Bereshith – In the Beginning
It is a troubling piece of writing: the first chapter of Genesis. Some point to it as the reason they don’t believe in God. It is pulled out like a gun during arm wrestles between atheists and creationists. It is used by some to determine a start date for the earth. Troublesome.
Putting logic-clouding passions aside, what essentially is the the first chapter of Genesis?
It began with the human desire to understand who we are, how we were made, and our purpose. For some reason, we human beings have it hard-wired into us that there is something beyond this world that explains our existence and purpose. Every culture on the earth has grappled with this core belief in its mythologies.
Mythologies are stories with truths that are greater than literal truths. They speak of things beyond what we know and understand. I have always believed that a study of the mythologies of the world would bring a person much closer to understanding the fundamental questions of life: where did we come from, how was the earth formed, what happens after we die, what is our purpose?
With scientific study and observation, it is possible to learn how things work in the world in which we live. However, science is limited by our five senses and our ability to reason. If there are things beyond what we can tangibly experience and explain, and I believe that there are, and I also see evidence of it in the common themes of world mythologies, then scientific study will not be able to answer all of our questions.
At first, the Genesis creation story was told through oral tradition and passed down from generation to generation. That’s likely why it is in poetic form, which is easier to remember and repeat. Echoes of it can be found in creation stories in distant places around the world, which indicates the oral retelling had traveling power.
It didn’t get written down until Moses and his crew began to scribe things out in old Hebrew.
They began with the words “Bereshith Elohim,” which means “In the beginning God.” And there is more to the meaning of Elohim. Elohim is “God Creator,” a part of the triune God who some call God the Father. It is also a complicated plural noun.
The Israelites called the book “Bereshith” because it was common practice in the early evolution of literature to title things with their first word. The word “Genesis” came from the later Greek language and means “birth, genealogy or history of origin.”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2, NIV translation)
These first verses are very much like numerous creation stories around the world.
Then the sections of verses take a repetitive pattern beginning each time with “And God said, ‘Let…” Each section ends, “And there was evening, and there was morning — the first (second, third, etc) day.” And sometimes “And God saw that it was good.”
The Spirit of God hovering over the waters of the earth is mystically beautiful and doesn’t tend to give the reader much trouble. It can be imagined.
What people have trouble imagining is that each part could have happened in one single day as we know it now. And when scholars attempt to determine a date for the beginning of the earth by going back six days from Adam, it is troublesome, especially since scientific evidence tends to suggest that there was a large period of time between the beginning of the earth and the beginning of humankind. Let alone, we don’t really know when Adam lived for sure.
And yet, as a child, I never had a problem with the first chapter of Genesis. Years later, as I read, studied and wrote my own poetry, I figured out why. The style of writing of Genesis 1 is poetry, not prose. And while prose uses devices as well, poetry almost counts on them. I knew about symbol and repetition as devices in poetry and so I recognized them for what they were.
“Day” is a symbol for a period of time. It was never meant to represent twenty-four hours.
In the simplest terms, the poem of Genesis 1 presents the idea that a deity created or set in motion the earth and the life within it, and it sets an order for the creation or development of life.
The word “evolution” not only doesn’t scare me, but it describes the very nature of living beings. The living things of this earth were meant to change and grow, even the very earth itself was meant to develop. To think that everything was meant to remain stagnant doesn’t prove itself out when observing life over time. Everything living changes. God designed it that way.
Read the creation verses carefully. The idea that God set life in motion (“let there be”) without necessarily directly creating each thing individually is very possible. The exception to that is God’s direct creation of human beings, which is very specifically and vividly described.
First “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): God creates light and separates it from darkness. Interesting that darkness is already there and light is the thing created to remove darkness.
Second “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): God creates sky and separates it from water.
Third “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): God creates dry ground and separates seas from it. Then, he creates vegetation.
Fourth “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): God creates lights in the sky (celestial bodies).
Fifth “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): God creates birds and sea creatures. It has crossed my mind that this could very easily be the dinosaur age, especially now that scientific evidence has indicated that dinosaurs were likely more birdlike than was once thought. Sea creatures fits right in with the dinosaur age.
Sixth “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): God creates land animals and all other animals. Then, he creates a human being. It is interesting that they are created on the “same day” or “same span of time,” which possibly fits with theories about the timeline of mammals in the scope of the earth’s timeline.
Seventh “Day” (aka “Indeterminate Span of Time”): The poetic account of creation ends with God resting from work, an example set for humanity to follow. Did God rest one day or a million years? Who knows. We may never know.
And there you have it. The order of the development of life. Does it conflict with scientific observation and logical reasoning? No, it does not.
There are troubling words again at Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” (NIV translation)
There is a lot in that one sentence.
“Let us?” Who is “us” and “our?” Some Biblical scholars state that the part of the triune God that is the Creator God is “speaking” with the other parts of the trinity. Some state that it may be members of the heavenly host, such as angels and perhaps other beings we have no reference point to understand.
Some scholars state that the subsequent verse, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female, he created them,” refutes the idea that the previous “us” could be the trinity. If it was the Triune God, then why didn’t the text read, “God created man in their own image?”
Isn’t the role of God the Creator within the trinity to be the part that does the creating? The three in one concept is difficult to understand, which is part of what gives it its power. If it was easy to understand and too much like what we know in our sensory world, wouldn’t that just prove that it was imagined by humans?
Simply, there is logic to the idea that something that is greater than we can understand actually would be greater than what we can understand. We could compare it things we know, not unlike when the character Q in the Star Trek series showed Captain Janeway the Q Continuum and it appeared to her in the guise of the American Civil War because it was the closest thing to what she could understand about a world beyond her understanding.
Continuing on in the sentence: “make man in our image.” First, this was never meant to indicate a gender, but to include all human beings. The Hebrew word is “etadam” which is a collective noun indicating all humanity. It also happens to be what the first human was named: Adam. The “et” prefix gives the word its accusative form in the sentence.
The Hebrew word translated in English as “image” is “tselem,” which literally means “a replica or shadow of the original.” It is derived from another Hebrew word “tzel” which means “shadow.” The connotation of the original Hebrew is the sense of a copy or a cut out of the original, not the same as the original itself, but like it. The English word “image” has a visual connotation that is not intended. It is not that people look like God. It is more that they are a copy of God. How much that copy is reflected physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, we don’t know for sure.
Continuing in Genesis 1:26, the idea that humans were to rule over the fish, birds and other animals is in keeping with the original Hebrew meaning. Certainly, human beings have dominated the earth, subduing animals who could easily subdue us.
Genesis 1:29-30 indicates that human beings were originally vegetarian, and there are scientific theories which support the idea that humans were initially plant-eaters. Read Genesis 9:1-7 for the change to omnivore status for humans after the flood.
The prose account of creation quickly focuses on a descriptive story of the creation of the first man. Genesis 2:7: “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (NIV translation)
In Hebrew, the word “adamah” means “ground” or “earth.” It is the word used in Genesis 2:7. The name Adam appears to have two roots in the Hebrew language: “etadam” which means “a replica or shadow of the original” and “adamah” which means “ground” or “earth.”
The imagery of God breathing life into the nostrils of the first human has always captivated me. It wasn’t the forming of the dust that brought life. There is something more needed. Something must be breathed into someone to become a living being. Is that breath the spirit, the soul? Or something else?
The Hebrew words “chayyah nephesh” mean “living being” or “living soul” and specifically refer to sentience. These words, or sometimes just “nephesh,” are used in various parts of the Old Testament, including Genesis 1, to indicate a sentient, living being.
In Genesis 2:9, God does something controversial. He puts a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil not just into the garden where the first human lives, but in the middle of that garden. Then, in Genesis 2:17, he tells the first human that he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And here’s the kicker. The English translation continues, “for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Not “if,” but “when.” It looks like the original Hebrew connotation is “in that day you eat of it.”
It presents a dilemma for me. If God is omniscient, then he knows what the humans are going to do, even the one who hasn’t been created yet. It screams of an intentional test the outcome of which the test creator already knows. Yet He does it anyway! Why?
I’ve often kicked around the idea that God set up the situation human beings are in as a proving ground. So, hear me out. If the story of a fallen angel is true and if this would have been heart-wrenching to God, who appears to feel deeply based on stories in the Bible, is it possible that He would want to avoid that happening again and might try to create beings who are strengthened with challenges and have the opportunity to prove that they won’t turn away before coming to His place which we call Heaven. Somehow, it makes sense. Unfortunately, those who essentially “don’t pass the test” are relegated to come to the place of the one who fell which we call Hell. I’m not convinced the story is over there. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a plan to bring the fallen one back that involved human beings in some way. Could be. Who knows?
In order to transition from the world God created to either Heaven or Hell, the created being would have to “die.” Thus, the necessity of the tree. Thus, the necessity of wrestling with the knowledge of good and evil.
Some scholars have stumbled over the “you will surely die” part. Neither Adam nor Eve died at the moment that they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, prior to eating the fruit, it is inferred that they would go on living without end. After eating the fruit, they became mortal; they would die one day. Again, God is outside of time, so the literal “when” of it is not the point.
But that’s getting ahead of Genesis 1 and 2. Returning to the creation story, once the setting is in place, God creates a helper. But first, he plays a little game with Adam, attempting to get him to choose a helper from among the animals. Perhaps he wanted Adam to appreciate what he was about to get. A little psychology. Adam’s first word on waking up after God puts him to sleep and removes a rib to create the woman is: “Finally!”
Genesis 2:24 is symbolic of the union between a man and woman becoming one flesh and became the basis for the Western concept of a monogamous marriage. The two become one.
The last line of Genesis 2 adds an element frequently found in short stories: foreshadowing, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
What are the greater truths of Genesis 1 and 2? When you sift away the literary devices, what do you have? What do you find out about the earth and those who inhabit it?
Genesis 1 and 2 are an attempt to explain something unexplainable, putting it into terms that can be understood by humans. Of course it is going to be complicated! And we will not be able to understand it fully.
Read it carefully and take a look at the other creation stories from around the world. Pay close attention to the themes and elements that repeat themselves across different stories. Very likely, it is here that fundamental human truths can be found.
Sources:
Crossways International. Crossways. Minneapolis, MN.
Bell, James Stuart and Campbell, Stan. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible. Third Edition. Alpha Books: the Penguin Group. 2005.
Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. HarperCollins. 1940.