Light and Space in Genesis 1

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Vetus Testamentum brill.com/vt

Cory Crawford Ohio University [email protected]

Abstract

I address here the still-vexing problem of why the Priestly narrator in Genesis 1 separates the fiat lux that opens the process of creation from the creation of sun, moon, and stars three days later, on day four. I organize ancient and modern explanations under four rubrics (polemical; functional; phenomenological; mystical) and find them relevant but ultimately insufficient to explain the way light operates in the logic of the Priestly creation narrative. I argue instead that we must attend first to the logic and narrative irregularity of the text itself in order to discern compositional motivations. The structure of Genesis 1 points toward an understanding of the nonsolar light (and its separation from darkness) in spatial terms, analogous to the separation of waters on day two and dry land on day 3, the sun, moon, and stars populating their spaces as do the birds, fish, land animals and humans.

Keywords creation – Priestly source – space – light – Hebrew Bible …

בְּרֵ אשִׁ ית אבָּרָ אֱ ֹלהִ ים אֵת הַשָּׁמַ יִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶ ץ׃ וְהָאָרֶ ץ הָ יְתָ ה תֹהוּ וָ בֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁ ְך עַל־פְּ נֵי תְ הֹום וְרוּחַ אֱ ֹלהִ ים מְרַחֶפֶ ת עַל־פְּ נֵי הַמָּ יִם׃ וַ יֹּאמֶר אֱ ֹלהִ יםיְהִ י אֹור וַיְהִ י־אֹור׃ וַיַּרְ אאֱ ֹלהִ יםאֶ ת־הָאֹור כִּ י־טֹוב וַיַּבְדֵּלאֱ ֹלהִ יםבֵּין הָ אֹור וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁ ְך׃ וַיִּקְרָ אאֱ ֹלהִ יםלָאֹור יֹום וְלַחֹשְֶׁך קָרָ א לָ יְלָ ה וַיְהִ בי־עֶרֶ וַיְהִ י־בֹקֶר יֹום אֶחָ ד׃

When God began to create the heavens and the earth— now the earth was unformed and empty, with darkness on the surface of Deep, the breath1 of God agitating2 on the surface of the waters3 —God said, “Let there be light.” Then there was light.4 God saw the light, that it was good. God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. There was evening, and there was morning, Day One. ∵

The irruption of light onto the dark abyss that opens the first day of creation continues to vex interpreters, as it has since antiquity; few careful readers miss the curiosity of day one’s fiat lux in a narrative that does not see the sun for three more days. Despite many discussions about the quality and origin of the light, its presence in the cosmos of Genesis 1 has yet to be fully explained.5 In

1 I translate “breath” rather than “wind” or “spirit” given the subsequent emphasis on speaking. Cf. Ps 33:6: “by the word of Yhwh were the heavens made / by the breath [rûaḥ] of his mouth their host.” 2 I translate “agitating” rather than “brooding” or “fluttering” or “hovering” to convey the poten- tial for threat within the semantic field of √rḫp (cf. Jer 23:9). Further, in a bilingual “histori- cal-literary” inscription of Nebuchadnezzar I that relates the disappearance and triumph of Marduk, the deity is described as a vocal master of nature in resonant terms, which G. Frame translates “at his roaring the seas are agitated,” ([a-na ú-t]a-zu-me-šú i-ár-ru-ra ta-ma-a-ti; RIMB B.2.4.8 §28). On “fluttering,” see W. Propp, Exodus 19-40 (New York, 2006), pp. 677-681. 3 The strophic division follows N. Wyatt, “The Darkness of Genesis 1.2,” in The Mythic Mind: Essays on Cosmology and Religion in Ugaritic and Old Testament Literature (London, 2005), pp. 92-101. 4 I do not translate, as some have recently, “‘Let light be’ and light was,” because such a translation presumes the ontological introduction of light ex nihilo, whereas the more traditional rendering preserves an ambiguity that allows a more localized understanding (let light be here, as it were). 5 Focused treatments, discussed below, include M. Smith, “Light in Gen 1:3—Created or Uncreated: A Question of Priestly Mysticism?” in C. Cohen et al. (eds.), Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul (Winona Lake, Ind., 2008), pp. 125-134; E. Noort, “The Creation of Light in Genesis 1:1-5: Remarks on the Function of Light and Darkness in the Opening Verses of the Hebrew Bible,”

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 558 Crawford this paper I explore this question by organizing and summarizing previous attempts to answer it and extend the discussion toward a fuller consideration of one almost entirely neglected aspect of the nonsolar light, namely, its relationship to space in the context of the whole Priestly creation narrative. Scholarly explanations of the light can be heuristically grouped in the following categories: polemical, temporal, phenomenological, and mystical. I hasten to add that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive; some categories are straddled by a single work. The basic contours can be outlined by a look at a handful of representative studies.

Polemical Explanations

One of the most common characterizations of the Priestly creation account derives from its comparison with other ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies and even with other Israelite creation narratives.6 As opposed to most other narratives, here the pre-creative state is not obviously inhabited by gods or other agents; there is only Elohim and a wet, murky wasteland. The traces of ante- cedent traditions—and therefore of the “demythologizing” transformations of the Priestly author—are found throughout the text, as even the picture of the solitary divine is destabilized by the plural forms in vv. 26-27. Some, like Jacob Milgrom, argue that this demythologization applies also to the “luminaries,” whose regular Hebrew names are avoided, the argument goes, because of their similarity to the great Mesopotamian deities, especially to Shamash, who was “in charge of the entire universe.”7 Instead the Priestly writer substituted the apparent circumlocutions “greater light” and “lesser light.” Eibert Tigchelaar

in G. van Kooten (ed.), The Creation of Heaven and Earth: Re-interpretations of Genesis 1 in the Context of Judaism, Ancient Philosophy, Christianity, and Modern Physics (Leiden, 2005), pp. 3-20; J. Milgrom, “The Alleged Hidden Light,” in H. Najman and J. Newman (eds.), The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (Leiden, 2004), pp. 41-44; G. Garbini, “The Creation of Light in the First Chapter of Genesis,” in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1973), pp. 1-4; H. May, “The Creation of Light in Genesis 1:3-5,” JBL 58 (1939), pp. 203-211. 6 G. Hasel, “The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology,” Evangelical Quarterly 46 (1974), pp. 81-102. This is more fully explored in J. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, 1988). 7 Milgrom, “Alleged Hidden Light,” p. 42. See also 41n. 4 for prior bibliography of the polemics of Gen 1; see also E. Tigchelaar, “‘Lights Serving as Signs for Festivals’ (Genesis 1:14b) in Enūma Eliš and Early Judaism,” in van Kooten (ed.), Creation of Heaven and Earth (Leiden, 2005), pp. 31-48; Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil.

Vetus TestamentumDownloaded from 68 Brill.com09/25/2021(2018) 556-580 10:20:43AM via free access Light and Space in Genesis 1 559 breaks down the argument into three related points: 1) God explicitly makes the luminaries in Gen 1:16 (i.e., they are not independent agents); 2) the text uses ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ light instead of more common terms ‘sun’ and ‘moon’; 3) the text ascribes no divine agency to these celestial bodies in determining the fate of humans.8 Milgrom argues that the reason for the separation of light from the luminaries is to deny not only identity to the celestial bodies but also agency, that the reason for their dissociation is ultimately to locate the source of the luminaries’ power elsewhere, namely, in the nonsolar light of day one, brought into being by the command of Yhwh. Milgrom supports his argument by reference to other biblical texts that separate the sun from sky light (Isa 30:26; Amos 8:9; Eccl 12:2; and especially 2 Sam 23:4). He also points out that the only other time P uses māʾôr (“luminary”) is in reference to the tabernacle (e.g. Exod 35:14), in which the māʾôr of the tabernacle required a source of fuel external to itself, and thus, by comparison, “the sun and the moon refracted this [created] light but added to it no light of their own…. They themselves are inert and impotent.”9 Challenges to this explanation have been mounted. Mark Smith points to Mesopotamian texts that similarly subordinate the sun, moon, and stars to the great gods (Anu, Enlil, and Ea), and that even call the astral bodies “signs.”10 More germane still is the use in Northwest Semitic literature of phrases “great light” (nyr rbt) in reference to the sun and possibly the moon.11 There are other reasons internal to Genesis 1 that avoiding the names sun and moon would make sense (discussed below) and that the luminaries of day four are not so impotent as the polemic explanation makes it seem: days four through six avoid all but the most generic names for the inhabitants of the world, on the one hand, and on the other these bodies are created not only as passive signs (ʾotot, v. 14) but are described in terms that verge on making agents of them. They are created “for ruling” (or “dominating”; lĕmemšelet/limšol b- vv. 16, 18) day and night. To these lights is delegated the responsibility of (actively) dividing (lĕhabdîl; v. 18) between day and night, previously the sole prerogative of God (cf. v. 4). What appears to be polemic may rather be a byproduct of other Priestly interests, for example to link the mĕʾorot of day 4 to the ʾôr of day one in showing an ordered creation, or to emphasize the hierarchy inherent in the created order, neither of which could happen easily with the use of the common nouns, cognate though they be with names of ancient Near

8 Tigchelaar, “Lights Serving as Signs,” p. 32. 9 Milgrom “Alleged Hidden Light,” p. 43. 10 M. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Minneapolis, 2009), pp. 93-98. 11 Smith, Priestly Vision, pp. 93 and 256nn. 44, 46.

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Eastern deities. Finally, as William Lambert observes for one of the very accounts Genesis 1 is supposedly reacting against, when it comes to the ordering of the celestial bodies in Enūma eliš tablet V, “very little mythology is present. Somehow, the author managed to deal with the function of the moon without so much as a mention of the name Sîn.”12 Thus while P’s move away from the cosmogonic conflict with competing deities is apparent at many points (as it is for most all biblical creation accounts), there is good reason to doubt this was the primary objective of the author’s separation of light from the sun.

Temporal Explanations

John Walton also doubts the necessity of the polemic explanation, instead opt- ing to understand the light in what I group with similar understandings under the heading of temporality. He in fact uses the term “functionality,” concluding that when it comes to acts and works of creation, “we ought to think … in terms of functions rather than material objects.”13 For Walton, the creation of light is a metonym for time, or “period of light,” since its purpose was to alternate func- tionally with darkness and to mark the passage of time. Claus Westermann similarly asserts that “the separation of light from darkness is temporal, not spatial,”14 as does Smith, who offers the distinction that whereas time was created on day one, it was not separated until day four with the markers provided by the greater and lesser lights.15 While it is certainly obvious from the naming scheme that light and darkness served to mark the days that structure the creation narrative—and therefore would best be established before the end of day one—this explanation is again limited in our inquiry by the fact that the functional purpose of the light of day one does not speak to the question of why this light must be separated from the heavenly bodies of day four, bodies that also serve explicitly to mark the passage of time—Milgrom’s “cosmic clock.”16 While it is impossible

12 W. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Winona Lake, Ind., 2013), p. 172. 13 J. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, Ind., 2011), p. vii. See also pp. 152- 155 on the possibility of reading nonpolemically. 14 C. Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary (trans. J. Scullion; Minneapolis, 1984), p. 112. 15 Smith, Priestly Vision, 91-93. 16 Ancient interpreters argued that the emergence of the earth on day three meant that now its people would need markers of time, for which the luminaries, whose purpose is to “shed light on the earth,” were apparently created. This is likely the understanding of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, which also saw the lights of day one and day four as different

Vetus TestamentumDownloaded from 68 Brill.com09/25/2021(2018) 556-580 10:20:43AM via free access Light and Space in Genesis 1 561 to exclude this temporal explanation entirely from consideration, especially given that the diurnal cycle supplies the primary structure of the rest of the account, it fails to deal with the need for separating the light from the lights.

Phenomenological Explanations

Those approaches that I call phenomenological attempt to explain the separation of lights by inhabiting the ancient mind that experiences celestial phenomena without the vocabulary or knowledge of astrophysics. These explanations target the conceptual logic of the nonsolar light by rooting it in observations of the natural world. We have already seen Milgrom’s appeal to other biblical narratives that parse light from the sun, so there is some textual support for this view. Nahum Sarna also takes this position, citing Isa 30:26 and Job 38:19-20 in rendering the opinion that the nonsolar light “most likely derives from the simple observation that the sky is illuminated even on cloudy days when the sun is obscured and that brightness precedes the rising of the sun.”17 Gerhard von Rad likewise opted for reading “realistically,” relating the light of creation to the regular diurnal cycle—“the light has poured in and has removed chaos to a gloomy condition of twilight”—which feeds back into the present quotidian experience: “every morning … something of God’s first creation is repeated.”18 He goes on to say that in the ancient Near East people “did

in scope, presenting the first light as illuminating the whole cosmos instead of just the earth: “let there be light to illuminate the world [ʿlmʾ, as opposed to the earth], and immediately [i.e., not on day 4] there was light.” (trans. Maher; Collegeville, 1992). Another ms. has ʿlʾh, ‘upper regions’, which conveys an even more restricted view of the light of the first day (see ibid., n. 6). The immediately indicates another interpretive move, one that takes aim at competing understandings of the light in Gen 1 as metaphorical, as in Jubilees and the Hymn to the Creator from Qumran (11QPsa), which understand the light to be the metaphorical illumination of the divine mind: “And [he created] the abysses and darkness—both evening and night—and light—both dawn and daylight—which he prepared in the knowledge of his heart.” (Trans. Wintermute, APOT, p. 55). 11QPsa preserves a very similar conceptualization: “Dividing light from darkness, he established the dawn- ing in his mind’s decision” (trans. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, [Cambridge, Mass., 1998], p. 49). The notion that all the works were created spiritually, on one day, probably draws strength from the Neo-Platonism found in Philo as well as from Gen 2:4b, which seemed to the interpreters to indicate creation happened on a single day. See Kugel’s discussion of platonic influence in Traditions, pp. 63-65. See also Genesis Rabbah 1:14ff. 17 N. Sarna, Genesis/Bereshit (Philadelphia, 1989), p. 7. 18 G. von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (London, 1972), pp. 52-53.

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 562 Crawford not consider the remarkable separation of light and stars as something that could not be performed, because [they] did not think of light and darkness exclusively in connection with the heavenly bodies.”19 As Von Rad’s statement indicates, the phenomenological approach also attempts to make sense of the sequence of darkness, followed by the injection of light apparently to form an admixture, followed by separation. The sequence has Yhwh speaking the light into existence (yĕhî ʾôr), judging it good, and only then dividing it from the dark. Between its creation and separation, then, what did the creator look at? Some have suggested that the admixture of light and dark before its separation evokes a kind of literal dawn of creation. This sequence, dark–dawn–day may have been the model envisioned in Genesis 1. As Jon Levenson puts it, this sequence writes into quotidian and cultic experience the cosmic memento of the darkness that obtained before day one: “the prior- ity of ‘evening’ over ‘day’ reminds us of which is primordial and recalls again that chaos in the form of darkness has not been eliminated, but only confined to its place through alternation with light.”20 This explanation likely informs a justification for the presence of nonsolar light but not its cause, since there is nothing in Genesis 1 to suggest the author’s desire to rationalize an unexplained natural phenomenon. It seems more likely that the possibility of this dissociation was a means to different exegetical ends. I will return to this conceptual logic in investigating the structure of the Priestly creation account below.

Mystical Explanations

The phenomenological explanations of light are in many ways precisely the opposite of those that understand the light of day one to be categorically, even metaphysically different from that of day four, explanations I call “mystical.” By mystical I do not intend to signal specific schools of Jewish or Christian thought, rather I mean to group here explanations that see the light of day one as somehow transcending the natural world as perceived by humans. This is the explanatory thread that most ties together ancient and modern interpreters. The implicit starting point for ancient mystical explanations was always the observation of the problem under consideration here, the difference of the nonsolar light from the luminaries and their separation. Although this is not

19 Von Rad, Genesis, p. 51. Smith also entertains the possibility (Priestly Vision, p. 80). See also U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, (Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 43-44. 20 Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, p. 123.

Vetus TestamentumDownloaded from 68 Brill.com09/25/2021(2018) 556-580 10:20:43AM via free access Light and Space in Genesis 1 563 the occasion to explore the full range of interpretive solutions, their interrela- tionships, and the various nuances of each, it is possible to point out the main strands, some of which are woven together in a single source. Operating from the assumptions that textual oddities were cryptic modes of divine instruction,21 premodern interpreters generally saw the light of day one as indicating something deeper about the world and the divine creative process.22 Some saw in the text an indication that the first light was that by which God saw in order to create, the light of the cosmic workshop, as it were.23 This craftsman’s lamp was for others a special dispensation of divine light, not meant for earth, and restricted to the treasuries of heaven.24 Some understood it, as do a few modern interpreters, as the luminescent source from which the celestial bodies drew.25 And some located this light in the divine mind, the mental lightbulb

21 See Kugel, Traditions, pp. 1-41. 22 The main interpretive ideas related to this verse are translated and organized in Kugel, Traditions, pp. 44-91. See also B. Bakhouche, Science et exégése: les interprétations antiques et médiévales du récit biblique de la création des éléments (Genèse 1,1-8) (Turnhout, 2016), as well as the second half of Tigchelaar, “Lights Serving as Signs,” which treats in detail Second Temple interpretation of Gen 1:14 on the functions of the celestial luminaries. 23 So Aristobulus (in Eusebius Praep. Evang. 13.12.9); 2 Enoch 25:3; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Gen 1:3; b. Hagigah 12a; Ephraem Commentary on Genesis 9:2; Philo On the Creation 31, 55; 4 Ezra 6:40. Von Rad (Genesis, 51) seems to adopt a similar stance: “Without light there is no creation; only light reveals the contours of the creature blurred in darkness.” The ancient readings were likely aided by the syntax of Gen 1:3, as some rabbinic commentators reanalyzed the direct-object markers (ʾet) as the preposition ‘with.’ The phrase “and God saw the light (ʾet hāʾôr), that it was good,” thus becomes “and God saw with the light, that it [i.e. the earth?] was good.” Although this reasoning is not explicit in the rabbis for this verse (as it is for Gen 1:2), it may inform the many interpretations that understand the light to be, as it were, the craftsman’s lamp. See Genesis Rabbah 1:14 and especially Rashi’s extension of this in his comment to Gen 1:14: “They were created on the first day, and on the fourth day, He commanded them to be suspended in the sky, and likewise, all the creations of heaven and earth were created on the first day, and each one was fixed in its proper place on the day that was decreed upon it. That is why it is written: ‘with the heavens (ʾet haššāmayîm)’ to include their products,” and ‘with the earth (wĕ-ʾet hā-ʾareṣ),’ to include its products.” 24 So b. Hagigah 12a; 2 Enoch 25:1-3; 4 Ezra 6:40. The implication draws its justification partly from the biblical indication of Gen 1:15 that the luminaries were to give light on the earth. 25 Ephraem, Commentary on Genesis 9:2; Philo On the Creation 31, 55. Cf. Milgrom, “Alleged Hidden Light.”

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 564 Crawford of knowledge that allowed the rest of creation to unfold.26 A fuller explication of each of these texts would reveal how thick the tangle of meaning of this verse could be for postbiblical interpreters;27 to pursue each strand sufficiently would take us too far afield. The themes outlined here indicate the basic ancient solutions and, more important, the way the problem was perceived.28 Although between pre- and post-Enlightenment interpretation lies a gulf of fundamentally different approaches to the biblical text, those modern commentators who attempt to understand the nonsolar light of day one still seek answers from the immediate context, from elsewhere in the Bible, and also from comparison with ancient Near Eastern cosmologies in attempt to deci- pher the ontological significance of the light. Central to these modern “mystical” interpretations is the recognition that light was commonly perceived as an inherent feature of the divine person, as Ps 104:2 and many other biblical and non-biblical texts state explicitly.29 In the search for contextual parallels one finds faint precedent for the presence of nonsolar light at the beginning of cosmogonic narratives.30 Although most Mesopotamian texts are entirely unconcerned with the appearance or source of light apart from the celestial bodies, an important exception exists in an Ur III tablet (late third millennium BCE) from Nippur which, to my knowledge, has not been discussed in relation to Genesis 1 since the publication of

26 So Philo 31, 55; Jubilees 2:2; Josephus Ant. Jud. 1.27; 2 Enoch 25:3; Hymn to the Creator (11QPsa). 27 E.g., 2 Enoch 25:1-3: “And I commanded the lowest things: ‘Let one of the invisible things descend visibly!’ And Adoil descended, extremely large. And I looked at him, and behold, in his belly he had a great light. And I said to him, ‘Disintegrate yourself, Adoil, and let what is born from you become visible.’ And he disintegrated himself, and there came out a very great light. And I was in the midst of the light. And light out of light is carried thus. And the great age came out, and it revealed all the creation which I had thought up to create. And I saw that it was good” (trans. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, p. 73). Here, melded into one, are the invisible and visible light, divine forethought as illumination, angelic partners, luminescent clothing, and the revelatory light of creation. 28 We might just point out here other motifs that inform and are informed by the interpretive problems presented by the light of day one: the creation of (heavenly) Torah, the creation of angels, the participation of Wisdom and Logos in worldcraft, among others. See discussion in Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, pp. 44-91. For a fuller narrative of the development of Jewish interpretation on just the light of day one, see H. Schwartz, The Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford, 2004), pp. lxxi-lxxiv. 29 See I. Winter, “Radiance as an Aesthetic Value in the Art of Mesopotamia,” in B. Saraswati, S. C. Malik, and M. Khanna (eds.), Art: The Integral Vision (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 123-132; also S. Z. Aster, The Unbeatable Light: Melammu and its Biblical Parallels, (Münster, 2012). 30 Walton charts the most relevant nonbiblical texts for Genesis 1 (Genesis 1, pp. 18-21) but neglects to include light as a comparative category.

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Rubio’s 2013 edition presented below, which has important implications for the present study.31

Obv. Obv. 1. Lord Heaven illuminated heaven. 1. a[n e]n-ne2 an mu-zal[ag]-⸢ge?⸣ Earth bent over and looked at the ⸢ki mu⸣-[gur]um?-me2 kur-še3 igi Netherworld. mu-[gal2?] 2. No water was drawn from the deep, 2. buru3 a nu-bal nig2 nu-gar ki dagal nothing was produced, broad Earth ⸢x x⸣ RI nu-ak did not do … 3. Enlil’s great išib-priest did not yet 3. [i]šib mah den-⸢lil2⸣-la2 nu-u3- exist, the sacred purification rites gal2 [š]u-⸢luh⸣ ku3-ge šu nu-⸢u3- were not performed. ma-ni⸣-du7 4. The host? of Heaven was not 4. [er]in2 ? an-na-ke4 šu nu-⸢u3-tag⸣ adorned. ⸢x x x x⸣ DI … … 5. … were mixed together. 5. […] teš2-bi-a mu-lu 6. … had not taken … 6. [… nu]-⸢u3-TUKU⸣-TUKU 7. Daylight did not yet shine, night 7. ⸢u4 nu-zalag gi6⸣ am3-mu-la2 spread, 8. But Heaven had lit up his heavenly 8. an-ne2 ⸢da⸣-ga-an-na-ka-ni mu-ni- abode. ib2-kar2 Rev. Rev. 1. The ground could not by itself 1. ki-du u2-šim-ma ni2 nu-⸢mu⸣- make vegetation grow long. gid2-gid2-e 2. Enlil’s mes had not (yet) been con- 2. me den-⸢lil2-la2-ke2⸣ kur-kur-ra ⸢šu stituted in all the lands. nu-u3-du7⸣

31 NBC 11108. Transliteration and translation of G. Rubio, “Time Before Time: Primeval Narratives in Early Mesopotamian Literature”, in L. Feliu et al. (eds.), Time and History in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona, (Winona Lake, Ind., 2013), pp. 3-17 (here, p. 7 and see p. 13 for photographs of the tablet). Clifford (Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible [Washington, D.C., 1994], pp. 28-29) included this text in his discussion of ancient Near Eastern creation accounts, and his translation differs significantly, especially where the primordial illumination is concerned, perhaps because it is a translation of J. Van Dijk’s French rendering in “Existe-t-il un ‘Poème de la Création’ Sumérien?” in Kramer Anniversary Volume: Cuneiform Studies in Honor of Samuel Noah Kramer, B. Eichler et al. (eds.); AOAT 25; Kevelaer, 1976), pp. 125-133. See also Walton, Genesis 1, p. 32 n. 47 for discussion. Note that none of these discussions, including Van Dijk’s, assesses the significance of the text for understanding the primordial light of Genesis 1.

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3. … of Heaven … 3. ⸢x x x x an⸣-na-ke4 ⸢x (x) x x⸣ x … 4. … 4. [x (x)] ⸢a-x⸣-[x] ⸢x x x⸣-um-sa2-sa2 5. The gods of Heaven and the gods 5. [ding]ir an-⸢na dingir ki-a⸣ nu-u3- of Earth were not (yet) performing ⸢ma-su8-su8⸣-ge-eš2 their duties.

The text presumes initial darkness, following which (the deity) Heaven illuminated (the space of) heaven. It is uncertain whether this illumination allowed (the personified) Earth to look at the Netherworld, but it is tantalizingly similar to those Second Temple interpretations of Genesis 1 that cite the primordial light as that by which God worked. The text is explicit about this first illumination not being part of the diurnal, solar cycle in ll. 7-8: “Daylight did not yet shine, night spread, but Heaven had lit up his heavenly abode.” Rubio points out, further, that the emphasis on darkness in l. 7 (“night spread”) is a rhetorical strategy for indicating a “negative ontology”, which may be the reason for the prevalence of darkness before creation in so many accounts. In any case, this text demonstrates precedent for a primordial nonsolar light, though its relatively early date, coupled with the fact that this notion is to my knowledge unattested elsewhere in Sumerian and Akkadian texts, makes it highly unlikely that this composition had direct influence in the composition of Gen 1.32 Further, Rubio noted this text’s role in constructing Mesopotamian conceptions of “time before time,” whereas on some level the Priestly invoca- tion of nonsolar light is the very instantiation of time, as the functional explanations point out. Moving to the first millennium, the most important Babylonian creation narrative of this period, Enūma eliš (Ee),33 does not hint at such a light, or even darkness, during creation; other Mesopotamian creation narratives presume darkness but no explicit lighting of the cosmos. It does, however, describe the luminescent body of Marduk. After Marduk slays Tiāmat and creates the earth and sky from her corpse, and after he populates the heavens with the Moon and constellations (Ee V), his face was made to shine (Ee V.82) and he donned a

32 The other, earlier text Rubio discusses may have preserved a similar notion, but the beginning of the composition is not preserved enough to tell. In favor of the possibility is the nearly identical statement that “daylight did not shine / moonlight did not come forth,” coupled with a hint in the first lines at brightness: “Earth would dazzle …” (ki-e SAL.KAB- na dalla ha-mu-ak-e; Rubio, “Time before Time,” p. 5). 33 Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, pp. 439-444, places the composition no earlier than the late second millennium. All translations of Ee follow Lambert.

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“crown of terror as a royal aura [Akk. melammu]” (Ee V.94). At the beginning of the giving of Marduk’s fifty names in tablet VI, which Lambert calls the climax of the narrative, Marduk is hailed as “the son, the sun-god of the gods, he is dazzling,” and the gods are enjoined to “ever walk in his bright light.”34 Thus in this case the resplendence of Marduk follows his creative acts. Yet the stron- gest thematic connection between Gen 1 and Ee is not in primordial light but in the establishment of celestial markers of time (Gen 1:14; Ee V.1-46).35 Egyptian accounts feature similar topoi, where many references to creation assume the emergence of order from a dark and watery chaos.36 The most common affinities adduced by scholars are attested in Papyrus Leiden 350 I and in the “Great Hymn to the Aten”, which connect light with the beginning of creation. In the former, a New Kingdom composition, the creator Amun is described as the one who self-evolved, and that “Light was his evolution on the first occasion.”37 Further, he subsumes the sun: “The Sun himself is joined with his person…. Amun, who emerged from the Waters that he might lead everyone.”38 In the latter, a New Kingdom composition from the latter part of the second millennium, the beneficence of the Aten is extolled: “Splendid you rise in heaven’s lightland, / O living Aten, creator of life! / When you have dawned in eastern lightland, / You fill every land with your beauty…. When you set in western lightland, Earth is in darkness as if in death…. Darkness hovers, earth is silent / As their maker rests in lightland.”39 This hymn has frequently been compared to Psalm 104, which extols the creation of Yahweh in similar

34 Ee VI.127-128; trans. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, p. 117. Compare IV.58, in which Marduk wears an “aura [melammu] of terror” as he goes out to fight Tiāmat. 35 Unfortunately the text is damaged in the latter lines that apparently discuss the formation of days, although months and years are clearly indicated. Strongly indicative of connection is the concern with sun and moon and almost no discussion of constellations or planets in both texts. As Lambert puts it for Ee, “the real interest of the author lay in fixing the calendar rather than in astronomy per se. The stars with which he deals fix the year, then he passes to the moon, by which the month is fixed, and he concludes this part of his work by treating the sun, the regulator of the day.” (Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, p. 172). For a detailed discussion and comparison of Gen 1:14 and Ee, see Tigchelaar, “Lights Serving as Signs.” 36 See, for example, COS, texts 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 1.10, 1.16. 37 All translations of J.P. Allen, COS 1.16. This phrase is in the “90th Chapter” according to its own numbering. 38 Ibid., “200th Chapter.” 39 Trans. M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: The New Kingdom (Los Angeles, 1978), pp. 96-100 = COS 1.28. See also S. Quirke, “Creation Stories in Ancient Egypt,” in M. Geller and M. Schipper (eds.), Imagining Creation (Leiden, 2008), pp. 61-86.

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 568 Crawford imagery and sequence, and some even posit a literary relationship between the two.40 Levenson goes further, to suggest the possible mediated influence of the Great Hymn to the Aten on Genesis 1 via Psalm 104.41 We find again here the close association of the creator god with light, and although the Aten is indistinguishable from the sun’s rays, we find the hint of a dissociation of the sun from light in the expression translated by Lichtheim as ‘lightland’ (akhet, more frequently translated ‘horizon’), repeated in these lines. We will return to this later. Thus while there is some older precedent for divine light associated with creation, it is usually not characterized as a separate substance but is instead most frequently attached to the divine body, as in Ps 104:1-2: “You are clothed with majesty and glory / wrapped in light as with a cloak.” This has more in common with Marduk’s melammu than with the fiat lux of Genesis 1.42 Important here is the observation of Theodore Lewis, who aptly summarizes the notion that fiery light was coterminous with the divine person: “The numinous quality of fire is one of the most (the most?) enduring of images used by the authors of the Hebrew Bible to depict divine presence. It appears in every literary (i.e., Pentateuchal) strand, in most literary genres, and throughout every period.”43 One need only think of the burning bush (Exod 3), the pillar of fire (e.g., Exod 13), the kĕbôd Yhwh (e.g., Exod 24:16), the shining of Yhwh’s countenance in the Priestly blessing (Num 6:24-26), Ezekiel’s inaugural vision (Ezek 1-3) among dozens of other examples.44 More relevant to the light of Genesis 1 are Amos 5:18, in which the prophet reverses the audience’s expectation that the day of Yhwh is light; Isa 45:7, where Yhwh claims to “form light and create darkness”,

40 P. Humbert, “La relation de Genèse I et du Psaume 104 avec la liturgie du Nouvel-An is- raëlite,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 15 (1935), pp. 1-27. 41 Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, pp. 53-65; see also the detailed discussion and bibliography in B. Schipper, “Egyptian Backgrounds to the Psalms,” in W. Brown (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms, ed. W. P. Brown. New York, 2014), pp. 57-75. 42 On the comparison of terms like hôd and hādār with Akkadian melammu, see Aster, Unbeatable Light. 43 Lewis, “Divine Fire in Deut 33:2,” JBL 132 (2013), pp. 791-803, here p. 796. He goes on to support Steiner’s argument that ʾešdāt in Deut 33:2 is “fire flying forth,” connecting the image to other biblical and ancient Near Eastern representations of the divine presence. 44 See references in Lewis, “Divine Fire.” On the Kabod as light, in addition to Aster, Unbeatable Light, see B. Sommer, “A Little Higher than the Angels: Psalm 29 and the Genre of Heavenly Praise,” in M. Grossmann (ed.), Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding: Essays on Biblical and Near Eastern Literature in Honor of Adele Berlin (Bethesda, 2013), pp. 129-153, here see pp. 132-135; J. Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel (Sheffield, 1993).

Vetus TestamentumDownloaded from 68 Brill.com09/25/2021(2018) 556-580 10:20:43AM via free access Light and Space in Genesis 1 569 and Isa 60, where the divine effulgence dispels the darkness covering the earth and Yhwh’s people.45 This is seen also in the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud plaster inscription fragment: [bzrh ʾl br] (“when El dawned on …”).46 Perhaps the most similar in regard to the disbursement of light, although it is not set in the context of creation, is Psalm 43:3 “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me, let them bring me to your holy hill, to your dwelling.” Moving past the search for examples of divine radiance at creation, some modern scholars have similarly described the light of day one in terms of its qualitative effect on the created universe: since it emanates from God, it im- plies that divine qualities—a kind of moral order—are woven into the fabric of creation. This would not be entirely out of place in ancient Near Eastern— especially Egyptian—cosmogonies, in which the creator establishes order (including natural law as well as behavioral decorum) in opposition to darkness and chaos of the waters. Herbert May connected the light of day one to the postexilic eschatological hope symbolized by the shining glory of the Day of Yhwh, in which the celestial bodies become irrelevant. More recently, Smith connected the light to divine speech and from there to the divine instructions of the Priestly torah, which is made explicit in texts like Prov 6:23: “for the com- mandment is a lamp (nēr) and the torah is a light (ʾôr).” Smith concludes that “Gen 1:3 captures the notion of a divinely generated light that functions ultimately as the source for both natural light and moral-cultic illumination.”47 He wonders whether the priests would have also intended the verse to hint at “a notion of uncreated, divine light that emanates from the heavenly temple.”48 Noort argues that in the Hebrew Bible “speaking about God in relation to light is never a neutral theme,” and that the text indicates P attributed a special status to this light because it is indicative of “the majestic presence of God.”49 He goes on to adduce as evidence biblical texts like Ps 112:4, where those who fear the lord “shine (zāraḥ) in the darkness as a light (ʾôr) for the upright.”50

45 Aster, Unbeatable Light discusses these examples in much greater detail and in the context of Assyrian concepts of divine radiance. For a fuller listing of intertextual connec- tions to the first day (Gen 1:1-5), see S. Giere, A New Glimpse of Day One: Intertextuality, History of Interpretation, and Genesis 1.1-5 (Berlin, 2009). 46 Lewis, “Divine Fire,” p. 792. 47 “Light in Genesis 1:3,” p. 132. See also Smith, Priestly Vision, pp. 79, 83. 48 “Light in Genesis 1:3,” p. 133; cf. Ps. 43, above. 49 Noort, “Creation of Light,” p. 17. Noort sees the structure of the text pointing toward a special role for the light; I see it rather as evidence of the activities of day one as an innovative expansion of earlier materials (preserved in vv. 14-19, roughly), and not as P signaling a special status of the light. 50 Ibid., p. 18.

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Von Rad called light the “firstborn of creation,”51 possibly informed by the prologue to the gospel of John and its rereading of Genesis 1 through Philo, although he also emphasizes its creatureliness as an object distinct from the divine person. These observations strengthen the claim that to understand the light of day one we are justified in turning to biblical and extrabiblical traditions, but in doing so we cannot forget to attend to the innovations isolated and brought into sharper focus against the backdrop of the shared features. It thus seems that, while the common treatment of the divine body as luminescent in the Hebrew Bible and broader ancient Near East is undeniable, the Priestly author’s understanding of the created light of day one is novel in fundamental ways, and that therefore to make sense of it we are best served by making re- course to P itself, asking what the author gained by this innovation. Perhaps the best way of thinking about these analogies is with Richard Clifford, who suggested Genesis 1 was “eclectic like the one extant Phoenician cosmogony [that of Philo of Byblos], … which seems to be a mixture of Egyptian, Phoenician, and Greek conceptions.”52 As with the phenomenological explanations, these antecedents help view some of the individual threads used in weaving together a new tapestry, but they are ultimately of limited value for our specific question, for although the other creation texts apparently described divine luminescence emanating from the creator and from other divinities, none of them makes an equivalent move to depersonalize and reify the light as a created substance. More important, any claim to discern mystical qualities of the light must be inferred by comparison, because nowhere do we find it explicitly stated in the text.53 We are ultimately left to explore the nonsolar light within the logic of the text as it stands.

51 Genesis, p. 51. 52 R. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (Washington, D.C., 1994), p. 141. See the similar conclusions of Wenham, Genesis 1-15, (Waco, 1987), pp. 8-10. 53 The notice that “God saw the light, that it was good” in v. 4 should not automatically be taken as evidence of an indication of an introduction of moral order any more than the other similar statements throughout the chapter. The reason that light is here uniquely singled out is, in my reading, so that the reader not be led to think that the darkness was included in the evaluation. This itself may be a stronger indication of the relative qualities of the created light and primordial darkness. Levenson argues that the waters still carry the negative residue of the Chaoskampf motif from other creation accounts (Creation and the Persistence of Evil, pp. 47-50, 127).

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Light and Space in the Narrative Structure of Genesis 1

Our first hint at the nature and function of light came through its connection with Psalm 104 and other biblical and extrabiblical texts indicating divine radiance. But this light also has a narrative function crucial to the Priestly structure: it is absolutely essential to the articulation of a seven-day creation period, else what is a day? As was explored already in the functional explanations above, the alternation of light and dark, and the naming of this alternation Day and Night sets in motion a clock by which the omniscient narrator demarcates creative acts and imposes order on the process. But this still leaves one wondering why the sun and moon could not have served this purpose since they themselves are said to divide day and night on day four. We can begin to answer that question by attention to the overall structure of the seven days, a structure which is recognized in virtually every modern commentary and charted in most treatments of Genesis 1 (see below, Table 2). We can use the deliberate scaffolding and implicit equations of the Priestly composition to discern clues as to how the author understood the light. This scaffolding is constructed by repeated verbal formulae (quotation-command; fulfillment; naming; approbation; day number) as well as by a logically ordered progression, although sometimes these structures exhibit variation that indicates the reworking or incorporation of earlier traditions. As B. Anderson put it, most scholars recognize that “traditional materials have been homogenized in the present account, which compresses eight creative acts into six ‘days of work.’”54 Further complicating the issue is the observation, again made by many, that different elements were marked by a different means of creation, some by word and others by deed. This alternation led to the dominance of a theory in the early and middle of the twentieth century that these two processes were not originally intertwined, but rather that an original creation-by-deed account (Tatbericht) had been reshaped into a seven-day creation-by-word account (Wortbericht) by the Priestly author.55 Although this has not maintained

54 “The Priestly Creation Story: A Stylistic Study,” in From Creation to New Creation (Minneapolis, 1994; repr. from Canon and Authority, ed. Coats and Long, Philadelphia, 1977), p. 43. 55 This was articulated in great detail by Schmidt, Die Schöpfungsgeschichte der Priesterschrift (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1964). For histories of and reactions to these attempts see T. Krüger, “Gen 1:1-2:3 and the Development of the Pentateuch,” in T. Dozeman, K. Schmid, and B. Schwartz (eds.), The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (Tübingen, 2011), pp. 125-138; Wenham, Genesis 1-15, pp. 7-9; Anderson, “Priestly Creation Story;” see also Smith, Priestly Vision, pp. 175ff.

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 572 Crawford consensus, with objections usually advanced on the basis of the fragmentary results of separating the two putative accounts, we do find doublets and seams that break along the word-deed divide that are best explained by authorial supplementation. It may be the case that the earlier tradition is impossible to recover intact,56 but the idea of the introduction of creation by fiat superim- posed on a prior Tatbericht tradition seems reasonable and explains best the irregularities of Genesis 1.57 This has implications for understanding the nonsolar light as an interpre- tative move on the part of the author, a move that comes into focus by comparison with the lights of day four (Gen 1:14-19).58 These luminaries are both spoken into existence (vv. 14-15) and made (vv. 16-18), which doubling suggests already the superimposition of a fiat-structure. “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky, to divide day and night, and let them exist for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to shed light on the earth. And it was so.” Verse 15 ends with the fulfillment formula, which usually concludes the creation activity (cf. v. 7), and thus presents a compositional seam.59 Following this is the Tatbericht: “God made (way-yaʿāś) the two great lights—the greater light for ruling over (lĕmemšelet) the day and the lesser light for ruling over (lĕmemšelet) the night—and the stars. God put them (way-yittēn) in the vault of the sky to shed light on the earth, to rule over (limšol) the day and the night, and to separate the light (lĕhabdîl) from the darkness.” Taking v. 15b as a dividing point between two

56 For a recent attempt to reconstruct the penultimate stage, see Krüger, “Gen 1:1-2:3.” 57 I use the terms Wortbericht and Tatbericht from here on not to argue for the combination of two separate documents, but as shorthand for what I see as traditional material (Tatbericht) and Priestly reworking (Wortbericht), which are defined in part by their de- piction of modes of creation. 58 For a more comprehensive treatment of the literary seams of vv. 14-19, see Schmidt, Schöpfungsgeschichte, pp. 109-117. 59 LXX famously moves the completion formula of v. 7 to v. 6 most likely to solve the problem of v. 15 by understanding it not to be conclusory but introductory, as referring to what follows. (‘It happened thus: …’ as opposed to ‘Thus it was.’) See discussion in W. Brown, Structure, Role, and Ideology in the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Genesis 1:1-2:3 (Atlanta, 1993), p. 53 n. 41. Brown sees the LXX as a fairly straightforward witness to its Hebrew Vorlage (VorLXX) and as the earlier text. I find this position untenable for the basic reason that it seems much more likely that LXX smoothed out the structural problems with its Vorlage (as here) than that MT scribes introduced this unevenness; see Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1-11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition (New York, 1998); cf. Krüger, “Genesis 1:1-2:3,” pp. 127-28.

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Table 1 Comparing day four and day one

Day Four: vv. 14-15; Day Four: vv. 16-18a Day One (vv. 3-5) 18b-19

Mode of Let there be lights God made the two Let there be light creation great lights Completion And it was so. — And there was light formula (wa-yĕhî kēn) (wa-yĕhî ʾôr) Ruling day — Greater light to rule — and night day / lesser to rule night / (both) to rule over day and night Shedding For shedding light For shedding light — Light on earth on the earth Separation lights separate Two great lights God separates light day and night separate light from from dark dark

sections, we find they are distinct from each other in modes of creation (speaking vs. making/placing), in function of the luminaries (marking signs, seasons, days, and years vs. governing day and night), in their precise acts of separating (day and night vs. light and darkness), and in the specified hierarchy (generic “lights” vs. greater and lesser lights). The two sections are united by their terminology for the lights and in their indication of the place within the vault. Although these are not impossible to reconcile with each other, their redun- dancy and subtle differences that break across a clear literary seam are strong indicators of two literary products. When we compare the two sections with the content of vv. 3-5, the picture becomes clearer. Taking vv. 14-19 grosso modo as the combination of an older tradition (vv. 16-18a) and an expansion that reworks the older material (vv. 14-15; 18b-19), we find a telling harmony and dissonance with vv. 3-5. The most pronounced similarities are between vv. 14-15 (the expansion) and vv. 3-5: “Let there be light” (yĕhî ʾôr; v. 3) vs. “Let there be lights” (yĕhî mĕʾôrot; v. 14); completion formulae: “and there was light” (wa-yĕhî ʾôr; v. 3) “and it was so” (wa-yĕhî kēn; v. 15b). One also notes that on day one the creation was accomplished purely by fiat, there is no subsequent verb of making as there is in vv. 14-19, suggesting that vv. 3-5

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 574 Crawford are an innovation of the Priestly author as part of his enumeration of a seven- day structure, especially given that both the nonsolar light and the seven-day structure are unique among ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies.60 There is an important point of dissonance between vv. 3-5 and vv. 14-19 as well. In the former, after creating the light, God separates light from darkness before naming them Day and Night, which accords well with the Wortbericht supplement of vv. 14-15, where now the lights separate day and night as opposed to light and darkness. In the probably older Tatbericht, however, the lights rule day and night and separate light from darkness, which becomes a point of tension as the reworking now makes it appear had already been accomplished by God on day one (v. 4). This suggests two things. First, in adding further support to the claim that the Tatbericht is earlier, it indicates that one of the purposes of the Wortbericht was to accomplish what Sara Milstein calls “revision by introduction,” whereby scribes preserved the old text at the same time they fronted their own innovations. “Because the new contribution was at the front, the received work was automatically reread through the lens of this perspective. The fact that modern exegetes often interpret these works according to the logic of their secondary contributors reveals just how effective this technique could be.”61 Second, and related, it indicates that the author was working with a source (either oral or written) that he could not (or would not) tamper directly with.62 Thus I proceed with the analysis of the light of day one on the basis that it is the result of P’s expansion of older materials, the same expansion that introduced the seven-day structure to the narrative and added material to what became the activities of day four.63 When we look at the structure of the final form of Gen 1:1-2:3 we can begin to make sense of the author’s logic, which will help clarify the role of light in day one. The affinities of day four with day one echo the larger parallel diurnal structure of Genesis 1. Most commentators since at least the late eighteenth century point out that the orderly progression of creation is defined not only by its

60 This is also the opinion of May, “Creation of Light,” among others. Note also the occur- rence of “signs” (ʾotot), a well-known Priestly leitwort, in the Wortbericht section of day four. 61 S. Milstein, “Delusions of Grandeur: Revision through Introduction in Judges 6-9,” in A Life in Parables and Poetry (ed. J. Greene; Berlin, 2014), pp. 210-239, here 211; see also her Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature (Oxford, 2016). Cf. Schmidt, Schöpfungsgeschichte, pp. 95-100. 62 Again, see Milstein, “Delusions of Grandeur,” and Tracking the Master Scribe, passim, on this. 63 This is basically the conclusion reached by Schmidt (Schöpfungsgeschichte, pp. 95-100), which he arrives at by slightly different logic.

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Table 2 Bilateral harmony of diurnal triads in Genesis 1

Triad 1 Triad 2

Day One: Light (separated from Darkness) Day Four: ‘Greater’ and ‘Lesser’ Lights; Name-act: Light = ‘Day’; Dark = ‘Night’ Stars Day Two: Vault to separate Ocean and Sky Day Five: ‘Great’ Sea monsters, sea Name-act: Vault = ‘Sky’ creatures, and birds Day Three: Subcelestial Waters and Dry land; Day Six: Land animals; Humans grain and fruit trees Name-act: Land = ‘Earth’; Water = ‘Seas’ Day Seven: Rest

formulaic wording and division into days, but also by what Milgrom aptly calls a “bilateral harmony” of two triads of days.64 As Table 2 shows, the first three days establish the preconditions for the next three. These triads are not simply the result of modern exegetical penchant for structure; the days of each are linked by verbal and conceptual features not shared by the other triad. Both triads begin with “God said, let there be light(s)” (way-yoʾmer eʾlohîm yĕhî ʾôr / mĕʾôrot). In the first triad, as many have noted, spatial separation dominates the acts of creation. It is twice indicated by the verb lĕhabdîl, with day and night separated in v. 4, as are the waters above and below the dome in vv. 6-7. In v. 9 the terrestrial waters were gathered together (yiqqāwû) to reveal dry land. Another marker of the first triad—this one rarely noted—is the act of naming (see Table 2) that provides the coordinates, as it were, for locating the creations of the second triad: the sun, moon, and stars “rule over” day and night (v. 14), the birds and sea creatures are created in sky and seas (1:20), and the birds multiply on the earth, where also the land creatures (including humans) dwell and move. These verses of the second triad make reference back to the domains created and named in the first.

64 “Alleged Hidden Light,” p. 43n.8. The earliest observations of this progression an- tedate H. Gunkel: Ilgen in 1798, whom Gunkel cites in his Genesis commentary (Genesis, [Göttingen, 1901]: p. 118), and, even earlier, J.G. Herder, Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, 1774, reprinted, with commentary, in Johann Gottfried Herder Schriften zum Alten Testament (ed. R. Smend; Johann Gottfried Herder Werke 5; Frankfurt am Main, 1993), pp. 185-301, see especially pp. 270-271 for his graphic organization of the days.

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Whereas name-acts are distinctive of the first triad, they are studiously avoided in the second. As noted above, the most glaring are the apparent circumlocution of “sun” and “moon” by the more generic “greater light” and “lesser light.” This prompts the observation that the other terms of the second triad are also collective and categorical: stars, birds, fish, sea monsters, wildlife, and even humankind. This generic quality is highlighted by (and was perhaps a response to) the Yahwist’s hyperattention to naming the earth’s creatures in Gen 2-3. Another distinctive feature of the second triad—and again rarely noted—is that they are also marked by hierarchical language: the celestial luminaries are assigned “greater” and “lesser” status and they explicitly “rule over” their domains, while the sea includes the “great” sea monsters (hattanninîm haggĕdolîm) singled out among the population, but of course both earth and sea—everything beneath the sky—are ruled by humans (vv. 26, 28). This bilateral structure allows us to understand the Priestly conception of the light of day one by comparing the other items in its set and the relationship between the first and second triads. The creative acts of days two and three (sky, seas, earth) clearly establish the spaces or regions that would be inhabited on days five and six (birds, marine animals, land animals). The fact that light and dark, day and night are also separated and named using the same terminology (lĕhabdîl and liqroʾ l-) suggests we take seriously the possibility that they were also intended to be understood as spaces. One recalls that in v. 2 darkness was already anchored spatially (“darkness was on the [sur] face [ʿal pĕnê] of Deep”).65 Further, all spaces of the first triad are populated in the second with inhabitants that require the corresponding medium for their existence. Robert Coote and David Ord point out that the populations of the second triad, including the celestial luminaries, are defined by mobility within their domains.66 In the only study of which I am aware to treat the light explicitly in spatial terms, Ronald Simkins brings these observations together in his brief note that “the Priestly writer has … classified the world according to a meaningful spatial pattern…. Light and darkness are not a substance but

65 Many ancient cosmogonies couple darkness with the primordial waters, and some also metaphorize it as clothing. See, for example, the Hymn to the Aten §4, “for darkness is a blanket.” Darkness is also compared to death in §3 (“the land is in darkness in the manner of death”). 66 R. Coote and D. Ord, In the Beginning: Creation and the Priestly History (Minneapolis, 1991), pp. 53-56. See also R. Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, Mass., 1994), pp. 194-197.

Vetus TestamentumDownloaded from 68 Brill.com09/25/2021(2018) 556-580 10:20:43AM via free access Light and Space in Genesis 1 577 rather an environment or a habitat in which living beings exist. The sun, moon, and stars are thus presented as the ‘beings’ of this environment.”67 Spatial understandings of light and dark are not unheard of in the Hebrew Bible. Speaking of the horizon in a text that evokes creation motifs, Job 26:10 reports that Yhwh “inscribed a circle on the face of the waters, at the boundary (taklît) of light and darkness.”68 Neither is it unheard of in Egyptian texts, as we have already seen in Lichtheim’s translation of the composite word akhet as “lightland” in the Great Hymn to the Aten. This captures what James Allen characterized as the Egyptian perception of the horizon: “Between the day and night skies was a region known as the Akhet, into which the sun set before de- scending into the Duat, and into which he rose before appearing in the morning sky.”69 He also offers a phenomenological explanation for this, exactly like that proposed by Milgrom, Sarna, and others (above) for the nonsolar light: “The concept of the Akhet was a practical explanation of why light fades gradually after sunset and appears gradually before sunrise, instead of disappearing and reappearing with the sun all at once.”70 That created light be understood as space seems even less unusual when one recalls the profusion of architectural metaphors in other biblical creation texts. Ps 104; Job 38:4-11; Ps 102: 2,3,5; Prov 3:19-20; Prov 8:22ff.; Isa 40:12-13 all incorporate building motifs in their discussion of the formation of the world. Seen in this perspective, the light of day one makes sense as the domain later inhabited and ruled over by the greater light, and darkness by the lesser. This is not to say that it is not connected to the divine radiance or to polemics against Babylonian deities or to the marking of time,71 but, at least in its final

67 R. Simkins, Creator and Creation, pp. 196-197. Smith hints at such an understanding, but then opts instead for light-dark separation as the instantiation of time: “The verb [lĕhabdîl] is used for the separation of light from darkness in verse 4—a spatial separation. In a sense, this might also be considered a temporal act, as it takes place as the first act of creation at the beginning of creation. Time, as known to human beings, begins with this act.” Priestly Vision, p. 91; cf. also his discussion of “lightscapes” although this seems more a metaphor for a kind of ethical sheen cast over creation (p. 79). 68 See also Job 12:22. 69 J. Allen, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge, 1999), p. 21. See also J. Allen, “The Natural Philosophy of Akhenaten,” in J. Allen et al. (eds.), Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (New Haven, 1989), pp. 89- 101, esp. p. 93. 70 Middle Egyptian, p. 21. 71 W. Mitchell notes the conceptual difficulty and rhetorical impossibility of separating time from space: “The fact is that spatial form is the perceptual basis of our notion of time, that we literally cannot ‘tell time’ without the mediation of space. All our temporal language

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 578 Crawford formulation in the Priestly creation account, it must be considered primarily (if not exclusively) in spatial terms, as the dominion populated and presided over by celestial bodies. It seems likely that Priestly metaphysics made a causal separation between sun and daylight, and it is not necessary to presume that the sun merely reflects the light of day one. The phenomenological observations that biblical metaphysics in several texts allow for the independence of light from the celestial bodies seem also to be operative here, or at least uti- lized in the conceptual background informing the author’s arrangement of the creative process. A final issue to consider is what Smith called the ambiguity inherent in P’s treatment of this nonsolar light, wherein it seems to be both a dissociat- ed substance of creation and also a mystical light that literally initiates the Priestly torah.72 As Smith himself points out, deliberate ambiguity in Genesis 1 is unusual given the highly structured and methodical style of the Priestly source in general and the creation account in particular. Understanding the light (and dark, day and night) in primarily spatial terms provides an alterna- tive possibility—that the lack of specificity over the ontological quality of the light is not so much a deliberate ambiguity as it is a side effect of the way the Priestly writer deployed the existing notion of divine primordial light, fitting it into the symmetrical scaffolding that prized space above mysticism, though perhaps only narrowly so. This comes into clearer focus when one considers the literary operations performed on the likely antecendents (the Tatbericht), dim as our understanding is of the compositional history. If the common argument of the Priestly author’s dependence on Psalm 104 holds, for example, Yhwh’s garment of light (Ps 104:2), already commodified as a fabric as in many other Semitic texts, is stretched into a kind of celestial canopy. Further, in the Hymn to the Aten, realized also in Egyptian iconography, there is a subtle distinction between the Aten himself and his rays: “Though you are far, your rays are on earth, / Though one sees you, your strides are unseen” (§3). And we have seen the even older hint of this dissociation in a Sumerian text of the Ur III period.

is contaminated with spatial imagery: we speak of ‘long’ and ‘short’ times, of ‘intervals’ (literally, ‘spaces between’), of ‘before’ and ‘after’—all implicit metaphors which depend upon a mental picture of time as a linear continuum. If we are going to dismiss these expressions as mere metaphors, we had better abandon our clocks and their metaphors of circular time as well. A more sensible solution is to note that we experience time in a wide variety of ways and that we consistently use spatial imagery to describe these experiences,” (“Spatial Form in Literature: Toward a General Theory,” Critical Inquiry 6 [1980], pp. 539-567, here p. 542). 72 Smith, “Light in Gen 1:3.”

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The Priestly author completes the separation, detaching the light and turning it and the dark into the medium in which the celestial bodies are suspended, operate, and have dominion. It was a crucial move that did two things for P: 1) it allowed the narrator to speak of ‘day’ from the earliest point of creation, even before the luminaries exist, and 2) it allowed for the triads to be balanced with named spaces in the first three days and the population of these in the second. By making “day” and “night” into the first created element, the author was able to neutralize the apparently anathematic privileging of the celestial bodies as divine agents as in other Near Eastern and especially Babylonian cultures and at the same time to create a parallel set of processes that enhanced the notion of divine procedure and forethought. It fits well within the Priestly predilec- tion for spatial boundary setting and maintenance.73 If these observations hold, they add further weight to the argument that behind the Priestly cosmogony lie the notions of the divine sanctuary, either of the wilderness tabernacle, or the temple of Jerusalem, or both. It at least manifests a preoccupation with architectural organization and the function- aries and hierarchies that operated within it. Levenson articulated this, as have many others,74 in calling attention to the “homology of temple and created world.”75 Walton summarizes the “temple identity” thus: “the climax of a temple inauguration is when the deity enters his prepared residence and rests there, as he assumes rule of the cosmos from his temple-throne…. The entire cosmos [in Genesis 1] is viewed as a temple designed to function on behalf of humanity; and when God takes up his rest in this cosmic temple, it ‘comes into (functional) existence’ … by virtue of his presence.”76 One might speculate then that the movement from darkness to light, heaven to earth, seas to land might also adumbrate the spaces of temple architecture, from YHWH’s dwelling shrouded in total darkness in the dəbîr,77 to the hêkal, with its lampstands,

73 On which see F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time, and Status in the Priestly Theology (Sheffield, 1990); M. Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, Ind., 1985); M. George, Israel’s Tabernacle as Social Space (Atlanta, 2009). 74 See Smith, Priestly Vision, p. 179 and references at pp. 296-297 n.106, as well as discussion of cosmos as temple in ibid., pp. 11-37. See also V. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and North-West Semitic Writings (London, 1992), pp. 241-242, who points to the “common idiom” of building in biblical creation narratives. The theme of temple at creation is found in ancient interpretations, as well, as the place from which God created the world, or the place built with the created world; see discussion and references in Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, pp. 58-59. 75 Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, pp. 78-99, here p. 82. 76 Walton, Genesis 1, p. 190. See also discussion in ibid., pp. 178-192. 77 See 1 Kgs 8:12; see also Wyatt, “Darkness.”

Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access 580 Crawford to the courtyard and its representation of the sea and land and abundant vegetation. I propose that, although the other treatments of the problem have pointed to important and sometimes crucial aspects of the distinction between solar and nonsolar light in Genesis 1, none has had the power to explain the motiva- tion of the Priestly author like the spatial cause. The separation of light from the celestial bodies allows a clearer view of the Priestly transformation of ante- cedent creation narratives in a way that makes a statement about the structure and spatial quality of creation, one that ultimately seems indissoluble from temple space that is at the heart of the Priestly work(s). It is congruent with the many other studies that have detected in Genesis 1 the allusion to temple motifs and hermeneutics and helps to solve many of the narrative and metaphysi- cal problems surrounding the first day of creation in the Priestly tradition.

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