I haven't been writing for the past two weeks because I have been sick, it has been really hot here, there has been too much going on in my life, etc. I can come up with a million excuses. It is certainly not because there has been no news. But there has also been a problem of writer's block. I suppose all writers come to a point when they say to themselves, "there is so much that has been written, what can I say that is different?" So I'm just not sure what to write that hasn't already been written about current events.

I have been reading a book entitled "The Beginnings of Wisdom" about the philosophy behind the book of Genesis. It is fairly dense reading, so I have been going slowly. One of the main points is that the bible was not necessarily written as a historical document, but has a certain point of view that it is putting forward. I cannot sum it up in a simple and trite formula, but the book begins from the assumption that the inconsistencies and oddities of the bible story are placed there for a reason.

Here is sample of one of the point about the creation. When god created the world, he created light and separated day and night before he created the sun. This seems inconsistent with the natural world based on observance of the sun and how it works, even for the ancients. The reason, according to the author, is to demote the sun in the pantheon of creatures in the universe. At the time of the writing of the Bible, there were people across the earth, most notably in Egypt and Mesopotamia, who worshipped the sun. The Hebrews wanted to reject this sun worship, so demoted the sun by saying it was created after plants. Also, by listing the order of creation in the way it does, at odds with our observed and deduced knowledge of the universe, the Genesis writer states from the beginning that one cannot understand the world through observation and deduction, but through revelation by God.

As I said, the book is dense and takes each part of the story and analyses it from two to three different angles, the historical view, which is the most superficial view; the analytical view, breaking down the meaning of the words, the order in which things are presented, etc.; and the moral view, what is being taught by the text.

I do not agree with all of what he says but it is an interesting and educational read. He seems preoccupied in the footnotes with the idea that creation and evolution are not necessarily at odds with one another because the creation story is not necessarily a historical account, but a pedagogical account.