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Genesis I-II
Tales of the Earliest World
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7496-3
Chapter One
GENESIS IN SEVEN DAYS
Our name of the book of Genesis comes from Greek, and it means " origin, beginning." The Israelites named their books from the first words in them, and the Hebrew name for Genesis is Bere'šît, "In beginning" (I explore the word more below). The account in 1.1–2.4 is the first of two creation stories, probably a later understanding than the second story.
This account is a very formal tale, structured clearly and consistently around seven days. Its way of going about its work within that structure is also very formal, and so is its rather repetitive literary style. Elohîm (we'll see a different way of referring to the deity in ch. 2) says that something is to happen, and it happens: "'Let light be.' And light was" (v. 3). Elohîm looks at what he has done and pronounces it good. Then he names the thing or things created, and the day ends. There are, of course, specific ways of dealing with various happenings on a given day. Matters seem to get a bit more extensive as the chapter moves along, and at its end is a specific application of all of this to Israel's life. We look first at the translation of the text itself, and then I discuss some of its interesting and important aspects.
Finally, the often repeated word "good" has significant connotations in Hebrew, not only of excellence in general, or of high morality, but also of beauty. As you see the constant refrain "it was good" throughout this story, you might have that sense of "beautiful" in mind, especially at the very last remark when, with everything finished, Elohîm looks at all he has done and thinks that it is "very good."
In the translations, boldface numbers refer to the chapter in Genesis; superscripts are verse numbers.
1 1 When Elohîm began to create the sky and the earth, 2 the earth was shapeless and empty and darkness across the abyss, and Elohîm's wind swept across the waters. 3 And Elohîm said, "Let light be." And light was. 4 And Elohîm saw the light, that it was good. And Elohîm made a division between light and dark. 5 And Elohîm called the light Day, and the dark he called Night. And it was evening and it was morning day one.
6 And Elohîm said, "Let a bowlshape be in the middle of the waters, and let it make a division between waters and waters." 7 And Elohîm made the bowlshape, and it made a division between the waters that were underneath the bowlshape and the waters that were above the bowlshape. And it was so. 8 And Elohîm called the bowlshape Sky. And it was evening and it was morning a second day.
9 And Elohîm said, "Let the water underneath Sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry appear." And it was so. 10 And Elohîm called the dry Earth, and the gathered water he called Sea. And Elohîm saw that it was good.
11 And Elohîm said, "Let Earth produce green, plants seeding seed, fruit trees making fruit by their kinds, in which is their seed on Earth." And it was so. 12 And Earth brought out green, plants seeding seed by their kinds, and trees making fruit in which is their seed by their kinds. And Elohîm saw that it was good. 13 And it was evening and it was morning a third day.
14 And Elohîm said, "Let there be lightgivers in the bowlshape of Sky to make division between Day and Night, and let them be for portents and for set times and for days and years. 15 And let them be as lightgivers in the bowlshape of Sky, to give light on Earth." And it was so. 16 And Elohîm made the two big lightgivers, the Big Lightgiver to rule Day and the Small Lightgiver to rule Night, and the stars. 17 And Elohîm placed them in the bowlshape of Sky to give light upon Earth, 18 and to rule Day and Night and to divide between light and dark. And Elohîm saw that it was good. 19 And it was evening and it was morning a fourth day.
20 And Elohîm said, "Let the waters swarm swarms of living things, and let flyers fly over Earth, across the surface of the bowlshape of Sky." 21 And Elohîm created the huge sea monsters and all the living things that creep, with which the waters swarm, by their kinds, and all winged flyers by their kinds. And Elohîm saw that it was good. 22 And Elohîm blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in Sea, and let flyers multiply in Earth." 23 And it was evening and it was morning a fifth day.
24 And Elohîm said, "Let Earth produce living things by their kinds, cattle and creepers and wild beasts by their kinds." And it was so. 25 And Elohîm made the wild beasts by their kinds and the cattle by their kinds and all the creepers on the ground by their kinds. And Elohîm saw that it was good. 26 And Elohîm said, "Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them dominate the fish of Sea and the birds of Sky and the cattle and all Earth and all creepers that creep on Earth." 27 And Elohîm created humans in his image, in Elohîm's image he created them, Male and Female he created them. 28 And Elohîm blessed them, and Elohîm said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it, and dominate the fish of Sea and the birds of Sky and all the living things that creep on Earth."
29 And Elohîm said, "There now, I have given you all the green seeding seed that is on the surface of all Earth, and all the trees in which is the fruit of trees seeding seed; it is yours for food, 30 and to all the wild beasts and to all birds of Sky and to all creepers on Earth in which is living being, all the green plants for food." And it was so. 31 And Elohîm saw all that he had made, and, there, it was very good. And it was evening and it was morning a sixth day.
2 1 And Sky and Earth and all their hosts were finished. 2 And Elohîm finished on the seventh day his work that he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 And Elohîm blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because in it he had rested from all his work that Elohîm had created to do.
4 This is the historyh of Sky and Earth when they were created.
A later writer in Greek knew this story well, and decided to imitate it for his own purposes: "In the beginning"-he did know this story-"was the word" (John 1.1). Not only did he know it, but he understood it after his fashion. It is a creation story focused on words. Everything that Elohîm does is first spoken. "'Let light be.' And light was." The speech, it seems, causes the deed. And when the deed is done, and Elohîm ponders the result, speech is reported again: "And Elohîm called the light Day, and the dark he called Night." Having named Day, Elohîm has completed the first day.
There is a peculiarity about Elohîm, this designation of the deity: it is a masculine plural noun, the singular of which was probably Eloah, which occurs often in the Book of Job, or perhaps more familiarly El, which is found often elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as well as in some surrounding cultures. But this plural noun regularly takes, here and elsewhere, singular verbs, unusual for Hebrew, which usually matches plural verbs to plural nouns. Some thinkers believe that the plural form expresses the idea that this god is the final and perfect deity, though I do not find other instances of the use of a plural to denote perfection. There is no way to be certain of the idea or of its reality. This deity was clearly the only one to whom the Israelites were supposed to pay attention. But there are a couple of places later that look as if the storytellers may have been thinking of plural Elohîm.
This story of creation is shown in a process of abstractions that, by naming, become concrete or familiar things or forces. It starts with darkness, but then there is light, and Elohîm proceeds to name them both, Day and Night. Then we go to the abstract "bowlshape," which divides in two the waters that were already there, and Elohîm names that object Sky. One apparent abstraction may not be one. The first Hebrew word, usually translated "in the beginning," poses a somewhat esoteric and difficult problem of grammar. The way the word is written, it says not "in the beginning" but "in beginning of," the natural continuation of which would be "Elohîm's creating." That requires modifying the traditional written form of the verb "create," which for those who know Hebrew is in a perfect tense, the masculine singular bara'. Along with a number of others, I have translated it as, "When Elohîm began to create," a more English way of saying, "In the beginning of Elohîm's creating," making the verb "create" by a change of vowels into an infinitive form, b'ero'. If that seems a radical thing to do, the fact is that the Hebrew of the Bible, until the Middle Ages, was written entirely in consonants, and one was supposed to figure out what word and form a given collection of consonants would likely come out to. In our case, bara' and bero' would have looked exactly the same, as their consonants, br', are the same. Moreover, one had learned in the synagogue school what the words were considered to be through memorizing them. Languages change over time, as do the understandings of texts. Vowel signs were added to the biblical text in the Middle Ages, and they represent the way the words were pronounced in the synagogue services. To modify the vowels that were added in the Middle Ages is not at all a radical thing to do. To propose changing a consonant, however, is more radical, and I try never to do it.
It seems clear that the storytellers were not thinking of what later philosophical and theological traditions, speaking Latin as they often did, called creatio ex nihilo, "creation from nothing," namely, that the creator was not working with preexisting stuff. But in this story, something was there-the empty, shapeless "earth," darkness, the "abyss," the wind across waters. The latter is, by the way, I'm convinced, really wind, Elohîm's wind. Most Christian translations turn the word into "spirit," often capitalized. That strikes me as deciding on the basis of Christian Trinitarian theology a translation of what the biblical text-the basis of Christian theology, if theologians are to be believed-says and means. I'm not satisfied to do that. The theology needs to be based on what the text says as it says it-which does not ease theology's job (but theology is not my job). The verb for the wind's action, which I have translated "swept," has sometimes been rendered as "brooded." It's an interesting image, but the verb is rare enough not to allow very wide interpretive boundaries.
After light comes to be, the next thing is to put something new in the middle of something old, the bowlshape in the middle of the waters. You may notice that "waters" has a plural form, which it has in Hebrew, though there are some odd things about it. Hebrew has singular and plural forms for its nouns but also "dual" forms, meaning two of whatever is being named, often for "eyes," "hands," "feet," and other pairs. The word for "waters" is odd in being accentuated as if it were dual. A dual form might refer to the two bodies of water, above the bowlshape and below it.
"Bowlshape" may strike you as peculiar, but we are dealing here with that pattern of beginning with abstractions, which are then named as familiar objects; "light" to "Day" and "dark" to "Night," for instance. The Hebrew word raqîa', then, ought to refer to something abstract, and "bowlshape" is the closest I can come to it. The Hebrew word is rather rare, and some authorities suggest that sometimes it refers to something like a thin, beaten, metal plate. It is evidently solid, which is why some earlier translations used the word "firmament." I take it to be like an upside-down hemisphere, and we'll see it again in the Flood story. It comes to be named "Sky," and I urge you not to think of that as the equivalent of "heaven," even though many translations render it as "heaven." On occasions when the Hebrew Bible refers to it as where the deity lives, that may have a meaning something like "heaven," though heaven was not for the ancient Israelites a place to which people went after death. They went to a place always called She'ol, which was thought of as being below the Earth.
Then Elohîm concentrates on half the waters, those underneath Sky, and moves them into one place; and where they once were, something dry appears. He names that dry stuff Earth, and the waters take the name Sea. So the creation continues from the abstract to the specific, though it is still at a high level of abstraction. So far darkness and waters have had added to them: first light, then a shape that appears to be a hemisphere, which has water both above and beneath it, and then a separation under that hemisphere of water from the dry. We will hear more about the waters that are above Sky and below Earth in the Flood story. But we need to notice here that Earth appears to be a self-contained, hollow object surrounded on all sides by water. It is also interesting that the water that forms Sea is all in one place. The Israelites had no idea that the world contained more than one ocean. To be sure, in fact the world does contain only one ocean, which receives different names in its different parts, but from any one of which you can ride a ship into another. But the Israelites, not being a seagoing people, were not knowledgeable about the sea. Nor were any other ancient peoples aware of the size and extent of the ocean.
One omission, odd to us, is that what fills the space between Earth and the bowlshape of Sky is never mentioned. The Israelites seem never to have thought of air as a substance, though they knew about wind and clouds and rain and such, as well as breath. In fact, as far as I can tell, there is no classical Hebrew word for air apart from "wind."
Now Elohîm separates the waters from what is first described as "dry"-most English translations call it here "dry land," but that is premature. The Hebrew simply says "dry" as an abstraction, and Elohîm names it Earth. Like Sea, Earth is all in one place-again, the ancient Israelites, like most of the ancient world, had no idea of the existence of several separated continents. And Earth is now instructed to "produce" something abstractly "green." Thus Elohîm does not "make" or "create" the plants, it seems, but Earth produces them. The green is then categorized into two sorts, plants that sow their seed and plants that bear fruit with seed in it. So we have a classification-what botanists call a taxonomy, an abstract category divided into its components-of the greenery in terms of the ways the plants reproduce themselves. Again, however, notice that it is first the abstract "green" and then the concrete "plants" in their two subdivisions, each of which has its "kinds," or species, as we would think of them.
Then Elohîm turns to Sky, and puts what are abstractly called "lightgivers" there. The word is related to but distinct from the original word for light, the first thing created. That light in Hebrew was 'ôr, but a lightgiver is ma'ôr, a verbal noun having a causative sense. A ma'ôr gives light, causes it to be light. So these lights are derivative of the original, abstract light. This may very well upset our modern minds, because we know perfectly well that what makes light for us is precisely the "lightgiver," and there is no other source of light. In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky had his characters wonder about that, how it could be that light was created first and only on the fourth day were the sources of light created. Well, that is a problem if we take our perception and understanding of the source of light as the only way to think about it. Obviously these storytellers did not think of it that way. They were thinking about abstracts and concretes, about "light" ('ôr) and "lightgiver" (ma'ôr).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Genesis I-II Copyright © 2011 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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