John Walton has a book coming out from Eisenbrauns on the creation narratives in Genesis. The book has seen some delays and it is not on the Eisenbrauns website yet. However, if you want a sneak peak of the book while you await its publication John has an article, “Creation in Genesis 1:1-2:3 and the Ancient Near East: Order out of Disorder after Chaoskampf,” in Calvin Theological Journal 43 (2008): 48-63 in which he provides a summary of his views on Genesis 1 as an ancient Near Eastern temple cosmology as well as an extended excerpt of a section from the forthcoming book on theomachy (or, divine conflict).
For more reading on this subject you can see various interactions with Walton’s more popular treatment of Genesis 1 in his book by IVP, The Lost World of Genesis One:
Scot McKnight’s 18 post review.
James McGrath’s 18+ post review.
John Walton provides an extensive response to John Hobbins’ critique on the Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog
See also Chris Heard on the verb bara’
Tyler Williams had a very helpful four-part series on Mesopotamian creation accounts and you can see one of my reflections on this as well
Lastly, for another recent treatment of Genesis 1 see Mark Smith’s new book in which he discusses the Priestly vision of the account. (Here is a review by Joseph Kelly–thanks John Hobbins).
The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1
by Mark S. Smith
Fortress Press, Forthcoming November 2009
176 pages, English
Paper, 6 x 9
ISBN: 9780800663735
List Price: $25.00
Your Price: $22.50
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/SMIPRIEST
Smith’s book is actually 315 pages. Of course, 154 of those pages are dedicated to an appendix, recommended reading, endnotes (104 pages!), and 3 indexes. A review of the book is available at my blog.
I also did a multi-post review on Exploring Our Matrix.
Thanks, James, I’ll add you to the list and Joseph, thanks for the correction; I bet James Spinti will see it and adjust the Eisenbrauns database.
Thanks for this list, Charles.
It was nice to read Joseph Kelly’s review of Mark Smith’s latest, which I haven’t had a chance to read yet.
Chris Heard also wrote some insightful posts on some of Walton’s proposals.
Thanks Charles for pointing me to this upcoming monograph. I read Walton’s Lost World this summer and found myself respecting his desire to move beyond the creation debates to dealing with the text. I look forward to reading a more scholarly perspective of his points. I purchased Smith’s book at SBL and plan on reading it over Christmas break after I read and review Sailhamer’s latest work on the Pentateuch.
Merry Christmas.
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Does he call the Priestly account of creation myth? (I’m betting he won’t even call the first creation account “priestly”. But I’d love to be surprised.)
I think he probably learned from Pete Enns that is might be an unwise career move to call the first creation account “myth” but I don’t think he would be averse to that label. However, he would probably think that the genre of temple dedication would be more accurate.
Actually Charles, if I understand the situation right, it was not calling Genesis 1 a myth that got Enns in all the trouble. It was his assertion that biblical authors were employing second temple hermeneutics (i.e. non-grammatical historical exegesis) when engaging the Hebrew Bible. It is truly so absurd that I always question my own comprehending of the situation, but I remember talking with Enns about it at the time and asked how what he had said was any different than McCartney in the 1980′s book, Inerrant and Hermeneutic. He said it wasn’t (because that is where he first encountered the position he was writing about) and that it was really odd. Again, if I understood correctly, the confession that they were using to nail the coffin shut on his career at WTS was WCF 1.9:
The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture [which is not manifold, but one], it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.
According to the argument, if you say that they were employing non-grammatical historical exegesis, then it wouldn’t be true thatone must go to the places that speak more clearly (i.e. the prophecy text) in order to enlighten the less clear passage (i.e. the fulfillment text). It is really an elementary reading of both this confession and of the Bible, but they felt strongly about it. And again, maybe I misunderstood the situation while I was there, but I don’t think the issue of myth was the strong driving force between the Enns expulsion.
Joseph, you certainly know more about the situation than I do. I think that you are very right about the specifics about how they dislodged him but I think it was a multi-faceted thing and they also really did not like his genre identification of Gen 1-11 as “myth” as well as his use of extra-biblical material to understand the meaning of biblical passages–again linked to the rule you mention of Scripture interpreting Scripture instead of looking to ancient cognate lit.
My comment was a rather poor attempt at dark humor.
I imagine you are right and that the issue was multi-faceted. It was probably the case that Enns’ fifth chapter was simply the easiest way to oust him, confessionally speaking. And the humor is not poor, given the fact that the school’s actual concerns are really shrouded in mystery. How people perceived the controversy over Enns’ book probably had a bigger impact than what was really going on. If I were Walton, I would be careful too. I looked at applying to Wheaton, and one of the confessions you have to make as an incoming Ph.D student is of a literal Adam and Eve. When I read that, I gave up looking at Wheaton. You have some great people at Wheaton (e.g. Walton, Schultz), but that is a hoop through which I am not willing to jump.