In their book, Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption Through Scripture, Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson employ a musical metaphor to organize the material. “Scripture is music,” they say, and the variety of genres in Scripture call to mind the variety among musical genres as well.
The authors go beyond this though, and highlight how a musical approach to Scripture encompasses three key aspects (24-25):
- Tension and resolution among themes
- The relationship between melody and harmony
- The interplay of rhythm and meter
Taken together, these aspects of the musical metaphor help us “hear” a musical reading of Scripture that should connect the themes and movements into a coherent symphony.
This symphony has four movements in their arrangement of it:
- Out of the House of Slaves (Exodus through Joshua)
- The Exodus in Genesis
- The Re-echoing of the Exodus (Ruth through Malachi)
- The Great Deliverance (The New Testament)
I found this way of offering a short whole Bible biblical theology to be very stimulating and satisfying. The latter because I’m a musician, and the former because it prompted my thinking on other issues in interpretation, namely, the earliest chapter of Genesis.
In Roberts and Wilson’s section on Genesis, they start with the story of the flood. They reach back a bit to chapters 3-6, and nod to the opening chapter as an overture, but don’t develop the point. Which is fine, because I want to.
I debated a bit whether Genesis 1 should be thought of as a prelude or an overture. I think the latter is mainly right, but it depends on how you construe the metaphor. An overture is usually the introduction to a more major musical work like an opera or an oratorio. It introduces major themes and motifs that will occur later. A prelude is much shorter and much less developed, and I think there’s a bit more to Genesis 1 than that.
Genesis 1 presents God as the composer of the heavens and earth who calls out order out of disorder. One could construe the disorder as chaos. We do have water in the opening scene, which often symbolizes chaos in the ancient world. However, chaos tends to imply more of a combative tone, and in Genesis 1, God freely orders, organizes, and calls into being the various parts of the heavens and earth.
In terms of genre, C. John Collins notes that Genesis 1 is more exalted prose than standard historical narrative. This would place it somewhere between standard poetry and prose. I tend to think Genesis 1 itself suggests we are dealing with an extended poetic parable.
Here’s what I mean: God is being depicted as an ideal worker who works in an ordered fashion during the day and sleeps at night before moving to the next step. He organizes the domains moving closer to the earth each day (heaven, then to sky, then to dry land). Then he fills those domains in the same order (stars, fish/birds, land animals). Mankind as a group is made in his image on the final day before God “sabbaths” in his ordered kingdom. Later in Exodus, this is the template presented for Israel to follow in their own work, something they do in imaging their maker.
These types of poetic depictions of God, especially later in the Psalms, are ways of understanding God’s work in light of how humans work. But, given that they are type of anthropomorphizing God, elsewhere we don’t think they should be pressed in a direction that makes the details have physical referents. God’s arm is might to save, but that means he is capable of saving anyone, not that he works out a lot (or has arms for that matter).
This parable does not need to have a direct historical referent in order to be literally true. As it relates to interpretation, this would suggest we can affirm the literal truth of the text (God created everything and is Lord of all creation) without pressing the details into either scientific or historical timelines. This is not say that there was not a point in the past when God created the heavens and earth. Rather, it is suggesting that Genesis 1 is less concerned with giving what we would consider scientific details of that event as it is setting the tone for the story that follows.
Though I’m not competent to develop it further, one may think of Tolkein’s opening overture in the Silmarillion where Iluvater sings the world into existence. I’m not saying God sang the heavens and earth into existence in Genesis 1. But, in a musical metaphor, it is the overture that sets the tone for the rest of Scripture, and that is its major function in Genesis.
In a similar way, this post should set the tone for how I think we should read Genesis 1 in light of the rest of the unfolding story of Scripture. I think this is the best way to read it, and as we move through the other review books, I’ll try to flesh out why and defend the idea further. I’m doing so because I want to be a better reader Scripture, not because I’m trying to reconcile Genesis 1 with modern scientific paradigms. This particular reading doesn’t commit someone one way or the other on the question of evolution, which is why it’ll be a while until we get to that. For now, we need to discuss and defend further this idea of genre in Genesis 1, and we’ll do that next week.
[Special Note: I was able to read Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption Through Scripture because Crossway sent me a review copy. Thanks Crossway!]