The Priestly Account of Creation
Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a; 5:1-2a
Preliminary Observations
The Bible does not actually begin with Genesis 1, but with Exodus 1. It is actually with the Book of Exodus that Israel Egypt Babylon
These first chapters of the Bible are now set in the context of the Pentateuch (the Torah), in the middle of which is the account of the Exodus deliverance, the giving of the covenant on Sinai, God’s providential care and guidance in the wilderness, and the gift of a promised land—the focal points of Israel’s earliest history. Both of the pre-histories merely develop what is contained in the narrative of the Exodus events. In the Hebrew Bible we find the story of the deliverance from Egypt
There is another sense in which the creation accounts in Genesis must be understood in proper context. In the past people have looked upon Genesis 1 and 2 as, not only the basic, but indeed, the exclusive Biblical evidence concerning creation. If we look at the Hebrew Bible in its entirety, however, we shall notice, even at first glance, that statements concerning both creation and the Creator are to be found throughout the entire canon. Some older approaches to Genesis understood the first two chapters as one coherent account that related, first, the creation of the world and humankind (1:1 – 2:4a) and then a still more detailed account of the creation of humankind (2:4b-24). By the mid-nineteenth century Biblical interpreters were calling attention to the presence of evidences in these two chapters (along with chapter 3) of two different sources, of two different creation accounts.
Nowadays, however, it is clear that Genesis 1 and 2 are only two of many such statements. And if it is our desire to listen to what the Bible really has to say about creation and the Creator, we must not isolate Genesis 1 and 2 from the rest of the evidence. Rather, we must seek to comprehend these chapters in the light of the many statements concerning creation that stretch over the entire Bible. The Bible contains numerous statements concerning creation, coming from many different times, couched in very different language, and presented in completely different ways. Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a is one of those ways; Genesis 2:4b – 3:24 is another way. And neither of them is the only way.
We should also note that we miss one of the essential aspects of the Bible if we fail to notice from the very beginning that the whole wealth of Biblical statements concerning creation and the Creator stand in conjunction with the praise of God. In fact, if we look carefully at the texts, we cannot escape the conclusion that, in the strictest sense, these are not really “statements” or “propositions” at all. Creator and creation are not spoken of in a descriptive or a factual way after the manner of a doctrinal discourse. Rather, the majority of such passages are intimately associated with God’s praise; and this is something quite different.
When the Biblical writers speak about Creator and creation they break forth in praise of God’s majesty, in a joyous, sincere, and spontaneous burst of praise. And the language of praise is poetry, metaphor, symbol, and even (perhaps especially) “myth.” When we compare Genesis 1 through 3 with the hundreds of other creation texts in the Hebrew Bible, these chapters may, at first impression, appear to be an exception. A reader might get an initial impression that we have here a sober historical account comparable with the accounts in 1 and 2 Kings (although it is now clear that even 1 and 2 Kings are not sober history either).
But such an impression misreads the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2. That purpose can be seen only when these chapters are compared with all the other passages praising the Creator. Or, to put it in yet another way, the real purpose is appreciated only when one considers that the original hearers of the Genesis creation narratives heard them as part of Israel Israel
An Ancient Near-Eastern World-View
Therefore, it may be helpful to examine some of those other texts and to take note of some of the terms and concepts that appear, before we examine the Priestly account in Genesis 1:
Psalms 18:15; 19:1; 29:10; 136:1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; 148:4-8; Job 38:4-11, 12-18, 19-24, 31-38; Isaiah 40:21-22 28; 42:5; Job 37:18; Psalm 33:4-9; 104:1-9; Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Malachi 3:10; Genesis 37:38; 42:38; 44:27-31; Jonah 2:6; Psalm 115:15-18; 121:1-2; Genesis 11:4-9; 28:11-19; Job 3:3-8; 7:12; 9:4-13; 26:7-14; Isaiah 27:1; 51:9; Psalm 74:12-17; Habakkuk 3:2-9, 15; Psalm 82:1; 89:5-11; Job 41:1-4; Psalm 104:24-30.
What kind of a world do those passages describe? How would such a picture look? What kind of language is being used? What kind of feelings are being expressed? Does the earth have “foundations”? Is the sky a solid dome? Are there hidden “storehouses” in the sky to hold the rainwater, the snow, the hail, and the thunder? Are there “gates” and “entrances” to some special “compartment” somewhere “up there” where God dwells? Are there other heavenly beings dwelling in that special “compartment” with God? If so, who might they be? Is there a special “compartment” underneath the earth where the dead dwell? Are there “bars” and “gates” to hold back waters that not only surround the dry land, but that are also located under the earth, and even above the sky itself, so that the world will not get flooded?
And are there great Sea Monsters or Sea Serpents or Dragons like Leviathan and Rahab and Yamm (“Sea”—personified as a being opposed to Yahweh) and Naharaim (“River”—similarly personified) out there that have some degree of “enmity” against the rest of God’s creation? Does the raging Sea, the Great Deep (Hebrew: Tehom) appear to be depicted sometimes in personal terms? Is there some story, presupposed but never told, some little private “joke,” as it were, that only the “insiders” have heard, about some great primeval battle, or struggle, at least, that Yahweh once had with the Sea or the Great Deep, or with Rahab or Leviathan or Yamm or Naharaim? What kind of historical or cultural or religious background is being pre-supposed when the Biblical writers have spoken about creation using such terminology and concepts?
And, having read those passages and similar ones, and having asked those hard questions, can we find some relationship between the kind of language and presuppositions found in those various passages and the kind of language and presuppositions that we encounter in Genesis 1-3?
Before we deal with those questions directly, I want to tell you a true story. Back in 1976 I was teaching an adult vacation Bible school class in a local church in Smithfield , NC
When we asked him to explain, he said, “I was teaching a group of 10th and 11th graders about America
“Now I understand what she was trying to describe. She was just taking those Biblical pictures literally!”
The Biblical World-View
In fact, this was the picture of the world held in common by almost all of the people of the Ancient Near East—the people of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Canaan. That picture did not come to the Hebrews by Divine revelation, but rather, by people simply describing what they observed and experienced. They didn’t need God to tell them the world was organized that way. It was obvious to anybody with eyes, ears and other senses. The real questions about which people sought Divine guidance were, “How did the world get to be this way?” and even more importantly, “Why? For what purpose did whatever Creator-god(s) there might be make our world the way it is?” and “What is the relationship of human beings to that creation and to its Creator(s)?”
And it was precisely here that the Hebrew people parted company with the Egyptians and the Canaanites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Most of the texts we have been reading were set down long before the account in Genesis 1. So it’s not surprising that there are echoes of the same pre-suppositions in Genesis 1. And it is clear that the writers/compilers of that account are well aware of those older Near Eastern versions of the creation story, and aware especially of the version that came from Babylon
The Enuma Elish Epic
And there is probably a good reason for that. The reason is that, more than likely Genesis 1 was composed in its present form while the Jews were still in Exile in Babylon BCE , and before about 400 BCE . And there they no doubt observed the Babylonians every year in their annual New Year celebration acting out their version of the creation myth in a kind of ritual drama. And those exiles, among whom were the compiler(s) or author(s) of Genesis 1, apparently felt impelled (or “inspired”) to protest: “Now wait just a minute! You Babylonians have got the whole thing wrong! There’s another, better way of understanding how our world got here, and for what purposes human beings and the rest of the creation came into being. Here it is.” And thus, this magnificent confessional hymn was proclaimed.
Just what was the Babylonian version of the creation story? We did not become aware of it until the 1870’s. An archaeologist named Layard had discovered the ruins of the Assyrian palace of King Asshur-Banipal Assyria at Nineveh Iraq
The Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, was regarded as the most sacred of the Babylonian myths. Created by the ancient Sumerians, it developed over more than a thousand years in ancient Assyria and Babylon
Enuma Elish told how the universe and human beings came into existence as the result of a battle between the forces of order and the powers of chaos. At the very beginning there were two great sexual principles, Apsu, the god/sea monster of the “Abyss,” the sweet, subterranean waters, and Tiamat, the goddess/sea monster of the salt water oceans. The name Tiamat is related to the Hebrew word tehom, which Genesis 1:2 and other passages in the Hebrew Bible translate as “the Deep,” or “the Abyss.”
All of the Mesopotamian gods were said to have their origin from these two. Because the younger gods annoy them, Apsu and Tiamat plot to destroy their own children. One of the gods named Ea kills Apsu by using magic. But Tiamat takes a new husband, a god named Kingu, and creates and leads an army of demons in an attack on the other gods. At this point, Marduk, the god of the city of Babylon
Marduk threw a net over Tiamat, to enclose her body. Then he sent the winds into her mouth so that she could not close it. Then he shot one of his arrows/thunderbolts into her opened mouth so that it tore her belly, cut through her inward parts, and pierced her heart. Then he separated her body into two parts, like a shellfish. From the top half of Tiamat’s body Marduk formed the firmament, the dome of heaven. From the bottom half of her body Marduk formed the dry land of the earth. He then built gates and locks to hold back the waters of the oceans, and the waters underneath the earth, and the waters above the firmament dome. He set the moon and the sun and the stars in the sky to determine the days and the months and the seasons and the years. Then from the cursed blood of the god Kingu he commanded the god Ea to make human beings to serve the gods as their slaves.
This myth does have many points of similarity to the picture of the world that we encounter in the Hebrew Bible and to various Hebrew Bible references to the creation. The Deep (Hebrew tehom) is a common Biblical metaphor for disorder and chaos, and several passages suggest a battle between Yahweh and a sea monster (e. g., Psalms 74:13-14; Isaiah 51:9; Habakkuk 3:8). But on the whole the Hebrew Bible moves on a very different level from the Mesopotamian myth.
We ought not to completely dismiss that myth as mere superstition, however. In it the Mesopotamian expressed his belief that law and order are never easily won. They come by the defeat of the forces of chaos and disorder, and can be preserved only by a continuous, year-in, year-out struggle against those evil powers.
The Priestly Creation Story in Genesis 1:1 - 2:4b
But in contrast to such ideas as those we encounter in the myths of Mesopotamia , the priestly writers/compilers of Genesis 1:1 – 2:4b deliberately oppose a somewhat different picture. The most obvious difference is that the Hebrew account asserts the notion of only one God as over against the many gods of the Mesopotamian traditions. And in place of the Mesopotamian mythology’s delicate and tenuous balance between the forces of chaos and the forces of order, the Hebrews believed in this single Power, majestically encompassing all the functions of all lesser gods, and in absolute control of all. In Genesis 1 there is no hint of any conflict or battle for control. There is only the absolute word of command by the one God.
It is perhaps less obvious, but just as important to notice that many of the phenomena that obediently respond to the simple word of the Hebrew God (Hebrew: ’Elohim—a plural word, perhaps signifying the plurality of all godly powers united into one) – these phenomena are the very gods we encounter in the non-Hebrew mythological traditions! They are the gods of the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds, the waters, the sea monsters, etc. On the first day the gods of light and darkness are dismissed, on the second day the gods of sky and sea, on the third day earth-gods and vegetation. On the fourth day, sun-, moon-, and star-gods, and on the fifth and sixth days, associations of divinity with the animal realm are rejected, and finally, human existence itself is emptied of any intrinsic divinity.
Perhaps most remarkable is the Hebrew depiction of “the Deep.” This “formless void” of emptiness and nothingness, for which the Hebrew word is “tehom,” is none other than that monstrous goddess Tiamat of the Enuma Elish story! That one who was the threat to all order and creation in Babylon
And perhaps least obvious to our modern eyes is what might have been most obvious to any Jew of that time (about 550-450 BCE ): the stark contrast between the gutsy, war-like drama of Enuma Elish and the majestic poise of Genesis 1. In the place of a battle between two opposing camps of gods, the Hebrews depict a single Voice, Whose words of command explode into colossal acts.
As we trace the Mesopotamian myth to the end we can note at least one other remarkable difference between the two accounts. The people of Mesopotamia believed that human beings were created fundamentally to serve as slaves of the gods. But the Hebrews describe humankind as the chief steward of God’s good creation, designed in the very image of the Creator. Many things, both profound and silly, have been said about this concept of the “image of God.” Just what is it that sets human beings off from all other creatures here?
But speculations are not necessary, because we need go no further than the very verse which follows the first mention of that phrase (Genesis 1:27-28) to find out what the phrase meant to the Biblical writers themselves. And it is this: humanity’s god-like-ness consists in the task of governing the rest of creation as God’s stewards. Other creatures are told simply to “multiply.” Human beings are also told to “have dominion” on God’s behalf. Whatever else the phrase “image of God” might mean, the interpreter must always return back to this fundamental point.
There are some other points of importance in Genesis 1 that fall outside the scope of a comparison with Enuma Elish. The opening phrase is one such point. “In the beginning,” (בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית bereshith), is what we are used to hearing. Yet many Hebrew scholars have concluded that this is a weak translation. There is no “the” in the Hebrew text, and the point of it all is far more profound. The concept of “first of all” is wrapped up in the Hebrew word bereshith, and perhaps means primarily, “at first,” or perhaps even better, “of first importance.”
Such an idea shows up beautifully in a famous line in the Book of Proverbs which uses the same word: “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom,” which means: “the most important thing about being wise is that one have an attitude of profound respect for God.” Using that analogy the sense of Genesis 1:1 may not be a reference to chronology at all, but may mean, “the most important thing to understand is that the One God is the Creator of everything that exists. This One God created the totality of everything that is in heavens and the earth.” Then that statement stands to serve as an appropriate introduction to everything else in the chapter.
Furthermore, the language with which the chapter continues suggests that the creative act was, in fact, an act of conquest—a mastering of unordered chaos, darkness, and primeval waters. Nothing in all of this chaos, however, is able to answer God back. Genesis 1 almost demands that we translate ourselves backward in time to hear it say to us: “If you would know the Hebrew ’Elohim as God, you must first ponder the inadequate alternative of believing in many gods.”
Like the Mesopotamians of old you must understand what it is to worship a balance of powers rather than one Creator. You must understand what it is like, furthermore, to be a slave to those gods. You cannot appreciate the shocking degree of freedom and responsibility that goes with this Hebrew concept of creation and of humanity unless you understand the alternative of religious slavery.
Finally, let us summarize at this point some of the key themes of this hymn of creation:
1. This account teaches that God alone is the Creator of all. God has no divine helpers. God is completely different from everything else. Nothing else in the world is Divine. The world is created out of emptiness and nothingness, and the world is not simply shaped out of pre-existing matter (Genesis 1:1). A further implication is that, since the world was created “out of nothing” and was originally pronounced “good,” human beings cannot blame God for the way the world has turned out since Creation. The world has not inherited a curse, but a blessing. Human beings are responsible for their own sins.
2. Creation occurs in response to God’s Word. God simply says, “Let there be . . . ” (יְהִ֣י yehi) and what has been spoken comes to be (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, etc.). A human being might indeed say, “Let there be a chair, or a house, etc.,” expressing an intent to build one. But a human being can not say, “Let there be a star; let there be a sky.” But God’s Word is God’s Deed. (Goethe’s Faust was right! – Faust, Part I, lines 876-903).[1]
3. In this account God creates light; it is not the gift of the sun or the moon (gods in Mesopotamian religions), which shine only with the light that God has given them (Genesis 1:3, 14-15).
4. God separates the waters of the Great Deep (Hebrew: tehom) that are above from those that are below by hammering out a firm dome (firmament), and by gathering the waters below together into seas so that dry land appears. God thus controls the waters, which are the threatening forces of chaos that were feared by people of the ancient Near East (Genesis 1:6-10). God is in control of the world that has been created.
5. The heavenly bodies—sun, moon, plants, stars—that were thought to be gods elsewhere in the ancient Near East, are not given names here, for they are only creatures of God (Genesis 1:14-18).
6. In this account the earth shares in the task of creation, though only at God’s command; the earth brings forth plant life; the waters ring forth sea creatures and birds; the earth also brings forth animal life, but not in exactly the same way that it brings forth plants. Human beings share in God’s dominion over other created things. But God alone creates humankind (Genesis 1:11 , 20-21, 24-25).
7. Human beings are created in God’s own “image,” and God has given them dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26 ). The whole creation leads up to the creation of human beings. Human life is not created, as in the Mesopotamian myths, to provide a plaything or a slave to serve the gods. Humanity is created to be God’s representative in governing the rest of the creation.
8. God has created humanity both male and female, and this fact is closely connected with humanity’s being in the Divine image (Genesis 1:27 ). The God of the Bible is not a being of the male gender only. As many passages in the Hebrew Bible assert, God has both male and female characteristics (i.e., Yahweh is like a warrior, or like a mother hen brooding over her young), but transcends all such merely human traits.
9. God has blessed humanity with sex and with the gift of children (Genesis 1:28 ). God pronounced this process good.
10. There is no need to look to lesser gods for the fertility of the earth. To worship them would be to deny the power of the Creator.
11. The final work of creation that the writers of this account desire to emphasize is the Sabbath Rest of God on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). Observance of the Sabbath first became important to the Jews during the Exile in Babylon high point
Contentment welleth up no longer in my breast.
Yet wherefore must the stream, alas, so soon be dry,
That we once more athirst should lie?
Full oft this sad experience hath been mine;
Nathless the want admits of compensation;
For things above the earth we learn to pine,
Our spirits yearn for revelation,
Which nowhere burns with purer beauty blent,
Than here in the New Testament.
To ope the ancient text an impulse strong
Impels me, and its sacred lore,
With honest purpose to explore,
And render into my loved German tongue. (He opens a volume, and applies himself to it.)
’Tis writ, “In the beginning was the Word!”
I pause, perplex’d! Who now will help afford?
I cannot the mere Word so highly prize;
I must translate it otherwise,
If by the spirit guided as I read.
“In the beginning was the Sense!” Take heed,
The import of this primal sentence weigh,
Lest thy too hasty pen be led astray!
Is force creative then of Sense the dower?
“In the beginning was the Power!”
Thus should it stand: yet, while the line I trace,
A something warns me, once more to efface.
The spirit aids! from anxious scruples freed,
I write, “In the beginning was the Deed!”
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