Foundation #1 - Happenstance or Intellegent Design
This foundation module ask if the universe of matter is an arbitrary fluke or whether it is the…See More
The mixing of religious and non-religious beliefs in an individual.
Was Genesis 1 a Story for Children?
I began to think that the paneling structure and repetition of Genesis 1 must have had its origin in the education of children in ancient Israel. It seems to me to have the ring of instruction rather than of formal worship. It is, of course, instruction through the medium of a story. And this is the way best suited to children. Father Sean McEvenue compared the chapter with several well-known nursery rhymes and fairy tales of modern pieces which imitate their way of doing things. In a very large number of these a pattered repetition is one of the favorite techniques of the story-teller.
Many of our so-called fairy tales are in fact folk tales of early Europe that used to be enjoyed by adults. They cultivate the sense of wonder and accustom the mind to symbolic language. This means not only entering imaginatively into the greatest of all mysteries, but also paradoxically by using the language of symbols we reveal both ourselves and our construction of the world as one consisting of multiple and competing discourses.
I wonder, however, if the story of Genesis 1 might not have been intended not simply for Israel’s children but for a childlike Israel. The priestly author of this chapter could have composed the story for the unlettered majority of Hebrews with his patterns of repetition making use of a device which is familiar from the oral tales of many societies in ancient times. These stories were told by their story-tellers at the various social gatherings, particularly perhaps during the festivities at the great seasonal pilgrimages like Passover or Tabernacles. Genesis as we have it must be based on much older original texts.
The Cosmic Egg
In the beginning, Hesiod says, there was Chaos, vast and dark. Before earth and sea and heaven were created, all things wore one aspect: a confused and shapeless mass, nothing but dead weight, in which, however, slumbered the seeds of all things. Stephen Hawking has asked, somewhat poetically, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Prior to the existence of all space, time, matter, and energy there was no universe to describe and there were no physical laws or initial conditions that could have played a role in its genesis. Needless to say, quantum field theory describes matter as propping out of the quantum vacuum; neither mathematical construction provides an explanation, let alone an efficient cause, for these events.
Among the first words of the Bible (Genesis 1: 2) we have: "And the earth was without form and void." Earth, sea, and air were all mixed up together; so the earth was not solid, the sea was not fluid, and the air was not transparent. The Hebrew expression "Tohu" (without form) has a more extensive meaning in the writings of the Kabbalah, where it denotes the world of chaos or original substance and energy that preceded Genesis. It was only with the collapse of this world of Tohu that our world, the world of Tikun (Restitution), could come into existence. But the confrontation between the primal disorder and the amended order continues as a fundamental feature of reality.
Within this void, according to the Greek myth, was a bird called Nyx that laid a golden egg, out of which came Eros the god of love. Here Eros has only a metaphysical significance: he represents the force of attraction which causes beings to come together. In China a myth tells of the god P’an Ku, also born from an egg. Thus far, then, both myths fit well enough into the early version of the Big Bang theory that had everything starting from a cosmic egg.
The embryonic god/universe was in the egg for many ages. When “he” was born, the top part of the egg, being the lightest, sprang up and formed Uranus, the sky crowned with starts; the air was next in weight and place. The bottom part of the egg, being heavier, sank below, and formed Gaia, the Earth. And the water took the lowest place, and buoyed up the earth.
From Chaos were born Erebus and Night who uniting gave birth in their turn to Ether and Hemera, the day. The universe had been formed. On his part, Uranus fertilized Gaia and she gave birth to the next generation of gods, the Titans, notably Kronos, who fathered the lesser gods we are familiar with such as Zeus.
The Great-Mother
The Babylonian myth of Creation tells us of a victorious rebellion of male gods against Tiamat, the great-mother who ruled the universe. They formed an alliance against her and chose Marduk to be their leader in this fight. After a bitter war Tiamat is slain, from her body heaven and earth are formed, and Marduk rules as supreme God.
To determine whether Marduk will be able to defeat Tiamat, he has to pass a test, which is the key to understanding the myth.
Then they placed a garment in their midst;
To Marduk, their first born, they said:
“Verily, O Lord, your destiny is supreme among the gods,
Command “to destroy and to create and it shall be!
By the word of your mouth let the garment be destroyed;
Command again, and let the garment be whole.”
When the great Mother is challenged by the male sons, the mole – who does not have the gift to procreate (the sperm is as indispensable for the formation of the child as the female egg but this knowledge is not an obvious recognizable fact like pregnancy or child-birth) must prove that he is not inferior. If he cannot produce with a womb, he produces with his mouth, his word, his thought. That is when we understand the meaning of the test: Marduck can defeat Tiamat only if he can prove that he can also create, out of sheer nothing, by the fiat of divine will, all that is beginning to be.
The Harmony of Creation
It is not difficult to see why the Hebrew priestly authors scorned the matriarchal principles of social organization and mocked its religion orientation. They were well aware of what they were doing. In the Bible’s version of Creation there is no union of earth god and sky goddess, no more analogy with procreation. The supremacy of a male god is established and hardly any trace of a previous matriarchal stage is left.
God alone, whose unutterable majesty created the world by his word, makes the woman and her creative powers no longer necessary. God spoke from out of the shroud of mystery and said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Before even there was a sun or a moon there was light.
“God made the dome and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. God called the dome "the sky." Evening came, and morning followed--the second day. Then God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear." And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared. God called the dry land "the earth," and the basin of the water he called "the sea." God saw how good it was.” (Genesis 1: 7 – 11)
Both accounts of creation (Greek and Hebrew) are combined from this point on. For the Greeks, some god – it is not known which – gave his good offices in arranging and disposing the earth. In the Hebrew tale, the author’s arrangement of the story is the repetitions, which sounds out like hammer blows all through the chapter.
“Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it." And so it happened: the earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it. God saw how good it was. Evening came, and morning followed – the third day.” (Genesis 1: 11 – 13)
Their cumulative and patently intentional effect is to place God, not the world, squarely in the centre of the stage. Each act of creation begins, continues, and ends with him. He is there before any of it. Everything is planned by him, and everything works out in accordance with his plan. For the Greeks God also appointed rivers and bays their places, raised mountains, scooped out valleys, distributed woods, fountains, fertile fields, and story plains. The air being cleared, the starts began to appear, fishes took possession of the sea, birds of the air, and four-footed beasts of the land.
“Then God said, "Let the water teem with abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky." And so it happened: God created the great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems, and all kinds of winged birds. God saw how good it was, and God blessed them, saying, "Be fertile, multiply, and fill the water of the seas; and let the birds multiply on the earth." Evening came, and morning followed –the fifth day. (Genesis 1: 14 – 23)
For all its scientific primitiveness we still need this old chapter because, in a way that by its very nature science is incapable of matching, it takes us right to the heart of the matter. Although many myths involved a creator god, the Hebrew God was distinct and separate from creation: before any beginning and beyond any end, God, the unmanifest simply is. The Chinese myth makes god the immediate source of matter, forming the aspects of the universe from his being. Most dramatically of all, P’an Ku himself became much of the rest of creation.
This approach puts Yahweh in a totally different class from the African and Chinese myths of creation. In the ancient African beliefs, the sky gods are creations of the Mother Earth. She breathes them out, and can breathe them back again. Africans believed that the earth is ultimately more powerful than the sky and its gods; the sky can withhold rain, but earth is the source of the life force itself. The sky, with all its dramatic life-giving movement, is in fact created by the earth – the envelope of air and moisture surrounding us is really the earth’s “breathing.”
According to Hesiod it seems likely that Gaea, from whom all things issued, had been the great deity of the primitive Greeks. Like the people of Africa, the Greeks must doubtless have originally worshipped the Earth in whom they beheld the mother-goddess. This is again confirmed by the Homeric hymn in which the poet says: “I shall sing of Gaea, universal mother, firmly founded, the oldest of divinities.”
Tags: Bible, Creation, Greek, Hebrew, Myths
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by doug on -
And it is equally as important to remember that the true author of Genesis 1 is Yhvh. He merely inspired Moses to write what is written. I think that is significant, and indicates that there is something that God wanted to communicate to us in that chapter...which is rather obvious.
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Permalink Reply by Claudia M. Mazzucco on -
It is interesting to note that Sigmund Freud connects the play of children with the fantasies of “creative writers.” I have always been intensely curious to know from what sources that strange being, the creative writer of the Bible, drew his material. They were men without doubt, and how they manage to make such an impression on you with it and to arouse in you emotions of which, perhaps, you have not even thought yourself capable. You cannot ask whoever wrote the Bible to give an explanation but not even the clearest insight into his choice of material and into the nature of the art of creating imaginative stories, will ever help us to be children of Israel.
Freud writes:
“The unreality of the writer’s imaginative world, however, has very important consequences for the technique of his art; for many things which, if they were real, could give no enjoyment, can do so in the play of fantasy, and many excitements, which, in themselves, are actually distressing, can become a source of pleasure for the hearers and spectators at the performance of a writer’s work.”
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Permalink Reply by Claudia M. Mazzucco on
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Doug, you know that Moses didn’t write the Five Books of Moses, don’t you? Besides, it is not that obvious for me.
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Permalink Reply by Khem the Is Real-ite on -
The Gospel of Khem is the greatest creation narrative since Genesis. It's "R" rated, so not for children.
http://khemthenautonnier.blogspot.com/2010/01/gospel-of-khem.html
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Permalink Reply by Khem the Is Real-ite on
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On the other hand, except ye become as a little child, you won't be able to understand it.
http://khemtherevelator.blogspot.com/2009/09/discourse-on-method.html
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Permalink Reply by doug on
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Jesus believed that Moses wrote the 5 books of the Torah...so if it was good enough for him to believe it was so, it is good enough for me also. I default to the wisdom of Jesus (Col 2.3).
I apologize then, in saying that it was rather obvious. I see it as God having a reason to communicate pretty much everything (and anything) that he tells us in his word. I take the Bible as a personal message from God, as simplistic as that might sound...I believe that is how God intends it.
And as dt writes, I can see much of the Bible as metaphor...and even more, especially in light of considering children. For when children do wrong, they either usually hide or lie (which is hiding the truth)...and are we not all children? And so it was was Adam & Eve sinned and thought they could hide.
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Permalink Reply by doug on
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I don't recall reading this statement anywhere, at least not in the Bible. Alexander, can you help me with where it is from? or am I correct in thinking it is simply a parody?
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Permalink Reply by Claudia M. Mazzucco on
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How could Moses, presumed author of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, describe his own death?
In recent centuries, alternative authorship has been proposed. The documentary hypothesis is now accepted by essentially all mainline and liberal theologians.
11th Century CE: Isaac ibn Yashush suggested that the list of the Edomite kings in Genesis 36 was added by an unknown person after Moses died. For this assertion, he became known as "Isaac the Blunderer."
15th Century: Bishop Tostatus suggested that certain passages were written by one of the prophets, not by Moses.
16th Century: Andreas van Maes suggested that an editor added additional material to some of Moses' writings.
17th Century: Thomas Hobbes prepared a collection of passages that seemed to negate Moses' authorship.
18th Century: Three investigators (Witter, Astruc and Eichhorn) independently concluded that doublets in the Torah were written by two different authors. A doublet is a story that is described twice, as in: the two creation stories in Genesis:
Two descriptions of the covenant between God and Abraham
Two stories about the naming of Isaac
Two stories about the renaming of Jacob
Two versions of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 & Deuteronomy 5)
Two accounts of Moses' striking the rock at Meribah
These doublets appeared to contradict each other. In most cases, one referred to God as Yahweh while the other used the term Elohim.
19th Century: Scholars noticed that there were a few triplets in the Torah. This indicated that a third author was involved. Then, they determined that the book of Deuteronomy was written in a different language style from the remaining 4 books in the Pentateuch. Finally, by the end of the 19th Century, liberal scholars reached a consensus that 4 authors and one redactor (editor) had been actively involved in the writing of the Pentateuch.
20th Century: Academics have continued to refine the Documentary Hypothesis by identifying which verses (and parts of verses) were authored by the various writers. They have also attempted to uncover the names of the authors.
In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu in which he urged academics to study the sources of Biblical texts. Recent archaeological discoveries and new linguistic analysis tools have facilitated the research into the hypothesis. Belief in the documentary hypothesis was triggered by a number of factors, such as:
Anachronisms, like the list of the Edomite kings.
Duplicate and triplicate passages.
Various passages portrayed God in different ways.
The flood story appears to involve the meshing of two separate stories.
The belief, centuries ago, by archaeologists and linguists that writing among the ancient Hebrews only developed after the events portrayed in the Pentateuch. Thus, Moses would have been incapable of writing the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures.
These factors led theologians to the conclusion that the Pentateuch is a hybrid document which was written well after Moses' death, and much later than the events portrayed. The authors and redactors are unknown.
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Permalink Reply by Claudia M. Mazzucco on
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The following text leaves little room for the idea that God had dictated the five books to Moses on Sinai, though I accept that various documents interlaced in the Bible are divinely inspired.
The Hebrew Bible contains twenty-four books.
These were written over a period of more than a thousand years. And it contains under its covers many different views and perspectives, and includes very different telling of the same events.
Over this time, the circumstances of its authors, and the circumstances of the ancient Israelites and their neighbors, changed greatly. So did many of their views. Even within single books (Like Isaiah) scholars observed different voices and outlooks.
These written texts were edited together by others, and later still, canonized by others, and each of these people brought their own prejudices and politics into the text.
Already in 1678, a French priest named Richard Simon (1638 – 1712) had concluded from the double and repeating narratives in Genesis that Moses had transcribed part of the Pentateuch, and that anonymous authors had written the rest.
Seventy0five years later, in 1753, another Frenchman, a physician named Jean Astruc, hypothesized that the two different names used for God in Genesis (Elohim and Yahweh) were used by different authors writing different stories that were later merged.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, scholars had identified four separates documents bound up in the Five Books of Moses – a “Priestly” one, an “Elohim” one, a “Jehovist” one and a “Deuteronomist” one – and had found signs of a group of overall editors, or redactors. They were identified by their initials, P, E, J, D and R.
What can we learn from the Bible about ancient Israel itself? The answer maybe very little. Some scholars insist that we know close to nothing, and that much of what earlier researchers have concluded, based on their exacting study of the Bible is simply wrong.
To hope to learn from these books just what the people they describe thought about nature or anything else is to hope for the impossible.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff H on -
Although the mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) has been challenged for the past century and a half, there is still good reason to believe it to be true.
It has become fashionable to believe that the Pentateuch is a result of a compilation of various documents labeled J, E, D, P, which were eventually put together by an editor in its present form about 400 b.c. This fanciful and elaborate theory, however, has little to recommend it and is based upon erroneous methods of investigation.
As C. S. Lewis illustrates from personal experience, when he writes about the critics' application of their methods to his words:
"What forearms me against all these Reconstructions is the fact that I have seen it all from the other end of the stick. I have watched reviewers reconstructing the genesis of my own books in just this way.
"Until you come to be reviewed yourself you would never believe how little of an ordinary review is taken up by criticism in the strict sense: by evaluation, praise or censure of the book actually written. Most of it is taken up with imaginary histories of the process by which you wrote it.
"The very terms which the reviewers use in praising or dispraising often imply such a history. They praise a passage as 'spontaneous' and censure another as 'labored'; that is, they think they know that you wrote the one currente calamo and the other invita Minerva.
"What the value of such reconstructions is I learned very early in my career. I had published a book of essays; and the one into which I had put most of my heart, the one I really cared about and in which I discharged a keen enthusiasm, was on William Morris. And in almost the first review I was told that this was obviously the only one in the book in which I had felt no interest.
"Now don't mistake. The critic was, I now believe, quite right in thinking it the worst essay in the book; at least everyone agreed with him. Where he was totally wrong was in his imaginary history of the causes which produced its dullness.
"Well, this made me prick up my ears. Since then I have watched with some care imaginary histories both of my own books and of books by friends whose real history I knew.
"Reviewers, both friendly and hostile, will dash you off such histories with great confidence; will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors had influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why—and when—he did everything.
"Now I must first record my impression; then, distinct from it, what I can say with certainty. My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; that the method shows a record of 100 percent failure.
"You would expect that by mere chance they would hit as often as they miss. But it is my impression that they do no such thing. I can't remember a single hit. But as I have not kept a careful record, my mere impressions may be mistaken. What I think I can say with certainty is that they are usually wrong... " (Christian Reflections, p. 159–160).
It must be initially stated that Moses was in a position to write the Pentateuch. He was educated in the royal court of Egypt, which was highly advanced academically. He had firsthand knowledge of the geography of Egypt and the Sinai, with plenty of time—forty years in wandering and forty more years beyond that—to compose his work. At the same time that Moses lived, there were uneducated slaves working in the Egyptian turquoise mines writing on the walls, thus demonstrating the extent of writing in Moses' day.
The evidence within the Pentateuch points to Mosaic authorship, since it clearly portrays Moses as the author of certain portions. "And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD" (Exodus 24:4, KJV). "And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people" (Exodus 24:7, KJV). "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel'" (Exodus 34:27, RSV). To these references many others could be added.
Not only does the internal evidence of the Scriptures make it clear that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but other Old Testament books make Mosaic authorship clear. Joshua 8:32 (KJV) refers to "the law of Moses, which he wrote." Additional Old Testament references include I Kings 2:3, II Kings 14:6, and Joshua 23:6, which attribute to Moses the authorship of the Pentateuch.
Jewish tradition is firm in its belief in Mosaic authorship. Ecclesiasticus, one of the books of the apocrypha, written about 180 b.c., states, "All this is the covenant-book of God Most High, the Law which Moses enacted to be the heritage of the assemblies of Jacob" (Ecclesiasticus 24:23). The Talmud, in Baba Bathra, 146, which is a Jewish commentary on the first five books (around 200 b.c.), along with the writings of Flavius Josephus (born a.d. 37) and philo (a.d. 20) also concur.
Early Christian tradition likewise agrees that Moses composed the Pentateuch. The writings of Junilius (a.d. 527–565) and Leontius of Byzantium (sixth century a.d.) along with Church fathers Melito (a.d. 175), Cyril of Jerusalem (a.d. 348–386), and Hilary (a.d. 366) teach that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
Add to this the testimony of the New Testament. The apostles believed that "Moses wrote unto us" (Mark 12:19, KJV) as did the apostle Paul, who when speaking of a passage in the Pentateuch said, "Moses describeth" (Romans 10:5, KJV).
However, the issue as to the authorship of the first five books is once-and-for-all solved by the testimony of the God-man Jesus Christ. Jesus made it clear that Moses wrote these books (Mark 7:10; 10:3–5; 12:26; Luke 5:14; 16:29–31; 24:27, 44; John 7:19, 23).
In John 5:45–47, Jesus states, "Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" (NASB).
Two other considerations to be taken into account when examining the evidence with regard to those who do not believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch are their view of the world and archaeology.
Those who advocate that Moses is not the author usually hold to the idea that there is no supernatural work of God in the world, nor has there ever been. Thus, it would be foolish to believe all the historical information written about the creation of the world, the crossing of the Red Sea, God speaking to Moses, or even the historical evidence that Moses, a prophet of God, wrote the account in the first place. The whole idea is more of a story.
What they fail to do is consider the evidence because of their view of the world. This type of reasoning is faulty. First, one examines the evidence and then decides his case. Simply examining the evidence doesn't mean one will agree with someone else's conclusions, but it does mean he is not rejecting the conclusions out of ignorance.
Second, in the past fifty years archaeological finds have vindicated many of the Old Testament claims supporting the probability of Mosaic authorship. This is because most all of the finds demonstrate that only someone who lived during the time the Bible purports that Moses lived could have known and written about the things in these books.
When all this evidence is considered together, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is shown to be a fact. Such primary evidence would be accepted without hesitation in a court of law, and any theory of multiple documents would be ruled out as inadmissible. There is simply no evidence to support that theory which cannot be very reasonably answered.
Umberto Cassuto, The Documentary Hypothesis, 1st English ed., Jerusalem Magnes Press, 1961
Gleason Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, rev. ed., Moody Press, 1979
Josh McDowell, More Evidence that Demands A Verdict, Campus Crusade for Christ, 1975
Robert Dick Wilson, "Is the Higher Criticism Scholarly?" Reprinted in Which Bible?
http://www.josh.org/site/c.ddKDIMNtEqG/b.4565509/k.6E23/Did_Moses_w...
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Permalink Reply by Jeff H on
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Given a choice between the meanderings of men or the words of a timeless God, I will take the latter as a much more accurate view of reality.
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Permalink Reply by Khem the Is Real-ite on
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Alexander
What you are NOT aware of is that your entire inner life is based on nothing more than your (subjective) myths and your (private) superstitions.
A careful study of modern books and scientific papers would establish clearly (to a Knower like Khem, if not to yourself) that you are deluded by the illusion of progress.
Just mention Open Source Religion, Proprietary Religion, Belief Genome, Belief Modules, or Prerequisite Beliefs in a tweet to appear in this twitter feed.
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