What “Really” Happened at Creation?
Science and Stories
Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation (2014). NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Is science at war with the Bible? Too often that assumption prevails. Many biblical literalists present themselves as defenders of the Bible. They argue against scientific views. Some defenders of science ridicule the Bible as a book of foolish anti-scientific errors. Views of Creation often become the battlefield for this unfortunate conflict. Sometimes a focus on the question, What really happened? can distract us from deeper meanings.
When Did the Defense of Biblical Narratives as Science Begin?
A few centuries ago, no one fought about the biblical Creation stories. The Creation stories defined a shared worldview for most Europeans. Scientific discoveries began to challenge that biblical worldview. Views of the Bible also changed.
Astronomers demonstrated that the earth revolves around the sun. Over the centuries, awareness grew of an immense universe and many galaxies beyond our own. Awareness of micro-organisms and subatomic particles expanded our knowledge of previously unknown dimensions of the world around us. Recognition of the vast age of the universe grew, too, as did knowledge about changes in the earth and the evolution of its living organisms over geologic time.
~ Natural Literalism
Before these scientific discoveries, people in the part of the world that was mostly Christian assumed a worldview drawn from the Bible. They accepted biblical narratives with a view characterized as “natural literalism.” The questions that would challenge this view simply had not emerged. People assumed that the Bible came from God and that it was true. The Bible needed no defense.
~ Conscious Literalism
The battle began when scientific inquiry meant that the biblical worldview of natural literalism could no longer be taken for granted. Holding that worldview now required defending the Bible as true. The biblical worldview became a conscious choice. Natural literalism was no longer possible. Conscious literalism emerged as a choice for a biblical worldview, a choice that meant rejection of scientific discoveries.
Along with the scientific discoveries, historical critical approaches to interpreting the Bible emerged in the period known as the Enlightenment. (See the post “Just Read the Bible?”) Biblical accounts of Creation were opened to question and interpreted as myths. Literal views of the Bible were questioned.
Forms of atheism were discussed more openly, too. Atheism was sometimes a false accusation leveled against some scientists and philosophers as well.
~ Fundamentalism
Enlightenment ideas began to be discussed more broadly with the spread of education. Some religious leaders and others who assumed a conscious literalism saw this as a threat. Around the turn of the last century, they formed a project known as “The Fundamentals.” This project produced statements of doctrines that claimed to be based on a literal reading of the Bible. They promoted their “Fundamentals” widely with financial support of some wealthy backers.
Among the doctrinal articles were some that promoted reading biblical Creation narratives as literal accounts that competed with the science of the day. Fundamentalism presented itself as a defense of the Bible against science. Different versions of Creationism developed within Fundamentalism focused on different aspects of the story as literal. Fundamentalism and Creationism became widely assumed as “biblical.” Other interpretations of the Bible were not as well known.
A Battle over Factuality – What Really Happened?
As Fundamentalism grew, some people who took science seriously began to be more zealous in discrediting the Bible. Many focused their efforts on countering assertions that the Bible contains scientific truths. The Bible is riddled with inconsistencies starting from the first two chapters. Debunking the Bible at the level of fact is not actually difficult.
The conflict over the factuality of the Bible hid its most valuable contents, however: its stories, poetry, dramas, questions, characters, and the connection it offers with people of long ago. The power and meaning of the ancient writings in the Bible often became lost in the compulsion to defend magnificent literature as scientific fact.
Critical scholars of the Bible were often caught up in the question, What really happened? More recently, scholars recognize that this question itself is caught up in the conflict over factuality driven by the Fundamentalist movement. Critical scholars increasingly approach biblical texts with a focus on meaning and historical context rather than factuality. Scholars assume that biblical texts were always literature. Creation narratives are an example.
Are the Biblical Creation Stories Science?
No. Imagine an astrophysicist today explaining theories of the origins of the universe to a group of high school students. Then those students go home and describe the origins of the universe to others in their families. Would those descriptions be “science”? They would rely on the scientific understandings of our time. Yet they would not be the same as the descriptions and theories astrophysicists discuss with one another as they engage in scientific research. Scientific investigation continues the search to understand “What really happened?” More and more, critical biblical scholars tend to leave such scientific questions to scientists.
Biblical stories of Creation reflect scientific understandings from the times they come from, not ours. Assuming views of the universe of their own times, they presented compelling visions of how the world began for communities long ago. Storytellers made those visions vivid and excited the imaginations of their listeners. Listeners’ imaginations are still awakened by these stories.
Such stories do not tell us “what really happened.” Instead they give us visions of who we are in the world, our relationships with other life, the divine, and more. These stories carry significance as stories that have been told for centuries. They carry questions for us about our cultures and relationships.
Is There a Single Biblical Creation Story?
The Bible does not present a single version of what happened when the world began. Even in the first chapters of Genesis, there are two different stories. One describes Creation in six days followed by a day of rest on the seventh. This version starts with the image of a vast expanse of water and tells about the voice of God forming a world like a plate with a great dome of sky (Genesis 1:1–2:3). A second narrative starts with an expanse of dry land where water is scarce, and God creates a human and creatures from mud in a different order than in the first story (Genesis 2:4–25).
Many other versions of the origin of the world also appear in biblical texts. Some are found in the Psalms. Psalm 19, for example, describes divine glory expressed in the heavens and describes Creation in a poetic metaphor of God setting “a tent for the sun” in the heavens and the sun coming out “like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy” (Psalm 19:4–5). The Psalm continues with a lovely description of the movement of the sun that hardly describes the star at the center of the solar system in the universe as we know it today.
Many other images of the origins of Creation are found in biblical texts, including Proverbs 8:22–31, Isaiah 40:12–23, Jeremiah 10:11–16; John 1:1–5, and many more. Many use metaphorical images. They are metaphors like ancient Homeric references to the “rosy-fingered dawn.” No one assumed that literal hands were appearing in the morning sky. Biblical descriptions such as God making a tent are also metaphors.
So What Really Happened at Creation?
Critical biblical scholars now tend to leave this scientific question to astrophysicists and other scientists. They recognize that reconstructions of the origins of the universe change as new evidence becomes available. What really happened? is a question for ongoing scientific inquiry. Critical biblical scholars focus instead on questions of meaning and context, questions that we share with our ancient forbears as we investigate their world and their literature.
Other posts and podcasts on this website include engagements with biblical texts as story:
Posts on Creation Stories and Storytelling by religious leader Gordon Raynal about allowing biblical Creation stories to open a world of imagination and connection.
Podcast 9 with storyteller and Hebrew scripture scholar Dr. Marti Steussy.
