Review of The Lost World of Genesis One, Part Five

John Walton begins the next section of his book The Lost World of Genesis One with an anecdote about a question that led him to come up with many of the book’s insights. Most if not indeed all scholars will relate to the experience of asking a new question, or noticing a neglected detail, or in other ways having an “a-ha!” moment. In Walton’s case, the question was why the “light” is not, on the first day in Genesis 1, simply called “light”, rather than “day”. What Walton realized is that the focus is not on creating light as a “substance”, but on creating a “period of light” with a particular function (pp.54-55).

Day two contains a problem which Walton identifies and addresses directly. “In antiquity people routinely believed that the sky was solid…We cannot think that we can interpret the word “expanse/firmament” as simply the sky or the atmosphere if that is not what the author meant by it when he used it and not what the audience would have understood by the word” (pp.56-57). Yet Walton seeks to avoid the conclusion that the Bible is wrong by emphasizing that views of the material world have differed from age to age, as science and other knowledge has progressed (p.61). By claiming that the view of the material aspects of the cosmos are assumptions rather than emphases of the author of Genesis 1, Walton seeks to avoid attributing an “error” to the author. To his credit, he does not only admit but emphasizes that the author used language which reflects a view of the material cosmos that we today do not and cannot share. The point, rather, is that God made the basis for weather – whether that be accomplished by a solid dome with windows in it, or weather processes as understood by modern meteorology.

What has perplexed some about day three is that nothing material is made on that day. This lends support to Walton’s view that what is emphasized throughout is not the making of “stuff” but the accomplishment of a functioning cosmos. After surveying a similar emphasis in other ancient Near Eastern texts, Walton wryly notes that, if the emphasis is on making of material things, then the only physical thing said to have been made during the first three days is the dome, the very thing that modern people are likely to say does not exist (p.60).

The emphasis in this chapter is summed up in its final paragraph: “God did not give Israel a revised cosmic geography – he revealed his Creator role through the cosmic geography that they had, because the shape of the world did not matter…This creation account did not concern the material shape of the cosmos, but its functions” (pp.61-62).