After declaring the creation of the universe (Gen 1:1-2), the narrative of Genesis 1 documents eight "God said’ decrees that mandated the transformation of the earth (Gen 1:3-31) along with the creation of various forms of life, while concurrently establishing a daily living pattern for man by means of the unique wording of a six-day refrain. In a nutshell - that’s the essence of Genesis 1!
Hi Ray,
is there some point to this for discussion or is this just a blanket statement? I happen to agree with the notion that Genesis 1 is the only creation account, however, its not news as this discussion is a regular on these forums.
Are you leading to a different angle to the usual ANE vs YEC there?
“Essence”? No. Major point? Sure. It’s actually an aspect of the opening Creation account being cast in the “royal chronicle” genre: the account assumes the standard ANE idea that the creation of the world involved a battle by deity over chaos, and the “God said” theme is saying, “Battle? YHWH-Elohim spoke, and that was it!” It thus served as a polemic ridiculing all other ANE deities by making them look weak and ineffective: they had to fight to establish order; YHWH-Elohim just spoke and things were so.
In the “temple inauguration” genre, the message is different because the nature of the temple is different: all other ANE deities needed humans to build temples for them, and the humans had to make images of those deities to sit in the temples; the Genesis writer is saying, “Nope – no human slaves necessary; YHWH-Elohim built His own temple by commanding it to be!, and it’s all of Creation! Besides which, humans aren’t slaves of deity, they’re the images in YHWH-Elohim’s (cosmic) temple!” Again, it ridicules the pagan deities while teaching about Yahweh.
Great theme, yes, but not the whole essence – indeed a great enough theme that an apostle later picks it up when he notes that God spoke to things that didn’t even exist, and they came to exist.
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Perhaps it is unwise, even dangerous to claim a specific and exclusive understanding of any part of Scripture?
Richard
It sounds like you are just saying that Genesis 1 is more about establishing that God is the creator and establishes rhythms in creation. I would agree with this and argue that is why we are getting off on the wrong track trying to read a scientific origin account into Genesis 1, but was that your point?
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Instead of antiquated science which gets so many things wrong, I see Genesis 1 as having a theological purpose only – to tell us all these things light, space, time, water, earth, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and mankind are not gods but creations of a deity who also intended us to be like Him, made in His image.
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That seems to be part of the myth.
That seems to be a popular myth these days.
The Manifold Beauty of Genesis 1 (The Manifold Beauty of Genesis One | Kregel) explores seven significant literary themes in the Bible that are introduced in Genesis 1. Certainly claiming that we have exhausted the meaning of a particular piece of scripture is unwise. At the same time (cf. the epistemic humility thread), saying that “it means whatever you want it to mean for you” is not true. It is possible and necessary to determine what are reasonable interpretations, in keeping with the author’s intentions, rather than making up whatever we feel like. As John Walton pointed out, Scripture needs to be a tether, not a springboard, if we are claiming to be true to the Bible and not merely somehow inspired by it. Yet our understanding is imperfect. What are proper boundaries, versus legalistic additions? That’s a major theme of Galatians.
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I remember Calendar, Covenant, Land, and Temple. Another book I read notes that both priesthood and kingship are found there as well!
That is such a great analogy! OTOH, a lot of theology starts off within the springboard category and gets polished as the tether is employed.
I think that to a large degree it was the section on Galatians in a course on “Paul’s Great Letters” that tipped me towards theology. The professor called that letter the “Declaration of Independence of the New Testament”, and I’ve never forgotten that, especially as it links to Martin Luther’s statement that we should “sin boldly but pray more boldly still” (though that doesn’t quite carry the sense of the German, in modern English; the idea is that while we live we are going to sin, but we should live boldly anyway, not dreading sin but drawing towards Christ).
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What all these discussions of Genesis 1 and ANE understanding of the heavens, and refuting ANE myths, and the theological point, and all the themes, including the metaphor of the temple… what they all miss is the most important aspect of Genesis 1.
The most important aspect of Genesis 1 is that it is an exact retelling of what we today know about the origin of the universe and the earth. You don’t have to read science into it ---- it’s already there!!
At first everything is darkness. Then God says let there be light. When did light originate, folks? Yes, at the big bang, along with darkness (matter) and time (evening and morning, day one).
Then the “waters” are separated. It doesn’t say a wall was made, it doesn’t say a layer of clouds was made, it says waters were separated from waters. That’s all. What are these waters? The waters below we have always taken to mean the earth. Doesn’t that suggest that the “waters above” are other planets? Other heavenly bodies? Seems more reasonable than the other things people have called them. This indicates the spreading out of the universe after the big bang.
Then the continents arise. That is indeed something that happened in earth’s early history. And the existence of continents brings seas. At nearly the same time, on the same “day” life begins, the delicate greening, the plentitude of oxygen breathing bacteria and algae. This is the third “day.”
After the oxygen gathered in the atmosphere, it became less cloudy and the moon and stars appeared. This is the fourth “day.”
On the fifth day, now that oxygen was plentifully on the scene, animal life began to form: the Cambrian Explosion. And at the end of this period of time, flying insects showed up. The word commonly translated as birds, actually means flying things.
Doesn’t this give you chills yet?
On the sixth day land animals show up and then human kind.
The day, the time? The days lock these events in the proper order. If the ancients had confused the order; Genes 1 wouldn’t be an accurate account of origins. Also, these days, when you convert them into years, according to when these events happened, we find each day is about half the day before it. Quite an orderly week. Now that Einstein has explained time to us, we have no reason to argue about how long it took God to create. Time goes at different speeds depending on the intensity of the gravitational field where you are.
How did a bunch of ancient people, or even one ancient person, come up with a list of creative acts that exactly mirrored what we know actually happened? It’s not possible. Genesis 1 is itself an act of God. Why doesn’t anyone see this? It proves God’s reality and his connection to the Bible.
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Except that it doesn’t. It is not even close to what we know actually happened. It says the fruit bearing plants came before animals. But this is incorrect. The animals came before the plants which have fruit. The fruit was an adaptation to animals to get them to spread their seeds everywhere. And Genesis 1 has sun and moon made after the plants which is wrong also. Next it has birds created before land animals at the same time as the fish, which is wrong. And even if you interpret “birds” as flying insects, it is still wrong, because non flying insects on land came before the flying insects.
So as a science text, Genesis 1 is terrible and treating it as such only gives atheists good justification for classifying the bible as antiquated science which should be disposed of now that we have better science books with an accurate account of what happened. Of course you can rightly say the language simply didn’t have precise enough terms to say things correctly and I would very much agree with you. But this doesn’t change the basic problem of being a rather poor science book and obsolete. This is why I don’t think this is what Genesis 1 was really about. No it was not a “creation for dummies” book. What possible reason would God have for providing such a thing anyway?
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Amen!
God could have been doing any number of things in the eternity past, including before the Big Bang. He would not just be sitting in darkness. He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, before time. The heavens represents the immaterial (including light, sound, as well as time) and the earth represents the material, starting off in a generally liquid state (the great deep). Stars, the Sun and even the early Earth started off in a molten, liquid state… and then the earth began to cool, the surface became dark…
- Gen 1:2a The earth was (or became) without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.
After creating the universe, God now pays special attention to the state of the earth:
- Gen 1:2b And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
‘hovering’ (7363. רָחַף rachaph) means to brood over… like how a hen broods over and egg. He’s got big plans!
‘face’ (6440. פָנִים panim) is in the plural form. Multiple faces or tectonic plates covering over the waters which have been subducted into the interior of the earth.
Oooh! here it comes!..
- Gen 1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
Whamoooh!.. The earth is all lit up as the pronto planet Theia slams into the Earth!
No, the waters were separated by the ‘firmament’ which is the solid surface of the earths crust. Theia brought a lot more water to the planet than it had previously. The waters above are the oceans, and the waters below are the liquid molten interior. Here is my crude remapping of earth imagery that I have shared before:
The rest of what you said all looks pretty good.
Oh yes 
In our common decent order, plants come before animals. This is the order of Creation.
No. Even that is incorrect.
Trying to go back to some beginning, plants and animals came together in the same time frame. To be sure there are kinds of plants came before some kinds of animals and some kinds of animals came before some kinds of plants.
Regardless, the Bible tells it wrong. The kinds of plants it describes did not come before the kinds of animals it describes.
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Our common decent with plants goes way back to about 1.6 bya. Cyanobacteria are a single celled organism that all other plants would evolved from. Its common decent order for first mention and then God stays within that subject to describe everything in that plant category as part of that day.
LOL The definitions of words can be altered to make any statement true.
To stay within the true definitions of the words, no they can’t be altered to say anything you want.
It is typical for fanatics to say their made up definitions are the “true” definition. In this way they insist that everyone think like they do. This is the seed of the worst kind of evil, by which they can justify doing anything.
This completely ignores tue statememts in Genesis…it clearly says
God create man IN HIS OWN IMAGE. Male amd.female He created them!
Darwinian evolution does not fit with that at all.