The eternally working Creator (part 2)

Growing in wisdom and understanding
The poetic literary forms in Job, then, provide another challenge to Western ideas of accuracy. But taken in light of what those cultures, at that time, viewed as "valid" or meaningful records (especially when compared with what many other cultures around the world view as valid history), it's not so hard to see how ancient Israel could have recognized the completely valid principles and lessons portrayed in Job, without splitting hairs about how (or whether) Job and friends could have put all their thoughts and emotions instantly into great poetry. As we would understand it, what is likely to have happened is this: Job the person existed; those events of his life actually took place; the insights that he and his friends gained from their arguments (and from Job's encounter with God) were as we have them; but their expression in the poetic form we have on record was set down later, through the obvious careful thought, practiced skill, and great effort that would have to have gone into creating such elegant poetry.

No more split ends!
God simply does not owe it to us to be hair-splitting about "accuracy" in the way we define it; in fact, in Scripture he regularly paraphrases himself without explanation or clarification ... since the cultures through whom he was speaking and working did that all the time themselves, and would have understood immediately what he meant, with no problem about it.

(For example, the reiteration of the Ten Commandments in Deut 5, on the eve of Israel's entry into their new land, is not identical to its original version given at Sinai, in Ex 20. Again, in Jn 3, as Jesus is dialoguing with Nicodemus on how to enter eternal life, he paraphrases himself within moments: in v 7 he quotes what he had just said to Nicodemus in v 3 ... but not the way he had just worded it! This is because a paraphrase that accurately conveys the gist or intent of something is fully as valid, or "accurate", as were the original words, even if it is very different in detail or specifics.)

At any rate, God's consistent emphasis throughout the Bible, far beyond merely acquiring accurate information (as we like to put an emphasis on), is for us to understand what he means, and together with that to know him as a Person ... and so to keep understanding him and his ways better:

"... teach me your ways so I may know you ...." (Ex 33.13)

"... where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell? ....
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells ...." (Job 28.12, 23)

Show me your ways, O Yahweh,
teach me your paths. (Ps 25.4)

The unfolding of your words gives light .... (Ps 119.130)

... if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding ....
... Yahweh gives wisdom,
and from his mouth come
knowledge and understanding. (Prov 2.3-6)

No longer will someone teach his neighbor ... saying, "Know Yahweh," because they will all know me .... (Jer 31.34)

Who is wise? He will realize these things [God's works and ways].
Who is discerning? He will understand them. (Hos 14.9)

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (Jn 17.3)

I keep asking that [God] ... may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. (Eph 1.17)

... the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord .... I want to know Christ .... (Phil 3.8, 10)

... asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. (Col 1.9)

... I know whom I have believed .... (2 Tim 1.12)

Capisce? Savvy? Get it?
The passages emphasizing wisdom, understanding, and knowing God personally (there are, of course, many more than these) constitute one of the most persistent and universal themes in Scripture. Our Western emphasis on accurate information, then, ought to take a back seat to genuine understanding of Scripture ... that is, our efforts to understand what was actually meant ought to take priority over simply acquiring accurate information ... because, depending on what God meant in a given place, what appears to be plain, clear information might not be what he intended for us to understand at all.

Does that sound like a hard assignment? Well, whether we like it or not, the persistent assignment from God here is "wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom" (Pr 4.7), and that just takes thought and effort; there isn't any way around it. We've gotten used to wanting what's easy and fast ... we joke about ourselves being a "drive-through nation"! But you can't just "get wisdom" as if it were an item added to a shopping list: "Hey, on the way home, could you please stop at the market and pick up some milk, bread, eggs, and ... oh yeah, get wisdom." On the other hand, neither is it some arcane, mystical understanding, that only an elite few are somehow able to attain: God's Word not only urges everyone to get wisdom, he also promises that he will provide it: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him" (Jas 1.5) ... as, in fact, is also stated or implied in all the scriptural calls for wisdom cited briefly above. So the pursuit of wisdom and understanding is essentially to run into the arms of the One who is already wanting to teach that to us.

What's in your wall ... eh, wisdom?
So what would wisdom consist of in this case? Well, at the least, it would include aiming to understand more about the context that something was written in—culturally and historically—and about the literary style that was being used (such as historical chronicles; poetic form; narratives that may be either history or allegory); and, as already mentioned, the context of whether those peoples saw it as necessary for records to be factually precise as we do, before they could be considered true or accurate. A further consideration might be whether the people who recorded something were drawing it from their own experience, or were relating an account that had been handed down to them from somewhere else, or from further back in time.

Moses the editor
This comes into particular significance in the case of Genesis, because, while traditionally Moses is credited as its author, clearly God did not, as it were, just sit him down and dictate it to him from scratch. ("Moses, take a letter! [ahem!] 'In the beginning ...'") It records history from creation up to the settling of Jacob and his family in Egypt, where their descendants were later enslaved, leading up to the deliverance recorded in the next book, Exodus: in other words, Genesis partly explains how Israel got into the fix it did in Egypt; partly puts their own history in context with the broader history of God's design, going back to creation (and looking forward in his ongoing promise to bless the world through Abraham's descendants); and partly makes clear that the God who delivered them from Egypt isn't just any god, but the only Creator, the Eternal. But it's unlikely that anything in the book was at all news to the people of Israel in Moses' time; it's not as if, on hearing it read aloud for the first time, they would have said, "Oh really? There's a God? The earth was created? We're descended from some guy named Abraham? Whaddaya know!"

Moses, as some commentators point out, would more likely have been a sort of editor of an anthology, compiling earlier accounts into a coherent story as we have it. And in fact evidence of that is very clear: the Hebrew literary formula typically used in opening a record of events, or of some chapter in history revolving around a certain person, family line, or society, is "The book of the generations of ...", or sometimes simply "The generations of ...". Recent English translations of the Bible (such as the New International Version) usually paraphrase that as "The account of ...", or some similar phrase, to make it more understandable to readers in English: but that's what the Hebrew expression actually implies, since it isn't always strictly a genealogical record, nor even necessarily includes one. And Genesis bears a number of such "generations" headings, at significant breaks in the story line: 2.4; 5.1; 6.9; 10.1; 11.10; 11.27; 25.12; 25.19; 36.1; 36.9; 37.2. Eleven short-story "accounts" are compiled there, with the initial account of creation making a twelfth. Each of these probably represents an ancestral record, handed down either orally or (before the development of alphabetic writing) in some recorded form such as markings on stone, pottery, or wood, as memory aids in the telling of the story.

(Lest it should be supposed that oral tradition represents a shaky and unreliable form of passing along history, many cultures around the world have long maintained, and some still maintain, complex and extensive oral traditions, which are usually kept by someone trained in the rigorous art of memorizing, reciting, and teaching them; sometimes symbolic or pictorial memory aids are also used. Some Native American creation or cultural accounts, for example, can take up to three hours to recite ... others up to twelve or fourteen hours ... and they must be ceremonially recited word for word, without error, or their recital is considered impure and must be started all over again! That's a pretty good incentive to get it right the first time, and every time. For that matter, disciples of rabbis in Jesus' time were expected to pay close enough attention to the rabbis' teachings that they could be recited mostly verbatim, and/or recorded accurately later; this also explains how so much of Jesus' teaching was able to be "captured" in the moment by his disciples.)

©2008 Roger S. Smith

Part 3: understanding what God means