Genesis, Creation, and Ancient Interpreters: Who is “Us”?

Daniel Mann - #37384

Is the angel of the Lord to be trusted?

“The angel said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place.” Rev 22:6

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in me.” Jn 14:21

If Jesus was Almighty God…why the distinction?

I am not saying that Jesus was just a man…God fully indwelled him and elevated him above all things..giving him authority over all of creation.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all. He is the icon of God…the reflection of God…the personification of God.

“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” Jn 4:24

Peace

Dr. Enns,

I think the problem becomes more sticky when one understands that “image and likeness” are not the nature of the man, but the role he plays in the world in relationship to God. In other words, if man is God’s image (i.e., cult image) representing His victory over chaos, then how could it refer to anyone else? It could not refer to angels or a heavenly court, since God alone in Genesis 1 is seen as the victor over chaos. God alone is the deity of the temple. God alone, therefore, would be the deity of the image. I reject the magisterial “we"option, although it is still a possibility. I think this leaves us with two other possibilities as Christians:

1. God really is communicating something about His triune nature that only Christians for whom the Scriptures were written down, would understand fully later.
2. The ancient imagery and language of the divine council is being collapsed into a single divine Being in order to displays His supremacy, and perhaps, exclusivity in being the Creator God (whereas in other ancient Near Eastern accounts, creation takes place through the decision of the collective).

Of course, all of these can be combined in some way.

I should say that in ancient Near Eastern accounts, the creation of man takes place through the decision of the collective.

I think a common thread in many of the replies here, on all sides, is the assumption that any particular use of language has one meaning baked into it, namely the meaning of the original author; and trying to find what a text means to us should merely be a matter of finding out what it meant to the original author.

Consequently, some respondents here see God as the principal author of this particular passage in Genesis 1, and not only that, but a God willing to plant seeds in his choice of words that only fully speak to people far into the future.  These respondents think that trinitarianism is thus an original sense of the passage, and only because of that can trinitarianism therefore be said to be a genuine sense of the passage.  Other respondents here see man as the principal author; or God, yet a God who speaks progressively over the ages, at any given time only implanting what the people are ready to understand.  These respondents think that trinitarianism thus is not the original sense of the passage, and therefore ought not be taken as a valid sense of the passage by us either.

... (continued)

Continuing:

My problem with this, is that I don’t think this is how literary language, such as we find in much of the Bible (including Genesis 1) functions.  In literature, there is the author’s original meaning, and then there is the fresh sense that later audiences find and read into it; and both are fruitful for informing what any particular passage ought to be thought of as meaning to us.  Great literature is always like this: it is what makes it relevant and “living” to future generations far-removed from the source.  In particular, reading fresh insight into the Hebrew scriptures, in light of the Jesus experience (not merely discovering original meaning), is what we see NT authors such as Matthew themselves doing all the time - so I think we find some biblical imprimatur for this as well.

In short then, in my opinion trinitarianism is not exegetically found in this passage.  But later Christians can legitimately perceive trinitarianism within it, eisegesis though this may be, because of how the evocative use of “us” in the passage fits with Christian theology already concluded on other grounds.  And there is nothing wrong with that, because the meaning of great literature is never limited to what it originally means.

Scott,

I think the issue for me is that both the “original” meaning AND the future interpretation of that meaning may both be intended by God. The reason why I would say this is due to my presuppositions that God has inspired this text and leads the human (whether all of the time or occasionally) to use certain words to convey meaning. My further presupp, that God is all-knowing, leads me to believe that He is aware of how He Himself will use a text later. So, for instance, if God says that “out of Egypt” He called His Son, which refers to Israel in the original context, but then uses it to refer to Christ, we must be aware that God knows at the time He originally communicates that passage that He will use it later to refer to something else. If this is the case, is not the divine intent of the passage also present in the original text, but only known by further revelation or Spirit led interpretation of the text?

(cont.)

If we apply that to this passage (although the NT is not explicit in interpreting this as a reference to more than one Person within the Godhead, John seems to allude to the idea in his interpretation of Gen 1), can we not say that the Trinity, in a sense, is referred to here, even though the only original understanding from a human perspective is one that connects to the immediate audience within their cultural context?
Hence, the interpretive method we see in the Second Temple period (seen in such writings as the DSS and NT) and beyond may have validity in more than just clever human way to eisegete the text, simply because God who is all-knowing is also its author.

The ANE context is the most responsible way to read the text. Careful readers of the OT are aware of how historically conditioned revelation is. If this were not the case, the word of God would not be intelligible to either original author or audience. Language, concepts, and ideas are employed in God’s revelation that are contemporary to the original audience. God accomodates their conventions of knowledge in order to speak meaningfully to them. In this regard his revelation is incarnational as Enns has so ably demonstrated elsewhere. Its no wonder early interpreters misread the text given the scarcity of knowledge available to them of the ANE world. Our progress in such extra biblical studies has helped us better understand this text and many others. Attempts to find trinitarian evidence in this text is anachronistic. There is plenty of support for our glorious triune God revealed in the NT.

Abraham’s Kushite/Egyptian ancestors associated the Creator and perfection with the number 3.  There is a word in the Hebrew Bible that conveys this conception: “Baal Shalisha” - the 3-God, not 3 gods, as these ancestors were not polytheists, but henotheists.  Wisdom was with God as an eternal attribute of God, but also embodied, that is, with a beginning instrumental to creation. In Proverbs 9:1-6 Wisdom says that “Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works… the deep was not, when I was born.”

David,

What do we do with all of the ANE information found in Second Temple apocalyptic literature? Does it not display that those early interpreters in fact did have much of the knowledge of that we possess today? Or are you thinking of patristic and post-patristic interpreters? The interpreters within the 2d Temple period seem to be aware of the historical reading and consider it to be the obvious reading, but also see a second divine intention, a cryptic message to be used of God later for their generation, and only available to the spiritually-enlightened, within that same text. The issue does not seem to be one of knowledge, but hermeneutic.

Bryan,

Please excuse me for intruding upon your conversation with David.

Knowledge and hermeneutic were intertwined and relied on the tradition received from Abraham’s ancestors. We see this in the book of Job. This is evident also in kabalah, though the symbolism of kabalah departs from the older priestly tradition since it was influenced by Babylonian ideas.

In ancient times,the word ” we” in Hebrew was used to designate an individual of a particular status and importance. God would certainly meet these criteria. There is no English “us”.

I agree with Peter Enns that this is not an easy passage to explain.  Genesis 1:26 certainly does not occur in a vacuum.  Two chapters later, in Genesis 3:22, we read that the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” 

  Several chapters later, in a different setting, we read, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language…” in Genesis 11:7.

    Then there are the dozens of passages in the Old Testament that refer to other gods as being inferior to Yahweh, e.g., “Thou shalt make no covenant with them nor with their gods,” (Ex. 23:32), “The Lord your God is the God of gods,” (Deut. 11:17), “Worship him all ye gods” (Ps. 97:7), to name but three examples.

    On the other hand, the book of Isaiah certainly emphasizes the presence of only one God, e.g., “Apart from me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5).  There is no heavenly court mentioned.

    Considering the different authors involved and the different time frames for composition of the various books of the Bible, it seems the “theology of God” is anything but monolithic in the Old Testament.

@Kevin Brown - #39218
Right.
Since you guys have chosen to disbelieve the simple straight forward reading of Genesis 1, you are now firmly on the path to destroy anything and everything you can find in the bible.
So what you’re saying is that the bible is inconsistent, there’ s contradictions about there being only one God and the bible is simply a book that’s been thrown together by so many disagreeing authors.  Why believe it anyway? What is there to believe in the bible if you don’t believe Genesis 1? Why bother with the rest. Just dump it.

Time to read something else, maybe more thought provoking and edifying:
http://creation.com/laws-of-information-2

For Trevor K.

1. All texts, including biblical texts, require interpretation.  Whether a particular interpretation is “simple” or “straightforward” all depends on the reader.  One “simple” reading of Genesis 1:26, is to see the word “us” and to conclude that more than one entity is involved.  The big question, as the title of Peter Enns’ article points out, is “Who is ‘us’?”

2. Your assumption about people you have never met is incorrect.  Commenting on the problems seen in Genesis 1:26 and other biblical texts is not a declaration of intent to “destroy anything and everything you can find in the Bible.”  Please, less melodrama and more discussion.

3. Commenting on the problems in one verse of Genesis 1 is not tantamount to disbelieving the whole first chapter of Genesis.

4. Having gone to the website http://creation.com/laws-of-information-2 I fai,led to see the connection between the long article there discussing reasons for God’s existence and the article here under discussion by Peter Enns about the exegesis of Genesis 1:26

My interpretation of this is (granted again just a possible solution)
Being that GOD created man in his own likeness. Then we indeed, are in the same likeness, or form of GOD. Or Jesus Christ, so when he was creating the universe, he was with Jesus which would provide a singular and plural explanation as they are one.

Also JOHN 17:5

Jesus speaks of his relationship with GOD before the world, which is proof of his existence prior to creation.

John 17:5 (King James Version)

5And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.