While I was taking Hebrew classes, I stumbled upon an unusual commentary. It was only over 4 chapters, but it happened to be 4 chapters I was intently interested in understanding better. The book, by C. John Collins, was Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary.
You can read the fruits of that paradigm shift in an older Genesis series I did. In the more recent past, I benefited from Collins book on Adam and Eve. However, that was still nearly 7 years ago.
Back in the fall, I had the opportunity to read his most recent book, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11. I decided it was worth really getting this review series going by starting here (although last week’s discussion of overture is worth going back to read).
The introduction begins with a discussion of 19th century literalism, via a collection of essays that was published in 1860. It provides a nice backdrop for how critical approaches to Scripture developed, and how some fundamentalist responses ensued. In some ways, when someone argues for a “plain reading of the text,” it is in rejection of the more critical/scholarly approaches that took root in the 19th century because those approaches were often used to undercut the historicity and authority of Scripture.
However, those approaches don’t necessarily have to be in conflict with a high view of Scripture, inspiration, inerrancy, and the like. Collins brings in C. S. Lewis, and argues that Lewis’ scholarly works can actually be used as tools to develop a “critically intuitive approach to hermeneutics.”
Although you wouldn’t guess it from the title or subtitle, this book could reliably be called “How C. S. Lewis Can Help You Read Genesis Better.” Lewis features prominently in chapters 2-4 which are where Collins develops the method he’ll apply to Genesis 1-11 in chapters 5-7. After giving his reading, Collins surveys other readings of Genesis 1-11 in chapter 8. Chapters 9-10 explore whether or not the biblical picture of the world, and God’s action in it, are outdated (i.e. technically wrong). A concluding chapter offers a constructive way we can appropriate Genesis 1-11 for today.
The unique contribution from all of this has to be Collins’ chapters developing Lewis’ ideas. Chapter 2 gives general orientation to linguistics, rhetorical analysis, literary criticism, and questions of genre. Chapter 3 then relies heavily on Lewis to get at the types of language we find in Scripture and how we should go about interpreting them. We often want there to be analytical language when what we find is more poetic even when it is prose. Sometimes, in the case of metaphor, a plain sense reading actually makes no sense. And yet, we take metaphorical expressions to be literally true in a certain sense.
Chapter 4 rounds out the methodological section by asking what good faith communication looks like. There are multiple ways to speak truly, and the writers of Scripture utilize them. This is just as we do in our normal everyday communication, something speech act theory helps decode.
With all of this established, Collins then gets into background issues with Genesis. With the methodology in the background, he explores what we actually find in Genesis before offering a literary, theological reading of Genesis 1-11. In that mini commentary, he concludes that Genesis 1 is “somewhere on the continuum from ordinary to poetic language and thus will not be concerned with the inner workings of the things it depicts” (168). I would take this to mean that reading Genesis 1 (and other chapters) analytically misses the point of the type of communication it is, and forces it to be more literal than the original author intended (and creates a meaning that would not have occurred to the original audience for that matter).
While I could perhaps do a chapter by chapter account of this book, and Collins reading of Genesis, I’d rather encourage you to read it for yourself if you’re interested in reading Genesis well. His reliance and exposition of Lewis is worth the price of the book alone, as it generates a way of reading the text of Scripture that isn’t confined to Genesis. If you’re really curious to understand Genesis better, I think this book is the place to start.