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Genesis creation narrative

January 01, 1970

"Genesis 1" redirects here. For other uses, see Genesis 1 (disambiguation).

The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth[a] of both Judaism and Christianity.[1] The narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. In the first, Elohim (the Hebrew generic word for god) creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh (i.e. the Biblical Sabbath). In the second story God (now referred to by the personal name Yahweh) creates Adam, the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden. There he is given dominion over the animals. Eve, the first woman, is created from Adam's rib as his companion.

The authors of the Hebrew creation narrative borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology and ancient near eastern cosmology, but adapted them to their unique belief in one God.[2] The first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch (the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy) is thought to have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist source) and was later expanded by other authors (the Priestly source) into a work very like Genesis as known today.[3] The two sources can be identified in the creation narrative: Priestly and Jahwistic.[4] The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism.[5] Robert Alter described the combined narrative as "compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends".[6]

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.[7]

The Genesis creation narrative inspired a genre of Jewish and Christian literature known as the Hexameral literature. This literature was dedicated to the composition of commentaries, homilies, and treatises concerned with the exegesis of the biblical creation narrative through ancient and medieval times. The first Christian example of this genre was the Hexaemeron of Basil of Caesarea, and many other works went on to be written from authors including Augustine of Hippo, Jacob of Serugh, Jacob of Edessa, Bonaventure, and so on.[8]

Composition

 
Cuneiform tablet with the Atra-Hasis Epic in the British Museum

Sources

See also: Documentary hypothesis, Textual variants in the Hebrew Bible § Genesis 1, and Textual variants in the Hebrew Bible § Genesis 2

Although tradition attributes Genesis to Moses, biblical scholars hold that it, together with the following four books (making up what Jews call the Torah and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch), is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods."[9] The creation narrative consists of two separate accounts drawn from different sources. The first account in Genesis 1:1–2:4 is from what scholars call the Priestly source (P). The second account, which takes up the rest of Genesis 2, is largely from the Jahwist source (J).[10]

There is currently no scholarly consensus on when the narrative reached its final form.[11] Many scholars date the J source to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE and the P source largely to the 6th century BCE.[12] A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive narrative of the Pentateuch was composed in the 7th or 6th centuries BCE.[3] A sizeable minority of scholars believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, also known as the primeval history, can be dated to the 3rd century BCE, based on discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible.[13]

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, 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 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.[14]

Structure

The creation narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the two first chapters of the Book of Genesis[15] (there are no chapter divisions in the original Hebrew text; see Chapters and verses of the Bible). The first account (Genesis 1:1–2:3) employs a repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment, then the statement "And there was evening and there was morning, the [xth] day," 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.[16]

Consistency was evidently not seen as essential to storytelling in ancient Near Eastern literature.[b] 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 while the second (the Jahwist story) focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment.[15] The highly regimented seven-day narrative of Genesis 1 features an omnipotent 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.[17] Even the order and method of creation differs.[17] "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."[18]

The primary accounts in each chapter are joined by a literary bridge at Genesis 2:4, "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 LORD God made the earth and the heavens". This verse is one of ten "generations" (Hebrew: תולדות toledot) phrases used throughout Genesis, which provide a literary structure to the book.[19] 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.[20]

Mesopotamian influence

See also: Panbabylonism and Ancient near eastern cosmology
 
Marduk, god of Babylon, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of primeval chaos

Comparative mythology provides historical and cross-cultural perspectives for Jewish mythology. Both sources behind the Genesis creation narrative borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology,[21][22] but adapted them to their belief in one God,[2] establishing a monotheistic creation in opposition to the polytheistic creation myth of ancient Israel's neighbors.[23][24][page needed] Genesis 1 bears similarities to the Baal Cycle of Israel's neighbor, Ugarit.[25]

Genesis 1 also bears striking similarities and differences with Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth.[22] The myth begins with two primeval entities: Apsu, the male freshwater deity, and Tiamat, the female saltwater deity. The first gods were born from their sexual union. Both Apsu and Tiamat were killed by the younger gods. Marduk, the leader of the gods, builds the world with Tiamat's body, which he splits in two. With one half, he builds a dome-shaped firmament in the sky to hold back Tiamat's upper waters. With the other half, Marduk forms dry land to hold back her lower waters. Marduk then organizes the heavenly bodies and assigns tasks to the gods in maintaining the cosmos. When the gods complain about their work, Marduk creates humans out of the blood of the god Kingu. The grateful gods build a temple for Marduk in Babylon.[26]

In both Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish, creation consists of bringing order out of chaos. Before creation, there was nothing but a cosmic ocean. During creation, a dome-shaped firmament is put in place to hold back the water and make Earth habitable.[27] 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).[28] In contrast to Enuma Elish, Genesis 1 is monotheistic. There is no theogony (account of God's origins), and there is no trace of the resistance to the reduction of chaos to order (Greek: theomachy, lit. "God-fighting"), all of which mark the Mesopotamian creation accounts.[2] The gods in Enuma Elish are amoral with limited powers and create humans to be their slaves. In Genesis 1, however, God is all powerful. He creates humans in the divine image, cares for their wellbeing,[29] and gives them dominion over every living thing.[30]

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; 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 Genesis 2:6 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 when, in Genesis 4:1, she says that she has "created a man with Yahweh", but she is not a divine being like her Babylonian counterpart.[31]

Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth, the Atra-Hasis epic – parallels that in fact extend throughout Genesis 2–11, from the Creation to the Flood 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.[32]

Alternative biblical creation accounts

The Genesis narratives are not the only biblical creation accounts. The Bible preserves two contrasting models of creation. The first is the "logos" (speech) model, where a supreme God "speaks" dormant matter into existence. Genesis 1 is an example of creation by speech.[33]

The second is the "agon" (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.[34] There is no complete combat myth preserved in the Bible. However, there are fragmentary allusions to such a myth in Isaiah 27:1, Isaiah 51:9–10, Job 26:12–13. These passages describe how God defeated the forces of chaos personified as sea monsters. These monsters are variously named Yam (Sea), Nahar (River), Leviathan (Coiled One), Rahab (Arrogant One), and Tannin (Dragon).[35]

Psalm 74 and Isaiah 51 recall 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..."[36]

First narrative: Genesis 1:1–2:3

 
The Ancient of Days by William Blake (Copy D, 1794)

Background

The first creation account is divided into seven days during which God creates light (day 1); the sky (day 2); the earth, seas, and vegetation (day 3); the sun and moon (day 4); animals of the air and sea (day 5); and land animals and humans (day 6). God rested from his work on the seventh day of creation, the Sabbath.[37]

The use of numbers in ancient texts was often numerological rather than factual – that is, the numbers were used because they held some symbolic value to the author.[38] The number seven, denoting divine completion, permeates Genesis 1: verse 1:1 consists of seven words, verse 1:2 has 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.[39]

The cosmos created in Genesis 1 bears a striking resemblance to the Tabernacle in Exodus 35–40, which was the prototype of the Temple in Jerusalem and the focus of priestly worship of Yahweh; 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.[40]

Pre-creation: Genesis 1:1–2

1 In the beginning God [Elohim][c] created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit [ruach] of God moved upon the face of the waters.[41]

The opening phrase of Genesis 1:1 is traditionally translated in English as "in the beginning God created".[42] The Hebrew, however, is ambiguous and can be translated at least three ways:[43]

  1. as a statement that the cosmos had an absolute beginning ("In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.");
  2. 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
  3. 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!").

Biblical scholar John H. Walton argues that Genesis 1:1 functions as a literary introduction and summary of what follows in chapter 1.[44][d] This is the most common view held by European scholars.[45] Thus, biblical scholars such as Christine Hayes, Michael Coogan, and Cynthia Chapman argue Genesis 1:1 does not describe creatio ex nihilo (Latin for 'creation out of nothing') or the initial origins of the cosmos. Rather, they argue, this verse describes the creation of an ordered universe out of preexisting material.[46][47] R. N. Whybray concurred, pointing out that the earth already exists as a "formless void".[48] John Day, however, argues that Genesis 1:1 does describe the initial creation of the universe, writing: "Since the inchoate earth and the heavens in the sense of the air/wind were already in existence in Gen. 1:2, it is most natural to assume that Gen. 1:1 refers to God's creative act in making them."[49][50]

The word "created" translates the Hebrew bara', a word used only for God's creative activity; people do not engage in bara'.[51] Walton argues that bara' does not necessarily refer to the creation of matter. In the ancient Near East, "to create" meant assigning roles and functions. The bara' which God performs in Genesis 1 concerns bringing "heaven and earth" from chaos into ordered existence.[52] Day disputes Walton's functional interpretation of the creation narrative. Day argues that material creation is the "only natural way of taking the text" and that this interpretation was the only one for most of history.[53]

Most interpreters consider the phrase "heaven and earth" to be a merism meaning the entire cosmos.[54] Genesis 1:2 describes the cosmos before creation. The earth is described as "formless and void". This phrase is a translation of the Hebrew tohu wa-bohu (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ).[55] Tohu by itself means "emptiness, futility". It is used to describe the desert wilderness. Bohu has no known meaning, although it appears to be related to the Arabic word bahiya ("to be empty"),[56] and was apparently coined to rhyme with and reinforce tohu.[57] 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'".[58]

Verse 2 continues, "darkness was upon the face of the deep". The word deep translates the Hebrew təhôm (תְהוֹם), a primordial ocean. Darkness and təhôm are two further elements of chaos in addition to tohu wa-bohu. In Enuma Elish, the watery deep is personified as the goddess Tiamat, the enemy of Marduk. In Genesis, however, there is no such personification. The elements of chaos are not seen as evil but as indications that God has not begun his creative work.[59]

Verse 2 concludes with, "And the ruach of God [Elohim] moved upon the face of the waters." There are several options for translating the Hebrew word ruach (רוּחַ). It could mean "breath", "wind", or "spirit" in different contexts. The traditional translation is "spirit of God".[60] In the Hebrew Bible, the spirit of God is understood to be an extension of God's power. The term is analogous to saying the "hand of the Lord" (2 Kings 3:15). Historically, Christian theologians supported "spirit" as it provided biblical support for the presence of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, at creation.[61]

Other interpreters argue for translating ruach as "wind". For example, the NRSV renders it "wind from God".[48] Likewise, the word elohim can sometimes function as a superlative adjective (such as "mighty" or "great"). The phrase ruach elohim may therefore mean "great wind". The connection between wind and watery chaos is also seen in the Genesis flood narrative, where God uses wind to make the waters subside in Genesis 8:1.[62][63]

In Enuma Elish, the storm god Marduk defeats Tiamat with his wind. While stories of a cosmic battle prior to creation were familiar to ancient Israelites (see above), there is no such battle in Genesis 1 though the text includes the primeval ocean and references to God's wind. Instead, Genesis 1 depicts a single God whose power is uncontested and who brings order out of chaos.[64]

Six days of Creation: Genesis 1:3–2:3

 
The first day of creation, by Jean Colombe from the Heures de Louis de Laval [fr] (see Louis de Laval)

Creation takes place over seven days. The creative acts are arranged so that the first three days set up the environments necessary for the creations of the last three days to thrive. For example, God creates light on the first day and the light-producing heavenly bodies on the fourth day.[47]

Days of Creation[47]
Day 1 light Day 4 celestial bodies
Day 2 sea and firmament Day 5 birds and fish
Day 3 land and plants Day 6 land animals and humans

Each day follows a similar literary pattern:[65]

  1. Introduction: "And God said"
  2. Command: "Let there be"
  3. Report: "And it was so"
  4. Evaluation: "And God saw that it was good"
  5. Time sequence: "And there was evening, and there was morning"

Verse 31 sums up all of creation with, "God saw every thing that He had made, and, indeed, it was very good". According to biblical scholar R. N. Whybray, "This is the craftsman's assessment of his own work ... It does not necessarily have an ethical connotation: it is not mankind that is said to be 'good', but God's work as craftsman."[51]

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 Enuma Elish and also echoes Job 38, where God recalls how the stars, the "sons of God", sang when the corner-stone of creation was laid.[66]

First day

3 And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.[67]

On day one, God starts the process of bringing order to chaos by creating time.[68] God creates by fiat; he merely speaks light into existence. This highlights God's omnipotence,[69] and it suggests comparisons between God and a king, who has merely to speak for things to happen.[70]

Then God separates the light from the darkness and names them.[48] In Genesis, creative acts begin with speech and are finalized with naming. This has parallels in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. In Egyptian Memphite Theology, the creator god pronounced the names of everything, and Enuma Elish begins at the point where nothing has yet been named. For ancient peoples, a person or object did not exist without a name.[71]

Second day

 
Ancient Israelites and other Near Eastern people understood the world to be surrounded by water. The upper waters are contained by a solid dome or firmament (the sky). The dome was supported by mountains.[72]

6 And God said: 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.[73]

Rāqîa, the word translated as firmament, is from rāqa', the verb used for the act of beating metal into thin plates.[74] 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.[75] 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.[76]

The Earth itself was a flat disc, surrounded by sea or mountains, on which the firmament rested. The firmament was transparent, 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, the abode of the dead.[77] The waters of the deep would later be released during the Deluge, when "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" from the waters beneath the earth and from the "windows" of the sky.[78]

Third day

And God said: 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good. 11 And God said: 'Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth.' And it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.[79]

On the third day, the waters withdraw, creating a ring of ocean surrounding a single circular continent.[80] By the end of the third day God has created a foundational environment of light, heavens, seas and earth.[81] 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.[82]

Fourth day

 
The Creation – Bible Historiale (c. 1411)

14 And God said: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.' And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.[83]

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 were organised around the cycles of both the Sun and Moon, in a lunisolar calendar that could have either 12 or 13 months.);[84] 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.[85] 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.[86]

Fifth day

And God said: 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.' 21 And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that creepeth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after its kind, and every winged fowl after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying: 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.' 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.[87]

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 and Leviathan from Psalm 74:13, and Isaiah 27:1, and Isaiah 51:9, but there is no hint (in Genesis) of combat, and the tannin are simply creatures created by God.[88]

Sixth day

 
The Creation of the Animals (1506–1511), by Grão Vasco

24 And God said: 'Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.' And it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' 27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. 28 And God blessed them; and God said unto them: 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.' 29 And God said: 'Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed—to you it shall be for food; 30 and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is a living soul, [I have given] every green herb for food.' And it was so.31 And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.[89]

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 [own] image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them."), the word is still not exclusively male.[90]

Man was created in the "image of God". The meaning of this is unclear: suggestions include:

  1. Having the spiritual qualities of God such as intellect, will, etc.;
  2. Having the physical form of God;
  3. A combination of these two;
  4. Being God's counterpart on Earth and able to enter into a relationship with him;
  5. Being God's representative or viceroy on Earth.[91]

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,[92] or that it reflects a setting in a divine council[broken anchor] with God enthroned as king and proposing the creation of mankind to the lesser divine beings.[93]

God tells the animals and humans that he has given them "the green plants for food" – creation is to be vegetarian. 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.[94]

Upon completion, God sees that "every thing that He had made ... was very good" (Genesis 1:31). This implies that the materials that existed before the Creation ("tohu wa-bohu," "darkness", "tehom") were not "very good". Israel Knohl hypothesized that the Priestly source set up this dichotomy to mitigate the problem of evil.[95]

Seventh day: divine rest

 
Seventh Day of Creation, from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel

And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made.[96]

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.[97] 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 LORD thy GOD, 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 LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

Second narrative: Genesis 2:4–2:25

 
The Creation by Lucas Cranach, 1534

Genesis 2–3, the Garden of Eden 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".[98] 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 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.[98] It opens "in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens", a set introduction similar to those found in Babylonian myths.[99] Before the man is created the earth is a barren waste watered by an ’êḏ (אד‎); Genesis 2:6 the King James Version 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".[100]

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 (ייצר‎ yîṣer), meaning "fashioned", a word used in contexts such as a potter fashioning a pot from clay.[101] God breathes his own breath into the clay and it becomes nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎), 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.[102]

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.[103] The "tree of life" is a motif from Mesopotamian myth: in the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1800 BCE)[e] the hero is given a plant whose name is "man becomes young in old age", but a serpent steals the plant from him.[104] 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.[105] In Eden, mankind has a choice between wisdom and life, and chooses the first, although God intended them for the second.[106]

The mythic Eden and its rivers may represent the real Jerusalem, the Temple and the Promised Land. Eden may represent the divine garden on Zion, the mountain of God, which was also Jerusalem; while the real Gihon 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) and guardian cherubs.[107] 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.[108]

"Good and evil" is a merism, 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.[109]

The first woman is created out of one of Adam's ribs to be ezer kenegdo (עזר כנגדו‎ ‘êzer kəneḡdō)[110] – 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.[111] 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.[112]

The woman is called ishah (אשה‎ ’iš-šāh), "Woman", with an explanation that this is because she was taken from ish (אִישׁ‎ ’îš), meaning "man",[110] but the two words are not in fact connected.[113] Later, after the story of the Garden is complete, she receives a name: Ḥawwāh (חוה ‎, Eve). This means "living" in Hebrew, from a root that can also mean "snake".[114] Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer connects Eve's creation to the ancient Sumerian myth of Enki, who was healed by the goddess Nin-ti, "the Lady of the rib"; this became "the Lady who makes live" via a pun on the word ti, which means both "rib" and "to make live" in Sumerian.[115] The Hebrew word traditionally translated "rib" in English can also mean "side", "chamber", or "beam".[116] 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.[117]

Creationism and the genre of the creation narrative

Main articles: Creationism and Creation science
 
Eden (Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472–1553)

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).[118] According to Biblical scholar Francis Andersen, 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.[119] Reformed evangelical scholar Bruce Waltke cautions against one such misreading: the "woodenly literal" approach, which leads to "creation science", but also to such "implausible interpretations" as the "gap theory", the presumption of a "young earth", and the denial of evolution.[120] As scholar of Jewish studies, Jon D. Levenson, puts it:

How much history lies behind the story of Genesis? Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all.[121]

Another scholar, Conrad Hyers, summed up the same thought by writing, "A literalist interpretation of the Genesis accounts is inappropriate, misleading, and unworkable [because] it presupposes and insists upon a kind of literature and intention that is not there."[122]

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.[123] 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".[124] 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".[124] 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.[125]

One can also regard Genesis as "historylike", "part of a broader spectrum of originally anonymous, history-like ancient Near Eastern narratives."[f] Scholarly writings frequently refer to Genesis as myth, but there is no agreement on how to define "myth", and so while Brevard Childs 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.[7]

Genesis 1–2 reflects ancient ideas about science: in the words of E.A. Speiser, "on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian science."[126] The opening words of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", sum up the author(s) belief that Yahweh, the god of Israel, was solely responsible for creation and had no rivals.[127] Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy, concluded that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity.[128] Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with the creative word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).[129] 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.[130] 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".[127] There were also waters above the Earth, and so the raqia (firmament), a solid bowl, was necessary to keep them from flooding the world.[131] 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.[130]

The idea that God created the world out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) has become central today to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – indeed, the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides felt it was the only concept that the three religions shared[132] – yet it is not found directly in Genesis, nor in the entire Hebrew Bible.[133] According to Walton, 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.[134] John Day, however, considers that Genesis 1 clearly provides an account of the creation of the material universe.[53] Even so, the doctrine had not yet been fully developed 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.[135]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The term myth is used here in its academic sense, meaning "a traditional story consisting of events that are ostensibly historical, though often supernatural, explaining the origins of a cultural practice or natural phenomenon." It is not being used to mean "something that is false".
  2. ^ "One aspect of narrative in Genesis that requires special attention is its high tolerance for different versions of the same event, a well-known feature of ancient Near Eastern literature, from earliest times through rabbinic midrash. ... This could not have happened if the existence of variation were seen as a serious defect or if rigid consistency were deemed essential to effective storytelling" (Levenson 2004, p. 9).
  3. ^ The word translated "God" in Genesis 1:1–2 is Elohim, and the word translated "Spirit" is ruach (Hayes 2012, pp. 37–38).
  4. ^ "By now it has been long recognized and widely accepted that the Hebrew text will not accommodate the idea that there was a separate creation in v. 1 that was destroyed and that a new creation is initiated in v. 2. This Gap Theory (or Ruin and Reconstruction Theory) would require the translation 'the earth became formless and void.' If the author had intended this, he would have put the verb first in the sentence and attached a preposition to the word 'formless'" (Walton 2001, p. 728, note 20).
  5. ^ "The story of Adam and Eve's sin in the garden of Eden (2.25–3.24) displays similarities with Gilgamesh, an epic poem that tells how its hero lost the opportunity for immortality and came to terms with his humanity. ... the biblical narrator has adapted the Mesopotamian forerunner to Israelite theology" (Levenson 2004, p. 9).
  6. ^ "In summary, rather than creating a fully new text after the manner of a modern novelist or even a modern historian, ancient authors of historylike narratives like Gilgamesh or Genesis would often build their text out of earlier traditions. [...] Seen within this perspective, Genesis is part of a broader spectrum of originally anonymous, history-like ancient Near Eastern narratives" (Carr 1996, p. 21).

Citations

  1. ^ Leeming & Leeming 2004, p. 113.
  2. ^ a b c Sarna 1997, p. 50.
  3. ^ a b Davies 2001, p. 37.
  4. ^ Bandstra 2008, p. 37.
  5. ^ Wenham 2003b, p. 37.
  6. ^ Alter 2004, p. xii.
  7. ^ a b Hamilton 1990, pp. 57–58.
  8. ^ Katsos 2023, p. 15–16.
  9. ^ Speiser 1964, p. xxi.
  10. ^ Collins 2018, p. 71.
  11. ^ Whybray 2001, p. 41.
  12. ^ Coogan & Chapman 2018, p. 48.
  13. ^ Gmirkin 2006, pp. 240–241.
  14. ^ Ska 2006, pp. 169, 217–18.
  15. ^ a b Alter 1981, p. 141.
  16. ^ Ruiten 2000, pp. 9–10.
  17. ^ a b Carr 1996, pp. 62–64.
  18. ^ Carr 1996, p. 64.
  19. ^ Cross 1973, pp. 301ff.
  20. ^ Thomas 2011, pp. 27–28.
  21. ^ Lambert 1965.
  22. ^ a b Levenson 2004, p. 9.
  23. ^ Leeming 2004.
  24. ^ Smith 2001.
  25. ^ Smith & Pitard 2008, p. 615.
  26. ^ Hayes 2012, p. 29–33.
  27. ^ Coogan & Chapman 2018, p. 34.
  28. ^ McDermott 2002, pp. 25–27.
  29. ^ Hayes 2012, pp. 33 & 35.
  30. ^ Coogan & Chapman 2018, p. 35.
  31. ^ Van Seters 1992, pp. 122–24.
  32. ^ Carr 1996, p. 242–248.
  33. ^ Fishbane 2003, pp. 34–35.
  34. ^ Fishbane 2003, p. 35.
  35. ^ Sarna 1966, p. 2.
  36. ^ Hutton 2007, p. 274.
  37. ^ Sarna 1966, pp. 1–2.
  38. ^ Hyers 1984, p. 74.
  39. ^ Wenham 1987, p. 6.
  40. ^ Levenson 2004, p. 13.
  41. ^ Genesis 1:1–1:2.
  42. ^ Walton 2001, p. 69.
  43. ^ Bandstra 2008, pp. 38–39.
  44. ^ Walton 2001, p. 70.
  45. ^ Day 2021, p. 5.
  46. ^ Hayes 2012, p. 37.
  47. ^ a b c Coogan & Chapman 2018, p. 30.
  48. ^ a b c Whybray 2001, p. 43.
  49. ^ Day 2021, pp. 5–6.
  50. ^ Tsumura 2022, p. 489.
  51. ^ a b Whybray 2001, p. 42.
  52. ^ Walton 2006, pp. 183–184.
  53. ^ a b Day 2014, p. 4.
  54. ^ Walton 2001, p. 728, note 17.
  55. ^ Whybray 2001, pp. 42–43.
  56. ^ Day 2014, p. 8.
  57. ^ Alter 2004, p. 17.
  58. ^ Thompson 1980, p. 230.
  59. ^ Walton 2001, pp. 73–74.
  60. ^ Blenkinsopp 2011, p. 33.
  61. ^ Walton 2001, pp. 76–77.
  62. ^ Blenkinsopp 2011, pp. 33–34.
  63. ^ Walton 2001, pp. 74–75.
  64. ^ Hayes 2012, pp. 38–39.
  65. ^ Arnold 1998, p. 23.
  66. ^ Blenkinsopp 2011, pp. 21–22.
  67. ^ Genesis 1:3–1:5
  68. ^ Walton 2001, p. 79.
  69. ^ Arnold 1998, p. 26.
  70. ^ Bandstra 2008, p. 39.
  71. ^ Walton 2003, p. 158.
  72. ^ Coogan & Chapman 2018, p. 31.
  73. ^ Genesis 1:6–1:8
  74. ^ Hamilton 1990, p. 122.
  75. ^ Seeley 1991, p. 227.
  76. ^ Walton 2003, pp. 158–59.
  77. ^ Knight 1990, pp. 175–76.
  78. ^ Wenham 2003a, p. 29.
  79. ^ Genesis 1:9–1:13
  80. ^ Seeley 1997, p. 236.
  81. ^ Bandstra 2008, p. 41.
  82. ^ Kissling 2004, p. 106.
  83. ^ Genesis 1:14–1:19
  84. ^ Bandstra 2008, pp. 41–42.
  85. ^ Walsh 2001, p. 37 (fn.5).
  86. ^ Hamilton 1990, p. 127.
  87. ^ Genesis 1:20–1:23
  88. ^ Walton 2003, p. 160.
  89. ^ Genesis 1:24–31
  90. ^ Alter 2004, pp. 18–19, 21.
  91. ^ Kvam et al. 1999, p. 24.
  92. ^ Davidson 1973, p. 24.
  93. ^ Levenson 2004, p. 14.
  94. ^ Rogerson 1991, pp. 19ff.
  95. ^ Knohl 2003, p. 13.
  96. ^ Genesis 2:1–2:3
  97. ^ Walton 2006, pp. 157–58.
  98. ^ a b Stordalen 2000, pp. 473–74.
  99. ^ Van Seters 1998, p. 22.
  100. ^ Andersen 1987, pp. 137–40.
  101. ^ Alter 2004, pp. 20, 22.
  102. ^ Davidson 1973, p. 31.
  103. ^ Levenson 2004, p. 15.
  104. ^ Davidson 1973, p. 29.
  105. ^ Kooij 2010, p. 17.
  106. ^ Propp 1990, p. 193.
  107. ^ Stordalen 2000, pp. 307–10.
  108. ^ Davidson 1973, p. 33.
  109. ^ Alter 2004, p. 21.
  110. ^ a b Galambush 2000, p. 436.
  111. ^ Alter 2004, p. 22.
  112. ^ Turner 2009, p. 20.
  113. ^ Garr 2012, p. 127.
  114. ^ Hastings 2003, p. 607.
  115. ^ Kramer 1963, p. 149.
  116. ^ Jacobs 2007, p. 37.
  117. ^ Hugenberger 1988, p. 184.
  118. ^ Wood 1990, pp. 323–24.
  119. ^ Andersen 1987, p. 142.
  120. ^ Waltke 1991, pp. 6–9.
  121. ^ Levenson 2004, p. 11.
  122. ^ Hyers 1984, p. 28.
  123. ^ Cotter 2003, pp. 5–9.
  124. ^ a b Cotter 2003, p. 7.
  125. ^ Cotter 2003, p. 8.
  126. ^ Seidman 2010, p. 166.
  127. ^ a b Wright 2002, p. 53.
  128. ^ Kaiser 1997, p. 28.
  129. ^ Parrish 1990, pp. 183–84.
  130. ^ a b Aune 2003, p. 119.
  131. ^ Ryken et al 1998, p. 170.
  132. ^ Soskice 2010, p. 24.
  133. ^ Nebe 2002, p. 119.
  134. ^ Walton 2006, p. 183.
  135. ^ May 2004, p. 179.

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  • Smith, Mark S. (2001). The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New ed.). Oxford University Press USA. ISBN 0-19-516768-6.
  • Smith, Mark; Pitard, Wayne (2008). The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Volume II. Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU/CAT 1.3–1.4. Brill. ISBN 978-90-474-4232-5.
  • Soskice, Janet M. (2010). "Creatio ex nihilo: its Jewish and Christian foundations". In Burrell, David B.; Cogliati, Carlo; Soskice, Janet M.; Stoeger, William R. (eds.). Creation and the God of Abraham. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49078-8. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Speiser, Ephraim Avigdor (1964). Genesis. Doubleday.
  • Stordalen, Terje (2000). Echoes of Eden. Peeters. ISBN 978-90-429-0854-3. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Thomas, Matthew A. (2011). These Are the Generations: Identity, Covenant and the Toledot Formula. T&T Clark (Continuum). ISBN 978-0-567-48764-3.
  • Thompson, J. A. (1980). Jeremiah. New International Commentary on the Old Testament (2nd ed.). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 831. ISBN 0-8028-2530-3. J.A Thompson Jeremiah.
  • Tsumura, David Toshio (2022). "Creation Out of Conflict? The Chaoskampf Motif in the Old Testament: Cosmic Dualism or creatio ex nihilo". In Macaskill, Grant; M. Maier, Christl; Schaper, Joachim (eds.). Congress Volume Aberdeen 2019. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-51510-9.
  • Turner, Laurence A. (2009). Genesis. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-906055-65-3. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Van Seters, John (1998). "The Pentateuch". In McKenzie, Steven L.; Graham, M. Patrick (eds.). The Hebrew Bible Today: An Introduction to Critical Issues. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-25652-4. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Van Seters, John (1992). Prologue to History: The Yahwist As Historian in Genesis. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 0-664-22179-3. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  • Walsh, Jerome T. (2001). Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-5897-0. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  • Waltke, Bruce (1991). (PDF). Crux. 27 (4). Westminster Theological Seminary. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2014.
  • Walton, John H. (2001). The NIV Application Commentary: Genesis. Zondervan Academic. ISBN 9780310866206.
  • Walton, John H. (2003). "Creation". In T. Desmond Alexander, David Weston Baker (ed.). Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-1781-8.
  • Walton, John H. (2006). Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Baker Academic. ISBN 0-8010-2750-0. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  • Wenham, Gordon (2003a). Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Pentateuch. Exploring the Bible Series. Vol. 1. IVP Academic. p. 223.
  • Wenham, Gordon (2003b). "Genesis". In Dunn, James Douglas Grant; Rogerson, J. John William (eds.). Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-3711-0. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Wenham, Gordon (1987). Genesis 1–15. Vol. 1 and 2. Texas: Word Books. ISBN 0-8499-0200-2.
  • Whybray, R. N. (2001). "Genesis". In Barton, John; Muddiman, John (eds.). The Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford University Press. pp. 38–66. doi:10.1093/acref/9780198755005.001.0001. ISBN 9780198755005.
  • Wood, Ralpth C (1990). "Genre, Concept of". In Watson E. Mills (ed.). Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. Mercer University Press. ISBN 978-0-86554-373-7. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Wright, J. Edward (2002). The Early History of Heaven. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-534849-1. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.

Further reading

  • Bouteneff, Peter C. (2008). Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narrative. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. ISBN 978-0-8010-3233-2. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Brettler, Mark Zvi (2005). How To Read the Bible. Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 978-0-8276-1001-9. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Brueggemann, Walter (1982). "Genesis 1:1–2.4". Interpretation of Genesis. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 382. ISBN 978-0-8042-3101-5.
  • Carr, David M. (2011). "The Garden of Eden Story". An Introduction to the Old Testament. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5623-6. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Dalley, Stephanie (2000). Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-283589-5. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  • Friedman, Richard Elliott (2003). The Bible with Sources Revealed. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-195129-9. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Ginzberg, Louis (1909). The Legends of the Jews (PDF). Jewish Publication Society. p. 695. from the original on 13 March 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
  • Graves, Robert; Patai, Raphael (1986). Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis. Random House. ISBN 978-0-7953-3715-4. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  • Heidel, Alexander (1963). Babylonian Genesis (2nd ed.). Chicago University Press. ISBN 0-226-32399-4. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Heidel, Alexander (1963). The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (2nd Revised ed.). Chicago University Press. ISBN 0-226-32398-6. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Kaplan, Aryeh (2002). "Hashem/Elokim: Mixing Mercy with Justice". The Aryeh Kaplan Reader: The Gift He Left Behind. Mesorah Publication, Ltd. p. 224. ISBN 0-89906-173-7. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
  • King, Leonard (2010). Enuma Elish: The Seven Tablets of Creation; The Babylonian and Assyrian Legends Concerning the Creation of the World and of Mankind. Cosimo Inc.
  • Kramer, Samuel Noah (1956). History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History.
  • Kugler, Robert; Hartin, Patrick (2009). An Introduction to the Bible. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-4636-5. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Leeming, David A. (2010). Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-174-9.
  • Louth, Andrew (2001). "Introduction". In Andrew Louth (ed.). Genesis 1–11. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-1471-8. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • McMullin, Ernin (2010). "Creation Ex Nihilo: Early History". In Burrell, David B.; Cogliati, Carlo; Soskice, Janet M.; Stoeger, William R. (eds.). Creation and the God of Abraham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49078-8. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Penchansky, David (November 2005). Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible. U.S.: Westminster/John Knox Press. ISBN 0-664-22885-2. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Sawyer, John F.A. (1992). "The Image of God, the Wisdom of Serpents, and the Knowledge of Good and Evil". In Paul Morris, Deborah Sawyer (ed.). A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden. Sheffield Academic Press Press. ISBN 978-0-567-02447-3. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Schwartz, Howard; Loebel-Fried, Caren; Ginsburg, Elliot K. (2007). Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford University Press. p. 704. ISBN 978-0-19-535870-4. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Smith, Mark S. (October 2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (2nd ed.). William B Eerdmans Publishing Co. ISBN 0-8028-3972-X. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Stenhouse, John (2000). "Genesis and Science". In Gary B. Ferngren (ed.). The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia. New York, London: Garland Publishing, Inc. p. 76. ISBN 0-8153-1656-9.
  • Stagg, Evelyn and Frank (1978). "Genesis and Science". Woman in the World of Jesus. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westminster Press. p. 135. ISBN 0-664-24195-6.
  • Tsumura, David Toshio (2005). Creation And Destruction: A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-106-1. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Walton, John H.; Matthews, Victor H.; Chavalas, Mark W. (2000). "Genesis". The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-1419-0. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  • Wylen, Stephen M. (2005). "Chapter 6 Midrash". The Seventy Faces of Torah: The Jewish way of Reading the Sacred Scriptures. Paulist Press. p. 256. ISBN 0-8091-4179-5. from the original on 8 March 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2020.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Creation according to Genesis.

Biblical texts

  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (Hebrew–English text, translated according to the JPS 1917 Edition)
  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 (Hebrew–English text, with Rashi's commentary. The translation is the authoritative Judaica Press version, edited by Rabbi A. J. Rosenberg.)
  • Chapter 1 6 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine Chapter 2 4 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine (New American Bible)
  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (King James Version)
  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (Revised Standard Version)
  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (New Living Translation)
  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (New American Standard Bible)
  • Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (New International Version (UK))

Mesopotamian texts

  • "Enuma Elish", at Encyclopedia of the Orient Summary of Enuma Elish with links to full text.
  • ETCSL – Text and translation of the Eridu Genesis () (The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford)
  • "Epic of Gilgamesh" (summary) 30 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine
  • British Museum: Cuneiform tablet from Sippar with the story of Atra-Hasis

Related links

January 01, 1970
genesis, creation, narrative, genesis, redirects, here, other, uses, genesis, disambiguation, creation, myth, both, judaism, christianity, narrative, made, stories, roughly, equivalent, first, chapters, book, genesis, first, elohim, hebrew, generic, word, crea. Genesis 1 redirects here For other uses see Genesis 1 disambiguation The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth a of both Judaism and Christianity 1 The narrative is made up of two stories roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis In the first Elohim the Hebrew generic word for god creates the heavens and the Earth in six days then rests on blesses and sanctifies the seventh i e the Biblical Sabbath In the second story God now referred to by the personal name Yahweh creates Adam the first man from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden There he is given dominion over the animals Eve the first woman is created from Adam s rib as his companion The authors of the Hebrew creation narrative borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology and ancient near eastern cosmology but adapted them to their unique belief in one God 2 The first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy is thought to have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE the Jahwist source and was later expanded by other authors the Priestly source into a work very like Genesis as known today 3 The two sources can be identified in the creation narrative Priestly and Jahwistic 4 The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism 5 Robert Alter described the combined narrative as compelling in its archetypal character its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends 6 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 7 The Genesis creation narrative inspired a genre of Jewish and Christian literature known as the Hexameral literature This literature was dedicated to the composition of commentaries homilies and treatises concerned with the exegesis of the biblical creation narrative through ancient and medieval times The first Christian example of this genre was the Hexaemeron of Basil of Caesarea and many other works went on to be written from authors including Augustine of Hippo Jacob of Serugh Jacob of Edessa Bonaventure and so on 8 Contents 1 Composition 1 1 Sources 1 2 Structure 1 3 Mesopotamian influence 1 4 Alternative biblical creation accounts 2 First narrative Genesis 1 1 2 3 2 1 Background 2 2 Pre creation Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 Six days of Creation Genesis 1 3 2 3 2 3 1 First day 2 3 2 Second day 2 3 3 Third day 2 3 4 Fourth day 2 3 5 Fifth day 2 3 6 Sixth day 2 4 Seventh day divine rest 3 Second narrative Genesis 2 4 2 25 4 Creationism and the genre of the creation narrative 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Citations 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links 10 1 Biblical texts 10 2 Mesopotamian texts 10 3 Related linksComposition nbsp Cuneiform tablet with the Atra Hasis Epic in the British Museum Sources See also Documentary hypothesis Textual variants in the Hebrew Bible Genesis 1 and Textual variants in the Hebrew Bible Genesis 2 Although tradition attributes Genesis to Moses biblical scholars hold that it together with the following four books making up what Jews call the Torah and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch is a composite work the product of many hands and periods 9 The creation narrative consists of two separate accounts drawn from different sources The first account in Genesis 1 1 2 4 is from what scholars call the Priestly source P The second account which takes up the rest of Genesis 2 is largely from the Jahwist source J 10 There is currently no scholarly consensus on when the narrative reached its final form 11 Many scholars date the J source to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE and the P source largely to the 6th century BCE 12 A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive narrative of the Pentateuch was composed in the 7th or 6th centuries BCE 3 A sizeable minority of scholars believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis also known as the primeval history can be dated to the 3rd century BCE based on discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible 13 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 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 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 14 Structure The creation narrative is made up of two stories roughly equivalent to the two first chapters of the Book of Genesis 15 there are no chapter divisions in the original Hebrew text see Chapters and verses of the Bible The first account Genesis 1 1 2 3 employs a repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment then the statement And there was evening and there was morning the xth day 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 16 Consistency was evidently not seen as essential to storytelling in ancient Near Eastern literature b 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 while the second the Jahwist story focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment 15 The highly regimented seven day narrative of Genesis 1 features an omnipotent 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 17 Even the order and method of creation differs 17 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 18 The primary accounts in each chapter are joined by a literary bridge at Genesis 2 4 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 LORD God made the earth and the heavens This verse is one of ten generations Hebrew תולדות toledot phrases used throughout Genesis which provide a literary structure to the book 19 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 20 Mesopotamian influence See also Panbabylonism and Ancient near eastern cosmology nbsp Marduk god of Babylon destroying Tiamat the dragon of primeval chaos Comparative mythology provides historical and cross cultural perspectives for Jewish mythology Both sources behind the Genesis creation narrative borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology 21 22 but adapted them to their belief in one God 2 establishing a monotheistic creation in opposition to the polytheistic creation myth of ancient Israel s neighbors 23 24 page needed Genesis 1 bears similarities to the Baal Cycle of Israel s neighbor Ugarit 25 Genesis 1 also bears striking similarities and differences with Enuma Elish the Babylonian creation myth 22 The myth begins with two primeval entities Apsu the male freshwater deity and Tiamat the female saltwater deity The first gods were born from their sexual union Both Apsu and Tiamat were killed by the younger gods Marduk the leader of the gods builds the world with Tiamat s body which he splits in two With one half he builds a dome shaped firmament in the sky to hold back Tiamat s upper waters With the other half Marduk forms dry land to hold back her lower waters Marduk then organizes the heavenly bodies and assigns tasks to the gods in maintaining the cosmos When the gods complain about their work Marduk creates humans out of the blood of the god Kingu The grateful gods build a temple for Marduk in Babylon 26 In both Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish creation consists of bringing order out of chaos Before creation there was nothing but a cosmic ocean During creation a dome shaped firmament is put in place to hold back the water and make Earth habitable 27 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 28 In contrast to Enuma Elish Genesis 1 is monotheistic There is no theogony account of God s origins and there is no trace of the resistance to the reduction of chaos to order Greek theomachy lit God fighting all of which mark the Mesopotamian creation accounts 2 The gods in Enuma Elish are amoral with limited powers and create humans to be their slaves In Genesis 1 however God is all powerful He creates humans in the divine image cares for their wellbeing 29 and gives them dominion over every living thing 30 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 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 Genesis 2 6 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 when in Genesis 4 1 she says that she has created a man with Yahweh but she is not a divine being like her Babylonian counterpart 31 Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth the Atra Hasis epic parallels that in fact extend throughout Genesis 2 11 from the Creation to the Flood 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 32 Alternative biblical creation accounts The Genesis narratives are not the only biblical creation accounts The Bible preserves two contrasting models of creation The first is the logos speech model where a supreme God speaks dormant matter into existence Genesis 1 is an example of creation by speech 33 The second is the agon 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 34 There is no complete combat myth preserved in the Bible However there are fragmentary allusions to such a myth in Isaiah 27 1 Isaiah 51 9 10 Job 26 12 13 These passages describe how God defeated the forces of chaos personified as sea monsters These monsters are variously named Yam Sea Nahar River Leviathan Coiled One Rahab Arrogant One and Tannin Dragon 35 Psalm 74 and Isaiah 51 recall 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 36 First narrative Genesis 1 1 2 3 nbsp The Ancient of Days by William Blake Copy D 1794 Background The first creation account is divided into seven days during which God creates light day 1 the sky day 2 the earth seas and vegetation day 3 the sun and moon day 4 animals of the air and sea day 5 and land animals and humans day 6 God rested from his work on the seventh day of creation the Sabbath 37 The use of numbers in ancient texts was often numerological rather than factual that is the numbers were used because they held some symbolic value to the author 38 The number seven denoting divine completion permeates Genesis 1 verse 1 1 consists of seven words verse 1 2 has 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 39 The cosmos created in Genesis 1 bears a striking resemblance to the Tabernacle in Exodus 35 40 which was the prototype of the Temple in Jerusalem and the focus of priestly worship of Yahweh 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 40 Pre creation Genesis 1 1 2 1 In the beginning God Elohim c created the heaven and the earth 2 And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep And the Spirit ruach of God moved upon the face of the waters 41 The opening phrase of Genesis 1 1 is traditionally translated in English as in the beginning God created 42 The Hebrew however is ambiguous and can be translated at least three ways 43 as a statement that the cosmos 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 Biblical scholar John H Walton argues that Genesis 1 1 functions as a literary introduction and summary of what follows in chapter 1 44 d This is the most common view held by European scholars 45 Thus biblical scholars such as Christine Hayes Michael Coogan and Cynthia Chapman argue Genesis 1 1 does not describe creatio ex nihilo Latin for creation out of nothing or the initial origins of the cosmos Rather they argue this verse describes the creation of an ordered universe out of preexisting material 46 47 R N Whybray concurred pointing out that the earth already exists as a formless void 48 John Day however argues that Genesis 1 1 does describe the initial creation of the universe writing Since the inchoate earth and the heavens in the sense of the air wind were already in existence in Gen 1 2 it is most natural to assume that Gen 1 1 refers to God s creative act in making them 49 50 The word created translates the Hebrew bara a word used only for God s creative activity people do not engage in bara 51 Walton argues that bara does not necessarily refer to the creation of matter In the ancient Near East to create meant assigning roles and functions The bara which God performs in Genesis 1 concerns bringing heaven and earth from chaos into ordered existence 52 Day disputes Walton s functional interpretation of the creation narrative Day argues that material creation is the only natural way of taking the text and that this interpretation was the only one for most of history 53 Most interpreters consider the phrase heaven and earth to be a merism meaning the entire cosmos 54 Genesis 1 2 describes the cosmos before creation The earth is described as formless and void This phrase is a translation of the Hebrew tohu wa bohu ת הו ו ב הו 55 Tohu by itself means emptiness futility It is used to describe the desert wilderness Bohu has no known meaning although it appears to be related to the Arabic word bahiya to be empty 56 and was apparently coined to rhyme with and reinforce tohu 57 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 58 Verse 2 continues darkness was upon the face of the deep The word deep translates the Hebrew tehom ת הו ם a primordial ocean Darkness and tehom are two further elements of chaos in addition to tohu wa bohu In Enuma Elish the watery deep is personified as the goddess Tiamat the enemy of Marduk In Genesis however there is no such personification The elements of chaos are not seen as evil but as indications that God has not begun his creative work 59 Verse 2 concludes with And the ruach of God Elohim moved upon the face of the waters There are several options for translating the Hebrew word ruach רו ח It could mean breath wind or spirit in different contexts The traditional translation is spirit of God 60 In the Hebrew Bible the spirit of God is understood to be an extension of God s power The term is analogous to saying the hand of the Lord 2 Kings 3 15 Historically Christian theologians supported spirit as it provided biblical support for the presence of the Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity at creation 61 Other interpreters argue for translating ruach as wind For example the NRSV renders it wind from God 48 Likewise the word elohim can sometimes function as a superlative adjective such as mighty or great The phrase ruach elohim may therefore mean great wind The connection between wind and watery chaos is also seen in the Genesis flood narrative where God uses wind to make the waters subside in Genesis 8 1 62 63 In Enuma Elish the storm god Marduk defeats Tiamat with his wind While stories of a cosmic battle prior to creation were familiar to ancient Israelites see above there is no such battle in Genesis 1 though the text includes the primeval ocean and references to God s wind Instead Genesis 1 depicts a single God whose power is uncontested and who brings order out of chaos 64 Six days of Creation Genesis 1 3 2 3 nbsp The first day of creation by Jean Colombe from the Heures de Louis de Laval fr see Louis de Laval Creation takes place over seven days The creative acts are arranged so that the first three days set up the environments necessary for the creations of the last three days to thrive For example God creates light on the first day and the light producing heavenly bodies on the fourth day 47 Days of Creation 47 Day 1 light Day 4 celestial bodies Day 2 sea and firmament Day 5 birds and fish Day 3 land and plants Day 6 land animals and humans Each day follows a similar literary pattern 65 Introduction And God said Command Let there be Report And it was so Evaluation And God saw that it was good Time sequence And there was evening and there was morning Verse 31 sums up all of creation with God saw every thing that He had made and indeed it was very good According to biblical scholar R N Whybray This is the craftsman s assessment of his own work It does not necessarily have an ethical connotation it is not mankind that is said to be good but God s work as craftsman 51 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 Enuma Elish and also echoes Job 38 where God recalls how the stars the sons of God sang when the corner stone of creation was laid 66 First day 3 And God said Let there be light And there was light 4 And God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness 5 And God called the light Day and the darkness He called Night And there was evening and there was morning one day 67 On day one God starts the process of bringing order to chaos by creating time 68 God creates by fiat he merely speaks light into existence This highlights God s omnipotence 69 and it suggests comparisons between God and a king who has merely to speak for things to happen 70 Then God separates the light from the darkness and names them 48 In Genesis creative acts begin with speech and are finalized with naming This has parallels in other ancient Near Eastern cultures In Egyptian Memphite Theology the creator god pronounced the names of everything and Enuma Elish begins at the point where nothing has yet been named For ancient peoples a person or object did not exist without a name 71 Second day nbsp Ancient Israelites and other Near Eastern people understood the world to be surrounded by water The upper waters are contained by a solid dome or firmament the sky The dome was supported by mountains 72 6 And God said Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters 7 And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament and it was so 8 And God called the firmament Heaven And there was evening and there was morning a second day 73 Raqia the word translated as firmament is from raqa the verb used for the act of beating metal into thin plates 74 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 75 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 76 The Earth itself was a flat disc surrounded by sea or mountains on which the firmament rested The firmament was transparent 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 the abode of the dead 77 The waters of the deep would later be released during the Deluge when all the fountains of the great deep burst forth from the waters beneath the earth and from the windows of the sky 78 Third day And God said Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear And it was so 10 And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas and God saw that it was good 11 And God said Let the earth put forth grass herb yielding seed and fruit tree bearing fruit after its kind wherein is the seed thereof upon the earth And it was so 12 And the earth brought forth grass herb yielding seed after its kind and tree bearing fruit wherein is the seed thereof after its kind and God saw that it was good 13 And there was evening and there was morning a third day 79 On the third day the waters withdraw creating a ring of ocean surrounding a single circular continent 80 By the end of the third day God has created a foundational environment of light heavens seas and earth 81 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 82 Fourth day nbsp The Creation Bible Historiale c 1411 14 And God said Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth And it was so 16 And God made the two great lights the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth 18 and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness and God saw that it was good 19 And there was evening and there was morning a fourth day 83 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 were organised around the cycles of both the Sun and Moon in a lunisolar calendar that could have either 12 or 13 months 84 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 85 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 86 Fifth day And God said Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven 21 And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that creepeth wherewith the waters swarmed after its kind and every winged fowl after its kind and God saw that it was good 22 And God blessed them saying Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let fowl multiply in the earth 23 And there was evening and there was morning a fifth day 87 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 and Leviathan from Psalm 74 13 and Isaiah 27 1 and Isaiah 51 9 but there is no hint in Genesis of combat and the tannin are simply creatures created by God 88 Sixth day nbsp The Creation of the Animals 1506 1511 by Grao Vasco 24 And God said Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after its kind And it was so 25 And God made the beast of the earth after its kind and the cattle after their kind and every thing that creepeth upon the ground after its kind and God saw that it was good 26 And God said Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth 27 And God created man in His own image in the image of God created He him male and female created He them 28 And God blessed them and God said unto them Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth 29 And God said Behold I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you it shall be for food 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is a living soul I have given every green herb for food And it was so 31 And God saw every thing that He had made and behold it was very good And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day 89 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 own image in the image of God created He him male and female created He them the word is still not exclusively male 90 Man was created in the image of God 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 on Earth 91 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 92 or that it reflects a setting in a divine council broken anchor with God enthroned as king and proposing the creation of mankind to the lesser divine beings 93 God tells the animals and humans that he has given them the green plants for food creation is to be vegetarian 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 94 Upon completion God sees that every thing that He had made was very good Genesis 1 31 This implies that the materials that existed before the Creation tohu wa bohu darkness tehom were not very good Israel Knohl hypothesized that the Priestly source set up this dichotomy to mitigate the problem of evil 95 Seventh day divine rest nbsp Seventh Day of Creation from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel And the heaven and the earth were finished and all the host of them 2 And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made 3 And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made 96 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 97 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 LORD thy GOD 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 LORD made heaven and earth the sea and all that in them is and rested on the seventh day wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it Second narrative Genesis 2 4 2 25 nbsp The Creation by Lucas Cranach 1534 Genesis 2 3 the Garden of Eden 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 98 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 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 98 It opens in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens a set introduction similar to those found in Babylonian myths 99 Before the man is created the earth is a barren waste watered by an eḏ אד Genesis 2 6 the King James Version 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 100 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 ייצר yiṣer meaning fashioned a word used in contexts such as a potter fashioning a pot from clay 101 God breathes his own breath into the clay and it becomes nephesh נ פ ש 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 102 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 103 The tree of life is a motif from Mesopotamian myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh c 1800 BCE e the hero is given a plant whose name is man becomes young in old age but a serpent steals the plant from him 104 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 105 In Eden mankind has a choice between wisdom and life and chooses the first although God intended them for the second 106 The mythic Eden and its rivers may represent the real Jerusalem the Temple and the Promised Land Eden may represent the divine garden on Zion the mountain of God which was also Jerusalem while the real Gihon 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 and guardian cherubs 107 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 108 Good and evil is a merism 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 109 The first woman is created out of one of Adam s ribs to be ezer kenegdo עזר כנגדו ezer keneḡdō 110 a term notably difficult to translate to the man Keneḡdō means alongside opposite a counterpart to him and ezer means active intervention on behalf of the other person 111 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 112 The woman is called ishah אשה is sah Woman with an explanation that this is because she was taken from ish א יש is meaning man 110 but the two words are not in fact connected 113 Later after the story of the Garden is complete she receives a name Ḥawwah חוה Eve This means living in Hebrew from a root that can also mean snake 114 Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer connects Eve s creation to the ancient Sumerian myth of Enki who was healed by the goddess Nin ti the Lady of the rib this became the Lady who makes live via a pun on the word ti which means both rib and to make live in Sumerian 115 The Hebrew word traditionally translated rib in English can also mean side chamber or beam 116 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 117 Creationism and the genre of the creation narrativeMain articles Creationism and Creation science nbsp Eden Lucas Cranach the Elder 1472 1553 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 118 According to Biblical scholar Francis Andersen 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 119 Reformed evangelical scholar Bruce Waltke cautions against one such misreading the woodenly literal approach which leads to creation science but also to such implausible interpretations as the gap theory the presumption of a young earth and the denial of evolution 120 As scholar of Jewish studies Jon D Levenson puts it How much history lies behind the story of Genesis Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology it is very far fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all 121 Another scholar Conrad Hyers summed up the same thought by writing A literalist interpretation of the Genesis accounts is inappropriate misleading and unworkable because it presupposes and insists upon a kind of literature and intention that is not there 122 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 123 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 124 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 124 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 125 One can also regard Genesis as historylike part of a broader spectrum of originally anonymous history like ancient Near Eastern narratives f Scholarly writings frequently refer to Genesis as myth but there is no agreement on how to define myth and so while Brevard Childs 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 7 Genesis 1 2 reflects ancient ideas about science in the words of E A Speiser on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian science 126 The opening words of Genesis 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth sum up the author s belief that Yahweh the god of Israel was solely responsible for creation and had no rivals 127 Later Jewish thinkers adopting ideas from Greek philosophy concluded that God s Wisdom Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity 128 Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with the creative word In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God John 1 1 129 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 130 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 127 There were also waters above the Earth and so the raqia firmament a solid bowl was necessary to keep them from flooding the world 131 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 130 The idea that God created the world out of nothing creatio ex nihilo has become central today to Islam Christianity and Judaism indeed the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides felt it was the only concept that the three religions shared 132 yet it is not found directly in Genesis nor in the entire Hebrew Bible 133 According to Walton 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 134 John Day however considers that Genesis 1 clearly provides an account of the creation of the material universe 53 Even so the doctrine had not yet been fully developed 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 135 See alsoAdapa Anno Mundi Apollo 8 Genesis reading Allegorical interpretations of Genesis Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament Babylonian mythology Biblical chronology Biblical cosmology Biblical criticism Christian mythology Creation evolution controversy Creation mandate Cultural mandate Eridu Genesis Genesis flood narrative Hexameron Islamic mythology List of creation myths Ningishzida Religion and mythology Sanamahi creation myth Sumerian literature Tower of Babel Tree of the knowledge of good and evilNotes The term myth is used here in its academic sense meaning a traditional story consisting of events that are ostensibly historical though often supernatural explaining the origins of a cultural practice or natural phenomenon It is not being used to mean something that is false One aspect of narrative in Genesis that requires special attention is its high tolerance for different versions of the same event a well known feature of ancient Near Eastern literature from earliest times through rabbinic midrash This could not have happened if the existence of variation were seen as a serious defect or if rigid consistency were deemed essential to effective storytelling Levenson 2004 p 9 The word translated God in Genesis 1 1 2 is Elohim and the word translated Spirit is ruach Hayes 2012 pp 37 38 By now it has been long recognized and widely accepted that the Hebrew text will not accommodate the idea that there was a separate creation in v 1 that was destroyed and that a new creation is initiated in v 2 This Gap Theory or Ruin and Reconstruction Theory would require the translation the earth became formless and void If the author had intended this he would have put the verb first in the sentence and attached a preposition to the word formless Walton 2001 p 728 note 20 The story of Adam and Eve s sin in the garden of Eden 2 25 3 24 displays similarities with Gilgamesh an epic poem that tells how its hero lost the opportunity for immortality and came to terms with his humanity the biblical narrator has adapted the Mesopotamian forerunner to Israelite theology Levenson 2004 p 9 In summary rather than creating a fully new text after the manner of a modern novelist or even a modern historian ancient authors of historylike narratives like Gilgamesh or Genesis would often build their text out of earlier traditions Seen within this perspective Genesis is part of a broader spectrum of originally anonymous history like ancient Near Eastern narratives Carr 1996 p 21 Citations Leeming amp Leeming 2004 p 113 a b c Sarna 1997 p 50 a b Davies 2001 p 37 Bandstra 2008 p 37 Wenham 2003b p 37 Alter 2004 p xii a b Hamilton 1990 pp 57 58 Katsos 2023 p 15 16 Speiser 1964 p xxi Collins 2018 p 71 Whybray 2001 p 41 Coogan amp Chapman 2018 p 48 Gmirkin 2006 pp 240 241 Ska 2006 pp 169 217 18 a b Alter 1981 p 141 Ruiten 2000 pp 9 10 a b Carr 1996 pp 62 64 Carr 1996 p 64 Cross 1973 pp 301ff Thomas 2011 pp 27 28 Lambert 1965 a b Levenson 2004 p 9 Leeming 2004 Smith 2001 Smith amp Pitard 2008 p 615 Hayes 2012 p 29 33 Coogan amp Chapman 2018 p 34 McDermott 2002 pp 25 27 Hayes 2012 pp 33 amp 35 Coogan amp Chapman 2018 p 35 Van Seters 1992 pp 122 24 Carr 1996 p 242 248 Fishbane 2003 pp 34 35 Fishbane 2003 p 35 Sarna 1966 p 2 Hutton 2007 p 274 Sarna 1966 pp 1 2 Hyers 1984 p 74 Wenham 1987 p 6 Levenson 2004 p 13 Genesis 1 1 1 2 Walton 2001 p 69 Bandstra 2008 pp 38 39 Walton 2001 p 70 Day 2021 p 5 Hayes 2012 p 37 a b c Coogan amp Chapman 2018 p 30 a b c Whybray 2001 p 43 Day 2021 pp 5 6 Tsumura 2022 p 489 a b Whybray 2001 p 42 Walton 2006 pp 183 184 a b Day 2014 p 4 Walton 2001 p 728 note 17 Whybray 2001 pp 42 43 Day 2014 p 8 Alter 2004 p 17 Thompson 1980 p 230 Walton 2001 pp 73 74 Blenkinsopp 2011 p 33 Walton 2001 pp 76 77 Blenkinsopp 2011 pp 33 34 Walton 2001 pp 74 75 Hayes 2012 pp 38 39 Arnold 1998 p 23 Blenkinsopp 2011 pp 21 22 Genesis 1 3 1 5 Walton 2001 p 79 Arnold 1998 p 26 Bandstra 2008 p 39 Walton 2003 p 158 Coogan amp Chapman 2018 p 31 Genesis 1 6 1 8 Hamilton 1990 p 122 Seeley 1991 p 227 Walton 2003 pp 158 59 Knight 1990 pp 175 76 Wenham 2003a p 29 Genesis 1 9 1 13 Seeley 1997 p 236 Bandstra 2008 p 41 Kissling 2004 p 106 Genesis 1 14 1 19 Bandstra 2008 pp 41 42 Walsh 2001 p 37 fn 5 Hamilton 1990 p 127 Genesis 1 20 1 23 Walton 2003 p 160 Genesis 1 24 31 Alter 2004 pp 18 19 21 Kvam et al 1999 p 24 Davidson 1973 p 24 Levenson 2004 p 14 Rogerson 1991 pp 19ff Knohl 2003 p 13 Genesis 2 1 2 3 Walton 2006 pp 157 58 a b Stordalen 2000 pp 473 74 Van Seters 1998 p 22 Andersen 1987 pp 137 40 Alter 2004 pp 20 22 Davidson 1973 p 31 Levenson 2004 p 15 Davidson 1973 p 29 Kooij 2010 p 17 Propp 1990 p 193 Stordalen 2000 pp 307 10 Davidson 1973 p 33 Alter 2004 p 21 a b Galambush 2000 p 436 Alter 2004 p 22 Turner 2009 p 20 Garr 2012 p 127 Hastings 2003 p 607 Kramer 1963 p 149 Jacobs 2007 p 37 Hugenberger 1988 p 184 Wood 1990 pp 323 24 Andersen 1987 p 142 Waltke 1991 pp 6 9 Levenson 2004 p 11 Hyers 1984 p 28 Cotter 2003 pp 5 9 a b Cotter 2003 p 7 Cotter 2003 p 8 Seidman 2010 p 166 a b Wright 2002 p 53 Kaiser 1997 p 28 Parrish 1990 pp 183 84 a b Aune 2003 p 119 Ryken et al 1998 p 170 Soskice 2010 p 24 Nebe 2002 p 119 Walton 2006 p 183 May 2004 p 179 ReferencesAlter Robert 1981 The Art of Biblical narrative Basic Books 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Smith Mark S 2001 The Origins of Biblical Monotheism Israel s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts New ed Oxford University Press USA ISBN 0 19 516768 6 Smith Mark Pitard Wayne 2008 The Ugaritic Baal Cycle Volume II Introduction with Text Translation and Commentary of KTU CAT 1 3 1 4 Brill ISBN 978 90 474 4232 5 Soskice Janet M 2010 Creatio ex nihilo its Jewish and Christian foundations In Burrell David B Cogliati Carlo Soskice Janet M Stoeger William R eds Creation and the God of Abraham Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 139 49078 8 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Speiser Ephraim Avigdor 1964 Genesis Doubleday Stordalen Terje 2000 Echoes of Eden Peeters ISBN 978 90 429 0854 3 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Thomas Matthew A 2011 These Are the Generations Identity Covenant and the Toledot Formula T amp T Clark Continuum ISBN 978 0 567 48764 3 Thompson J A 1980 Jeremiah New International Commentary on the Old Testament 2nd ed Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company p 831 ISBN 0 8028 2530 3 J A Thompson Jeremiah Tsumura David Toshio 2022 Creation Out of Conflict The Chaoskampf Motif in the Old Testament Cosmic Dualism or creatio ex nihilo In Macaskill Grant M Maier Christl Schaper Joachim eds Congress Volume Aberdeen 2019 BRILL ISBN 978 90 04 51510 9 Turner Laurence A 2009 Genesis Sheffield Phoenix Press ISBN 978 1 906055 65 3 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Van Seters John 1998 The Pentateuch In McKenzie Steven L Graham M Patrick eds The Hebrew Bible Today An Introduction to Critical Issues Westminster John Knox Press ISBN 978 0 664 25652 4 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Van Seters John 1992 Prologue to History The Yahwist As Historian in Genesis New International Commentary on the Old Testament Westminster John Knox Press ISBN 0 664 22179 3 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 2 February 2020 Walsh Jerome T 2001 Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Liturgical Press ISBN 978 0 8146 5897 0 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 2 February 2020 Waltke Bruce 1991 The Literary Genre of Genesis Chapter One PDF Crux 27 4 Westminster Theological Seminary Archived from the original PDF on 29 April 2014 Walton John H 2001 The NIV Application Commentary Genesis Zondervan Academic ISBN 9780310866206 Walton John H 2003 Creation In T Desmond Alexander David Weston Baker ed Dictionary of the Old Testament Pentateuch InterVarsity Press ISBN 978 0 8308 1781 8 Walton John H 2006 Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible Baker Academic ISBN 0 8010 2750 0 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 2 February 2020 Wenham Gordon 2003a Exploring the Old Testament A Guide to the Pentateuch Exploring the Bible Series Vol 1 IVP Academic p 223 Wenham Gordon 2003b Genesis In Dunn James Douglas Grant Rogerson J John William eds Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible Eerdmans ISBN 978 0 8028 3711 0 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Wenham Gordon 1987 Genesis 1 15 Vol 1 and 2 Texas Word Books ISBN 0 8499 0200 2 Whybray R N 2001 Genesis In Barton John Muddiman John eds The Oxford Bible Commentary Oxford University Press pp 38 66 doi 10 1093 acref 9780198755005 001 0001 ISBN 9780198755005 Wood Ralpth C 1990 Genre Concept of In Watson E Mills ed Mercer Dictionary of the Bible Mercer University Press ISBN 978 0 86554 373 7 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Wright J Edward 2002 The Early History of Heaven Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 534849 1 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Further readingBouteneff Peter C 2008 Beginnings Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narrative Grand Rapids Michigan Baker Academic ISBN 978 0 8010 3233 2 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Brettler Mark Zvi 2005 How To Read the Bible Jewish Publication Society ISBN 978 0 8276 1001 9 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Brueggemann Walter 1982 Genesis 1 1 2 4 Interpretation of Genesis Westminster John Knox Press p 382 ISBN 978 0 8042 3101 5 Carr David M 2011 The Garden of Eden Story An Introduction to the Old Testament John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 1 4443 5623 6 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Dalley Stephanie 2000 Myths from Mesopotamia Creation the Flood Gilgamesh and Others Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 283589 5 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 2 February 2020 Friedman Richard Elliott 2003 The Bible with Sources Revealed HarperCollins ISBN 978 0 06 195129 9 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Ginzberg Louis 1909 The Legends of the Jews PDF Jewish Publication Society p 695 Archived from the original on 13 March 2020 Retrieved 2 February 2018 Graves Robert Patai Raphael 1986 Hebrew Myths The Book of Genesis Random House ISBN 978 0 7953 3715 4 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 2 February 2020 Heidel Alexander 1963 Babylonian Genesis 2nd ed Chicago University Press ISBN 0 226 32399 4 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Heidel Alexander 1963 The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels 2nd Revised ed Chicago University Press ISBN 0 226 32398 6 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Kaplan Aryeh 2002 Hashem Elokim Mixing Mercy with Justice The Aryeh Kaplan Reader The Gift He Left Behind Mesorah Publication Ltd p 224 ISBN 0 89906 173 7 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 29 December 2010 King Leonard 2010 Enuma Elish The Seven Tablets of Creation The Babylonian and Assyrian Legends Concerning the Creation of the World and of Mankind Cosimo Inc Kramer Samuel Noah 1956 History Begins at Sumer Thirty Nine Firsts in Recorded History Kugler Robert Hartin Patrick 2009 An Introduction to the Bible Eerdmans ISBN 978 0 8028 4636 5 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Leeming David A 2010 Creation Myths of the World An Encyclopedia Vol 1 ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1 59884 174 9 Louth Andrew 2001 Introduction In Andrew Louth ed Genesis 1 11 InterVarsity Press ISBN 978 0 8308 1471 8 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 McMullin Ernin 2010 Creation Ex Nihilo Early History In Burrell David B Cogliati Carlo Soskice Janet M Stoeger William R eds Creation and the God of Abraham Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 139 49078 8 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Penchansky David November 2005 Twilight of the Gods Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible U S Westminster John Knox Press ISBN 0 664 22885 2 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Sawyer John F A 1992 The Image of God the Wisdom of Serpents and the Knowledge of Good and Evil In Paul Morris Deborah Sawyer ed A Walk in the Garden Biblical Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden Sheffield Academic Press Press ISBN 978 0 567 02447 3 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Schwartz Howard Loebel Fried Caren Ginsburg Elliot K 2007 Tree of Souls The Mythology of Judaism Oxford University Press p 704 ISBN 978 0 19 535870 4 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Smith Mark S October 2002 The Early History of God Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel 2nd ed William B Eerdmans Publishing Co ISBN 0 8028 3972 X Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Stenhouse John 2000 Genesis and Science In Gary B Ferngren ed The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition An Encyclopedia New York London Garland Publishing Inc p 76 ISBN 0 8153 1656 9 Stagg Evelyn and Frank 1978 Genesis and Science Woman in the World of Jesus Philadelphia Pennsylvania Westminster Press p 135 ISBN 0 664 24195 6 Tsumura David Toshio 2005 Creation And Destruction A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament Eisenbrauns ISBN 978 1 57506 106 1 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Walton John H Matthews Victor H Chavalas Mark W 2000 Genesis The IVP Bible Background Commentary Old Testament InterVarsity Press ISBN 978 0 8308 1419 0 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Wylen Stephen M 2005 Chapter 6 Midrash The Seventy Faces of Torah The Jewish way of Reading the Sacred Scriptures Paulist Press p 256 ISBN 0 8091 4179 5 Archived from the original on 8 March 2023 Retrieved 11 November 2020 External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Creation according to Genesis Biblical texts Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Hebrew English text translated according to the JPS 1917 Edition Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Hebrew English text with Rashi s commentary The translation is the authoritative Judaica Press version edited by Rabbi A J Rosenberg Chapter 1 Archived 6 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine Chapter 2 Archived 4 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine New American Bible Chapter 1 Chapter 2 King James Version Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Revised Standard Version Chapter 1 Chapter 2 New Living Translation Chapter 1 Chapter 2 New American Standard Bible Chapter 1 Chapter 2 New International Version UK Mesopotamian texts Enuma Elish at Encyclopedia of the Orient Summary of Enuma Elish with links to full text ETCSL Text and translation of the Eridu Genesis alternate site The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Oxford Epic of Gilgamesh summary Archived 30 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine British Museum Cuneiform tablet from Sippar with the story of Atra Hasis Related links Human Timeline Interactive Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History August 2016 Portals nbsp Bible nbsp Christianity nbsp Evolutionary biology nbsp Islam nbsp Judaism Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Genesis creation narrative amp oldid 1223736540, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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