One of the great things about science and technology is the
elegance of the solutions that emerge out of innovation. I’m
reading The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns on a Kindle. Like other e-readers
the Kindle allows for font and text size changes which makes page numbering
problematic. As the texture of the text changes so does the number of pages in
the book. Yet the total length of the book never changes, just the number of swipes
required to read to full resolution. So
what magical methods do the makers of tech texts devise? Fractions! Well
specifically percentages.
Maybe I’m goofy for liking stuff like this but I do. I’m also enjoying The Evolution of Adam and today I’ll share a few observations from
the first 23%.
I was fortunate to participate in a call with Peter Enns
last month in which he discussed some of the central issues in his latest book.
In a previous post I shared some notes from that
call. My notes covered two main areas;
the purpose and place of the Genesis text and Paul’s treatment of and
relationship with Adam. The first 23% of The
Evolution of Adam deals with the perceived conflict between Genesis and the
science of Evolution and also begins to shed light on Genesis in terms of
authorship, genre and its role in defining Israel’s national identity.
The first thing I was impressed by, at the time of the
original phone conversation and in the introduction of the book, is Dr. Enns’
respect for Christian tradition and especially opposing points of view. He makes it clear that the Bible is the
inspired Word of God but also that as long as it has been read it has been discussed
and has incited questions and disagreement. I’m grateful for the example provided for
confidently expressing convictions while still respecting opposing points of
view.
It is made clear within the first 5% however that not all
Biblical interpretation is equal. The limitations of these views are described
in the following quote.
These
other views, rooted in a precommitment to read the Bible literally at virtually
every point despite evidence to the contrary, avoid engaging science by reinterpreting
it to conform to that conviction. To the contrary, it is clear that, from a scientific point of view, the Bible
does not always describe physical reality accurately; it simply speaks in an
ancient idiom, as one might expect ancient people to do. It is God’s Word, but
it has an ancient view of the natural world, not a modern one.
Much of the first 23% describes Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch
as a declaration by ancient Israel of their National Identity and their role in
the world as God’s chosen people. In
this description the authorship of the Pentateuch is fleshed out as a
compilation of several authors over centuries of time. As Enns points out, this
is not a new conclusion but is as old as the Old Testament itself.
The discussion around the Bible’s beginnings is described as
self generating as there are internal conflicts within the text itself. When I read this section the questions and
conflicts resonated so deeply with my own experience with the Scriptures that I’m
confident I would have audibly expressed my agreement if not for being on the
train and surrounded by strangers.
Enns remarks that questions and discussions around Genesis
should be expected because Genesis generates its own questions. Why are there
two completely different creation accounts? Where did Adam’s offspring’s wives
come from? Why does God need to ask where Adam and Eve are in the Garden? Why
is Genesis so repetitive? The presence
of these conflicts, repetitions, parallelisms and stylistic deviations are
evidence that Enns and centuries of Biblical scholarship point to when claiming
multiple authors and the nationalistic purpose of the texts.
This is an important point because it takes Genesis and the Pentateuch
out of the realm of pure historical account (and therefore out of conflict with
modern science) and into a complex assemblage for the shaping of Israel’s
relationship with God and the world.
The book returns often to the impact of reading Genesis well
on our view of science and as I move toward the 24th% and beyond a
discussion of genre and calibration with similar ancient texts is taking
shape. I’ll continue to process the book
and report more as the fraction of the total book read approaches 1/1.
