Another poetic line of thought. In my spare time (away from the day-job in IT in scientific research) I am a songwriter and hymnwriter. I realised that we have seem to have no hymns that take science seriously. Yes, there are several that talk about present-day nature, such as “How great thou art” and “Great is thy faithfulness”. But none that resonate with the wonders of the deeper science. This isn’t really surprising; the language of the peer-reviewed science paper doesn’t normally lend itself too readily to the language of worship-songs and hymns!
So here’s one. This approach seems to honour both what the scripture authors knew (and didn’t know) and what science knows (and can’t know). It lets them resonate with each other, but without trying to force a contrived concordism, and also (I hope) without falling into the “God of the gaps” trap.
In terms of our scientific desire to understand every last detail (good and right and proper!) I draw your attention to the last line of verse 3. (And spot the book reference in the last line of verse 2.)
1. In chaos and nothingness, you of unnameable Name
spoke into the emptiness, fanning dark energy's flame.
Your Spirit was hovering, racing and shaping the birth
of galaxy clusters, of sun and the moon and the earth.
2. Your voice pierced the darkness, your Word blazed your light on the world;
whole continents drifted while aeons and ages unfurled;
and coaxing the DNA helix to double and bind,
your Spirit breathed origin to every species and kind.
3. O Lord, where were we when you laid the foundations of earth?
When morning stars harmonised song, when the oceans burst forth?
When you played your dice, when you planned that through chance life evolved?
In mere mortal span, still your mysteries remain unresolved.
4. So where then is wisdom, and can understanding be found?
Yet heavens are voicing your glory: in Christ is their crown.
Invisible God, given visible image, you came,
breathed order and life: Jesus Christ, Name above every name.
Transcendent and immanent, God ever three, ever one:
we praise you and worship you, Father and Spirit and Son.
We have a holy book. Most religions have holy books. What makes ours better than theirs?
When I ask that question, most people say, “Because it is inspired.” But believers in the other books say the same. Where is the proof that ours is more inspired or theirs not inspired? Where is the proof that the Bible is not just good philosophy mixed in with lies to make gullible people obey?
I have met people who lost faith in the Christian religion and cite Gen 1 first in their long list of stupid things people believe. The first chapter of an inspired holy book should not have logical reasons to be called stupid or a myth. I find it amazing that Augustine had this same observation. His solution served the Church well.
If only Gen 1 matched standard science, a person might say, “Lucky guess,” or “You manipulated the meaning to fit.” If we add Gen 2-11 to show all those strange little stories tell the same story as standard science, then one must be hard core against belief to deny something was going on.
Ontology is philosophy with a good mix of metaphysics, mostly ideas that cannot be falsified. Theology makes Gen 1 about spiritual things. The only spiritual aspect mentioned in Gen 1 is God. The rest of the text is about nature. Gen 1 rejects all other gods and spiritual forces of nature. Gen 1 and standard science have the same goal, the description of nature.
No. You still don’t get it.
I believe God gave Moses an actual vision of the historical creation. A vision does not dictate full understanding or comprehension. He got enough to set things into an order that matched or changed his understanding of nature. Because of God’s inspiration, it matches today’s understanding too.
Such a vision would contain too much detail to write in one historical document. A master poet, probably not Moses, captured the vision. Poetry can relay more concepts with less words than a narrative. It can SHOW the interplay of the parts without going into great detail. It is also easier to memorize or sing, which comes in handy when the population has few books/scrolls.
The poetry did not “disguise” meaning. The order is not “dislocated.” These words convey an almost evil intent. Instead, circular poetry shows how all the parts of a natural creation overlap and intertwine, which match standard science. A simple list does not do that, and one never will.
The traditional Christian interpretation of the text caries so many non-biblical details that our “vision” no longer coincides with the biblical text. Religion changed the meaning and lost the pattern. Westerners are very linear thinkers, so yes we need to read it like it was intended to be read to grasp the full meaning.
Yes, open communication. Lets not fall back into the near past when believers condemned believers of different denominations to hell just because they did not believe everything alike. I suspect that made God cry. Probably why our world is in such a spiritual mess.
My motivation for writing this book has many reasons. Showing the biblical text as a miracle for non-believers is simply obvious and necessary to me but not to you. I’m not sure why you think that an “external reason” would tempt me to skip or add to the text. I have been quite diligent in keeping those out. One of the reasons to post here is to find any I did not notice. So far, no one has found one. You haven’t even tried. Your entire discourse is an attempt to turn me away from pursuing something good and amazing.
Bolstering confidence is a good thing. In that quest, I found that a poem interpreted by science gives a much clearer understanding of God’s motivations: his love, mercy, and forgiveness. That matches the Abba Jesus loved. I have found the texts say creation is one as its Creator is One. Humanity is one as its Creator is One. The oneness of creation and humanity are scientific beliefs. Understanding God and our relationship to God is incredibly important.
To me, your approach to the text is limited by your beliefs and knowledge. Case in point: the text does not dictate angiosperms, yet “flowering plants” is the only way you describe the passage. Conifers are not angiosperms. They have seeds that people eat. They were one of the first trees. You limit the text to a current scientific definition, not the writer’s understanding of plants.
Duh, of course science has changed. That never stopped people from trying to mesh it with the Bible. In fact, our understanding of geology started because of the desire to read the two as one. Modern Creationism started because the “geologists” kept finding things that did not fit. However the two could not be one because Christians believed lots of non biblical things about creation.
I never said it proved religious teaching as correct. Harmony is circumstantial evidence for inspiration. That gives a reason to believe in the God mentioned in the text.
What religion does not speak directly to a believer’s heart? Basically your statement says you prefer a false religion over the truth if the truth makes you uncomfortable. The words of Jesus repelled a lot of religious people for the same reason. You trust your opinion way too much.
I believe I said something like Gen 1 is an outline that science describes in detail. That poetic “outline” shows the “purposefulness of the arrangements of creation” and who made everything. Not sure why you have not picked that up yet.
People who read this passage before science started destroying the myth did not need science to understand it. Once knowledge showed the interpretation (believed to be textual) to be false we started needing the two to match. Atheism took off because these passages did not match. Atheism still thinks it knows better. You have nothing but opinion to give anyone to build faith.
For as much as you have written, I have no clue which version of the creation story you believe. The “traditional interpretation” starts out in statements like, “God created everything perfect.” Gen 1 never gives any indication of anything being made perfect. Perfection is not mentioned by any other biblical writer nor is it mourned. Any interpretation that includes perfection will never match science or the Bible. It will never give us a clear understanding of God or our relationship with God.
I have a book full of details I have not mentioned in this thread including why I believe Moses had a vision of creation. I’m not sure why you think this one detail is so important except to condemn me for 1) not telling you sooner or 2) “importing.” Tradition gives Moses credit. The text’s insistence of one God as a lone creator is unique to the Hebrews and very strong in the writings at the time of Moses. But tradition is not why I believe that Moses saw this vision.
You still do not accept that the passage is circular poetry even though the patterns match. Your reasons do not address the poetry or the match with science. Your objections show that you prefer something you can manipulate in your head and solidifying the text with science messes that up. You reject that God showed Moses a vision of creation because Moses could not see subatomic matter. Basically you think God is incapable of giving an adequate vision. You reject the need for reality in the text. Yet the text is all about the reality of God creating everything we can possibly know. You limit God.
I should add perhaps, that I feel a greater freedom in my poetry, in that while I take my reference points from biblical passages, I am not overly concerned with making anything but general statements (when I think that may add to the poem) related to science and philosophy. I guess this also indicates a difference in approach. I enjoy the genre mainly because it allows a greater degree of expressing my feelings, and especially in that it forces me to examine language at a deeper human level.
@Jo_Helen_Cox: Source at link below. It includes links to the score (tune) and to background notes about both why I wrote it, and detailed commentary on specific aspects:
Thanks. I hadn’t noticed the tension between verses two and three. I’ll give that some thought. Nevertheless, such tension isn’t necessarily bad. Is the normally particle-like electron a wave or a particle? Is normally wave-like light wave or particle? In wave/particle duality there’s a tension, and we recognise that both aspects are true.
Your comments about verse three with congregations ring true in my experience. We used at a Hymn Society conference, and a couple of lay people (out of about 100) asked me about it. They have a point. One of the constant tensions within the hymn/song world is how far we rein back to be within comfort zones (but this can veer towards lowest common denominator) and how far we push folk beyond the comfort zone (and what better place than worship for acknowledging that there are things beyond our grasp). This is towards the latter end of that spectrum. There is, I suspect, no simple answer.
So this will never make the top hundred hallelujah hot-hits! I’m not giving up the day-job to live on its royalties! Nevertheless, a part of its role is to give encouragement to a “thinking congregation” that modern science is God-given.
I asked for what I wanted. You never even looked up “circular poetry” to find out what it was. You never considered that it did what I said it would do. You still don’t understand why it needs to be done. Instead you simply said I was wrong. Nope. That does not help.
Those with strong backgrounds in comparative linguistics as well as backgrounds in Hebrew from the best schools definitely would agree. However, you’d be amazed how many professors at many of the smaller fundamentalist seminaries and denominational pastor-training schools earned all three of their degrees from very homogenous institutions—and sometimes even multiple degrees from the same campus. (Some even stay around and teach on the same campus. When I used to guest lecture at a lot of schools, I was amazed how often entire faculties were totally unaware of important scholarship, especially in Biblical linguistics.)
Frankly, I’ve been retired for so long—and working in other areas of scholarship ever since—that I’ve not kept up on the best resources for students and laypersons.
However, I would recommend some general reading on related issues which I think you would enjoy. Moises Silva and David Allen Black have written some outstanding introductions to Biblical linguistics. And D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies has become a classic. Even though you’ll probably find a lot more Greek New Testament examples in those books, the principals and fundamentals of careful exegesis are sure to capture your interest.
There are also some excellent websites containing handy compilations of Hebrew idioms, some of which you’ll already recognize and others you may have never stopped to think about.
I’d recommend that you read Genesis 1 through 9 (yes, up through chapter 9) in several modern English translations while paying special attention to the translation footnotes. For example you will find that even though the generally ambiguous word “earth” usually appears in the main text, each instance will be tagged in the footnote as “land” or “country/nation” or something like “The heavens and the earth is a Hebrew idiom referring to what the ancient Hebrews regarded as their entire universe.”
I also recommend spending some time reading the NIV Commentary on Genesis 1 through 9. In fact, I recommend an investment in the entire series, but if that isn’t possible, you can also buy the volumes individually. Volume 1 (containing Genesis) as well as the Matthew/Mark/Luke volume deserves to be in your library—unless you have access to a library with the entire series in its reference room.
The NET Bible with translation notes at the Bible.org website is worth checking out. You may also like the write-your-own-notes feature.
My current work is largely Greek NT and I can no longer claim to keep up with the latest Pentateuch scholarship. But other readers can probably recommend some good websites.
Maybe I should have said you prefer a fairy tail to reality if that reality makes you uncomfortable. Lots of people choose that way. For example, the Star Wars movies have produce a religious following. They know that the movie is not true history, yet they prefer the fantasy to reality.
Yes, we all must choose what we believe. Your example is a bit over the top. However, I am saying we have an ancient document that can be read in harmony with science and you reject that interpretation because… why?