School is for learning?

(Per­haps what fol­lows is a bit of frus­tra­tion?) I received a few of my course­books this morn­ing, and among them was a bible, the (get ready for this): Fully Revised Fourth Edi­tion, The New Oxford Anno­tated Bible, New Revised Stan­dard Ver­sion With the Apoc­rypha, Col­lege Edi­tion, An Ecu­meni­cal Study Bible — if that isn’t a mouth­ful, I don’t know what is. I’ve been want­ing a bible with an Apoc­rypha for a while now, so it’s nice that school was the way I came about it. But any­way; I imme­di­ately started read­ing the explana­tory / study notes, and feel a hint of dis­ap­point­ment. Allow me to illus­trate. Here’s a brief por­tion of the explana­tory note on Gen­e­sis 1:1:

1.1: Schol­ars dif­fer on whether this verse is to be trans­lated as an inde­pen­dent sen­tence sum­ma­riz­ing what fol­lows (e.g., “In the begin­ning God cre­ated”) or as a tem­po­ral phrase describ­ing what things were like when God started (e.g., “When God began to cre­ate … the earth was a form­less void; cf. 2.4−6). In either case, the text does not describe cre­ation out of nothing…

Now here is a study note from the ESV Study bible on the same passage:

This open­ing verse can be taken as a sum­mary, intro­duc­ing the whole pas­sage; or it can be read as the first event, the ori­gin of the heav­ens and the earth (some­time before the first day), includ­ing the cre­ation of mat­ter, space, and time. This sec­ond view (the ori­gin of the heav­ens and the earth) is con­firmed by the NT writ­ers’ affir­ma­tion that cre­ation was from noth­ing (Heb. 11:3; Rev. 4:11). God cre­ated. Although the Hebrew word for “God,” ’Elo­him, is plural in form (pos­si­bly to express majesty), the verb “cre­ate” is sin­gu­lar, indi­cat­ing that God is thought of as one being. Gen­e­sis is con­sis­tently monothe­is­tic in its out­look, in marked con­trast to other ancient Near East­ern accounts of cre­ation. There is only one God. The Hebrew verb bara’, “cre­ate,” is always used in the OT with God as the sub­ject; while it is not always used to describe cre­ation out of noth­ing, it does stress God’s sov­er­eignty and power. Heav­ens and the earth here means “every­thing.” This means, then, that “In the begin­ning” refers to the begin­ning of every­thing. The text indi­cates that God cre­ated every­thing in the uni­verse, which thus affirms that he did in fact cre­ate it ex nihilo (Latin “out of noth­ing”). The effect of the open­ing words of the Bible is to estab­lish that God, in his inscrutable wis­dom, sov­er­eign power, and majesty, is the Cre­ator of all things that exist.

I now own an NRSV which states (doesn’t show) that Gen­e­sis 1:1 does not describe cre­ation out of noth­ing (how­ever Gen. 1:1 is viewed), and an ESV that states (doesn’t show),that Gen­e­sis does teach cre­ation out of noth­ing. The hint of dis­ap­point­ment that I feel is this unwill­ing­ness (as I take it) from inter­preters to give due con­sid­er­a­tion to oppos­ing inter­pre­ta­tions when it is the case that com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions have a con­sid­er­able amount of sup­port behind them. To say it another way — I want to decide for myself.

In the pref­ace to his com­men­tary on Gen­e­sis, John Skin­ner, D.D., said (and I believe quite wisely):

That the analy­sis is fre­quently ten­ta­tive and pre­car­i­ous is fully acknowl­edged ; and the dan­ger of bas­ing con­clu­sions on insuf­fi­cient data of this kind is one that I have sought to avoid. (ICC, pref­ace, IX)

With respect to how Gen­e­sis 1:1 should be taken, Skin­ner writes (and then pro­ceeds to show), “In a note below rea­sons are given for pre­fer­ring this con­struc­tion to the other ; but a deci­sion is dif­fi­cult, and in deal­ing with v.1 it is nec­es­sary to leave the alter­na­tive open.” ‘This con­struc­tion’ being the route the NRSV has cho­sen; ‘the alter­na­tive’ being the absolute sense of ‘in the begin­ning’ (ICC, 12). John H. Sailhamer’s com­men­tary on Gen­e­sis in The Expos­i­tors Bible Com­men­tary, affirms much the same as Skinner’s: “The inter­pre­ta­tion given to v.1 rests on the tra­di­tional read­ing of… (bere­sit) in the absolute sense: ‘In the begin­ning.’ A strong case, how­ever, can be made for read­ing the phrase as a con­struct and sub­or­di­nat­ing to v. and vv.2–3″. He then pro­ceeds to dis­cuss the case made for the sub­or­di­nate sense, and the prob­lems with it.

In the same vein (is this get­ting redun­dant?), the NET­Bible says it as follows:

In the begin­ning. The verse refers to the begin­ning of the world as we know it; it affirms that it is entirely the prod­uct of the cre­ation of God. But there are two ways that this verse can be inter­preted: (1) It may be taken to refer to the orig­i­nal act of cre­ation with the rest of the events on the days of cre­ation com­plet­ing it. This would mean that the dis­junc­tive clauses of v. 2 break the sequence of the cre­ative work of the first day. (2) It may be taken as a sum­mary state­ment of what the chap­ter will record, that is, vv. 3–31 are about God’s cre­at­ing the world as we know it. If the first view is adopted, then we have a ref­er­ence here to orig­i­nal cre­ation; if the sec­ond view is taken, then Gen­e­sis itself does not account for the orig­i­nal cre­ation of mat­ter. To fol­low this view does not deny that the Bible teaches that God cre­ated every­thing out of noth­ing (cf. John 1:3) – it sim­ply says that Gen­e­sis is not mak­ing that affir­ma­tion. This sec­ond view pre­sup­poses the exis­tence of pre-existent mat­ter, when God said, “Let there be light.” The first view includes the descrip­tion of the pri­mor­dial state as part of the events of day one. The fol­low­ing nar­ra­tive strongly favors the sec­ond view, for the “heavens/sky” did not exist prior to the sec­ond day of cre­ation (see v. 8) and “earth/dry land” did not exist, at least as we know it, prior to the third day of cre­ation (see v. 10). ¹

The NRSV and ESV not being com­men­taries, I can under­stand that they don’t go to the same depth a com­men­tary would. How­ever, being study bibles — for stu­dents, no less — I have to won­der if more detail should be included. Or per­haps the detail of ‘the­o­log­i­cal bias’ should be removed. If I’m a stu­dent who doesn’t under­stand all of the issues behind a text such as Gen­e­sis 1, and my beliefs are formed on the author­ity of oth­ers (who I pre­sum­ably trust as com­pe­tent schol­ars), then what I am to do when I learn that there is another view I hadn’t even con­sid­ered, because those same schol­ars decided it wasn’t worth considering?

What I’m left with oth­er­wise is a view (“Gen­e­sis doesn’t teach cre­ation out of noth­ing / Gen­e­sis teaches cre­ation out of noth­ing”) with almost no clue as to why I’ve come to that view, other than ‘so-and-so’ said it in a book I once read. But what a silly com­plaint! Want­ing to be prop­erly edu­cated for the amount of money I’m pay­ing… An exor­bi­tant amount of money at that.

Related posts:

1. A lit­eral read­ing of Genesis?
2. Say what?!
3. Sir Ken Robin­son: Bring On the Learn­ing Revolution!