Stories ancient and modern

587 was a pivotal year in the story of our people. After two years of nebuchadnezzar II’s siege, Jerusalem fell. The city was destroyed, including the temple. Babylon was victorious. The Kingdom of Judah was no more. The people were carried off into exile. it was very nearly the end of the story for our religion and our people. The Babylonians conquered by assimilation. The people were divided up, cut off from one another, and forced to live among the Babylonians, who imposed their culture, language and religion upon their new neighbors. Of course I would not be writing this little bit of history had that been the end of Jewish culture and religion. Our people survived, but barely. In the process they were exposed to a universe of new ideas and ways of thinking.

Prior to the exile, our origin story was the story of where our people had come from and how we came to be a distinct group of people. The way we told our story is recorded in the book of Deuteronomy these days, but before the time of the exile, we had need to have it written down. It was a strong oral tradition. Each generation learned the story word for word: “A wandering Aramean was my father, he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, he and just a handful of his brothers at first, but soon they became a great nation, mighty and many.” The story went on to record the Exodus from Egypt and end with the liturgy of offering to God: “And he brought us to this place, gave us this land flowing with milk and honey. So here I am. I’ve brought the first fruits of what I’ve grown on this ground you gave me, O God.”

But when we got to Babylon, we heard the organ stories of our new neighbors. They told an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia about gods locked in struggle and the formation of humans from their adversarial relationships. The stories were fascinating and speculated about the origin of the earth itself and the beginnings of time. But the stories did not ring true for our people, so they dug deeply into their own origins and the most ancient stories of our people. As our people emerged from Exile and began to trickle back into Jerusalem and the surrounding lands they brought with them the origin stories that we have been teaching our children ever since: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, while the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Le there be light’ and there was light.” Alongside this story was another about the Garden of Eden and the formation of Adam and Eve. We have used those stories and the one about the wandering Aramean to explain our origins. They have formed the basis of generations of teaching, of intense debates about who we are and where we have come from, and of the way we think of our world. When we tell these stories we think of God and we speak of God. Since Roman times we have used a Latin word to describe this thinking: theology.

Who knows why, in recent times, there has developed a kind of false divide between the study of science and the discussions of theology. Some claim that the two ways of knowing are opposed and that they cannot be reconciled, but for most of our history, science and theology were partners and sought the truth together. Personally, I cannot buy the divide. I find nothing in my theology that requires the rejection of scientific method and i find nothing in science that refutes my theology.

What I do find is that my scientist friends actually enjoy theology and sometimes they even engage in a kind of thinking that reminds me of the conversations our forebears had with the Babylonians so many generations ago. I like to listen to Science Friday on NPR. The conversations about science are enlightening and challenging. So it was only natural that I would pick up and read the story that is the current selection of the Science Friday Book Club. N. K> Jemisin’s book “The Fifth Season,” is part of her triple Hugo-winning Broken Earth trilogy. The novel ponders seismology, volcanology and how societies respond to disaster. The book is, however, a novel. A story based in some healthy research of geology and plate tectonics and volcanoes and the flows of magma, but a story nonetheless. It is one writers speculation about what might have occurred long ago, before the ancient supercontinent Pangaea began to break up and migrate into the current configuration of continents on our planet.

What I find fascinating about the book selection, now that i have read the book, is how much the conversation is a form of theology. Like the people of Israel carried off into Babylon and exposed to a different origin story, I find the speculation about societies reaching for meaning to be fascinating even if I cannot believe that there ever were creatures with the power to control volcanoes and the movement of the plates of the planet. My scientist friends don’t believe in such creatures, either. They would not posit that Orogenes ever existed. Although Jemisin tells a compelling and complex story of a character with the ability to control energy and temperature, it does not change our core beliefs. The novel gives the scientists a way to talk about the ancient processes of geology and the span and scope of geological time. And when they do, i find the discussion to lead to God and the realities and powers that are far beyond our human nature.

The book hasn’t shaped my worldview, thought it probably has taught me a little bit about geology. Still, it has been fun to read and I’m looking forward to discussing it with the scientists and listening to their interpretations of what is clearly an origin story. Maybe, like ancient Israel in Babylon, it will give me perspective from which to refine and reshape the stories I tell.

Copyright (c) 2019 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!