For most people growing up in church, the only real meaning the first chapters of Genesis have is to show us how bad or disobedient we are, or how we got saddled with this sin problem. But there's much more to the story, and discovering it brings new light (and new encouragement) to how we might see God, ourselves, and the Story.
For most people growing up in church, the only real meaning the first chapters of Genesis have is to show us how bad or disobedient we are, or how we got saddled with this sin problem. But there's much more to the story, and discovering it brings new light (and new encouragement) to how we might see God, ourselves, and the Story.
Welcome back to The Willing Fool. I'm your host and lead fool, Paul Trimble. And today we are going to dive deeply. We are going to talk about, specifically the opening chapters of Genesis. Now, if you're like me, the way the opening chapters of Genesis have worked for you in your faith, in your understanding of God and the world and humanity.
It's mostly a, a fairly negative, takeaway, a negative feeling that you might associate with these chapters, because I think emotionally the way that it works is, okay, God made everything fine, people appear on the scene almost immediately, great. And that's where everything goes downhill. Like from almost day one.
And they exist in this perfect, pre sin earth place called Eden. Everything is good. And they just can't handle the goodness so they make a bad decision. And from that point forward, the nature of life changes. The nature of earth changes. There's no longer Eden. And, all of a sudden now, humankind, Adam, Eve, and all the way up through you and me, are saddled with this sin problem.
And then, the rest of the Bible is primarily, what are we gonna do about that? We gotta fix this sin problem. There's gotta be some way. To deal with this so our moral guilt doesn't, uh, gain us what we deserve, which is eternal punishment in hell. That's, you know, very, very simplified, but that's, I think that's how it often works on an emotional level.
That's what the story is. The role of Genesis 1 through 3 is... To explain sort of historically how we got here into this bad position and to frame us as being in that position And a lot of the rest of what follows after that is just we might look at it as The historical details almost like a history textbook of what happened from that point forward but really the the thing that just hangs out there like begging to be answered is well What do we do about this sin problem this moral guilt problem that we have we've got it.
We've got to rectify it We need something, somebody to come fix that for us, and and that's the story. And that's the role that Genesis 1 through 3 plays in it. And there's elements of that that I would affirm and say, well, yeah, sure. But I think, if the question is, is that really... The emotional weight, the takeaway, the frame of the story that we're supposed to come away with, the, the only one that we could come away with, I think I would answer to that, no, it's not the only way.
In fact, there's a pretty different approach that I think makes more sense of all of the biblical data and what we learn about Who God is and what he's looking for in and for us and from us But it does require us to take a very different look and to question some of those assumptions that seem very Firm and ironclad and hey, what else are you gonna take away from this?
It requires us to question those things. So I'm gonna raise a few questions. I'm not like nothing I'm gonna say today or probably in this entire season is completely original to me So I don't want to try to pull it off as if it is and today I'm gonna be leaning on pretty heavily on Michael Heiser's work.
He is teacher recently passed But lots of good books and videos out there Um, and so I would recommend getting your hands on his works if you're interested in this moving forward. It's gonna be way, uh, better explained, better done, much more thoroughly. I'm not doing that. I'm doing a fast pass and just to make, try to connect some dots with our actual...
Walk of a Christian life and shared church life. So here's some weird things There's plenty of weird things in the opening chapters of Genesis, but here's some questions. I'm gonna specifically isolate and mention Okay. Well one let's just get it out of the way as we start. There's a walking talking snake I think the Hebrew word is Nakash and he's a walking talking snake.
He interacts with Eve And through Eve, with Adam as well. And after this whole incident with the fruit and it's eaten and that choice is made, this snake experiences a curse. And, among other, other people receiving a curse, but the snake does as well. And one of the things he's cursed to do is to eat dust.
And you might wonder, well, why pick that weird thing out of all the weird things in there? Well, there's a reason, but just for now, let's just note he's cursed to eat dust, which if you notice, snakes technically zoologically do not eat dust. So that's an interesting thing to say that the snake's going to eat dust.
And then there's this. Promise, or this foreboding, proclamation about the snake and its relationship to, mankind. So, in Genesis 3. 15 it says, I will put hostility between you, talking to the snake, and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel. Cool. Now, That's an interesting little promise or statement, whatever you want to call it. But what is that talking about?
Hostility between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, you will strike his heel. So I guess you could say, well, is this a statement about the ongoing relationship between humans and snakes just in general, biologically, zoologically, and it could be, of course, The rest of the Bible doesn't really talk about that specifically.
It's not like a theme in the scriptures. So it would be a little bit interesting if that was the case. And not maybe the most relevant to the story as a whole. And some people see in this, Inklings of what goes on with, Jesus. And seeing something of the supernatural here with the snake. And sort of this ongoing battle, and I, I think there's reason for that, there's decent reason for that, but I think there's even a third, broader way to understand this that, we'll come back to, but, but for now, just note, okay, there's this weird promise between the woman and the snake, there's gonna be hostility, the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the snake, this idea, offspring of the snake, it's gonna come back into play, but just, Put a pin right there for now.
Now, secondly, those are things just with a snake. There's this thing with Eden, right? And I think the way Eden has worked for most of us is, like I mentioned earlier, it's a pre sin Earth. It's paradise. This is what the Earth was before the fall, before sin entered the picture. But, As soon as you start investigating that thought, it doesn't hold a lot of water because if you remember what happens after the fruit is eaten and the pronouncements are made, Adam and Eve leave Eden and they go where?
They don't go just from pre Sin Earth to post Sin, they just go to the rest of the Earth. Which implies that Eden was a specific geographical area, just looking at it at face value, not the whole earth. And in fact, it's, the geography of it is described in the opening chapters. You know, there's these rivers, it describes something about the land, and, and...
Geographical terminology like East and West is used in the East and, Adam and Eve end up going to the East from there. So there's at least geographical directions involved. So it doesn't seem like Eden is pre Sin Earth. It seems like it's a specific place. It's this well watered area, that has a, is a garden or has a garden and it's a, it's a subset.
It's a subset of Earth. It's a place. Now, one more thing that has, bothered people for a long, long time is, as God is speaking in these chapters, he keeps referring to himself as us. He's saying, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And it's not, it's not only one occurrence, it's, it's a few occurrences.
But what is this plural referring to? Let us do this. God is God, as far as I know. You know, monotheism, one God in the Bible. Is this a royal we? What's, what's happening here? And so there's just some hanging questions with Genesis 1 through 3. So that's all well and good. We got those questions there.
So, here's what we're going to investigate in this episode. Just a couple sources. One, is there any ancient Near Eastern context that would shed light on this, that might be relevant? Two, is there any biblical data or evidence that seems like it may be relevant and connected as well? So that sounds really simple, but there's actually a lot there.
And if we take those fully into account, I think it does really shift. The picture of what's going on here. And what we might take away from it, as well as just how it resonates with us in shaping our understanding of God, ourselves, and the story of the scriptures. So, firstly, I'm just going to paint a very general picture here of what I understand the Ancient Near Eastern context is, and some of the understandings that might be relevant to what we're reading.
Well, as it turns out, we in the last hundred years have learned a lot more than ever before about ancient Near Eastern cultures that were similar to those of the people who wrote scriptures that were the neighbors of the people who wrote, the, the verses in the Bible. And a very, very common view was that the gods, God and the gods, And they went by different names, different descriptions, obviously in different places.
That's not earth shattering news, I don't think, to anybody. And it's in the scriptures as well. There was this idea that God, you know, there was a, there was a council and you might use the term divine council. There was spiritual beings, not just one, but many. And, there was usually one or sometimes more than one, but, but for the sake of simplicity, we're just going to use the paradigm of one at the top.
And then there might be a couple levels beneath that one level beneath that would be. spiritual heavyweights that were important, were powerful, contributed ideas and thoughts and actions to the Supreme God. And then there would maybe be a third level of angels, essentially, like messengers, like functionaries.
They maybe didn't hold the same level of weight and authority, but they could carry out functions. They did what they were told. in doing the bidding of the gods. And so that's, that's part of the, Near Eastern context. And very often these gods, they met in a specific place in specific times. They had assemblies, they had councils, they, they met.
And the, the places where they met were described as variously gardens. Uh, specifically well watered gardens with, rivers and, of course, if you're an ancient Near Eastern person, water is life. If you have a choice, you're going to choose to live near water, so of course, why wouldn't the gods live near water?
That would just be a no brainer. Also, the mountains, if you think about it, a mountain, most cultures have symbolized Something of the gods or a place to meet with gods and it makes sense at a very, visceral level you're, you're going up gods, you would think of maybe being up high in the sky and so a mountain is somewhere that they kind of meet in the middle and, you could, you could easily envision gods living on a mountain or going up a mountain to get closer to or actually to commune with the gods.
So where did these councils meet? Well watered gardens, mountains, watered gardens. And oftentimes there's imagery associated with precious stones. Just... Kind of affiliated with gods. And so if you're an attuned Bible reader You you know bells should be dinging for you all over the place because this is a very close match For the description of Eden that we're just talking about well watered and not so much the mountain.
We'll come back to that earlier I don't really see anywhere in Genesis 1 through 3 talking about a mountain but well watered garden for sure precious stones definitely and so there's some resonances there. So then the next question you might ask just naturally is, is there any overlap between that way of thinking, that paradigm, and the scriptures talking about spiritual beings and the heavens?
And the simple answer is, Oh, yeah, there's a ton. There's a ton, and I wish that in the space of this episode, we could just sit here and unpack it passage by passage. We're talking many dozens of passages, throughout the entirety of the scriptures. But we won't have time to do that, so I'm gonna have to pick just a few.
So I'm gonna do that, um, I'm gonna start with Job 38, and these are sprinkled all over the place, and it's hard to actually narrow it down, but this is sort of the bombshell of one of, Michael Heiser's works, The Unseen Realm, plus other works as well, that's just. Kind of the, the primary one that people probably get an introduction to this sort of teaching and it's interesting because you would think Wait a second.
There's all these spiritual beings all these things you could call gods with a lowercase g It seems so anti biblical anti Christian But the reality is this is this is it's just there it's throughout the entirety of the scriptures It was the understanding of very early Christians And, Second Temple Judaism as well.
It wasn't controversial. If you ask my opinion, not that you did, If you ask my opinion, I think this fell out of favor, um, and remains out of favor. Because, among other things, it just, it's hard for us to fit it into our worldview. This isn't, this isn't our cultural context. Our cultural context is rationalistic.
We want to believe in as little supernatural as we have to. So, you know, of course, do anything spiritual or biblical or Christian. I have to believe in God. You know, that's just That's part of the whole deal, but don't ask me to believe in a lot of other supernatural things because that's just weird And it gets abused by people and it's odd and I can't explain it to any of my you know Likewise rationalistic friends that exist in this culture that we have And so I think beginning some time ago.
It just became less and less Acknowledged and prominent to the point where it's just sort of faded Faded From View. And then of course, there's people who get just really, really obsessed and everything they talk about is about supernatural this and that, and it's, I think for most people it's pretty off putting.
You don't know what to do with that. So there's a couple reasons why. It might be hard for us to want to be retrained or even be open to thinking this way, but I think if we're going to do what we talked about in the last episode and do our best to see what the message of the scriptures is through the writer's eyes.
And if we need to suspend judgment on what we think about all of it, fine, you know, you can suspend judgment. You can remain a little bit neutral, but at least, at least, try to look through their eyes and see what they are actually saying. You can always make a judgment later. But if you don't at least acknowledge what they're saying and look at it through their eyes, you can't even do that well.
You can't even render a good judgment because... You're just thinking through your own lenses, and you're not even gonna see what they're saying. And I think that's true in Genesis 1 through 3. So anyway, that's my sidebar soapbox, but Job 38 The Lord is answering Job from the whirlwind and he says where were you when I established the earth?
Tell me if you have understanding who fixed its dimension. Certainly you know who stretched a measuring line across it, what supports its foundation, who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Now this is talking about the establishment of the earth, the creation of the earth, and stars, when it says morning stars sang together, of course stars don't sing, and this could just be metaphorical, but there is a common understanding in the Ancient Near East that stars were associated with, or were, spiritual beings. And there's an intuitive sense to that because they're in the heavens, first of all, so that's the location of the gods as far as we can understand, and they move.
Which is a sign of light. So if you've got things in the heavens and they move then Those might be spiritual beings. So morning star singing together. I don't think it's just poetic I think it's it's got this in view and then you have an all the sons of God Shouted for joy sons of God in Hebrew bene Elohim.
This is a phrase that's repeated and it's this is not talking about people right because we're talking about the creation of the earth here and But there's these pre existing sons of God, these B'nai Elohim, shouting for joy, kind of rooting God on in his creation endeavors. And so who is this? Well, this is part of that, part of that general category of spiritual beings or divine beings and they're rooting God on.
This is very, very far from the only passage that talks about this. In fact, The opening chapters of Job itself describe these scenes, these, these council scenes where spiritual beings are interacting with God and having conversations with him about what he's going to do and how he's going to do it. I won't, I won't read those to you here, but if you're familiar with Job, you're aware of this.
This is an image that fits hand in glove with Job 38. Okay, you've got these spiritual beings. They clearly interact with God. They talk about what's going to go on on the earth. They help execute what's going to go on with the earth. It's just a picture being painted. So, if I'm going to keep going, I'm going to go to Psalm 82.
And, there's actually several psalms that are relevant and talk about this. God has taken his place in the divine assembly. Divine assembly is almost a technical term for this divine council idea. He judges among the gods. Okay, sounds like there are other gods and he judges among them. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?
I'm going to skip down a little bit to verse 6. I said, you are gods. By the way, Jesus quoted this in the context of displaying who he was to people who disbelieved. And, he quoted this. I said, you are gods. You are all sons of the Most High, however you will die like men and fall like any other ruler.
Rise up God, judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you. So, face value understanding of this, and people definitely disagree and take a position opposite to what I'm describing. But the, the face value is, God is in his divine assembly, he's in his divine council, and he's rendering a judgment.
And he's saying your gods, your sons of the most high, your, your sons of Elohim, B'nai Elohim. But you will die like men. You will fall like any other ruler. You will die like men is not the most obvious that you would say that to a person, because of course a person will die like a person. But it takes on a special meaning and makes sense as language that you would use to...
render a judgment to a spiritual being who has failed in his endeavor. You might think, okay, well, that's fine if it's just that one, but no, it goes on and on. I mean, I have so many scriptures listed down. I'm not going to read them all because. You'll get bored and stop listening, but if you're interested, again, there's great resources out there.
The Unseen Realm is a book that's a good place to start. These passages are, sprinkled throughout the entirety of the scriptures. Here's one more from Psalm 89, Lord, the heavens praise your wonders, your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can compare with the Lord?
You could say that if there's no one else in the skies, but it makes a lot more sense if there's other beings in the skies. Who among the heavenly beings, again, makes more sense if there are some, is like the Lord? God is greatly feared in the council of the holy ones. Makes more sense if there is one.
More awe inspiring than all who surround him. Lord God of hosts, who is strong like you, Lord? And it goes on from there. Once more, I'm just giving you a sprinkling. There's so much. but. I'm just using this as a launch point, as a very simple sampling to say, it's there. It is there. The idea of the divine council, the spiritual beings who play a key role in deciding things and moving the plot forward.
If you read the New Testament, I know these were Old Testament scriptures, Hebrew scriptures, but if you read books like Ephesians, you will see references to these spiritual beings sprinkled throughout. And not just ones who are doing the work and will of God, but those who are opposed as well. And God has a vested interest in.
What they are doing and thinking and saying and what they observe and so there's there's spiritual beings quote unquote on the dark side Colossians 2 references how Jesus has Basically defeated them in the cross these dark powers Revelation 20 and Revelation 12 talk about the ancient serpent the snake, the devil being cast down, which is language that might sound a little familiar.
A snake being cast down, low, I mean, this is also sprinkled throughout the letters of Paul. 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 in the context of. Food that's been sacrificed to other gods and he uses language of idols and demons there and it gets a little Very interesting actually because in some places it's like well idols are nothing but in other places It's clear like there's a real danger with these other demons representing other gods and I think those things can be understood pretty easily together and if you have a block of wood, that's nothing.
But if you give special honor and invoke, a god, a demon to inhabit it, well, there doesn't have to be anything special about the block of wood if that, if that other being does exist and is willing to reciprocate with you. So those things can go together. But point being, again, This is all throughout the entirety of the scriptures and integral to the plot I'll unpack a little bit more of that in future episodes, but Again, this is just very high level Ancient Near East there's a divine council.
There's a three layer structure essentially to on the divine beings they meet in a particular place well watered and potentially a mountain type scenario and beautiful jewels all around, sparkling nature perhaps. And so, so then if we revisit Eden, we're going to look at one more scripture. But if we revisit Eden, it starts to take on a different vibe.
It starts to take on a different, um, different connotations. So here's a scripture, Ezekiel 28, and it has connection to All of this conversation we've had to this point so far. The initial or immediate application of Ezekiel 28 is an earthly ruler who is being challenged and, more than challenged, his fate is being sealed by God.
So, it says it's to the ruler of Tyre. And in all likelihood this primarily has in view a human ruler. And it goes on and it starts using God like language, perhaps this ruler had, aspirations to be more than a man, which, you know, that's kind of what we do as people. We, we want to be immortal, we want to be all powerful, even though we know we cannot.
But then as it continues on in verse 11, there's a shift. It says,
This is what the Lord God says. You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone covered you, carnelian, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald. You hearing those jewels? Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold.
They were prepared on the day you were created. You were an appointed guardian cherub. For I had appointed you, you were on the holy mountain of God. You walked among the fiery stones. From the day you were created, you were blameless in your ways until wickedness was found in you. I'm going to skip to verse 17.
Your heart became proud because of your beauty. For the sake of your splendor, you corrupted your wisdom. So I threw you down to the earth. I made you a spectacle before kings. And it goes on from there. So, for our purposes, just note, first of all, there's there's a specifically Eden is mentioned. And it's a garden of God.
But also, a few verses down, it's described the same character as being in the holy mountain of God. And so, this this garden imagery and this mountain imagery are alternately used at different times to indicate a dwelling place of God. And so there's this character here again, the, the King of Tyre is in view, but then there's this other language that's Eden language, which obviously the King of Tyre wasn't in Eden.
And he's described as an anointed guardian cherub in the holy mountain, in Eden. And wickedness was found in you. You were, your heart became proud because of your beauty. So there's this, this imagery of something that sounds at least like a divine or spiritual being in Eden who takes this huge fall, is really humbled and laid low, by God.
And so, if you connect this with Eden, you, you could easily start to see, oh, okay, so this is, there's a mountain, it's a garden, this is all, this is all typical divine counsel imagery, and it's connected with Eden. Okay, well that makes me actually want to take a step back and rethink Eden. Okay, so Eden is a specific place and God seems to walk around and talk there like, like it's his home.
Hmm. Then you've got this guardian cherub, this divine being who takes a big fall because he is filled with how great he is. And is, does not seem in accordance with God, but more so in rebellion with God. And so you start to see where later thinkers, later God followers started to look at this snake and think, Hmm, this might not just be a snake.
Is it, does it make sense that he's walking around and talking? Well, Normally we don't associate walking and talking with snakes, but, but, if, if Eden is this divine meeting place, this divine council location, then, yeah, it's not unheard of for, a god, a divine being to be speaking through an animal.
That's That's actually a lot more believable, even in ancient Near Eastern terms, than just a walking, talking animal. That's not part of their worldview. But a walking, talking, divine being in the form of an animal, yeah, that, that could fly. Then, he's cursed to eat dust. We talked about how snakes don't physically, biologically eat dust, but...
If that is imagery talking about being laid low, then that, that makes some sense. And now, well, this gets really interesting. Does it make sense of the fact that Eden is not all of Earth? Yeah, it totally makes sense. It's not, it's not pre sin Earth. It's, it's this divine location for the council meeting.
And does it make sense of, well, let us make man in our image and then God going and doing it? Yeah, he could be having a conversation with the divine council and saying, Let us do this. You know, and then getting any input that's desired from the council members and then himself doing it. So God is a creator, but he, he does have an audience that he can talk to that is entirely consistent with ancient Near Eastern worldview of, of the divine realm and really with what's presented in the rest of scripture as well, including Job 38, saying these sons of God are rejoicing at the moment of creation.
They're there. They're around. And then you go to that little promise, that thing of, well, there's gonna be this Ongoing tension, animosity between the seed of the snake and the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman, pretty clearly that's humanity. The seed of the snake, well, that could be other snakes if we're just looking at him as a snake.
But if it's not, the seed of the snake, that could be anybody, anything, divine or human, that is following in the footsteps of the snake. Now how does that work as a frame for the story? An ongoing tension, an ongoing battle between those who are following the path of the snake and everyone else, divine beings, human beings, either or.
Yeah, that actually, we're going to look at this in more detail in the next. next episode, but, but yes, that actually is the story that proceeds from there. This ongoing tension, this battle that's going to continue. Now, here's where it gets, in my mind, so interesting, because you could be interested in this just as sort of like a, uh, academic exercise, theological exercise.
And that's fine, but think back to where we started this episode. Normally, I think, when we read Genesis 1 through 3, we just think, the fall of man, aren't we idiots? Didn't we blow it? Um, this is why we have this sin problem. This is the frame of the story, is how we just blew it from the beginning, and now we've got this sin problem that needs fixed.
But think about this. God placed man, humankind, Adam, Eve, in the garden. But if that's... If that's the area for the divine council, that's in a sense, uh, that's a sign of deep respect. That's a sign of, I, I want you in my inner circle. I want you in this spiritual family. I want you in the seat of power. I want you in where decisions get made.
And there's this fellowship. There's this tightness. We do things together. We're running this, we're running this, creation enterprise, earth, the cosmos as a family business. I've got my divine beings here, my spiritual beings. We're going to do that. But I want you humans. I want you, Adam. I want you, Eve, to be part of that.
If that's true, then... Then what I take away from that is God wants humanity to have extreme access to him. He wants intimacy. He wants proximity. He wants us to be where he is and he wants to be where we are. And putting us in Eden, or having us experience Eden, is testament to that. It is a, it is a, an acted out statement of how God wants us to be, and of course he sends humanity out into the rest of the earth to spread that goodness, to, to execute on his behalf, much as he might a divine or spiritual being send them to execute on his behalf, but to spread his, his kind of life, his kind of way of ruling, his stewardship, his rulership, his kingship, he wants us to do the same in the rest of the earth.
But we're, we were invited to the seat of power. We were invited to this place where you would think it would just, might just be spiritual beings. In fact, if you're a spiritual being and you thought you had it all and you were full of yourself and you thought of yourself very highly and thought, look how powerful and shiny I am, then maybe you might think, what do you mean, including these lowly, pathetic humans in this?
These aren't our kind. These are our people. You might. You might not look very highly on that. You might not want them to experience the high level and position that you have. That's not, I'm not saying that is what, I'm just saying it's not hard to think that way at all. It also shows that God, if this is true, then God has an extremely high view of humanity and our vocation, our calling, what he thinks we can do.
Would everyone agree with that in the divine counsel? Maybe not. God seems to think that we are up to the task. He wants to be extremely close. He wants to provide intimate access and proximity. He has a very, very high view of who we are. And I think that this reality actually frames the entirety of the rest of the story.
Now, it doesn't make the fall, the sin, any less tragic. In fact, if anything, it makes it more tragic when you see how good that is. How high that calling is, how high the desire is. for intimacy and proximity and access and nearness. But the sin is not the frame. We're not even the center of the frame. I mean, we're integral and we're important, but there's other characters that loom very large and are going to help frame, shape, and move the story forward.
And if you don't get that, then you, you, it's hard to put us in the right place. It's hard to get what the message is. It's hard to see the role and the place of humanity in the story. And so that's what I think is worth fighting for. We'll continue to look at it in the upcoming episodes, but that's going to be it for this one.
Give it a little more thought and please, please, please join me for the next one. That's it for the willing fool this time. See you next time.