@TB2
John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009)
I have read the following three books authored by John H. Walton and in this order: (1)
The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), (2)
Genesis 1 and Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), and (3)
The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2–3 and the Human Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015).
I was in a weird place about eight or nine years ago. I had become convinced that young-earth creationism was an incorrect interpretation of Genesis, but my reasons for rejecting old-earth creationist interpretations continued to hold (both the Day-Age view and the Gap view). So, I was in a holding pattern of sorts for a long time, with no idea how to understand the creation account.
I was beginning to lean toward the Framework view as espoused by Meredith G. Kline, a theological hero of mine, but only slightly because something seemed not-quite-right with that view, too. It was around this the time that Amazon recommended
The Lost World of Genesis One to me, as I was browsing through some vaguely related material. That was an attention-getting title, so kudos to whichever editor came up with that.
Anyhow, I devoured that book in one sitting because I was absolutely fascinated by everything he was saying—because he was making points that I had arrived at independently through my own private studies (such as rejecting the notion of the supernatural as unbiblical, indefensible, and unhelpful). But what really grabbed my attention was his argument that, essentially, creationists have not provided a literal interpretation of Genesis. It barely qualifies as an interpretation at all. (This is not what he said but rather my summation thereof.) Creationists make a lot of noise about interpreting Genesis literally but the stark reality is that they don't. That was a shocking wake-up call for me, as a creationist.
Did God create the world in six 24-hour days? Never mind how long the days were, the more important and more relevant question regards the meaning of "create." You see, the most basic core of the creationist argument turns out to be an assumption imposed on the text, which therefore cannot be called an interpretation by any stretch of the imagination, much less a literal one. They believe that, in Genesis, God creating stuff was about bringing it into material existence (i.e., constituted by matter and energy)—light, sky, land, plants and animals, and mankind. That reflects our modern ontological categories, but is that what it meant for the original author and audience? Did they share our view?
It turns out that this question is one that we creationists have never asked. We just assumed they did and imposed that assumption on the text—and THEN delved into arguments about whether "yom" refers to 24-hour days or indefinite ages and so forth. But running with an assumption imposed on the text is not a literal interpretation—it's not an interpretation at all, period. It doesn't even ask the question, much less attempt an answer. In fact, it is a failure to even recognize that a question should be asked here.
So, I thought this book was ground-breaking and it certainly convinced me. When only one side is making an exegetical argument while everyone else leans hard into eisegesis, it's not a difficult choice for me. But the case that he was making (vis-a-vis the cosmic temple) dovetailed very nicely with the view presented by Gregory K. Beale in
The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004) and Meredith G. Kline,
Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006). All of that taken together with a Reformed covenant theology and a redemptive-historical hermeneutic has powerfully shaped my biblical world-view.
William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam (2021).
Although I possess a copy of this book by Craig, I haven't yet opened it. I am already familiar with what he's going to argue in there and I already flatly reject it—so I'm not in a hurry to read it. (Craig will argue that Adam and Eve were historical people and the progenitors of the human race, but lived over 750,000 years ago and were members of the archaic species
Homo heidelbergensis.) I will read it eventually, I know, but mostly because I want to know how he deals with the fact that the stories involving Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants involve things like domesticated animals, agriculture, metalwork, walled cities, and more, things for which the earliest evidence dates from 15,000 years ago.
An alternative book that I would highly recommend to you, one which was equally groundbreaking and influencial, is
S. Joshua Swamidass, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019). He makes a solid case for those who want to maintain that (a) Adam and Eve were real people (b) who were created
de novo by God (c) roughly 6,000 years and (d) were the genealogical ancestors of everyone. They were not the first humans, but then nothing about a, b, c, and d above requires them to be. (I don't know whether that's his own view or not, but he lays out an argument for those who do hold it.)
