Excursus on the Origin of Life and Evolution of Biological Complexity (Part 9): The Monotheistic Hebrew Myth Interpretation
August 07, 2025The Monotheistic Hebrew Myth Interpretation
Today we come to our eighth and final interpretive alternative of Genesis chapter 1. I'm calling this the monotheistic Hebrew myth interpretation. As a springboard for explaining this interpretation, I want to refer to a book by a pair of evangelical scholars, Johnny Miller and John Soden, called In the Beginning. . . We Misunderstood published in 2012. Miller and Soden were professors at Columbia Bible College and Lancaster Bible College, both with doctorates from Dallas Theological Seminary. So they have conservative bona fides which are simply impeccable. They can't be accused of being radical liberal or progressive scholars.
They argue in their book that Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 is not to be taken literally. They rehearse the evidence against a literal interpretation of the text which we've reviewed already in this class when we discussed the literal interpretation. They also agree with the literary framework view of the French scholar Henri Blocher that the days are not chronologically ordered in Genesis 1 but rather are ordered in a kind of parallel or thematic fashion that doesn't imply a chronological week of days. Moreover, they agree with John Walton’s view that creation begins with verse 2 of the text and not with verse 1. In all of these respects their view is familiar and not new.
What is distinctive about their view is the way in which they understand the Genesis account in relation to ancient Near Eastern mythology. They maintain that the key to correctly interpreting Genesis 1 is to compare it with Egyptian creation myths. They also survey Mesopotamian myths and Canaanite myths as well, but they think that these bear few resemblances to Genesis 1. But they point out Israel was in Egypt for some four hundred years, and the Israelites had come to worship Egyptian deities. They claim that when we compare Genesis 1 to the Egyptian creation myths, then very significant similarities, as well as differences, emerge. The differences help us to see the ways in which Israel sought to correct these pagan myths.
Reconstructing an Egyptian creation myth is extraordinarily difficult. They admit,
There is no single Egyptian account known to date that describes the complete Egyptian perspective on creation. Instead, we have to put together a mosaic of bits and pieces recorded in various documents. These documents represent a mixture of times and theologies (covering more than two millennia), many of them in tension with one another, a situation that did not seem to bother the Egyptians. . . . For the most part, Egyptian creation documents consists of brief statements and allusions, scattered among many inscriptions (Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, the Book of the Dead, and other inscriptions).[1]
So there really isn't a creation story available in Egypt, but they cobble together these various inscriptions from tombs, from coffins, from various other monuments, and in that way try to construct a coherent picture of what these Egyptian theologians believed about creation.
They summarize the Egyptian creation myth in the following way, and I'm going to read now a very lengthy quotation of their summary of the view of creation in these Egyptian myths.
Before the beginning of creation, there was only an infinite dark, watery, chaotic sea. There was nothing above the sea or below the sea – the sea was all there was. Immersed in the sea, Atum (or Re or Amun or Ptah), the creator god and source of everything, brought himself into existence by separating himself from the waters. Egyptian cosmologies that view Amun as the creator, or even as one of the four initial qualities of the precreation matter (watery, unlimited, dark, imperceptible) from which creation emerges, would then also understand the wind to be present in the water, because Amun was also god of wind. Since Atum, Amun, and Re are all connected with the sun, light was then in existence, even though the sun itself had not yet risen.
While several means of creation are used interchangeably in the Egyptian accounts (including sneezing or spitting and masturbation), in many accounts Atum (or one of the other gods noted above) spoke the universe into existence. This new creation (or the "universe" as conceived by the Egyptians) began with the separation of the waters to create the atmosphere (a bubble of air, known as the god Shu, in the midst of this endless mass of water). Atum's command separated the surface of the waters in the sky (Nut) from the earth (Geb). The waters receded and the first mound of earth appeared. The sun (Re), already in the waters (Nun) before the separation of the atmosphere, rose for the first time as the main event of creation. And so the basic universe was formed – a bubble of light, air, earth, and sky in the continuing infinity of dark, motionless water.
The universe was actually composed of thousands of gods (all of which were part of Atum) in the Egyptian understanding, because "all the elements and forces that a human being might encounter in this world are not impersonal matter and energy but the forms and wills of living beings – beings that surpass the merely human scale, and are therefore gods." Into the universe, Atum commanded the creation of plants and animal life, Re formed man as his image, or Khnum fashioned man on a potter's wheel with the breath of the god (Re or Hekat or Aton) giving life to the image. In some accounts, man springs from the tears of the eye of Atum (the sun).
After speaking into existence the "universe" and its millions of gods with their towns, shrines, and offerings, Ptah rested with everything in order. . . .
In Egyptian theology, all of creation was done in a single day, which was called "the first occasion." At the end of the day, the sun traveled through the Duat (the Egyptian underworld) and fought the enemies of order to arise victorious the next day. Each succeeding day reenacted the creation event: the sun had won its victory over the enemies again and begun a new day of order.[2]
Miller and Soden draw various points of similarity with Genesis but also point out significant differences. What they maintain is that the goal of the author of Genesis is not to correct the physical descriptions found in these Egyptian creation stories, but rather to correct the theology of creation. For example, the author of Genesis, they say, completely demythologizes the natural world. He gets rid of all of these gods and goddesses and instead has a single creator God who is the source of everything else and who is not himself self-created or who comes out of the primordial water but is rather a transcendent and sovereign deity. So they write,
. . . in most cases, the biblical writer uses common motifs to demonstrate the stark differences in the Hebrew presentation of God. In other words, the considerable differences show that Genesis is not copying but recasting the events of creation in order to argue strongly for a different theology.[3]
So the people of Israel reject the polytheistic pagan myths and substitute for it, as it were, a Hebrew monotheistic myth about the Creator God of Israel. Here is how they summarize the Hebrew creation theology which is opposed to the creation theology of Egypt.
Moses does not directly dispute the events of creation, but he uses common Egyptian perceptions of creation to present a radically different and unique understanding of God and his relationship to man in this world. To summarize these distinctions:
1. God in Genesis exists independently of creation and is not created or self-created. . . .
2. God alone transcends creation. [There are no other deities, no other transcendent beings.] . . .
3. God is sovereign over all creation. [There is no sort of warring factions; no sort of obstacle to be overcome. Rather, God is completely sovereign over the created world.] . . .
4. God alone is deity. [Not only is there no account of the creation of gods, there is the clear implication that no other gods are created. So it's not simply that God is over the hierarchy of other deities, but there aren't any other deities. There are no other gods that God has created.] . . .
5. Mankind has great significance and value as God's image. Mankind replaces the sun as the central focus of creation and the climax of that creation. . . .
6. Israel was to celebrate the rule of God in their lives by imitating their Creator in work and rest each week. . . . This weekly respite presents a dramatic shift from the daily conquest of the sun god over chaos, his rebirth each morning, and the daily grind of uncertainty in each Egyptian day. . . .[4]
Let me wrap up here with a summary. The force of the title of Miller and Soden's book, In the Beginning. . . We Misunderstood, seems to be that we have misunderstood the type of literature that Genesis is. Their book raises the question whether Genesis 1 is not also of the genre of myth, as are the Egyptian accounts of creation. The difference between them lies not in their literary genre but rather in their theology. In contrast to the polytheistic Egyptian myths, Genesis is a monotheistic Hebrew myth. That will be the view that we will then begin to assess when we meet next week.