I have to be a bit careful in critiquing John Walton’s thesis in his book The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, because, as has been pointed out to me, it’s only a summary of his much more substantial argument in his Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology. I’m not sure that really excuses the lack of concrete evidence in support of the argument in the shorter book, but it’s something to keep in mind.

If we are going to read the New Testament as historical narrative, we have to have some sense of historical context. The church, on the whole, is not interested in historical context. The Bible is mostly treated as a self-contained, self-sufficient sacred text. In a recent comment Travis Finley wrote: “My hermeneutic ultimately depends upon a primacy of the uniformity of scripture; that is, the reader ought to be able to interpret the meaning of the text from the primary text itself, rather than extra-biblical.”

That perhaps suggests a high view of scripture, but it is also going to be, more often than not, a protectionist strategy. We are afraid that if we make scripture transparent to its literary-historical environment, our cherished interpretations of it—whether traditional or idiosyncratic—will be put at risk.

I have no problem with Trinitarian orthodoxy as the product of a post-biblical, post-Jewish, post-apocalyptic rethinking of the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit, in the context of the construction of a new worldview for the Greek-Roman oikoumenē. I think that was probably, like Christendom itself, a natural and necessary development.

A narrative-historical approach, however, pushes back against the worldview-defining dominance of Trinitarian orthodoxy at two points.

Neil asks in connection with my post Talking Jesus: problems with the modern evangelistic paradigm: “how do you view the Trinity given your statement about the uniqueness of Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ and everyone else’s encounter with either the pre-risen Christ or the Holy Spirit post-resurrection?” I had complained that in the “Talking Jesus” report on evangelism in England the understanding of Jesus that dominates the New Testament is entirely disregarded. I will try and explain roughly how I think the Trinity fits into this argument.

I have finally got round to reading John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, and I have to say, I don’t see it.

Walton’s central contention is that what we have in Genesis 1 is an account not of the creation of the material cosmos but of the inauguration of the world as a temple for the creator God. He does not deny that the world is God’s material creation as a matter of theology, only that this is not the message that the author of the passage was trying to get across. In the context of the debate about origins there is an immediate benefit: we no longer need to map the chronology of Genesis 1 against scientific accounts of the formation of the universe and the emergence of life:

In summary, we have suggested that the seven days are not given as the period of time over which the material cosmos came into existence, but the period of time devoted to the inauguration of the functions of the cosmic temple…. (91)

Why does Paul say in Galatians 4:4 that Jesus was “born from a woman” (genomenon ek gunaikos)? I argued in “Christmas according to St Paul” that the “sending” of Jesus was much more like the sending of the son to the vineyard in the parable of the wicked tenants than the sending of Wisdom into the world. In other words, I don’t think Paul is talking about the incarnation. The sending happened when the time was fulfilled and Jesus began to proclaim the good news of the coming kingdom of God to Israel (cf. Mk. 1:15).

I noted that “born of a woman or of women” was an idiomatic expression for being human, and in particular for being weak, vulnerable and flawed. But there is perhaps more that can be said.

Paul appears not to have known the Christmas story—or not to have been much interested in it, at least. In the letters that have survived he makes no mention of a census, a journey to Bethlehem, angels, shepherds, the presentation in the temple, astrologers from the east, the flight to Egypt, or the massacre of the infants.