Friday, October 14, 2011
The ancient cosmos
“It is clear from the cosmological literature of the ancient Near East that order in the cosmos and the control of the functions of the cosmos were more prominent in the ancient thought world than any consideration of the material origins of the cosmos. In what follows, I will show that ancient Near Eastern literature is concerned primarily with order and control of functions of the world that exists rather than with speculations about how the material world that exists came into being... A study of these concepts reveals how pervasive the issues of rule and authority were for ancient thinking. The model of the cosmos as a kingdom was more relevant in the ancient world than our modern model of the cosmos, which typically portrays it as a machine.”—Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, pages 8-9
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I've been reading Walton's less scholarly version of this treatise, The Lost World of Genesis. Excellent book.
It's funny I went to the Creation Museum near Cincinnati. I kept thinking about what I'd read in Walton's book, and how we've done a terrible disservice to everyone. Why can't we simply admit the obvious? "We don't know how God went about creating the Cosmos." No one does.
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