness as Night.”
I had several conclusions.
First, it should be clear that Genesis isn’t addressing modern concerns about science, evolution, the age of the earth, etc.
“Genesis 1 was not written to answer our curiosities about how the universe came to be. It was not written in code to show us that the Israelites had a basic grasp of the Big Bang, expanding universe, and Einstein’s theory of relativity.”- Peter Enns
Second, Genesis said some extremely important things to the Israelites in Babylon, who were surrounded by polytheists and having a theological crisis because they had “lost” to the Babylonians and the Jerusalem temple had been destroyed. If we think of Genesis in conversation with Enuma Elish, it might go like this.
“You [Babylonian Enuma Eliš] say the universe, and humankind’s place in it, is the result of a struggle between immoral and amoral deities the end-result of which is not favorable to humankind at all; I [Genesis] say that a single all-powerful God created a universe that is good and reflects well on its Creator, who made it as a habitat for humankind, the object of his blessing.” – Source.
Third, there remains a lot of thinking and work to be done to help LDS feel that evolution is less of a threat to their testimonies. Too much work in the science-and-religion-reconciliation business (esp. creationism/evolution) is done on the scientific side. This problem will not be solved by writing better essays on carbon-14 dating, dendrochronology, or whale flippers.
Rather, the problem lies in our interpretive assumptions about what revelation is, what scripture says and means, how we should interpret and understand it. That is where the conflict truly lies, and that is where the discussion should be. What did Genesis mean to the Israelites, and how should we understand it in a way that is faithful to scripture?
That’s not a discussion scientists are equipped for; contributing to this LDS conversation on the lay level will require gaining a little expertise in this area, reading this material, and “paying dues” as an active Latter-day Saint, in the words of LDS anthropologist Armand Mauss. To that end, I provided an annotated bibliography, much of which will be recognizable from my posts here, like this one.
*(Sidebar) It is problematic that LDS literature typically doesn’t model or teach any method of interpretation of Scripture for two reasons, one specific, one general.
First, and most specifically, while we are making great strides in how we teach modern LDS history (e.g. the Gospel Topics essays and release of the new history Saints today), we are not doing the same when it comes to ancient scripture. We’re creating a future crisis by not addressing this, as laid out here and here.
Second, our LDS materials implicitly teach that truth and scripture are simple, and understanding them is simple. What happens when we meet complexity? Does the mere presence of complexity throw our faith into crisis because we haven’t been primed to expect it? Davis Bitton wrote,
“What’s potentially damaging or challenging to faith depends entirely, I think, on one’s expectations, and not necessarily history. Any kind of experience can be shattering to faith if the expectation is such that one is not prepared for the experience…. the problem is the incongruity between the expectation and the reality.”
When people who have imbibed the “truth=simplicity” equation lose their testimonies and get flipped to the non-believing side, they often retain that equation. Through that distorting lens, more complex or nuanced arguments about history/scripture/prophets, even when made by professionals and experts, get labeled as “mental gymnastics” dodging “obvious” and “simple” truth. If, on the other hand, we showed people the actual process and work that goes into interpreting scripture and history especially when its messy, then they might be more prepared to handle messiness themselves. This would move them away from the very fragile “truth= simplicity” equation. It lets them learn to recognize when a bad argument or no argument at all is being made in scripture or history, and even make arguments themselves.
Elder Maxwell once said, “It never ceases to amaze me how gullible the Latter-day Saints can be. Our lack of doctrinal sophistication makes us an easy prey for such fads.”
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Elijah and da Bearss: 1 Obnoxious Teenagers: 0 ( Bundel, public domain via wikipedia)
Here’s the link to my combined podcast of lessons 29-30, and transcript. These chapters are about the transition from Elijah to Elisha and some of Elisha’ prophetic acts, which raise questions about the varying nature of prophets and prophetic succession. The manual suggests that in 2:1-10, “Elijah prepares Elisha to become the new prophet.” This kind of language assumes several things, namely, that there is only “one” prophet, namely,“the prophet,” the one prophet who is THE Prophet. (more…)
It was the last week of the semester, we got sick, and some other distracting things happened this week (see #3). Fortunately, if you missed my updated posts, thanks to #1, you can find my old ones easily.
First, I’ve gone back and tagged a lot of my previous posts, so they can be accessed in groups. That is, scroll down to the bottom of a post, and you’ll see “select category” next to “select month.” Now that I’ve tagged many of my posts, you can see just my posts related to Evolution, or to Gospel Doctrine Resources, or to Genesis, or to Books or to Scripture Study
Second, I’ve been blogging for a long time, at various places, so I’m going to start rerunning old posts on various things. I find them useful, I doubt most people have seen them, and due to repeated technical migrations, some of them have actually disappeared from the web, so I couldn’t even link to them if I wanted to.
Third and more exciting, my wife and I will be moving to the Phoenix/Mesa/Tempe area this fall, where I will work on preparing for my comprehensive exams (American Religious History, Reformation History, History of Science) and writing a dissertation proposal.
Fourth, I have two upcoming events. In June, I’m at the Mormon History Association conference in Boise, ID. My paper is “’Latter-day Saints Accept the Scriptures, But Every Man Must Interpret Them for Himself’ —Recovering David O. McKay’s Views on Genesis and Evolution”. The other two papers in my session are “Darwinism, Evolution, and Latter-day Saint Church Education, 1875-1911” and “‘One of the Most Valuable Books I have Ever Read’: The Influence of William Jennings Bryan on 20th Century Mormon Responses to the Theory of Evolution.”
Then in October, I’m speaking at the Joseph Smith Papers Conference on Translation. There’s no schedule yet, but I know some of the other people, and it should be an interesting conference. My paper, partially derived from part 2 of my book manuscript, is “Translation, Creation, and Revelation: Implications of Textual Differences in the Pearl of Great Price.” I’m looking at those places in the text where Moses reads differently from the KJV, but Abraham matches the KJV. Part of my conclusion is that these changes imply that revelation is not a straight line of upwards progress, but a mediated human-divine dialectic process which sometimes becomes “frozen” as scripture. The implication is that scripture is not necessarily composed of divinely revealed eternal facts, but contains human elements and understandings common to the time. This can account for differences between inspired texts which, according to common assumptions, “should” be identical.
Balaam, the donkey, and the angel, by Jaeger. Public domain in US via wikimedia commons.
These chapters are all about Balaam, Balaam’s talking donkey, God’s power, blessing and cursing. The manual chooses as subtitle “I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord” and describes its purpose as “to encourage class members to submit to God’s will without hesitation.”
First off, I think without any parsing, that’s a dangerously overstated thing to say. And secondly, even when carefully parsed… I think it’s dangerously overstated.
Why? (more…)
What makes this chapter difficult and uncomfortable? (BTW, if it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, I’d suggest you’re either not paying attention, or haven’t really thought about it.) (more…)
Benjamin the Scribe
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