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An Unbeliever Explains Creation (Part 6)

Submitted by Ken Watts on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 15:14

At the end of part 5, you had read as far as the words, "the first day", and that had brought a shock of recognition—that the poet was referencing the first word of the poem, and all of its associations of beginnings, by making time the first thing created, and doing it by creating the first day.

The creating is not done directly by gods, but is delegated to the earth.

In your role as an ancient Israelite, reading the genesis poem for the first time, you're excited and intrigued by all that the poet has accomplished in a very few lines—tying together the traditional creations themes of creation-by-dividing and creation-by-naming, and chaos, using the word/spirit concept to analyze and define chaos as nothing, introducing the idea of gods in the singular (you still don't know where that's leading), playing on the parallel between the plurality-in-singular of gods and the plurality-in-singular of the word/spirit model, tying the word/spirit model to the creation-by-naming concept...

Your head is spinning with delight, confusion, and anticipation as you read the next line:

Gods said, "Let there be a space between the waters, to separate water from water."

The poet ties the word/spirit model ("gods said") to the dividing model ("to separate water from water") and introduces the next thing to be created after time: space. Of course, we're not speaking of the modern scientific idea of space here, but of space as we all know it—the sky over our heads, where the birds fly, the clouds float, the stars twinkle.

So gods made the space,
and separated the waters above the space from the waters below the space,
and so it was,
And gods called the space sky

The second day parallels the structure of the first: a new element is introduced on each day (light, space), and then a separation occurs (light from darkness, waters above from waters below), and then the new creation is named. You notice, immediately, that the creation of sky echoes the first verse, just as the creation of time did. But you also notice that day two does not completely parallel day one.

On day one, the chaos symbol (darkness) was incorporated into the creation of time, as night.

On day two, the chaos symbol (the waters) is divided, but it is never named—never becomes a part of the creation. This is the rough equivalent of a modern poet not producing a rhyme where the reader would expect one. You find yourself waiting for this break in parallels to be resolved.

Gods said, "let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place, so that dry land may appear. And so it was.

You didn't have to wait long. It dawns on you that this is a brilliant poetic stroke, in multiple ways.

The poet introduced the poem with three elements: time, space, and the physical environment. But when the poet used the word/spirit model to analyze chaos, we were left with only two symbols of chaos: darkness and the waters of the deep.

If the poet was going to follow the pattern of day one, and use a chaos symbol (darkness) and its newly created opposite (light), in each case, we would run out of chaos symbols before the earth has been created. By not naming the sea on day two—by leaving the waters below as an unresolved symbol of chaos—the poet has solved this problem. Darkness is conquered on day one; the waters, on days two and three.

And this division beautifully parallels the unusual structure of the very first sentence:

First Sentence: In the beginning (time) The sky and the earth (space and  matter)
Chaos Symbols: Darkness The waters of the deep
The First Three Days: Day 1: light, the first day Day 2: Sky
Day 3: Earth

The order of that first sentence now makes complete sense. By putting the phrase "in the beginning" at the beginning, the poet has not only brought up a host of "beginning" associations, and made the order of ideas in the first sentence parallel the structure of the first three days, but also has made the kernel sentence, "gods created", act as a break, dividing the time element from the space and matter elements—a pattern that now is repeated by assigning the chaos symbol of darkness to day one, and the symbol of the deep to days two and three.

The opposite of darkness is light. The opposites of the waters are space and time. Space is the opposite of the untamed disorder of the archetypal waters of chaos. Dry land is the opposite of the half-tamed waters below, which have been divided once, but not completely tamed, since they have not yet been named.

Now you understand why only the sky was named on day two.

And gods called the dry land earth,
And the gathering of the waters he called seas.
And gods saw, that it was good.

You realize that this is the first time that last sentence has been used since day one, when light was created. And you almost immediately realize the implications of that. Light was the opposite of darkness, but the full opposite of the waters was not created on day two: just the first half—the sky. Now that the waters are completely tamed, goodness can be pronounced here, as well—once more tying days two and three together.

But the phrase "gods saw that it was good" in day one preceded the naming—came before day and night were named and finished off the act of creation. Is this significant? Or is it just pattern play, as we saw earlier when the elements of chaos were reversed from one line to the next?

Then gods said, "let the earth produce fresh growth,
let there be on the earth plants bearing seed,
fruit-trees bearing fruit each with seed according to its kind."
So it was;
The earth yielded fresh growth,
plants bearing seed according to their kind,
and seeds bearing fruit each with seed according to its kind,
and gods saw that it was good.

It was significant. Even though the naming has been done, the creative activity is not completely finished.

Here, the creating is not done directly by gods, but is delegated to the earth. "Let the earth produce fresh growth." And how is the earth to do this? That is not spelled out, but what is spelled out is something that any ancient Israelite would have known—the maintenance end of that creation: the ongoing ability of the plants, which the earth brought forth, to continue the process by bearing seeds to create more plants after their kind.

You would not have seen the clear distinction that we see here between the plants and the earth, because the earth, to the ancient Israelites, was the entire physical environment, plants included. Plant growth was part of the land.

So, what we have at the end of the first three days, is not so much a new creation—you'll notice there's no naming going on here—as a flourish on the creation of the earth: the icing on the cake. And this icing partakes in some measure of the creative abilities of gods. It can bring forth, produce, fill the chaos with content and order.

 And the evening and the morning were the third day.