Book Notice: Scripture and Cosmology

Kyle Greenwood

Scripture and Cosmology: Reading the Bible Between the Ancient World and Modern Science
Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2015.
Available at Amazon.com

Kyle Greenwood has produced a short, informative, and elegant book on the biblical creation stories and modern science. What he shows is that ancient near eastern creation stories undoubtedly exhibit a worldview that includes a three-story universe and the biblical authors simply assume such a worldview. At the same time, he does note the differences between the biblical accounts of creation and ANE creation epics. His main observations are that Israel’s commemoration of creation included: (1) A seven day creation week is only present in Genesis 1 and implied in Exodus 20.11, but its not ubiquitous; (2) Creation is normally related to ancient cosmologies than to a precise order as in Genesis 1; (3) The creation accounts are “poetic in nature, using metaphors, anthropomorphic language and other literary devices to convey concepts that would otherwise be foreign to human understanding”; (4) All the creation accounts affirm the notion that all aspects of the created order come from God; (5) Each of the creation accounts emphasizes God’s sovereignty over the cosmos, not his war with other gods; and (6) Regardless of how many tiers the universe has in the minds of the authors, God is make of all of it. There are also good discussions of Aristotle and Copernicus and their reception in the church (FYI Luther and Calvin were not taken with heliocentrism). The book closes with a nice discussion on Scripture and Science with an emphasis on divine inspiration as accommodating to the worldview of the biblical authors. All in all, a good book for people who want something on the Bible, creation, the ANE context, and modern science.