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An Unbeliever Explains Creation (Part 14): Five Things the Bible Does Say about Creation

Submitted by Ken Watts on Fri, 10/26/2007 - 15:05

LAST TIME, WE LOOKED AT some of things the creation story in Genesis doesn't say—or didn't say to the people who read it in its original setting. Now it's time to look at what it does say. If you were an ancient Israelite, reading the creation story with a full knowledge of the assumptions and literary techniques that the author shared with his or her audience, what would you have heard?

But first, a word to believing Bible students (the rest of you can skip the indented portion, if you like):

I haven't spent a great deal of time in this series justifying my interpretations—especially the small points. The reason for that is obvious; the task of explaining the complex parallelisms was the real focus. But I want you to know that everything I have said here is backed up by careful research, done at the graduate level when I was in seminary. I may be mistaken on some points, but I haven't been sloppy.

I only mention this because I know that the hardest thing a believer does is interpret the Bible. It's a lot easier for me, now, because I don't have to believe what it says. Depending on your particular denomination, or lack of denomination, you may find that some of what follows feels heretical. When that happens, you may want to reject it, and you may start grasping at straws—anything to discredit me, or this interpretation.

I hope you won't—not for me, but for you. You don't have to reject your faith to believe that it's important to interpret a text honestly, or to think that the text ought to be telling you what it means, rather than the other way around. And I think that there's value in that, even from your perspective as a believer. If you're going to claim a faith based on the Bible, then shouldn't it really be based on the Bible, even if that means changing what you believe?

So if  you question some of the small points, I would encourage you to do your own research, but not by simply going to a commentary—that only tells you what the author's theology was.

Go to the source. Go to the passage, consult the context, do your own word studies. Even the dictionaries are sometimes wrong, in obvious ways. (BDB, for example, says that one Hebrew word for spirit was used for the spirit of animals as well as people, then gives six examples. But if you actually look them up, five clearly apply to humans in context, and the other one is ambiguous).

Think for yourself. Even in Bible study, it's important to pay attention to truth with a small "t".

And, a reminder to everyone about my own stance—I'm not advocating the following points as "gospel". I just think they are what the passage says. In some cases I think the passage is insightful, and that we can learn from it. In other cases I think it's just outdated.

But in every case I find it fascinating to see how an ancient mind saw the world.

So, to the list:

  1. Chaos.

    One point that the parallel versions share is the idea of chaos as the opposite of creation. And in both versions chaos is described by breaking it into a combination of emptiness and formlessness.

    Anyone who has tried to create something, say a song, or a poem, has had the experience of the chaos that precedes the creative act. That moment when you look at the blank page, and wait for both the inspiration and the voice: the movement and the structure.

    In the first version, the symbol of emptiness is darkness. In the second version, the symbol is dryness. In the first version, the symbol of formlessness is the deep, in the second, it's the lack of cultivation.

    In the eyes of an ancient Israelite—who was part of an agricultural society where what humans did was irrigate and cultivate the land—this would have tied their own daily work to the very idea of the creation of the cosmos. They would, in essence, be doing the same thing that gods/Yahweh did. Banishing chaos by their creative work.

    It's important to notice here that the idea of emptiness is at least as much an emptiness of energy as it is of content. We can see that by looking at the opposing ideas in each version.

    In the first version, the opposing force to the darkness is the spirit of gods. The word spirit is based on the idea of breath, or wind—that is, the idea of pure movement.

    This is as close as an ancient Israelite could get to the modern idea of energy. Remember, the wind can't be seen, you can only see it's effects. The human spirit is seen as the energy of human life—the force that moves us to action. Like the wind, it can't be seen, but it can be felt

    In fact, the term is often used for what we would call feelings or emotions. In the voice model, the breath is the energy which gets structured by the word, to make speech possible.

    Likewise, light—the created answer to darkness—is also a source of energy, though they didn't understand it the same way modern physics does.

    The stream or spring—the created answer to the dryness in the second version—and the rivers are also energy symbols, both because they make life possible, but also because they are moving water (sometimes called living water), that is, they are not stagnant, but healthy sources of life. The parallel to moving air, in the case of spirit, is obvious.

    The same is true of the stream and the rivers in the second version.
  2. The Act of Creation.

    There are several ideas about creation that are expressed by both versions.

    Creation involves not only the basic energy or content, but also a form. Once you have your inspiration, you still need to find the appropriate structure to express it.

    For the ancient Israelites, structuring involved boundaries. It involved building a wall around a garden. It involved separating the waters of chaos to create the sky. It involved setting a boundary between the dry land and the sea. It involved distinguishing creatures that fly from creatures that swim, and both from creatures that walk.

    And all of this was tied up with the idea of language—another allusion to the speech model. Because the process of naming was seen as the necessary completion of creation. The seas are not fully created until the third day, because that is when they are named. When Yahweh/gods brings the animals to the human to name,  the human participates in their creation.

    This idea also rings true to our experience. Some time ago, a friend of mine decided to teach me how to rock climb. He took me out to a climbing spot, roped me up, and began to teach me the rudiments of the sport. Before this, I would drive through rocky terrain, and I would see, well—rocks. That is to say, my world had rocks in it, and grass, and trees, and sky, etc.

    But after some time training with my friend, I would look out my car window, and my world had a lot more in it. It had sandstone, and granite. It had cracks, and face climbs. It had thousands of things it hadn't had before.

    Why? Because they had been named. Naming something really does bring it into existence—at least in the world we actually live in. So to name is to create.

    To name is also to make distinctions, on the basis of similarities and differences. This is something that I often think anti-evolutionists just don't understand about the view of creation in Genesis. They object to the idea that a monkey could turn into a man. But that is not what evolution says. It says that a primate species was divided, and as the distinction grew, one branch became monkeys, and the other became humans. In fact, it describes exactly the process of creation by divisions that is described in the first version of the creation story.
  3. God.

    The two versions also tell us something about the ancient concept of divinity.

    First of all, they agree in using the term gods as a singular. Since this was also the plural which referred to the varying gods of all the nations, it seems as though there's an intentional effort to embrace all the gods, but as a single concept. There's an abstract idea of divinity here.

    In the first version, this gods is described in two ways. First, we are told that gods creates, and does so by naming, by making distinctions. Secondly, we are told that gods consists of word and spirit—of structuring and energy.

    In the second version, these same themes are echoed in various ways, and gods is identified, in some sense, with Yahweh, the local god of Israel.
  4. The Created World.

    Both versions, in different ways, see God, and the entire created world, as resonating with the daily life and customs in Israel.

    The first version tells us that gods took six days of work to create the world, then rested on the Sabbath. The second version says creation was accomplished in a single day, but the point there is that neither time line is intended literally. The symbolic value of the first version is intended: our local custom of resting on the seventh day is in tune with creation.

    The first version assigns the animal kingdom to categories that reflect the dietary habits of Israel. So the diet of Israel is in tune with creation.

    The second version endorsed farming as the very purpose for which humans were created. So the daily work of Israel is in tune with creation.

    Both versions, in different ways, give humans dominion over other animals, so domestication of beasts is in tune with creation.
  5. Humans.

    Both versions give humans a unique and elevated place in the creation. The first version makes humans the culmination of the whole process.

    The second version begins with the creation of the human, and culminates with the division of humanity into male and female, making the creation of humanity the center of the entire process.

    But there's more than that.

    Get ready for some heresy.

    The first version repeats, over and over,  the idea that life reproduces after its kind. Plants after their kind, birds after theirs, fish after theirs, etc. At the end of this long litany, gods produces humans in his own image. Humans have dominion over the world. They have both spirit and word. They use their spirit and word to create. They are capable of naming, and of making distinctions.

    All of this hints that humans are made after gods kind—that they are, themselves, descended from gods.

    But what does the second version say?

    It has Yahweh/gods  breathe into the human's nostrils the breath of life.

    That is, it says that the human spirit is the spirit of Yahweh/gods—what they call in church the Holy Spirit. So we have the human, whose purpose is to bring structure to creation through cultivation, empowered for this task by the divine spirit.

    And, toward the end of the passage, that same human completes the creation of the animals by naming  them.

    In the fifth chapter of Genesis, which tells of Adam's children, we read:

    On the day when God created man he made him in the likeness of God...
    Adam...begat a son in his likeness and image, and named him Seth.

    The idea gets further support in many places outside of this passage, even in the Christian New Testament.

    If you want to  ask how Jesus, or the Jews of his time, would have interpreted this verse, you could notice that Jesus not only called God "Father", but encouraged his disciples to do the same.

    When Luke recites Jesus' ancestry, he goes through Joseph's line, and ends with

    ...Cainan, son of Enosh, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.

    Time to grasp at straws.