Paul LaViolette reveals astonishing parallels between cutting edge scientific thought and early creation myths, and how these myths encode a theory of cosmology in which matter is continually growing from seeds of order that emerge spontaneously from chaos. Exposing the contradictions of the Big Bang theory, LaViolette leads us beyond the restrictive metaphors of modern science and into a new science for the 21st century.

In Genesis and Cosmos Adam Rasmussen examines how Basil and Origen addressed scientific problems in their interpretations of Genesis 1. For the first time, he offers an in-depth analysis of Basil’s thinking on three problems in Scripture-and-science: the nature of matter, the super-heavenly water, and astrology. Both theologians worked from the same fundamental perspective that science is the “servant” of Christianity, useful yet subordinate. Rasmussen convincingly shows how Basil used Origen’s writings to construct his own solutions. Only on the question of the water does Basil break with Origen, who allegorized the water. Rasmussen demonstrates how they sought to integrate science and Scripture and thus remain instructive for those engaged in the dialogue between religion and science today.

This text investigates what the Bible has to say about astronomical objects and phenomena. The Bible contains many mentions of astronomical things, beginning with creation and concluding with end-time prophecies. Besides the sun and moon, the Bible names groups of stars, Orion, the Pleiades, and the bears. In addition to what the biblical record shows about astronomical phenomena, many people think that it teaches things that it actually does not teach. These concepts are examined in depth as well. Unique among books discussing the intersection of biblical text and astronomy because of the range of questions explored and answered definitive work that explores many popular questions and misconceptions about the universe and the Bible Sorts fact from fiction and truth from popular myths as the true purpose of these enigmatic lights in the night sky are revealed

The ancient Near Eastern mode of thought is not at all intuitive to us moderns, but our understanding of ancient perspectives can only approach accuracy when we begin to penetrate ancient texts on their own terms rather than imposing our own world view. In this task, we are aided by the ever-growing corpus of literature that is being recovered and analyzed. After an introduction that presents some of the history of comparative studies and how it has been applied to the study of ancient texts in general and cosmology in particular, Walton focuses in the first half of this book on the ancient Near Eastern texts that inform our understanding about ancient ways of thinking about cosmology. Of primary interest are the texts that can help us discern the parameters of ancient perspectives on cosmic ontology—that is, how the writers perceived origins. Texts from across the ancient Near East are presented, including primarily Egyptian, Sumerian, and Akkadian texts, but occasionally also Ugaritic and Hittite, as appropriate. Walton’s intention, first of all, is to understand the texts but also to demonstrate that a functional ontology pervaded the cognitive environment of the ancient Near East. This functional ontology involves more than just the idea that ordering the cosmos was the focus of the cosmological texts. He posits that, in the ancient world, bringing about order and functionality was the very essence of creative activity. He also pays close attention to the ancient ideology of temples to show the close connection between temples and the functioning cosmos. The second half of the book is devoted to a fresh analysis of Genesis 1:1–2:4. Walton offers studies of significant Hebrew terms and seeks to show that the Israelite texts evidence a functional ontology and a cosmology that is constructed with temple ideology in mind, as in the rest of the ancient Near East. He contends that Genesis 1 never was an account of material origins but that, as in the rest of the ancient world, the focus of “creation texts” was to order the cosmos by initiating functions for the components of the cosmos. He further contends that the cosmology of Genesis 1 is founded on the premise that the cosmos should be understood in temple terms. All of this is intended to demonstrate that, when we read Genesis 1 as the ancient document it is, rather than trying to read it in light of our own world view, the text comes to life in ways that help recover the energy it had in its original context. At the same time, it provides a new perspective on Genesis 1 in relation to what have long been controversial issues. Far from being a borrowed text, Genesis 1 offers a unique theology, even while it speaks from the platform of its contemporaneous cognitive environment.

This study is the first volume in the new Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series. It contains a new English translation of Philo's famous treatise "On the creation of the cosmos" (the first for seventy years), and the first ever commentary in English. In this work the Jewish exegete and philosopher gives a selective exegesis of the Mosaic creation account and the events in Paradise as recorded in Genesis 1-3. It is the first preserved example of Hexaemeral literature, and had a profound influence on early Christian thought. The commentary aims to make Philo's thought accessible to readers such as graduate students who are just beginning to read him, but also contains much material that will be of interest to specialists in Hellenistic Judaism, ancient philosophy and patristic literature.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the Bible. When we read Scripture we often imagine that the world inhabited by the Bible's characters was much the same as our own. We would be wrong. The biblical world is an ancient world with a flat earth that stands at the center of the cosmos, and with a vast ocean in the sky, chaos dragons, mystical mountains, demonic deserts, an underground zone for the dead, stars that are sentient beings, and, if you travel upwards and through the doors in the solid dome of the sky, God's heaven--the heart of the universe. This book takes readers on a guided tour of the biblical cosmos with the goal of opening up the Bible in its ancient world. It then goes further and seeks to show how this very ancient biblical way of seeing the world is still revelatory and can speak God's word afresh into our own modern worlds.

There are many questions that intelligent people have about the Bible, science and evolution theory. Finding intelligent answers is difficult. The problem is that specialization is required in the sciences, in philosophy and theology, so people tend to pick one and disregard the others. There aren't so many people that consider all three fields with much depth of understanding. I made a try at that and wrote a book that is free to download. It is not only difficult to understand all three fields, it is difficult to select what should be written about, and difficult to write well. I didn't by any means cover everything; there is lots to cover.