Reading Genesis after Darwin
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Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species has changed the landscape of religious thought in many ways. There is a widespread assumption that before Darwin, all Christians believed that the world was created some 6,000 years ago over a period of 6 days. After Darwin, the first chapters of Genesis were either rejected totally by skeptics or defended vehemently in scientific creationism. This book tells a very different story. Bringing together contributions from biblical scholars, historians and contemporary theologians, it is demonstrated that both Jewish and Christian scholars read Genesis in a non-literal way long before Darwin. Even during the nineteenth century, there was a wide range of responses from religious believers towards evolution, many of them very positive. Stephen C. Barton and David Wilkinson argue that being receptive to the continuing relevance of Genesis today regarding questions of gender, cosmology, and the environment is a lively option.
Contributors ixIntroduction Stephen C. Barton David Wilkinson xiPart I Engaging Again with the Scriptures1 How Should One Read the Early Chapters of Genesis? Walter Moberly 52 Genesis before Darwin: Why Scripture Needed Liberating from Science Francis Watson 233 The Six Days of Creation According to the Greek Fathers Andrew Louth 394 The Hermeneutics of Reading Genesis after Darwin Richard S. Briggs 57Part II Understanding the History5 What Difference Did Darwin Make?: The Interpretation of Genesis in the Nineteenth Century John Rogerson 756 Genesis and the Scientists: Dissonance among the Harmonizers John Hedley Brooke 937 Science and Religion in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Landscape Art David Brown 111Part III Exploring the Contemporary Relevance8 Reading Genesis 1-3 in the light of Modern Science David Wilkinson 1279 All God's Creatures: Reading Genesis on Human and Nonhuman Animals David Clough 14510 Evolution and Evil: The Difference Darwinism Makes in Theology and Spirituality Jeff Astley 16311 "Male and Female He Created Them" (Genesis 1:27): Interpreting Gender after Darwin Stephen C. Barton 18112 Propriety and Trespass The Drama of Eating Ellen F. Davis 20313 The Plausibility of Creationism A Sociological Comment Mathew Guest 217Index of Modern Authors 237Subject Index 243
