Creation, Rest, and Reign: What Genesis Meant to the Ancient World (Rachel Booth Smith) Ep. #224

Dru (00:00)
An Egyptian, a Hittite, and a Hebrew are all sitting around a campfire swapping creation stories. What would seem weird and what would seem This week we’re talking to Rachel Booth-Smith who wrote a book called Rest Assured where she investigates in a very readable book even at the high school level or a small group level, ancient Near Eastern text and the creation account and how it kind of all leads into Sabbath and how Sabbath means things that maybe we didn’t think it meant.

It’s a fascinating read. I’m very impressed by how she made things that really only scholars talk about accessible and readable for just about anybody. Once again, fascinating conversation. Stay tuned.

Dru (00:43)
so maybe I should ask you, well I’m just assuming that you,

like have been in Bible studies, it reads as somebody who has been in Bible studies and maybe has had to be the one where you’re like, I’m not sure if that’s what this text is about, right? When somebody says something. So I wonder what were the things that was in my mind what generated this book, but what for you actually generated the book?

Rachel Booth Smith (01:09)
Yeah, it kind of started from a seminary class and I went to Torah and I sat down and I heard about all of these other cosmogonies and then was just kind of enlightened into what that revealed in the Genesis account and I would go to my friends and I was like, you guys, this is incredible. And they were like, what? And they would look at me like I was bringing something very, very new in and they were a little bit alarmed because it was so new and they had never heard it.

Dru (01:33)
Hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (01:37)
And so I went back to my professors and I was like, is this new? And they were like, no, this is real old. Like we’ve been talking about this for 40, 50 years. And I said, well, wait a minute, then why isn’t this, it brought to my friends. And I felt honestly a little bit betrayed by the academy. why can I tell you the four tenants of Kin Ham, but I can’t tell you everything else.

Dru (02:04)
Ken

Ham as a creation scientist for those of you that don’t know. Yeah.

Rachel Booth Smith (02:07)
Yes, and

I do remember asking a professor, where is his interaction with these scholars? And they were like, he doesn’t interact with the scholars. He’s not in any of this at all. I think he’s actually not even degreed in that stuff. So I was just kind of shocked that what was available to the public was not ⁓ actually ⁓ rigorously studied and had not been put to the test in the academy.

Dru (02:14)
Mm.

Rachel Booth Smith (02:36)
and the stuff that had been put to the test at the academy and worked out, stayed on the top shelf. And so I was really frustrated about that. And so I thought, well, I’ll write about this. And so I did a little Bible study and it was very well received and I compared cosmogenies and then I kind of just set up the contrast. I was like, let’s read these and look at it what they’re saying and then let’s look at what the Bible says. And it was so fun, it was so great.

⁓ But there was ⁓ a lot of trepidation from people. A lot of people have been taught that creation can be a litmus test for your faith. And I was running into that and because I had the credibility in my church and because the pastors had said I could teach this, they weren’t giving me that same litmus test and they were open to receiving it. ⁓ But that’s not always…

not always the case. And so I had to get a little bit creative about how I presented the material to kind of overcome that litmus test. But really it came out of my desire to bring this material to my friends in a way that they would be able to read even if they had been up all day with a kid who was, you know, had the measles or whatever, you know, like they were ready, they could take a chapter of this at a time.

Dru (03:55)
Yeah, and it reads like you have, I mean, that’s how it reads, it’s like I’m a friend who you’re trying to explain this to. I could imagine in some circles, ⁓ you use your family a lot. At beginning of every chapter, we hear another, it’s a bit of biography about how it fits in, and then you weave it together, and every time I was kind of like, all right, where’s she going with this? So it was good. ⁓ I like being surprised. But the, ⁓ so you’re,

Rachel Booth Smith (04:21)
Yeah.

Dru (04:24)
So that’s the entree. So you bring it into the family. You make a nice analogy that you can then use for every chapter. Good writing technique. But when you are sitting in a Bible study or talking to friends and you’re saying, well, this actually in the ancient ear, this might have sounded like the Enuma Elisha. This would have been things that people would have talked about the actual the theogones, right? The creation of the gods and then the cosmogony there as well. ⁓ I would imagine if you

Like in my mind, if I have that conversation with my friends who are not theologically oriented, their eyes just go blank like Dora the Explorer and like, they’re not interested. So I’m wondering how did you overcome that gap of interest?

Rachel Booth Smith (04:59)
You

You know, ⁓ one way I tell it that seems to work is I say imagine a campfire of different backgrounds. I think there’s so many pastoral nomads, so I think it’s fair to picture this happening even if we don’t have record of it. imagine the Hittites sitting there, and then you’ve got the Egyptian there, and you’ve got Joe Hebrew here, and you’ve got this whole campfire of, you know.

these guys sitting around and they’re looking up at the stars and somebody says, ⁓ tell me your story. Tell me, tell me how it happened. You know, what do you think it was? And you know, you’d hear one guy’s story and then you hear another guy’s story and then you hear the, you know, the Hebrew story and the Jewish story. And as he would tell it, you know, I say, sometimes I think that the campfire would get very upset.

And sometimes I think the campfire would be like, okay, and they would say, this is falling into the rhythm of what we understand. They would sit back relaxed. And sometimes they might get up and leave. And sometimes it’s offensive. Sometimes it’s beautiful and beyond compare. And so when the campfire gets animated, that’s when we wanna lean in and be like, hmm. And that has developed interest. People are like, ⁓ that sounds interesting. I can understand that.

Dru (06:25)
Yeah. Could we also throw the American fundamentalist evangelical, which I am loosely related with that tradition. ⁓ Could we put them around the campfire and would they be offended or would they see similarities?

Rachel Booth Smith (06:41)
Well, first off, I tell them they’re not at the campfire. I say you’re eavesdropping. Yeah, I just, I call it wholly eavesdropping. I say, you know, we’re listening in on a conversation that was happening. And so, ⁓ so yeah, you know, that’s, that’s part of what you have to overcome. And secondly, our questions aren’t the same questions they have. So I say, you know, you’re, you’re, can be a little bit rude to assert your, your ⁓

Dru (06:44)
You’re not invited. Yeah, okay.

Rachel Booth Smith (07:08)
primary interest into the conversation when that’s not what they’re asking. ⁓ And I didn’t let my five-year-old do that. So I don’t think that’s fair for us to do that either. ⁓ But I do think there’s some things that are hard. I think God’s delivering some truths that are a little bit difficult to hear ⁓ in a good way, right? In a good way. But I think overall His message

is one that we probably miss out on. Like I think you hear a lot about the power and majesty of creation. And a lot of times we skip the goodness, you know? Like why is goodness repeated? Not just because it’s good, because he’s good, right? And so like there’s a lot in there that ⁓ is good digging into.

Dru (07:55)
⁓ And where do you find, as you’re explaining these things, because it reads very much like you have talked through these things with other people, ⁓ as you’re explaining, where do you find the biggest stumbling blocks? Because I could imagine people also saying, why are you talking about quote unquote pagan text and pagan stories? We’re talking about what God said, not those people said. Like you’re eavesdropping too far. ⁓

Rachel Booth Smith (08:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, like, you know, when I’m citing coffin text spells, right? Like, sometimes the people who look at the end notes sometimes are like, hey, ⁓ that’s wicked. So I’m like, yeah, fair enough. Fair question. ⁓ The thing that people mostly struggle with, I think is the concept of just the idea of reading other stories. I think it’s the vocab. When I say, you know, we’re going to put Genesis next to these other

I say stories, not myths, because that’s a word that just creates all sorts of issues. But then even the word story mixes them up and we run into the other litmus test, which is inerrancy. And I try to avoid that by saying, you know, we tell the story of Jacob, right? We believe that happened, but the word story I’m using in that way, and that helps. that’s probably, you’re right, like when comparing it to other texts, they’re saying, but ours is true.

Dru (08:54)
Right.

Rachel Booth Smith (09:19)
I yeah, it is true and what is it communicating? It’s using this style. It’s like the style of a Western, right? Like they’re using that style to tell you something very specific. Let’s lean into the style. So.

Dru (09:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay, so going to drag you into my corner so I can beat you up a little bit right now. So are you ready? Yeah. Well, you have a whole chapter on genre, right? ⁓ And the one I might have missed it, right, because I was reading quickly. But ⁓ the one genre note you didn’t mention was ⁓ that you have Toledot in there. These are the generations of in the creation and everywhere else that clearly refers to genetic or genealogical descent.

Rachel Booth Smith (09:51)
Here we go. Let me get a drink of water.

Dru (10:18)
But you didn’t seem to count that as part of the genre equation in Genesis 1. Not every book can do everything. You can’t include everybody’s opinions, right? But I did wonder where do you place that genealogical note about creation?

Rachel Booth Smith (10:33)
I don’t, I haven’t thought yet. I’m gonna go limp fish in that corner. ⁓ I don’t have any great thoughts on that or interpretations. I kind of just left it alone. the, know, yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, I said amen like a coward and walked away.

Dru (10:34)
Never thought about it for a second. Yeah.

Okay. That is a fair response.

Yeah. You’re

not the first Hebrew Bible scholar that I put that to. they’re like, hmm, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that. Great. OK. So the book is called Rest Assured. Very clever. So why are you looking at creation through the lens of rest? I think that would catch a lot of people off guard, because they don’t think of rest as the thing that’s going on in creation. And what kind of work?

Well, I’ll let you say why the lens of rest? And we can talk about what work that metaphor does for you.

Rachel Booth Smith (11:28)
Yeah, so God rested on the seventh day. And so that was one of the big things that really changed for me when I learned that, know, rest is like saying sitting down kind of at a throne because everything is operating correctly. ⁓ God can sit on his throne. And that’s like a ⁓ good way to end a cosmogony is to say, and the deity rests.

⁓ And it’s rest not as in napping, but as in reigning or like Star Trek, you know, like engage. We’re ready to go, ready to roll. It’s like the beginning of something awesome is happening because everything is set up. And so that shift in thinking really, really changed a lot of things for me because if it is, if God is reigning and that’s what that means in the end and it’s saying that God set up the homeostasis and here we go, we’re going to run.

What does it mean when he asks me to rest? And what does it mean that God is on the throne? First off, in Genesis, when he gets to the end and he sits down, there’s a couple of really interesting conclusions there. One, there was no battle. So what’s that about? But then secondly, what he set up to run perfectly, to look at that and to say that was the ideal, that was important. And then also to say who is on the throne.

So, you we all say worship God, God’s on the throne, that’s great, but I feel like Genesis 1 is saying, who is God? Like that’s what we should be concerned with, and that’s what’s really, really, really beautiful. And so then once we kind of meditate on who God is on the throne, then our ability to rest is easier, honestly. I’m happier that he is on the throne. That guy who did all that stuff, thank God.

that is who is on the throne. And if we can put all that together and then understand that our call to rest is to actually say you are God and I am not in all the gillion areas that we’re worried about, then that just changes a lot of things.

Dru (13:39)
Yeah, ⁓ it’s a hard equation, especially for Americans who are very individualist and then functionally oriented towards we take care of everything. ⁓ I have all kinds of insurances so that I don’t have to trust God for just about anything, right? I just have to trust the insurance company. That’s not a swipe at insurance. It’s just the nature of our existence. ⁓

Rachel Booth Smith (13:48)
Yeah, I got this.

Yes, yeah.

Dru (14:05)
Would you also see this as ⁓ a parallel and we think of the ascension of Jesus as him kind of taking his role as regent with God, but he does sit at a throne, right? He ascends to a throne, so is that the same thing going on with Jesus? You can walk away from this one as well.

Rachel Booth Smith (14:17)
on.

I mean, it seems like it. I think it seems like there’s that Second Kingdom idea that the reign has also been inaugurated ⁓ for this kingdom come, for the restoration plan is beginning this big arc, and that’s a huge piece of it. So yeah, I think it’s on purpose. I think it’s a shadow and a mirror and all of those things.

Dru (14:50)
And I know my Jewish listeners will be leaning in right now, because it sounds like what you’re suggesting is ⁓ rest means a lot of work in preparation so that you can sit and things will run, right? Which tends to be around the Jewish holidays as is happening, especially Pesach. ⁓ But even every week, you have to coordinate your week so that ⁓ you can sit and let things run, right? ⁓

Rachel Booth Smith (15:10)
Yeah.

Dru (15:20)
Okay, when you talk about Sabbath in the church, do you, like we have this discussion, you I was a pastor getting people say, hey, like it’s good to take a Sabbath. Like it’s, you know, there’s atheist or books written by atheists that are suggesting people should take a Sabbath. But I’ve come to also realize that it’s disingenuous to tell people to take a Sabbath if they’re not working six days a week.

So which also, you know, both sides offend Americans, right? You should tell them like, hey, you need to stop working one day a week and do something else. And also like you need to work six days a week, not a weekend. So do you see both sides operating here in the creation narrative?

Rachel Booth Smith (15:48)
Yeah.

Ha!

I do think there’s like a 6-1 rhythm for sure. I think the idea of 7 is interesting in that it might not have been, like if I think about sitting around that campfire, right, and they’re listening in and he says, we get to the end and it’s day one. Like I feel like the campfire would lean in and be like, how many days are we going? Right? Cause 7 was really special. 7 meant something really interesting was happening. It was.

Dru (16:23)
Hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (16:29)
was kind of a combination of sacred and ⁓ lovely. Like seven meant something. And so when they get to day two, and then three, and then four, like I feel like the campfire would be like, how am I going to? Like that’s really fun. And so I think the seven is interesting in that way. And then when God does, you know, starts with the Exodus and the manna from heaven, you know, it’s definitely the six one rhythm, right? So you get the six on this one and then six and then one.

And then the prophets ⁓ later on when they talk to them, they’re kind of upset at what’s happening at the six and they’re upset with what’s happening with the one. Like they’re supposed to be a cohesive unit, not just separated. And so I do think it’s interesting that in creation it is one event and it is recognizing the rain on one day, but then operating within the functions that God has given you in the six. ⁓ But when you…

if you’re doing the six wrong, then the one isn’t going to work out either. You know, like you can’t, you can’t toggle it and pick and choose, which is, you know, all of the prophets that they’re, they’re, they’re pounding about. then the need to get to the Pharisees and to the other, you know, books later where they’re adding the rules and the guardrails. And they’re like, look, we have to do the six right. And we have to do the one right. Like they’re just really, really concerned about that because they’re concerned about holiness and they care. And it’s, it’s really, it’s

Dru (17:32)
Right.

Right.

Rachel Booth Smith (17:58)
I mean, I think it was a fair concern to have because they’d really messed it up. and Jesus is like, wow, you know, turns out not quite. Let’s, let’s, let’s reframe it just a touch.

Dru (18:00)
Mm-hmm.

Right. And like so many things with the Pharisees, he both affirms their desire to be holy and to establish traditions of holiness where there’s a lot of improvisation needed, but then chastises them for doing that and not ⁓ taking on the weightier matters of the law and integrating those. So it’s part of Jesus’ stick as a prophet. When I was, this is probably 12, 13 years ago when I was working on this book on ritual.

Rachel Booth Smith (18:15)
Yeah. ⁓

Dru (18:37)
⁓ ritual thinking within the biblical text. It was for the first time in my life I went through the prophets and it stood out to me, wow they talk about Sabbath a lot. It might be one of the most talked about recurring topics across the prophets and to the point where you get to Isaiah and it’s like eunuchs and foreign people.

Rachel Booth Smith (18:47)
Right?

Dru (18:58)
who keep my Sabbaths will have a greater inheritance than New Heaven’s New Earth, right? And you’re like, well, that was surprising. The one that keeps the Sabbath, you thought it would be keep the Torah. It might even be shorthand for keeping the Torah, The justice of land. So I think it is a bit surprising. ⁓ I wonder functionally how you view in a Christian life, I know people are gonna take very different stances and strong and weaker on this.

But what does Sabbath look like in the weekly Christian life? For you, you don’t have to prescribe anything.

Rachel Booth Smith (19:29)
I mean,

for me personally, if I can get to the end of a Sabbath and realize you are God and I am not, I feel like that was a win. I feel like it’s about reorienting my kingdom to his kingdom. And there’s just this subtle misunderstanding that grows in my six days into my kingdom, my schedule.

Dru (19:47)
Hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (19:57)
my, you know, even my things I want to do for Jesus, right? Like I just, I just build myself a house every stinking week. I can’t seem to help it. And the seventh day, whatever, whatever guardrails you need to set up for yourself, you know, I think it’s getting to the spot where you aren’t doing or building your own set of things.

⁓ and so sometimes, you know, that can look like rest. Sometimes that can look like family time. Sometimes that looks like preparing in the six so that you can take the one off. ⁓ I think that one’s different for everyone and I’d be pretty hesitant to prescribe that. because I mean, in your reading about Sabbath, you probably saw there’s like hardly any words about it. Like, like keep it and you’re like, how? And there is just hardly a stinking thing. Like there’s hardly any, ⁓

Dru (20:25)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (20:48)
any rules around it. And I think that’s on purpose. ⁓ I think that’s so that we recognize the king, ⁓ like specifically. I think going to church is like the very best way to celebrate Sabbath because that is absolutely that heart orientation ⁓ shift that happens there. And so that would be my number one. Like if I had to give somebody something, I would say go one day a week and make sure you mark that one day and, and start it at least, you know.

Dru (21:17)
Right.

Now some people will get very particular about go one day a week. They’ll say, no, no, the Sabbath is the Sabbath. mean, there’s a Jewish tradition of the eternal Sabbath that all years are marked off in actual metaphysical time and space. So I take it you’re not a Friday to Saturday, sundown to sundown Sabbath person.

Rachel Booth Smith (21:37)
No, I don’t see a ton of ⁓ reason personally for me to adhere to the strict timeline of that. I think it’s a lot more about the principle than the thing. And I think Jesus does that too when he’s, you know, he actually intentionally does a lot of healing miracles on the Sabbath. And I think that’s partly because he’s declaring his kingship, but he’s telling them, I’m doing this restorative act. I’m trying to pull us back.

and forward into what he designed it to look like. So of course he can do that. The king can do that. In particular, he should do that on Sunday. That’s who he is.

Dru (22:19)
Yeah, so even there,

and you’re right, mean, Sabbath is almost an entirely improvised ⁓ ritual, right? It’s like a set aside day, but there’s no direction. So you can, it makes sense that if the Pharisees and the people who cared about following the Torah were going to fight about anything, it was going to be the Sabbath. Cause that like, you get nothing, you get almost nothing, right? You don’t get much more with baptism or communion either. ⁓ There’s a ton of improvisation with both of those. ⁓

Rachel Booth Smith (22:40)
I don’t know.

Yeah.

Dru (22:48)
So I wonder what role, so looking back at creation, you put Sabbath as, or the resting of God as kind of his enthronement.

his kingdom and going back to your comment that you kind of casually threw in there, which I thought was kind of mind blowing is that if you’re a Hebrew hearing this story or anybody else, you are thinking, wait, how many days is this going to go? So how do you, what do you think is the significance of the breaking up of a week like that? My friend, Josh Berman, he casually blew my mind with this statement. goes, ⁓ months, ⁓ days.

years are all lunar and solar, like they’re all directly referenced off of some celestial event. There is no such seven day anything in creation, right? It’s a completely artificial thing. So how does that fit within the ancient Near East? Would that blow their minds? Or they’d be like, yeah, everybody does seven, seven day weeks.

Rachel Booth Smith (23:34)
Yeah.

You know, I don’t know about the seven day weeks. know they did like, I don’t know how they did time. I know they did ritual. Like, and I guess when I was studying it and looking it up, I just started looking up what’s like a priestess installation? What is, you know, a dedication for ⁓ like a temple or a shrine or a, and just kind of started reading through that. There was one ⁓ that was like a love letter that I found and he was like,

Dru (24:01)
Mm.

Rachel Booth Smith (24:14)
you know, I love you seven ways, let me count them, you know, and he was like jumping on the seven theme. And so I didn’t necessarily look at like the days, like the marking of the days, but more like why did he pick seven? Like what would seven have triggered for them in their mind? And I think it would have triggered like special and holy and sacred and ⁓ intentional, like marked out, right?

Dru (24:16)
Hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (24:43)
⁓ So that was, I don’t know, I thought that was really fun to think about the campfire, you know?

Dru (24:50)
Yeah, of how various people would have heard that like, ⁓ I think about something marked out.

Rachel Booth Smith (24:56)
Yeah, I don’t know any other days marked out like that. I’ve read all the creation ones I can get a hold of and nobody else is very intentional with it. The day’s thing is kind of unique in Genesis. And so that’s something worth noting, right? When they start off without a battle or without a conflict, there’s always chaos, but when he starts it with the chaos and the day, right? Like, huh, that’s fascinating.

Dru (25:06)
Great.

No.

I’m just had a thought I’m going to look it up right now. Utnapishtim in the flood narrative, I think, is it seven or nine days? No, it’s seven days of the flood in the Gilgamesh. This is the Gilgamesh Tavala 11, if I remember correctly, the Utnapishtim narrative. he has seven days rather than 40 days of rain and then 100 whatever days is in the flood narrative. Yeah.

Rachel Booth Smith (25:26)
Yeah.

It where? ⁓

The seven is interesting for that. Huh.

Dru (25:51)
I hadn’t thought about it until

Rachel Booth Smith (25:52)
I have to think about that.

Dru (25:53)
you just said that just now. Okay, yeah, seven shows up in various ways that would have been familiar. In the same way that, I guess, in our culture, hundreds, decimals, round decimal numbers kind of feel natural to us in some way. numbers have a feel to them, right? If I said 27, that feels weirder than 20 for all kinds of…

Rachel Booth Smith (26:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. Or if it was like,

you know, he ran a hundred yards, you’d be like, ⁓ he was scoring touchdown. You know, like you just automatically insert it into, you insert it into your category, you know, when you hear certain things. And I feel like they would have gotten to seven and the rest and then, and the fact that there had been no battle and, it was all goodness. Like, I feel like that would have been like the collision of so many different, you know,

Dru (26:19)
Right.

Right, right. yeah, that’s a great example.

Rachel Booth Smith (26:43)
mind-blowing ideas. ⁓ It’s just really lovely. Yeah.

Dru (26:48)
Yeah, so talk about that a bit more. You’ve mentioned it a couple times, there’s no battles, right? So, you know, when I talk about those classes, I say, well, you one of the weird things about Genesis 1 is like, dies. ⁓ Nobody gets ripped into shreds. So what would have been the common expectation for the creation of the world?

Rachel Booth Smith (27:03)
Yeah.

Sure, mean they do a lot of really, some things are totally normal, but you’ve got lots of deities having interactions and ⁓ yes, some, yeah, remember my audience? They are quite obscene, honestly. They would definitely be banned from the school library. ⁓ But they

Dru (27:17)
That’s a very polite way to put it. Interactions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Various interactions, miscellaneous. ⁓

Rachel Booth Smith (27:38)
They fight a lot, they politic, there’s sex, there’s different people vying for attention, there’s good advisors, there’s bad advisors, ⁓ there’s compromise. There’s really interesting, it actually looks a whole lot like the world today. If you were going to think about any sort of government, and even the ones that we really admire, there’s all of these things that are involved. And some of them are really good.

like the good advisors, like you want that in your story. ⁓ And then sometimes, or oftentimes, there’s a collision, and then whoever wins the battle is kind of the deity that sits at rest, and that’s the deity that they’re claiming, and that’s the deity that’s their head honcho, that is in charge of their city or the way they run things. ⁓ And so when God has this whole story, and there is the,

There is the us, the, you know, in the beginning, but generally it’s just God doing it. ⁓ And it’s all goodness and there’s no advisors whispering in his ear. There’s no, else happening, right? There’s no sex, there’s no violence, there’s no politicking. It’s just these solo decisions that are good and then he rests and that’s it. Like that is, that’s insane. And

You know, as I was kind of meditating on it, insane for my ear. Like I have no concept of a power that holds such incredible might and with goodness and without any threat. Like I don’t know, I really, don’t think I’ve encountered anything that happens that way.

Dru (29:04)
Insane for the ancient Near Eastern ear, right? Okay.

Hmm.

Yeah,

that’s a great point.

Rachel Booth Smith (29:31)
any

place that is run with that kind of power. ⁓ I’ve never seen it. ⁓ so I was, cause I was trying to make an analogy for it and I thought, I don’t have one. I don’t have a place. I don’t have a place to put this. ⁓

Dru (29:49)
There’s no

natural analogy to it, yeah.

Rachel Booth Smith (29:51)
There really isn’t, and I really love that. ⁓ And I think it’s supposed to be that way. I think that’s one of the things that’s supposed to kind of blow our minds a little bit too, still. I have not found even the best king, even the best authority figure, there is always a threat. There is always a need for advisors. Like our humanity just makes this one impossible. And…

Dru (29:54)
Yeah.

Rachel Booth Smith (30:17)
And it’s what makes God God. then when I think about that again, we get to this point where I’m like, oh, thank God he’s on the throne. I can trust him better than I can trust really anything else. so, yeah, I just love that there is no, there’s no threat and he holds all of that power without any, I don’t know, just so casually and carefully. I don’t know, how do you describe that?

Dru (30:25)
Hmm.

And I think I’m filtering my Jewish friends’ minds here as well. I think they would push back and say, in creation, yes, but pretty quickly with Israel, it is, and I’m going to kill all y’all if you keep doing this, right? So there definitely is. But that is also if you think, well, why is it? What’s the this in that statement? It’s if you’re exploiting the poor, like if you’re doing what we consider pretty horrible things today as well.

Rachel Booth Smith (30:54)
great. Great.

Yes,

yeah, there is the way you treat each other, right? Like he will just eventually as his image bearers, you have to stop like, and that that he just doesn’t let you reflect him and continue in that forever. Also, thank God.

Dru (31:28)
Yeah, that’s

great point. ⁓ Also, you mentioned in the book this, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking across the text, this is the first time we ever see a God who is just treating things in the world as objects, like the sun is an object, the moon is an object. It’s not the body of a God that’s been ripped in half and stuck up there to light the sky. ⁓ I wonder what that does ⁓ for the…

our view of the power of God as well.

Rachel Booth Smith (32:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think the campfire would have been pretty pissed on that one. I think that might have been a walk away moment. You know, like you might have lost your audience a little bit with I think the sun as a greater light. I think that was very offensive ⁓ because the sun was in charge of a lot. And so I think when God is making that a lesser light and claiming all of the ⁓ all of the attributes that the sun was responsible for, like justice and like

Dru (32:03)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (32:28)
I don’t know that one I think would have would have sent everyone pretty pissed. But yeah, he pretty much is like, yeah, it’s kind of a Roomba dudes, you know, like I turn it on, I move it, it does what I want, you know, like he goes across, it does thing.

Dru (32:33)
Yeah.

It goes across the sky. Especially

later ⁓ Egyptian accounts where it’s Atumrah, right? You have this whole narrative going on with where it goes after it goes down.

Rachel Booth Smith (32:50)
It’s huge. Yeah, yeah, it’s a big

deal. Like it was a, I think I say it’s a big dog deal. You know, like the sun was one you really don’t mess with, you know, it was touch enlightening on that. So.

Dru (33:01)
which

is what makes it so darn depressing when David sets up a cavalry who worshiped the God of the sun, right? You know, and you’re like, oh man, you went there.

Rachel Booth Smith (33:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and I make the point, I was like, God wasn’t delivering the, know, we have the campfire where they’re sharing, right? But this Genesis was for the Israelites. Like it was a message to them and they did not take it. Like they, they, you know, they were ready to toss it. ⁓ they, they did the, sun God thing and they, and it’s one of the other points I make in the book, I think as, know, in our, in our.

Dru (33:24)
Hmm.

Rachel Booth Smith (33:39)
culture, we pick or choose our religion. And I think it’s important to note that Israelites just added, you know, like they didn’t say, I’m going to worship the sun god instead of Yahweh. They were like, ⁓ this is a sweet addition that has got to be helpful for us because look at it. The thing is so powerful. ⁓ think they worked. ⁓

Dru (33:46)
Hmm.

The rule of duct tape, as they call that in the military. Like if one time around

will hold it nicely, 20 times around will hold it even better. So one God, great. Three more, let’s put them on. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Booth Smith (34:06)
Thanks, Zach.

Put them in, suck them in. Yeah, that’s

awesome. I like that.

Dru (34:13)
⁓ Well, as I was telling you before we recorded, I think this is the first book I’ve ever read where somebody in a kind of a delightful and very easy to understand way sews together ancient Near Eastern literature. The only other book I know where this has done really well, I hope I’m not offending any of my colleagues, is Jerry Unterman’s Justice for All, where he does kind of an analysis of the issue of justice in the ancient Near East.

Rachel Booth Smith (34:38)
you

Dru (34:39)
But even that’s more academic. This, like I could hand this to anybody and they could read it. it’s exciting. So all of you who have been asking the Center for Hebraic Thought like, where’s the book I can hand my mom or my uncle or to help start thinking about Israel as a member of the ancient Near East, but as distinct in these various ways, the campfire distinctions that would be made there.

Rachel Booth Smith (34:59)
Thank

Dru (35:02)
I think this would be certainly one of the first books you could hand somebody and see how much they like it or hate it. ⁓ Because I can imagine some people going like, I don’t need to know that stuff. ⁓ But I think you’ve made the case that actually this really does kind of enhance. I think it’s important also to say, look, we’ve only known this stuff for five generations of scholarship. So it’s not like Christians before us who didn’t know any Akkadian or Ugaritic didn’t understand the creation account, right?

Rachel Booth Smith (35:08)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Yeah,

yep. Yep.

Dru (35:30)
But this illuminates ⁓ all

kinds of things that, so we’re like in this privileged position where we can read what you’ve put together here and see things that maybe previous Christians couldn’t because we’re privileged to be in this point of history.

Rachel Booth Smith (35:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s pretty unique and fantastic, right? Like how great to have at our fingertips all of this stuff that, you know, linguists and archaeologists and everyone, they’ve done so much work, just really good work. ⁓ And it’s just sitting there ready for us to pluck. So I’m really, really thankful.

Dru (36:06)
And we should say your brother is actually a Hebraist and Ancient Near Eastern scholar. So you had a cheat code there that you could just email your brother and get clarifications.

Rachel Booth Smith (36:15)
I did.

I did. I actually, I enlisted his daughter, she was six at the time, to draw a picture in there of like, I talked about ⁓ when kids do self portraits, they’re telling you about their world. Like, you your kindergartner comes home and you see, ⁓ why are they in the corner? Like, why did they draw themself over there? They’re like telling on themselves, right? How they viewed the world. And so I had my…

Dru (36:27)
Right.

Right.

Rachel Booth Smith (36:39)
Um, my niece draw a picture of what would the ancient near Eastern little girl have drawn? How would she have seen her world? so, yeah, yeah. So that. I know she’s fantastic. She, her mom, her mom’s pretty good at art and stuff as well. Yeah. So she, my, niece Lucy drew, you know, this is what the ancient near Eastern world would look like, but that was, that was nice to have in clutch, you know, that, uh, Scott, my, my brother, I don’t know if he answered.

Dru (36:46)
Wait, those were the ones that were in the book? She’s sick. Those are really good drawings. Okay. Yeah, that’s impressive.

Rachel Booth Smith (37:09)
all my calls because I’m his sister or if he just felt obligated. But either way, I was so thankful for him.

Dru (37:11)
Yeah. ⁓

He loves to tell people why they’re wrong about things in the Ancient Near East, so…

Rachel Booth Smith (37:20)
That’s a different, you know, little bit of a different relationship when your sister calls you. So I think he has a little gentler thing.

Dru (37:22)
Yeah.

I can imagine. ⁓

Well, Rachel Smith, thank you for that. And I want to get the name of the book correctly. Rest assured what the creation story was intended to reveal about trusting God. Thank you for your wisdom.

Rachel Booth Smith (37:39)
Thank you, thanks for having me on, I really appreciate it.