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Reading Genesis 1â?"2
An Evangelical Conversation
By J. Daryl Charles Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC
Copyright © 2013 Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61970-167-0
CHAPTER 1
A Literary Day, Inter-Textual, and Contextual Reading of Genesis 1–2
Richard E. Averbeck
This collection of essays and responses does not focus on the "scientific" issues. We are not scientists. But the discoveries in physical sciences most certainly cast a long shadow over the conversation. All the writers of the five views presented in this book believe in the truth, authority, and reliability (inerrancy) of the Bible, including Gen 1–2. We all specialize in the study of the OT in particular. To one degree or another, however, we all disagree on how to read and interpret these first two chapters of the Bible.
How does God himself intend us to read Gen 1? There are good substantial reasons for reading Gen 1 to refer to six literal days of creation and a seventh day of rest. The points are well-known; for example, the evening and morning formula throughout the chapter, day by day, and the reference to the six-day creation work week in the fourth commandment to reinforce the seventh-day Sabbath (Exod 20:11). So there is good reason to see these as regular literal days. For many years I was satisfied with this reading, and still today have a good deal of respect for it.
Could it be, however, that this may be an overly "literalistic" way for us to read the text (i.e., a misreading that does not properly allow for the genre and intent of the text and the figurative use of language)? The six/seven pattern is common in biblical and ANE literature. I will supply examples from the Bible and the ancient Near East below. But for now, here is the question: Could it be that this well-known pattern was used as a way of shaping the story, not intending that we read it as an ironclad account of the actual steps in God's creation work? The well-known correspondence between days 1 through 3 ("forming the cosmos") and 4 through 6 ("filling the cosmos"; cf. Gen 1:2a, "Now the earth was formless and empty") and many other features of the chapter also suggest that perhaps the account has been schematized. The story has been given this literary shape for its effective telling.
Preview and Method
This is not a matter of somehow finding more time in Gen 1 to accommodate the vast ages of evolutionary science. The concern is an honest reading of Gen 1 from a literary, exegetical, historical, and theological point of view. The view taken here is that the account in Gen 1 begins with the universe as a whole (Gen 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") and then step by step unpacks the parts that make up the whole (Gen 1:2–2:3). The author (whether we have the divine or the human author in mind) shaped the story of creation around what was observable and understandable to the ancient Israelites. Like the text, we need to start our thinking here with the observable world and see the creation story as an explanation of that observable world in terms of God as the creator. The primary purpose of the story was to help them think of their God as the framer of their lives by the way he fabricated and set up their world. It is as much about how the world works and how we fit into it as it is about the material creation of it.
The way of telling this creation story was determined and shaped by God's concern that they know him as the only true God, that they know the kind of good God he is, and that they live well for him within his good creation. This would include, for example, living in God's image and likeness by being good stewards of his good creation (Gen 1:26–28; see also 2:15–17) and by imaging God even through keeping the Sabbath (Exod 20:11 with Gen 2:1–3). God did create the cosmos. This chapter surely teaches that. But the scheme of the creation account was set up to correspond to what was observable to them and required of them. In fact, it corresponds quite well to the world as we experience it even today. The "days" here are snapshots of the world as they observed it in that ancient day. God was revealing to them what they needed to know about himself, about themselves, and about living in their world. He expects us to get the same from it today.
As for Gen 2, this narrative makes it even more clear that the God who created the whole cosmos in Gen 1 is none other than their covenant God, Yahweh (see the combined name "Yahweh God" in 2:4b, 5, 7, etc.; cf. Exod 3:15; 6:2–3, etc., as opposed to 'elohim, "God" alone in Gen 1). In this particular account, however, we have a more standard literary narrative with historical markers. For example, the Tigris and especially the Euphrates rivers were known to the Israelites of Moses' day by name and general location (Gen 2:14), and, in my opinion, Adam and Eve are viewed as actual historical individuals (see also 5:1–3, etc.). This account extends all the way through Gen 4. The accounts in Gen 1 and Gen 2(–4) vary in terms of scale: Gen 1 is the whole cosmos while Gen 2 is limited to the world of humans and animals. They also differ in terms of how they describe the creative acts of God and explain creation's purpose.
In terms of method, "literary" in the title of this essay emphasizes the need to pay attention to the literary features of Gen 1–2, from grammar to genre to discourse and everything in between. This will provide the framework for the rest of our discussion as we move through Gen 1 and into Gen 2 unit by unit. The term "intertextual" in the title refers to the need to pay special attention to the inner-biblical parallels to Gen 1 in other parts of the canon—other creation accounts or reflections on creation in the Bible. Like the different ways the authors shaped the telling of the life of Christ in the four NT Gospels, there are different ways of articulating God's work in creation. Psalm 104 has proven to be especially helpful in this regard.
The word "contextual" refers to the literary context in Gen 1–4 and beyond, and to the extrabiblical resources that help us capture the ANE contextual backdrop for these accounts. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the twentieth century there has been a long history of scholars illegitimately imposing ANE material on the biblical text. This is still an unresolved problem, but one person's application is another person's imposition. Scholars, including evangelical scholars, disagree over the sort of relationship Genesis and extrabiblical sources have to each other. Yes, God spoke his revelation into this ANE context, but he also spoke against it. He is meeting the readers where they are in their world, but he is also taking them where they need to go from there. This is how communication works—divine revelation too.
In the Beginning: Genesis 1:1–2
Scholars debate the grammar and interpretation of the first two (or three) verses of the Bible. Traditionally, the first verse is taken as an independent clause that reports the creation ex nihilo of the starting material in v. 2. Some scholars still support this view. I am not disagreeing with the fact that God created original matter ex nihilo but saying that Gen 1:1 is not talking about that. My disagreement with this reading is based on a combination of the grammatical analysis of the passage, the relationship between v. 1 and the structure of the book of Genesis, and consideration of the ANE environment. I will do my best to keep my remarks about Hebrew grammar as simple and clear as possible without leaving out essential elements.
One of the distinguishing features of Hebrew narrative grammar is the regular use of one single particle (Heb. vav ) prefixed to the first word of a clause to connect one clause after the other. Often it simply means "and," but it can mean "then," "so," or "now," depending on the kind of word to which it is attached and the flow of the narrative. In general, if it attaches to a finite verb at the beginning of a clause it keeps the narrative action going forward in some way. If it attaches to anything other than a verb (i.e., a noun, adjective, preposition, another particle) it is called disjunctive and inserts information into the narrative but does not move the action forward. Genesis 1:2 begins with a vav disjunctive on the noun "earth" ("Now the earth was formless and empty") and continues with two more such clauses through the end of the verse: "and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
When the vav attaches in a certain way to the prefix form of the finite verb it is not only a conjunctive vav but also what we call a vav-consecutive. We call this the preterite verb; that is, the regular past tense narrative form of the verb. It is this kind of verb form that appears at the beginning of v. 3, "And God said." This is the first regular past tense narrative verb in the Bible. So v. 2 provides information about the conditions into which God spoke his first creative word in v. 3. At that time, "the earth was formless and empty." This is a common way to start a narrative account in Hebrew: first the circumstantial information, and then the action begins. Compare, for example, Gen 3:1 ("Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said") and 16:1–2 ("Now Sarai the wife of Abram had not borne children to him, ... and Sarai said to Abram"). All the major units in Gen 1 begin with "and/then God said" (1:3, 6, etc.). Days 1 and 2 as well as 4 and 5 have only one such unit. Day 3 has two units, and day 6 has three. Day 7 is arranged quite differently.
So, what does v. 1 accomplish here? I take it to be an independent clause serving as a title announcing the subject of Gen 1, not the actual beginning of God's creation work in the chapter. It does not fall within the "and God said" units as do all the other action units in the chapter. Instead, it offers a first glimpse at the whole of creation as the starting point for the account, and around which the story is shaped so that the ancient Israelites would know that their God, and their God alone, created their world. The expression "the heavens and the earth" at the end of v. 1 is a merismus; that is, the two opposite parts refer to the whole of the created order.
Moreover, in its function as a title, v. 1 corresponds to the generations formula that appears regularly throughout Genesis and breaks it into major units (Heb 'eleh toledot, "these are the generations of"; 2:4; 5:1 [with variation]; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2). All these formulas pick up something that comes before and introduce the section that will develop it further. This would make it unsuitable as a title for Gen 1, since there is nothing that comes before v. 1. It has the effect of setting Gen 1:1–2:3 off as a sort of prologue to the remainder of Genesis.
The Hebrew verb bara', usually rendered "created" in Gen 1:1, appears five more times in the account (once in 1:21, three times in 1:27, and once more in 2:3). The subject of the action is always God, never man or anyone else. It has received a good deal of scholarly attention as to its basic meaning and implications. It is a key verb, for it appears in the title of the account at the beginning (1:1) and in the concluding reference to the creation work of God as a whole at the end (2:3). Thus, it surrounds the account overall. Moreover, it occurs three times in the climax of the whole story, referring to the creation of humanity, male and female (v. 27). Interestingly, it is also used for the creation of the water and sky animals (v. 21). It is not used for the creation of the plants or the land animals, most likely because it is "the earth" that brings forth both, at God's command (1:11–12, 24–25).
Gen 5:1–2 uses bara' again three times for God's creation of humanity, male and female, referring to Gen 1:26–28. Here it is used again in combination with the verb 'asah, "to make, do," as in Gen 1:26–27. They are not the same, and there have been a number of proposals about how to distinguish between these two verbs. The main distinction in usage seems to be that 'asah is about doing or making things, with no indication of whether they are new or not, whereas bara' highlights the initiation of something new, whether things, events, or other phenomena. There is no space here to review all the usages of these terms.
Whatever view one takes of the grammar, translation, and interpretation of Gen 1:1–2, it is clear that the "and God said" units running through the chapter beginning in v. 3 progressively eliminate the conditions of v. 2. This corresponds to the common ANE pattern of starting creation accounts with the preexistence of a deep, dark, watery abyss. The sources for this are well-known. For example, at the beginning of the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, the point of departure is a deep, dark, watery abyss:
When the heavens above did not exist,
And earth beneath had not come into being—
There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,
And demiurge Tiamat, who gave birth to them all;
They had mingled their waters together
Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to be found—
When not one of the gods had been formed
Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,
The gods were created within them: ...
Tiamat is known as the goddess of the depths of the sea (cf. tehom in Gen 1:2b, "and darkness was over the face of the deep"), while Apsû is the god of the underground waters. The name Enuma Elish comes from the first words of the composition, "When (the heavens) above." The similarity to the beginning of Gen 1 (bereshit, "In the beginning" or "When God began") is obvious. Both compositions begin with a temporal clause, and at the beginning there was water—only water. Of course, in Enuma Elish there follows a theogony (i.e., creation of the various other gods), but in this way Gen 1 is completely distinct. There are no other gods at all. The deep, dark, watery abyss is also one of the standard starting points for creation in the Egyptian world. For example, in one Coffin Text we read: "on the day that Atum evolved—out of the Flood, out of the Waters, out of darkness, out of lostness."
A deep, dark, watery abyss was a most natural and understandable starting point for a creation story in the ancient Israelite world. Thus, in Gen 1 we watch God paint his literary picture of creation and the cosmos step by step, and he paints it against the same standard backdrop as would be normal in the ancient Near East. The picture itself is quite different in many important respects, but there are also other similarities to ANE accounts.
ANE Texts and the First Three Days of Genesis 1
One of the most important points of comparison between the creation account in Gen 1 and the creation and cosmology texts of the ancient Near East is the three levels of the cosmos, corresponding to the first three days of Gen 1. The three levels are held in common, or at least they appear in one form or another across a substantial spectrum of texts. This is not a matter of one culture borrowing from the other or the Bible borrowing from its ANE environment. Instead, it reflects the observable realities of the place of humans within the cosmos. We need to go behind the ANE culture to the observational world of all humans, then and now. Humans have always naturally observed what is above us, what is below us, and the place where we stand between the two.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Reading Genesis 1â?"2 by J. Daryl Charles. Copyright © 2013 Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC.
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