Looking at John H. Walton’s Book (2025) “New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis” (Part 1 of 20)
0001 The book before me is published by Intervarsity Press. The subtitle is “Advances in the Origins Debate”. This work is the latest in the “Lost World Series” that delves into how Genesis should be regarded in light of the archaeological discoveries of the past three centuries.
Of course, “new explorations” implies “advances”. Advances adjust previous positions. The reader is advised to consult the conclusion immediately after the introduction, and before the section on methodology.
An examination of a prior work can be found in Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in August 2022. The review is updated and fashioned as the first and fifth chapters in Razie Mah’s 2024 e-book, Exercises In Artistic Concordism, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0002 The term, “literature of the ancient Near East” is somewhat awkward, because the writings of the ancient Near East were buried in the ruins of royal libraries throughout Egypt and the Levant. The writings are in cuneiform, wedge impressions on clay tablets. The clay fires into brick when the royal library burns, along with the rest of the royal city. Then, the ruins get buried in vegetation, and later human settlements, and so on. Then, the tells (or hills) are excavated by modern archaeologists. Archaeologists discover thousands of cuneiform tablets and learn how to translate them. These translations constitute “the literature of the ancient Near East”.
0003 Of course, this story sounds implausible.
However, God tends to manifest the implausible.
0004 In fact, if God only performs sensible… what is the correct term?… “interventions”, then no one would notice. If anyone could turn water into wine, then the miracle at Cana would be ho-hum.
The Uruk culture invents writing by impressing tokens onto the surface of clay balls (which then contain the impressed tokens). That seems sensible. Centuries later, a Sumerians scribe uses a reed stylus to create impressions on a clay surface that is curved, like the surface of a ball. That seems sensible, also. Then, stylus impressions on a clay tablet become so routine that cuneiform is used for centuries to record transactions and inventories. Eventually, the same writing is used to record the civilization’s origin myths.
0005 Okay, each of these steps is sensible, although unlikely.
How many unlikely, yet sensible, developments can be strung together before the results may be declared “miraculous”?
0006 So, what is miraculous with respect to Walton’s lost-world propositions?
God provides eighteen centuries of biblical interpretation by Christians before creating the conditions where a challenge to traditional reference and affirmation occurs.
The archaeology of the ancient Near East unearths literature that is (more or less) contemporaneous with the Old Testament.
That is the challenge.
0007 The Old and New Testaments are no longer subject to plain reading as the sole foundation of interpretation.
Why?
How can one conduct an honest reading of the Old and New Testaments and not accommodate the literature of the ancient Near East?
0008 Okay, replace the word, “honest”, with the word, “literal”.
It seems that figurative and allegorical readings are not challenged.
