Friday 10/24/14

This week?s LifeTeen Question of the Week comes from Hannah McElman. Hannah asks:

Are we supposed to take the creation story in Genesis as historically accurate? I have heard many claims as to why that story cannot be true.


Strap in, Hannah, it?s going to be a bumpy ride? well, it will be, but not quite yet. First we have some history to go over. It?s kind of boring, so I?ll keep it exciting with pictures. You like pictures, right?


The word Bible comes from the Greek words ?? ?????? or tà biblía, which means ?the books.? It?s an appropriate name, because even though it comes neatly packaged between a front and back cover, the Bible is not one book, but an anthology of 73 books. It is divided into two sections, the Old Testament (or Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament. More theologians and Biblical scholars are starting to call the Old Testament the Hebrew Scriptures because it is the Sacred Scripture of the Jewish people written by the ancient Hebrew people. I think it might be time for another picture.


The Hebrew Scriptures grew out of oral tradition, some of which started thousands of years ago. The stories were passed down through the generations without actually being written down. Instead, parents, grandparents, storytellers, and religious leaders would recite the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures and the listeners would commit them to memory. Eventually, as the faith grew and expanded into different parts of the world, it became necessary for the ancient Jewish people to write their scripture down so that it could be studied without a Temple or Synagogue readily available. On that note, here?s another picture.


The collection of books that we call the Bible actually has a number of different genres in it. It contains poetry, music, romance, biography, genealogy, prophecy, letters, science, law, self-help, parable, and many more including, yes, you guessed it, history.



Which brings us to Hannah?s question? sort of. There are actually two creation stories in Genesis, not one. The first one begins with Genesis 1:1 with ?In the beginning? etc. etc.? and goes up until Genesis 2:3. The second and completely different creation story begins with Genesis 2:4 and continues on.


Which Came First, the Dog or the Woman?

In what ways are they different? Well, for starters, there?s the order of creation. In the first creation story, the world starts as a big body of water. God makes light and then, God separates the water into the sky and the ocean then gathers the ocean together for dry land. Then God makes the stars, and the sun, and the moon and all that good stuff, then plants and animals. Finally, once everything else is made, he makes man and woman; the crowning achievement of His creation. The manner in which he creates is by word. God says ?Let us make human beings in our likeness,? and then they exist. His word becomes physical reality.

In the second creation story, things happen differently. First, the world begins with very little water. In fact, the world is one big desert with no living things, just a little fountain and a stream. In this version of the story, God?s first act is to create man. I don?t mean that His first act is to create people; I mean his first act is to create man. He does this not by speaking, but by picking up some clay, forming it into a man, and breathing life into it. Then, once man is created, he creates plants and makes a garden for the man. Then the man gets lonely. God doesn?t think that the man should be alone, so he tries to make him a companion. He makes all the animals, one at a time, and brings them to the man.


The man names them each, then tries to see if they are a suitable companion, and each one turns out not to be. Finally, God puts the man to sleep, takes one of his ribs, and forms woman out of it. The woman is finally a suitable companion for the man. Hooray!

Here?s the problem: both of these stories cannot be historically accurate. Some people have tried to say that the second story of creation is just a clarification of the first story, that it includes the details of creation. That is simply not the case. In fact, not only are these stories different, they are incompatible. In many ways, they are entirely opposite.

The reality is that neither one of these stories was ever meant to be taken literally, not even by the ancient Jews. They are what are called ?etiological myths.?



An etiological myth is a story which is used to explain how things got to be the way that they are. Think Aesop?s fables and stories like ?How the Leopard Got its Spots.? They are stories made to pass down some important truth. So there it is then. I guess they are not true. They are just myths.

Hold your horses, Tex. This rodeo ain?t over yet.



The Bible is the inspired Word of God. It is not some book of fairy tales. Every story in there, every last word of it, is important. Just because the creation stories are not historically true does not mean they do not have some valuable truth to teach us. Which brings us back to oral tradition.


Think of a story you know by oral tradition. Maybe it?s the story of your great grandparents coming to America. Maybe it?s the one about that time your mom shot bottle rockets through the old fashioned keyhole on the bathroom door while your uncle was having a sit down. The point is, different members of your family probably tell that story differently. There are parts that they don?t fully understand. Your mother doesn?t really know what your uncle?s face looked like when his toilet session turned into the fourth of July, and unless he took the time to look in the mirror while he was pulling a ?Bert the Turtle? ( look it up) neither does he. They both fill those details in though, because without them, the story is no good. That doesn?t make the story untrue, though, it just means we need to look a little harder to find the truth. The things that both stories have in common are the things the story is meant to teach. These are the truths of the story.

If we apply the same lens to the creation stories, we can find out what the essential truths of the stories are. God created the universe (the exact mechanism used was not important to the ancient Hebrew people, so they expressed it poetically), humanity holds a prime place in the world (one story puts them first, the other saves the best for last, but in both stories they are the purpose of creation), the created world is intrinsically good (both stories frequently refer to the created things as ?good.?), when God finds some good lacking, like man without a wife, he creates something to fix it, man and woman were made to be partners, and many other truths come forward as well. The stories were never intended to be a scientific or historical account of how the world was created, but that doesn?t mean they?re just a bunch of hogwash. We have to be smarter and more nuanced about the way in which we read.

So now you know, and




If you have a question you'd like Mike to answer, submit it under the "Ask Mike" section of our website. To guarantee that your question is chosen, pass it down through oral tradition for a few thousand years, then have two of the most popular versions of it written in ancient Hebrew and mail them to: