A conversation with John Walton on Genesis

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And this interview, Eli Ayala speaks with John Walton on the topic of Genesis.

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Welcome back to another episode. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and welcome back to Revealed Apologetics, your central hub for everything apologetics.
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We tend to focus on apologetics in general and presuppositional apologetics in particular, and of course we cover all sorts of theological and biblical topics that cover a wide range of issues.
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Today I'm very excited to have Dr. John Walton, the author of The Lost World of Genesis 1, and I believe he has a series,
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The Lost World of Adam and Eve and The Lost World of the Torah. Very interesting stuff, definitely covering topics of great interest, especially as it relates to apologetics and just biblical studies.
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And of course anything that has to do with Genesis is always controversial. A lot of people have very passionate views on multiple sides of the spectrum.
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As you know, I've had Dr. Hugh Ross, who is a leading old earth creationist proponent, on to discuss the issues of young earth creation as with Dr.
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Jason Lyle, a noted young earth creationist. And so when I'm not doing apologetics, apologetic methodology,
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I really love to explore this issue of Genesis. And so just a couple of weeks ago I found myself reading
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The Lost World of Genesis 1 and found it to be fascinating, and so I figured I'd just reach out to the author.
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And through providence, I was able to connect to them directly. It was actually pretty funny. So I'm really happy to have
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Dr. Walton with us today. Now before I introduce him, I just want to make a quick little reminder, those who are interested in joining
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Presupp University, which is an online apologetics course where you can learn what
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I call biblical apologetics or presuppositional apologetics, you can sign up on revealedapologetics .com
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and look for the Presupp U drop down menu there and you could sign up online if you're interested in that.
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All right. Well, without further ado, I would like to introduce Dr. John Walton.
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How's it going, Dr. Walton? Going well, Eli. Thanks for inviting me to be on your show.
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Well, thank you so much for accepting my invitation because I'm sure you get lots of invitations and you have no idea who
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I am. So I appreciate it. Yeah. All right.
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Well, good. Maybe you did a little research and found out I wasn't too crazy. So I appreciate you being willing to come on.
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Happy to be here. All right. Well, why don't you share a little bit about yourself? Perhaps my audience, my audience tends to be on either side of the spectrums of like old earth creationism, young earth creationism.
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They might not be familiar with your work. You don't have to go into all the details, but who are you?
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And how about we start there? Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? Okay. So I was raised in the church, became a
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Christian at a very young age. And the church I grew up in was basically young earth by persuasion, although it wasn't a big thing that they talked about a whole lot.
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It just was there. Sure. I was raised that way and really grew up that way into my adult years.
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And so that was the position that was my default position. I went through a period in college where I was sort of defending that particular view.
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Okay. And so that's kind of how I, how I grew up. I went to a
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Jewish school for my PhD and learned my Hebrew exegesis there and comparative studies, and then went on to teach at Moody Bible Institute, where I taught for 20 years.
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Okay. Through most of the time at Moody, I remained a young earth person.
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I would have described myself as uncomfortably young earth. And in that sense, it was uncomfortable because I believed that that was the only option that the
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Bible left me. Okay. And therefore that was what I did. Yet I was uncomfortable because I felt like,
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I'm not sure I'm reading this right. It wasn't an element of science. It was an element of hermeneutics that made me disconcerted.
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And, but most of my time at Moody, I was in that particular camp just because I didn't see any way that I could go anywhere else with my commitment to biblical authority.
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It was just toward the end of that time in the late nineties, that actually in the middle of a classroom discussion, suddenly all the pieces clicked into place.
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And I said, oh, that's how I've been looking at this incorrectly. And here's the adjustments
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I need to make. And these are the doors that opens up. And again, it wasn't an issue of something science did.
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It was an issue of hermeneutics and how I was reading the text. Yeah. What I appreciate,
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I listened to a couple of lectures before I had you on just to brush up. I have heard about you before, and I was,
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I had a passing acquaintance with some of your views, but what I really appreciated in some of your talks is that you said,
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I'm not a science guy. Not that that's a bad thing, but you're a text guy. And those, those who know my apologetic methodology,
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I placed very much, I placed great emphasis upon the text since that is our source of authority as, as a presuppositional list in my apologetic methodology,
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I very much emphasize that. But at the same time, I really appreciated that regardless of, of whether I would end up agreeing with your insights or not,
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I really appreciated that you didn't come to the text with this kind of desire to reconcile an interpretation with, with science.
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And that's what I really, it really opened me up to listening to what you had to say, because that doesn't rub a lot of Christians well, when we're trying to reconcile things and find excuses as to why we could hold to this option or that option with regards to interpretation.
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So I very much appreciated that about, about your approach. You're exactly right, Eli. You know, lots of people respond to me as critically that I'm trying to defend an evolutionary model and that's not accurate at all.
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Sure. What I'm trying to do, cause I couldn't do that. I'm not a science person. What I'm trying to do is read the text as well as I can, as faithfully as I can, as God's word, and then ask the question, is it or is it not compatible with what mainstream science is today?
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And I've decided that I believe it's compatible, but that doesn't mean I'm committed to science as it is.
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If mainstream science changed tomorrow, my question wouldn't be any different. Is the text compatible with mainstream science?
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That's just so people who are trying to navigate between the text and mainstream science can try to figure out what are the obstacles?
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What do I have to think about? Right now, now, without getting into the details of your view just yet,
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I guess one thing that is attractive about your view, and I'm sure you'll unpack it in just a moment, but that if someone were to understand the text, the way you understand it, it does leave open a wide variety of understandings of the interplay between Genesis 1 and certain understandings of science.
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For example, I'm not a theistic evolutionist. I don't hold to that position. In my opinion, I think that position is false.
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That's my view. And you have people from all different parts of the spectrum. However, your view, it seems to me, leaves it open for someone to be a committed young earth, old earth, and still look at Genesis 1 and say, hey,
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Dr. Walton has made some good insights here, and so I'm not very sure if Genesis 1 is teaching what many people think it's teaching.
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Would I be correct in that? Well, that's correct. Again, my basic approach, as we'll get into, is that I don't believe that when you read the text in its ancient
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Near Eastern context, I don't believe that it's addressing our scientific issues today.
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And that means that I can be someone who deals with the text and not really have a lot of concern for what science is doing.
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People will either accept mainstream or modify mainstream or reject mainstream. Let's read the text well.
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Sure. Now, before we get into the details of how you understand the text, I want to explore what you said before.
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You were an ardent young earther for quite some time. And people who watch my stuff on this specific topic, it's very interesting to me, but I don't know where I land in terms of the old earth, young earth debate.
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But when you were a young earther, was it simply because of your understanding of the text as you were raised to interpret it?
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Or did you read certain young earth material that really helped you keep that position until you were later exposed to maybe a different way of looking at the text?
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I mean, I read plenty of young earth material, but it wasn't like I was persuaded by that view.
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I was persuaded by the fact that as I looked at the arguments for day being a long extended period of time in various permutations,
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I just found them unconvincing and not really reflecting the Hebrew text very well.
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Yeah. Now, what I found is, and this again, I guess maybe this is what led me to picking up your book and beginning to read, is that like I mentioned at the beginning,
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I've had Dr. Jason Lyle, who is a noted young earth creationist. He's an astrophysicist and he handles the text pretty well.
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I mean, some people might disagree on certain interpretations. Then I had Dr. Hugh Ross, who's a noted old earth creationist on.
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As I studied this topic, I'm not convinced one way or the other right now, but I always read
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Genesis 1 and thought to myself, while both groups have some interesting insights and various strong points in favor of their view, there seems to be more going on here that I'm missing.
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That really led me to pick up your book and like, I've heard so much about Dr. Walton, let me pick up the darn book and see what he has to say.
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While I'm still not convinced one way or the other, what you began to touch on was, I think, a question that a lot of people haven't really taken seriously.
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Some people have, and some will agree with you, some will disagree, but I want to ask you this question, and this is really what really got me attracted to what you had to say.
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Why don't you explain to people, without getting into the details just yet, why it's important to transport your mind into the mind of an ancient
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Israelite when you're reading something like Genesis 1? I mean, that's what really comes out of your writings.
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I feel like, again, people could agree or disagree with your conclusions, but when the way you explain the issues,
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I feel like I'm transported into that ancient context. Why is that so important when we're studying
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Genesis 1? Well, it's important because our understanding of biblical authority is that God, with his authority, invested that authority in human authors.
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Therefore, they carry the authority of God. That means if I'm going to get the authority of God, I need to be tethered to them.
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I'm accountable to those human authors because that's how I reflect my accountability to God.
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He chose that direction. I have to choose that direction. So I'm accountable to them, and that means the language that they use and the culture that was behind their communication is important for me to get as much of as I can.
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I'm limited because I'm not an ancient Israelite. I can't totally recover that world, but I can hold myself accountable by trying to be tethered to those authors and their intentions.
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To me, that's essential to a sound hermeneutic, that I am tied to the original author's intentions as best as I can understand it.
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And that means their literary intentions, their theological intentions, their cultural intentions, and their historical intentions, the context.
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And so context has that fourfold element, literary, theological, historical, cultural.
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And I have to be bound to those. Otherwise, I'm just going to go off on my own, doing my own thing.
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And in that sense, I will not be respecting the authority of the text.
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Okay. Now, I want to talk a little bit about how one does that, because again, there's this quick response.
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So when someone takes an interpretation like you do that kind of goes against some of the traditional views, a lot of people say, well, if we can't just understand it the way it's said, do we need a guru to tell us what
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Scripture says? I mean, how could anyone study all of the ancient context, all these things that are necessary to kind of transport ourselves into the text?
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How can someone do that? God spoke to us clearly, we should be able to read and understand it. There's some problems with that. But before we get into those details, why do you think, and maybe this is your experience, why do you think a lot of Christians avoid diving deep into the
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Old Testament? It's not that they don't read it. There seems to be a more comfort in the
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New Testament. Why do you think people avoid the Old Testament in terms of getting really, really deep into that world?
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It's because they find lots of things that confuse them, which is precisely the point I'm making.
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They confuse us because we are not part of that culture. And because we don't know that language, you know, people say,
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I just want to read the Bible as it is. Well, then open your Hebrew and Greek. The fact is we're already dependent on people who have translated for us.
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And it's important to translate language, and it's important to translate culture, because those things are not intuitive to just any reader.
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People stay away from the Old Testament because it confuses them. They don't know what to do with it. They don't know how to get to the information that they feel will be vital and transforming for them.
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They don't know how to treat it as God's word. All right, so in order to understand the
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Old Testament in any text, I mean, we have to know the context, and context can be literary context, it can be historical context, all sorts of different angles of the context we can come at it.
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But okay, we need to think like these ancient Israelites so that we can kind of understand what
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Moses is writing. I mean, I don't know what you believe about Mosaic authorship or anything like that, but the author of Genesis, what they're writing, we have to kind of transport our minds into that time.
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That is easier said than done. How might you give advice to people as to how to jump into such an ancient text as the
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Book of Genesis and really get a grasp as to what's going on there? I think the first step is not as hard as some of the other steps.
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The first step is to realize that we all, as readers, bring our own cultural setting to our reading.
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We read it as moderns, we read it as Westerns, we read it as Americans, we read it in an
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English context, we read it against our theology. That's natural to us. Of course we read it that way.
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The first step then is to recognize or begin to recognize all the many ways that you are doing that.
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In other words, it's not so much yet get into ancient Israel, it's look at those things that you know are modern and push them to the side.
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No, Deuteronomy is not talking about social networks. No, Deuteronomy is not talking about the market economy, capitalism, and supply and demand.
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It should be just as easy for us to imagine that Genesis is not talking about genetics and modern science.
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Start by intentionally moving your cultural elements off to the side because you know that they're not talking about those.
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Now, a parenthesis here. Some people say, oh, but God knows. That's a problematic position to take because that would suggest that somehow we have a hotline to heaven that swings around to the authors and gets straight to God.
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We say, well, the Spirit gave me that. Well, you know the problem with that. Anybody can claim the
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Spirit gave them anything. The Crusades and Manifest Destiny and the Holocaust. That doesn't work.
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We cannot use the Spirit as an appeal to authority. The text has been given to us for that.
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So you can't say, well, God knows. We're tethered to the authors because that's who
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God chose to use. Right. And that's an important link, what you just said right there.
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It's not that we're removed from God and we have to deal with the authors. It's the authors, it's the very authors that God chose to communicate that.
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So it's not taking God out of the picture. It's acknowledging what God has used, his method of transmitting his revelation in Scripture.
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Exactly. The Spirit has worked through the authors. The Spirit has produced the text. We're tied to the
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Spirit when we're in the text. So that's step one, try to move aside the things that you know don't belong there that are modern in nature.
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The second step then is to start trying to penetrate the ancient world.
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Now that's really tough. It's a different kind of tough. That's really tough. 20 years ago, if someone had asked me,
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I would have said, well, you know, there's some German journals that might help you a little bit.
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You know, here's some Akkadian texts. We're 20 years past that. And there are tools today that can help just the regular
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Bible reader get a sense of the ancient world. I've had the privilege of helping produce lots of those.
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So I know what they are. The place I would have people start is the Cultural Background Study Bible. All the study notes in the
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Cultural Background Study Bible are background sorts of notes, whether it's history or archaeology or manners and customs or ancient literature, the ways people lived and thought.
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All the notes are that cultural background. And you've got them right there alongside your
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Bible. So something like that would be a great way to get into it.
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If you're going to go beyond that and deeper, then there are other sources that can get you there.
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But that's the process. But the fact is, we're very well along the way.
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If we only get to that first step and push our own modern culture aside, that doesn't mean that we think the
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Bible is not relevant to our modern culture. But if we're going to know what the Bible has to say for us, we have to start with what it said to them.
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We have to take things in sequence. So we start with understanding what it said to them, because it's not going to say to us what it didn't say to them.
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Okay? We have to start with that. I mean, that goes back to your basic how to read the Bible for all it's worth, Fee and Stewart.
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You know, we start with what it said to them. And so that's our process. So here's a question.
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So we need to remove our modern eyes, so to speak, and kind of see it through the eyes of the ancients.
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But again, it's something that's easier said than done. How does one identify these kind of modern glasses, assumptions that we bring to the text?
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I mean, I know we need to remove our modern outlook, but it's so tethered to the way that we think.
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How does one reduce some of those issues as they approach the text?
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How do they identify those things in themselves? Well, just ask yourself the question, is the question
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I'm asking in the text something that reflects my modern world, or would have they thought of this in the ancient world?
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You know, even things like personal rights, democracy.
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You know, when we think about those things, you know, democracy wasn't on the radar in the ancient world.
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They can't be talking about that. There is a book called Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes.
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Okay. That's another one that can help people start to recognize ways that they are importing their own issues and culture.
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We want the Bible to speak to our culture, and it does, but we have to go through the right processes to get there.
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We can't start by saying, what does the Bible say about gender identity? I mean, the
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Bible has things to say about it, but we have to start by understanding what it says in its context before we can ask the questions for ourselves.
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Okay. So let's jump in this then. Okay. So some of the insights that you've made and some of the conclusions that you reach, have been controversial for a lot of people.
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Is that correct? Sure. Yeah. So now here's a question that I would imagine someone could ask.
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Okay. So you have people interpreting Genesis for a very long time. Okay.
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And you have kind of these solidified camps already, right? You got the young earth creationists, the old earth creationists, the framework hypothesis guys, and they're all like, hey, you know, you got to look at the text this way.
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You got to look at the text that way. Who are, who do you think you are, Dr. Walton, coming along all these years later, has everyone in the history of biblical interpretation missed this, or is what you're pointing out something that is found throughout the history of interpretation, but you're kind of bringing out those elements in a new way, or maybe just, you know, bringing out something that's already been there.
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How would you respond to someone who thinks that, you know, you're, you're bringing insight that apparently no one has seen.
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That sounds a little suspicious to me. How would you respond to something like that? There are really two kind of different responses that work together.
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One is if you look through the history of interpretation, you can find that all the way back, they were asking some of the questions that I'm asking.
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Sure. They were opening up some of the spaces that I enter into. But it's, it's more in general ways.
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And it's because of part number two, part number two is people could not have interpreted the
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Bible this way, because they did not have the information about the ancient Near East interpreters, even in the early church, longed to know more about the ancient world of Israel's context, but they had no resources.
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You know, the reformers would have longed to know about the ancient context, but they had no resources.
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Archeology began producing such resources for us in the second half of the 19th century.
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But then it took a good 100 years for texts to be deciphered, translated, interpreted, dealt with in academia, and then not to mention starting to move into more public discourse.
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So in that sense, it's really only in the last couple decades, that such information has been available for conversation.
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Peter, I just didn't have it. Sure. Would that be likened to the, kind of the
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New Testament situation that, that we have a wide variety of manuscript evidence that wasn't available to say, you know, the, the folks who made the
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King James version back in 1611, we just have more information. Would you say that with regards to the ancient world, we have more information available to us that give us insights into those ancient times that some of the, you know, the interpreters that came before us didn't have available to them?
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Is that what you're saying? Right. Far more. I mean, there are over a million cuneiform texts. I'm not exaggerating.
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There are over a million cuneiform texts and nobody had that in the 19th century.
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Nobody had that even in the early 20th century. But when we get new resources, it's our responsibility to make use of those resources.
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Reformers said the same thing about Greek and Hebrew. Remember the Reformers were, were heavily criticized for moving away from the
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Latin Vulgate and moving toward the, the foundation of Greek and Hebrew.
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Erasmus defends it all the time. He was criticized heavily as well. And so, but they said, we have these resources now, we need to use them.
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And that meant that they drew conclusions that were different from the people who had gone before them.
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Oh, okay. And of course, when that happens, when you're dealing with the Bible, it means when, when people start doing those things, they will be called heretic for a few centuries until someone says, okay, fine.
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They were onto something. It's like, whatever. Fine. Okay. Let's go back to the
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Greek, you know? All right. That, that, that's great. So, so let's get into Genesis one. Okay.
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One of the things that I got from, from reading your material was that you understand
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Genesis one as not speaking of kind of like cosmic origins with regards to like the creation of like the material world.
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And that really runs contrary to a lot of the way many people read the text. And I was very interested in how you came to those conclusions.
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Why don't you unpack for us why you think based on your studies, that Genesis one is not talking about material creation, which is usually assumed in the young earth interpretation, the old earth interpretation.
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What do you think's going on there? And perhaps you can kind of unpack some examples for us. Sure. Happy to do it.
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Just real quick. Genesis one in like two seconds. When I, when I wrote
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Lost World of Genesis one, I was trying to think of what terminology I could use that would be a contrast to a material approach.
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Of course, the material approach is very, very important to us today because we live in a scientific kind of world that's exploring the material world.
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But in the ancient world, I was trying to think of a contrast and I came up with function, that they were more interested in function.
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As time has gone on, I've decided that's not the best terminology. It's not that I disagree with it, but there's better.
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And the better terminology that I now use is that the book was more interested in order than in material.
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God ordering the cosmos to function the way he wanted it to, with a theological purpose that Genesis one unfolds.
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And so the idea of ordering as a creative act. In that way,
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I talk about the distinction between house and home. To build a house is an act of creation, so to speak.
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To make a home is also an act of creation. It's difficult to make a home without there being a house there.
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Yet you can talk about making a home without really being interested in the plumbing or the heating and air conditioning.
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You can talk about making a home without trying to explore the integrity of the roof or the foundation.
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So there's a difference between the material house and building a home. And so I talk about the fact that in our modern science, we talk about cosmic origins as a house story.
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And that's perfectly legitimate. That's important. But what I try to suggest is that in the
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Bible, they're more interested in the home story. God is creating a home for people, and he intends to make his home among them.
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God's presence. We'll get to that in a little bit. So the idea that, think of it as a home story, not a house story.
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They're both legitimate kinds of stories. They're both origin stories, but it doesn't have to be both.
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Now, okay, so it's more of a home story than a house story. So basically you're saying it's not so much building a house, it's more of the function of a home.
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So for example, you have, I think you used the example in one of your talks or in your book, when does a restaurant become a restaurant?
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Is it when the building is built or when people start serving food? Is that distinction you're trying to make here between kind of having a building, but then having a function for the building?
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Is that what you're saying? Sure. I used examples of a college campus, all kinds of things. You can talk about the infrastructure and the buildings, or you can talk about what goes on there.
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What's essential to identity. That's what I try to say now about Genesis 1.
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If we use the word cosmic origins with a scientific overtone, which we generally do, then that's not a helpful term because I don't think they have those scientific overtones.
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Therefore, I would call it an account of cosmic identity because it's trying to help you understand what the cosmos is as opposed to just its material manufacturing.
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Okay. Now, has the history of interpretation understood
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Genesis 1 as a house story as opposed to a home story?
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I mean, are the insights that you're making new? You see what
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I'm saying? Because it seems like I understand what you're saying, and I kind of understand why you would say it because of the examples you gave in your book.
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I thought that they were good and strong relevant points, but I guess the knee -jerk reaction that some people would have is, well, then why hasn't anyone pointed these things out in the past?
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It seems that most people, even on the wide spectrum, seems to suggest that, yeah, there is a creation of the material world to some extent.
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Perhaps people who are not concerned with modern science read it and still come away with that. How would you respond to something like that?
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Well, I think you can look back in the theological treatment of Genesis 1 all the way back and find people who say things like, you know,
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God is making a home for us. You know, when Jesus says in John 14, I'm going away, but don't worry,
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I'm going to prepare a place for you. That wasn't the first time. And so that's theologically concept that you can find, that God intends to dwell with us.
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That's biblical, and it's been part of theology all along. So I'm not identifying any new kinds of ideas in the home story, okay?
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It's just that I'm trying to say that as it tells the home story, it's not necessarily very interested in the house story.
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That gets to the idea that we have to ask, what kind of creation story is this?
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If I walked into a theater late and poked the person next to me and said, how did the play begin?
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They could talk to me about when the script was written, but that's not what I want to know. They could talk to me about when the theater was built, but that's not what
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I want to know. They could talk to me about the construction of the set, but that's not what I want to know.
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They could talk about the cast. That's not what I want to know. Those are all valid answers, and they're all true, and they're all important.
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You can't have the play without the set, without the cast. But my question was, what's happened since the curtains opened?
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And so all those other questions are going to be put to the side while I focus, try to get information about the question
32:02
I'm asking. And I'm saying the same thing about Genesis. Some people treat
32:07
Genesis as a script story, or a cast story, or a set story, or the theater story.
32:14
But what is it that Genesis is doing? We have to ask, what kind of creation account are they intending to give?
32:23
It's not a question of, what all did God create? That's easy. Everything in every way.
32:29
But this is a literary question. What is the nature of this account?
32:35
Okay, so it's a home story, not a house story. It's a story about assigning function as opposed to material creation.
32:46
And I like the language you used, because I tend to think in philosophical categories where you use the terminology like functional ontology.
32:54
Is that what you used in your book, functional ontology? I did. I did. And I understood.
32:59
You probably have a better way of using that, but it helped me when you said that. I was kind of like, all right, that makes sense. Because I think in those philosophical categories.
33:05
Now, if Genesis 1 is not a house story, but a home story, perhaps you can share with some folks what evidence led you to conclude that contrary to popular opinion, right, it is in fact a home story as opposed to a house story.
33:22
Well, I started looking through the days of Genesis. I mean, read the text. Day one, he creates day and night, he creates time, those are not material.
33:31
Day two, it talks about the firmament, but he's created, I think the word rakia refers to the space in which people live.
33:40
Okay, that's not material. And day three, he says, let the dry land emerge.
33:45
It doesn't say he made it. Let plants sprout. He doesn't talk about him actually making material things.
33:52
So you start looking through the days and you say, hmm, this is odd. They're not talking about him actually manufacturing any material stuff.
34:00
It's not because they didn't believe he did. It's just that the concepts of time, day and night, those order our world, food and the way it grows season by season orders our world.
34:14
So you can see in the text, if you sit and read it, the emphasis on these aspects of order, we get to day four and it says
34:24
God made the sun, moon and stars. He goes, ah, there you go. There is material being manufactured.
34:30
Well, you'd like to think so. But the fact is, when you look into the ancient world, you discover quickly that in the ancient world, nobody knew that the sun, moon and stars were material objects.
34:42
So that would be a modern assumption. Exactly. We think of those things. We assume that they're objects, that they're material, but they didn't know that in the ancient world.
34:53
And you notice that the biblical text calls them lights. God made lights.
35:00
That's not a physical manufacturing process. Now we know that he would have had to do a material thing to get there, but that's not what the text says.
35:10
Okay. Then he says, let birds swarm, let fish team. It doesn't say he made them.
35:15
Of course he did materially, but again, that's really not the focus of the text.
35:21
So what does it mean to let, let the earth produce living creatures, let the seas team with, with, you know, the fish.
35:28
What does that mean? It just says, this is how God has ordered our world. He's, he's decorating.
35:34
This is the furniture. This is the wallpaper. This is, this is the context in which we are going to put human beings to live in this world that God has made for them.
35:45
Okay. So, so let the earth produce living creatures. That's, I mean, it's,
35:51
I mean, I guess I don't know Hebrew, Hebrew. So I guess from English, from English, it just sounds like, all right, let the earth produce the creatures in some way.
36:01
In what way does it, does it do that? That's not a scientific description. Sure. Sure. We would never say science talks about the earth somehow producing living creatures.
36:10
Well, I'm not talking about science. I'm just saying from the text, it's, it just, I guess I, I understand what you're saying.
36:16
And I understand some of the points you make, like, those are great points, but I kind of sympathize with the person that says, well, it really seems like there's some kind of material creation going, maybe not in a sophisticated, modern scientific sense, but there seems to be a, you know, let the earth produce.
36:31
And it was, you know, let the day six. And that's the only one that has any connection to a material creation.
36:39
Okay. When the other six don't, that should lead you to say, well, so that's not the main focus here.
36:46
Okay. All right. All right. So now when we get to, and again, this is a topic of, of your book, the lost world of Genesis, by the way, the title of the book makes one want to purchase it.
36:59
It sounds intriguing. What do you mean the law? That was something that caught me at the beginning, even before I knew about your views specifically,
37:06
I thought the title was just so intriguing because when we think of old Testament, it is, it is kind of a lost world.
37:14
I mean, my wife was, was talking about how she finds it difficult to read through the old Testament, because it's just, she doesn't understand that world.
37:21
And so, so regardless if someone, you know, agrees with, with some of the things you're saying or not, we could all agree that in order to get in touch with that world, we need to kind of know what's going on in that context.
37:33
So I thought the title was brilliant because it's very intriguing. Like, well, what do you mean the lost world? Is there something about Genesis that I just never considered before?
37:41
So kudos for the title. I thought that was brilliant. I wish I could say, I thought of it because the publisher that thought of it.
37:48
And in fact, that was a little bit hesitant to say, you know, you're not going to put dinosaurs on the cover, right? I mean,
37:53
Jurassic park or something. So, so, but it seems to have worked.
37:59
You're, you're right. People have been intrigued by it. And so we've got six lost world books now. Yes. And, and so let's move.
38:05
So let's move on. So, so Genesis one, the lost world of Genesis one, you say that the, the evidence strongly suggest a more functional creation as opposed to like a material creation.
38:16
And you, you, you think that that is evidenced in the text itself. And so taking that position, since it's not addressing our more modern concerns of material creation and the beginning of the universe.
38:28
Is it true then you conclude that there is a, a variety of conclusions therefore that someone could come without being restrained from a particular interpretation of the text?
38:38
Is that something you would be suggesting? I'm not sure quite where you're going with that. I, well, I'm not leading anywhere.
38:44
I just want to know. I just want to know if having your understanding and with regards to a functional creation, it seems that if I were to adopt that view, for instance, that would, that would actually leave a couple of options open to me with regards to how, how my understanding of the
39:00
Bible may interplay with what I adopt scientifically. Does that make sense? Exactly. Okay.
39:05
You know, you take something like young earth and people who believe young earth. And again,
39:10
I came out of that background. I understand it pretty well. People who believe young earth would not say we believe young earth because science inevitably and demonstrably leads us there.
39:22
Sure. In fact, they would say, no, science doesn't seem to lead us there. That's why they have to talk about the appearance of age, but the
39:29
Bible demands it. Okay. Now, and for, for a long time, I thought the same way.
39:35
Once I got to the point that said, wait a minute, maybe the Bible doesn't demand it. At that point you could say, well, yeah, but still it could be a young earth, but see the point.
39:45
If the Bible doesn't demand it, then why would you think it's young? The scientific evidence all points the other way.
39:53
And the young earth group knows that. All right. So, so let's move on to where I was going before was, and please,
40:00
I know, I know we, we've only just met, but I, I, I'm not asking questions to lead you into.
40:06
Yeah. Not trying to trap you or anything like that. I honestly, I find this, this topic so fascinating and still looking into things, but you, you wrote the book
40:15
Lost World of Genesis One, and then you wrote the book, which I would imagine is probably a little more controversial,
40:20
The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Would you, would you say that that's more of a, you're going into even more controversial territory as opposed to just covering
40:28
Genesis One? It is. And you'll notice there is a good, what, five, six years or something between the two.
40:34
Okay. And you know, when Lost World of Genesis One kind of grew popular, the publisher said, well, why don't we do
40:44
Lost World of Genesis Two? And I thought, well, that would be a great idea if I only knew what I thought. So I better not write it until I have something figured out that makes some kind of sense.
40:54
Okay. So I just worked on it for a while to try to understand the text better. I always start with trying to read the text closely.
41:02
Okay. I don't start by saying, I'm going to try to make this like the ancient Near East, or I'm going to try to make this compatible to science.
41:09
I start by saying, look at the text. And so you notice, for instance, no, you don't notice,
41:16
I have to tell everybody in Genesis Two Seven, God created the man from the dust of the earth.
41:23
So we're told that word from is not there. The Lord God created man.
41:29
There's no from, there's no of, there's no, there's no preposition there. Well, that's, that's a close textual reading that has some ramifications, some implications that I need to then think about.
41:45
So, so, okay. So what do you believe about the creation of Adam and Eve?
41:50
Do you, do you hold to a, a literal Adam and Eve, the first two people?
41:56
Do you have a view where you think maybe there are other hominids around and God, I mean,
42:01
I don't know where you, where you stand with regards to what you eventually believe about these things, but what do you believe about the text?
42:08
And then maybe you can kind of share what do you believe about some conclusions that you've reached independent of, not independent of the text, but in light of your understanding of the text, what other positions have you adopted that are related to this topic?
42:20
Does that make sense? So I, I still hold pretty strongly to the idea that Adam and Eve are real people in a real past.
42:31
Okay. Okay. Now that's a textual comment because the text treats them that way, both
42:38
Old Testament and New Testament, real people in a real past. If I believe the text is saying that I hold onto it.
42:46
To ask the question, are they the first of the species? That's suddenly a scientifically nuanced question.
42:55
And therefore I have another problem because now I have to say, wait a minute, what in that question is science and what did it, what in it is text?
43:05
Okay. Does the Bible believe that there were other people at the time of Adam and Eve?
43:11
See, that's where I can try to ask it without making it a scientific species kind of question.
43:17
Does the Bible believe that there are other people? Now I see some textual indications that they might've thought there were.
43:25
So for example, you know, the fact that Cain finds a wife, always been problematic in biblical interpretation.
43:32
And all the way back, there were people who said, this suggests there were other people. The idea that Cain builds a city.
43:39
You can't build a city for yourself. That's just a man cave. You have to have people.
43:46
And even the idea that Cain says, now anybody who finds me will kill me.
43:52
You know, I don't think he's talking about mom and dad. You know, there are other issues going on here.
43:59
Now the Bible doesn't open those up because that's not its job. The Bible tends to have a particular focus and it follows it.
44:07
And so it doesn't run down those rabbit holes. But there are indications that there may be, may be other people around.
44:17
Sure. Okay. So, so the whole thing with Cain's, with Cain's wife, I guess maybe now that you're saying this,
44:24
I kind of thinking in terms of other questions that someone might ask. So, so do you hold to the view of the, you know, the, the long lifespans?
44:32
Do you believe that the Bible is teaching that, that these, these people live long lifespans? I've heard people say, well, because these lifespans were so long, you know, there were time for societies to develop.
44:42
We're just kind of being told the story, for example, Cain kills Abel, but we don't know how old they were.
44:48
We don't know if they had other kids. We don't know if, you know, if the population is spread. How would you speak to something like that?
44:54
I don't know. I'm not sure where you, where you stand. You're absolutely right. And that's the way that many people have answered it in the past.
45:00
I mean, it's not like these questions were never asked before and that there aren't answers given for them. Of course there are.
45:07
But when we ask a question about the long ages, people say, well, I read the Bible literally. And so I really believe that they lived that long.
45:15
Well, that's, that's fine. I commend you for wanting to read the Bible as accurately as you possibly can.
45:22
But remember that using the word literal reading doesn't make a claim about your intuition regarding English words.
45:30
We can't use literally that way. Right. We have to talk about the
45:35
Hebrew text. We have to talk about what those numbers meant to a Hebrew reader in the ancient world.
45:43
So that makes it a more difficult question. Okay. What did an Israelite reader think about those ages?
45:51
Did they believe that those were actual count them out years, do the math or did they have another sense about them?
45:58
There's evidence it's complicated and it's not a slam dunk by any means, but there's evidence that suggests that those numbers should be understood in more rhetorical terms.
46:09
Sure. Now for whatever that means and whatever, however you would work that out.
46:14
But if they are, well then we can't just do the math and we can't think that people actually were living 900 years.
46:21
Again, that's still an option, but it's not the only option. So all of these things come together in, in myriad ways and that's what makes interpretation so difficult.
46:33
And being committed to the text, uh, your, your conclusions wouldn't be because you think it's irrational to believe that people, you're being driven, you're trying to ask what is the text actually saying?
46:43
Because people could interpret what you're saying as well. You know, he's just compromising the text. He doesn't just believe God's word.
46:48
You know how people can get sometimes. I, so you would say it's not an issue of what's reasonable to believe or not with regards to the possibility of someone living those long ages.
46:57
You're just not sure that the Bible is necessarily saying it could be, uh, but there's some, there's some issues going on that we need to consider when, uh, you know, considering how we are to interpret those passages.
47:09
Right. I don't want to look at biological longevity. That's interesting, but that's not what I'm looking at. I want to look at ancient
47:16
Near Eastern use of numbers, including biblical use of numbers and whether biblical use of numbers looks like it lines up with ancient
47:22
Near Eastern use of numbers. After all, it doesn't have to just because the ancient Near East does something doesn't mean the
47:28
Bible has to, but it might. And to compare it to what the ancient Near East does is better than to compare it.
47:35
What my modern intuitions might be. Right. Right. So, I mean, after all the Israelites in the ancient world thought a whole lot more like Babylonians than they did like modern
47:43
Americans. Right. And I actually, I actually think that's a huge insight. That's when
47:48
I, uh, I, I heard you speak at a lecture. I think that that's, that's so important. Um, while it's true that the
47:55
Bible does not have to conform to extra biblical sources, the extra biblical sources are going to be closer than us modern people.
48:04
Now that's true. Even if you agree or disagree with Dr. Walton, that's just a true insight that I think is helpful in approaching this question, regardless of where, of where you stand.
48:13
Now, I just want to say some, uh, something to the folks who are, um, who are listening. I see a lot of comments, uh, in the comment section.
48:20
That's great. I'm glad people are having some respectful interaction there, but if you have any questions for, for Dr. Walton, he was so kind to, to agree to take some questions.
48:28
And so I see some comments with regards to some, uh, disagreements here and there, um, put it in a form of a question and I'm sure
48:35
Dr. Walton would be happy to, uh, to address it. Just make sure you put question in front of your questions so that I can differentiate between the comments and the questions.
48:43
So, so thank you very much for that. Um, all right. So, um, so in the creation of Adam and Eve, so, so, so what do you, how would you understand what many take to be the physical creation, forming, uh,
48:55
Adam out of the dust of the ground, breathing into him the breath of life and man became a living soul. And then of course, God, uh, takes a rib out of Adam's side.
49:02
How do you understand those texts from your, uh, your knowledge of the Hebrew and some of the context?
49:08
How do you pick that apart? Because that seems at least for English readers to be suggesting strongly a sort of material, uh, creation.
49:16
How would you unpack that for folks? And again, I would say that it's, I would consider it a case of human identity, not human origins.
49:24
Okay. Okay. He's not from the dust. He is dust. That's identity. He is dust.
49:30
His life is from God. God breathed in the breath of life. This is identity. Our life is from God.
49:37
We are, but dust. Okay. The, um, idea of the woman and, and the rib.
49:43
Um, if you read that book or here, listen to my presentations, there's really no good reason to translate that rib.
49:51
It's side. He's taking half of Adam and making Eve. Okay.
49:56
And that talks about human identity, meaning gender identity. We're the same, the same essence, even though male and female are different ontologically, we are the same.
50:08
That's an important point to make, but it's an identity point, not a biological one. So where does the word rib come from?
50:15
Why, why do some translations use that, um, that word? That's a long discussion, but again, even in the first couple of centuries
50:23
AD, you can find both Jewish and Christian discussions about whether side or rib would be better.
50:30
Vulgate and subtugent are both ambiguous on the matter. And so again, it's a long history of, of interpretation, but that term is not used anatomically anywhere else in the old
50:42
Testament. So it's used architecturally, but there, it talks about a side, this side, that side.
50:49
Um, so again, there's every indication that there's something bigger going on.
50:55
Okay. Okay. Um, the serpent, what's up with the serpent? What's going on there? What is your understanding of the serpent in the garden?
51:02
Well, again, if I try to read text, old Testament text, and what they would have thought of the serpent in the garden,
51:08
I don't have a whole lot to go on because they never mentioned it again. Okay. And so when we talk about it, they show no understanding that it was
51:17
Satan or connected to Satan in any way. Satan isn't even a really major character.
51:23
We deal with Job, but that's, that's another long discussion. Okay. There, it's not a name, it's a function, but at any rate, um, so they would not have thought in those terms.
51:33
So that's one thing to say, okay, that's our modern stuff, move it off the table. Okay. But so what's left, what do they think about this, this critter?
51:44
Um, it is a critter, you know, God made. Um, and, uh, yet we find that it introduces, uh, some ideas that when people act on them, bring about a problem.
51:58
I talk about that in terms of them being, him being a chaos creature, but again, that's a long discussion.
52:03
I don't know that that's going to be productive right now. Uh, we haven't gotten to cosmic temple at all.
52:09
And I really feel like we need to talk about that as well, because that's really the main theological focus of everything.
52:15
Okay. So why don't you, we talk about that right now, uh, with, with regards to making a house, a home, um, and looking at creation within the context of the ancient world, isn't it not the case that create the understanding of creation in the ancient context was kind of this concept of, um, setting up a temple for the
52:35
God to live in. How is that concept in the ancient world reflected in the Bible? But then how is the
52:41
Bible different if, if, if it has any unique features when compared to some of these, uh, extra extra biblical sources?
52:48
Well, you know, I believe that in the approach I take that God is creating an order, he's creating an ordered cosmos with the main feature is that he is going to dwell in the midst of people he created.
53:01
Okay. Now that's a, that's a very important theological issue that goes all the way through the Bible. Um, I've preached on it.
53:09
It's on YouTube, my manual theology stuff. You can find it there. What, what happens is we don't understand the word rest.
53:16
We think that rest means relaxation and disengagement. And we wonder why does God need rest?
53:22
And what sense does this make? And this is nothing material. So it doesn't even belong here. And people talk about the six days of creation, which is horrible.
53:31
The seventh day is what it's all about. God has ordered the cosmos and in day seven, he rests.
53:38
God's rest is not disengagement. It's engagement. God's rest is not relaxation.
53:44
It is rule. God rests on a throne. And so he ceases his ordering work, that's
53:50
Shabbat, but he takes up his rest on his throne. That's Exodus 20, Psalm 132.
53:56
God rests on his throne and he's ruling this creation. When we skip day seven and just say, oh, this is about the
54:03
Sabbath in Jewish something or a law, we're missing the point. Without day seven, the first six mean nothing.
54:12
God has ordered it and he now rules it. And that's the basic idea of the cosmic temple.
54:18
God has made the cosmos sacred space by his presence being there.
54:25
And again, when we turn this into just a scientific account of material stuff, we're missing the theological meat of the passage.
54:37
Why do you think people throughout, I mean, obviously you have a whole wide range of understandings, but why do you think people, even in not the modern context, have understood
54:48
Genesis to be speaking of the creation of the material? What is it in the text itself that brings them to that conclusion?
54:55
Is it simply not having access to some of these historical contextual sources?
55:02
I mean, maybe it's just my own ignorance. It's an area that I, and one of the reasons why I had you on, the
55:07
Old Testament, I don't read the Old Testament as often as I should, especially doing apologetics. I know enough that I could defend my views and the integrity of the
55:15
Bible, but it's definitely not, I'm more in the New Testament. But based on my own studies, it seems that the issue of material creation has been part of a common understanding, even though they might debate the details throughout the history of interpretation.
55:31
Why do you think people prior to our modern context understand it in that way, if they're not being influenced by, say, modern scientific influences?
55:40
Well, especially once you pass the Enlightenment, people are more and more and more interested in the material world.
55:46
If you go before that, they had no reason to differentiate all of that. They were in a non -scientifically thinking world, but they still thought in terms of God making the material world, and he did.
55:57
So, but they had no knowledge or connection with the ancient worldview that actually even saw ontology differently.
56:07
Again, by the time you're in the Greek -speaking world, they're thinking of ontology in material kinds of terms, although you could argue that Plato didn't, but whatever.
56:17
Once you get into the Roman period and Hellenistic thinking that influenced that, people are thinking of ontology materially.
56:27
And so they really have difficulty imagining, as modern people do, imagining that existence could be based on something besides materiality.
56:37
And that's what I've tried to demonstrate in the ancient world, that something does not exist for them until it has a role and a function in an ordered system.
56:49
Then it exists. And there's evidence to demonstrate that they thought that way. But that is not natural to us, and it was not natural to the
56:56
Greek -speaking world that kind of produced Western culture. All right. My last question, we're at the top of the hour, and then we'll get to some
57:03
Q &A. And I want to respect your time and not keep you, I suppose I can keep you here for hours.
57:09
I would have plenty of questions, but I want to respect your time. So what about the flood?
57:14
I know people would be interested in how do you understand, you go from Genesis 1, Genesis 2, eventually you get to the flood.
57:19
These are all issues that are typically related to some of these controversial areas of debate. What do you think the
57:25
Bible's teaching with regards to the flood? Global flood, local flood? What do you think's going on there?
57:31
As always, global, local is a scientific question to some extent. The theological question is clear enough.
57:37
We can see clearly what the text is doing with the flood. It's a recreation account.
57:43
Order was undone. They went back to a watery everything, and then order was brought out again.
57:52
That part's clear. I developed that all, of course, in Lost World of the Flood that I wrote with Tremper Longman. So it's not hard to see what the biblical text is doing.
58:01
But again, people want to have their scientific questions answered. I'm just not sure that we can expect to get scientific answers from a text that's not trying to give those.
58:11
Now, people say, but wait, the text does give that information, because at the end of chapter 7, it keeps talking about all the waters, all the land, under all the seas, under all heavens, where no one that had breath of life was left, right?
58:27
It uses very clear universalistic language. So the question we have to ask is, is that universalistic language to be taken in its full, un -nuanced reading, or is there some rhetoric involved?
58:45
What we demonstrate in Lost World of the Flood is that there are numerous examples in the Bible where universalistic language in catastrophic contexts is not actually universal at all.
58:58
It's rhetoric. Even a non -catastrophic context,
59:04
Genesis 41, all the world came to Joseph for food. Are you going to insist on reading literally?
59:10
The Eskimos came, all of them, not just a representation. Made the trip across the Atlantic, brought all the
59:16
Aborigines from Australia. I mean, are we really going to read that literally? No, we know it's rhetoric, but even in several descriptions of the exile, you read
59:27
Lamentations 2, you read Zephaniah 1, total destruction of everything, full universal language.
59:36
And yet we know all the lands were not destroyed, all the Jews were not killed, all the cities were not destroyed.
59:42
It's the exile. We know what happened. And a lot of people are okay with that language, but for some reason, when you get to the earlier parts of Genesis, they tend to be more literalistic.
59:54
I mean, literalistic in a more straightforward, right off the page, sort of literalistic.
01:00:00
My point is that we have to be consistent in our hermeneutics. If we allow the possibility that universalistic language can be rhetorical, then we have to be willing to consider that possibility, consider that possibility, even in Genesis 7.
01:00:14
All right. And even if you disagree with how you're taking it, at least you can't say that's impossible because there is a consistent use of that sort of language throughout the text.
01:00:24
Right. Okay. All right. Very good. Well, thank you so much for that. Hopefully that whets people's appetite to look into it.
01:00:32
Hey, listen, guys, everyone that I have on my show, I don't necessarily agree with everything.
01:00:37
There are certain areas that I'm studying, Genesis being one of them. And so Dr. Walton has been an interesting voice in this discussion.
01:00:47
And I was very captivated with how he gave a lot of the cultural background and ancient background. I thought it'd be a great idea to have him on and discuss his views.
01:00:55
What I appreciated about one of your talks was before you gave the talk, you were like, listen, I'm not trying to convince you guys if you're a young earth, you're like, great, but I'm just want to give you something to consider.
01:01:06
And I think as Christians who are trying to engage the word of God and to understand the ancient texts,
01:01:12
I think we need to consider what people bring to the table. And if you at the end of the day disagree, that's okay.
01:01:19
But again, part of the learning process requires that we do a little work. So with that said,
01:01:25
I want to go through some questions and even some comments. We'll share some comments. Maybe you can comment on the comments, but Noble Eagle gave a super chat.
01:01:34
So I want to get to that question first. Isn't the reinterpretations of Genesis of Dr.
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Walton, something new that the Judeo -Christian religion never believed or taught before? How would you address that comment there?
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There's certainly some new aspects, but some of it's not as new as you might think, but even the new aspects, yes, it's coming out of ancient
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Near Eastern resources that we never had before. And now we do. And I believe that it's our responsibility to use those to their fullest, though it's not always clear cut exactly how to do that.
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Okay. Thank you so much, Noble Eagle for the $10. That's greatly appreciated. This is a comment and it's based upon something you said when you kind of gave some extra biblical commentary as to how we can fully understand the text.
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This is a statement. Roger says, he just admitted eisegesis. Now let's define what eisegesis is and why you're not necessarily,
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I don't think you were committing eisegesis in anything that you said, because I think you differentiate what the text is saying and how we consider some of the broader context of the ancient world and understanding.
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So why don't you explain for folks what eisegesis is and why you're not doing that? Eisegesis is reading things into the text.
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Okay. Now I am not reading the ancient Near East into the text. I'm trying to understand what ancient
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Near Eastern aspects are actually already there in the text that I need to understand.
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The text is not in a cultural vacuum. The text has an ancient world behind it, just like it has a language behind it.
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My eisegesis then has to include trying to understand those aspects of culture that inform the writers themselves.
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That's not me reading into it. That's them having that as part of their backdrop.
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Right. And that's true regardless if you agree with Dr. Walton or not on his own views.
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That's so vitally important that the book of Genesis does not exist in a vacuum.
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You don't just read a text and the meaning leaps out at you without consideration of the broader context. That's very important.
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Here's a more personal question with regards to your theological position. You can answer it or you can pass. It's completely fine.
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Someone was asking, are you Old Earth, Young Earth, or something in between? How would you define your position in those categories or maybe not in those categories?
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Since, as I said, I believe that Young Earth is premised not on science but on the idea that the
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Bible requires it. I do not believe the Bible requires it and therefore there's no reason for me to be
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Young Earth. Now in that sense, therefore, I would follow science to be
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Old Earth, but it's not because I'm following science instead of the Bible. The Bible has no position on the age of the earth.
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It has no position and therefore there's no biblical view of the age of the earth.
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That means I have no choice but to say, do I believe science or not? And on that issue,
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I'm fairly convinced. So in that sense, I believe the Earth is old but not because I believe it's a biblical position.
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There is no biblical position. It's science and the Bible is not addressing it. Okay, very good.
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Someone did ask a question that is related to this and it's more of an informational question. There are some people who have various levels of knowledge in this specific topic.
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Why don't you define very briefly what is Old Earth creationism and Young Earth creationism? Someone was asking before as I look for my next question here.
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Again, there are some people who say they're Young Earth creationists. They believe that the Bible demands that the earth is young.
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That's a combination of the seven 24 -hour days and adding up the genealogies. That's too simplistic, but that at least gets you the right direction.
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So there are other people who are Old Earth who say, no, no, no, no, no, we don't have to have 24 -hour days.
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They can be an extended period of time each of those days, but they're still trying to interpret the days of Genesis in Old Earth kinds of terms, in ways that will allow for an
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Old Earth. I'm not trying to understand the days of Genesis in relation to the age of the earth.
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So I don't really follow that position either. Okay, so my position on the
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Bible is it's not addressing those things. And you can see that that's the case. Old Earth and Young Earth refers, pertains to material creation.
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My very point is that Genesis 1 is not a house story and therefore to ask how old does
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Genesis say the house is? Wait, it's not a house story. And so in that sense, that's not a question that the
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Bible is trying to address and therefore there's not a biblical view. Okay, I want to share this comment.
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There's ongoing discussion here, but I think it's a good one to address, which
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I completely disagree. I do apologize, Roger, but your comments here, he says, I have yet to hear any scripture.
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I keep hearing just philosophy. To be perfectly honest, I have not heard any philosophy. I've just heard scripture and some considerations of broader context.
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That's just me. But why don't you respond to someone who might say, hey, you're inserting philosophy as opposed to relying on the text, which is completely opposite of what you said, you're a text guy.
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But why don't you speak to that? Well, it seemed to me that I did speak very specifically about the text in Genesis 2.
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Does it say from the dust? No, it doesn't. Does the word mean rib? No, it doesn't. Those kinds of questions.
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On Genesis 1, it was just a matter that those weren't the questions that were asked. In the book, I spend a lot of time on bara, the word create.
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I did talk about what the word asah, made, has to do with made lights. So I think
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I looked at the text quite a bit. But again, to some extent, my answers were driven by the questions
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I was asked. Very, very good point. Here's a question. It was a long question here.
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Why is it that we are forced, quote, unquote, scare quotes here, to have this conversation, if not within a post
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Darwinian context? That is, if we say it is not concerned with building the house, why is that important to assert?
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Is it because we can have an open or we have an open to the empirical world of science in order to avoid a conflict of science and revelation?
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In other words, maybe it's because of the influence of Darwinian evolution that we have to have these conversations and maybe go back to Genesis and say, well, maybe it's not really saying this, that, or the other thing.
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Do you understand the spirit of the question? Yeah, that's a fair question. And the fact is, science has prompted us to ask certain questions.
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And to me, science doesn't drive our answers, but it drives us back to the text to say, have we looked at everything the way we're supposed to?
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I think of the Ancient Near East in the same way. The Ancient Near East doesn't drive my reading the text, but it prompts me to ask questions that I might not have asked myself.
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And certainly in a pre -scientific world, even if you go back to the pre -Enlightenment and things like that, they wouldn't have been asking the same kinds of questions that we do.
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And so we are prompted and that to me gives a certain legitimacy to it, but still
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I don't want to read science into the text. I don't want to read the Ancient Near East into the text.
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Okay. All right. Very good. Roger says something else that I think is important for you to address and that is good for you to clarify so people can see where you're coming from.
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Again, he says his authority is science, not scripture. Why is that not the case? Again, respectfully,
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I'd have to disagree with Roger, but because this is an apologetics show, these issues do have relationship to apologetics and the role of authority.
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And I think it's important to address this so that people don't have any misapprehensions as to what is your foundation when approaching these issues.
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Why is that not the case? Why is your authority and your understanding not science, but you're trying to engage the text?
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I haven't proven or I haven't tried to prove anything that I've said on the basis of science.
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I've tried to demonstrate it on the basis of scripture. I am tied to the authority of the text and to the authors.
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I'm trying to read what they say. They weren't thinking about science and I'm specifically saying we should not be bringing science to the question of the text at all.
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So I really don't see with all due respect how Roger could come to that conclusion. All right.
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Thank you very much. Let's see here. I'm going through some of the comments here. Okay. I do apologize if I skip some questions.
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Some of the questions are not being asked with a question in front of it. Okay. Let's see here.
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Okay. We have another question here. Nope. We got through that one already. I'm so sorry.
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Let me move quickly down here. Okay. All right.
01:10:34
So this is another super chat by Noble Eagle. Would Walton accept the debate with Dr.
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Jonathan Sephardi who refutes his arguments in his book? Well, obviously that would be up for debate.
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But Dr. Walton, are you the kind of scholar who engages in sorts of debates or are much of your writing more or your debate in the context of writing and just showing your views through writing?
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How would you approach something like that? No, I don't do debates. And really, even in my academic writing,
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I don't try to take other people to task. People are doing the best they can with the evidence and the presuppositions that they have.
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And I respect that. And so I don't try to take on other people.
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And when they take on me, and many have, they've targeted me and talked about me and some fairly, some unfairly.
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And I certainly have my own responses, but even then
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I don't usually respond publicly. They're welcome to their opinions. And if they don't like what
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I have to say, that's fine. Think something else. As you said, I'm not trying to make clones of everybody to think the way
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I do and have the same conclusions I have. I am trying to bring information to the table that lots of people don't know and trying to raise the consciousness awareness of hermeneutical issues that need to be addressed.
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All right. Thank you very much for that. And I think that's important to keep in mind. Those who follow my channel and channels like this that focus on apologetics.
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I mean, not every person is going into these issues, wanting to debate other people.
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That's not the issue. Some people are more inclined to do those things and they're certainly free to do that.
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But I don't think the only sort of learning that we can engage in is through like these models of conflict.
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I'm a big fan of the debate format, but at the same time, there is nothing wrong with good old just opening up a book and reading someone's perspective and doing the hard work in that regard.
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So I very much respect that, Dr. Walton. All right. Here's another question. Ricardo Sierra asks if the flood is regional and not worldwide, why would not
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God instruct Noah to leave to a different area instead of creating such a big arc?
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Those are great questions. Again, how large is the region? I don't know.
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That assumes that the Bible is telling us something about the extent of the flood. And I don't think that it is.
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Just like the Bible is not telling us something about the age of the earth.
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We're asking our scientific questions. And I just don't know that the text is going to give us answers to that in that regard.
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Now, this gentleman is asking a question really about what the text could have done.
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God could have done it a different way. But see, I can't evaluate God's decisions of how to do what and what to do when and where.
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This is what the text presents. And that's the arc becomes a symbol of God's deliverance.
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That's a great thing. God's grace, that's a great thing. So there may be other reasons for all of that.
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So I'm just not sure that we can ask the text to make those sorts of assessments.
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Yeah. And I think that's a very good point. I think your views and your conclusions, I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, leave it open to where someone might land on those issues.
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And so to ask these questions is really to miss the whole point of what you were saying. You're like, the text isn't asking those questions.
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So they're important questions. If you're trying to answer some kind of question that relates to maybe how this relates to science or whatever, some kind of model of interpretation, but that's not what your view is saying.
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Your view kind of leaves it open as to where someone might land on those issues. Am I correct there? Sure. If someone still believes that there was a global flood, that's fine.
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The Bible certainly doesn't shut that down. Sure. And so that's, but don't say you believe that because the
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Bible gives you no other options. I wouldn't agree with that statement. Sure.
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All right. Thank you for that. Roger Vincent gave $10 super chat. Thank you so much. I appreciate the support.
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And that was the final question. Now, folks, I just want to say something real, real quick. You do know that I've interviewed multiple people coming from different spectrums.
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We had Jason Lyall on to defend the young earth creationism, Dr. Hugh Ross to defend old earth creationism. And I wanted
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Dr. Walton to come and explain his view. And so I think it's very important that we consider what people say and test things against scripture.
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And that is going to require us to understand scripture and study the context and things like that. And with regards to disagreeing, that's okay, right?
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As long as we're not dealing with essential Christian doctrine that is definitional of the Christian faith. I think these important in -house discussions requires that we be a little open, engage the text, engage these ideas and a lot of what some of the experts have to say and really just come to grips with what we think the word of God is saying and be patient and understanding towards those who disagree.
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Dr. Walton, I very much appreciate your time. And I'm going to continue reading through your book.
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I have found it very helpful. Again, I don't know where I stand at this moment, but I have been finding your book very enjoyable and informative.
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And for that, I'm greatly appreciative. Thanks, Eli. All right. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this episode.
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And I will keep folks updated with my next guest. And I will be doing a video response to a preacher who apparently thinks apologetics is useless.
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So we'll talk about why apologetics isn't useless and critique that perspective and really ground the task of defending the faith in what the