The Exodus is Our Genesis

The creation story is WAY MORE INTERESTING than creationism

Trinity Sunday — Genesis 1

June 9, 1993:

For some reason the date sticks in my memory.

The opening date of Steven Spielberg’s first Jurassic Park film. At the point in the movie when the guy who played Newman on Seinfeld gets his face eaten by a whatever-raptor, at that point in the movie on June 9, 1993 I leaned over and whispered into my date’s ear, “Of course, it’s all a hoax. Dinosaurs never actually existed.”

When it comes to the Book of Genesis, when it comes to creation, it seems like dates are always at the heart of the matter.

Dates like November 24, 1859:

The date Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species and threw the Bible-believing world for a Copernican loop.

Dates like July 21, 1925:

The date a jury in Dayton, Tennessee found high school teacher, John Scopes, guilty of violating the Butler Act, the state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools.

When it comes to how and when it all began and how that beginning squares with the beginning of scripture, it seems like the debate’s always about dates.

Dates like 4.5 Billion:

The number of years ago, according to scientific consensus, the earth was born with a bang.

Dates like 2.5 Billion:

The best scientific guesstimate for when life first opened its eyes in the primordial ooze.

It’s always about dates.

Dates like 6,000:

The date that creationists say God first flicked on the lights and started it all according to the step-by-step sequence in scripture.

Dates like May 28, 2007:

The date that the $27 million Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky, a museum where visitors can find a life-sized T-Rex, who apparently forgot he was a carnivore, cavorting in the Garden with Adam and Eve.

It’s all about dates.

Dates like June 5, 2023:

As in, tomorrow. The date I’ll likely get a handful of emails angry at me for lacing my comments about that museum with sarcasm.

Dates are everything.

Dates like April 1992:

The date I portrayed William Jennings Bryan in the Governor’s School production of Inherit the Wind, the stage version of the Scopes Monkey Trial (Yes, that was a thing I did back in the day).

April 1992— that was almost exactly three years before I became a Christian.

Playing William Jennings Bryan, the famed biblical literalist, I had to learn to say:

• Yes, I believed Joshua literally commanded the sun to stop.

• Yes, I believed there literally was morning and evening before God created the sun on the 4th Day.

• Yes, I believed the Earth was literally only thousands of years old not millions or billions.

April 1992:

Three years before I became a Christian, that was the date I became convinced that in order to invite Jesus into your heart you literally had to check your brain at the door.

That is when I became convinced that believing in God required you also to believe that centuries of science were all a deliberate hoax.

Or, worse, God deliberately deceives us.

And in April 1992 I decided that such a God literally wouldn’t be worth believing in.

When it comes to the Book of Genesis, when it comes to how and when it all began and who or what was behind it, it seems like dates are always at the heart of the matter.

Which is funny.

Because there’s one date that seldom gets mentioned.

1849— 10 years before Charles Darwin spoiled everyone’s fun.

1849:

That’s the date Austen Henry Layard excavated the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal in Mosul, Iraq. In the ruins of that library, Austen Henry Layard discovered the original creation story.

Maybe you know it.

It goes like this:

In the beginning, when the earth was without form and chaos and dark waters covered the face of the deep, god brought forth life.

On the first day, there was light. Light that emanated from god and god separated the light from the darkness.

On the second day, god created the firmament; god created a dome to push back the waters and god called it sky.

On the third day, god gathered the waters in one place so that dry land could appear.

On the fourth day, god created the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky and named them.

And day six god created humankind to do god’s work and on day seven god rested and exalted in celebration for what he done.

Sound familiar?