Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology.

• Author: Tsumura, David T.
• Position: Book review

Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology. By JOHN H. WALTON. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2011. Pp. xiii + 214. $34.50.

In this monograph John Walton seeks to situate Genesis 1 in the ancient Near Eastern (=ANE) cognitive environment and interpret it as an ancient text like other ancient Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian texts, paying attention to both similarities and differences between Genesis 1 and mythological texts. As in his earlier book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), he intends not only to "understand the texts," but also to "demonstrate that a functional ontology pervaded the cognitive environment" of the ANE, i.e., that "in the ancient world, bringing about order and functionality was the very essence of creative activity." That is, Walton thinks of creation in the ANE in terms of function rather than of material objects and insists that we should "penetrate ancient texts on their own terms rather than impose our world view" (p. viii). Yet, one wonders if he has really succeeded.

In chapter 1 Walton deals with the methodology of "Cosmology and Comparative Studies," and in chapter 2 he classifies various creation myths according to whether there is a "precreation" or "precosmic" condition in those myths (p. 22; see p. 28).

In chapter 3 Walton discusses the "Ancient Cosmological Cognitive Environment" and concludes that "cosmic ontology in the ancient world was a functional ontology--that is, everything exists by virtue of its having been assigned a function and given a role in the ordered cosmos" (p. 24). Therefore, the precosmic world was not a world absent of matter, but "a world absent of function, order, diversity, and identity" (p. 42). He holds that "in the ancient world something was created when it was given a function" (p. 43).

In chapter 4 Walton interprets Genesis 1 as part of the common ANE cosmological cognitive environment he has described. After a detailed study of the verb bara he concludes that it means "to bring something into (functional) existence" (p. 133) in the light of a still disputed etymology "to separate" (see Becking and Korpel's suggested rendering "to construct" in JHS 10 [2010]). Walton explains that Gen. 1:1 means that "[i]n the initial period, God brought cosmic functions into existence" (p. 133).

By accepting the existence of a "precosmic world," which is not "a world absent of matter," in the Genesis story...