Utumishi Blog

Here’s one other suggestion on the language of the first few chapters of Genesis…

Some have suggested that Genesis 1-3 (and possibly up to chapter 11) is apocalyptic in genre. It can be pushed too far but I think there’s probably an element of truth here that might be worth pursuing.

Apocalyptic is not necessarily looking to the future or the ‘end times’. An ‘apocalypse’, like the book of Revelation, is literally an unveiling – visible reality is pulled aside like a curtain and we glimpse a deeper spiritual reality. That’s what happens in Rev. – the surface layer of life, characters and events in the Roman world in the first century is peeled back and we see terrifying and wonderful deeper realities – spiritual death, demonic schemes, the wrath of God, the reign of Christ, the security of the saints.

Apocalyptic is essentially a form of visionary prophecy – a divine disclosure in the form of a vision. This is made very explicit in Rev. as the writer John reports heaven being opened and repeatedly says, “I saw”. You don’t get that in early Genesis but, when you think about it, how did Moses know this stuff about pre-history? Surely he must have had it revealed to him in some way.

Interestingly, there are a lot of connections between the first few chapters of Genesis and the last few chapters of the Bible. In both we find a creation of heaven and earth, patterns of seven, a river, the tree of life, the serpent, deception, a mark, worldwide judgment, a rainbow, the fall of Babel.

I’m aware that this is probably just opening yet another can of worms about the genre of the book of Revelation but I think it’s hard to miss that the last book of the Bible is chock full of metaphor. That’s not to say it is fantasy – it is just a different way of talking about reality. When it says, “I saw a Lamb standing as though it has been slain” – it doesn’t mean that the focus of the devotion of all creation is a  woolly animal with multiple horns and eyes. But in one sense, yes, there is a Lamb on the throne at the centre of the universe. When it talks of the “the dragon” who “stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it” – we don’t need to believe that around the manger in Bethlehem there was Mary, Joseph a few farm animals and a colossal seven-headed dragon ready to gobble up the incarnate Son of God. But in one sense, yes, the dragon was there in Herod’s palace, in the desert for 40 days, indeed throughout Jesus’ life, doing his best to devour the serpent crusher.

What does this mean for early Genesis? I’m not sure. But here are five characteristics of apocalyptic metaphor that I noticed in research on Revelation which may also to apply to early Genesis:

1. Original rather than conventional – Original metaphors are not standardised symbols with predictable meanings (e.g. people might say that in ancient literature the symbol A always means B). Rather, these are metaphors that are surprising, puzzling, creative. The whole story of creation, Eden and fall, its characters and twists, is without any close parallels in ancient writing. We shouldn’t expect comparative religion or ancient mythology to shed light on these metaphors except sometimes by way of contrast. Original metaphors grab the attention and make you think.
2. Open-ended rather than determinate – That is metaphors that cannot be easily or helpfully fixed as one thing or ‘translated’ into ‘normal language’ (A = B). Instead these are metaphors that live/work as metaphors, sparking all sorts of connotations and sending your mind off in various directions, opening up whole seams of meaning and significance. E.g. what about the mentions of trees, fruit and seed (both plant and human) that come at various points in Gen. 1-3? Don’t they open up all sorts of possibilities that resonate throughout the rest of Scripture?
3. Noun-based rather than verb-focused – I.e the key metaphors are not so much in the verbs (e.g. make, desire, hear) but consist in the nouns. Noun-based metaphors seem to have a greater power to paint pictures in your mind. It’s interesting that it’s the nouns of early Genesis that really stick with you and essentially tell the story: Garden, Serpent, Tree, Fruit, Sword. In Rev. metaphors are often introduced the first time with a definite article – e.g “THE Beast” (when you’d expect the first reference to be ‘a beast’) – which seems to underline/highlight/give extra force to the metaphor. And similarly in Genesis it’s interesting to notice we are introduced to “THE tree of life” and “THE serpent”.
4. Referent-supressing rather than referent-explicit – That is, in apocalyptic, you rarely get a mention of the visible-world ‘thing’ to which the metaphor refers. E.g. Revelation doesn’t say “The Emperor such-and-such is the Beast” it just tells you about “the beast”. You are not given A = B you are just given B. The everyday world is completely peeled away and you are just immersed in the deeper reality. This sort of metaphor is very difficult to spot because there are none of the obvious clues of metaphor and it can be read as a straightforward narrative – much as Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was initially read by many people, and is still read often today, as simply a children’s story rather than a political and moral allegory. I’m not saying that Genesis is allegory in the same way as Gulliver’s Travels but could there be similarly referent-suppressing unflagged (i.e. unmarked, hard to notice) metaphors in there?
5. Allusive rather than everyday – That is metaphor which is not making links within ordinary human experience (e.g. “can you see what I’m saying” where the metaphor of sight is being used) but rather metaphor which makes intertextual links with other parts of Scripture. Revelation does this all the time, making hundreds of allusions to the Old Testament. Again and again the prophet John uses an OT image or name to describe reality – Babylon, Sodom, Egypt, Jerusalem. At first sight the idea of looking for allusion in early Genesis seems a bit odd – how can you allude forward? But when we consider it was (at least in large part) written by Moses who already had in mind, if not had already written the other four books of the Torah, and furthermore that it was written by the Spirit who had the whole canon in mind, then it seems less strange. Greg Beale and others have noted a lot of connections between language in early Genesis and the way the vocabulary of Tabernacle and priesthood later in the Torah. It’s not just that Exodus etc. pick up things from Genesis, it’s more that the particular language used in Genesis describing the activity of Adam and the LORD is already priestly/tabernacle language which would be odd in a purely garden context and suggests there is allusion going on. (Beale’s talk on this is well worth listening to in full here or there’s a summary in his article here).

So what? Well the purpose of metaphor is, I would argue, more to move the heart than simply inform/puzzle the mind. The dragon in Rev. and the serpent in Genesis are supposed to impact us with the repulsive, scary reality of demonic deception. We’re supposed to long for that garden home as well as feel the heat of the sword that blocks the way. We’re supposed to feel that real tension between the attractiveness of the forbidden fruit and the attractiveness of the Lord and his tree of life.