OK - Time to catch up on reader questions.  Here is another great point for discussion by Cliff from Oregon: 

“In Chapter four, and your discussion of accommodation, you seem to present us with a false dilemma: that God had to choose between revealing truths to Moses within the context of his (mistaken) cosmogony, or introducing a more scientifically correct cosmology. Why could he not choose a third alternative of eliminating all references to either? If, in fact, Genesis 1 is every-word-inspired, why would God give an untrue account. Why would he not leave things quite simply at Genesis 1:1, and then move to the story of Adam and Eve? Why does accommodation have to include so much mistaken detail?”

Since I don’t have direct access to the mind of God, I can only speculate on the answer to this.  Suffice it to say that the text itself supports the assumption.  In other words, we know that God inspired the author of Genesis to give the Hebrews a creation account.  And as Christians, we accept the authority of Scripture and reject any idea that the Biblical authors could turn “rogue” during their writing.  But yet we can clearly see the Ancient Near-Eastern (ANE) model of the heavens and the earth being described throughout the Scriptures, especially during the creation account.  So we must conclude that for some reason, God - in his infinite wisdom - saw it fit to do this.  I don’t think this point is debatable.  But if I understand you correctly, your question is more along the lines of, “Why do you think God did it like this, when He could have just omitted all references to the scientific details of the cosmos?”

Consider two things: (1) how important cosmology was to ANE cultures (they all had detailed versions) and (2)  how conflated ANE cosmologies were with polytheistic paganism.  Now consider how susceptible God’s people were to pagan influence before the Scriptures were committed to writing.  Imagine how difficult it would have been to maintain a theologically correct oral tradition when such fascinating pagan oral traditions were being told all around you.  Whether in Babylonian exile or slaves in Egypt, the Hebrews were being continually bombarded with ANE paganism.  And ANE paganism was always wrapped in cosmological packaging and always included a creation account demonstrating how the pantheon of pagan gods organized the heavens and the earth from the primordial chaos. 

Given this, I don’t see how God could have addressed the ANE paganism without addressing the ANE cosmology.  But a radical break with the scientific consensus of the day might have destroyed the credibility of His prophets.  Consider the fourth day of creation.  God made two great lights, the sun and moon, set them in the firmament between the waters and made the stars also.  If we understand the role that the heavenly bodies played in ANE paganism, then we can clearly see the wisdom of God in assigning a common purpose to the sun and moon (to be light and signs for seasons), and relegating the stars to insignificant things, created by Yahweh almost as an afterthought.  So we can forget about using the stars for Astrological purposes, which was common practice in the ANE.  And we can forget about worshipping the stars as gods, since they are created entities of lesser significance than the two “great” lights - which themselves were not gods but objects used by Yahweh for a naturalistic purpose.

So God clearly makes his theological point.  A point that would have been difficult to make without any reference to the heavens.  Ditching the solid firmament for deep space, introducing planets nebulae and galaxies, and explaining how the stars are actually greater lights than the moon (only much more distant), and how the moon is not even a light (reflecting the light of the sun), and that the sun is the same type of thing as the other stars which are innumerable - all of this would have been an incredible distraction to the theological point being made - that the universe were created by one God, and no created thing is to be worshipped as god.

This didn’t end with the Old Testament.  When Jesus tells his disciples that the “mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds” - He is also using the scientific consensus of his audience (smaller seeds had not yet been discovered) to make a point.  Had he made reference to ”orchid” seeds, his theological point might have been overshadowed by scientific questions.  Had He not made any references to seeds, this important parable might not have been told.  The Scriptures are full of such instances.  So we can only conclude that God is free to accommodate Himself to our finite understanding of the universe we inhabit, even it means using mistaken scientific consensus to make a theological point. 

The bottom line: if science is continually adapting to new discovery, and the “Word of the Lord Standeth fast for ever” then any science used by the Biblical authors must be understood in the proper scientific context.  This understanding should also keep “Biblical science” from limiting the scientific progress of future generations of Christians.  In fact, we should expect modern science to reveal things that would have been unknown to the generations of God’s people who committed the Scriptures to writing.

-GJG

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