Regarding both types of materials one is entitled to judge that the priestly document made comprehensive use of the science of its day in critically selecting and interpreting its results by relating them to the creative activity of God.I could not imagine a more profound misrepresentation and am surprised that Pannenberg made it. The use of phrases such as "the science of its day" and "interpreting its results" is an anachronistic move designed, it would seem, to put the mythological fictionalising of pagan seers on an equal footing with the work of the CSIRO.
Nothing could be further from the truth. ANE pagans didn't have a science, let alone one that had results! Indeed, if you think that they did, you may as well talk about the 'results' of astrology. Go read Enuma Elish and see if you can see any traces there of a conceptualisation of the universe that would allow observations to be made as though (a) humans could draw meaningful conclusions about the characteristics of the universe and that (b) the universe was able to be subjected to rational enquiry. There is nothing in any ANE text outside of the Bible that suggests that the thought world of that day gives the universe a dependent and well structured relationship with its rational, orderly and loving creator. (You might have thought I would say that the universe was 'natural', but not so; it is created. See my previous post on Methodological Naturalism).
Rather, quite the opposite. The ANE world didn't do science at all, and couldn't have as the modern scientific project is only a few centuries old and is rooted in Christian biblical theism. The concepts that we use today are as foreign as could be to the ancients.
The Genesian account doesn't critically select and interpret anything (to suggest it does renders it to be no more than an empty and ultimately meaningless polemic: an advertising gimick, no less!); no, it overturns competing accounts and makes of the relationship between the world its creator and humanity something entirely different from paganism's mish-mash of speculation, improbability and nonsense (this is what Pannenberg illogically, and ignorantly misnames 'science') and unique it its and any other day.
Apart from everything else it does, it lays the foundation for modern science, compared to the dead ends that paganism repeatedly runs into and creates the environment in which we relate to God as person to person, in trust and love.
