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Home , Book of Genesis, Gihon, Let there be light

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Genesis 1

1In the beginning when created the and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, ‘’; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

6 And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ 7So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9 And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, ‘Let the earth forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

14 And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. 16God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

20 And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ 21So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, ‘ and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ 23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

24 And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. 2

25God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

27 So God created humankind in his image, in the he created them; male and female he created them.

28God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ 29God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. 31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 2

2Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

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Genesis 2:4b-25 Another Account of

5 In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of 7 the ground— then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the 9 man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. 11The name of the first is ; it is the one that flows around the whole land of , where there is ; 12and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13The name of the second river is ; it is the one that flows around the whole land of . 14The name of the third river is , which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the .

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the to till it and 16 keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

18 Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will 19 make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a 21 helper as his partner. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with . 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.’ 24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. 4

Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a The Priestly creation account (P)

God is one who: Creates the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1) Speaks and creation happens (Gen 1:3 and elsewhere with “God said”) Rests on the seventh day (Gen 2:2)

Humans are: The climax of creation (Gen 1:24-26) Made in God’s image (Gen 1:26) Male and female (Gen 1:27) To be fertile, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it (Gen 1:28) To have dominion over all living creatures, trees, plants etc. (Gen 1:28)

The world is: Ordered (Gen 1:1-31) Made for (Gen 1:28) Good (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 30.

Genesis 2:4b – 25 The Yahwist creation account (J)

The Lord God () is one who: Creates the earth and then the heavens (Gen 2:4b) Creates the “unnamed man” on the first day (Gen 2:7), then the trees and other plants, then animals, and finally the “unnamed woman.”

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The Priestly Creation Account (Gen 1:1 – 2:4)

The P account of creation in 7 days is a brilliant start to the OT. It combines the best of Hebrew narrative style with the soaring refrains of a hymn. It doesn’t waste a word, but uses a carefully worked out structure combined with repetition of key expressions to create a powerful effect on the reader or listener. As in a good drama or carefully told children’s story, we experience the awe and majesty of God’s creative power in the very telling of the event.

The creation itself unfolds in 6 days, carefully balanced into 3 days each:

1st day creation of light 4th day creation of bodies of light

2nd day creation of heavens and 5th day creation of creatures of water and waters

3rd day creation of land and 6th day creation of life on land vegetation and its vegetable food, creation of humankind

On the first 3 days, God creates the physical world and separates each part into its place; on the last 3 days, God populates this world with living creatures and assigns them their proper roles. The climax of the creative process is the being, whom God makes male and female, blesses, and appoints as his deputy to have dominion over his new creation.

The world which is thus described does not share the same scientific view that we have, in which the earth is one planet around one sun in a universe full of suns and planets. The ancient picture of the universe is more like that depicted on the yellow sheet of this handout, in which the earth is a disc surrounded by water not only on the sides, but underneath and above too. A firm bowl (the “firma-ment”) keeps the upper waters back but has gates to the rain and snow through. The sun, moon and stars moved in fixed tracks along the underside of this bowl. From below the disc, the waters break through as wells, rivers and the ocean, but the earth stands firm on pillars sunk into the waters like the pilings of a pier. Deep below the earth is Sheol, the dwelling place of the dead, which can be entered only through the grave. 6

In this picture, the were no different from other ancient people around them. Even the order of creation is very similar to the Babylonian account of creation, which we call Enuma Elish. In this story, known from at least 1700 BC, long before the priestly account, the world begins from the of fresh and water, Apsu (male) and (female).

From the union of the primeval waters, all other gods and goddesses spring. Soon there is discord and fighting among them - and Apsu and Tiamat, deeply disappointed, decide to kill all their offspring. When the gods discover the plan, one of them, Ea, kills Apsu. Alone now, Tiamat, the symbol of chaotic darkness and disorder, declares war against the gods. The gods in fear choose a young warrior god, Marduk, to lead them against their own mother. But they must agree to make him king of the gods before he will undertake the battle. He wins by means of his storm weapons of thunder, wind and lightning and kills Tiamat. Out of one half of her body he makes the earth, and out of the other half, the heavens. Marduk next proposes to create humans, to be at the service of the gods and so that the gods may rest!

Marduk has Ea, the wise god, fashion human beings from the of one of the defeated gods. Marduk also fixes the roles of all the gods, sets order to the world, and finally celebrates his kingship over gods and humans alike by a banquet.

The Enuma Elish has a number of similarities to the account of creation in Gen 1. E.g. Gen 1:2 mentions the darkness and the waters of . But the closest links between the two accounts are found in the order of creation that both follow:

Comparison of Gen 1 and the Enuma Elish

Day Genesis Enuma Elish

1st Day light created Light emanates from the gods

2nd Day the sky dome created creation of (dome)

3rd Day creation of dry land creation of dry land

4th Day creation of heavenly lights creation of heavenly lights

6th Day creation of man creation of man 7

7th Day God rests and sanctifies the the gods rest and celebrate a Sabbath banquet

While the priestly authors obviously knew the Babylonian story, or one similar, and used its outline, they did not accept its . P makes no mention of a battle between Yahweh and the forces of chaos represented by the water: nor does it say that human beings are made up of the flesh of a god; nor does it claim that we have no purpose but to be slaves of the gods; nor is Yahweh portrayed as one among many competing, bickering and openly jealous divinities. Rather, in direct opposition to all that the Babylonians held about the origins of the universe, and in particular about the claims of their god Marduk to be lord over all other gods, P solemnly affirmed the basic insights of ’s :

 There is one God, without sexual gender, alone from the start  Who created from his goodness and wise plan a world of order  In which matter is good and not the result of whim or magic,  But God’s word decrees what is to be and establishes limits;  He gave humans a place of honour, made in his own image;  They were to have responsibility over what was created  and share divine gifts of pro-creating life, sharing his Sabbath rest and knowing God personally

The whole picture that P presents of God’s power, freedom and unchallenged control over the world he created is reinforced by the calm and deliberate repetition of the basic formula that is used:

God said: Let there be… and it was so! God saw that it was good and it was evening and morning on day (X)

The scope of Gen 1:1-2:4 contains a whole portrait of the nature of Yahweh, the God of Israel, over against all pagan claims. Such a profound statement was not the earliest, but rather is the last part to be added to the Pentateuch, a summary of what God can do, a guarantee that the story to follow makes sense. How close it comes to the wonder and praise expressed in Psalm 8:3-6

When I look up at the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars you have set in their place, What is man that you should remember him, 8

mortal man that you should care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowning him with glory and honour. You make him master over all your creatures, you have put everything under his feet.

The Yahwist Creation Story (Gen 2:4-25)

After the solemn tones of the Priestly creation narrative, the reader notices a definite change in mood in the J story. Where the P account moves toward the creation of humanity as its climax, the J writer begins with God’s creation of the man, and describes how subsequently God builds up a world for his new creature. In reality, J presents two stories. The first is the story of how God created one human being, but saw that he needed companions. God made a garden, but it was not enough; then he made the animals, and they did not prove enough; finally he made woman from man’s flesh and human community was created, and it was enough. The second story tells how God gave humans care over the garden and made everything perfect for them. It sets the stage for the of the first human couple. The author speaks almost as in a fairy tale – God walks with his man and woman and talks to them, he thinks out loud, he works as a potter, fashioning people from mud and breathing life into them. There is a concrete sense of closeness to the earth about the story-teller’s manner in J.

As in Gen 1, many elements are drawn from common of the Ancient Near East. The tree of life is well known in Babylonian circles as a symbol of long life, or even immortality. The picture of a garden in the East is known from Sumerian poems. The mystical power of the great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, is praised in many Babylonian hymns. While no parallel to the tree of knowledge of good and evil has yet been discovered, the question of a human becoming like God in wisdom after eating food reserved for gods is treated in the Legend of Adapa, a Mesopotamian . It tells how the first man was allowed into the council of the gods where he was offered the bread and water of life to give him immortality and divine status. But he refused it, thinking it was a trick, and so lost the opportunity to be among the gods forever.

The theology of the J account uses all these elements from pagan myths to give a very Israelite message. Yahweh God begins creation with the human species and then fashions a world that they are to cultivate and tend, and makes animals for them to rule over, and then establishes marriage and human community of two sexes to complement one another.

Though the J account was quite different in style from that of P, the Priestly editors found no difficulty incorporating the two together. God’s magnificent creation of the world in Gen 1 set the stage for his intimate concern with man 9 and woman in Gen 2. What God did was awe-inspiring, but it was also very close to us.

Extract from Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato sì – On Care for our Common Home (24 May 2015)

II. THE WISDOM OF THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNTS

65. Without repeating the entire theology of creation, we can ask what the great biblical narratives say about the relationship of human beings with the world. In the first creation account in the , God’s plan includes creating humanity. After the creation of man and woman, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen 1:31). The teaches that every man and woman is created out of love and made in God’s image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26). This shows us the immense dignity of each person, “who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons”.[37] Saint John Paul II stated that the special love of the Creator for each human being “confers upon him or her an infinite dignity”.[38] Those who are committed to defending human dignity can find in the Christian faith the deepest reasons for this commitment. How wonderful is the certainty that each human life is not adrift in the midst of hopeless chaos, in a world ruled by pure chance or endlessly recurring cycles! The Creator can say to each one of us: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jer 1:5). We were conceived in the heart of God, and for this reason “each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary”.[39]

66. The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality. They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. According to , these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin. The harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). As a result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature became conflictual (cf. Gen 3:17-19). It is significant that the harmony which Saint Francis of Assisi 10 experienced with all creatures was seen as a healing of that rupture. Saint Bonaventure held that, through universal reconciliation with every creature, Saint Francis in some way returned to the state of original innocence.[40] This is a far cry from our situation today, where sin is manifest in all its destructive power in wars, the various forms of violence and abuse, the abandonment of the most vulnerable, and attacks on nature. 67. We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us. This allows us to respond to the charge that Judaeo-Christian thinking, on the basis of the Genesis account which grants man “dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), has encouraged the unbridled exploitation of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by nature. This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the Church. Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures. The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15). “Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations. “The earth is the Lord’s” (Ps 24:1); to him belongs “the earth with all that is within it” (Dt 10:14). Thus God rejects every claim to absolute ownership: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev 25:23).

Questions for Reflection:

 How relevant is the voice of the Pope and the Church on this issue of the environment?

 In Genesis 1:28 and 2:15, we read that God gave newly-created humanity “dominion” over the earth, to “cultivate and care for it.” How does Pope Francis interpret these passages? What does he say is our responsibility to God’s earth and the creatures in it?

 For whom did God create the earth? Who is entitled to the goods of the earth? What is meant by the phrase “universal destination of goods”?

 During the preparation of the gifts at Mass, the celebrant prays, “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.” To this we respond, “Blessed be God 11

forever.” How do these words express the relationship between God, humanity, the natural world, and his plan for creation?

 What is the ultimate destiny of the universe according to Pope Francis?