A Kentucky drystone masonry fence has no mortar. The artisan places the stones so that their own weight and peculiar shapes hold them together from within. At first sight the stones can seem ill-fitted. Small stones occupy odd spots, loose fill can be seen spilling out. But the stones are placed to shift over time. Weather, oddly shaped stones, shifting ground, incidental damage, rather than undermining the fence, actually compact it together through the years, so that the fence grows even stronger and more beautiful. These fences have stood for over 150 years. Sometimes I feel my own thoughts to be ill-fitted, uncemented, and loose, but I trust under the pressure of the years and the forces of life, they can somehow fit together as well...
Creation 2-Dealing with the Days
©Lawson G. Stone, 2005
The three articles posted so far have circled around the exegetical issues that affect how we interpret Genesis 1:1-2:4a (which I call "Genesis 1" for convenience), the "Creation Week." The opening expression "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" seems to be a dependent clause, "When God began to create the heavens and the earth..." This suggests that Gen. 1:1 does not take us back to the very beginning, the "year zero" but only to the beginning of the economy in which we now live. Next, exploring the term bara' revealed that misunderstanding it as "create out of nothing" obscures its true meaning. Both of these observations open up the possibility that our chapter, by not starting at the ultimate beginning, leaves open a longer and more open process for the origin of the universe. Now we turn to the interpretation of the "days" of Genesis 1. Are they so-called literal days, i.e. 24 hour solar days, or should we interpret them in some other fashion?
The 24-Hour day view rests on three claims. First, the use of the Hebrew term yom (day) with a numeral is said always to denote a 24-hour, solar day. Since the numerals appear throughout Genesis 1, we must view these as a continuous week of 144 hours (or 168 if we count the seventh day). Second, the expressions "evening and morning" bound each day, pointing to solar phenomena and thus marking the days as ordinary solar days. Third, the Sabbath commandment of Exod. 20:11 grounds the command to rest on the literal seventh day of the week on the creation week and its days, necessitating a "literal" reading of the days of Genesis 1. Lets look at each of these in turn, which will take more than one article!
First, the days are not enumerated with the regularity that we often assume. The first day is referred to as "day one" (Heb yom echad). This expression allows several possible translations, which we'll look at below. The author then enumerates days 2-5 using an indefinite ordinal pattern: a second...third...fouth...fifth day. The indefinite construction does not require, might not even imply, immediately consecutive days. These days could simply be days selected out of a larger series, for their distinctive content or significance. So even if they are "solar" days, our week might conceal a great many other days. The writer then speaks of the sixth day and the seventh day. The latter reference would be definite because, for Hebrew thought, the seventh day is a specific, important day, the Sabbath. The sixth day would be definite because it is the day that brings the creative labor of God, and thus the day sequence, to a conclusion. So the week itself need not be seen--indeed, might not be best seen--as a single run of 7 directly consecutive days.
Back to day one, though. The term yom echad certainly can denote a single solar day. But the term echad carries much richer nuances. Sometimes echad functions as the indefinite article. In 1 Sam. 27:1 David muses “Now I will perish one day (yom echad) by the hand of Saul." Here the meaning is "some day" and refers not to a specific day, not even the first day of a series, just some time in the future. Other times, the expression "one day" is an idiom, a figural expression, to mean "all at once" or "suddenly" when the contexts, which are often eschatological and fit into a larger chronological scheme that involves more than one day, suggest a process actually involves an indefinite period of time (Isa 9:14; 10:17; 47:9; 66:8; Zech 3:9; 2 Chron 28:6) These passages could be interpreted differently than I suggest here, so check them out youself and draw your own conclusions--I could very well be wrong.
In one of its most striking uses, often echad involves an inner plurality. In Gen 1:9 we read how the waters under heaven are gathered into "one place" (maqom echad). And yet, this "one place" is named by God "the seas," a plural! The "one place" is in fact, many places. Likewise, in Gen 2:24, the man and woman, become "one flesh" (basar echad). And yet, they are still two distinct people, two distinct bodies, for the next verse says (literally translated) "the two of them were naked, the man and his wife..." Again, the "one" is in fact, an internally plural one. A striking statement appears in Zech. 14:7: "For it will be one day (yom echad) which is known to the LORD, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will be light." This "one day" seems to be other than a solar day. These observations point to the possibility that the "day one" of Gen 1:5 could denote a good deal more than a single solar day that commences a stretch of 144 (or 168) hours within which God created the entire universe.
Thus, the time-frame of Genesis 1:1-2:4a could be:
- An indefinite and unknown period from the original creation up to Gen. 1:1-2, where we see the earth is "formless and void."
- The commencement of the creation of the "world" with which the biblical message concerns itself, in an indefinite period known as "day one" in which light is created and separated from darkness.
- Another indefinite period within which skies, seas, vegetation, fish, and birds are "brought forth," described by selecting 4 representative days enumerated as "a second day," "a third day," etc.
- The climax of God's work in a day defined as "the sixth day" within which land animals and humanity are brought forth.
- The goal of the narrative, "the seventh day" which, ironically, has no "evening and morning" associated with it.
My point here is not to say absolutely that this is what Genesis 1:1-2:4a mean, to the exclusion of any other possibility. My point is simply to show how the language of the text allows a range of possibilities, so that to use it to enforce on readers a mandatory "young earth" or 144/168 hour creation goes beyond the boundaries set by the text.
But if the days are not a "literal" week, what might they be? The clue comes from what some have mistakenly considered "contradictions." First, we note that we have a couple of sequence problems if the days are to be construed "literally." That is, we have "evening and morning" before the sun and moon are created--they come on day 4. Not only that, we have "evening and morning" on day 1 before there is even a proper sky. The opening of the space in the mass of waters to created the firmament creates what we know as the sky: where birds fly, on the second day.
Note that these problems are not solved by the popular expedient of claiming "phenomenological language." Some will claim that the text does not narrate things as they actually occurred, but rather as they would have appeared to an observer on earth. Thus, on the fourth day, the sun and moon were not actually created, but only appeared as distinct heavenly bodies. But how could this be? For the answer, this viewpoint appeals to Genesis 2:5-6, which state that before it rained, there was merely a "mist" that arose and watered the surface of the ground. Some suggest this "mist" was actually a very dense vapor canopy that surrounded the earth. This canopy of water-vapor was so thick that it obscured the sun and moon as distinct heavenly bodies and only thinned out enough for them to appear distinctly on the fourth day. This canopy also is thought to have caused the ultra-long lifespans of persons in the early chapters of the Bible, and its condensation is said to be the cause of the flood.
A variety of things could be said about this view. First, it simply does not represent the meaning of the Hebrew terms found in Gen. 2:5-6. Though it appears only twice in the OT, it is known from Akkadian and Sumerian, where it denotes subterranean waters. This meaning fits Gen 2:5-6. Only secondarily does it refer to water vapor (Job 36:27). Second, a canopy of water-vapor that thick does not account for the fact that the earth was so dry in Gen 2:4b-6 that there was no vegetation growing. However moist such a canopy might be, it can't be more moist than real rain, and Gen 2:5 says it had not yet rained on the earth and thus, the earth could not support vegetation. It cannot be claimed in reply that the canopy blocked so much light that it prevented plants from growing, because if it allowed enough light through to disinguish day and night, that would surely permit quite a bit of vegetation to grow. But the greatest problem with the whole appeal to phenomenological language here is that Gen 1:15-19 clearly states that God "made" the great lights and "put" them in the heavens, right after saying "let there be light-bearers." That is, the language is no different from the creation language of other passages where we naturally think of the creative acts happening on those days. So the claim that the sun and moon were actually made earlier, but were not visible, rejects the literal sense of Gen 1:15-19 ! Worse, if these verses do not actually say the sun and moon were made on day 4, then what stops us from saying none of the creative acts occurred on the days, or in the manner, stated in the text? Things could have even evolved from a single-celled organism, but only "seemed" to appear in the manner described in Genesis. Thus the vapor-canopy theory combined with the special pleading for phenomenological language actually destroys any hope of a literal interpretation.
The sequence problem has been known and solved for almost 2000 years. The earliest church fathers saw it and developed a solution that found classic presentation in the 13th century in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. The days form a literary structure in two parts. Days 1-3 are days of separation of preparation, and days 4-6 are days of "adornment" or fulfillment. The days of each unit corresspond to each other in a pattern of A-B-C//A'-B'-C'.
| Days of Preparation | Days of Fulfillment |
|---|---|
| Day 1 Light/Dark Separated | Day 4 Sun/Moon/Stars Made |
| Day 2 Sky/Waters Separated | Day 5 Birds Fish Made |
| Day 3 Dry Land/Seas Separated | Day 6 Land Animals and Humanity Made |
Thus the days are used to create sharp scene divisions or markers to stress how God perfectly matched each creature with its environment and the purposefulness of all that he did. Since Day 7, the Sabbath, lies outside this pattern, it receives separate treatment and lacks an "evening and morning," thus becoming the goal and climax of the entire account, just as the series of "goods" comes to a climax with Day 6 ("very good") and does not get repeated in Day 7.
The sabbath is the goal of the whole narrative of creation. The fact that the story seems aimed at, among other things, grounding Israel's concept of the Sabbath, might be why the writer chose to structure the story as a week with days. This literary structure provided the perfect progression, with the writer providing plenty of clues that we need not handle the days as "God's first week at work" but rather as an artistic structure. This allows us also to account for why Exod. 20:11 seems to treat the days literally in commanding the hallowing of the Sabbath. The writer is working with the literary imagery of Genesis 1:1-2:4a, not trying to exegete every detail. In fact, very often, when a biblical author quotes some other literary work, even another biblical author, this is the case. For example, in Jude we read of an argument about the disposition of the body of Moses between the archangel Michael and Satan. This encounter is not found in scripture, but in the apocryphal "Assumption of Moses." I doubt that Jude "took literally" this work, but since it was well known and popular, he cites it as an illustration without endorsing a particular interpretation of it. Likewise, Paul at Mars Hill in Athens quotes a pagan philosophical idea, but does not in doing so endorse that philosophy or authorize a particular intepretation of it. In the same way, Closer to home, Psalms 78 and 105 make use of the plagues narrative in Exodus, but present fewer and different plagues, in a different order, But few would claim that these two Psalms should make us re-think the plagues in Exodus. We recognize in the Psalms a poetic license behind the writers words. Exod. 20:11 cites Genesis on the level of its surface narrative, and since that narrative aimed at authorizing the Sabbath, that use was perfect for the Sabbath commandment. I wonder--I haven't checked--if the 7 days of creation are ever cited in the New Testament?
A good interpretation of the days in Genesis 1:1-2:4a must explain why the writer chose to use "days" and a "week" if in fact they are not intended chronologically. I think the Sabbath helps, but there is yet another, larger reason for using the structure of a week to narrate creation that I will share next time. But I caution you, it's a little wierd and I might be way off base....
This series of articles on Genesis 1 has addressed a collection of interpretive questions that circle around whether Genesis 1 commits the Bible-believing, Christian reader to believe that God created the earth, with all its complex structures and myriad life-forms, a comparatively short time ago, say, less than 10,000 years, over a period of 6 consecutive 24 hour days, or whether Genesis might actually be composed around other guiding principles that would allow different views on the timing of the creation. Inevitably we have to think about the "days" in Genesis 1. Are they "literal" days? Or are they instead "literary" days that only serve to mark the units of the narrative and provide a structure the clearly stresses the importance of the seventh day, the Sabbath? Or do other possibilities exist?
I believe they do. I'd like to present you with a "What if/Why Not?" scenario for understanding Genesis 1:1-2:4a. I don't know if this, in the end, answers all the questions, but it illustrates how the current impasse confines us to a sterile dichotomy between "literal" and "figural."
The inspired author of Genesis 1:1-2:4a did not write in a vacuum, nor was he isolated from the religious and literary traditions of antiquity. In fact, the writer betrays every sign of being highly educated in the most cosmopolitan, international sense. Our writer would have known the creation narratives and religious practices of the surrounding ancient cultures intimately. So it makes sense that to grasp just what the Genesis 1 creation story "did" for its early readers, we should try to grasp how such literature was actually used in antiquity. On this point, much can be said.
In the ancient Near East (ANE), creation narratives have a natural "home" in New Year celebrations. Regardless of when a culture places the beginning of a year, the concept is generally that of a new beginning, a re-affirmation and renewal of the fundamental forces thought to shape existence. So in celebrating the New Year, most ancient Near Eastern cultures celebrated the Creation. The Babylonian creation story, known as the Enuma Elish, provides a massive example. The story figured prominently in the Babylonian celebration of the New Year because it featured the victory of Babylon's chief deity, Marduk, over Tiamat, the forces of chaos pictured as a watery deep--as the foundation for order. After slaying Tiamat in battle, Marduk cut her body in half and placed half above as the sky and half below as the earth. He then established his own authority over all the gods and nature and placed his throne in Babylon, from which to rule the universe. Thus the creation narrative celebrated the chief god's victory over chaos, the establishment of order, and provided justification for a human institution: the hegemony of Babylon. This reaffirmation of order provided important content for the Babylonian New Year celebration, known as the Akitu festival.
Scholars have long recognized links between Genesis 1:1-2:4a and the Enuma Elish. For example, both texts see creation as emerging out of a vast, watery deep that is divided in half, part above, and part below, to form the universe. Again, in both the force that actually achieves dominance over the deep is a mighty wind: Marduk blows into Tiamat, inflating her, and in Genesis the "spirit of God," a phrase also translatable as "a wind of God" or "a vigorous wind" is disturbing the surface of the darkened waters at the beginning of the narrative. Though they serve a radically different vision of God and the universe, such points of narrative contact still suggest that perhaps Genesis 1:1-2:4a "did" for the Hebrews something similar to what the Enuma Elish "did" for the Babylonians: provided the religious narrative foundation for reaffirming the cosmic order in the celebration of the New Year. Might Genesis 1:1-2:4a have provided the religious basis for Israel's New Year's celebration?
The Babylonian New Year celebration was complex, and "Truth in Advertising" requires me to note that various cities in Mesopotamia celebrated their New Years Festivals in different ways. It even appears that the New Years Festival was not always associated with the akitu festival, particularly at the earliest stage of Sumerian history. So my observations must be general and cautious. We've already noted that the creation story (Enuma Elish) was part of the New Years festival. This celebration also covered a prescribed series of days, with specific ritual acts on each day. For example, on the 4th day, the creation narrative was read. A week later, the victory of Marduk over Tiamat--the core of the creation epic--was portrayed in ritual drama. Though the duration of ANE New Years festivals varies, they all work carefully with the structure of the lunar month, which involves 7 day weeks. So we see a linkage between Creation, the New Year, and the structure of the week.
So here's a scenario. It is far from a full-blown interpretation, just a "what if/why not?" exercise. What if Genesis 1 represents a liturgical text, a text used by the Israelites in their celebration of the New Year. What if they, like many other ANE cultures, celebrated the New Year by celebrating creation? The "days" of the text mioght indeed be literal, 24 hour days. Rather than being the "days" of an original week of creation, they would be the literal days of the festival, climaxing in the Sabbath. The story of each day would be not a documentary-journalistic account of "God's First Week at Work" but a synopsis of what was celebrated on each day. And the point of the text would be not a quasi-scientific analysis of how the universe got here, but a hymn of worship and praise to the Creator aimed at drawing the reader to rest and trust in God, and step up to the high calling God gave humanity as his Image in the world.
Imagine the impact such a celebration could have by noting the contrasts. First, the OT story has no conflict between God and the cosmic deep. Nothing resists or threatens God's action, and his creation's order is guaranteed by his own word of power. Second, the OT story reaches its climax not in the affirmation of the divine king and the human king, but in a declaration of divine rest which, in turn, authorizes human rest. The ANE stories authorize tyranny, the OT story authorizes liberty. Third, the ANE story understands the world as the mutilated body of a female deity, a female deity representing the force of chaos that must regularly be subdued by the male god. The OT story offers no gender-referenced view of the creation, but celebrates humanity as male and female, jointly called upon to rule the creation as God's representatives. For the Babylonians, it was a reminder that Marduk's might undergirds the authority of the king to control their lives and, indeed, to conquer the entire world. For the Israelites, the New Year would be a reminder that "This is My Father's World!"
For the ANE cultures, creation was ultimately about politics, power, fear, and control. For the Hebrews, creation was about a God who rests, and who delights in giving his people rest.
Speaking of which, it's time for my Sunday nap!
