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Our methods of interpretation determine our interpretations. For example, John Walton has written:
• [The Hebrew Scriptures] was written to Israel. It is God’s revelation of himself to Israel and secondarily through Israel to everyone else. As obvious as this is, we must be aware of the implications of that simple statement. Since it was written to Israel, it is in a language that most of us do not understand, and therefore it requires translation. But the language is not the only aspect that needs to be translated. Language assumes a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to communicate into the framework of a culture. (The Lost World of Genesis 1)
As uncontroversial as this statement might seem, it is highly biased. How? Much of what had been written wasn’t intended for Israelite understanding but for ours:
• 1 Peter 1:10–12 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
Not only didn’t Israel understand much of what had been written, but even the writers themselves and the angels failed to understand much of it. However, Walton claims that to understand the OT, we must first understand the language of the OT, and this requires the interpreter to understand the culture of the ancient Israelites.
However, the writers of the NT never acknowledged this as a problem, even though during their 70 years of exile in Babylon, they had lost both their culture and their Hebrew language in favor of Aramaic. Yet they continued to quote extensively from the OT without lamenting that they first had to relearn the culture and the Hebrew language. Why not? Because they knew that they were receiving their teachings from the Lord:
• 2 Peter 1:20–21 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Walton adds:
• The key then [to understand the Israelite culture] is to be found in the literature from the rest of the ancient world. Here we will discover many insights into ancient categories, concepts and perspectives. Not only do we expect to find linkages, we do in fact find many such linkages that enhance our understanding of the Bible.
However, the Bible never advises us to study ancient pagan literature so that we can better understand God’s Word. Nor do the NT writers suggest that we need to understand the writings of the rabbis in order to grasp post-exilic Israelite culture! Instead, they insisted that Scripture is enough:
• 2 Timothy 3:16–17 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
As if ancient pagan writings contain a vital key to unlocking the meaning of the OT, Walton insists that:
• Comparing the ancient cultures to one another will help us to see those common [cultural] threads even as we become aware of the distinctions that separated them from one another.
Perhaps these writings might be help us understand their attraction to the Israelites, but this will give us no assurance that it will aid us in understanding the Bible.
While Walton admits that there are both commonalities and differences among the ancient near-eastern civilizations, how can he distinguish those aspects that will enable us to understand the Israelite language, culture, and Bible? However, Walton is convinced that:
• the views of deity in the ancient world served as the context for Israel’s understanding of deity. It is true that the God of the Bible is far different from the gods of the ancient cultures. But Israel understood its God in reference to what others around them believed.
There is not a hint of this in the Scriptures despite Walton’s assurances:
• For the Israelites, Genesis 1 offered explanations of their view of origins and operations, in the same way that mythologies served in the rest of the ancient world…
Walton doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge the extent to which God’s revelations to Israel had set the Biblical faith apart from those of the surrounding nations. Instead, he assumes that since these nations resorted to mythology to explain their origins and beliefs, so did the Israelites, even though the Bible consistently affirms that the Scriptures come from God and not from the pagan nations. Nevertheless, Walton claims:
• [Israel] believed that the sky was material (not vaporous), solid enough to support the residence of deity as well as to hold back waters. In these ways, and many others, they thought about the cosmos in much the same way that anyone in the ancient world thought, and not at all like anyone thinks today. And God did not think it important to revise their thinking.
Did Israel think about the world as did the neighboring Pagan nations? It is true that when they rejected God and their Scriptures, they fell under the influence of their pagan neighbors. However, the teachings of the Scriptures were entirely a different matter. Would God therefore feel compelled to endorse their pagan “science” in order to communicate His spiritual truths to Israel? Certainly not!
Walton claims that God was uninterested in presenting an accurate and scientific account of creation. It simply wasn’t God’s intention. Nor was He interested in counteracting pagan worldviews, which Walton claims the Israelites had shared. In contrast to his account, the Bible tells us that He considered pagan religions as abominations and forbade Israel to partake in their beliefs and practices.
However, physical truths often supported spiritual truths. For example, that fact that His creation was “very good” supports the fact that He loves His creation.
Likewise, the truth that we had been created in the moral likewise of God (Genesis 1:26-27; Ephesians 4:24) provided the necessary scaffolding for understanding that human suffering hadn’t been part of God’s original glorious creation but resulted from human rebellion against the Creator.
Likewise, we cannot separate the physical reality of Jesus dying on the Cross from the spiritual reality of the proof of God’s love that He had died even for His enemies.
Walton denigrates the Bible to try to prove that God has no interest in factually teaching about the physical world:
• Through the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science beyond their own culture.
However, the Word does reveal many such truths:
1. TIME IS NOT ETERNAL: 2 Tim. 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life--not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
2. ENTROPY (DE-EVOLUTION) Hebrews 1:10-12 And, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.” (also Isaiah 51:6; Psalm 102:25-26)
3. FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS (Matter/Energy neither created nor destroyed): Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
4. THE UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING: Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Contra the steady-state theory that had ruled science).
5. THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE PHYSICAL WORD AREN’T VISIBLE: Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
6. GENETICS SHOW THAT WE ALL CAME FROM A SINGLE SET OF PARENTS: Acts 17:26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
7. OCEAN THERMAL VENTS: Job 38:16 “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?
8. WATER CYCLE: Job 36:27 "He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams.” (Also Amos 9:6; Eccl 1:7)
9. DINOSAURS?? Psalm 74:14 It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert.
10. STARS AS GUIDES TO SEASONS AND GEOGRAPHIC POSITIONS: Genesis 1:14 lights in the expanse of the sky… [would] serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.”
11. GOD WORKS THROUGH FIXED LAWS: Jeremiah 33:25 states that God accomplishes His purposes through “fixed laws of heaven and earth.” (Although science demonstrated that phenomena operated according to laws, the Bible long before posited the operation of the God’s laws.) (Also Job 38:33)
12. COUNTLESS STARS: Jeremiah 33:22 states, “I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore. " (Also Job 11:7-8; 22:12)
13. ROUND EARTH, EXPANDING UNIVERSE: “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isaiah 40:22; 42:5).
14. THE EARTH DOES NOT SIT ON A PEDESTAL AS ANE COSMOLOGY HAS IT: Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.
15. HOMO SAPIENS ORIGINATED FROM A SINGLE, COMMON ANCESTOR Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
16. STRESS NEGATIVELY IMPACTS HEALTH: Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
17. NECESSITY FOR QUARANTENE: Leviticus 13:46 “He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
18. UNHEALTHY QUALITY OF EXCREMENT: Deut. 23:12-13 Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. 13As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.
19. FOSSIL FINDS IN THE MOUNTAINS: Psalm 104:6 …the waters stood above the mountains. (Even Everest)
Nevertheless, Walton insists that:
• ancient literature is the key to a proper interpretation of the text, and sufficient amounts of it are available to allow us to make progress in our understanding.
Walton does what theistic evolutionists do. They relegate the first several chapters of Genesis to mere myth to remove any conflict with the theory of evolution. They claim that evolution focuses on the physical world while the Bible’s focus is upon the spiritual, thereby hoping to remove any conflict between the two. However, whenever the NT quotes the OT, it acknowledges that certain physical events, whether historic or scientific, actually took place. Besides, without these events, Biblical theology would be without its designated foundation.
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