Book Review: Ben Stanhope (Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible. 2020 Scarab Press. $46.98 (Paperback) $7.86 (Digital)
Young Earth creationist organisations such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and the Institute for Creation Research in asserting that Genesis 1-11 should be interpreted literally inevitably end up pitting the Christian faith against what the past few centuries of historical and scientific research have taught us about natural and human history. The inevitable tension between the YEC worldview and the robust nature of the scientific evidence for an ancient, evolving universe too often results in believers abandoning their faith, having assumed that if the YEC worldview is wrong then the Bible cannot be trusted.
The problem of course lies in the flawed hermeneutic by which the YEC interprets the first eleven chapters of Genesis. It has been noted that a fundamentalist is someone who doesn’t recognise that they have a hermeneutic. The YEC simply assumes without justification that the chapters must be read literally. The question of how the original audience would have read these chapters is ignored or fudged.
Biblical scholar Ben Stanhope’s Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible ably summarises its thesis in its title. As Stanhope notes in his introduction:
As someone who deeply values the Hebrew Scriptures, I have written to engage the average churchgoer and curious secular readers. My thesis is that archaeological and linguistic discoveries about the Bible’s original context clearly show that a great deal of mainstream young-earth interpretation of biblical creation texts is wrong. I also aim to demonstrate that these archaeological and linguistic discoveries should correct our understanding of the biblical authors’ core intended messages. [1]
Stanhope divides his book into three sections. In section 1 “Proposed Claims of Extinct Animals in the Bible” he rebuts the YEC belief that passages such as Job 40:15-24 and Job 41 are describing dinosaurs. In section 2 “Reading Genesis Like an Ancient Israelite”, Stanhope tackles the questions of whether Genesis 1:1 describes the absolute beginning of the universe, ancient Hebrew cosmology and their conception of the Earth, the nature of Eden, what the seven days of creation really meant, the long lives of the antediluvian patriarchs, and the question of animal death before the Fall. This comprises the main part of the book. In his final section, “Section 3 A Path Forward”, Stanhope, writing primarily for an evangelical audience rebuts the belief that the Holy Spirit functions as a supernatural Bible commentary. He also argues that fundamentalist views on inspiration actively work to stop the believer from properly understanding Genesis 1-11. In the appendices, Stanhope critiques the YEC belief that there is evidence for human and dinosaur coexistence, rebuts the misuse of flood legends across ancient cultures to support belief that the Noachic flood was global, and analyses several cosmogeographical views to show that ancient cultures believed in a flat earth covered by a solid firmament, providing the cultural context against which to understand ancient Hebrew cosmogeography.
The main strength of (Mis)interpreting Genesis is in its focus on interpreting Genesis 1-11 in its original context rather than getting sidetracked into irrelevant scientific questions. Section I, which ably demolishes YEC claims that the Bible refers to now-extinct animals such as dinosaurs, and chapters in Section 2 on ancient Israelite cosmogeography and the temple theology behind the seven day creation motif alone make the book worth obtaining.
Recommended.
References
1. Stanhope, Ben.
(Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible (p. 12). Scarab Press. Kindle Edition.
