What Is the Creation Story There to Do for Us?

We understand the Biblical Creation Story best if we consider what kind of text it is, what were the needs of the first audiences, and what social setting it was intended for. We will appreciate how reading it aloud in worship enabled its ancient audiences to live faithfully in the land, admiring the creation as a work of craftsmanship, and seeking to form a life of imitating God, and this fortifies them (and us) against some prominent temptations.

Biography

C. John “Jack” Collins (PhD University of Liverpool) is Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, and a Senior Research Fellow for The Creation Project for the 2016-17 academic year. With degrees from MIT (SB, SM) and the University of Liverpool (PhD), he has been a research engineer, a church-planter, and, since 1993, a teacher. In addition to his early focus on Hebrew and Greek grammar, he also studies science and faith, how the New Testament uses the Old, and Biblical theology. He is the author of Science and Faith: Friends or Foes? and Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care, as well as the forthcoming volume from Zondervan, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11.