1.1 The genesis of modern science and the evolution of biblical criticism

Historical study indicates that the sciences developed in close tandem with modern biblical criticism, to the extent that both kinds of discipline owe a great deal to each other. A well-known argument by Harrison (1998) makes precisely this point, that the ‘Scientific Revolution’ of the seventeenth century was made possible by the Protestant Reformation of the previous century, which in turn was made possible by crucial changes in the dominant biblical hermeneutic. The ‘two books’ metaphor of medieval Christianity – where God is said to be revealed both in ‘the book of God’s words’ (the Bible) and in ‘the book of God’s works’ (nature) – is important here, since the pre-Reformation Church’s fondness for applying symbolic and allegorical interpretations of scripture was also carried over to the natural world, which was seen as a source of signs pointing to a deeper, spiritual reality. Hence, when the Reformers instead insisted upon the plain sense of scripture, and simultaneously opened-up the (Latin) Bible to ordinary believers in their own vernacular, views of the cosmos became similarly transformed into a literal physical reality which could be interpreted in its own terms. All this is not to say that there was no empirical study of the natural world before the Reformation, but the Reformation’s hermeneutical and theological shift of emphasis allowed for new modes of study of both the Bible and the natural world to emerge, modes which eventually became the contemporary academic disciplines of the natural sciences and biblical studies.

In the meantime, it was centuries before there was a clear and irrevocable parting of the ways between the sciences and theological scholarship (roughly second half of the nineteenth century). In the intervening years it was commonplace for scientific innovations to be given theological glosses. The development of ‘physico-theology’ is one of the clearest examples of this period, where mathematical and physical principles were applied to the understanding of natural causes which were simultaneously identified with divine causes, to the extent that there was no clear distinction between physics and providence. Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) law of universal gravitation, for one, represents an important scientific leap forward which Newton and his supporters justified to its detractors on theological grounds. Newton’s voluminous work on biblical interpretation shows that he by no means accepted that his professional expertise should be limited to natural philosophy alone. Indeed, some of Newton’s followers such as Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) and William Whiston (1667–1752) were notable in using the new scientific wisdom to explore and support biblical stories. Whiston, for example, suggested that Noah’s flood had been precipitated by Halley’s comet passing very close to the Earth thousands of years earlier, while Clarke argued that biblical miracles are plausible (if unusual) natural events, thus lending credibility to the historical authenticity of the Bible. Some modern scientific studies of both the flood and biblical miracles take much the same approach, as shall be seen in section 3 and 4.

While such synthetic work was important in providing religious (and therefore cultural) justification for the burgeoning sciences of early modern times, the methodologies of biblical criticism as they are known today owe at least as much to the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and especially to the philosophical developments of thinkers such as René Descartes, Benedict Spinoza, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. The Enlightenment emphasis on the search for objectivity by the application of critical rationality led to the distinctive ‘historical-critical method’ of biblical study, aimed at determining the authentic scope and meaning of the biblical texts without (in principle) being unduly influenced by modern theological agendas, nor by the traditional concerns of church authorities.

1.2 Hermeneutics, criticism, and naturalism

The term ‘hermeneutics’ is commonly used to capture the philosophical, ideological, or theological decisions (principles) that one might bring to the reading of a text, while ‘criticism’ is the act of applying those decisions to the text in order to establish its meaning in their light. These key terms were linked inextricably by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) in the early development of modern biblical scholarship, but his view is more subtle than common usage might suggest:

Hermeneutics and criticism […] belong together, because the practice of one presupposes the other. The former is generally the art of understanding particularly the written discourse of another person correctly, the latter the art of judging correctly and establishing the authenticity of texts and parts of texts from adequate experience and data. Because criticism can only recognize the weight to be attached to evidence in its relationship to the piece of writing or the part of the text in question after an appropriate correct understanding of the latter, the practice of criticism presupposes hermeneutics […] the practice of hermeneutics presupposes criticism. (Schleiermacher 1998: 3–4)

Hermeneutics is ‘the art of understanding’, Schleiermacher tells us, but it can only proceed in tandem with criticism, which in turn can only proceed with a developing and progressive hermeneutics. Hermeneutics presupposes the criticism that is to be performed, and vice versa; the two are not so neatly distinguishable (in spite of common usage), but are interdependent. Thus, the well-known idea of the ‘hermeneutical circle’ arises: the act of understanding and judging a text is a circular and self-referential movement, which is continually provisional even if one may hope that it is also progressive.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that external considerations are brought to the text, which is why Schleiermacher speaks of understanding the author’s meaning ‘correctly’, and of judging ‘correctly’ the authenticity of the text. Schleiermacher apparently has in mind a particular kind of hermeneutics, what is usually termed the ‘historical-critical method’ of biblical interpretation. There, the aim is to understand what the original authors meant to say to their times and places. The critic hopes to reconstruct and explain (‘correctly’) the original authors’ genuine meaning by a combination of reading and re-reading in light of ‘adequate experience and data’. Schleiermacher includes in this exercise considerations about the functions and constraints of human language: that all human communication is geographically and historically bounded, and must be understood in light of the author’s whole life and influence and of our own changing context. Moreover, there is a psychological aspect to reading, both in terms of how the author conceived meaning in their own context and of how we come to understand the author’s mind. All of this is determined provisionally by the reader, open to revision and refinement in a progressively circular nature.

Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics has had an incalculable influence on theology, on biblical criticism, and on the philosophy of interpretation, to such an extent that he is still widely cited today (see Mambrol 2017 for a more detailed analysis). However, while Schleiermacher’s thought was decisive in laying down the philosophical/hermeneutical principles of criticism, many other scholars of the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries were significant in defining the special aspirations and limitations of the historical-critical method for study of the Bible (see Morgan and Barton 1988 for a helpful overview). A key area of debate concerned the relationship between the eternal doctrinal truths taught by the church and the shifting historical contingencies unearthed by biblical criticism. To what extent was the biblical critic constrained by prior theological commitments, or could she be free to go where the (historically-bound) evidence of the biblical texts led? And what exactly was the nature of the evidence, given that the texts had been assembled by ancient authors to serve theological commitments of their own? In answering these questions, an inescapable degree of naturalism began to emerge in the aims and scope of biblical criticism, that is, a conviction that the biblical texts should first be examined as human products in human history before traditional theological claims of divine revelation were admitted. Among key figures such as H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768), F. C. Baur (1792–1860), David Strauss (1809–1874), Wilhelm Wrede (1859–1906) and Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) – all of whom made sizeable contributions to this debate – three names stand out for bringing the implicit naturalism of the historical method into the open: Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781), Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976).

Lessing has come to be seen as especially incisive in the way that he articulated the divergence between theology and history, a divergence that has come to be known as ‘Lessing’s ditch’ (Lessing 2005: 84–87). Lessing pointed out that, insofar as the Christian revelation is dependent upon fulfilled prophecy and reports of miracles, it is open to historical enquiry which, by definition, must be able to raise questions and doubts about those reports. ‘[The biblical] proof of the spirit and of power no longer has either spirit or power’, he pointed out, ‘but has sunk to the level of human testimonies of spirit and of power […] because reports of miracles are not miracles’ (Lessing 2005: 84–87). Lessing’s widely quoted conclusion is apt: ‘contingent truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason’; the two are separated by a ‘broad and ugly ditch’ which Lessing could not cross, no matter how earnestly he tried to make the leap. In short, Lessing argued that faith can never rely on a historical record alone for its grounding, even if it is the normative historical record of the Bible.

Troeltsch sharpened the dilemma between faith and history further, identifying three principles to historical enquiry: criticism, analogy, and correlation (Dawes 1999: 28). In the first, criticism, the scholar acknowledges that every claim made in a text from the historical past must be subjected to a critical judgement. Since nothing in historical enquiry can be taken for granted, all conclusions drawn from a text are probabilistic in nature. In the second, the historical critic realizes that she reconstructs the past by drawing upon analogy with her own experience; the historian can identify with the biblical author only because of presumed similarities between past and present existence. In the third, every event is seen as correlated with other events, such that no event can be treated in isolation but must be taken carefully in context. As a consequence of these three principles, historical enquiry embraces and interrelates all ‘activities of the human spirit’, Troeltsch tells us (Dawes 1999: 34); nothing escapes its penetrating eye. Troeltsch sums this point up with a memorable quotation which makes a parallel with the natural sciences and their troublesome relation to theology:

Give the historical method an inch and it will take a mile. From a strictly orthodox standpoint, therefore, it seems to bear a certain similarity to the devil. Like the modern natural sciences, it represents a complete revolution in our patterns of thought vis-à-vis antiquity and the Middle Ages. As these sciences imply a new attitude toward nature, so history implies a new attitude toward the human spirit and its productions in the realm of ideas. (Dawes 1999: 35)

Like the natural sciences then, historical-critical enquiry of the Bible does not serve traditional theology; it revolutionizes our attitude to reality, whether we are thinking of nature, human history, or the human spirit. Together with the sciences, historical enquiry draws everything into the sphere of a naturalistic worldview.

A further significant move that reveals the implicit naturalism of biblical criticism was made by Bultmann, especially in his ‘demythologization’ programme. In the face of scientific advances which could not possibly have been anticipated by ancient minds, Bultmann asserted, modern people can no longer accept the Christian gospel message cloaked in outdated myths of gods and demons; the message must be ‘demythologized’:

It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles. We may think we can manage it in our own lives, but to expect others to do so is to make the Christian faith unintelligible and unacceptable to the modern world. (Bultmann 1961: 5)

The mention of ‘electric light and wireless’ may sound quaintly outdated to contemporary readers, but Bultmann’s point is that the full force of Christ’s kerygma (message) cannot be felt by the modern human when that kerygma comes packaged in a worldview that is ancient (or ‘obsolete’; Bultmann 1961: 3). Hence, according to Bultmann (1961: 16), biblical criticism must operate existentially, interpreting and exposing the mythology of the New Testament so that the modern human can apprehend the impact of the kerygma upon her own faith in her own time. In this it is modern science which demonstrates above all for Bultmann that such a process of demythologization by biblical criticism is vital and urgent.

The message to draw from these three thinkers is that modern science is not diametrically opposed to biblical criticism, as though the two were in conflict (as ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are often supposed to be in conflict). Quite the opposite: both modern science and biblical criticism (in its historical-critical mode) are embedded in the naturalistic worldview. In other words, both science and biblical criticism stand together, on the same side of Lessing’s ditch as it were, while theology and faith remain on the opposite bank. However, as shall be seen in section 3 and section 4, there are ways for faith to make affirmatory use of both modern science and biblical criticism, especially when it comes to the major miracle stories of the Hebrew Bible.

1.3 Methods of historical biblical criticism

The historical-critical method has dominated academic study of the Bible since Enlightenment times. True to the nature of the hermeneutical circle, it has gone through a continual process of methodological refinement during the course of its history. Early work (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) focused on ‘source criticism’, attempting to discern the literary sources that the ancient biblical editors (presumably) used to piece together the larger narratives such as the Pentateuch and the Gospels. By determining the scope and nature of these hypothetical sources it was thought possible to reconstruct something of the genesis and literary history of the biblical text itself. In turn, the source-critical method was supplemented in the late nineteenth century by ‘form criticism’, a concern for the precise form (genre) of each source. The idea was that the form might allow for the pre-literary setting-in-life (Sitz im Leben) of the source to be determined, along with some indication of the history of the text in oral (pre-written) tradition. Twentieth-century work developed ‘redaction criticism’, where the editorial work of those ancient editors who compiled the biblical texts was reconstructed and analysed, based on their supposed theological predilections as these might be reconstructed from the text. This last method has been particularly significant in study of the four gospels, since contemporary New Testament scholars routinely compare and contrast how one evangelist has presented the story of Jesus according to that evangelist’s theological scruples as compared with another evangelist.

A more recent notable type of historical-critical method is ‘social-scientific’ criticism, which since around the 1980s has become important as a way of building up an idea of the biblical authors’ socio-political and geographical context through the application of sociological models. Along related lines, human sciences such as linguistics and psychology have very recently been brought to bear in biblical criticism. In biblical scholarship, the emerging area of cognitive linguistics incorporates literary-critical methods with cognitive science in order to gain psychological insight into how the biblical authors constructed their narratives and characters, and how their readers envision, reflect on, and are transformed mentally by them (Rüggemeier and Shively 2021; see also Theology and the Cognitive Science of Religion).

In spite of this massive industry in developing the historical-critical method, other kinds of biblical criticism have proliferated since around the 1970s, influenced at least partly by postmodernism, along with a decreased confidence in the ability of historical criticism to obtain ‘objectivity’. These alternative methodologies are often quite deliberate in foregrounding the interpreter’s context over those of the (supposed) original authors, or in taking a hermeneutical stance informed by a contemporary theological or political agenda. Thus, one hears of many kinds of biblical criticism, including canonical, rhetorical, narrative, feminist, queer, liberation, or post-colonial criticism, to name some examples.

Biblical interpretations that prioritize contributions from the natural sciences represent a further alternative to the classic methodologies of historical criticism. Like historical criticism, these interpretations are grounded in the worldview of naturalism (section 1.2), but there is a further focus on ‘nature’ itself as an active agent in the biblical world. In such instances the contrasts between modern science and historical criticism become most clear, and the rest of this article explores these contrasts in key biblical texts. It will refer to biblical interpretations that prioritize contributions from the sciences as ‘naturalistic’ or ‘scientific’ interpretations. Although such interpretations are often made in the spirit of uncovering the historical reality behind the text, an inevitable degree of anachronism is introduced – since the biblical text is read in terms of contemporary scientific thought instead of relevant ancient perspectives – along with a degree of selectivity over which passages should be selected for interpretation – since the role of the natural world is emphasized over other critical considerations. For these reasons, many historical-critical scholars approach naturalistic interpretations with caution, in spite of the enduring popularity among scientists and the biblically literate public of such readings. The following sections outline the main biblical texts of interest in naturalistic interpretations, along with ongoing debates.

2.1 Genesis 1 and the Big Bang

To what degree does the authority of the Bible’s first creation story depend on its similarity to contemporary scientific views of origins? The question may not often be asked in so many words, but it dominates modern attitudes to Genesis 1, especially since intriguing parallels are often recognized between the biblical text and the science.

The initial moment of creation in Genesis 1, where God calls light into being from a state of incipient chaos (1:3) is frequently likened to Big Bang theory, where the universe originated in a tremendous flash of energy. Similarly, it is often assumed that the opening verses of Genesis 1 relate to the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing). Indeed, in the early years of the Big Bang theory (first half of the twentieth century), there was scientific disquiet on the grounds that the theory resembled the Christian doctrine and Genesis 1 too closely to be fully credible on scientific grounds. It was not until strong observational evidence (of the cosmic microwave background) came to light in the 1960s that the theory took firm empirical hold and became a household term.

The fact that all three – the opening verses of Genesis 1, Big Bang cosmology, and the doctrine of creation from nothing – indicate an absolute beginning to all things is too much of a coincidence for many modern Christians, who take these as complementary accounts of the same divinely-caused originating event. Copan and Craig (2004: 18), for instance, argue that Big Bang theory is not only complementary to creation from nothing and Genesis 1, but is effectively a scientific way of saying the same thing. Others however are not convinced that the three can be equated so easily. Promoting an atheist view, Krauss (2012) has argued that Big Bang theory is so successful that we no longer need to maintain theistic accounts of origins alongside it; the science has replaced any need to invoke either the Bible or Christian theology. On the other hand, scholars writing in the science-theology field have pointed out that the doctrine of creation from nothing does not necessarily teach the temporal beginnings of the universe so much as its ontological beginnings; the doctrine is therefore unassailable by modern science, since the latter is not equipped (by definition) to adjudicate on purely metaphysical schemes. To add yet more complexity, biblical scholars have criticized attempts to read Genesis 1 in terms of creation from nothing. Not only is there an enormous cultural, historical, and intellectual distance between the text and the doctrine, there are also interpretative questions surrounding the opening verses of Genesis 1 (along with its ANE context) which suggest that the text does not teach creation from nothing in any case (Harris 2013: 120–124).

The result is that, tempting as it might be to read the opening of Genesis 1 in terms of more modern ideas, there are good reasons for caution. When we look at the rest of Genesis 1, the reasons multiply.

2.2 The seven days of creation

Parallels are also frequently drawn between the later order of creation in Genesis 1 – with the sea and dry land appearing first, followed by plants, sea creatures, land animals, and finally humans – with the broad pattern of evolution revealed in the fossil record. Some take the similarities here between the Bible and science as evidence of divine revelation to the ancient authors, who could not possibly have otherwise known about modern scientific thinking. On the other hand, it is worth reflecting on this reading’s unashamed anachronism – as well as its selective literalism – all of which raise questions concerning its respect for the historical, literary, and theological integrity of Genesis 1. Selectively literal readings tend to downplay those features of the text that do not fit into their hermeneutical scheme. There are several such features. To begin with, Genesis 1 tells us that the entire universe beyond the firmament around the earth is made up of cosmic waters (1:6), while the sun, moon, and stars were created on day four, after the creation of day and night (1:5) and even after the earth and vegetation on day three (1:11–12). All of these features contradict the scientific picture of origins.

The most notorious difficulty which a modern scientific reading of Genesis 1 must overcome is the problem of the seven days of creation. The text echoes an earthly week of seven twenty-four-hour days. There are various hermeneutical strategies for reading the seven days in terms of the modern scientific picture of cosmic evolution (over billions of years), but the analogy with the human working week is then lost, as is the point about the holy seventh day (2:2–3), where God’s rest after the completion of creation parallels the weekly practice of Sabbath (Exod 20:10–11). Moreover, such strategies must treat each verse in an ad hoc way – taking some literally while others are assumed to be entirely figurative – in order to squeeze the text into the scientific framework. The inevitable result is that the scientific worldview is read into the text rather than the text’s own worldview being read out of it.

At first sight, young-earth creationism appears to take precisely the opposite stratagem regarding the days of creation, insisting that each day is a literal twenty-four-hour period (e.g. Whitcomb and Morris 1961: 228). However, since the cosmology of Genesis 1 is still treated in thoroughly modern terms, the overall effect is much the same as in the mainstream scientific readings, where the text is read in a selectively literal way determined by modern scientific attitudes instead of ancient cosmological thinking (Harris 2013: 43–44). In other words, creationist readings – as much as readings influenced by mainstream science – tend to rely on the assumption that Genesis 1 describes the origins of the natural world as we apprehend it today, without considering alternative layers of reality and significance in the text, especially layers which rely on the ancient scientific, mythological, and theological views of the original authors and audience.

Making a clear break with readings influenced by the modern scientific worldview, biblical critics generally seek to unearth those alternative layers, bringing the historical-critical method to bear. Theologically, for instance, it is important to note that the text is at least as much a portrayal of God the creator as it is of the physical universe and its creatures, a portrayal which likens God to a human craftsman, whose working week is the same as the human working week, crowned by the Jewish holy practice of resting on the seventh day, the Sabbath. Cosmologically, the text should be seen in its ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context. Important elements in the text – such as the cosmic waters, the firmament/dome structure (Gen 1:6–8) which separates the waters in order to provide a solid and impermeable boundary to protect the earth, and the celestial luminaries set within the dome (1:17) – bear no clear relationship with a contemporary scientific worldview but relate closely to ANE mythologies and cosmologies.

Recent work by some biblical critics (e.g. Creation in the Old Testament) has even raised the question of whether Genesis 1 concerns the making of the universe in the first place, or should rather be seen as God’s ordering and consecrating of what is already there into God’s cosmic temple. Similarly, Walton (2009) maintains that the text constructs a functional, not a material, view of the world’s origins: God was not making the material world ex nihilo but instead took seven days to constitute what was already there into networks of functional relationships.

There are other critical approaches to Genesis 1 altogether. Collins (2018: 18), for instance, develops a ‘critically rigorous’ reading of the text which is also ‘intuitive’. By drawing from C. S. Lewis’ pragmatic approach to literary and linguistic analysis, Collins evaluates both how the story might have functioned for its ancient readers, and how it might be told today. Correspondingly, Collins finds ways of foregrounding the story’s historical and theological truths without needing to negotiate the vexed scientific questions of origins that have continuously swirled around Genesis 1 in modern times.

Analysis of Genesis 1 in the historical-critical mode thus introduces very different kinds of questions from how well the text tallies with a modern scientific worldview. Once we take a more historically-minded view of the story, the problems surrounding the seven days fall into perspective alongside other theological, historical, and literary questions.

2.3 Made in the image of God

A further potential challenge from modern science to the interpretation of Genesis 1 concerns God’s famous statement that humans are made ‘in our image, according to our likeness’ (1:26).

The importance of this passage for Christian anthropology can hardly be overstated, but exactly what it means for humans to be made in the image of God (imago Dei) is controverted, and various interpretations have been advanced over the centuries. The majority view has tended to follow the ‘substantive’ interpretation. Here, the image is said to reside in that which is unique in the human substance or human nature compared to all other creatures, which is commonly identified with the human soul or mind. However, evolutionary theory, which indicates that humans have evolved from other creatures – and are closely related to other modern apes in biological, cognitive, social, and behavioural ways – undermines the substantive interpretation’s reliance on human uniqueness. Other interpretations are not so reliant, and the ‘functional’ interpretation in particular has gained ground in modern times, suggesting that the imago Dei resides not in anything special about what humans are in substantive terms so much as their divinely-allotted function on earth, their vocation. Evolutionary science is therefore less of a challenge to this interpretation. The question arises, however, as to what this special function is. Since the crucial verse (1:26) continues with God exhorting humans to exercise ‘dominion’ over all living things in earth, sky, and sea (1:26), the special function is often interpreted in terms of humankind representing God’s royal rule over creation. The rise in popularity of ‘stewardship’ theologies (in the face of the climate crisis) provides further impetus for such a view of the imago Dei.

These hermeneutical arguments for the imago Dei are influenced by modern scientific concerns, so it is worth asking how critical biblical scholars approach the problem. For their part, the consensus is clear. The imago Dei passage in Genesis 1 should be read in terms of the functional interpretation, since there is strong support from the ANE historical context that the human king was viewed as the ‘image’ of the deity. The Genesis 1 text ‘democratizes’ that idea so that all humans are the visible representatives of God’s dominion over creation (Middleton 2005: 121). This consensus has been reached entirely by historical-critical research, so it is convenient that the consensus also evades the challenge from evolutionary biology. However, there are complexities, since in practice most versions of the functional interpretation include a substantive tinge (Harris 2018b), and many scholars in the science-theology field continue to investigate substantive readings of the imago Dei because of that interpretation’s relevance for debates around transhumanism and artificial intelligence.

2.4 Genesis 2–3 and the fall

If readers are commonly tempted to draw parallels between the Bible’s first creation story (Gen 1) and the sciences, the second (Gen 2–3) offers few such opportunities. The latter’s account of the creation of a single adult male before all plants and all other animals (and of the woman, who comes last) flies completely in the face of the evolutionary history of life. Similarly, the story has a fairytale feel to it, with many fantastical elements; consequently, critical biblical scholars consider the story to be mythological, without any clear basis in history. The story is more of a fable or a paradigm, processing theological convictions about innocence, failure, and mortality in the human condition. Nevertheless, many Christians maintain that, however remote and elusive it may be, yet there must be a basic historicity to the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden (Gen 3), what is commonly referred to as the fall.

Maintaining this historicity of the fall mitigates two theological problems. First, if the fall did not happen in real time and space, then we would be forced to conclude that sin and evil (and the death that results from sin, according to Paul in Rom 5) were built into the original creation by God, who must be the source of evil. This conclusion causes obvious difficulties for theists. Second, without the fall, Christ’s historical act of salvation for sinful humans loses much of its traditional purpose and coherence (again, Paul’s explanation of Christ’s atoning work in Rom 5 is crucial).

For some of the most theologically conservative Christians – such as young-earth creationists – these two problems are of sufficient magnitude that mainstream evolutionary science must be rejected in favour of the historical Adam and Eve, who are supposed to have lived a few thousand years ago. However, there are other mediating solutions available.

In the Roman Catholic Church’s definitive Humani Generis (1950), Pope Pius XII declared that while evolutionary theory might be of value in understanding the physical origins of humans, it should not be considered as impinging upon belief in the spiritual soul, nor upon doctrinal considerations such as the primacy of Adam as the first human and the source of original sin. A line was thus effectively drawn between scientific research and theology which, while creating tension among Catholic theologians at the time (O’Leary 2007: 149–159), allowed for the Church’s tradition to be affirmed without denying the science. This has remained the Church’s official stance, although some recent Catholic theologians (and some popes) have been ready to explore the positive implications of the science for theological views of human and non-human origins (e.g. Johnson 2014).

Popular among evangelical Christians are solutions that re-envision the historicity of the fall in order to retain an evolutionary view of life. Generally speaking, these solutions relax the traditional requirement that Adam and Eve were literally the first humans, and see them as representing a significant stage in the growth of the human population, or of our spiritual evolution in pre-recorded human history. The well-known model by Alexander (2008), for instance, proposes that the historical Adam was a neolithic farmer some 6,000 years ago; by no means the first human, but the first to be gifted by God with the Holy Spirit and therefore the first to possess the divine image. From this man’s disobedience, original sin emerged to infect all later humans. Since Adam’s primacy in this model lies in the spiritual dimension, there is no impact on human biology or evolutionary history. A more recent solution to the problem of the historical Adam (Loke 2022) uses population genetics to suggest that Adam is the common ancestor of all modern humans even though he was certainly not the first anatomical Homo sapiens.

Although these approaches make few points of contact with the text of Genesis 2–3 itself – and can only be considered very loose interpretations; indeed, Loke (2022) argues that his own approach is a ‘model’ rather than an ‘interpretation’ – they tend to be popular in evangelical circles, where there is a real concern to maintain the historicity of the fall because of the influence of theologies of substitutionary atonement. However, there are many other Christians who show few such concerns to safeguard the traditional doctrines. Some prominent scholars in the science-theology field have deconstructed the Christian traditions of sin, death, and atonement to their roots, and are exploring new theologies of evolution, and evolutionary theodicies, without heavy reliance upon an historical fall (e.g. Sollereder 2019). The biblical text of Genesis 2–3 stands in the background to such work, but largely as a theological myth of origins. The biblical story is not therefore considered as having significant impact on the scientific history of human origins, nor vice versa, while the story nevertheless warrants deep theological reflection on the reality of the human condition.

2.5 Creation in the Hebrew Bible

The creation stories of Genesis 1–3 win the lion’s share of attention, but there is extensive creation material elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (see Creation in the Old Testament). Key collections of such creation passages appear especially in the psalms (e.g. Ps 8; 104), the prophets (e.g. much of Second Isaiah, Isa 40–55), and the wisdom literature (e.g. Job 38–41). Although some of this material appears similar to the creation traditions that appear in the Genesis texts (e.g. creation by God’s word, Ps 33:6), much of it develops in different ways, for instance citing mythological motifs known in other ANE texts (such as the divine warrior theophany in Ps 29, and God’s battle with the sea at creation; Ps 89:9–11 in English translations), or making rich theological connections between creation, exodus, redemption, and second exodus/new creation (e.g. Isa 51:9–11), or even developing the theme of the natural world’s praise of its creator (e.g. Isa 55:12).

Taken overall, the creation material of the Hebrew Bible is extremely diverse in both content and genre, and it defies easy systematization. Consequently, there have been few attempts to interpret it in modern scientific terms in the way that Genesis 1 has been treated. Note, however, the pioneering work of Brown (2010), and McLeish (2014), who make imaginative allusions between these creation texts and modern scientific ideas. Brown (2010) categorizes all of the Hebrew Bible’s creation texts into seven groups or ‘pillars’, and uses each group as an imaginative springboard to introduce many diverse scientific stories that relate to the various themes in the texts. For instance, Brown develops a parallel between the cosmic pessimism of Ecclesiastes and the cycles of struggle and competition in natural selection (Brown 2010: 186). McLeish (2014) concentrates on the book of Job, and likens the modern scientist’s deep curiosity about the natural world to Job’s search for wisdom in the face of trial, wisdom that God explores in the speech from the whirlwind by questioning Job on the many wonders of the natural world (Job 38–41).

These last two examples show how the wisdom literature in particular contains many resources for developing creation themes. One in particular stands out. In some hymn-like passages, wisdom is personified as a female being who has a special role to play at the original creation. In the most famous such passage (Prov 8:22–31), Wisdom describes how Yhwh created her at the beginning, God’s first work, before the beginning of the heavens and earth. She then accompanies God through the making of the rest of creation, acting as God’s ‘architect’ or ‘master builder’, God’s ‘delight’ (8:30). Later texts develop the personification of Wisdom even further, and describe her in such transcendent terms that it becomes difficult to disentangle her from God (Wisdom 7–9; Sirach 24).

From a modern perspective, these portraits of Wisdom bear an obvious relation to the ways that the laws of nature are seen by scientists (Harris 2013: 69–70). Wisdom works as the ubiquitous organizing power behind all creative and natural processes, and it is not too much of a stretch to compare her with the Platonist’s idea of forms, which has been so influential in the physical sciences for informing a view of the laws as the universal ordering principles of the cosmos. It is possible that attractive theologies of science could be fashioned which draw upon the hymns of Wisdom to provide biblical support and colour for the physicist’s view of natural law. Such theologies could draw upon the Genesis creation texts, but the Wisdom texts are rich and independent resources for creation thought in their own right.

2.6 Creation in the New Testament

Like the Hebrew Bible creation texts outwith Genesis, the New Testament is widely overlooked as a resource for creation theology, but it contains important theological developments around the role of Christ in creation. Best known is the prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1–18), which declares that Christ is the pre-existent Logos who was with God in the beginning, and through whom all things came into being long before he became flesh (see also 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15–20; Heb 1:2–3). Strong allusions are being made here to the Wisdom hymns discussed in the previous section; much that was said of Wisdom is now being said of the Logos/Christ. Hence it is clear that the Wisdom hymns provided the springboard for the New Testament writers to make theological sense of the profound but shocking claim that the all-too human teacher from Nazareth was simultaneously instrumental in the bringing about of worlds in the beginning, reflecting God perfectly. The Jewish Wisdom hymns – along with the eschatological conviction that Christ’s resurrection had inaugurated a new creation – made this amazing theological move possible (Harris 2013: 70–73).

In trying to make modern sense of the New Testament claims of Christ’s pre-existence, some theologians have brought discoveries in scientific cosmology to bear. Since the New Testament tells us that Christ the Logos is embedded in creation – he is its pattern/blueprint – then the incarnation is theologically parallel to scientific cosmology (Murphy 1994: 101–102). In which case, the intriguing idea of ‘fine-tuning’ becomes relevant in interpreting the texts. The point here is that the current physical structure of the universe is extraordinarily sensitive to the values of certain of the physical constants. If some of these constants had been even minutely different (less than one percent) then there may have been no galaxies, stars, or planets, let alone biological life on earth. A tortuous philosophical debate has ensued about whether fine-tuning constitutes scientific evidence for a divine ‘fine tuner’, or can be explained in non-theistic ways (such as by multiple universes). The christological argument suggests that fine-tuning is a scientific articulation of Christ’s pre-existence. The human Jesus of Nazareth was pre-existent insofar as the physical conditions for the evolution of our universe made his appearance as a human being inevitable in the fulness of time (Macquarrie 1990: 391–392; Murphy 1994). Thus, fine-tuning is a way of defending both the incarnation and the pre-existence of Christ, goes the argument, an argument made possible and cogent by the Wisdom hymns of the Hebrew Bible and the christological texts of the New Testament. Since this hermeneutical move is overtly anachronistic, it is as vulnerable to critique as other kinds of scientific readings of creation texts, but in the science-theology dialogue the fine-tuning reading offers an imaginative way of exploring the deep meaning that underpins the physical sciences.

2.7 Ecological hermeneutics

Ecotheology responds to the urgency of the environmental crisis, developing theological and ethical perspectives of the non-human natural world. The Bible’s creation texts are rich resources, but other biblical texts have proved invaluable for their ecological wisdom. The recent Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Ecology (Marlow and Harris 2022) illustrates the breadth of the area, as well as the particular hermeneutical questions raised.

One of the earliest – and most famous – publications in this area was hermeneutical in nature: Lynn White Jr.’s (1967) proposal that the modern exploitation of nature in the industrial revolution was legitimated by Western Christian anthropocentrism. To White, the Genesis creation stories were taken as free licence for humankind to dominate and exploit the natural world, since creation had been made for the benefit and rule of humankind. Although there have been many critical responses to White since, his argument still stands as a foil in ecological hermeneutics. An important lesson learnt from those responses is that – in spite of White’s essentially negative view of the creation texts – the Bible contains many texts that encourage a positive ecological stance towards the natural world (Horrell 2010: 8). For instance, the Hebrew prophets are saturated with natural imagery and with references to the natural world (e.g. Isa 24:3–6), giving a clear sense of nature’s independence in creation from humans.

One of the legacies of White’s proposal is that scholars in this area have taken great care to foreground methodological discussion, hence the development of ecological hermeneutics as a specialist field for the treatment of key texts. While many scholars in this area rely on the historical-critical method – essentially discerning a view of the original authors’ ancient ecological wisdom – others have built their own bespoke hermeneutical schemes to reflect the fact that modern ecological interpretation is influenced by (and influences in its turn) issues of sociopolitical, gender, and postcolonial justice.

Best known among these schemes is the Earth Bible. This project has produced a number of volumes of eco-commentary, originally set within the context of six foundational ecojustice principles: intrinsic worth, interconnectedness, voice, purpose, mutual custodianship, and resistance (Habel 2000; Earth Bible Team 2000). These principles were constructed so that ‘Earth’ should emerge as a character in the biblical narrative in its own right. In this view, Earth represents the entire living population of the planet, and stands for their mutual dependence upon each other. Earth has its own voice, which can be raised in celebration or in resistance to injustice at the hands of humans. Earth therefore resembles a living and dynamic organism, a self-regulating entity which is simultaneously constituted of interlocking networks of creatures (Earth Bible Team 2000: 46). Significantly, the Earth Bible principles do not use the terms ‘God’ or ‘creation’, in order that dialogue with scientists can be facilitated as much as with non-theistic religious traditions, and in order that Earth can be seen as the primary object of enquiry rather than secondarily, as part of God’s property (Earth Bible Team 2000: 38).

The Earth Bible rationale departs radically from the conventions of historical criticism, and as such is vulnerable to the potential drawbacks of anachronism and selective literalism outlined earlier, drawbacks which dog many scientific/naturalistic interpretations of the Bible. A defence of this particular rationale, however, might point out that the Bible is not a museum exhibit, but has a normative status for many millions of modern Christians today. Ecojustice is of such urgency that the Bible’s ethical advice must be translated into stark modern terms for modern people. However, ecological hermeneutics cannot of itself develop the pros and the cons further: this is a task for modern theologians and ethicists.

3.1 The flood (Gen 6–9)

The biblical flood is the prototypical story of divine judgement in the Bible, describing a catastrophe of such proportions as to reverse the original creation back to its state of watery chaos (as in Gen 1:2), in preparation for an effective new creation (Gen 9).

As with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and as with the other primeval stories of the ANE (which include several flood stories), the flood of Genesis 6–9 is believed by biblical critics to be largely mythological. There is no geological evidence of a worldwide flood in human history, and the realization that what evidence there is could be better interpreted in terms of a widespread ice age was one of the defining moments of nineteenth-century geology. However, some contemporary Christian believers uphold a basic historicity to the biblical story, nowhere more strongly than in young-earth creationism, where the flood is held responsible for having produced much of what we see today of the earth’s geology. Professional geologists – like critical biblical scholars – interpret the evidence (whether that evidence is the rocks or the biblical text) very differently from the creationists. However, this is not to say that there is no chance of some kind of genuine historical happenstance standing behind the story. Specifically, scholars often wonder whether the biblical story might reflect a distant memory of historical devastation due to the annual floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, where the ANE flood traditions are supposed to have originated. Moreover, some scientists have maintained that, although there may be no geological evidence known for a worldwide flood currently, this does not rule out the possibility that there was such a global catastrophe in human history. Several kinds of scientific model have been proposed for a global flood, some of which have been important in the history of science.

3.2 The exodus

The book of Exodus contains many stories of divine action and miracle, most famously the plagues of Egypt (Exod 7–12) and the sea crossing (Exod 14–15). The Exodus text makes it abundantly clear that these were divine acts, but in modern times there have been many scientific/naturalistic interpretations, which work by assuming that the text provides eyewitness data (observations) for the construction of scientific models. Whether or not such interpretations ‘explain away’ God’s supposed role in the story is a complex theological question beyond the scope of this article. There are many answers to this question – both positive and negative – depending upon one’s understanding of the distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘supernature’, and upon whether one accepts the widespread Humean view of miracle. These are largely modern concerns which the biblical texts do not address.