John S. Lewis

John S. Lewis is Professor Emeritus of Planetary Sciences and Co-Director of the Space Engineering Research Center at the University of Arizona. He was previously a Professor of Planetary Sciences and Chemistry at MIT. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the California Institute of Technology in 1973 and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, PRC for the 2005-2006 academic year. He is presently Chief Scientist for Deep Space Industries, an asteroid-mining company.

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The Scale of Creation in Space and Time

by John S. Lewis | undefined 8 | 12-27-2013

The accounts of creation in Genesis, Moses, and Abraham as well as in higher endowments of knowledge given to the faithful are based on visions in which the seer lacked the vocabulary to describe and the knowledge to interpret what he saw and hence was obliged to record his experiences in the imprecise language available to him. Modern attempts to explain accounts of these visions frequently make use of concepts and terminology that are completely at odds with the understanding of ancient peoples: they project anachronistic concepts that the original seer would not have recognized. This article reviews several aspects of the creation stories in scripture for the purpose of distinguishing anachronistic modern reinterpretations from the content of the original vision.This essay derives from a presentation made at the 2013 Interpreter Symposium on Science and Religion: Cosmos, Earth, and Man on November 9, 2013. Details on the event, including links to videos, are available at journal.interpreterfoundation.org. An expanded version of the symposium proceedings will be published in hardcopy and digital formats.

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All journal publications and video presentations are available for free by digital download and streaming. The price of hard copy versions of journal articles covers only the cost of printing; books are typically priced to help cover both upfront pre—publication expenses and royalties to authors when applicable. In some cases, the Foundation may subsidize publication costs to keep retail prices affordable.