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An Unbeliever Explains Creation (Part 5)

Submitted by Ken Watts on Thu, 08/09/2007 - 11:56

We left off, in part four, at the phrase "Let there be light." You were imagining that you were an ancient Israelite, reading the creation poem in the first chapter of the Bible.

We have inherited this idea, and still use it to this day, when we talk of team spirit, or school spirit, or the spirit of democracy.

So far, you've been following the masterful technique of the poet who wrote those first few lines. You've been impressed by how the poet has turned the traditional speech model of word and spirit inside out, and used it to analyze chaos (nothing), and you've been intrigued by the fact that the poet has chosen to use the plural term "gods" as a singular, where you would have simply expected "Yahweh"—the name of Israel's god.

There may, by now, be another parallel bubbling in the back of your brain, because the word/spirit concept, which you are so familiar with, also involves the marriage of plural and singular.

To begin with, every act is both word and spirit. One cannot exist without the other. A voice cannot make a speech sound without both the energy and content of the breath, on one hand, and the structure and shaping of the articulation, on the other. A person cannot act without a motivating desire and the pattern of behavior which structures that desire. If I eat, it's because I have hunger (spirit) and the ability to do things like chewing, or using a fork. If I kiss a baby, it's because of affection (spirit—the driving force and content of the act) and because that spirit is structured into the specific movements of leaning forward, pursing my lips, etc.

But there's more. My spirit—the animating force of my whole personality—is one (to the extent that I'm sane) but also many. I have multiple desires: hunger, affection, ambitions, tastes, etc. Likewise, my word—the structure of my personality—is a unity made up of multiple ways of putting all of those desires into action. I may even have multiple ways of fulfilling a single desire. Or I may have structures—ways of behaving—which fulfill multiple desires at the same time.

And there's still more, because the idea of word and spirit applied not only to individuals, but to groups of people. In fact, we have inherited this idea, and still use it to this day, when we talk of team spirit, or school spirit, or the spirit of democracy. Groups of people often have shared desires, and shared ways of putting those desires into action, which unify many into a team or group, that can be understood as a unit. Our individual spirits resonate, and become a single, group spirit. Our individual behaviors join into a unit and become a single behavior: a football play, a cheer, the performance of a band.

So, when you, as an ancient Israelite, read those first few lines, and find yourself contemplating the word/spirit concept—with its multiple implications of plurality-in-unity—and, at the same time, contemplating the idea of the plural "gods" being used as a singular, you may well notice a parallel between the two ideas. (For those of you who are wondering,—yes, this does have something to do with the historical development of the idea of the trinity in Christian thought, and no, the ancient Israelite poet has nothing of the kind in mind in this passage.)

So, you have come to the dramatic line, "let there be light," with all of these thoughts bouncing around in your head, and you read on:

And there was light, and gods saw that the light was good,

The poet has your attention through this, because none of the creation narratives you know about in the ancient world describes the creation of light. You wonder where this is leading.

And he divided the light from the darkness.

You are back on familiar territory here, again, because one of the standard patterns of creation narratives you are familiar with is the idea of dividing in order to create. In the Babylonian creation myth, Tiamat (a personification of chaos) is killed by Marduk, and then her body is divided to create the earth and the sky.  The Egyptian myth has Shu dividing Geb (earth) from Nut (sky). Light and darkness are parallel to the ideas of waters and emptiness, but it's hard to see how gods is going to produce earth and sky from darkness and light.

He called the light day,
And the darkness, he called night.

Another really nice move on the poet's part. Naming is also a theme that you know from other creation mythologies, and one that works very well with the word/spirit theme that the poet has already established.  The idea is that something is not completely created until it is named—that the naming makes it fully what it is. So light is not the first created thing, here, but is the necessary preliminary step to the creation of day and night. Their naming makes this clear.

The beginning of creation is not the creation of earth and sky in this version. Rather, in creating day and night, gods creates time. And this is confirmed by the next line:

So evening came, and morning came—the first day.

The first day—the poet has done it again. Suddenly the cascade of parallels which you felt at the unconventional "beginning" of the passage as a whole showers through your mind again. The beginning of the first sentence, the beginning of the Torah, the beginning of the creation story, the beginning of time—is echoed again by mention of the first day—as the beginning act of creation. You find yourself expecting more echoes of that first line, in the lines to come.

And you are not going to be disappointed.