For many Latter-day Saints, the opening chapters of Genesis, with their creation accounts, are a battleground. We try to map the “days” of creation onto geological eras, reconcile a localized flood with global stratigraphy, or fit evolution into the rib of Adam. But what if we are asking the text to do something it was never designed to do? In a refreshing and technically grounded new interview over at the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, BYU ancient scripture professor Avram R. Shannon suggests that the key to understanding Genesis isn’t to force it into harmony with 21st-century science, but to let it be what it actually is: an ancient, edited, and composite text that cares far more about our covenant relationship with God than the physics of the cosmos.
The Tale of Two Creations
One of the first things Shannon points out—a fact he quizzes his own BYU students on—is that Genesis doesn’t offer a single, seamless narrative. It presents two distinct accounts (Genesis 1:1–2:3 and Genesis 2:4–2:25) that differ in style, scope, and even the order of creation.
The first creation account contains the separation of creation into creative periods … Human beings are made in God’s image, and males and females are created simultaneously.
In the second creation account … The order of creation is first the male human, and then the rest of the animals, then the female human … This is the creation account where humanity is made from dirt.
Rather than seeing these as contradictions to be “fixed,” Shannon frames them as complementary theological pillars. He connects them to what Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf calls “the paradox of man.” The first account (God’s image) teaches us we are everything to God; the second (dust) teaches us we are nothing without Him. We need both stories to understand who we really are.
I’ve written about the implications of these being two separate accounts in a previous series that I wrote about the Contradictory Commands to Adam and Eve:
Letting Ancient Books Be Ancient
Perhaps the most important part of the interview is Shannon’s insistence that we stop expecting Iron Age authors to understand DNA or astrophysics. He discusses the “firmament” (Genesis 1:6–8) not as a poetic metaphor for the atmosphere, but as what the ancient authors actually believed it was: a solid dome holding back cosmic waters.
It’s really a question of expectations. We want to be very careful when making scripture do something it is not trying to do …
There is no possible way for an author in the Mediterranean Iron Age to even have the tools to articulate what DNA is … It would be unfair of us to expect it of them. Sometimes it is helpful to just let ancient books be ancient.
He argues that this doesn’t invalidate the inspiration. Citing Nephi, he reminds us that God speaks to people “according to their language, unto their understanding” (2 Nephi 31:3). God worked within the ancient Israelites’ geocentric, flat-earth worldview to teach them saving truths about the Covenant, just as He works within our incomplete scientific models today.
Joseph Smith’s Creative Engagement
Shannon also dives into Joseph Smith’s famous King Follett Sermon to illustrate a uniquely Restoration approach to the text. Joseph didn’t feel bound by the standard translation—or even the standard Hebrew grammar. Shannon unpacks Joseph’s reading of the first verse of Genesis, where the Prophet altered the Hebrew word reshit (“beginning”) to roshit (“head”) to argue that “The Head One of the Gods brought forth the Gods.”
On a purely grammatical and text-historical level, this does not reflect the Hebrew text we have received at all…
[But] this is a tricky question, in part because Joseph Smith is reflecting on the Hebrew Text—but he is also emending it.
This shows that for Latter-day Saints, the text is dynamic and open to prophetic expansion, not a static prison of literalism.
Conclusion
Shannon ultimately argues that Genesis is a prologue to the Exodus—a setup for the story of Israel, not a textbook on biology. By accepting its ancient nature, we can stop fighting with the text and start learning from it.
Recognizing that the ancient authors were not doing twenty-first-century science helps me to focus on what they are doing rather than potentially remonstrating against them for what they are not.
For more on how to read the “firmament,” the specific Hebrew grammar of the King Follett sermon, and the role of the Redactor in Genesis, head on over to the Latter-day Saint history blog, From the Desk, to read the full interview about the two creation accounts in Genesis with Avram Shannon.
Leave a Reply