The Genesis creation narrative is the
creation myth
A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...
of both
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
and
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. The
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning") ...
. In the first,
Elohim
''Elohim'' (: ), the plural of (), is a Hebrew word meaning "gods". Although the word is plural, in the Hebrew Bible it usually takes a singular verb and refers to a single deity, particularly (but not always) the God of Israel. At other times ...
(the Hebrew generic word for
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
) creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh (i.e. the
Biblical Sabbath
The Sabbath is a weekly day of rest or time of worship given in the Bible as the seventh day. It is observed differently in Judaism and Christianity and informs a similar occasion in several other faiths. Observation and remembrance of Sabbath ...
). In the second story God (now referred to by the personal name
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he posse ...
) creates
Adam
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
, the first man, from dust and places him in the
Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...
. There he is given dominion over the animals.
Eve
Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...
, the first woman, is created from Adam’s rib as his companion.
The Hebrew creation narrative borrowed themes from
Mesopotamian mythology
Mesopotamian mythology refers to the myths, religious texts, and other literature that comes from the region of ancient Mesopotamia which is a historical region of Western Asia, situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system that occupies ...
, but adapted them to their unique
belief in one God. The first major comprehensive draft of the
Pentateuch
The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the sa ...
(the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with
Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy ( grc, Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronómion, second law) is the fifth and last book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called (Hebrew: hbo, , Dəḇārīm, hewords Moses.html"_;"title="f_Moses">f_Moseslabel=none)_and_th ...
) is thought to have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the
Jahwist
The Jahwist, or Yahwist, often abbreviated J, is one of the most widely recognized sources of the Pentateuch (Torah), together with the Deuteronomist, the Priestly source and the Elohist. The existence of the Jahwist is somewhat controversial, ...
source) and was later expanded by other authors (the
Priestly source
The Priestly source (or simply P) is perhaps the most widely recognized of the sources underlying the Torah. It is both stylistically and theologically distinct from other material in the Torah, and includes a set of claims that are contradicted b ...
) into a work very like Genesis as known today. The two sources can be identified in the creation narrative: Priestly and Jahwistic. The combined narrative is a critique of the
Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms
monotheism
Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford ...
and denies
polytheism
Polytheism is the belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religious sects and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism. Within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the ...
.
Robert Alter
Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He published his translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018.
Biography
Rober ...
described the combined narrative as "compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends".
Scholarly writings frequently refer to Genesis as myth, for while the author of Genesis 1–11 "demythologised" his narrative by removing the Babylonian myths and those elements which did not fit with his own faith, it remains a myth in the sense of being a story of origins.
Composition
Sources
Although tradition attributes Genesis to
Moses
Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...
, biblical scholars hold that it, together with the following four books (making up what Jews call the
Torah
The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch), is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods." A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the
Jahwist
The Jahwist, or Yahwist, often abbreviated J, is one of the most widely recognized sources of the Pentateuch (Torah), together with the Deuteronomist, the Priestly source and the Elohist. The existence of the Jahwist is somewhat controversial, ...
source), and that this was later expanded by the addition of various narratives and laws (the
Priestly source
The Priestly source (or simply P) is perhaps the most widely recognized of the sources underlying the Torah. It is both stylistically and theologically distinct from other material in the Torah, and includes a set of claims that are contradicted b ...
) into a work very like the one existing today.
As for the historical background which led to the creation of the narrative itself, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is "Persian imperial authorisation". This proposes that the
Persians
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
...
, after their
conquest of Babylon in 538 BCE, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single
law code
A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the cod ...
accepted by the entire community. It further proposes that there were two powerful groups in the community – the priestly families who controlled the Temple, and the landowning families who made up the "elders" – and that these two groups were in conflict over many issues, and that each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.
Structure
The creation narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the two first chapters of the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning") ...
(there are no chapter divisions in the original Hebrew text; see
Chapters and verses of the Bible). The first account () employs a repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment, then the statement "And there was evening and there was morning, the
th">'x''thday," for each of the six days of creation. In each of the first three days there is an act of division: day one divides the
darkness from light, day two the "waters above" from the "waters below", and day three the sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are populated: day four populates the darkness and light with Sun, Moon and stars; day five populates seas and skies with fish and fowl; and finally land-based creatures and mankind populate the land.
Consistency was evidently not seen as essential to storytelling in ancient Near Eastern literature. The overlapping stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are contradictory but also complementary, with the first (the Priestly story) concerned with the creation of the entire
cosmos
The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...
while the second (the Yahwist story) focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment. The highly regimented seven-day narrative of Genesis 1 features an
omnipotent
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one of ...
God who creates a god-resembling humanity, while the one-day creation of Genesis 2 uses a simple linear narrative, a God who can fail as well as succeed, and a humanity which is not god-like but is punished for attempting to become god-like. Even the order and method of creation differs. "Together, this combination of parallel character and contrasting profile point to the different origin of materials in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, however elegantly they have now been combined."
The primary accounts in each chapter are joined by a literary bridge at , "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created." This echoes the first line of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth", and is reversed in the next phrase, "...in the day that the God made the earth and the heavens". This verse is one of ten "generations" ( he, תולדות ') phrases used throughout Genesis, which provide a literary structure to the book. They normally function as headings to what comes after, but the position of this, the first of the series, has been the subject of much debate.
Mesopotamian influence
Comparative mythology
Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics.Littleton, p. 32 Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used ...
provides historical and cross-cultural perspectives for
Jewish mythology
Jewish mythology is the body of myths associated with Judaism. Elements of Jewish mythology have had a profound influence on Christian mythology and on Islamic mythology, as well as on world culture in general. Christian mythology directly inhe ...
. Both sources behind the Genesis creation narrative borrowed themes from
Mesopotamian mythology
Mesopotamian mythology refers to the myths, religious texts, and other literature that comes from the region of ancient Mesopotamia which is a historical region of Western Asia, situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system that occupies ...
, but adapted them to
their belief in one God, establishing a monotheistic creation in opposition to the polytheistic creation myth of
ancient Israel's neighbors.
as a whole is imbued with Mesopotamian myths. Genesis 1 bears both striking differences from and striking similarities to
Babylon's national creation myth, the
Enuma Elish. On the side of similarities, both begin from a stage of chaotic waters before anything is created, in both a fixed dome-shaped "firmament" divides these waters from the habitable Earth, and both conclude with the creation of a human called "man" and the building of a temple for the god (in Genesis 1, this temple is the entire cosmos). On the side of contrasts, Genesis 1 is monotheistic; it makes
no attempt to account for the origins of God, and there is no trace of the resistance to the reduction of
chaos
Chaos or CHAOS may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional elements
* Chaos (''Kinnikuman'')
* Chaos (''Sailor Moon'')
* Chaos (''Sesame Park'')
* Chaos (''Warhammer'')
* Chaos, in ''Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy''
* Cha ...
to order (Greek:
theomachy A theomachy is a battle among gods in Greek mythology. An early example is the Titanomachy (War of the Titans), in which the Olympian Gods fought against the preceding generation, the Titans. The war lasted ten years and resulted in the victory of t ...
, lit. "God-fighting"), all of which mark the Mesopotamian creation accounts. Still, Genesis 1 bears similarities to the
Baal Cycle
The Baal Cycle is an Ugaritic cycle of stories about the Canaanite god Baʿal ( "Owner", "Lord"), a storm god associated with fertility. It is one of the Ugarit texts, dated to c. 1500-1300 BCE.
The text identifies Baal as the god Hadad, t ...
of Israel's neighbor,
Ugarit
)
, image =Ugarit Corbel.jpg
, image_size=300
, alt =
, caption = Entrance to the Royal Palace of Ugarit
, map_type = Near East#Syria
, map_alt =
, map_size = 300
, relief=yes
, location = Latakia Governorate, Syria
, region = F ...
.
The Enuma Elish has also left traces on Genesis 2. Both begin with a series of statements of what did not exist at the moment when creation began; the Enuma Elish has a spring (in the sea) as the point where creation begins, paralleling the spring (on the land – Genesis 2 is notable for being a "dry" creation story) in that "watered the whole face of the ground"; in both myths, Yahweh/the gods first create a man to serve him/them, then animals and vegetation. At the same time, and as with Genesis 1, the Jewish version has drastically changed its Babylonian model: Eve, for example, seems to fill the role of a
mother goddess
A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or th ...
when, in , she says that she has "created a man with Yahweh", but she is not a divine being like her Babylonian counterpart.
Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth, the
Atra-Hasis
''Atra-Hasis'' ( akk, , Atra-ḫasīs) is an 18th-century BCE Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets, named for its protagonist, Atrahasis ('exceedingly wise'). The ''Atra-Hasis'' tablets include both a creation myth and o ...
epic – parallels that in fact extend throughout , from the Creation to the
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
and its aftermath. The two share numerous plot-details (e.g. the divine garden and the role of the first man in the garden, the creation of the man from a mixture of earth and divine substance, the chance of immortality, etc.), and have a similar overall theme: the gradual clarification of man's relationship with God(s) and animals.
Creation by word and creation by combat
The narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 were not the only creation myths in ancient Israel, and the complete biblical evidence suggests two contrasting models. The first is the "
logos
''Logos'' (, ; grc, wikt:λόγος, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive ...
" (meaning speech) model, where a supreme God "speaks" dormant matter into existence. The second is the "
agon
Agon (Greek ) is a Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', ...
" (meaning struggle or combat) model, in which it is God's victory in battle over the monsters of the sea that mark his sovereignty and might. Genesis 1 is an example of creation by speech, while
Psalm 74
Psalm 74 is the 74th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever?". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translation ...
and
Isaiah 51
Isaiah 51 is the fifty-first chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains the prophecies attributed to the prophet Isaiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. Chapters 40- ...
are examples of the "agon" mythology, recalling a Canaanite myth in which God creates the world by vanquishing the water deities: "Awake, awake! ... It was you that hacked Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon! It was you that dried up the Sea, the waters of the great Deep, that made the abysses of the Sea a road that the redeemed might walk..."
First narrative: Genesis 1:1–2:3
Background
The cosmos created in Genesis 1 bears a striking resemblance to the
Tabernacle
According to the Hebrew Bible, the tabernacle ( he, מִשְׁכַּן, mīškān, residence, dwelling place), also known as the Tent of the Congregation ( he, link=no, אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד, ’ōhel mō‘ēḏ, also Tent of Meeting, etc.), ...
in , which was the prototype of the
Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two now-destroyed religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusa ...
and the focus of priestly worship of
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he posse ...
; for this reason, and because other Middle Eastern creation stories also climax with the construction of a temple/house for the creator-god, Genesis 1 can be interpreted as a description of the construction of the cosmos as God's house, for which the Temple in Jerusalem served as the earthly representative.
The word ''bara'' is translated as "created" in English, but the concept it embodied was not the same as the modern term: in the world of the
ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...
, the gods demonstrated their power over the world not by creating matter but by fixing destinies, so that the essence of the ''bara'' which God performs in Genesis concerns bringing "heaven and earth" (a
set phrase
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
meaning "everything") into existence by organising and assigning roles and functions.
The use of numbers in ancient texts was often
numerological
Numerology (also known as arithmancy) is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value, via an alphanumeric system, of the letters in ...
rather than factual – that is, the numbers were used because they held some symbolic value to the author. The number seven, denoting divine completion, permeates Genesis 1: verse 1:1 consists of seven words, verse 1:2 of fourteen, and 2:1–3 has 35 words (5×7); Elohim is mentioned 35 times, "heaven/firmament" and "earth" 21 times each, and the phrases "and it was so" and "God saw that it was good" occur 7 times each.
Among commentators, symbolic interpretation of the numbers may coexist with factual interpretations. Numerologically significant patterns of repeated words and phrases are termed "Hebraic meter". They begin in the creation narrative and continue through the book of Genesis.
Pre-creation: Genesis 1:1–2
:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness ''
as' upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Although the opening phrase of
Genesis 1:1 is commonly translated in English as above, the Hebrew is
ambiguous
Ambiguity is the type of meaning (linguistics), meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations wikt:plausible#Adjective, plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It ...
, and can be translated at least three ways:
# as a statement that the
cosmos
The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...
had an absolute beginning ("In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.");
# as a statement describing the condition of the world when God began creating ("When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless."); and
# essentially similar to the second version but taking all of Genesis 1:2 as background information ("When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth – the earth being untamed and shapeless... – God said, Let there be light!").
The second seems to be the meaning intended by the original Priestly author. Walton argues that the verb ''bara'' is used only of God (people do not engage in ''bara''), and that it concerns the assignment of roles, as in the creation of the first people as "
male
Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization.
A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...
and
female
Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction.
A female has larger gamet ...
" (i.e., it allocates them
sexes
Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones (ova, oft ...
): in other words, the power of God is being shown not by the creation of matter but by the fixing of destinies.
''The heavens and the earth'' is a
set phrase
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
meaning "
everything
Everything, every-thing, or every thing is all that exists; the opposite of nothing, or its complement. It is the totality of things relevant to some subject matter. Without expressed or implied limits, it may refer to anything. The universe is ...
", i.e., the
cosmos
The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...
. This was made up of three levels, the habitable earth in the middle, the heavens above, and an
underworld
The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
...
below, all
surrounded by a watery "ocean" of chaos as the Babylonian ''
Tiamat
In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( akk, or , grc, Θαλάττη, Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, mating with Abzû, the god of the groundwater, to produce younger gods. She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creati ...
''. The Earth itself was a flat disc, surrounded by mountains or sea. Above it was the
firmament
In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during his creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The concept was adopted into the subsequent ...
, a transparent but solid dome resting on the mountains, allowing men to see the blue of the waters above, with "windows" to allow the rain to enter, and containing the Sun, Moon and stars. The waters extended below the Earth, which rested on pillars sunk in the waters, and in the underworld was
Sheol
Sheol ( ; he, ''Šəʾōl'', Tiberian: ''Šŏʾōl'') in the Hebrew Bible is a place of still darkness which lies after death. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the d ...
, the abode of the dead.
The opening of
Genesis 1
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
continues: "And the earth was formless and void..." The phrase "formless and void" is a translation of the Hebrew ', ( he, תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ), chaos, the condition that ''bara'', ordering, remedies. ''Tohu'' by itself means "emptiness, futility"; it is used to describe the desert wilderness; ''bohu'' has no known meaning and was apparently coined to rhyme with and reinforce ''tohu''. The phrase appears also in Jeremiah 4:23 where the prophet warns Israel that rebellion against God will lead to the return of darkness and chaos, "as if the earth had been 'uncreated'".
The opening of Genesis 1 concludes with a statement that "''darkness'' was on the face of the ''deep''" ( he, תְהוֹם '),
he"darkness" and the "deep" being two of the three elements of the
chaos
Chaos or CHAOS may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional elements
* Chaos (''Kinnikuman'')
* Chaos (''Sailor Moon'')
* Chaos (''Sesame Park'')
* Chaos (''Warhammer'')
* Chaos, in ''Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy''
* Cha ...
represented in ' (the third is the "formless earth"). In the
Enuma Elish, the "deep" is personified as the goddess
Tiamat
In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( akk, or , grc, Θαλάττη, Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, mating with Abzû, the god of the groundwater, to produce younger gods. She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creati ...
, the enemy of
Marduk
Marduk (Cuneiform: dAMAR.UTU; Sumerian: ''amar utu.k'' "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) was a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of ...
; here it is the ''formless body of primeval water surrounding the habitable world'', later to be released during the
Deluge
A deluge is a large downpour of rain, often a flood.
The Deluge refers to the flood narrative in the Biblical book of Genesis.
Deluge may also refer to:
History
*Deluge (history), the Swedish and Russian invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Comm ...
, when "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" from the waters beneath the earth and from the "windows" of the sky.
The ''
ruach
In Judaism, the Holy Spirit ( he, רוח הקודש, ''ruach ha-kodesh'') refers to the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the universe or over God's creatures, in given contexts.Maimonides, Moses. Part II, Ch. 45: "The various cla ...
'' of God moves over the face of the ''deep'' before creation begins. ''Ruach'' () has the meanings "wind, spirit, breath", and ' can mean "great" as well as "god": the ' may therefore mean the "wind/breath of God" (the storm-wind is God's breath in Psalms 18:16 and elsewhere, and the wind of God returns in the Flood story as the means by which God restores the Earth), or God's "spirit", a concept which is somewhat vague in the Hebrew Bible, or it may simply signify a great storm-wind.
Six days of Creation: Genesis 1:3–2:3
God's first act was the creation of undifferentiated light; dark and light were then separated into night and day, their order (evening before morning) signifying that this was the liturgical day; and then the Sun, Moon and stars were created to mark the proper times for the festivals of the week and year. Only when this is done does God create man and woman and the means to sustain them (plants and animals). At the end of the sixth day, when creation is complete, the world is a cosmic temple in which the role of humanity is the worship of God. This parallels Mesopotamian myth (the ''
Enuma Elish'') and also echoes chapter 38 of the
Book of Job
The Book of Job (; hbo, אִיּוֹב, ʾIyyōḇ), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and is the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Scholars ar ...
, where God recalls how the stars, the "sons of God", sang when the corner-stone of creation was laid.
First day
Day 1 begins with the creation of light. God creates by spoken command and names the elements of the world as he creates them. In the ancient Near East the act of naming was bound up with the act of creating: thus in Egyptian literature the creator god pronounced the names of everything, and the
Enûma Elish begins at the point where nothing has yet been named. God's creation by speech also suggests that he is being compared to a king, who has merely to speak for things to happen.
Second day
''Rāqîa'', the word translated as
firmament
In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during his creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The concept was adopted into the subsequent ...
, is from ''rāqa','' the verb used for the act of beating metal into thin plates. Created on the second day of creation and populated by luminaries on the fourth, it is a solid dome which separates the Earth below from the heavens and their waters above, as in Egyptian and Mesopotamian belief of the same time. In Genesis 1:17 the stars are set in the ''raqia; in Babylonian myth the heavens were made of various precious stones (compare Exodus 24:10 where the elders of Israel see God on the sapphire floor of heaven), with the stars engraved in their surface.
Third day
On the third day, the waters withdraw, creating a ring of ocean surrounding a
single circular continent. By the end of the third day God has created a foundational environment of light, heavens, seas and earth. The three levels of the cosmos are next populated in the same order in which they were created – heavens, sea, earth.
God does not create or make trees and plants, but instead commands the earth to produce them. The underlying theological meaning seems to be that God has given the previously barren earth the ability to produce vegetation, and it now does so at his command. "According to (one's) kind" appears to look forward to the laws found later in the Pentateuch, which lay great stress on holiness through separation.
Fourth day
On Day Four the language of "ruling" is introduced: the heavenly bodies will "govern" day and night and mark seasons and years and days (a matter of crucial importance to the Priestly authors, as the
three pilgrimage festivals
The Three Pilgrimage Festivals, in Hebrew ''Shalosh Regalim'' (שלוש רגלים), are three major festivals in Judaism—Pesach (''Passover''), Shavuot (''Weeks'' or ''Pentecost''), and Sukkot (''Tabernacles'', ''Tents'' or ''Booths'')—when a ...
were organised around the cycles of both the Sun and Moon, in a
lunisolar calendar
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, combining lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of Lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Ea ...
that could have either 12 or 13 months.); later, man will be created to rule over the whole of creation as God's regent. God puts "lights" in the firmament to "rule over" the day and the night. Specifically, God creates the "greater light," the "lesser light," and the stars. According to Victor Hamilton, most scholars agree that the choice of "greater light" and "lesser light", rather than the more explicit "Sun" and "Moon", is anti-mythological rhetoric intended to contradict widespread contemporary beliefs that the Sun and the Moon were deities themselves.
Fifth day
In the Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythologies, the creator-god has to do battle with the sea-monsters before he can make heaven and earth; in Genesis 1:21, the word ''tannin'', sometimes translated as "sea monsters" or "great creatures", parallels the named
chaos-monsters Rahab
Rahab (; Arabic: راحاب, a vast space of a land) was, according to the Book of Joshua, a woman who lived in Jericho in the Promised Land and assisted the Israelites in capturing the city by hiding two men who had been sent to scout the city ...
and
Leviathan
Leviathan (; he, לִוְיָתָן, ) is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Amos, and, according to some ...
from Psalm 74:13, and Isaiah 27:1, and Isaiah 51:9, but there is no hint (in
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
) of combat, and the ''tannin'' are simply creatures created by God.
Sixth day
![Criação dos Animais (1506-11) - Vasco Fernandes (Museu de Lamego)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Cria%C3%A7%C3%A3o_dos_Animais_%281506-11%29_-_Vasco_Fernandes_%28Museu_de_Lamego%29.png)
When in Genesis 1:26 God says "Let us make man", the Hebrew word used is ''adam''; in this form it is a generic noun, "mankind", and does not imply that this creation is male. After this first mention the word always appears as ''ha-adam'', "the man", but as Genesis 1:27 shows ("So God created man in his ''
wn' image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."), the word is still not exclusively male.
Man was created in the "
image of God
The image of God (; ) is a concept and theological doctrine in Christianity, as well as in Judaism. This concept is a foundational aspect of Christian and Jewish understandings of human nature. It stems from the primary text in Genesis 1:27, which ...
". The meaning of this is unclear: suggestions include:
# Having the spiritual qualities of God such as intellect, will, etc.;
# Having the physical form of God;
# A combination of these two;
# Being God's counterpart on Earth and able to enter into a relationship with him;
# Being God's representative or
viceroy
A viceroy () is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix ''vice-'', meaning "in the place of" and the French word ''roy'', meaning "k ...
on Earth.
The fact that God says "Let ''us'' make man..." has given rise to several theories, of which the two most important are that "us" is
majestic plural
The royal ''we'', majestic plural (), or royal plural, is the use of a plural pronoun (or corresponding plural-inflected verb forms) used by a single person who is a monarch or holds a high office to refer to themselves. A more general term fo ...
, or that it reflects a setting in a
divine council
A Divine Council is an assembly of deities over which a higher-level god presides.
Historical setting
The concept of a divine assembly (or council) is attested in the archaic Sumerian, Akkadian, Old Babylonian, Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, ...
with God enthroned as king and proposing the creation of mankind to the lesser divine beings.
God tells the animals and humans that he has given them "the green plants for food" creation is to be
vegetarian
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter.
Vegetarianism m ...
. Only later, after the Flood, is man given permission to eat flesh. The Priestly author of Genesis appears to look back to an ideal past in which mankind lived at peace both with itself and with the animal kingdom, and which could be re-achieved through a proper sacrificial life in
harmony with God.
Upon completion, God sees that "every thing that He had made ... was very good" (). This implies that the materials that existed before the Creation ("''
tohu wa-bohu
''Tohu wa-bohu'' or ''Tohu va-Vohu'' ( ) is a Biblical Hebrew phrase found in the Genesis creation narrative ( Genesis 1:2) that describes the condition of the earth ()
immediately before the creation of light in Genesis 1:3.
Numerous interp ...
''," "darkness," "''
tehom
Tehom ( he, תְּהוֹם ''ṯəhôm'') is a Biblical Hebrew word meaning "the deep". It is used to describe the primeval ocean and the post-creation waters of the earth. It derives from a Semitic root which denoted the sea as an unpersonified en ...
''") were not "very good."
Israel Knohl
Israel Knohl ( he, ישראל קנוהל; born 13 March 1952) is an Israeli Bible scholar and historian. He is the Yehezkel Kaufmann Professor of Biblical studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Senior Fellow at Shalom Hartman Insti ...
hypothesized that the Priestly source set up this dichotomy to mitigate
the problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycloped ...
.
Seventh day: divine rest
Creation is followed by rest. In ancient Near Eastern literature the divine rest is achieved in a temple as a result of having brought order to chaos. Rest is both disengagement, as the work of creation is finished, but also engagement, as the deity is now present in his temple to maintain a secure and ordered cosmos. Compare with Exodus 20:8–20:11: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the thy , in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
Second narrative: Genesis 2:4–2:25
![Nuremberg chronicles - f 5v](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Nuremberg_chronicles_-_f_5v.png)
Genesis 2–3, the
Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...
story, was probably authored around 500 BCE as "a discourse on ideals in life, the danger in human glory, and the fundamentally ambiguous nature of humanity – especially human mental faculties". The Garden in which the action takes place lies on the mythological border between the human and the divine worlds, probably on the far side of the
cosmic ocean
A cosmic ocean or celestial river is a mythological motif found in the mythology of many cultures and civilizations, representing the world or cosmos as enveloped by primordial waters.
In ancient creation texts, the primordial waters are often ...
near the rim of the world; following a conventional ancient Near Eastern concept, the Eden river first forms that ocean and then divides into four rivers which run from the four corners of the earth towards its centre.
It opens "in the day that the God made the earth and the heavens", a set introduction similar to those found in Babylonian myths. Before the man is created the earth is a barren waste watered by an ''’êḏ'' (); Genesis 2:6 the
King James Version
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
translated this as "mist", following Jewish practice, but since the mid-20th century Hebraists have generally accepted that the real meaning is "spring of underground water".
In Genesis 1 the characteristic word for God's activity is ''bara'', "created"; in Genesis 2 the word used when he creates the man is ''yatsar'' ( ''yîṣer''), meaning "fashioned", a word used in contexts such as a potter fashioning a pot from clay. God breathes his own breath into the clay and it becomes ''
nephesh
Nephesh ( ''nép̄eš'') is a Biblical Hebrew word which occurs in the Hebrew Bible. The word refers to the aspects of sentience, and human beings and other animals are both described as being nephesh. Plants, as an example of live organisms, are ...
'' (), a word meaning "life", "vitality", "the living personality"; man shares ''nephesh'' with all creatures, but the text describes this life-giving act by God only in relation to man.
Eden, where God puts his Garden of Eden, comes from a root meaning "fertility": the first man is to work in God's miraculously fertile garden. The "tree of life" is a motif from Mesopotamian myth: in the ''
Epic of Gilgamesh
The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh ...
'' (c. 1800 BCE) the hero is given a plant whose name is "man becomes young in old age", but a serpent steals the plant from him. There has been much scholarly discussion about the type of knowledge given by the second tree. Suggestions include: human qualities, sexual consciousness, ethical knowledge, or universal knowledge; with the last being the most widely accepted. In Eden, mankind has a choice between wisdom and life, and chooses the first, although God intended them for the second.
The mythic Eden and its rivers may represent the real Jerusalem, the
Temple
A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...
and the Promised Land. Eden may represent the divine garden on
Zion
Zion ( he, צִיּוֹן ''Ṣīyyōn'', LXX , also variously transliterated ''Sion'', ''Tzion'', ''Tsion'', ''Tsiyyon'') is a placename in the Hebrew Bible used as a synonym for Jerusalem as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole (see Names ...
, the mountain of God, which was also Jerusalem; while the real
Gihon
Gihon is the name of the second river mentioned in the second chapter of the biblical Book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers (along with the Tigris, Euphrates, and Pishon) issuing out of the Garden of Eden that branched fr ...
was a spring outside the city (mirroring the spring which waters Eden); and the imagery of the Garden, with its serpent and cherubs, has been seen as a reflection of the real images of the Solomonic Temple with its copper serpent (the
nehushtan
In the biblical Books of Kings ( 2 Kings 18:4; written c. 550 BC), the Nehushtan (Hebrew: ''Nəḥuštān'' ) is the name given to the bronze image of a serpent on a pole. The image is described in the Book of Numbers, where Yahweh instructed M ...
) and guardian cherubs. Genesis 2 is the only place in the Bible where Eden appears as a geographic location: elsewhere (notably in the Book of Ezekiel) it is a mythological place located on the holy Mountain of God, with echoes of a Mesopotamian myth of the king as a primordial man placed in a divine garden to guard the tree of life.
"
Good and evil
In religion, ethics, philosophy, and psychology "good and evil" is a very common dichotomy. In cultures with Manichaean and Abrahamic religious influence, evil is perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, in which good shoul ...
" is a
merism
Merism ( la, merismus, grc-gre, μερισμός, merismós) is a rhetorical device (or figure of speech) in which a combination of two ''contrasting parts'' of the whole refer to the whole.
For example, in order to say that someone "searched e ...
, in this case meaning simply "everything", but it may also have a moral connotation. When God forbids the man to eat from the tree of knowledge he says that if he does so he is "doomed to die": the Hebrew behind this is in the form used in the Bible for issuing death sentences.
![Creation-Luther-Bible-1534](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Creation-Luther-Bible-1534.jpg)
The first woman is created out of one of Adam's
rib
In vertebrate anatomy, ribs ( la, costae) are the long curved bones which form the rib cage, part of the axial skeleton. In most tetrapods, ribs surround the chest, enabling the lungs to expand and thus facilitate breathing by expanding the ches ...
s to be ''ezer kenegdo'' ( ''‘êzer kəneḡdō'') – a term notably difficult to translate – to the man. ''Kəneḡdō'' means "alongside, opposite, a counterpart to him", and ''‘êzer'' means active intervention on behalf of the other person. God's naming of the elements of the cosmos in Genesis 1 illustrated his
authority over creation; now the man's naming of the animals (and of Woman) illustrates Adam's authority within creation.
The woman is called ''ishah'' ( ''’iš-šāh''), "Woman", with an explanation that this is because she was taken from ''ish'' ( ''’îš''), meaning "man"; the two words are not in fact connected. Later, after the story of the Garden is complete, she receives a name: ''Ḥawwāh'' (, Eve). This means "living" in Hebrew, from a root that can also mean "snake". Assyriologist
Samuel Noah Kramer
Samuel Noah Kramer (September 28, 1897 – November 26, 1990) was one of the world's leading Assyriologists, an expert in Sumerian history and Sumerian language. After high school, he attended Temple University, before Dropsie and Penn, both in ...
connects Eve's creation to the ancient Sumerian myth of
Enki
, image = Enki(Ea).jpg
, caption = Detail of Enki from the Adda Seal, an ancient Akkadian cylinder seal dating to circa 2300 BC
, deity_of = God of creation, intelligence, crafts, water, seawater, lakewater, fertility, semen, magic, mischief
...
, who was healed by the goddess
Nin-ti
Ninti ( sux, 𒀭𒎏𒋾; "mistress of life") was a Mesopotamian goddess worshiped in Lagash. She was regarded as the mother of Ninkasi. She also appears in the myth ''Enki and Ninhursag'' as one of the deities meant to soothe the eponymous god's ...
, "the Lady of the rib"; this became "the Lady who makes live" via a
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic ...
on the word , which means both "rib" and "to make live" in Sumerian. The Hebrew word traditionally translated "rib" in English can also mean "side", "chamber", or "beam". A long-standing exegetical tradition holds that the use of a rib from man's side emphasizes that both man and woman have equal dignity, for woman was created from the same material as man, shaped and given life by the same processes.
Creationism and the genre of the creation narrative
![Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach (I)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Adam_and_Eve_by_Lucas_Cranach_%28I%29.jpg)
The meaning to be derived from the Genesis creation narrative will depend on the reader's understanding of its
genre, the literary "type" to which it belongs (e.g., scientific cosmology, creation myth, or historical saga). According to Biblical scholar
Francis Andersen
Francis Ian Andersen (28 July 1925 – 13 May 2020) was an Australian scholar in the fields of biblical studies and Hebrew. Together with A. Dean Forbes, he pioneered the use of computers for the analysis of biblical Hebrew syntax. He taught O ...
, misunderstanding the genre of the text—meaning the intention of the author(s) and the culture within which they wrote—will result in a misreading.
Reformed
Reform is beneficial change
Reform may also refer to:
Media
* ''Reform'' (album), a 2011 album by Jane Zhang
* Reform (band), a Swedish jazz fusion group
* ''Reform'' (magazine), a Christian magazine
*''Reforme'' ("Reforms"), initial name of the ...
evangelical
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide Interdenominationalism, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "bor ...
scholar
Bruce Waltke
Bruce K. Waltke (born August 30, 1930) is an American Reformed evangelical professor of Old Testament and Hebrew. He has held professorships in the Old Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Westm ...
cautions against one such misreading: the "woodenly literal" approach, which leads to "
creation science
Creation science or scientific creationism is a pseudoscientific form of Young Earth creationism which claims to offer scientific arguments for certain literalist and inerrantist interpretations of the Bible. It is often presented without ove ...
", but also to such "implausible interpretations" as the "
gap theory", the presumption of a "
young earth
Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between approximately 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespr ...
", and the denial of
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
. As scholar of
Jewish studies
Jewish studies (or Judaic studies; he, מדעי היהדות, madey ha-yahadut, sciences of Judaism) is an academic discipline centered on the study of Jews and Judaism. Jewish studies is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of history (esp ...
,
Jon D. Levenson
Jon Douglas Levenson is an American Hebrew Bible scholar who is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School.
Education
*A.B. '' summa cum laude'' in English, Harvard College, 1971.
*A.M. Department of Near Easter ...
, puts it:
Another scholar,
Conrad Hyers
Merritt Conrad Hyers (1933–2013) was an American historian of religion and ordained Presbyterian minister. He taught for many years at Gustavus Adolphus College, and wrote multiple books on humor in religion and on Zen Buddhism.
Early life and ...
, summed up the same thought by writing, "A
literalist interpretation of the Genesis accounts is inappropriate, misleading, and unworkable
ecauseit presupposes and insists upon a kind of literature and intention that is not there."
Whatever else it may be, Genesis 1 is "story", since it features character and characterization, a narrator, and dramatic tension expressed through a series of incidents arranged in time. The Priestly author of Genesis 1 had to confront two major difficulties. First, there is the fact that since only God exists at this point, no-one was available to be the narrator; the storyteller solved this by introducing an unobtrusive "third person narrator". Second, there was the problem of conflict: conflict is necessary to arouse the reader's interest in the story, yet with nothing else existing, neither a chaos-monster nor another god, there cannot be any conflict. This was solved by creating a very minimal tension: God is opposed by nothingness itself, the blank of the world "without form and void." Telling the story in this way was a deliberate choice: there are a number of creation stories in the Bible, but they tend to be told in the first person, by Wisdom, the instrument by which God created the world; the choice of an
omniscient third-person narrator in the Genesis narrative allows the storyteller to create the impression that everything is being told and nothing held back.
One can also regard Genesis as "historylike", "part of a broader spectrum of originally anonymous, history-like ancient Near Eastern narratives." Scholarly writings frequently refer to Genesis as myth, but there is no agreement on how to define "myth", and so while
Brevard Childs
Brevard Springs Childs (September 2, 1923 – June 23, 2007) was an American Old Testament scholar and Professor of Old Testament at Yale University from 1958 until 1999 (and Sterling Professor after 1992), who is considered one of the most influe ...
famously suggested that the author of Genesis 1–11 "demythologised" his narrative, meaning that he removed from his sources (the Babylonian myths) those elements which did not fit with his own faith, others can say it is entirely mythical.
Genesis 1–2 reflects ancient ideas about science: in the words of
E.A. Speiser
Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (January 24, 1902 – June 15, 1965) was a Polish-born American Assyriologist. He discovered the ancient site of Tepe Gawra in 1927 and supervised its excavation between 1931 and 1938.
Speiser was married to Sue Gimbel ...
, "on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian science." The opening words of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", sum up the author(s) belief that
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he posse ...
, the god of Israel, was solely responsible for creation and had no rivals. Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy, concluded that
God's Wisdom,
Word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
and
Spirit
Spirit or spirits may refer to:
Liquor and other volatile liquids
* Spirits, a.k.a. liquor, distilled alcoholic drinks
* Spirit or tincture, an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol
* Volatile (especially flammable) liquids, ...
penetrated all things and gave them unity. Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
with the
creative word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (
John 1:1). When the Jews came into contact with Greek thought, there followed a major reinterpretation of the underlying cosmology of the Genesis narrative. The biblical authors conceived the cosmos as a flat disc-shaped Earth in the centre, an underworld for the dead below, and heaven above. Below the Earth were the "waters of chaos", the cosmic sea, home to mythic monsters defeated and slain by God; in Exodus 20:4, God warns against making an image "of anything that is in the waters under the earth". There were also waters above the Earth, and so the ''raqia'' (
firmament
In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during his creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The concept was adopted into the subsequent ...
), a solid bowl, was necessary to keep them from flooding the world.
During the Hellenistic period this was largely replaced by a more "scientific" model as imagined by Greek philosophers, according to which the Earth was a sphere at the centre of concentric shells of celestial spheres containing the Sun, Moon, stars and planets.
The idea that God created the world out of nothing (''creatio
ex nihilo
(Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe comes to exist. It is in contrast to ''Ex nihilo ni ...
'') has become central today to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – indeed, the medieval Jewish philosopher
Maimonides
Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah ...
felt it was the only concept that the three religions shared – yet it is not found directly in Genesis, nor in the entire Hebrew Bible. The Priestly authors of Genesis 1 were concerned not with the origins of matter (the material which God formed into the habitable cosmos), but with assigning roles so that the Cosmos should function. This was still the situation in the early 2nd century AD, although early Christian scholars were beginning to see a tension between the idea of world-formation and the omnipotence of God; by the beginning of the 3rd century this tension was resolved, world-formation was overcome, and creation ''ex nihilo'' had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology.
See also
*
Adapa
Adapa was a Mesopotamian mythical figure who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality. The story, commonly known as "Adapa and the South Wind", is known from fragmentary tablets from Tell el-Amarna in Egypt (around 14th century BC) and from f ...
*
Anno Mundi
(from Latin "in the year of the world"; he, לבריאת העולם, Livryat haOlam, lit=to the creation of the world), abbreviated as AM or A.M., or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on the Bible, biblical accounts of the Genesi ...
*
Apollo 8 Genesis reading
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 read from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the Moon. Astronauts Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman, the first humans to travel to the Moon, recited verses 1 through 10 of the ...
*
Atra-hasis epic
*
Allegorical interpretations of Genesis
Allegorical interpretations of Genesis are readings of the biblical Book of Genesis that treat elements of the narrative as symbols or types, rather than viewing them literally as recording historical events. Either way, Judaism and most sects ...
*
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament
''Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament'' edited by James B. Pritchard (1st ed. 1950, 2nd ed.1955, 3rd ed. 1969) is an anthology of important historical, legal, mythological, liturgical, and secular texts from the ancient Near E ...
*
Babylonian mythology
Babylonian religion is the religious practice of Babylonia. Babylonian mythology was greatly influenced by their Sumerian counterparts and was written on clay tablets inscribed with the cuneiform script derived from Sumerian cuneiform. The myth ...
*
Biblical chronology
The chronology of the Bible is an elaborate system of lifespans, 'generations', and other means by which the Masoretic Hebrew Bible (the text of the Bible most commonly in use today) measures the passage of events from the creation to around 164 ...
*
Biblical cosmology
Biblical cosmology is the biblical writers' conception of the cosmos as an organised, structured entity, including its origin, order, meaning and destiny. The Bible was formed over many centuries, involving many authors, and reflects shift ...
*
Biblical criticism
Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as ''historical-biblical criticism,'' it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the concern to ...
*
Christian mythology
Christian mythology is the body of myths associated with Christianity. The term encompasses a broad variety of legends and narratives, especially those considered sacred narratives. Mythological themes and elements occur throughout Christian l ...
*
Creation (disambiguation)
Creation may refer to:
Religion
*''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing
* Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it
* Creationism, the belief tha ...
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Creation–evolution controversy
Recurring cultural, political, and theological rejection of evolution by religious groups (sometimes termed the creation–evolution controversy, the creation vs. evolution debate or the origins debate) exists regarding the origins of the Eart ...
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Creation mandate In Reformed Christian ethics, the creation mandates or creation ordinances are the commandments given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2. These predate the Mosaic Law and are often thought to apply to all people rather than just Christians. They ...
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Cultural mandate
In Judaism, Christianity, and some other Abrahamic religions, the cultural mandate is the divine injunction found in Genesis 1:28, in which God, after having created the world and all in it, ascribes to humankind the tasks of filling, subduing, ...
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Enûma Eliš
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Genesis flood narrative
The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is the Hebrew version of the universal flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the micro ...
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Hexameron
The term Hexameron (Greek: Ἡ Ἑξαήμερος Δημιουργία ''Hē Hexaēmeros Dēmiourgia'') refers either to the genre of theological treatise that describes God's work on the six days of creation or to the six days of creation thems ...
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Islamic creation narrative
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Jewish mythology
Jewish mythology is the body of myths associated with Judaism. Elements of Jewish mythology have had a profound influence on Christian mythology and on Islamic mythology, as well as on world culture in general. Christian mythology directly inhe ...
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List of creation myths
A creation myth (or creation story) is a cultural, religious or traditional myth which describes the earliest beginnings of the present world. Creation myths are the most common form of myth, usually developing first in oral traditions, and are ...
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Mesopotamian mythology
Mesopotamian mythology refers to the myths, religious texts, and other literature that comes from the region of ancient Mesopotamia which is a historical region of Western Asia, situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system that occupies ...
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Ningishzida
Ningishzida ( Sumerian: DNIN-G̃IŠ-ZID-DA, possible meaning "Lord f theGood Tree") was a Mesopotamian deity of vegetation, the underworld and sometimes war. He was commonly associated with snakes. Like Dumuzi, he was believed to spend a part ...
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Primeval history
The primeval history is the name given by biblical scholars to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, the story of the first years of the world's existence.
It tells how God creates the world and all its beings and places the first ...
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Religion and mythology
Religion and mythology differ in scope but have overlapping aspects. Both terms refer to systems of concepts that are of high importance to a certain community, making statements concerning the supernatural or sacred. Generally, mythology is consi ...
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Sanamahi creation myth
The Sanamahi creation myth is the traditional creation myth of Sanamahism, a religion of the Meitei, Chothe, Komhreng, Kabui, Anāl, and, before their conversion to Christianity, Tangkhul people in Manipur, India.
Koubru, the first pla ...
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Sumerian creation myth
The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth, called The Eridu Genesis by historian Thorkild Jacobsen, is found on a single fragmentary tablet excavated in Nippur by the Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania in 1893, and first recognized ...
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Sumerian literature
Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian em ...
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Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages.
According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and mi ...
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Tree of the knowledge of good and evil
In Judaism and Christianity, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ( he, עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע, ʿêṣ had-daʿaṯ ṭōḇ wā-rāʿ, label=Tiberian Hebrew, ) is one of two specific trees in the story of the Garden ...
Notes
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External links
Biblical texts
Chapter 1
(Hebrew-English text, translated according to the JPS 1917 Edition)
Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3
(Hebrew–English text, with Rashi's commentary. The translation is the authoritative Judaica Press version, edited by Rabbi A.J. Rosenberg.)
(New American Bible)
(King James Version)
Chapter 1Chapter 2
(Revised Standard Version)
Chapter 1Chapter 2
(New Living Translation)
Chapter 1Chapter 2
(New American Standard Bible)
Chapter 1Chapter 2
(New International Version (UK))
Mesopotamian texts
Summary of Enuma Elish with links to full text.
ETCSLText and translation of the Eridu GenesisThe Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford
"Epic of Gilgamesh" (summary)
British Museum: Cuneiform tablet from Sippar with the story of Atra-Hasis
Related links
Human Timeline (Interactive)–
Smithsonian,
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...
(August 2016).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Genesis Creation Narrative
Adam and Eve
Creation narrative
Bereshit (parashah)
Biblical cosmology
Christian mythology
Comparative mythology
Creation myths
Creationism
Enūma Eliš
Jewish mythology
Mesopotamian mythology
Mythography
Religious cosmologies