Genesis 1: 6-8

Recommended Resources:

How To Study the Hebrew Bible (TBP Tim Mackie Jonah Class Notes) uploaded to our Dropbox folder. (https://tinyurl.com/OBBCGenesis)

Key Points:

At the end of class last week, a question was brought up about authorship of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible (sometimes called the Pentateuch). Tradition has long attributed those books to Moses, but that’s only part of the story. “Only small portions within the Torah are traced back to him, but not nearly the whole Torah: Exodus 17:14 (Battle against Amalek); Ex 24:4 (Covenant Code); Ex 34:28 (Ten Commandments); Numbers 33:2 (Wandering Stations); Deuteronomy 31:9 (Deuteronomic Law); and Deut 31:22 (Song of Moses).” Those are the only sections of the Torah we know for sure that Moses wrote. Genesis is completely anonymous and has no mention of Moses since it ends well before his birth. Furthermore, the end of Deuteronomy records Moses’ death, suggesting that he did not write the entirety of that book.

While Moses likely did write much of the Torah, the stories had a life before and after him as well. He was drawing on preexisting oral traditions, and then scribes came in during the time of the exile and compiled all that work together. It’s like a patchwork quilt with multiple sources. There are usually little clues in the narratives that suggest a text may have been from a different time period than the passages around it. For example, Exodus 15 is written in an older form of Hebrew than the stories surrounding it, implying that it was in existence long before the rest was written. There are anachronisms like calling the inhabitants of the land Canaanites in Genesis 12:6 even though the people in the land would not have been called Canaanites until a while after Abraham. There’s also mention of the days “before there reigned any king over the children of Israel” in Genesis 36:31 which only makes sense if the text was written after the time when kings started to rule, a few hundred years after Moses. Furthermore, verses like Deuteronomy 34:10 give the indication some time passes between the time of the story and the time of the writing. Certain stories in the Torah even map onto the story of David, suggesting that some of the editing may have been done during the days of the Davidic monarchy.

The Torah itself admits to drawing on multiple sources including “the Book of the Wars of YHWH” (Numbers 21:14). “In fact, the Hebrew Bible is filled with references to sources upon which various biblical texts are ostensibly based or which the biblical authors knew of and read: ‘The Book of Yashar’ (e.g., Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18); ‘The Book of the Acts of Solomon’ (e.g., 1 Kings 11:41); ’The Books of the Annals of the Kings of Israel’ (1 Kings 14:19; cf. also 2 Chron 33:18; 2 Chron 20:34); ’The Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah’ (1 Kings 15:7); ’The Records of Samuel the Seer’ (1 Chron 29:29); ’The History of Nathan the Prophet’ (2 Chron 9:29); ’The Records of Shemaiah the Prophet and Iddo the Seer’ (2 Chron 12:15);’The Annals of Jehu the son of Hanani’ (2 Chron 20:34); ’The Records of Hozai’ [or ‘the Seers’] (2 Chron 33:19).

That being said, over time, since Moses is a key character in Exodus-Deuteronomy, the Torah as a whole came to be called the Torah (Instruction, often mistranslated “law” in English) of Moses. “The books of Joshua 8:31-32, 23:6 and Kings (1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 14:6, 23:25) refer to the torah of Moses, or the scroll of the torah of Moses—though these are likely references to (some form of) Deuteronomy, not the entire Torah in its current form.

The much later books of Ezra 3:2, 6:18, 7:6; Nehemiah 1:7-9, 8:1, 14, 9:14, 10:30, 13:1, Daniel 9:1, 13, and Chronicles (2 Chron 23:18, 30:16, 34:14) also refer to ‘the torah of Moses’ or paraphrase laws from the Pentateuch as laws of Moses.

In the New Testament, Luke 2:22 refers to ‘the law of Moses’ and Mark 2:19 states ‘Moses wrote’ followed by a citation of Deut 25:5-6.

In the Babylonian Talmud (roughly 500 years after Jesus), Moses is listed as the Pentateuch’s author.” From https://www.thetorah.com/article/who-wrote-the-torah-according-to-the-torah

There are several NT verses that speak of the Torah of Moses, but those could just be saying he communicated the Torah to the people. (cf Matthew 8:4; Mark 12:26; Luke 24:27) None of those references have to imply that Moses wrote the entirety of the Torah, just the parts being spoken of there.

Moses came to be a shorthand way of talking about the Torah since he delivered it. But that doesn’t mean he wrote the whole thing. Consider how David is attributed as the author of Psalms in Luke 20:42 even though we know he didn’t write the whole of Psalms. It’s like saying “The White House put out a press report.” The White House is a building. It can’t put out a report. It means the president put out the report. The building has come to stand for something related. Likewise, Moses and David came to stand in for the books that bear their stories.

Also significant is how Hebrew talks about ownershipauthorship. Many of the Psalms (see Psalm 3 for an example) include a title saying, “A Psalm of David.” But in Hebrew, it’s literally “A Psalm to David.” This is quite the debate among Biblical scholars, but that can mean “a psalm written to David,” “a psalm written to the matters of David (aboutconcerning David),” or “a psalm belonging to David.” If I wanted to talk about my computer in Hebrew, I might say something roughly translated, “the computer to Colin,” the one belonging to me.

Ancient cultures did not have copyright laws. In that culture, if you liked someone’s writing, you’d simply say what they said, no attribution or reference needed. Conversely, sometimes stories were told as if from the perspective of a famous historical figure. They weren’t lying or making up stories. They were reimagining something from a famous person’s imagined perspective based on what was known of their persona. Anonymity was also common in ancient texts; many don’t have listed authors.

At the end of the day, we don’t need to know who the author of the Torah was. We don’t know who most of the authors of Bible books were. Moses absolutely had a hand in the formation of the Torah, but there were also oral traditions before him and there were editors after him. It's important for us to remember that this discussion is not about who takes the Bible seriously. Good Christians who believe the Bible fall on both sides of the discussion.

Cycling back to the previous week, we noted the Biblical theme of God’s calming Spirit showing up over chaotic waters. This first happens in Genesis 1:2 at the start of the Creation Week. The Spirit is described as hovering like a bird over the chaos waters. Then in Genesis 8:6–11, Noah sends out a dove over the chaos waters to find land emerging just like during Creation. Fast forward to Matthew 3:16 and we observe Jesus coming out of the Jordan’s waters to find God’s Spirit hovering like a dove over Him. This is how Biblical theology works. The authors don’t usually tell you up front that they’re referencing a previous passage; they just use key words to hyperlink you between stories. You’re going to start seeing sea and land, light and dark, chaos and order, creation and decreation all over the Bible. We touched on the decreation them a bit during the 10 Signs in our Exodus study. Instead of speaking light, God speaks darkness in the 9th Sign. Instead of bringing life, he brings death. Instead of humans ruling over the animals, the animals overtake the land. It’s a reversal of Creation. Jeremiah uses similar imagery in Jeremiah 4:22–29. There he mentions good and evil in connection with knowledge (Cf the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil), a wild and waste (tohu vavohu) land, skies without light, no humans, no birds, wilderness, etc. The Biblical authors and editors are masters at weaving together these sorts of themes. For more on how to study the Bible in this manner, check out How To Study the Hebrew Bible (TBP Tim Mackie Jonah Class Notes) uploaded to our Dropbox folder.

Commentary

1:6- I’m guessing you haven’t used the word firmament in a sentence any time recently. The Hebrew word behind it (raqia) refers to a hammered-out piece of metal. In English, it’s probably best translated as vault or dome. Some translations will say “separation” or “expanse,” highlighting the function of the raqia, to separate the expansive waters from each other. The concept doesn’t make much sense from a modern mindset, but in the Ancient Near East, people looked around and saw blue waters around them and looked up and saw blue in the sky as well. And sometimes the blue up there rained down water. So they assumed there was a large body of water above the skies as well as the ones around the land. They developed a cosmology that said the land was a floating disk surrounded by water below and water above with a dome separating the two, almost like a snow globe. It takes a little while for us moderns to get used to that way of thinking, but it is pretty intuitive when you consider it. We must also remember that the Bible is not trying to say there actually is a huge blue dome around planet Earth. God used images familiar to the original audience without necessarily saying one way or the other whether the idea was scientifically accurate. The point of the text is not whether or not there is a blue dome over the planet. The point is that Yahweh can speak order into a chaotic world in contrast to the gods of the other nations who had to fight with each other for control of the world. If Genesis was written today, God would have likely used imagery consistent with our modern understanding of the world to illustrate His power. But since Genesis is an ancient text, He used the language of the original audience.

The word raqia normally implies forceful, aggressive hammering. Yet God just made it. He holds back chaos with the power of a simple spoken word.

It’s interesting that even in an ideal creation, God did not remove all chaos. Rather, He just made it orderly. He set a place for the chaos waters and a place they could not touch. Our job as humans is to continue God’s creative work by spreading creation order into the parts of the world where chaos still reigns. Note then that the Flood is creation decreating, crashing in on itself. It is removing the best possible environment for humans to thrive in and literally raining chaos down upon it.

1:7- While some scholars, particularly in the Ken Ham/Creation Science field, think the raqia was removed during the Flood, the Bible never says that. Furthermore, a close examination of Genesis 1:8 will show that God named the raqia Skies. Once we get to Day 4 in verses 14-19, we’ll see that God places the sun, moon, and stars in the raqia. The raqia was never removed; it is the skies.

1:8- Day 2 of Creation has a glaring absence. It’s easy to miss if you’ve heard the story several times, but close examination reveals that there is no declaration of good on the second day. We don’t know for sure why that is, but the most common answer is that God only declares days good that move the world forward into a place habitable by humans. Since Day 2 just has waters without land, it is not good. I appreciate the thought process, but that logic would have to mean that Day 1 also wasn’t good. I believe a better answer can be found when we examine the next few verses. Day 3 begins with God’s still dealing with the waters, just like on Day 2. He shapes the waters below into one place so dry land can appear. Only then does He make a declaration of good. I believe Day 2 doesn’t include a statement of good because God didn’t finish His work with the waters on that day. Apparently taming the waters was a day and a half job whereas everything else just took one day. This holds up because, as we’ll see next week, Day 3 has a bonus, a part 2. God continues to create on the newly formed dry land, leading to a second declaration of good in Day 3. Thus, even in the absence of a proclamation of good on Day 2, thanks to the doubling on Day 3, the Creation Week includes 6 declarations of good and 1 of very good. The only reason Day 3 did not include that is because God wasn’t finished that part of His work yet. He waited until He finished that portion of the job before He called it good. Then, with the extra time remaining, He worked on the newly formed land.