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By Root 2273 0

of earth, where humanity lives. And the second obvious part of the story is its hierarchy. Everything is arranged according to an order imposed by the days of the week. The characters are ranked: first is God, the creator; that is evident. He creates by means of His word. Second in importance is the sabbath, the period of rest built right into the universe. And third is the human being, created at the last moment before the sabbath, the most important creature who was created male and female and in the image and likeness of God, whatever that may mean-looks, activities, and powers are all possible interpretations of the story. Every stage meets with God’s approval. The whole is described as “very good.”

Because human life is precariously dependent on sun and rain, crops and earth, and natural increase from herds, it is not trivial to say that these forces have godlike powers over us. Nevertheless, the Bible goes out of its way to debunk the idea that the natural world is filled with deities. Genesis demythologizes the natural world.

Absent in the Biblical account is special revelation-indeed, absent is the special revelation of the Exodus and the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai-human beings would naturally be led to the worship of the heavens. The Bible seeks to oppose and correct this perfectly natural human tendency from its first verse, by making the heavenly bodies creations of the one all-powerful God, thereby denying that the heavens or any other natural beings are worthy of human reverence. One God is better than many, according to this perspective, because it allows us to view the world as a unity and creation as a single, dynamic force.

In other words, the Bible is aware that nature is morally neutral. Not only is nature silent about right and justice, Genesis 1 goes on to say that no moral rules can be deduced from the fullest understanding of nature. Knowing even that humankind is the highest creature because we are free does not lead to any guidance about how this freedom is to be used. That is why there is an Eden story. The Eden story shows that moral discernment is a divine gift that comes from disobedience and has a cost: the price is our innocence.

ADAM AND EVE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN: AN EARLIER ACCOUNT OF CREATION

There are clearly two creation stories present in the Genesis narrative; one concludes at Genesis 2:4a, and the second begins immediately afterwards. The first story creates the man and woman together (Genesis 1:26); in the second, they are created separately, at different times. The first begins with the most famous beginning of all time, “In the beginning….” The second has its own, less well known formula of initiation: “These are the generations….” It is not nearly as dramatic but it is a convention for beginnings within the Bible; the first words of Genesis are not. The first account pictures the cosmos before creation as a watery chaos. The second pictures the world’s beginning as a dry desert, waiting for water to allow it to bear fruit. The first account dates from rather late in Biblical history, a Mesopotamian context, where the separation of saltwater from fresh water with a system of canals brought the beginning of city life in the Tigris-Euphrates Delta; it also betrays certain knowledge of Babylonian mythology. Most likely it was written after the Babylonian exile (587-539 BCE).61

The second creation account betrays little of this sophisticated scientific, Mesopotamian view of life. Locked within it are the countless experiences of sojourners in the rocky rain shadow of the Judean hills, the leeside of the mountains where fog and dew as much as rain brings what little moisture nourishes the winter grass. Also locked within it is the experience of coming out of the Judean desert to see the verdant cities of the plain, stuck between the sea and the mountains, which coax the rain out of clouds onto the Shephelah and northern valleys every winter.

In the same way, the two stories end quite differently. Genesis 1:1-2:3 ends with the sabbath and a moment of peace and blessing. But