Genre of Genesis 1
What is the purpose of Genesis 1?
I said in the previous article that we are mistaken to go to Genesis 1 with a scientific agenda – to ask scientific questions about the age of the earth and so on – because that’s not what Genesis 1 is for. It’s purpose is theological not scientific. It is interested in meanings and relationships not mechanisms. So we should be expecting to see Genesis addressing questions that would have been asked by people in the Ancient Near East back when it was written. The same questions are, in fact, still being asked by people today – although in very different terms.
But before we can get to those big answers to big questions, we must get to grips with Genesis 1 and find out more about it. This is a basic principle of all good Bible study. When we come to any passage of Scripture, the question burning in our minds is, ‘How is this relevant to me in my world?’ But before we can answer that question we must ask a more fundamental one – ‘What was God’s original intention in this passage?’ Or, if you like, ‘How was this relevant to the people who first heard or read this in their world?’ The first thing we must do is to see Genesis 1 in context – both its context within Genesis (and the whole Bible) and its historical context. This is called the literary-cultural approach to biblical interpretation.
So, how can we answer that fundamental question, ‘What was God’s original intention in this passage?’
The genre question
One of the first things to find out is the genre of a passage: what sort of writing is it? We’re all very familiar with genres. ‘Dear John …’ or ‘Once upon a time …’ instantly tell us what sort of writing we have in our hands and how to understand it properly. We don’t need to think too hard about it because we’ve grown up with these genres. We instinctively read things in the appropriate way. You don’t read a chemistry text-book in the same way that you read a love-letter – unless you have either a bizarre view of chemistry or a very sad relationship!
It’s not always so instinctive when we come to the Bible. It’s full of different genres. Some of them are easily recognisable: historical narratives, letters, and poems may have different rules from our modern equivalents but we still recognise them for what they are and read them in an appropriate way. Some genres, however, are completely alien to us: apocalyptic literature (Revelation, part of Daniel etc.), for example.
It’s vital that we do read things in the right way – we shouldn’t read a psalm in the same way as Paul’s letter to the Romans, for instance. The first is poetry – full of emotion and imagery – while the other is doctrinal argument and practical instruction. They are very different kettles of fish!
I said in the previous article that we are mistaken to go to Genesis 1 with a scientific agenda – to ask scientific questions about the age of the earth and so on – because that’s not what Genesis 1 is for. It’s purpose is theological not scientific. It is interested in meanings and relationships not mechanisms. So we should be expecting to see Genesis addressing questions that would have been asked by people in the Ancient Near East back when it was written. The same questions are, in fact, still being asked by people today – although in very different terms.
But before we can get to those big answers to big questions, we must get to grips with Genesis 1 and find out more about it. This is a basic principle of all good Bible study. When we come to any passage of Scripture, the question burning in our minds is, ‘How is this relevant to me in my world?’ But before we can answer that question we must ask a more fundamental one – ‘What was God’s original intention in this passage?’ Or, if you like, ‘How was this relevant to the people who first heard or read this in their world?’ The first thing we must do is to see Genesis 1 in context – both its context within Genesis (and the whole Bible) and its historical context. This is called the literary-cultural approach to biblical interpretation.
So, how can we answer that fundamental question, ‘What was God’s original intention in this passage?’
The genre question
One of the first things to find out is the genre of a passage: what sort of writing is it? We’re all very familiar with genres. ‘Dear John …’ or ‘Once upon a time …’ instantly tell us what sort of writing we have in our hands and how to understand it properly. We don’t need to think too hard about it because we’ve grown up with these genres. We instinctively read things in the appropriate way. You don’t read a chemistry text-book in the same way that you read a love-letter – unless you have either a bizarre view of chemistry or a very sad relationship!
It’s not always so instinctive when we come to the Bible. It’s full of different genres. Some of them are easily recognisable: historical narratives, letters, and poems may have different rules from our modern equivalents but we still recognise them for what they are and read them in an appropriate way. Some genres, however, are completely alien to us: apocalyptic literature (Revelation, part of Daniel etc.), for example.
It’s vital that we do read things in the right way – we shouldn’t read a psalm in the same way as Paul’s letter to the Romans, for instance. The first is poetry – full of emotion and imagery – while the other is doctrinal argument and practical instruction. They are very different kettles of fish!
The nature of Genesis 1
So, what genre is Genesis 1? Is it a vision? A theological tract? Prophecy? Apocalyptic? Parable? It’s harder to be sure about this passage than just about any other passage in the Bible. It’s not even clear whether it’s prose or poetry. It’s in a class of it’s own; there’s nothing else quite like it in Scripture. It’s a kind of half-way house between prose and poetry – very grand, very formal and highly structured.
It’s a kind of narrative but a very stylized one: for example, every phrase in Day 1 (verses 3 – 5) becomes a formula which is reused in subsequent days. We can say that it is not straightforward historical narrative for the simple reason that there were no human eyewitnesses until verse 26. At the very least, God had to reveal this to someone at some later time.
As we will see in the next article, Genesis 1 (which really finishes at the end of verse 3 of chapter 2) is an introduction to the whole of Genesis and to the whole Bible. It is written in a different style, and stands outside the structure of the rest of the book. Clearly most of Genesis is intended to be read as straightforward historical narrative. But chapter 1 has to fit into some other category – whether or not you end up saying that the days are periods of twenty four hours.
The purpose of Genesis 1
If we can’t categorically pin down the genre of Genesis 1, what can we say about why it was written in the first place? It certainly was intended to teach the ancient Israelites some crucial theological truths about God, about the nature of the world they lived in, and about what it means to be a human being. But there are plenty of clues to strongly suggest that it is also knocking on the head some of the false beliefs of the pagan nations around Israel. In particular, it deals with pagan false beliefs about God, the nature of the world and what it means to be a human being.
In other words, Genesis 1 appears to be primarily a theological tract dealing with some of the most basic issues, and introducing the book which told the Israelites who they were and where they’d come from.
But if it’s hard to be sure about the genre of Genesis 1, it reminds us again that we need to exercise humility in the way that we approach it and form our conclusions about it. We can – and must – be clear about the theology that this marvellous chapter teaches. But we shouldn’t be too surprised to discover a variety of opinions from Bible-believing, evangelical Christians about some of the other issues it touches on.
Source: http://www.tonywatkins.co.uk/science/science-faith/handling-genesis/
So, what genre is Genesis 1? Is it a vision? A theological tract? Prophecy? Apocalyptic? Parable? It’s harder to be sure about this passage than just about any other passage in the Bible. It’s not even clear whether it’s prose or poetry. It’s in a class of it’s own; there’s nothing else quite like it in Scripture. It’s a kind of half-way house between prose and poetry – very grand, very formal and highly structured.
It’s a kind of narrative but a very stylized one: for example, every phrase in Day 1 (verses 3 – 5) becomes a formula which is reused in subsequent days. We can say that it is not straightforward historical narrative for the simple reason that there were no human eyewitnesses until verse 26. At the very least, God had to reveal this to someone at some later time.
As we will see in the next article, Genesis 1 (which really finishes at the end of verse 3 of chapter 2) is an introduction to the whole of Genesis and to the whole Bible. It is written in a different style, and stands outside the structure of the rest of the book. Clearly most of Genesis is intended to be read as straightforward historical narrative. But chapter 1 has to fit into some other category – whether or not you end up saying that the days are periods of twenty four hours.
The purpose of Genesis 1
If we can’t categorically pin down the genre of Genesis 1, what can we say about why it was written in the first place? It certainly was intended to teach the ancient Israelites some crucial theological truths about God, about the nature of the world they lived in, and about what it means to be a human being. But there are plenty of clues to strongly suggest that it is also knocking on the head some of the false beliefs of the pagan nations around Israel. In particular, it deals with pagan false beliefs about God, the nature of the world and what it means to be a human being.
In other words, Genesis 1 appears to be primarily a theological tract dealing with some of the most basic issues, and introducing the book which told the Israelites who they were and where they’d come from.
But if it’s hard to be sure about the genre of Genesis 1, it reminds us again that we need to exercise humility in the way that we approach it and form our conclusions about it. We can – and must – be clear about the theology that this marvellous chapter teaches. But we shouldn’t be too surprised to discover a variety of opinions from Bible-believing, evangelical Christians about some of the other issues it touches on.
Source: http://www.tonywatkins.co.uk/science/science-faith/handling-genesis/