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Light and Space in Genesis 1

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Light and Space in Genesis 1 Vetus Testamentum 68 (2018) 556-580 Vetus Testamentum brill.com/vt Light and Space in Genesis 1 Cory Crawford Ohio University [email protected] Abstract I address here the still-vexing problem of why the Priestly narrator in Genesis 1 sepa- rates 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 … ְבֵּראִשׁיָת בָּרֱאאֹלִהיֵם אַת הָשַּׁמִיְם וֵאָת הֶאָרץ׃ ְוָהֶאָרָץ הְיָתֹה תָהוּ ובֹהוּ ְוֶחֹשְַׁך עְל־פֵּנְיתהֹום ְוַרוּחֱ אֹלִהיְם מַרֶחֶפת ַעְל־פֵּנַי הָמִּים׃ ַויּ ֶֹאמֱר אֹלִהיְם יִהַי אֹור וְיִהַי־אֹור׃ וַיְּרֱא אֹלִהיֶם אתָ־הִאֹור כּי־טֹוב ַוַיְּבֵדֱּל אֹלִהיֵם בָּיןהאֹור וֵּבַין הֶחֹשְַׁך׃ וִיְּקָרֱא אֹלִהיָם לְאֹור יֹום וַלֶחֹשְָׁך קָרָא לְיָלה ַוְיִהי־ֶעֶרַב יֹום וְיִהי־בֶֹקֶראָחד׃ © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15685330-12341337Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:20:43AM via free access Light and Space in Genesis 1 557 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 transla- tion 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 at- tempts to answer it and extend the discussion toward a fuller consideration of one almost entirely neglected aspect of the nonsolar light, namely, its relation- ship to space in the context of the whole Priestly creation narrative. Scholarly explanations of the light can be heuristically grouped in the fol- lowing categories: polemical, temporal, phenomenological, and mystical. I hasten to add that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive; some catego- ries 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 nar- ratives, 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.
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