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Why I No Longer Think Walton’s View Of Genesis 1 Functions

For a few years now, I have settled on a particular reading of Genesis 1, most popularly endorsed by the biblical scholar John Walton in books like “The Lost World Of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and The Origins Debate” (a popular level book) and “Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology” (A scholarly level book). John Walton’s thesis in a nutshell is that the 7 days of Genesis 1 are 7 24-hour days in which God only ascribes functions to all of the things in the universe, rather than physically bringing them into being. By “functions”, Walton doesn’t mean something like mechanical functioning wherein the sun functions because it is burning, converting hydrogen into helium, and so on. Rather, the function of the things in the cosmos function for the sake of humanity. [1]Commenting on Genesis 1:14, John Walton writes “Again we point out that these are not scientific functions but human-oriented functions. In this regard it should be noted that the fourfold … Continue reading Dr. Walton has recently started using the term “purpose” in place of “function” as he says it is less apt to misunderstanding.

I have defended Walton’s view in places like “Genesis 1: Functional Origins, Temple Inaguration, and Anti-Pagan Polemics” to name just one of many articles. However, in the past several months, I have begun to rethink the aspect of Walton’s thesis concerning whether Genesis 1 is about functional origins only, or is about material origins also. While I still think that most of his critics have misunderstood Walton and/or have given terrible arguments against the function only view, I think that there are at least 3 good reasons to think that Genesis 1 has a theology of material origins. I would still agree with Walton that Genesis 1 is not intended to be a scientifically accurate account of material origins, but that in the mythological poem that is Genesis 1, [2]Please don’t misunderstand me here. I do not think that Genesis 1-11 is mythological in the sense that the stories are not true or have no basis in reality. Rather, I would agree with Dr. … Continue reading we have a theology of material origins present alongside the strong emphasis of teleology.

Reason 1: The Framework Hypothesis

For a while now, I have found myself becoming more and more favorable to an interpretation of Genesis 1 most popularly known as “The Framework Hypothesis”. The more I think about it, the more plausible this reading seems. The Framework Hypothesis asserts that the 6 days in which God actually does the work of creating correspond to each other very neatly when you divide the days into two sets of 3. The first 3 days depict God forming realms or domains. The second half of 3 days depicts God filling those realms with inhabitants.

Day 1 – Light and Darkness, The Day-Night Cycle (Genesis 1:3-5)Day 4 – The sun, moon, and stars by which day-night cycles, and time keeping is possible. (Genesis 1:14-16)
Day 2 – The sky and the sea. Separates water above the firmament from water below the firmament (i.e the sea). (Genesis 1:6-8)Day 5 – Creates sea creatures to inhabit the sea, and birds to fly through the sky. (Genesis 1:20-23)
Day 3 – The dry land and vegetation on the dry land. (Genesis 1:9-13)Day 6 – Creatures that live on the dry land. Everything from bugs to humans (Genesis 1:24-31)
Day 7 – God Rests.

What are the odds that the days should just so align like this? We could have easily had a 3 day creation account in which God creates the inhabitants on the same days in which God created the domains in which they lived. So, for example, we could have had the text say that the sun, moon, and stars were made at the same time the light and darkness were made. In fact, some would say that would have been common sensical. After all, even an Ancient Near Eastern person would have known where light came from. They didn’t know about a rotating Earth, that the sun was comprised of various gases, and so on, but you don’t need to be a Neil deGrasse Tyson to know that without the sun, you don’t have light and heat. That we have day and night on Day 1, but the sun and moon on Day 4 would have even made an Ancient Israelite pause and ask “What is going on here?” Or, it isn’t unfathomable that the order of the creation of the animals be entirely reversed, with humans being made, then land animals, then sea creatures on Days 5 and 6. We could have had an alternating pattern of days as well, with God forming a realm, then the inhabitants of that realm, then forming another realm, then the corresponding inhabitants, until everything in the universe was made. For example, Day 1 would have had day-night, Day 2 would have been the celestial bodies, Day 3 would have been the sky and sea, Day 4 would have been the birds and fish, and so on. And yet, Days 1 and 4, Days 2 and 5, and Days 3 and 6 neatly correspond to each other this way. While it is not astronomically improbable that we should get this order, it does seem to be too convenient to be coincidental. In my previous article, I asked Gemini AI for the odds of the creation account unfolding in just this way and it concluded that the odds were 1 in 120. [3]See my blog post “Gemini AI Comments On The Framework View Of Genesis 1”. That’s not a lot, but its enough to raise an eyebrow and suspect that this isn’t purely coincidental.

Moreover, in Genesis 1:2, we read “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (ESV, emphasis mine in bold). The Earth was “without form and void”. Other translations say something like “formless and empty” (e.g NIV, NLT) When The Holy Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters, the problem with the world is stated up front; it was without form and was empty. What follows in the rest of the passage is God solving the problem of formlessness and emptiness. On Days 1-3, He solves the problem of formlessness and on Days 4-6, He solves the problem of emptiness.

Now, Walton argues in his books that the phrase “formless and void” should rightly be translated “an unproductive wasteland”. [4]John Walton, “The Lost World Of Genesis One”, page 48, Kindle Edition. However, as Jacques B. Doukhan wrote “2. Genesis 1:2 and the precosmic condition. Nothing in the text or in the semantic baggage suggests that the expression tohu wabohu refers, as Walton contends, to the state of disorganization and lack of function of the world. Instead, it describes a state of emptiness, as suggested through the onomatopoeia and ontological negativity, and, as also suggested by its associations with the words ’ayn (“not”) (Isa 45:19; Jer 4:23) and ’efes (“nothing”) (Isa 40:17) and its Genesis 2 parallel section, the second creation story, with the words ’ayn(“not”) (Gen 2:5) and terem (“before, not yet”) (Gen 2:5).” [5]Jacques B. Doukhan, “Review Of John Walton’s Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology”, Andrews University Seminary Studies, Vol. 51, No. 1, 83-88. Copyright © 2013 Andrews University Press. In my article responding to Doukhan, I wrote “One problem with this argument is that it utterly ignores all of the time “Tohu” is used in The Bible to refer to a lack of function, not a lack of material. For examples, in 1 Samuel 12:1, “tohu” is descriptive of idols who can accomplish nothing. But the idols certainly had physical form! Graven images were certainly not formless! Or consider Deuteronomy 32:10 where “Tohu” is used of the desertland. It’s used in parallel to wildness described by howling. Deserts and Wildernesses are not lacking material form! In Isaiah, “Tohu” is used to refer to worthless and useless things over and over. It’s used to describe desolate settlements (24:10), the nations (40:17), those who make idols (44:9), and what God created the universe to not be (45:28).

In many of these, not all, but in many of them, it is used to refer to something that clearly has material form and yet is still considered “tohu”. Thus, “formless” as a translation would not be fitting in these instances.

Walton is not arguing that Tohu or even the phrase “Tohu wa bohu” can never refer to lack of material, just that it often doesn’t. It’s often used for something that has no functon. This gives us somewhat of a probability judgment when we return to Genesis 1:2.” [6]Evan Minton, Cerebral Faith, “Responding To Jacques B Doukhan’s Critique Of “Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology”, November 25th 2022. –> … Continue reading

However, as I think about some of the examples of Tohu that I appealed to in order to counter Doukhan’s argument, it occurs to me that even some of them imply a type of formlessness that I think we have in Genesis 1:2. Take Deuteronomy 32:10, for example, which says “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste [tohu] of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.” (ESV) In Job 6:18, tohu is used of a wasteland away from wadis where caravans perish for lack of water, and in Isaiah 24:10 a tohu settlement is described as desolate. “The wasted city is broken down; every house is shut up so that none can enter.” (ESV) While one can make the argument that these places are non-functional in the sense that they are not functioning as societies, that there is no order in these examples, a sense of formlessness also seems to be implied. After all, have you ever seen a desert (Deuteronomy 32:10)? There isn’t much out there. It’s just sand for miles. If you’re lucky, you’ll come across a cactus or an oasis where you can replenish your water supply. But otherwise, it’s a whole lot of nothing! No buildings, people, plants, and even animals are scarce. Likewise, out on the ocean, you see a whole lot of nothing. Just water for as far as the eye can see. In a strict scientific sense, we can say that deserts and oceans have form, (everything is either solid, liquid, or gas after all), but let’s remember that Ancient Israelites weren’t thinking in these strict scientific categories. And even as a modern, I have no problem saying even in a metaphorical way that these places “have no form”. A modern analog might be the phrase “The middle of nowhere”. When we say “I’m in the middle of nowhere”, you don’t literally mean that you are not present in any existing location in the physical cosmos. In Isaiah 40:23, God is the one “who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.” (ESV) The word translated as empty at the end of this verse is “tohu”. Tohu also is translated as “nothing” in Isaiah 49:4. Job 26:7 says “He spreads out the northern (skies) over empty space (tōhû); he suspends the earth over nothing.” If one keeps in mind the dome cosmology of The Old Testament, affirmed by the vast majority of Old Testament scholars [7]Click here for a diagram of what I’m talking about. –> https://bloggingtheology.net/2017/03/04/old-testament-cosmology/, then we have a pretty clear example of tohu meaning a lack of material form, not just a lack of a function. Because on that ancient cosmology, between the solid sky and the ground was….wait for it….a whole lot of nothing! Maybe some clouds, maybe the sun was shining just under the dome, [8]See Peter Enns, “The Firmament Of Genesis 1 Is Solid, But That’s Not The Point”, January 14th 2010, BioLogos.org, … Continue reading and you had some birds flying around, but the vast majority of it was just empty space. The latter half of Job 26:7 says he hangs the Earth on nothing. In their cosmology, like in ours today, the Earth wasn’t really supported by anything. It wasn’t “turtles all the way down”. This snow globe of a world had a bottom and there just was a void beyond that. [9]I want to clarify that I am NOT a Flat Earther. To repeat, I am NOT a Flat Earther. While I do think that a flat disk Earth covered by a solid dome sky that holds back cosmic waters is found in the … Continue reading

I think there is a reason why the vast, vast majority of translators render Genesis 1:2 as saying the earth was

KJV, NASV: Formless and void

ESV, NKJV: Without form and void

NIV, NLT: Formless and empty

NRSV: A formless void

NJPS: Unformed and void

Net Bible: Without shape and empty

NCV: Empty and had no form

Every committee of translators seems to agree that the sense of Tohu wa bohu here means a whole lot of nothing. Emptiness, void, nothingness. While a formless and empty world is certainly a non-functional world, I think we would need strong reasons to go with John Walton’s rendering, and I don’t think a strong enough argument exists. Thus, if the majority rendering of Tohu Wa Bohu is correct, as seems to be the case, then the problem that The Holy Spirit seeks to solve as He hovers over the surface of the waters is not to decree functions to a world already full of forms and already populated by inhabitants, but to form those realms and to physically create those inhabitants for those realms.

John Walton said in “The Lost World Of Genesis One” that “For those who have in the past adopted the framework hypothesis, the theory proposed in this book does not require them to discard that interpretation, but only to accept the functional perspective alongside it. This does not require replacement, but would add value.” [10]Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 112). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. In other words, he says that the thesis he puts forth in his book is compatible with The Framework Hypothesis. However, I don’t really think I agree anymore. For me, to the extent that The Framework Hypothesis seems plausible, the functions-only view seems implausible. Walton’s view requires the bizarre picture that Genesis 1 is actually and only about God decreeing functions to things that already, in a physical sense, exist! When God decrees the purpose of the sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:14, the sun, moon, and stars already existed for billions of years. God just hadn’t given them their job assignment yet. When God says “Let us make man in our image” in Genesis 1:26, the first humans were already running around on the Earth. They just hadn’t been given the status of being God’s representatives and the Adamic covenant hadn’t been initiated. If you think I’m misrepresenting Walton, I can assure you that I’m not! Let’s hear Walton in his own words; “What would the observer have seen in these seven days of Genesis 1? At one level this could simply be dismissed as the wrong question. It continues to focus on the eyewitness account of material acts. But perhaps we can indulge our imagination for a moment as we return to the analogy of the college. The main thing that happens is that students arrive. But even that would not necessarily mean much if faculty did not begin offering courses. In the light of those two events, however, everything else that was there all along takes on energy and meaning. The course schedule brings order to time. Time had been there all along, but the course schedule gives time a meaning to the college and the students. Even the course schedule had been there a long time (designed months earlier with students registering), but it has no existence until the semester begins. Dorms had existed filled with furniture. But now students inhabit the dorms and the furniture begins to serve its function. The observer in Genesis 1 would see day by day that everything was ready to do for people what it had been designed to do.(emphasis mine in bold) [11]Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 99). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

This doesn’t at all seem compatible with The Framework Hypothesis! If what Walton says is correct, then we simply don’t have realm forming and realm filling in Genesis 1. We have a completed world (materially speaking), and God is just saying “This exists for this reason and that exists for that reason”, and, having been given function in an ordered system, now it really and truly “exists” in the ANE mindset.

Reason 2: God Turned On The Lights

In Genesis 1:3 we read “And God said ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light.” (ESV). As Walton has pointed out, the point of Day 1 isn’t really so much about the creation of light, but with the creation of time. I think he is right when he says “Time is what is created on Day 1” [12]A condensed paraphrase of Walton’s argument in “The Lost World Of Genesis One” on pages 55-57. He’s right, for as we read in verses 4-5 “And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (ESV) Walton is quite correct to point out that we have the use of Metonomy here, in that God doesn’t call the light “light” and the darkness “darkness”, but he calls the light “Day” and the darkness “Night”. And thus, what is created is the period of light and the period of darkness (i.e day and night). [13]ibid. This much, I still agree with. And it’s true that time is primarily a function. And it’s true that the time created here is not the lofty philosophical-scientific concepts of time that we call “The A-Theory” or “The B-Theory” [14]For a discussion on these two theories of time, see Dr. William Lane Craig’s book “Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship To Time”. However, are we really supposed to think that when the original author wrote this down or when ancient Israelites heard this story told orally, that they wouldn’t have envisioned The Spirit of God hovering over waters in a pitch black world, and when He said “Let there be light!” that there was no change in a state of affairs, from physical darkness to physical light? Are we really to imagine that the author didn’t intend for us to picture it being pitch black and then the world was suddenly illuminated by God’s command?

Walton argues [15]And in prior articles, I repeated this argument. that Day 1 doesn’t present us with an act of “material creation” because Ancient Near Eastern peoples didn’t know that light was composed of photons and wave particles (which we rightly recognize as material things), rather they thought of it as “just a condition” like darkness is. [16]John Walton, “The Lost World Of Genesis One”, page 54 of the Kindle edition. If we say that light is material, and hence we have material creation, on the basis of our knowledge of what light is made of, then we are slipping into concordism. We’re reading foreign ideas into the text. Since Walton, rightly, wants to avoid that, he argues that we are not justified in seeing material creation on Day 1.

Now I think I realize why Dr. William Lane Craig, in his own critique of Walton’s view, resorted to Aristotelian categories. [17]William Lane Craig, Defenders Podcast, “Excursus on Creation of Life and Biological Diversity (Part 7): The Literary Framework and the Functional Creation Interpretations” March 06, 2019 … Continue reading For the uninitiated, the philosopher Aristotle thought of causation in four different ways; material causation, formal causation, efficient causation, and final causation. Material causation refers to the matter or substance out of which something is made. For example, the material cause of a statue is the bronze or marble it’s made from, and the material cause of a table is the wood. Formal causation is the form, essence, or structure of a thing. It’s what makes something the kind of thing it is. For instance, the formal cause of a table is its design and structure (four legs, a flat top, etc.), and the formal cause of a laptop is it being an electronic device that is portable, has a keyboard and screen, can connect to the internet, etc. Efficient causation is a cause that brings something into being. This is the type of causation we zero in on in discussions of The Kalam Cosmological Argument. A carpenter is the efficient cause of a table because he took the wood and put it together. God is the efficient cause of the universe at The Big Bang. I am the efficient cause of this essay because I sat down and wrote it. Final causation refers to the purpose for which a thing is made.

When talking about whether Genesis 1 is about “material origins” or “functional origins”, in Aristotelian terms, we would say we’re debating whether it’s about efficient causation or final causation (or both!). Walton’s terminology causes confusion because, given his argument that light and darkness (and time) aren’t composed of anything material from an ANE perspective, we therefore cannot say that this is an example of material creation. And that is true on what Aristotle would mean by “Material causation”. But you can have efficient causation without any material being compiled together. Ancient Near Eastern peoples didn’t have to think light was physical to know that when you were in a dark cave, and you struck a match, a change in the state of affairs went from pure darkness to luminosity. Likewise, in Genesis 1:3, when God says “Let there be light!”, you can still properly interpret the state of affairs as changing from darkness to light even on the Ancient Near Eastern mindset that light was immaterial. When David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10, ESV), while it is true that we don’t have a picture of “material creation” on Walton’s understanding, (because the heart here is not the literal blood pump, but the seat of the emotions and cognitive processes), surely we are to see a request of David for God to enact some change in a state of affairs in David’s mind! David isn’t simply praying for God to give his pre-existent heart a new function!

Reason 3: The Trees Grew, Right?

Genesis 1:11-13 says “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.” (ESV)

It is difficult to read this passage and not see some kind of material creation/efficient causation happening here. When we read “The earth brought forth vegetation”, what are we supposed to envision but precisely what the text says; the earth bringing forth vegetation? Now, should we envision this happening in a single day like time lapse photography? [18]A notion that Dr. William Lane Craig ridicules, not because it is beyond God’s power to make forests and jungles in a day, but precisely because God told “The Earth” to do it. God … Continue reading At the very least, however quickly or slowly we should imagine this occurring, it is difficult to imagine God saying “Let the Earth sprout vegetation” and then reading “The earth brought forth vegetation” and not imagine that there was a state of affairs in which the world was a bunch of barren land and oceans, and then the plant life came into being up from the Earth. It is implausible to read this passage with the assumption that the world was already populated with fruit trees and bushes, but they just hadn’t been ascribed a function yet.

In the past, I dealt with this objection simply by saying that the case for a function-only interpretation is super strong elsewhere, and so we should interpret day 3 in light of the rest of the account. [19]In “Genesis 1: Functional Creation, Temple Inaugruation, and Anti-Pagan Polemics”, for example. However, I’ll admit that the events of Day 3 always caused a little bit of cognitive dissonance, and in light of reasons 1 and 2 above the argument from plant growth on Day 3 becomes a point I can no longer ignore.

What John Walton Gets Right! (Part 1) – Functions Are The Focus

Despite my criticisms here, I want people to know that I have benefited greatly from John Walton’s works. He, alongside Michael Heiser, independently showed me just how incredibly interesting Old Testament studies can be! And I highly recommend that everyone read his books. In fact, read “Ancient Near Eastern Thought and The Old Testament” if nothing else. That book alone will go quite a distance in helping you think like an ancient Israelite. I still consider him one of my favorite Old Testament scholars. Moreover, in spite of my criticisms here, even with regards to Genesis 1, I still think he gets a lot right.

As far as functions (or teleology) goes, Walton is at least correct in saying that this is what Genesis 1 is ultimately concerned with. Material origins is not the focus of the text. Yes, it does seem to be assumed, but why God created this, that, and the other thing seems to be the main focus. A couple of months ago, I listened to The Joe Rogan Podcast episode in which Rogan had biblical scholar Wesley Huff on after he won a one sided debate with conspiracy theorist Billy Carson. At one point in the interview, Wesley Huff said this; “When you look at something like the Enuma Elish, which was the Babylonian creation story, and then you look at something like Genesis chapter one, there are obvious crossovers with, like I said before, these ancient Near Eastern conventions. But then you can see that the author of Genesis is making these points that are actually rebutting something like the origin stories of the surrounding cultures, that largely believe that matter is, like, eternal, and the gods come out of the created world, and that there’s this narrative of the battle that takes place, where some gods fight against other gods, and the world around us that we see, and like human beings, are the end result of this battle.

And so they would read this on every Babylonian New Year. And one of the main themes was basically that, like, ‘It’s all chance. It’s all a random mistake. You were created without purpose and intention because Tiamat gets destroyed.’

And she’s the god that, you know, you come from. And then you read Genesis chapter one, and it says, ‘In the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth, and he makes it good.’ And there’s this idea that, like, that’s countercultural in the idea that the Babylonians did not think that the world was good. And that, like, at the end of every refrain, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good, and then it’s very good at the end.[20]Transcript of “Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan Podcast”, January 8, 2025 9:28 pmby Pangambam SPodcasts. January 8th 2025, –> … Continue reading

If Huff’s take is right, then the heavy emphasis on functions (lit. purposes) in Genesis 1 is actually a huge polemic against Babylon. Of course, whether Genesis 1 is interacting with the Enuma Elish is debated, and it largely depends on dating the composition of the creation account either during Israel’s exile in Babylon, or afterwards. But it is at least an interesting possibility. It also doesn’t depend on an adherence to JEDP because you can hold that Genesis 1-11 was post-exilic and still attribute a good chunk of the Torah to Moses. The late Dr. Michael S. Heiser held to this view. [21]See Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s blog posts “Mosaic Authorship of the Torah: Problems with the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP), Part 1” and “Mosaic Authorship of the Torah: Problems … Continue reading. At the very least, I think Walton does a good job of showing from multiple ANE creation myths as well as from The Bible that Genesis 1 is primarily concerned about purpose, not with when and how God materially brought everything into being. I just think Walton got carried away in trying to completely eliminate a theology of material origins from the text.

What John Walton Gets Right! (Part 2) – The Cosmic Temple Inauguration

I also think that John Walton is right in saying that Genesis 1 depicts God’s creation of the universe as a creation of His cosmic temple. If you’ve no heard of The Cosmic Temple Inauguration interpretation before, here’s a summary of it: After God spends 6 days creating, it culminates in His rest on the 7 day. This “rest” isn’t inactivity, but rather God taking up residence and ruling from His newly ordered domain. The parallels with Ancient Near Eastern temple inaugurations—where deities brought order out of chaos, took up residence, and established their rule within a newly built temple—are striking. Thus, Genesis 1 presents the entire cosmos as God’s cosmic temple, a place where He dwells, rules, and interacts with humanity, His image-bearers, who are tasked with extending His dominion within this sacred space.

Here are some of the reasons to take Genesis 1 as a Cosmic Temple Inauguration.

Reason 1: The Sacred Connotation Of The Number 7 In The Bible.

In his book “The Lost World Of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and The Origins Debate”, Old Testament scholar John H. Walton writes “First in line is the curious fact that the number seven appears so pervasively in temple accounts in the ancient world and in the Bible. Thus the seven days of the Genesis account of origins has a familiarity that can hardly be coincidental and tells us something about the seven-day structure in Genesis 1 that we did not know before and that is not transparent to modern readers. That is, if Genesis 1 is a temple text, the seven days may be understood in relation to some aspect of temple inauguration.” [22]Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 87). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

We see the number 7 occurring in places denoting sacredness generally, but especially in regards to The Tabernacle and The Jerusalem Temple.

*The construction of the tabernacle was completed in 7 stages (Exodus 40:19-32).

*The ordination of a priest was 7 days (Leviticus 8:33-35).

*Solomon’s temple was constructed in 7 years (1 Kings 6:38)

*Dedicated to God during a 7 day festival on the seventh month (1 Kings 8:2, 65) 

*Even Solomon’s dedication speech was given in 7 petitions (1 Kings 8:31-35).

But it’s even more interesting than this! As biblical scholar Ben Stanhope writes “Most Bible readers are aware that the Old Testament frequently uses the number seven as a symbol for completion and sacred order. However, you may not have noticed before that Genesis 1 has the number seven woven into the structure of creation through literary patterns beyond just its divisions of days. Many important words and phrases in Genesis 1 repetitively turn up in sequences of seven when counted up in the original Hebrew. Jeff Morrow at Seton Hall University summarizes these patterns that have long been marveled at by biblical scholars:[306] In Hebrew, Gen 1:1 contains seven words; 1:2 has fourteen words (2×7), and “God” occurs thirty-five times (5×7) in the seven-day account. The term “earth” occurs twenty-one times (3×7); “heavens/firmament” twenty-one times (3×7); the phrase “and it was so” appears seven times, as well as the phrase, “God saw it was good.” The important words “light” and “day” are found seven times in the first natural paragraph, and there are seven references to light in the fourth paragraph. In the section dealing with the creation of animals, the Hebrew word for “living beings” occurs seven times. In the seventh paragraph, which deals with the seventh day, there occur three consecutive sentences that each contains seven words and the phrase “seventh day” in the center. Moreover, the Hebrew words in the seventh paragraph total thirty-five (5×7).” [23]Stanhope, Ben. (Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible (pp. 137-138). Scarab Press. Kindle Edition. [24]See also See Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 1 (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1987), 7.

In light of all of this, which barely even begins to scratch the surface of the sacred significance of the number 7, it doesn’t seem likely that the author of Genesis said that God created the world in 7 days just simply because it just so happened to take Him that long. The number 7 is likely used as a literary device to support the sacredness of the universe, and this fact would not have been lost on an Ancient Near Eastern Israelite.

2: The Ancient Near Eastern Creation Texts Closely Link Temple Creation and Temple Building.

As J. Richard Middleton explains, “The notion of the cosmos as temple has its roots in the ancient Near Eastern worldview, in which temples were commonly understood as the royal palaces of the gods, in which they dwelled and from which they reigned. Furthermore, creation, followed by temple building and then divine rest, is a central theme in Mesopotamian, and perhaps Ugaritic, mythology (both Marduk and Baal have temples built for them after their conquest of the chaos monster).” [25]Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image (p. 81). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

We should observe that two ANE gods in two creation narratives — The Gudea Cylinder (2125 BC) and Ugaritic Texts (KTU 1:4:VII 16-40) respectively — end their work of creating with the establishment of temples, thus lending corroborative evidence from the cultural cognitive environment to support the proposal that this is what is going on in Genesis as well.

Other Ancient Near Eastern Creation Texts strongly hint at the same. 

The Temple Hymn Of Kes:

” House …… inspiring great awe, called with a mighty name by An; house …… whose fate is grandly determined by the Great Mountain Enlil! House of the Anuna gods possessing great power, which gives wisdom to the people; house, reposeful dwelling of the great gods! House, which was planned together with the plans of heaven and earth, …… with the pure divine powers; house which underpins the Land and supports the shrines! House, mountain of abundance which passes the days in glory; house of Ninhursaja which establishes the life of the Land! House, great hillside worthy of the purification rites, altering (?) all things; house without whom no decisions are made! House, good …… carrying in its hands the broad Land; house which gives birth to countless peoples, seed which has sprouts! House which gives birth to kings, which determines the destinies of the Land; house whose royal personages are to be revered! Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kec? Will any other mother ever give birth to someone as great as its hero Acgi? Who has ever seen anyone as great as its lady Nintud?” [26]http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4802.htm

Many creation texts describe the absence of a temple as a major part of the pre-cosmic condition. This is clearest in the preamble that concerns the founding of Eridu.

“The holy house, the house of the gods, in the holy place had not yet been made; No reed had sprung up, no tree had been created. No brick had been laid, no building had been set up; No house had been erected, no city had been built; No city had been made, .no creature had been created. Nippur had not been made, E-kur had not been built; Erech had not been created, E-ana had not been built; The Deep had not been created, Eridu had not been built; Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the habitation had not been made. All lands were sea. At that time there was a movement in the sea; Then was Eridu made, and E-sagil was built, E-sagil, where in the midst of the Deep the god Lugal-dul-azaga 1 dwelleth; The city of Babylon was built, and E-sagil was finished.[27]The Seven Tablets of Creation, by Leonard William King, [1902], at sacred-texts.com, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/stc/stc15.htm

3: The Bible Uses Temple Imagery To Describe The Cosmos Outside Of Genesis.

J. Richard Middleton wrote, “In the Old Testament, perhaps the most important text for our purposes is the oracle recorded in Isaiah 66:1– 2. Attributed by many scholars to Third Isaiah, this oracle calls into question the postexilic attempts of pious Jews to rebuild the Jerusalem temple (which had been destroyed by the Babylonians):

‘Thus says YHWH: Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where could you build a house for me? What place could serve as my dwelling? All this was made by my hand, And thus it all came into being —declares YHWH.’

The text does not say that God has no need for a temple, merely no need for a humanly constructed one, since God has already (by his own “hand”) built a cosmic sanctuary, and that should be sufficient. And this sanctuary in which God dwells is also portrayed as God’s palace, from which God reigns— hence the language of throne and footstool. The cosmic temple, in other words, is clearly equivalent to God’s kingdom.” [28]Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image (pp. 81-82). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

Psalm 132:7-8 says, “’Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!’ Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.” (NIV)

This passage refers to The Temple as God’s “resting place”. God “rests” in the temple. God “rests” in Genesis 1, at the end of the creation week. And since we know from Isaiah 66 that God considers the cosmos His resting place (He considers the heavens His throne and the Earth His footstool). In light of this, a strong inference can be made that God considers the cosmos His temple, and what happens in Genesis 1 is the creation of His temple, in which He “rests” at the end.

In conclusion, we have good biblical grounds as well as an antecedent probability from the cultural background that Genesis 1 is depicting the cosmos as the inauguration of God’s temple. For more, see John Walton’s book “The Lost World Of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and The Origins Debate” as well as Ben Stanhope’s “(Mis)Intepreting Genesis: How The Creation Museum Misunderstands The Ancient Near Eastern Context Of The Bible”.

Summary and Conclusion

There are 3 reasons why I no longer think that John Walton’s function-only view of Genesis 1 function. (1) The Framework Hypothesis seems to have a lot going for it, and The Framework Hypothesis requires there be 3 days of realm forming and 3 days of realm filling. On John Walton’s function-only interpretation, you don’t have the forming and filling of anything! Everything already exists in a physical or material sense. They simply need to be assigned their purpose. In spite of Walton’s claim to the contrary, his view and The Framework Hypothesis are not compatible. To the extent that I find The Framework Hypothesis plausible, I find the function-only view implausible. (2) In Genesis 1:3, God said “Let there be light!” and we’re told that there was light. Although Walton is correct to view this as the creation of time (lit. the day/night cycle), it seems implausible to think that the sun was already rising and setting, and that time simply needed to be given a function. It really looks like the text presents us with a scenario where it is dark, the Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the waters, and that when God said “Let there be light!” we had a change in a state of affairs from darkness to light. God turned the lights on. And while Walton is technically correct that this wouldn’t have been seen as “material creation” since, according to an ANE mindset, they didn’t view light or time as composed of photons and wave particles, we still have an instance of efficient causation. (3) On Day 3, when God tells the Earth to bring forth various kinds of fruit-yielding plants, it seems most plausible to see something physical going on in the world (i.e the land was barren and then plants sprang forth from the ground).

Although Walton may have been wrong to say that Genesis 1 isn’t about material origins at all (lit. efficient causation of physically bringing things into being), he is right to point out that functions/purposes is the emphasis of the passage. And if Wesley Huff is right that Genesis 1 has an exilic composition and was purposefully contradicting the Enuma Elish which implies that humans are an accidental by-product of warring gods, then the emphasis on humanity’s purpose and the purpose of everything in the world we live in makes good cultural sense. At the very least, many ANE creation myths do seem to be more concerned with purpose (or lack thereof) than with the when and the how things came to be. Finally, I still think Walton is right in the second half of his book where he argues that Genesis 1 depicts God creating the universe to inaugurate it as His cosmic temple. There are several good reasons for that as we’ve seen above, but I barely even scratched the surface. The cumulative case for a temple view of Genesis 1 is strong and has many lines of biblical and Ancient Near Eastern evidence in its favor.

A while back, I wrote a blog post titled “My Fallback Position On Genesis 1”. Unbeknownst to me, that article proved to be prophetic. I have now officially fallen back on my fallback position. Finally, I still hold that the vast majority of objections to Walton’s function-only view are unsound. But the 3 that I have presented in this article seem sufficient enough to abandon it.

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References

References
1 Commenting on Genesis 1:14, John Walton writes “Again we point out that these are not scientific functions but human-oriented functions. In this regard it should be noted that the fourfold description of functions (signs, seasons, days, years) are pertinent only to humans. The one that may seem not to belong is “seasons”—but here we must not think of seasons like summer and winter. The Hebrew word when it is used elsewhere designates the festival celebrations that are associated with the sowing season, the harvesting season and so on.” – Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 64). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
2 Please don’t misunderstand me here. I do not think that Genesis 1-11 is mythological in the sense that the stories are not true or have no basis in reality. Rather, I would agree with Dr. William Lane Craig that the genre of Genesis 1-11 is “Mytho-History”. Mytho-History is a strange and unique genre where historical events are reported in highly symbolic and mythical ways. A narrative in the Mytho-History genre is not historical reportage in the same down-to-earth literal way that books like 1 Samuel, Judges, or the gospels are. But neither are they purely fictitious narratives. They are historical narratives that employ lots of mythological motifs. For a defense of Genesis 1-11 as belonging to the genre of Mytho-History, as well as what implications that has on the creation-evolution debate, see Dr. William Lane Craig’s book “In Quest Of The Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration”. And if you’re interested, I have written a review of Dr. Craig’s book here –> “BOOK REVIEW: ‘In Quest Of The Historical Adam’ by William Lane Craig.”
3 See my blog post “Gemini AI Comments On The Framework View Of Genesis 1”
4 John Walton, “The Lost World Of Genesis One”, page 48, Kindle Edition.
5 Jacques B. Doukhan, “Review Of John Walton’s Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology”, Andrews University Seminary Studies, Vol. 51, No. 1, 83-88. Copyright © 2013 Andrews University Press.
6 Evan Minton, Cerebral Faith, “Responding To Jacques B Doukhan’s Critique Of “Genesis 1 As Ancient Cosmology”, November 25th 2022. –> https://cerebralfaith.net/responding-to-jacques-b-doukhans-critique-of-genesis-1-as-ancient-cosmology/
7 Click here for a diagram of what I’m talking about. –> https://bloggingtheology.net/2017/03/04/old-testament-cosmology/
8 See Peter Enns, “The Firmament Of Genesis 1 Is Solid, But That’s Not The Point”, January 14th 2010, BioLogos.org, –> https://biologos.org/articles/the-firmament-of-genesis-1-is-solid-but-thats-not-the-point
9 I want to clarify that I am NOT a Flat Earther. To repeat, I am NOT a Flat Earther. While I do think that a flat disk Earth covered by a solid dome sky that holds back cosmic waters is found in the pages of The Bible, the reason that I don’t ascribe to this cosmology is that I am not a concordist. I do not believe that The Bible meant to teach us scientific truths. I believe The Bible meant to record the history of God and His dealings with people in bringing about redemption, to teach us things about God Himself, and to teach us how we ought to live our lives before Him. History, theology, and morality are what The Bible intends to teach. And I believe is inerrant in all things that it intends to teach, but I don’t think that science was on the curriculum. I think divine accommodation is a feature of the biblical text, and when it comes to things like cosmology, this is an area where God assumes the cosmology of the day in order to communicate with the Israelites. He did not update their science, but assumed the cosmological paradigm that pre-existed His divine revelation, and used it as a vehicle to teach the ancient Israelites how He governed the cosmos. I talk more about divine accommodation in blog posts like “Objections To Concordism NOT Answered” and “Objections To Concordism STILL Not Answered: A Response To Alexander Young”. But you can also check out Peter Enns, “The Firmament Of Genesis 1 Is Solid, But That’s Not The Point”, January 14th 2010, BioLogos.org, –> https://biologos.org/articles/the-firmament-of-genesis-1-is-solid-but-thats-not-the-point, and “From the Mailbag: Why would God allow scientific errors in the Bible?” By Christy Hemphill , Gregg Davidson and Ted Davis on September 15, 2016, on BioLogos.org. –> https://biologos.org/articles/from-the-mailbag-why-would-god-allow-scientific-errors-in-the-bible
10 Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 112). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
11 Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 99). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
12 A condensed paraphrase of Walton’s argument in “The Lost World Of Genesis One” on pages 55-57
13 ibid.
14 For a discussion on these two theories of time, see Dr. William Lane Craig’s book “Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship To Time”.
15 And in prior articles, I repeated this argument.
16 John Walton, “The Lost World Of Genesis One”, page 54 of the Kindle edition.
17 William Lane Craig, Defenders Podcast, “Excursus on Creation of Life and Biological Diversity (Part 7): The Literary Framework and the Functional Creation Interpretations” March 06, 2019 — https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-3/excursus-on-creation-of-life-and-biological-diversity/excursus-on-creation-of-life-and-biological-diversity-part-7
18 A notion that Dr. William Lane Craig ridicules, not because it is beyond God’s power to make forests and jungles in a day, but precisely because God told “The Earth” to do it. God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation,” and the texts says “The earth brought forth vegetation.” This is not God saying “Let there be trees” and POOF! You have the rainforest. Rather, God commands natural processes to do these things. And we all know how long it takes nature to take a seed and make a full-blown tree out of it. We may not know precisely how long if we are not gardeners or botanists, but we know it takes longer than a day. And while God could have miraculously sped up the process, we just have no indication in the text that he did so. And so, some Christians use this fact to argue in favor of a Day-Age interpretation of Genesis 1, while others, like Dr. Craig, use it as part of a cumulative case to argue for the mythological-historical nature of the account. See William Lane Craig, “In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration” (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021), page 110.
19 In “Genesis 1: Functional Creation, Temple Inaugruation, and Anti-Pagan Polemics”, for example.
20 Transcript of “Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan Podcast”, January 8, 2025 9:28 pmby Pangambam SPodcasts. January 8th 2025, –> https://singjupost.com/transcript-of-wesley-huff-on-joe-rogan-podcast/
21 See Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s blog posts “Mosaic Authorship of the Torah: Problems with the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP), Part 1” and “Mosaic Authorship of the Torah: Problems with the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP), Part 2” and “Mosaic Authorship of the Torah: Problems with the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP), Part 3”
22 Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 87). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
23 Stanhope, Ben. (Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible (pp. 137-138). Scarab Press. Kindle Edition.
24 See also See Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 1 (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1987), 7.
25 Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image (p. 81). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
26 http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4802.htm
27 The Seven Tablets of Creation, by Leonard William King, [1902], at sacred-texts.com, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/stc/stc15.htm
28 Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image (pp. 81-82). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

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