Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology

For an ancient reader, to create something was not to make its matter but to give it a function and a place in an ordered whole. John H. Walton builds his reading of Genesis 1 on that idea, first gathering Egyptian, Sumerian and Akkadian texts, with Ugaritic and Hittite material where it helps, to show how the ancient Near East thought about origins and how closely it tied the working cosmos to the temple.

The second half turns to Genesis 1:1 to 2:4 itself, with careful studies of key Hebrew terms. Walton argues that the chapter was never an account of material origins but a cosmology framed in temple terms, speaking from its own world while offering a distinct theology. A rigorous, rewarding study for anyone who wants to hear this familiar text as its first audience did.