Reading Genesis

In the debate on the origins of the universe, two major camps squabble it out. The scientific and the creationist community. What people fail to understand about the reliability of the book of Genesis in relation to scientific and religious views is that both camps championing the demise of the other have failed to realize an important principle in reading the ancient book. That principle is the principle of contextualization. To be more precise, it is the principle that we must understand the book was written for a specific group of people in ancient times. It was meant to be read and heard by a specific group of ancient community in which the book was recorded. It was not written for scientific reasons or views of reality where reality is seen as nothing more than naturally occurring matter. For this reason, scientifically or wanting to be perceived as scientifically minded people judge the book of Genesis as unreliable or nonsensical. The religious proponents use the same natural view of reality as matter to read into the book and force others to submit to the demands that reality in material sense must be seen in terms of how it was described in the book. Both views are wrong. Imagine how the ancient community would have understood a scientific explanation on the origins of the universe and human kind based on our current popular views of big bang and evolution. Imagine how they would understand these scientific models. It would make no sense to the audience of the ancient text. Thus, when God inspired the writing of the book, it was meant for the level of comprehension based on the audience of that particular ancient context. It was never meant to be read according to our contemporary view of reality which is dominated by scientific perspective. It was never meant to be understood in the literal sense where reality is merely described as observable matter alone. Both camps using this viewpoint has done harm to the understanding of book and subsequently drawn a wrong conclusion that the book of Genesis is unreliable because the reality that it described is not the same as what we know now through our scientific knowledge. It was never meant to be understood as such in the first place!