The Old Testament

Abingdon Press

Chapter One

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, falls easily into four main sections, according to its content: Primeval History (chs. 1–11), Abraham and Sarah (12:1–25:18), Jacob and his family (25:19–36:43), and Joseph (37–50). The first section, the Primeval History, contains some of the Bible's bestknown stories and sets the stage well for our survey of the Hebrew Bible. Hence, we devote the first section of this introduction—three chapters—to it.

Genesis 1–11 1–3 Creation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 4 The First Murder: Cain and Abel 5 Genealogy from Adam to Noah 6–9 The Flood 10 Peoples Descended from Noah's Three Sons 11:1-9 The Origin of Different Languages: The Tower of Babel 11:10-32 Descendants of Shem to Abram

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are about origins. They relate creation and the origins of different groups of humans as background to the story of Abram and his descendants. They are history, but ancient history rather than modern history. Their purpose is not to recount exactly what happened in the past but to provide a broad context for Israel's history by explaining the origins of the world and of other civilizations. Writing within their culture and worldview, biblical writers made use of legends and myths in the absence of other sources in order to account for the origins of the world. Thus, these chapters of Genesis actually contain not one but several different stories of creation. Their account of origins is heavily influenced by Mesopotamian tradition in which the flood is an extension of creation. The Genesis account of the flood is composite and adapted from Mesopotamian versions. In addition to creation and the flood, these chapters give legendary explanations for the origins of different professions (ch. 5), the different peoples of the known world (ch. 10), and the different languages and cultures (ch. 11).

THE FIRST CREATION STORY (GENESIS 1:1–2:3)

CONTENT

The first chapter of Genesis tells of creation in six days. God's resting on and consecration of the seventh day (2:1-3) presumes and continues this day-by-day account, making it clear that the description in chapter 1 spills over into chapter 2. The division between chapters in this instance is poorly placed. The conclusion of the account does not come until God's blessing of the seventh day in 2:3. The full extent of the textual unit, then, is 1:1–2:3.

The first words of the Bible are ungrammatical in Hebrew. They literally read, "In the beginning of the God created the heavens and the earth." A slight change in the Hebrew vowels is required to make sense of the sentence. The most common solution yields, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." But another solution is to read these words as a temporal clause: "When God began to create the heavens and the earth ..." This latter solution is preferable in terms of Hebrew syntax. The sentence begun by the temporal clause is interrupted in 1:2 by a parenthetical description of the condition of the world when God began creation. The sentence then concludes in 1:3 by naming the first item of creation. The full sentence reads:

When God began to create the heavens and earth (the earth being formless and empty with darkness over the surface of the deep and a divine wind sweeping over the surface of the water), then God said, "Let there be light." (AT)

The view of creation reflected here is that of bringing order out of chaos rather than making something out of nothing (creation ex nihilo).

The account of creation for each day contains the same basic set of expressions:

God said, "Let there be x." And there was x/So God made x/And it was so. God saw that x was good. God called x "x." There was evening and morning, day y.

The set of expressions accommodates variation, as on the fifth and sixth days when God blessed them (animals, including birds and fish, and humans) with the command, "Be fruitful and multiply." But the basic pattern upon which each day's account of creation is built is still evident.

Remarkably, the basic pattern occurs twice for days three and six. Verses 9-10 read:

And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

According to the pattern in the other verses, one expects to read, "And there was evening and there was morning, the third day"(1:13). Instead, the pattern begins again:

Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation ..." And it was so (1:11) ... And God saw that it was good (1:12).

Only then does the time reference, "And there was evening and there was morning, the third day," occur.

Similarly, for the sixth day, the basic formula occurs in verses 24-25:

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind ..." And it was so ... God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind.

One expects to read, "And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." Instead, the formula restarts in verse 26 and is expanded through the end of the chapter:

Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image ..." (1:26) So God created humankind in his image ... (1:27) And it was so. (1:30) God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (1:31)

The narrative thus describes the creation of two categories of things, or better, two creative acts for days three and six. The first act on day three is the gathering of the waters to form seas and dry land. This is followed by the creation of vegetation on the dry land. On day six, land animals and humans are created in separate acts. Only one creative act is detailed for every other day.

The structure of the entire account may thus be sketched as follows:

Day 1 – light

Day 2 – dome (sky) in the midst of waters

Day 3 – seas and dry land vegetation

Day 4 – sun, moon, stars

Day 5 – birds, fish

Day 6 – land animals humans

Day 7 – Sabbath

The account is literarily sophisticated and extremely well balanced. The balance is obvious when the two halves of the account (days 1-3 and days 4-6) are compared side-by-side. In addition to having one item or category created on the first two days in each half (1-2, 4-5) and then two items on the third day (3 and 6), there is "horizontal" correspondence between each half: light (day 1) and luminaries (day 4), sky and seas (day 2) and the creatures in them (day 5), dry land and vegetation (day 3) and the animals and humans who live on land and consume its vegetation (day 6).

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