TheLost World of Genesis One appeared in 2009. Many of the ideas there had already been introduced earlier in my commentary on Genesis.1 Two years later, a full academic monograph,Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, was published to fill in the details for a scholarly audience. Two other Lost World books pertaining to Genesis then followed,The Lost World of Adam and Eve (2014) andThe Lost World of the Flood (2018).
For the story of how the ideas took shape, however, we have to begin a couple of decades earlier. I was raised in a family where the Bible mattered. My four siblings and I learned biblical content early and well. Our context was nondenominational, traditional, and evangelical, and therefore passively young-earth creationists (though others in that same context would have been more militant on that count). No other options besides a young earth were considered, but it was not a big issue. That continued to be my default position even through much of my time teaching at Moody Bible Institute (1981–2001). Nevertheless, alternative ideas were subtly taking shape in my mind.
As early as my master’s work (Wheaton College, 1975), I had taken an interest in Genesis as I began to learn Hebrew and study the Old Testament academically. When I got into my doctoral program (Hebrew Union College, 1976–1981), I began to understand the untapped significance provided by interacting with the cultures and literature of the ancient world. I studied Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Aramaic, and translated texts as well as studying the history and culture. As I did so, the cognitive environment of the ancient world unfolded. I was particularly interested in comparative studies that brought an understanding of the ancient world alongside the Old Testament to unpack cultural ideas inherent in the text. This led to my decision to do my dissertation on the Tower of Babel. In that work, I first began to combine a close, fresh reading of the Hebrew text with an exploration into the world of the ancient Near East. I investigated what type of tower this was, how such towers functioned, and what they stood for. I also researched what it meant to “make a name” in the Bible particularly and in the ancient Near East in general.2
It was never my intention nor inclination to suggest that the biblical authors borrowed and adapted literature from Babylon or Egypt (though many working in comparative studies have those preconceptions). I was more intrigued by the light that the literature shed on how people in the ancient world thought differently from us in so many ways. Besides issues of general comparison, I also wanted to interact with ancient Near Eastern background information as I performed exegetical analysis on particular passages such as the Tower of Babel to see what additional insight our knowledge of the ancient world could provide.
When I began teaching at Moody Bible Institute, I regularly taught a book-study course in Genesis. When asked, I used to tell my classes that I held an “uncomfortable young-earth position.” Young earth had been my default position since childhood, and I had read widely about other alternatives. I found proposals such as the gap theory or the day-age theory to be inconsistent with the grammar and syntax of the Hebrew text.3 So I remained in the young-earth camp because I could not see another option that would preserve what I considered essential to the demands of biblical authority. If I were to stretch the language in the ways required by those views, I would no longer be tracking with the authors of Scripture. Even so, I described myself as uncomfortable with the position because all the research and reading that I had done in Genesis and in the ancient Near East increasingly gave me an unsettled feeling. I became convinced that I was missing something important, but I could not put my finger on it. I strug
