This is the third review for the Lost World Series. The present title focuses on Genesis 6-11 with the subtitle, Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate. This title is co-authored with Old Testament scholar, Tremper Longman III, with special contribution from geologist Stephen O. Moshier. The Lost World project aims to bridge the cultural gap between the world of the Ancient Near East (ANE) and the (post)modern West. Given that a broad introduction to Walton’s project was provided in the first review, I will spare the reader of re-treading the same pathways. This title does not suffer from the same extreme pitfalls that the first two did. Unlike the first two, I’m genuinely open to the central interpretative claim. However, like the first two, there is no shortage of theologically suspect remarks.

Summary

The book is broken into 4 parts with 17 propositions. While the short, discrete chapters help with readability, separating them by parts helps even more. This textual cartography provides additional structure within which the reader may orient herself while traveling through the argument.

1. Method: Perspectives on Interpretation The first 6 propositions establish the broad interpretive assumptions. In some ways, much of the rest of the book emerges out of what is established here. The methodological die is cast, rendering the remainder somewhat predictable. Drawing on literary conventions from ANE literature, Longman and Walton argue that biblical authors use hyperbole and exaggeration for rhetorical effect. In particular, the flood as global catastrophe is one such example.
2. Background: Ancient Near Eastern Texts While this part does not play a decisive interpretive role, Longman and Walton establish the flood motif within ANE literature. They argue that there is not an obvious relationship of dependence between the biblical flood story and those from the ANE. 
3. Text: Understanding the Biblical Text Literarily and Theologically Here Longman and Walton claim that Genesis describes a local flood using universalistic hyperbolic language; that is, Genesis genuinely describes a global flood, but that this is strictly rhetorical. The point of the rhetoric is to link the flood event into a cycle of sin and judgment captured by the following events.

Adam: Exile from the Garden:: Cain: Exile from Family and God:: 
Mankind: Flood:: Ham: Curse:: Babel: Scattering

4. The World: Thinking about Evidence for the Flood This section engages stereotypical apologetic paths taken by Christians eager to vindicate the biblical flood account. They argue that neither does geology nor do the ANE flood stories support a global flood. This section concludes with some reflections on the relationship between science and religion.

Evaluation

Strengths

This is the most persuasive of the Lost World series, probably due to Longman’s influence. While I don’t always agree with Longman, I’ve observed in his work a higher level of scholarship and care with the biblical text. The greatest strength is that the basic interpretative strategy is workable. While I am not fully persuaded that this is the best way to make sense of the Genesis flood account, the fact that other biblical texts are demonstrably hyperbolic constitutes a workable exegetical hypothesis.

There are a few other stray remarks that I believe could be useful in trying to make sense of the Bible within its ANE context:

1. Longman and Walton offer solid insight into the naming of Noah. “He named him Noah (nh) and said, “He will comfort (nhm) us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed.” (Gen 5:29) Aside from the wordplay between Noah’s name and the word comfort, this is a peculiar prophecy. Does it mean the curse will end? Does it mean that Noah himself will offer the relief? Longman and Walton persuasively argue that Noah is not himself bringing comfort, nor even that the curse will be completely lifted. Rather they argue that Noah brings mankind to God’s place of rest on the other side of judgment. Facing the total corruption of mankind and the torment that comes from living in a society filled with injustice, Noah brought comfort by carrying the human race out of corruption through the judgment of the flood. The bizarre scene that follows signals that whatever comfort Noah provided was temporary.
2. In Proposition 3, Longman and Walton have a nice discussion of the nature of literal and metaphorical. Literal and metaphorical are heavily context dependent terms. In the biblical debate, historical narratives are literal in some sense, many psalms are metaphorical in some parallel sense. The problem is that ordinary language is suffused with imagery, meaning historical accounts may include ostensibly figurative language. If we do not properly attend to such figures of speech or idioms, we could end up with bad interpretations.
   
   To illustrate, many idioms are referred to as dead metaphors, such that competent speakers of the given language need not understand the figurative aspect to use it properly. A simple biblical example of a dead metaphor comes from the phrase the son(s) of… (See text notes for 1 Sam 2:12, Neh 12:28, Mark 2:19; see also Carson’s Jesus the Son of God, chapter 1.) ‘Son(s) of X’ is used to mean those among the X group. Of course, it can denote reproduction, but it is often used in contexts where it’s obvious that parent-child relations are absent. Furthermore, it’s also not exactly a classical metaphor either because of its common usage. A contemporary example includes the way we use ‘blueprints’ to mean any kind of instruction or pattern. This metaphor is doubly dead since few architectural firms use literal blue prints (cyanotype) typical of early twentieth century architectural drawing reproduction.

Criticism

My concerns with this title are in some ways more superficial. I think the basic strategy of the book succeeds as an acceptable interpretation of the Genesis flood. So, the concerns I have with this text are not so much with issues fundamental to the goals of the study. That said, I do think some stray remarks made throughout the text are unwise and at times irresponsible. In other words, these are not theologically superficial; otherwise, I would have simply ignored them.

In the early chapters of the books, Longman and Walton establish their method and interpretative assumptions. They offer anachronism as an example of figurative rhetoric used in Genesis: 

The early chapters of Genesis contain a number of obvious anachronisms to everyone but to those who refuse to pay any attention to the evidence we have from the ancient world. An illustrative but not exhaustive list includes the following:

1. the care of domesticated animals occurring in the second generation of humanity (Gen 4:2-5)
2. the construction of the first city in the second generation of humanity (Gen 4:17)
3. musical instruments in the eighth generation (Gen 4:21)
4. bronze and iron making in the eighth generation (Gen 4:22)

We point out these anachronisms because they suggest that we must remember that real events are being rhetorically shaped for theological reasons. The biblical authors are not interested in describing these events as we might view them in a videotape presentation.

Lost World of the Flood, pp. 28-9

This is a strange passage for several reasons.

• In his other books, Walton allows that Adam and Eve are not the first humans or the only people on the planet. Even more strange is that Longman and Walton cite W.H. Green’s seminal treatment of genealogies later in the book (108), indicating that they know these are incomplete genealogies. If either of these assumptions is true, then the above examples cannot be anachronisms since they don’t tell us anything about the chronology of these generations.
• This passage does not play by the dialectical rules. They say these anachronisms are “obvious … to everyone but to those who refuse to pay any attention to the evidence we have from the ancient world.” Ouch! What a barbed statement! Aside from the sharp language, this passage is question-begging. The goal should be to persuade me that the Genesis accounts cannot be properly understood without rhetorical intervention. But for me to see that these are anachronistic, I would need to have already accepted the chronology provided by extra-biblical sources and sciences—which is exactly what’s under debate. Moreover, at the very point where they could have persuaded me (explaining how these genealogies are “rhetorically shaped for theological reasons”), I’m left with silence—no explanation, no elaboration, no citation, just naked assertion. I’m open to persuasion, but not when the argument is circular and bordering on a straw man. I’m left simply thinking that unless I adopt their view, I’m an anti-scientific fool.

Again, Longman and Walton claim without argument that the Bible could have supported a steady-state model of the universe:

[I]n the days when we believed in a steady-state universe, people could easily have gone to the Bible to find confirmation of that science. But today we no longer believe steady-state to be true. Today we might think we find confirmation of the big bang or the expanding universe, but someday we may no longer consider those to be true.

Lost World of the Flood, p. 8, emph. added

Easily? Why don’t they provide any examples of people who did this before Hubble’s discovery of the red shift? What passages might support a steady-state universe to defend that claim? It’s true that people are creative in making the Bible say almost anything, but I have never heard of anyone claiming that the universe could be steady-state in the face of Gen 1:1.

Finally, one of the more unfortunate remarks made by Longman and Walton is as follows:

The ancient world as a whole has different ways of knowing than we do. One of the expressions of this is that they do not have a line between myth and history.

Lost World of the Flood, pp. 18-9

Something is already amiss when making a statement about the epistemology of the entire ancient world. While the different cultures of the ancient world are probably closer to one another than they are to us, the subsequent statement is extremely misleading. The ‘they’ of the second statement is meant to refer to the cultures of the ancient world, but it is far from true that all of them lack a line between myth and history. For example, in the fifth-century BCE, Thucydides’ adopted a highly self-conscious historiographical method in writing The History of the Peloponnesian War. As it concerns biblical thought, consider the following passage:

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories [mythos] when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

2 Peter 1:16-18 (NIV)

Peter explicitly distinguishes his own eye-witness testimony from mythos, the Greek word from which we get the English ‘myth.’ What’s especially striking about Peter’s sensitivity to myth is that he consistently refers to the flood. The force of the citations indicates that he does not view them as “cleverly devised stories.” (1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:4-10, 3:3-7) Now, Longman and Walton aren’t claiming that Genesis is myth in opposition to history; nevertheless, such a free blending of these concepts seems at odds with Peter’s (ancient) remarks.

Concluding Remarks

I appreciate that Longman and Walton resist treating the text as itself indicating a local flood. No doubt there are times when biblical authors use universal language to refer to a more limited domain (cf. Gen 41:57, Acts 2:5, Rom 1:8)—a common phenomenon in language where context specifies the range of such expressions (see this article’s opening sentence). I find myself resistant to arguments for a local flood because the Genesis account is so pervasively global (see esp. Gen 7:19-20). Longman and Walton opt for a local flood by signaling that the language, while unmistakably global, was hyperbolic. I’m genuinely open to this interpretation.

My one hesitation is that in the case of the hyperbole in Joshua’s conquest accounts, the textual evidence for treating the universal language as hyperbolic is internal to Joshua (cf. Josh 10:33, Josh 16:10). In the case of the flood, there is no counterevidence in Genesis suggesting that it was local after all. Even canonically, the language attributed to the flood has a distinctively global flavor. In 2 Peter 3:5-7, Peter compares the flood to creation and the final judgment—unmistakably global events. While Longman and Walton do address the New Testament authors, they claim that they echo the hyperbole of their Scriptures. The specter of hermeneutical unfalsifiability looms: if the flood was in fact global, how would we know?

This suggests that the geological evidence bears considerable weight in this interpretation. But Moshier’s geological section of the book focuses on debunking “flood geology,” a parallel to young earth “creation science.” Like Moshier, Hugh Ross’ arguments in Navigating Genesis against a global flood are aimed at dubious assumptions about the flood that I would not accept. Here is what I would expect to see if the flood were global:

• The global flood would be extremely ancient—on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. The rebuttals I’ve read of a global flood assume a young earth creationist chronology.
• A global flood would have been sensitive to climate differences; i.e. the water would freeze where appropriate. The text does not preclude that the flooding precipitation was snow.
• The animal pairs are strictly representative (according to its kind), not every single animal species (cf. Gen 1:21, 24-25).
• The “springs of the great deep” are immense. One of the biggest gripes in these discussions is an apparently inadequate supply of water for a global food. Recent research indicates that the supply of water on earth is at least double what is currently on the surface. This water is trapped in rock, but the point is that the terrestrial supply of H₂0 is much greater than was known even 10 years ago.