Saturday, 23 May 2009

• Question 140 - Is Wiseman's Theory of Genesis Correct?

  Question 140 - Is Wiseman's Theory of Genesis Correct?

   

  Dear Dr. Sungenis,

   

       Are you familiar wth the "colophon" theory of Genesis 1, developed by the British soldier Percy Wiseman 60-70 years ago as a result of his study of ancient Babylonian clay tablets in Iraq before and after WWII?  It has been going around in conservative Catholic circles lately as the supposed 'final' answer to most of the traditional difficulties in interpreting Gen. 1, as well as a way of reconciling Scripture with long-ages chronology.

       According to Wiseman and his followers, the mention of the first, second, third, etc., days in Gen. 1 are "colophons", or 'titles' and editorial notes placed at the bottom of each of a series of clay tablets with an ongoing message, to indicate the correct order, i.e., which is the next tablet to be read. It is claimed that the six days are indeed of 24 hours each, but are not days of Creation at all, but six consecutive days when God showed Adam in visions (or maybe audible narratives) all the things he had created at the beginning. So the "evening" and "morning" repeatedly mentioned are supposedly just referring to Adam going to sleep and waking up again next morning for another day-long supernatural audio-visual session of what Creation had been like. So if this is true, Genesis 1 tells us absolutely nothing about how long Creation itself actually took.

          I am no expert on these things, but my spontaneous reaction is highly skeptical. After all, there is nothing in the actual words of the text itself that states, or even remotely suggests, that God was giving Adam a series of visions day after day. And how come Moses and all the ancient Israelites and Fathers of the Church got it wrong and lost all knowledge of this supposed series of day-long visions or locutions? - a loss that threw believers for thousands of years into an error that would eventually produce a totally unnecessary conflict with "scientific" geology? Most of all, doesn't this theory contradict inspired Scripture itself? For in the Decalogue itself, the most solemn and central part of OT revelation, we read very plainly in Exodis 20: 11 that "In six days God made the heavens and the earth", not that in six days God "revealed to Adam how he had made heaven and earth".

        Have you given any thought and evaluation to Wiseman's theory? Since it is not generally accepted - or even very widely known - after more than 60 years - it would seem that some competent scholars must have seen some big problems with the theory. If you know of any critiques of it, could you give me a reference or web link?

   

  John D.

   

  R. Sungenis: John, yes, I'm very familiar with Wiseman's theory. I used to hold to it, at least until I found out the implications of it (i.e., that it was merely suggesting a literary framework to Genesis 1 and that the days should not be taken literally and sequentially).

   

  Even if there is a “literary framework” to Genesis 1 (e.g., the first three days are fulfilled by the second three days, especially in areas of locomotion), it doesn’t mean that Genesis 1 is not also intending to have the six days in chronological sequence. Both can be true without diminishing either. This was the very reason I didn't add Wiseman’s theory into my Genesis commentary, but I should have done a critique on it instead of ignoring it. His view is called the “Framework Hypothesis.”

   

  As such, although Wiseman’s theory is certainly a major step above and away from the highly erroneous JEPD theory, it simply does not do enough justice to the Genesis account as a verbatim literal event of history.

   

  Damien Mackey touts Wiseman’s theory, but Damien has concluded that the events in Genesis are not entirely literal, or they are only literal to a certain degree (e.g., there was no universal flood, the days of Genesis are not chronological, only topical). I assume this “semi-literal” imposition on Genesis is for the purpose of accommodating long ages and evolution, although I’m not sure in Damien’s case.

   

  One problem Wiseman runs into is that, if Adam is the writer of the 2nd Toledoth, then why is he naming countries and rivers before the flood (Gen 2:1-5:1)? His solution is that Moses is editing the 2nd Toledoth. But this implies that the 2nd Toletoth is not giving us accurate history. I’ve sparred with Damien on this. He believes that the rivers of Paradise mentioned in Genesis 2 didn’t exist in Paradise, since the Flood would have taken any trace of them away, and Moses wouldn’t have know about them; and Adam also could not know about them because they existed in Moses’ time, not Adam’s. I’ve argued that the rivers existed before and after the flood and that there are geological reasons why the rivers could remain intact.

   

  As for the idea that God was merely showing a movie to Adam, whoever is touting that appendage is adding something to Wiseman’s theory that Wiseman didn’t countenance, at least not that I’m aware of.

   

  But let’s just accept their argument. In that case, even if God was showing a movie to Adam, the fact remains that the movie holds the days of Genesis as literal 24-hour events in chronological sequence. So, if long ages are true, then God is lying to Adam by showing him a movie depicting literal 24-hour days.

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