Kyle Greenwood. Scripture and Cosmology: Reading the Bible Between the Ancient World and Modern Science. Downers Grove: IVP Academic. See here to purchase the book.
In Scripture and Cosmology: Reading the Bible Between the Ancient World and Modern Science,
biblical scholar Kyle Greenwood explores how ancient peoples understood
the structure and layout of the physical universe. He pays particular
attention to the cosmology within the Hebrew Bible and the challenges it
has posed to its religious interpreters, since the cosmology within the
Hebrew Bible appears to differ from subsequent cosmologies, including
our own. Greenwood offers suggestions about how evangelical Christians,
who regard the Bible as religiously authoritative, can accept the Bible
as divinely-inspired while still acknowledging and accounting for its
cosmology, which differs from the modern scientific understanding of the
world.
Greenwood looks at the cosmologies of the ancient Near East, which
was the milieu of the Hebrew Bible. Greenwood acknowledges the
existence of some diversity in ancient Near Eastern cosmology, but he
sees evidence that many in the ancient Near East believed in a flat
earth, a solid dome in the sky that held back the waters and had windows
for the rain to come through, and pillars that supported the land so
that it did not float on the waters (though, according to Greenwood,
there was a belief among some that the land did float). Greenwood
maintains that such a cosmology is present in the Hebrew Bible, but
Greenwood also mentions some differences between the Hebrew Bible’s
cosmologies and those of the ancient Near East. Greenwood also
discusses ancient Greek cosmologies and how they differed from the
ancient Near Eastern ones: there emerged a belief in a spherical earth
and spherical heavens surrounding the earth, and there was an
acknowledgment that water vapor played a role in precipitation. Rather
than believing that the moon gave forth light of its own (Greenwood is
not dogmatic that the ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible believed this,
but he seems to acknowledge it as a possibility), there developed the
view that the moon reflected light from the sun. Later, Greenwood
narrates, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler challenged the geocentric view
that was part of the Greek cosmology, maintaining that the earth
revolved around the sun. This challenged religious adherents to the
Bible, who thought that the Bible presented the sun moving, not the
earth.
What should a religious adherent to the Bible do, when biblical
cosmology differs from later scientific understandings of the universe?
Greenwood mentions how many medieval thinkers accepted a lot of
Aristotle’s views of the cosmos, while not wholly embracing Aristotle’s
religious views. Aristotle believed that the universe was eternal and
was supported by an impersonal prime mover, for example, whereas many
medieval religious thinkers held that a personal God created the
cosmos. Greenwood may regard this as a model for how evangelicals can
interact with science: accept its findings, yet still believe in a
personal God. Greenwood, like many others whom he cites, also believes
in the concept of divine accommodation: that God in God’s revelation
accommodated people where they were rather than attempting to correct
their flawed, inaccurate cosmologies.
There are many positives to this book. Greenwood provides
documentation from ancient sources in his discussions of ancient
cosmologies. He acknowledges diversity, debate, ambivalence, and nuance
in his consideration of issues, particularly issues concerning the
nature of the cosmologies that he discusses, as well as religious
attempts to cope with or account for biblical cosmologies. (John
Calvin, for example, believed in divine accommodation and was open to
what science had to say, yet he really struggled with aspects of the
Bible’s cosmology, in areas. There is some debate about Martin Luther’s
views on Copernicus. And there are three views on the Bible and
science in The Fundamentals, a crucial document in the
development of Christian fundamentalism.) Greenwood’s work is an
excellent resource of information on ancient cosmologies and religious
attempts to wrestle with biblical cosmology.
Regarding Greenwood’s attempts to account theologically for the
differences between biblical cosmologies and our modern scientific
cosmology, parts of his discussion resonated with me, but I doubt that
everyone will find what he says to be convincing. More than one
Christian scholar has mentioned divine accommodation as a way to account
for these differences, but what I liked about Greenwood’s discussion
was that he asked the question of what would have happened had God tried
to reveal to the ancient Israelites how the cosmos actually is. Would
they have understood what God was saying? And would that have detracted
from the spiritual or religious message that God wanted to reveal to
them? Greenwood cannot be accused of chronological snobbery, for he
astutely notes that there are many things about the universe that we,
right now, do not understand. Greenwood’s discussion here made divine
accommodation look plausible to me. It will probably not be convincing
to atheists, however, who would say that the Bible reflects inaccurate
ancient cosmologies because it is not a divinely-inspired book, but
rather the product of limited human beings, living in their own times. I
make this point because Greenwood indicates in the book that his book
could help evangelicals who are challenged by atheists. Maybe his book
would help evangelicals to account theologically for the Bible’s
scientific inaccuracies for themselves, but I doubt that it will assist
evangelicals in scoring points when debating atheists. Another point:
Greenwood states that the Bible is perspicuous about how to be saved. I
would dispute that idea, considering the different Christian and Jewish
views on what one must do to be saved (i.e., enter a good afterlife).
I have more questions after reading Greenwood’s book. Job 26:7
states that God hangs the earth on nothing, and, while Greenwood
convincingly argues against the idea that this means that the earth is a
sphere in outer space, he did not explain what that part of the verse
did mean. I was also curious about what ancient Near Eastern cosmology
had to say about the relationship between clouds and precipitation.
Greenwood mentions I Kings 8:45, in which the clouds become dark before
the rain, but he does not say whether ancient Near Eastern cosmology
acknowledged a connection between the clouds and rain. If they did,
would that challenge, or be an ancient alternative to, the idea that
rain came from above a solid dome and was let through the dome’s
windows? (Note: see Nicholas Petersen’s website for an alternative view
on the firmament in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. http://www.hebrewcosmology.com/)
There were times when Greenwood explained technical details about
ancient cosmology that shed light on how the ancient believed the world
worked: Greenwood, for example, addresses the question of how people in
the ancient Near East believed that salt water and fresh water were kept
separate, even though they thought that the water above the earth and
the water beneath the earth were part of a common structure. I
appreciated his explanation of this technicality, but there were times
when I was hoping for something similar in other discussions.
I still give this book five stars, however, because it is a
repository of information. Those who are interested in biblical
cosmology will find this book to be a helpful resource.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Intervarsity Press, in exchange for an honest review.