Religion (3)

Jia (John) L Han

Western civilization may be viewed as a fusion of Greek culture (philosophy, arts, and literature) and Judo-Christian culture. It is time to add religion into the mix.

We begin with the Bible. The first five books of the Bible were attributed to Moses who lived sometime between 1400 B.C. and 1200 B.C. (See Note 1 for further explanation.) The Bible is a special book, not one book but a compilation of 66 books. The final books of the Bible were written in the first century A.D. Therefore, writings of the Bible span more than 1000 years. Christians believe that the Bible was recorded by humans but was inspired by God. See [1] and references therein for more facts about the Bible. In this essay, we only need the first two chapters of the first book of the Bible, Genesis.

How to Understand the Bible?

Many may wonder whether one can believe the Bible, especially the early books. John Dickson has written several books on this and related topics. Two of his books are [2,3]. He has a degree in theology and a PhD in Ancient History. His books are quite easy to read. You may try his book.

I have a somewhat different interpretation, which concerns the way God communicated with human beings a long time ago. As mentioned earlier, the first few chapters of Genesis must have been orally transmitted since they concerned things before any human writings. Assume that there is a God. What would God tell humans then? If God tried to teach all the sciences and philosophy, he would have to build a huge library, perhaps orders of magnitude larger than any library now. In addition, human knowledge then was primitive. In order to arrive at today’s level of knowledge, he/she had to spend his/her lifetime studying. Even then he/she would gain only a fraction of knowledge needed to understand the world. So what would God do? He used metaphors so that humans would pay attention to important things.

So Genesis 1 & 2 should be understood as metaphors. It might be useful to explain what the word ‘day’ in these chapters means now. Literally speaking Genesis says that God created the world in six days. However the day here is not the same as today’s concept of ‘day’. Psalm 90:4

A thousand years in your sight

are like a day that has just gone by,

or like a watch in the night.

Also 2 Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Therefore, the word ‘day’ in Genesis 1 & 2 is the metaphor of time period.

Take Away from Genesis 1 & 2

The world consists of many types of things. Their complexities increase in the order they were created. More specifically, living creatures appeared only on the fifth day according to Genesis and mankind on the sixth day. In a way, this has been verified in the book of Job. Job was a righteous man. It seems that he was unjustly treated because he suffered hardship. Job had a conversation with his friends. God did not interfere during the conversation until chapters 38-40. In these chapters God retold his creation. The beginning part concerns things non-living while the latter part concerns living things. Ps. 104 shows similar divisions.

In my opinion, the world consists of three or more types of things according to Genesis and their complexities are arranged in the order they were created: 1) materials (things without life); 2) fish, beasts and other creatures; 3) human beings.

Religion and Philosophy

In the opening of this essay I said that the Western civilization may be viewed as a fusion of Greek culture and Judo-Christian culture. This has deep meanings. It is difficult to appreciate this connection. I recommend a good book on the relationship of philosophy and religion (Christianity) [4]. It is a textbook written by a Princedon professor and an academic co author. (BTW, only the first chapter - Introduction - is needed here. However, you should read carefully since it has profound meanings.)

Note one example mentioned in the Introduction: whether or not the universe has a beginning. Genesis says that God created the world, therefore, the universe had a beginning. However, according to Aristotle and many ancient Greek philosophers, the world has no beginning and no end. Until the early twentieth century, the scientific world believed that the world had no beginning, just as Aristotle did. Then, the Big Bang theory of cosmology was proposed and verified in astronomy observation. Thus, most scientific communities now agree that the world had a beginning. (For a more detailed account refer to [4].) This example does not imply that you should use the Bible for the purpose of scientific discoveries. However, one may find wisdom from the Bible so that one may understand the world better if combined with science and philosophy.

I do not ask you to believe these without reservation. Toward the existence of God, there are basically three types of people: believers who believe God exists, atheists who believe there is no God at all, and agnostics who think that God may or may not exist. I will show in the future that atheists often are stupid. At this point, agnostic suffices.

References:

1. 韩家亮：圣经和可兰经入门 《圣经和可兰经入门》

2. John Dickson, A Doubter's Guide to the Bible, Zondervan, 2015.

3. John Dickson, A spectator's guide to world religions : an introduction to the big five. Lion Hudson, 2008.

4. Diogenes Allen, Eric O.Springsted, "Philosophy for understanding theology," Westminster John Knox Press; 2 ed, 2007.

Note 1:

The first 5 books of the Bible were formed much earlier than Greek philosophers. I mentioned in [P1] that in this series I will try to follow the natural timeline if suitable. (I shall use [P1] to refer to the first essay of this series, [P2] for the second, and so on.) If timeline is the only criterion, I would have started this series with religion, not philosophy. Every early civilization had a religion. Greek philosophy was preceded by Greek religions. Greek religions (Greek mythologies) are considered pagan religions. Christianity supplanted pagan religions in the Roman Empire, of which Greece was part. In the earlier days, the Bible was limited to Jews, not well known to most parts of the world (which was why I started with Greek philosophy, not religion in [P1]). Jesus was born around 1 A.D. Christianity gradually spread to the Roman Empire. Therefore, we start from philosophy before Christianity.