(Genesis 1:1 - 2:3)
When Elohim initiated the creation of the earth and sky from the nothingness of eternity, the earth at first was amorphous, desolate, and devoid of life, with only darkness falling upon the waters of its fathomless oceans. But the spirit of Elohim, hovering over the surface of the seas, proclaimed, “Let there be light!” And the light came into being. Elohim was pleased by the light and so to distinguish it from the darkness, he established periods of light and periods of darkness. He called them “day” and “night.” The evening passed and gave way to the morning, completing the first day of creation.
Elohim then proclaimed, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters and let it serve to divide them!” Elohim created a dome to separate the oceans of seawater below it from the reservoirs of rainwater above it. And so it was done. Elohim called the celestial dome the “sky.” The evening passed and gave way to the morning, completing the second day of creation.
Elohim then proclaimed, “Let the waters beneath the celestial dome be collected in one place so that dry land may emerge.” Elohim called the dry land “earth” and the collected waters the “ocean.” He was pleased with them. “Let the earth produce vegetation, all varieties of cereal plants and all sorts of fruit trees.” And so it was done, the earth produced vegetation, all varieties of cereal plants and all sorts of fruit trees. Elohim found them pleasing. The evening passed and gave way to the morning, completing the third day of creation.
Elohim then proclaimed, “Let there lights beneath the celestial dome to separate the day from the night. Let them be used to signal the passing of the seasons and to mark the days and the years. Let them shine in the heavens to illuminate the earth.” And so it was done. He created a brilliant light, the sun, to gleam by day and a lesser body, the moon, to glow by night. He created the stars as well. He hung them beneath the celestial dome to illuminate the earth, to shine by day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. The evening passed and gave way to the morning, completing the fourth day of creation.
Elohim then proclaimed, “Let the water teem with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the open expanse of the heavens.” And so Elohim created the great monsters of the sea, all the aquatic creatures of every variety that abundantly populate the oceans, and every manner of flying birds. Elohim was pleased with them. He blessed them and exhorted them, “Be fertile, multiply, and fill the waters of the sea. And may the birds proliferate upon the earth.” The evening passed and gave way to the morning, completing the fifth day of creation.
Elohim then proclaimed, “Let the earth produce all varieties of animal life, domestic animals, small creatures that crawl upon the ground, and wild beasts.” And so it was done. Elohim made all the domestic animals, all manner of small animals and wild beasts. Elohim saw that it was all well and good. Then Elohim proclaimed, “Let us create a human beings who will look and be like us. Let us charge them to be stewards over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, over all the livestock, the earth itself, and all the small creatures that crawl upon the ground.” Elohim created human beings in his own likeness, and he created them male and female. Elohim blessed them and declared, “Be fruitful, multiply, populate the earth, and be its master. Rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Elohim also said, “Behold, I give to you every cereal plant that grows on the surface of the earth and every fruit tree as food for you. And to every animal on the earth, every bird in the sky, every living creature that moves upon the earth I give all the green plants as food.” And so it was done. Elohim viewed all that he had created and was satisfied that it was wholly good. The evening passed and gave way to the morning, completing the sixth day of creation.
The creation of the heavens and earth and all they contain was thus complete. Elohim had finished his task by the 7th day and so on the 7th day he took repose from the work he was doing. Consequently, Elohim blessed the 7th day and sanctified it because on that day he ceased doing his work of creation.
Notes
1. Although Elohim is a plural form in Hebrew there is no question that it is meant to convey a singular subject since, in most cases, it is followed by a singular verb. By the time of the writing of Genesis, (about the 6th century B.C. and later) a sole deity was well established in Hebrew beliefs. Elohim, in this narrative, is clearly presented as a universal creator god.
2. While Elohim creates the earth and sky, there is no explicit creation of water; the seas that cover the primeval earth seem to be already there when the act of creation begins. The fact that creation begins only when the spirit of Elohim (does Elohim also have a body as well?) makes contact with the surface of the water is a curious, half confirmation of the theory that life began in the sea.
3. The creation of light, and, a modern man might suppose, the entire band of electromagnetic radiation, proceeds the creation of the sun by three days. Night and day are also created on the first day without a sun yet being in existence. Light without a source of emanation and a day without a sun to mark its duration seem logically inconsistent. Light might be meant symbolically, but the reference to day and night in the next clause would seem to militate against anything less than a literal interpretation.
4. The work of the second day of creation is broadly misunderstood and nearly all translations leave the passage incomprehensible. (I have added a few words to explain what waters are being separated.) The "expanse" or "firmament" most translations refer to and have trouble explaining should be rendered "celestial dome" or "sky dome.". Those who wrote the Bible undoubtedly believed that the earth was a flat surface and that a dome containing the sky fit above it. (See the famous anonymous Flammarion engraving of the firmament.) Elohim created this dome on the second day. (If he created merely an expanse, that is, an area of nothingness, then he surely wasted a day of creation.) Of what solidity this dome might be is unclear and was probably unclear to the writers of Genesis, but the sun, moon, planets, and stars were thought to be suspended below it or else moved upon the surface of this dome. The dome would separate the oceans on the earth from the water which falls to earth as rain -- this latter water consisting of a sea above the celestial dome, which would, at times, open to emit some of this water as rain. The concepts of evaporation, condensation, the formation of clouds and precipitation were obviously not yet comprehended. --- It might be mentioned that the concept of the earth as a sphere was probably first proposed by the Greek Pythagoras in the 6th Century B.C. Philosophers before Socrates generally clung to the flat earth theory, but Aristotle believed the earth was a globe, as did many, but not all, western men of learning after him. This included Christian thinkers such as the Venerable Bede in the 8th Century and Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century AD who both wrote on the sphericality of the earth. Common, uneducated folk, unless they happened to be sailors, probably considered the world flat up until Columbus's time, if they happened to think about it at all. The Chinese, despite the knowledge they possessed on diverse subjects, inexplicably didn’t get off the flat earth bandwagon till the 17th Century!
5. It is curious that the narrative does not give as a specific reason for the creation of the sun, the warming of the earth, since this would be obvious even to a very primitive mind.
6. Fauna seems to be divided into three categories here, domestic animals and livestock, the large animals, and the small (creeping) animals that probably include reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc.
7. On the sixth day human beings, both male and female were created. This narrative is in contradiction to the succeeding Eden Creation Narrative, in which man is created first and woman subsequently, after it is determined that man needed something more suitable than animals as a companion.
8. The strong emphasis in the text that man was created in the image of his creator leads one to believe that both were creatures of the same order, that is, genetically compatible, something which the Bible authors would not have understood or known how to express. The “let us” may be a case of the royal “we,” but it is also possible Elohim may be speaking to other beings, probably of his own kind. One assumes the Creator to be a spirit being, but in the reference to man’s creation it is asserted that he has a human form.
9. Explicitly it is stated that Elohim wished for his animal creations not to eat one another, but to observe a strict vegetarian diet. The god Jehovah, in subsequent narratives, seems to have different ideas about eating meat, or else changes his mind about the matter.
10. Finishing creation in six days and thus having God rest on the seventh day is, one may surmise, a rationalization for a probably long-existing Hebrew tradition of a day of rest. (It is common for the origin, meaning, and purpose of ancient traditions to be forgotten and for myths to arise to explain them. Often attribution is given to divine acts or edicts.) The Hebrew Sabbath was always Friday evening to Saturday evening. Christians would change this observance to Sunday in the 2nd Century B.C. when leaders of the new faith were eager to establish Christianity as a discrete religion and not merely a sect of Judaism. Some believe that the Sunday Sabbath may have been observed by early Christians soon after the resurrection, which occurred on the first day of the week, Sunday.
11. All scientific theories explaining the creation of the universe presuppose already existing creation whether it be the hydrogen atom or electromagnetic energy. The concept of a something being created out of nothing is as impossible to grasp as the concept of time having a beginning. Here, Elohim does create something out of nothing. The Hebrew word used, “bara,” means “to create out of nothing,” and it is the word used in the first sentence of Genesis. It is employed elsewhere, but nearly always in regard to an act by the Creator, not by man. The more common Hebrew verb “asah,” meaning “to make,” is used here as well, somewhat indiscriminately, although one would expect it to be used to describe acts of creation in which already existing materials are being fashioned.
12. The view that the earth was created a few thousands years ago retained its plausibility until a couple centuries ago when scientific discoveries evidenced a much, much older earth. Since then, many have tried to reinterpret the Biblical account to fit the established facts of science. It is fruitless: there is no evidence that authors of Genesis were privy to anything more than the crude cosmological concepts of their day -- a geocentric universe, a flat earth, heavenly bodies suspended from a dome, natural law subordinate to supernatural forces. That a "day" in Genesis might be an age of indeterminate length is the argument that is often presented, but this contradicts the explicit insistence of the Genesis authors that a day, a twenty-four hour day, was a fixed concept existing even before there was a sun to mark it.
13. There is the implication that Elohim, after having completing Creation on the 6th day, not only rested on the 7th, but did no more creating. This fits in with a long-held view of not only of many Judeo-Christian theologians, but of deists as well that there was a single act of creation that set into motion the mechanisms of the universe. (The Creator apparently did not decide at some later point to devise a few new animals or, when the mood struck, will into existence a novel kind of flower or something.) Indeed, the idea of a fixed, unchanging world has only recently been challenged (and discredited). The theory of continuous creation or of God-managed evolution is definitely at odds with the Genesis account of creation.
14. The creation narratives of Genesis may or may not be more satisfying psychologically to believe in than the evolutionary scheme presented by contemporary science, but, truth be told, they are only slightly less preposterous. Contrary to logic, observation, and common sense, the latter asks us to accept that life can spring from the non-living, that the world and all its forms, living and otherwise, as well as its rhythms and harmonies, have come into being by felicitous accident, that existence has no purpose, the human soul does not exist, and death results in spiritual extinction. It posits the existence of a godlike intelligence called Evolution that fashions the alterations and development of life forms. It insists, without an iota of empirical evidence, that random mutations spurred by environmental adaptation can spontaneously generate new genera, (that is, the impossible scenario of one animal accidentally giving birth to an entirely new animal genetically incompatible with the parents, with that new animal being able to find identical mutations allowing it to successfully propagate itself). The inconsistencies and implausibilities of the Theory of Evolution are, in fact, legion. While religious faith and fervor have induced an irrational belief in the deity-inspired accuracy of the Genesis creation narratives, conviction and conformity have also imposed a quasi-religious devotion to myths of Evolution. In both cases, reason and truth are made to cede precedence to faith and belief.
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