In the Beginning: The True Message of the Genesis Origin Stories

by Lawrence R. Farley

For decades, debate has raged over whether God created the world in six days or whether it came to be independently over the course of billions of years. The assumption in these debates is usually that the claims of religion and of science are irreconcilable. But there is a third viewpoint that is rarely considered—the idea that while the Bible certainly teaches that God created the world, it gives no information about exactly how He did it, because the origin stories in the Book of Genesis were never intended to be read as either science or literal history. But they do have important lessons to teach us today. Fr. Lawrence Farley takes us through the initial chapters of Genesis verse by verse, bringing out the spiritual truths that lie hidden to modern minds in this ancient text.

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About the author

Father Lawrence, born in 1954, completed his M. Div. at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology in 1979. After 6 years in pastoral ministry with the Anglican Church of Canada, he entered the Orthodox Church and completed a Certificate program at St. Tikhon’s Seminary in Pennsylvania and was ordained to the priesthood in 1986. Since 1987 he has served as the pastor St. Herman of Alaska Church in Langley BC, a missionary parish of the OCA (Archdiocese of Canada) founded by local laity, which has since grown to attain regular parish status and purchased its own building. Several priests, deacons, and lay members of new missions have emerged from the membership of St. Herman’s. Fr. Lawrence is the author of the Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series from Conciliar Press, and of a number of other books and articles, and appears in regular weekday podcasts on Ancient Faith Radio. He lives in Surrey B.C. with his family.

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did like Fr Farley's approach to the Genesis text. He has us read the text as it might have been understood in the ancient world, with their ideas of mythology rather than trying to make the text address issues of modern science. He is not afraid to apply the concept of mythology to the text and to glean from it the lessons that are there from this perspective. He uses a knowledge of other ancient Mideastern sacred texts and of Hebrew to uncover the meaning that is there. As such he does not get into the issues raised by trying to read the text purely "literally" as some fundamentalists do. His literal reading is that he takes every word seriously as viewed through the lens he has chosen. Very helpful for those believers trained in science who find a literalist interpretation very problematic. I don't agree with all of his interpretative decisions - for example I accept that in the Noah and the flood narrative (Genesis 6-9) that there really are two separate flood stories that have been intertwined in Genesis. I think it readily accounts for the unusual repetitiveness and the inconsistencies found int he narrative. Obviously the final editor of Genesis accepted both of the stories and didn't try to correct either one or harmonize the differences. Fr. Farley makes no use of traditional Orthodox interpreters of Scripture - the Church Fathers. The lens he chooses to read the text doesn't require him to use their interpretation of the text.