Transcription
Always enjoy conversations. Yeah, well, let's have one here. I'm going to share my screen with you, and we're going to get [Music] rolling.
Welcome to another episode of Ring Them Bells, where we are dedicated to bringing the world's top scholars to the show to help us all rediscover the Bible on its own terms. Today, we have the absolute privilege of having Dr. John Walton on the show.
John Walton is one of the world's leading scholars and authors concerning the Old Testament. He has authored over 40 books, including the popular Lost World series that we're going to be discussing today. Since 2001, Walton has been Professor Emeritus at Wheaton College and previously was a Moody Bible Institute professor for over 20 years.
Walton's work has helped millions wade through the mess of the origins debate to see the truth of Genesis 1. Buckle up and get ready for a fascinating interview into the Lost World of Genesis with one of the great minds of our day.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show, the great and powerful Dr. John Walton! And all that applause is due, sir. Thank you so much for being on the show with us today.
My pleasure. Yeah, my library is lined with the books that you have produced, and I am so grateful for you. As I said before we just got started, it's such an honor to have you here.
Before I ask you anything, we spoke a little earlier, and I want to announce some big news about an upcoming release from you that you'll be updating and expanding upon your previous work on origins. We've got a new book coming out. The title is New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis. We've got it right there, and I'm so glad you have it because what I was going to just comment on—I'm a sucker for a good cover—and the trees on that look epic. They look so cool!
So tell us about this book and why the updates are so valuable for us today.
Well, Lost World of Genesis 1 was published in 2009. Fifteen years have gone by, and during that time, I've been on the road a lot—in churches, in colleges, across the states and around the world—talking about these issues. It's inevitable that as that takes place, I learn new ways to communicate, whether it's terminology that works better, or whether it's new illustrations or analogies, or whether it's bringing in more texts to discuss or more insights based on the interactions that I have.
This book is not meant to be a revised edition; it's not that at all. It rather is updating the conversation in important ways. In each chapter, I talk about what I said before in just a one-page brief summary, then I talk about new information of various sorts, and then I answer FAQs.
Because being on the road for 15 years, you know, I get the kinds of questions, whether it's from audiences that I'm trying to address or whether it's from critics or book reviews or whatever it might be. So this book has over 60 FAQs that will help clarify kind of where my thinking is on these various issues. There are a couple of issues as well in which I've changed my mind, and this book will also address those.
I think that's wonderful, and I think for just the world to understand that one of the top scholars can change his mind on biblical concepts or whatever—that's not just reasonable; that should be the way that we approach learning. So I'm so thankful for the humility that's even displayed in that, and I can't wait. I'm reaching out to IVP; I can't wait to get my hands on a copy, and hopefully, we'll have another talk about that soon.
Leading straight into that, my first question is about the illustrations and propositions that you've included so wonderfully throughout your books. I love your writing style of including helpful illustrations; it helps a guy like me out so much. Also, the way you structure all of your Lost World books with propositions as your means of conveying your findings is so helpful for guy readers like me.
Tell us about the illustrations. I'm most interested in that because I really think you have a knack for this and can draw tough subjects into more understandable themes through these illustrations. I wonder where that came from because it's so evident as I read through your books.
Yeah, it's a really important method of communication to use illustrations, analogies, metaphors—those kinds of things. Sometimes it takes me a while to get to them, so again, this new book will have ones that I've developed over the years that aren't in the original books but that I have found are helpful.
It's just a way to communicate difficult or complex ideas in ways that people might understand. So just for an example, one that I've been using lately is that I say, "Okay, so when I ask you about your electronic device, say your laptop, tell me about your laptop."
I say, "It's unlikely that you will talk to me about the polymers in the screen or that you'll talk to me about the chips on the motherboard." Maybe some of you would, but it's unlikely. More of you would be inclined to talk about the apps and the operating system. That just shows us how we tune in more to how things work for us rather than kind of the material nuts and bolts of what makes up the unit.
So it's just a good way of talking about how even today we sometimes are more interested in order and function and purpose than we are in materiality, even though we know that the material aspect is there.
Yeah, that's beautiful. I like that, and it brings it into modern terms with electronics and phones. It's like if I asked my kid to tell me about his iPad, the first thing he's going to is the apps. The first thing he'd be going to is all that. So it's instinctual, and it's great to draw that analogy.
Another illustration—and you can mix up any of the illustrations that I bring up from your book since we have new ones—feel free to include those into that. But let's, pun intended, dive right into your illustration of the cultural river, which was so helpful for me, and I use it all the time when I'm describing ancient cosmology and context and all those things.
So help us understand the concept of cosmology. I think just really understanding that word and term through your illustration is insightful. What is cosmology? Explain how the Bible was written for us but not to us through your themes of cultural river and cosmology.
Okay, so cosmology is just how we think about the world around us. We could talk about our cosmic geography, which for us is pictured in blue Earth, the globe, and the continents and all of those. But in the ancient world, it would have been pictured very differently.
So cosmology is basically just how we think about it. It could involve origins—that is, how this cosmos came into being materially—but that's something that's pretty specific to us. In the ancient world, they would have thought more about how it came to be ordered and to work the way that it does. Those are both issues of cosmology.
My point is that there's not a single universal cosmology; that is, the way that all cultures of all times think. We all have different ways of imagining the world around us and thinking about its significance. In that sense, it not only has to do with the question of origins, but it has to do with the question of identity.
So I'm more inclined to think about Genesis 1 as a text pertaining to cosmic identity—that is, what is the cosmos, what's its purpose, who set it up to work this way—identity rather than origins, which may have more of a scientific material bent to it. But that's all part of how we think about cosmology.
I use the concept of the cultural river to talk about the defaults that all of us have due to culture. I talk about our modern cultural river; it involves politics and economics and values and religion and science and social media and consumerism and all kinds of things—market economy, democracy, personal rights—all of those are part of our cultural river.
The point I make is that Israel would not have understood any of those aspects of our cultural river. They don't know our cultural river; they don't anticipate our cultural river; they would not understand our cultural river. And yet it's our default.
So often when people read the Bible, they want to start right from the get-go to read their cultural river onto the Bible, and I suggest that's a mistake. We first have to try to read the text with the insights that we can gain about their cultural river.
How did they think about the world? How did they think about themselves? How do they think about their place in the world? How do they think about the past? How do they think about society? How do they think about God? That's all part of their cultural river, and it won't be the same as ours.
The idea that the Bible is written for us but not to us is an important way to identify that cultural river distinction. Even though we feel like this is God's word, his communication for us, it's not in our language; it's not connected to our culture. Therefore, we have to start by trying to enter their cultural river and understand the text as they would.
The important distinction that I found is helpful here is that I want to always recognize that in the Bible, I have a conversation between insiders—the author and his intended implied audience. They are insiders, and when insiders communicate to insiders, they can assume a lot of common knowledge, common perspectives, common settings, and they don't have to explain those things.
It's very difficult always as outsiders to penetrate insider-to-insider communication because we may need all kinds of explanations that they didn't need to share because they already know it. But that's what happens when we read the Bible; we come as outsiders.
We don't like that. We would like to feel like we're insiders. This is God's word to me, God's love letter to me, you know, and we'd like to feel like we're deep insiders. But culturally, linguistically, literarily, we're not. So we have to try to do what we need to do to penetrate that insider-to-insider communication.
Yeah, that's beautiful. And one of the ways that you've demonstrated that through, as I've read through your work, is that literature of that ancient culture and context is super important for us to gain that insider to their river. Is that something you would still agree with?
Sure, yeah. I mean, how else can we get into their cultural river? The only access we have to their cultural river is through the literature, and that's why that stuff's important.
I mean, some people have responded to my work seemingly thinking that I'm suggesting that Babylonian literature, for example, is on the same tier as the Bible or that Babylonian literature kind of influences the Bible, and that's not my point at all.
My point is that if we're going to read the Bible well, if we're going to read it faithfully, we have to be accountable to the author's intentions, and those intentions are all bound up in the insider-to-insider communication that's part of their cultural river. Therefore, we need to understand the cultural river, and whatever literature we can find that is in that broad cultural river is going to be beneficial to us.
Yeah, that's so true because at the same time, with scripture being understood as the primary political witness that it gives out against the empires of its day, it would be very advantageous to understand these empires and their stories and their literature so that it gives us that cultural comparison.
So we can see the word that the Hebrew scriptures are speaking out into the empires of their day. So that's beautiful, and it helps us get to the core of understanding the text and what the author is trying to convey to us.
So much of modern evangelicals' approach to Genesis 1 has been scientific material origin debates, and I think using the word debates is very important there. But your work is highly regarded for its understanding that Genesis 1 was not written to answer scientific debates about the material origin of the universe but rather to answer how God brought function, order, and purpose—what you call a functional ontology.
You've got wonderful metaphors for this that I've heard of—restaurants and other things. So I was wondering, using any of the metaphors that you have, can you help my audience see how Genesis 1 reveals God's desire to order creation to function and give purpose as a place for him to dwell?
One of the analogies that I like best—and it was not in Lost World of Genesis 1, but I was able to incorporate it into the Lost World of Adam and Eve—is a distinction between house and home.
So we can talk about building a house, and that's a creative act; it's a material act. Building the house involves the foundation, the roof, the siding, the plumbing, the electricity—that's all the physical material aspects. Building the house is an act of creation.
But I contrast that to another act of creation—making a home. Making a home is a different kind of creative act. It involves order and organization; it involves use and purpose. That gives a different perspective entirely on trying to understand one aspect of creation.
So I draw the distinction that in our scientific cultural river today, we like to think of creation as a house story. There's some good value in doing that; science is based on trying to understand the house story.
But then what we do is we try to read Genesis 1 as if it's a house story, and what my claim is is that, no, really, not Genesis 1 is a home story—just as important a story, some would even say more important a story.
One of the contrasts I use is that a house is what you live in; a home is where your story comes to life. They both have areas of significance, but they're different.
So that's part of trying to answer the question, "What kind of creation account is this?" And that's where I propose something that helps us tap into the ancient world, which Israel was a part of, and to try to understand that Israel is seeing a different aspect of creation.
God did both the house and the home, but the question is, "What story do you want to tell?" So the question is not, "What are all the things God created?" but rather, "What kind of creation account is this?"
Yeah, and growing up, my personal experience—and I think I've heard you say you've had a similar one—I was taught to view the Bible as like dash cam footage of everything exactly as it was happening. Like this was just pre-recorded, jotted down, and exactly, you know, to look at it like that.
And we get into so much trouble. And then this is what I want to ask you about: What troubles can you see that we get into when we start trying to force these modern questions into this ancient text? Like I use the word debate; it seems that it always centers around conflict.
Even when someone approaches the Bible on someone's terms, you eliminate some of this debate and conflict because it's not trying to answer these questions. But when you approach the Bible with the way we were taught—as this dash cam footage of, "Hey, here's exactly what God did"—it creates all these moments for debate and conflict.
Do you have any word to speak to that?
Sure. One of the grave dangers comes about when we impose something foreign on the text. My view of biblical authority is that it derives from inspiration, and biblical authority represents the idea that since God has inspired scripture through his spirit, that it's his authority, and our job is to submit to it.
As we submit to it, we have to be accountable to it. I see that authority as vested in the human instruments that God used, and therefore it's God's authority but vested in those human instruments.
So my job, if I'm going to submit to God and be accountable to God, I have to submit to the human author and be accountable to the human author. That means that I want to be extra careful that I don't impose something foreign on the text, and my cultural river is foreign.
If I do that, if I impose something foreign to the text that the author did not mean and was not talking about, then what I'm doing is I'm compromising the authority of scripture because I'm mixing together something that it was not saying in its authority with something that's really coming from my cultural river's authority, and that's going to create problems.
So that's the danger that we have to be aware of. We do not want to insert ourselves into the text—our questions, our answers, our cultural river—because that, in the end, will mix us all up and confuse us about the issue of authority.
Yep, I like that you tied it to authority because I think that that's what it really comes down to—valuing the text. When you approach the Bible on its own terms, you are valuing the Bible's authority that it has over our lives, and I think that that's ultimately what we're all searching for.
N.T. Wright, another function, is the cosmos as a function as temple that your work has been so revolutionary for helping me understand. N.T. Wright, a dear friend of the show, references your work frequently when speaking about the Bible's focus on temple.
Help us understand Genesis 1 as God ordering the cosmos and ultimately the Earth through Eden to become his temple where he dwells. Why is this theme of temple so important in Genesis?
Well, it's important because a high value throughout the biblical text, all New Testament, is Emmanuel—God with us. Whether we see that in terms of the garden or whether we see it in terms of the tabernacle or the temple, whether we see it in terms of the incarnation or Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, or we see it in terms of the church as God's temple or the new creation, the theme of God's presence is an important one.
I've tried to suggest that it's implied right from the first chapters of Genesis. Now, in this new book, I've brought some clarity and some nuancing to that.
Because, of course, as we all know, the seventh day only uses the term Shabbat, which is a ceasing, or as I'm going to suggest, a pausing. But it doesn't talk about what comes of that. It's not until Exodus 20 that we get the connection between Shabbat—that pausing or cessation—and God's actual taking up his rest.
That's the Hebrew nuah. Exodus 20 pulls those together specifically in reflecting on the seventh day, but the seventh day account in Genesis 2 does not go that next step.
I would still claim that any Israelite reader would have immediately gone to that temple context because of the concept of rest. Even if it's Shabbat instead of nuah, the Israelite mind would have immediately identified God's resting that takes place in a temple.
For them, temple imagery in this insider-to-insider communication is implicit. So again, since we're outsiders, not insiders, we have to get into that implication and understand what an Israelite reader would have immediately included in that thinking.
Again, it's important because it establishes the beginning of this concept of God's presence, which is a theme throughout scripture.
What I hear you saying—and I've never really been able to make this direct connection the way that you said it just now—that I love—is that rest equates to residence. That when we hear God resting, that means, "Okay, he's residing here now; this is where he is dwelling."
Does that make sense?
Yes, absolutely. So a point I like to make is that when God rests in a temple—and this is true not only in Israel but throughout the ancient world—when a god rests in the temple, he's not resting in a bed; he's resting on a throne.
And that's a connection that is not automatic for us to think about.
No, but that rest on a throne not only includes residing, as you mentioned, a very important aspect—God with us, Emmanuel—but it also involves ruling. That is, God is the one who has set up order, and now he is sustaining order.
It draws the initial concept of creation together with the ongoing continuing acts of creation as sort of all bound up together.
Yeah, that's so wonderful, and it just lets us know with God desiring to dwell here—temple being the focus—that leaving out that material scientific side of it allows us to see that God's ordering of the cosmos at the beginning and then the ordering of the heavens and earth—that that was setting his temple up for his place to reside.
And that's just such a more powerful way, I think, to look at the text. I love that.
In light of all that we've just discussed, though, and going to N.T. Wright, one thing that was really surprising to me in your wonderful book, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, is that you do believe in a historical Adam and Eve, with quotes that we can explain—not in the way that most modern evangelicals do—but you do believe that.
I love the excerpt that you had from Wright in your Lost World of Adam and Eve book going over this. So what I have—real quick, I'm going to see if I have a clip to share from Wright talking about this, and then we'll discuss that together. How's that sound?
Sure, let's do it.
Genesis 1, 2, and 3 are some of the most explosive chapters. When anthropologists talk about myth, what they mean is not an untrue story; what they mean is a story which is full of power for how we understand ourselves individually, for how we understand ourselves as a community, for how we understand what the human project is all about and some of its paradoxes and tragedies and so on.
The mythological element, however, has got misunderstood to be, "If it's myth, therefore it isn't history," and vice versa. And that's just for starters. We need to lighten up about these words and maybe find some other words.
Because I do think it matters that something like a primal pair getting it wrong did happen, but that doesn't mean I'm saying that therefore Genesis is kind of positivist literal clunky history over against myth. Far from it.
I think, for instance, that the six days of Genesis—I'm with John Walton from Wheaton College on this—I think the six days of Genesis would be interpreted in terms of this is how you describe how people make a temple or a tabernacle.
This is a way of saying that when the good Creator God made the world, he made heaven and earth as the space in which he himself was going to dwell, and he shared the earth bit with human creatures.
To flatten that out into, "This is simply telling us that the world was made in six days," is almost perversely to avoid the real thrust of the narrative. This world was made to be God's abode, God's home, God's dwelling. He shared it with us, and he now wants to rescue it and redeem it.
So we have to read Genesis for all its worth and to say either history or myth is a way of saying I'm not going to study this text for all it's worth. I'm just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask.
I think that's a form of actually being unfaithful to the text itself.
Before I say anything, tell me your thoughts on that clip and what Tom just said.
I think that his reflections help us to identify something that you and I have already touched on a little bit earlier that I didn't come back and address.
So often, our reflexes as modern readers are that we want to dig into the Bible and try to reconstruct the events that it talks about—whether that's creation or whether it's the garden or whether it's the flood or Tower of Babel or Abraham or David or all the way down the line—the Israelite conquest.
We're reconstructionists. We feel like that's going to somehow validate the Bible if we can prove that these events actually happened.
Of course, sometimes that's the kind of work that apologists are doing—trying to reconstruct events. I think that Tom was suggesting, and I would agree, that we need to pay more attention instead of trying to reconstruct the events.
We can assume that they are events, but that's not our job to reconstruct them. The Bible is giving us an interpretation of events, and that's what carries authority because that's the Bible's message.
Therefore, we need to spend a little more time understanding the interpretation that the Bible is giving us—like the interpretation of the flood instead of the hydrology and geology and all of those kinds of things about the flood.
Let's look at the interpretation of the event. Likewise, the Israelite conquest, likewise whatever it might be. So it's not a question of whether there are events behind these or not; the Bible's not really trying to address those. It's assuming that in most instances there are events, but that's not our job.
I think that's kind of how I heard him leaning to say, "Let's tap in more to what's going on here as far as the authors are understanding the significance of what they're conveying."
Yeah, and I think our imaginations and creativity and just wonder at the text when we read it, too. We all kind of instinctively wonder, and like, "Did Adam and Eve really exist? What was it like?" All these things, you know, all the questions that come through.
And that's why I said I was surprised—not in a good way—that the way that you qualified it, and you just did just right there, as well—that you can still believe in the fact that there was a historical pair, Adam and Eve, just call them that—that were in space and time.
But that that's not what the text is trying—you still have to, when you come to the text, understand that's not what it's trying to convey to you. You can still have that belief; you can still have that.
And I think following through to the New Testament and as we get to Paul and as we get to even Jesus, who references Adam, we can kind of go to a space to where the text calls us to have some level of ability to believe in the historicity of Adam and Eve, of this ancient couple.
So to that, how do you—because in the book you say that you do hold that—how do you suspend those two at the same time?
Okay, so in my new book, I've moved along a bit to a different kind of spot—not one that contradicts what I said in Lost World of Adam and Eve, but one which just goes down a different path.
I've taken the archetypal aspect, which I talked a lot about in Lost World of Adam and Eve, and under the conviction that that's what the text is really doing, I've been a little more insistent on saying if that's what the text is doing, I don't even want to ask that other question.
I like it!
Okay? If they are archetypes, the whole point is they are all of us. We are them; they are us. What they are, we are. What they do, we do. And that's what's important.
We're historical; we're real people. Humanity is real; they are us. And in that way, we are—we not only get distracted by the historicity question, we get overwhelmed with it.
And therefore, we've been so eager to talk about them in their historical place and us in our historical place that we miss the very point of the text, as I now understand it—that we're not supposed to separate that out to them and us; we're supposed to be thinking about it as, "This is us."
And of course, if we are successful in doing that, if that's what Genesis wants us to do—and I think it is—we're successful in doing that, we don't get stuck on Augustine's question, "How come they goofed up?" and we get stuck with it.
Yeah, all we like sheep have gone astray.
Yeah, all we like sheep have gone astray.
Yeah, turned everyone to his own way, and Adam and Eve is our story.
Yeah, well, I think that—and that's the beauty of it—is that approaching it on its own terms, it's like I think Tom was trying to say that in there.
Like in our modern terms, we want—when we hear mythology, we think false. We think, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, and this is just not real, and it's a made-up story.
But the ancient use of mythology was to convey truth; it was not to create some falsified account. This was how they displayed their truth claims, was in these mythological cosmological functional ontology—all these big words.
But this is how they used mythology, how they used their text to declare their truths, and we're still getting truths no matter how you slice it.
And personally, I haven't gotten to where you are personally. I still believe in a historical pair—call them Adam and Eve because the text does—and that we can both exist there and still approach the text on its own right to get the wisdom that it has from it.
Right, and I wouldn't say that I no longer accept them as historical. I am saying I don't bother to ask the question. It's not the text's question.
Amen! I like that.
I would also say that it goes—you've used the word truth, and that's a good word—but it goes even beyond that to reality. That is, they believe their mythology—that is, in the ancient world, they believe their mythology reflected reality.
It's a reality that's in a different category than events that have transpired, but it is no less real. And in some cases, it's more real for them.
And so in that case, for people who are comfortable with assigning Genesis 1 and following as mythology, I'm not because it's too conflicted a term.
But for people who are and, like Tom, want to see kind of a core to that that's different from our popular way of thinking, that's really what they're getting at—that Israel is conveying a reality that is diminished if we try to make it all about events because reality is bigger and deeper than events.
I love that—reality is bigger and deeper than events. I'm going to put that on a shirt!
I think that's awesome.
So moving towards one of more of these themes that the text actually is trying to get us to understand, let's go to proposition 12 in your Lost World of Adam and Eve book that states Adam is assigned as priest in sacred space.
In this chapter, you say, "If the priestly vocabulary in Genesis indicates the same kind of thinking, the point of caring for sacred space should be seen as much more than landscaping or even priestly duties. Maintaining order made one a participant with God in the ongoing task of sustaining the equilibrium God had established in the cosmos."
So before we go any further, help us understand the functional ontology of humans as priests and caretakers of sacred space.
Okay, this is one of the places where I've changed my mind a bit.
I am picking all the good ones today!
Yeah, so there's no question in my mind that people are image bearers, and therefore they are also order bringers working alongside God—subduing, ruling. So they are order bringers.
In the part that you just read, that addresses some of that bringing order in this world. The question that I've now pursued a little differently in the new book is the priestly role.
Okay, we can be caretakers without the priestly role. Were caretakers in chapter one. The priestly role, as I developed it, was in chapter two.
This came in conversation with my son, who just completed his doctoral dissertation at St. Andrews on order in the ancient world and Genesis 2-4. One of the things he challenged me on is my conclusion that the Garden of Eden represented God coming into the human realm.
I had just not considered any other options. He proposed—and we've conversed about it at length—that in the ancient world, it makes more sense to think of the Garden of Eden as people being put in the divine realm.
We've got people like Gilgamesh, the flood hero, who is put into the divine realm. We have people like Adapa who penetrate into the divine realm and find it a very uncomfortable place to be.
So the idea that God formed Adam and took him and placed him in the garden—he made the case that this is people being put in the divine realm, not God entering into the human realm.
My objection was, "What about Tigris and Euphrates? That sounds like human realm." He pointed out very kindly that in Panite literature, the gods exist at the source of the waters. They meet on Mount Olympus. The divine realm is not so separate from the human realm.
Yogesh gets to it; he has to cross the river of death to do so, so it's kind of tricky, but he gets to it. The fact that Tigris and Euphrates are there doesn't change that.
But here's the upshot of it. If Adam and Eve are being placed in the divine realm, that means there's no role for them as priests. The divine doesn't need priests.
They may be viewed as wardens—that's the language of 2:15 again—and priests are wardens of sorts, but this might be a bigger role.
So that kind of diminishes the priestly identity without diminishing the fact that we are working alongside to bring order in the world in which he has placed us.
The importance of it—and this is key—is that when I first had that distinction of Adam and Eve as priests, I had to talk about two levels of representation.
I talked about them being archetypes in which they represent all of us because they are all of us. But then I also talked about priests, and we're not all priests.
As priests, they represented humanity in a different sort of way. Going this new direction with people in the divine realm and kind of suppressing that priestly element, we now can find that the archetypal representation is consistent throughout.
I don't have to have two kinds, which was a complicating factor. Now it's really just one kind of representation—all of us in divine space—all of us, all of us, all of us.
So again, in this sense, it brings a consistency to the text that was not as evident in my previous model.
Okay, I understand that. But as I read through just the words of Genesis, the priest—like I have to go to my translation. I wanted to grab a Bible right now, but if I go into Genesis, is the word priest not used to describe?
No, no. The way I built that was in 2:15, where their two tasks were to avad and shamar—serve and keep.
And I pointed out that those are used to describe priests in their role in the temple. Of course, they're not just used to, but it doesn't say they're priests; it just uses terms that are at times connected to priestly roles.
But of course, they could be connected also to a broader warden-type role. And it only shows that they are involved in the order-bringing process, which God created us for.
Yeah, I think I see the designation between what you're trying to say, but at the end of the day, it just feels like we're swapping terms, which I get is important.
But when we go back to what we just discussed as temple language and the importance of temple inside the Bible, the original authors and intended audience would have always assumed that within a temple, you're going to have priests.
And whether that's the divine realm coming down to the earthly realm or God bringing the earthly realm up to the divine realm, where those two intersected was temple in their mind.
That's what I've learned from you. And when we have that concept in their mind, they're also going to have priests.
And I think that maybe you're still leaving it there with the warden language that you're trying to say, but that at the end of the day, caretakers of sacred space—heaven to earth or earth to heaven—in my mind, that's a priest. Am I making sense?
Absolutely. The priests are the Israelite—or really the whole ancient world—conception of caretakers in sacred space.
Okay, and so again, Genesis 1 evokes that imagery, and this does not diminish the temple imagery because, again, that's God with us—God wanting to dwell among us.
But that still asks the question, "What aspects of that does the Garden of Eden reflect?"
Is the Garden of Eden a temple that is God coming into human space? In my first work, I suggested that it was. This suggests an alternative, and it has some advantages.
So people will have to sort it out and see what they think.
No, I like that we can look through the different lenses and see. I had Amy-Jill Levine, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, on here yesterday—a Jewish scholar—and she delights.
She views the Old Testament in her own respect of just that way—that it's this gem that you turn and see these multiple perspectives that you can then bounce back and forth, and that's kind of how scripture was created.
So I think it's valuable to hear that.
But carrying on with that train of thought, for what we just said—four temples, sacred space, all of the themes—I want to embody the narrative for a moment rather than trying to get like what all modern want is the dash cam footage or exactly what's happening.
I want me and you for a second to just embody the narrative that we have presented in Genesis.
And keeping with the themes of temple and priest, when I read the text, one of the functions or orders of humanity that I see come up right away was that we would bring God's rule here on earth as it is in heaven, which is a theme carried throughout the scriptures.
And by proxy, eradicate the spiritual evil influence that's been oppressing humanity—the evil that's initially represented by the snake.
So stay with me; I know that's a lot. Before we discuss this point in light even of your new findings, I want to get some needed context.
Let's watch this Bible Project video from Tim Mackey on the promise of the snake crusher and discuss together. How's it sound?
Sure, let's do it.
But if we take the whole cycle of the biblical story, I think the one that Jesus was angry at—that snake—that's the one that Jesus was angry at.
And knowing that he was doing exactly what God was calling him to do—to overcome the snake—is very strange.
And even more strange is the fact that the Bible doesn't say why or how this thing even got there. It just presents the snake as this creature who's in rebellion against God and that wants to get other people to doubt God's goodness and lead them on a path towards death.
And so whatever this snake is, it's the source of evil that pervades our world and our lives even still today.
But there is some hope because right here in the story, God makes this really interesting promise to Adam and Eve that someone is going to come in the future—a son of Eve—and this guy's going to come, and he's going to crush the serpent's head and destroy evil at its source.
However, during this battle, the serpent is going to bite this guy's heel. So it's like a mutual destruction.
Yeah, it's this very strange but beautiful promise, and it's just left hanging there. The Old Testament ends, and the snake-crushing king that everyone's been talking about never shows up.
And so it seems like the serpent wins, and this story actually would be a tragedy except for what happens next—Jesus rises from the dead.
That Jesus's power over evil and death has now become available to us to begin confronting the effects of evil in our lives.
But even still, death and evil are a real problem in our world all around us.
And so the story of the Bible ends by describing this future day when Jesus comes back and he finishes the job. He destroys the snake once and for all, and he restores the goodness of the garden here on earth.
Jesus comes onto the scene not to restore a perfection that was lost, but it's actually to reclaim a future and a destiny that has never been experienced by any human before.
And it seems to me that Jesus really saw the suffering and evil in his world as a result of this huge cascade of cause and effect, all leading back to the lies of the snake.
I want you to follow me on this. I want you to pretend I'm presenting a paper at a conference, and I'm using your thesis of the points that I've learned from you in the Lost World series to present this point to you about the functional ontology of humanity to eliminate spiritual evil.
In the chapter, you list roles as priest, which again we can talk about as guarding sacred space and sacred objects—keeping out anything that would compromise or corrupt the sanctity of sacred space or words that you use.
Both of these functions relate to the snake and the curse that God places upon this evil for the seed of humanity to crush it.
John says the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Paul in Colossians says Jesus disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them.
When we take the function of our humanity, fully identified in the person of Jesus, we see that God used Jesus, the ultimate human high priest, to fully eradicate evil.
And we see that seed planted way back in the Garden of Eden with the curse of the snake and the role of humanity as priest.
So what would you say to this point as a part of the functional ontology and priestly roles to care for sacred space was for humanity to be the means by which God casts out and destroys evil once and for all?
That was a lot, but it's something I always think about, and I wanted to talk to you about it.
I would disagree with the view presented in that video at very basic fundamental levels.
I see Genesis as operating not within the moral spectrum—that is, spiritual evil—but operating within the order spectrum—things that disrupt order.
I do not see the serpent as Satan; I see the serpent as a chaos creature, in which case he's representative of non-order.
Which is not evil, instead of disorder, which could possibly be evil as well as other things.
And I do not see Genesis 3:15 as reflecting a promise of a future victory or deliverance. The language, as I see it, does not suggest that.
It doesn't say who wins; it just says the battle is ongoing. The serpent, I suggested in Lost World of Adam and Eve—and I go much more into it in this new volume—is a chaos creature in the ancient world way of thinking.
So he doesn't represent evil; he represents non-order. And God has created order, but there are threats to order.
As non-order, he's a catalyst—not a source of evil; he's a catalyst for non-order. It's people who make the evil choice, and people bring that into the world as they become disruptive of God's order because they want to do order their own way, in their own time.
Genesis 3:15, as my son suggested to me—and I agree now—Genesis 3:15, instead of being like Babylon, where the gods defeat the chaos creature in order to bring order, Genesis 1 doesn't have anything like that.
Of course, there's no defeat of the chaos creature. What happens here is that since people have decided that they want to do their own order thing their own way, we all decide that this is all of us do our own order thing our own way.
God said, "Well then, you've chosen to battle the chaos creature; here it is." The enmity in 3:15—the ongoing strife, generation to generation—indicates that God has turned the battle against non-order and disorder over to us because we took it; we wanted it.
So that doesn't represent the beginning of evil; it doesn't set up the serpent as the source of evil. The serpent is the representation of that which we are battling against, which is not just moral evil, although that's part of disorder, but that's the whole idea that we want to be order-bringers, and we wanted to do it our way.
So all of that needs a lot further explanation, but you can see how it kind of delves into the very foundation of that conversation to say things might be going a different way in Genesis here.
Well, I like your connection of the snake to Leviathan and chaos creatures and deconstruction and lack of order—the opposite of what God brings in Genesis—and I think that's rightly connected.
But as we follow through, I just ask why you chose to think this way when we have New Testament references that put the snake as Satan.
And then we have a ton of church history and early interpretations to support that view as well.
And although throughout the Old Testament or even in the story of Genesis, I rightly will agree with you, they don't specifically try to identify this character as the Satan.
That is something that was prevalent within the earliest interpretations. We have New Testament examples of it.
So I guess rather than asking what you think about this, why do you want to make that shift? Is there a reason behind you wanting to make that shift? What is there, some tension that you see?
What is that?
First of all, it's not a shift I want to make; it's a shift that I have to make based on the question of what is Genesis doing.
Okay? I'm not going to solely rely on the New Testament to tell me what Genesis is doing because they're doing something different, and they're welcome to it. They have authority, etc., etc., to make something of that story.
But I want to know what Genesis is doing in its story, in its authority, in its context.
When I get to Revelation, John certainly draws a connection between the chaos creature, which is the dragon in his vision, and the chaos creature, which is the serpent in John's vision.
He gives a name to that chaos creature—Satan. That doesn't mean that the comparable chaos creature in Genesis would also be Satan.
So I would gently disagree that John has identified the serpent as Satan. His chaos creature is Satan in what he's doing with it, and he sees that chaos creature connection to the serpent in Genesis.
Genesis 3:15 is never again referred to, even in the New Testament. If it's this great first proclamation of victory and salvation to come in the great deliverer, it's really unusual that the New Testament has remained utterly silent about it.
And when there's one verse when people think it might be alluding to it—that's Romans 16:20, which is Paul's greetings, not his teaching.
His greetings, "May the God of peace crush Satan under your feet." He doesn't use the word crush that the serpent uses; he uses foot instead of heel.
Putting an enemy under your feet is a common trope throughout the ancient world.
And the one whose foot it is is the church, not Jesus. So the one place which I don't think is referring to Genesis 3:15 but which people might think—it's still the church, not Jesus.
Yeah, but we can interchange those two pretty easily theologically, you know what I mean?
So it doesn't make it a messianic task, and again, I don't think it's referring to Genesis 3:15 anyway because it doesn't use the right language.
So that all saying, I'm not convinced that the New Testament ever alludes to Genesis 3:15, which means we're on our own when we do that.
And I don't want to be on my own; I want to take the lead of scripture.
Okay, I get that. I think that even if we leave out the promise of the snake crusher as something that is directly called out and spelled out specifically inside a New Testament verse, I'll agree with you there.
And we do have the example in Romans 16, but it doesn't mean that the destroying of evil or the presence of a supernatural enemy coming against Jesus in the narrative—and I mean, just to go back to the point where you say you don't want to let the New Testament influence what Genesis is.
I get that for Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, but for me and you having a conversation here as Christians, we identify that we follow Jesus, and then you identify that I've heard you say that the scripture has authority tied up with the original author's intent, cultural context, and all these things.
So that as we go, as a believer, as a Christian—which you claim to be, I claim to be—that we draw our source of authority from the New Testament as equally as we do the Old Testament.
So that we don't go to the—when I read the Old Testament, I'm not trying to go to the New Testament to interpret it, but I'm not going to leave out the claims of the New Testament as I bring my overall overarching theme of what truth claims God is trying to draw out from the Bible for me.
I don't know if that makes sense, and I'm politely trying to argue against because I'm trying to understand.
Of course, we want to read the text as Christians, but reading the text as Christians is not the same thing as interpreting each text with its own authority.
Okay? Reading from a perspective is not the same thing as interpretation or exegesis.
So I can look at the New Testament and say Jesus defeated evil; the forces of evil, spiritual forces, are subjected to him. I agree; it's true.
Is that what Genesis 3:15 is saying? I've got no reason to think so.
Okay, so you can do both, and I see that.
Sure, but I think it's just being open to that discussion, and I think I'm interested.
And we don't have to go there, but I think there might be something underneath why we want to go that because a lot of what I'm hearing is that you can still have these same concepts, but we're just kind of changing names and hats of what it is and where it's at.
And maybe there's a reason for that because a lot of Christian traditions have twisted it to use it in the wrong way and overemphasized it.
So I don't know if maybe there's something behind that.
Well, here's the point. If I want to make a claim to somebody that the Old Testament in the Book of Genesis specifically anticipated Jesus in the role that he had, and I'm going to go to Genesis 3:15 to prove that, I'm on flimsy ground.
True.
And if that's what people want to do, they can get shot down very easily.
Yeah, okay.
So I'm going to make the point of Jesus defeating spiritual forces from the New Testament passages that say so.
Yeah.
I'm not going to try to drag it out of Genesis 3:15, where I'm on much flimsier ground.
Well, I drew not just on Genesis 3:15; I was drawing on all of the temple language, all of the priestly language that I learned from your book.
And I get we've got a new one coming out; got to read it.
But as I draw on all those things and I take those themes and connections on their own, isolating them out of the New Testament and away from Jesus and take them on their own separate accord and with the revelation of Jesus as the one human who does eradicate sin, evil, and death—which I think we can agree with—we can say that narratively speaking, taking it together, God did use humanity to eliminate this sin, evil, death—all the spiritual forces that were against us—even our own stupidity.
And it doesn't eliminate our own guilt in it all, but when I take it from that, and that's the point that I was just trying to draw out, is that God does end up using our humanity—this frail, not like we're made lesser than the angels, that we're made from the dirt; we're dirt creatures—that God takes this lesser being and uses it in this glorious way to eradicate evil and to bring about his dwelling, which is also represented in Jesus.
So I just thought it was kind of a cool—my point is, go ahead.
My point is that I can't say that from Genesis 3 because Genesis 3 doesn't say who wins.
True.
It doesn't say who wins. I can't go there.
I get it. Genesis 3, in my interpretation, says you've got the battle; it's yours; you're stuck with it.
I agree. I think that we are stuck with it, and the open-ended question that just gets drawn out—you, like you said, doesn't say who wins.
And that's how the Hebrew scriptures end—with this blank canvas of a human hero that we're waiting on to do the right thing, whether it be a king to bring God's rule in or to destroy supernatural evil that we see present in the early stuff.
It's all there.
I want to skip over to—this is important, and I wanted to get to it, and it kind of pairs perfectly with what we're saying.
We're already in the state of talking about the text, and I want to ask a couple of questions that we've already talked about, but just to establish context.
You would agree that biblical authority of interpretation is connected to the original author and his culture in context, correct?
Correct.
Correct.
Would you also agree that the interpretations closest to the time of the author—interpretations that would also have extra-biblical literature to support themselves—would be preferred over later interpretations that are by proxy more disconnected from the original author and their context? Does that sound correct?
That can sometimes be the case. My criteria that I use is not proximity in time.
Okay.
My criterion is strength of evidence.
I like that.
So I want to know what evidence is being used to support it, and theoretically, that's not necessarily tied to proximity in time.
I like that.
But would you agree that weight should be given to the earlier interpretations that have extra-biblical support over later ones that don't?
That's evidence; it's what you just said.
Here we go!
Here we go!
Let's go!
I'll go straight into it with an example. With that in mind, let's turn to your NIV application commentary on Genesis.
A huge focus of our channel is to help recover the supernatural framework, and I use that word supernatural in quotes. It's a tough—that doesn't mean something that's not natural, just spiritual—maybe the spiritual framework of the Bible that has been lost by the church over time.
As a standard, when I pick up a commentary on Genesis, I start with turning to Genesis 6 to see the author's take on the sons of God.
I feel like it's a good litmus test. But before we unpack what you've said in your commentary, I wanted to turn back to Tim Mackey and the Bible Project for one final clip as we close.
Let's check this out for context, and then we're going to talk about your current views on Genesis 6.
So the Bible's trying to tell us that the world is the way that it is not just because of human stupidity, but that there is a dimension of reality that's not easy for us to see.
And that works on both the individual level, like—but also it's working on a corporate level—the building of whole cities and cultures.
And that comes under the name Babylon. After the snake comes the rebellion of the sons of God in Genesis 6.
We're told that they have sex with women—men who then give birth to violent warrior giants.
Oh right, the Nephilim! These are probably the strangest characters in the whole Bible.
Well, strange from your point of view, but ancient readers knew exactly what was going on.
The ancient kingdoms around Israel claimed to be founded and protected by giant warrior kings who were part human, part god, and filled with divine wisdom.
Ah, I see. So the biblical authors are saying, "Hey, those warrior kings, they shouldn't be honored."
Right, in this story, they're portrayed as human rebels who are captive to spiritual evil, spreading their violence in God's good world.
Yeah, one of those kings in Genesis 10 goes on to build the city of Babylon—yes, Nimrod, whose name sounds like the Hebrew word for rebel.
And his kingdom leads to the next rebellion where humans exalt themselves in Babylon, but God scatters that rebellion.
And when Moses in Deuteronomy looks back at that story, he says that's the moment when God handed over the nations to worship the rebel host of heaven—the gods of money, sex, and military power.
Moses is the first one to call them demons—that is, lesser spiritual beings.
So demons are spiritual forces at work behind corrupt human power structures.
So this is why when Jesus arrives on the scene, he said his primary enemy is not human.
Right, Jesus and his first followers viewed all the pain and suffering in God's good world as a sign of its captivity to death and spiritual evil.
But they didn't think this was the end of the story, right?
Jesus knew that the only way out of this cosmic ruin is to overcome evil and death itself, even if it costs him everything.
Stay with me; I know that you're going to have some concerns with that clip, and I want to hear them from you.
You say in your commentary this issue of Genesis 6 and the sons of God—this issue is one of the thorniest of Old Testament interpretation.
The earliest view held unanimously until the 2nd century A.D. is that the sons of God were angelic beings.
You say the major strength of this interpretation is that the three other instances in the Old Testament where the exact phrase "sons of God" is used in Job all refer to angels.
In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, before Jewish interpreters and Christian interpreters began to diverge from this consensus, important here is under the New Testament heading.
You say it is true that the punishment cited in Peter and Jude is the same punishment meted out to angels in 1 Enoch's interpretation of Genesis 6, thus declaring that two New Testament biblical authors cite the validity of contextual evidence of Genesis 6 being contained in the non-canonical work of 1 Enoch.
Many scholars note that with the revelation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, textual criticism leans more heavily towards the original interpretation of rebellious angels as not human rulers.
So using your own hermeneutical skills that we've discussed, tell us your current thoughts on Genesis 6 and what view you would support today and why.
Actually, this seems like a much longer discussion than we have time for.
My current view is found in the book that I did with my son called Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology. We have a whole section on Genesis 6.
I see the passage in light of the Babylonian Apocryphal tradition, which is also reflected in the book of 1 Enoch.
I've probably published four or five times on Genesis 6 and taken a little different view each time, but the Demons and Spirits book has the most recent.
I love the Bible Project and all the things that it does. This is one of the points where I would not be in agreement with the particular view presented there, but I don't want to argue by proxy with Tim Mackey and what he's doing there.
I'd really rather not get into the details here; it's too long a conversation.
We can do that.
I think that's awesome.
I respect that.
I think that the truth is that what I'd love to do is—because you've brought up your son a few times here, and we talked about it when we were at Wheaton—I’d love for us offline to try to get a time scheduled where either I can just—I’d love to interview your son myself or where we could have a group conversation about that book.
Because I think that it's important for us all to discuss because at the end of the day, there's a lot of people that I know that wrestle with these questions of what reality is the Bible calling me to hold about spiritual evil.
And literally, people that, you know, concern believers that want to know how we are to operate, you know, whether coming out of traumatic past experiences where they've actually experienced spiritual trauma or they come out of churches that overemphasize it and make it something that it's not meant to be.
I just think that it's important, so I would say this: I honor your decision to not talk about it now, but maybe if we can put a pen in it and maybe seek to discuss it later on the grounds of love and respect for differing opinions so that we can have this conversation.
Because I think—I know, John, that it's important for the church, for guys like you to really discuss this and create a safe space for that conversation.
And obviously, I believe it's important too because we did a whole book on it.
Yeah, so we'll get there.
Yeah, that's really what the whole idea is, so that reflects how significant it is. But that also means that it really can't easily be discussed in a healthy, full way without more time to give to it.
I respect that.
Let's put a pen in it, and I respect that.
Thank you for that, and just acknowledging it.
And we love Tim Mackey and the Bible Project as well, and we don't have to agree on everything.
There's things I don't agree with them on.
We'll close with this, and the Lost World series, but changing gears and changing to one of my new favorite books, The Lost World of the Prophets.
I've loved this book; it's been my favorite book in the series so far.
So first, just tell my audience about this book and why you put it out.
Well, as with all the Lost World books, I decided to write on it because I feel like the church is suffering from a lack of perspective and information.
When they think about the prophets, they think about the prophets as those who predict the future, and they get all wound up in fulfillment.
I find that generally in churches, there are two contexts in which the prophets come into play. One is an apologetics—that is, to prove Jesus is God because the prophets prophesied about him—and two is to talk about the end times.
I think that both of those can serve as distractions that make it difficult to really understand what the prophets really are and what they're doing.
So I wanted to try to clarify that.
No, I love it. I think you did a great job. I think understanding prophecy and the themes of apocalyptic literature—like you really brought a lot to me to help understand that, and it made so much make sense.
And your concluding thoughts in this book you say are, "Are we living in the last days? We may well be, but maybe not. Just like the Israelites, we have not been given sure knowledge of a specific future. We should likewise recognize that all of our attempts to decode prophecy and apocalyptic to gain certain knowledge of the future are a vanity that we can't afford to indulge."
You close with saying, "The future is in God's hands, and in him we trust, not in our calculations or timelines. We should live as though we are in the end times, as uncounted generations also believed. Such conviction calls us to respond responsibly to the current crisis and to trust God's wisdom and timing."
I just, like I said, had Dr. Amy-Jill Levine on; she said to live every day like tomorrow is the end of the world, and that's a very biblical Jewish thing that she said.
I'm just curious, so with all that that you said, how would you answer to someone if they say, "Are we living in the end times?"
I would say we should be living our lives as if we are.
Well, we should also recognize that we might not be.
Yeah, we don't know if we're living in the end times.
Yeah, and that's the whole point of when we listen to Jesus and when we think about the prophets.
We don't know, but any time could be the end time; it could be the last times.
And so we should live responsibly.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I think it calls us into action.
And that's what I really loved about that part of the book was that, you know, it's whether you think you're in the end times or we're not, as we're going to follow Jesus through with what he's called us to do is to get into action.
And that should bring it into us, and you have done so much action.
I just want to say, you know, no matter where we may disagree or have points that I'm still trying to learn from you on, I love to be able to have these conversations to be able to digest what you think and what you understand because I value you as a great resource in the kingdom of God for many of us.
It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show from myself and the millions of others that you have helped approach the Bible more faithfully on its own terms.
Thank you for all the work that you've done, John. I appreciate you.
Well, thank you for that; that's very encouraging. And you know, we're all in this together. We keep trying to bring clarity and understanding so that we can be faithful and so that we can serve and honor God's name.
Yes, thank you for always helping me ask good questions, John. I really appreciate it. Would you mind closing us in prayer?
That would be fine.
Lord, we're so grateful for the communication that you've given us in your word. We pray that you will help us to continually be learning more, to be evaluating those things which we think we know, to try to understand better, and especially to help us live in light of what we have learned about who you are and what you're doing in the world.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen. John, thank you so much for being here today.
You're welcome.
We are out.
The Lost World idea is that there are things about the biblical text that have been lost to us through time and language. Our intention is to try to read the biblical text more carefully and to try to understand the ancient Near Eastern background so that we can be faithful interpreters of God's word.
It will help us to be more faithful because as we do those things, we can try to understand the truth claims of the Bible in their own linguistic, literary, and cultural context.
So we have to begin with what the Bible is. We consider the Bible to be God's word, revelation, having authority.
That authority can be a tricky word. What do we mean by that? Authority is something that we submit to, and therefore, if something has authority, we are accountable to it.
And that's the word I'd like you to remember—accountability. We are accountable to scripture, and that means we're accountable to the truth claims of scripture.
Now, how do we get those claims? How do we know what they are? Well, we get to the truth claims because that is what is being affirmed in the communicative intentions of the human instruments that God used.
God used people to communicate his word, so God's purpose is carried out through human purpose.
And that means that even though it's God's authority, it's vested in the ones we call the authors. That means that the message transcends the culture, but the form is culture-bound.
The way I like to say it is that the Bible is written for us, but it's not written to us.