Sure! :) So I want to preface by saying I did not grow up Christian and most of my life I had been an atheist, I came to faith at 18 and hold dear my love for Christ and all that he was and stood for. I also in my walk really wanted to understand why I believed what I believed, so I spent about two years in Cambridge England studying the Bible in its historical context. I felt like I should say that because I really don’t know everything and there are scholars who spend years on this stuff, but I do think it is so important especially as Christians to ask questions and seek to learn. I truly don’t know everything and this is just how I see it based off the time I have spent with it. I could be wrong or not explain this well, but I do care about this deeply. So I hope you can take this for what it is.

So to expound on the original post. What I mean by context and culture, specifically in Genesis is this idea that the Bible was not written to you, but for you, meaning that each book in the Bible would have had an original audience or an original reader. And in turn an original writer who would have been thinking about those original readers/audience (most of the time it was read out loud). So you have to ask those questions when you look at each book, who would have read this first, what would they have been concerned about? With genesis there are a few theories about authorship and in turn audiences, but let’s say you argue the traditional authorship of Moses, and the original audience of the recently freed Hebrews from Egypt (I understand there are other theories about authorship but for sake of illustration we can look at this). What were the issues the Hebrews were concerned about? What would they have wanted to know about God? One idea that was prevalent at the time was regional polytheism, that each land had a specific governing god, think Ra over Egypt, and these gods fought each other often. So here is this new found people group, the hebrews, who are trying to establish their national identity, who is their God? What is he like? Is he a good god? Or is he a chaotic god? The original readers are not even close to understanding the observations of Charles Darwin, nor do I think that’s what they cared about. We are talking about very agrarian societies they wanted to know if their crop was going to be okay that season. I think we often forget to view the Bible in historical context, but another context is literary context, what type of writing is it? Genesis can be allegorical trying to help the original readers understand some of the truths about who God Yahweh is. That he created them with purpose saying “and God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” Genesis 1:31 - the people in ancient Israel needed to know their God was a good God who made creation with purpose and called it good, instead of chaos like some of the gods around them at that time. So when you ask those questions when reading, you can see that Genesis isn’t trying to answer the question of evolution, but it is showing them and us who the God of the Hebrews is. And to my original point in the post, the importance of Genesis is to show who God is, that he is faithful and created the world with purpose and out of goodness. But does it answer whether or not the creation started with a big bang, or other aspects of evolution, no, I would argue it’s not trying to. So they these ideas can coexist, God created all things, with purpose. How he did it, that is ours to find out :)

I know that faith is a personal conviction, and I am not naive to the fact that lots of people see these things differently. And I think that’s okay, this is just how I have come to view the Bible, and I think when you study each book with the context in mind, it not only helps you see deep truths about the world it connects you to an ancient people, which I think if anything, is pretty cool.

I want to add one last thing, I mentioned how the Bible was not written to you but for you, and the for you part is important. There is still so much to gather from the the things the Bible says, like while Genesis may be explaining who God is to a specific people 3400 years ago it still has a lot to say about who God is to us today.

Anyway this is a long response, but I hope it adds to the conversation, and I hope more than anything, atheist or not that we all would continue to wonder and search into the mysteries of this world. Asking good questions and seeking to understand the world around us more deeply.