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As Biblical scholar Anderson argues:
“Although the Bible takes for granted the contours of ancient cosmology, it has demythologized the ancient understanding of existence. The OT contains no Theogony, no myth, which traces the creation to a primordial battle between divine powers, no ritual, which enabled men to repeat the mythological drama and thereby ensure the supremacy of the national god. Mythological allusions have been torn out of their ancient context of polytheism and nature religion and have acquired a completely new meaning within the historical syntax of Israel’s law supplanted by faith. The pagan language survives only as a poetic speech for the adoration of Yahweh, the Lord of History.”22
Israel’s orthodox creation faith as expressed vividly in Genesis, the message of 2nd Isaiah, many Psalms (Pss. 8; 19; 104), and Job 38, begins with Yahweh, the inscrutable Lord of Salvation History, all-seeing and all-powerful, creating all things from pre- existing watery chaos by His almighty, living Word.23 There is no
22 Anderson, B.W. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “Creation.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume I. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 726.
23 Anderson, B.W. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “Creation.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume I. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 725.
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