The Pattern of Creation
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One of the things about the Bible that I find myself constantly being draw to is, understanding “how” we read it. To be sure, its content is at the heart of the matter. But let me ask you a question.
How should we as modern readers approach a book that is considered to be ancient?
From the very first verses and indeed the very first chapter of the Bible we find heated debate. Not only in secular realm but among believers in the church.
Can you think of what some of those debates might be?
THE BATTLEGROUND
The first chapter of the Bible has become a battleground for strongly held convictions about what God did or did not do and how long it took him to do it.
There is a tension that seems to jump out at us from the very first chapter of the Bible.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Why does the Bible have to begin with Genesis 1? Why can’t we come to it later, after we’ve come to know and trust each other?
Of course, it’s first for a reason. How could anything come before creation? We can’t very well explore what it means to be human without it.
We cannot help but bring everything we are to bear on the bible.
Again…..Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
What are some of those things? Expectations!!!
So in a classroom like this…. here we are, you and I, with our long histories and commitments and suspicions.
But we all share a common goal….to take the bible seriously!
One of the things that opened my eyes to beginning to grasp what the Bible is doing is to understand the concept of genre.
Can you define what a genre is?
The Bible is composed of three main types of literature narrative, poetry, and discourse. Each has its own conventions; each has its own aims. A narrative involves the interaction of characters, setting, and plot. Poetry is a rhythmic composition, which in the Bible involves short pairs of lines packed with imagery. Discourse, also known as prose, includes instructions, speeches, and blocks of teaching logically arranged.
For me this was a new set of lenses through which I have been able to see the Bible. Genre influences the set of expectations we bring to the text about the types of claims it is making.
However, even with this understanding of genre. Right off the bat we hit a brick wall. Exactly what type of genre is Genesis 1?
When we turn we find only one character, God, and no plot conflict as far as I could tell. The text seemed almost rhythmic, but it didn’t fall into neat pairs of lines the way Hebrew poetry does. Even English translators seemed to have trouble deciding how to categorize it. Genesis 1 lacks normal paragraphs.
From my perspective....Genesis 1 had never been anything to me other than a straightforward historical report of how God made the world. I expected to find a narrative. What I found was a hybrid genre—the platypus of biblical literature—neither narrative nor poetry nor discourse. What does this mean?
Here in lies the heart of many heated debates. Is genesis history or artistry?
So let me ask another question. WhenI say a text is artistic does that make it unhistorical?
One could portray a historical event in any number of ways, poetically, abstractly, emotionally, or straightforwardly, and that portrayal does not change whether the event occurred in real time. However, the way an event is depicted clearly impacts our perception of that event. It conveys what the author wants us to see about it.
The converse is also true: just because a text seems straightforward doesn’t make it historical. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer seem plausible enough, but quite fictional.
To complicate matters, the truth value of a particular text does not rest solely on its connection to actual events. What do I mean by that? The Chronicles of Narnia are in no sense historical, but they powerfully convey truth about the way things really are.
So back to Genesis 1. Which we we get into here in a second.
But before we do. One important thing to realize. The debate over how creation happened often eclipses the theological question—why it happened. Why did God make the world and everything in it? Why is the act of creation portrayed in this way? Why does it matter? Ironically, in spite of vigorous disagreements over the method of creation, the purpose of creation is clear to those who read carefully.
Bible-believing Christians land across the spectrum on how God made the world. I have Christian friends who are fervent defenders of six-day, young earth creation (the view that God made the earth in six days around 4000 BCE), and other Christian friends who embrace theistic evolution (the view that evolution is the method God used to create all things). Others stand between these two poles. These friends all hold one thing in common: they believe in the authority and inspiration of the Word of God. Where they differ is on the question of genre.
My goal is not to change your mind on this issue but instead to invite you to set aside your conviction about how God made everything long enough for us to consider why. This matters for the question of human identity and purpose.
A TEMPLATE
One way to minimize the risk of importing our own ideas into the Bible is to pay attention to how the author uses patterns to create emphasis. Genesis 1 is a carefully crafted work of art that conveys the symmetry and order of God’s design.
2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Against the backdrop of the “formless and empty” world in Genesis 1:2, where the deep seas churn in darkness. We know that in six days God brings order to creation.
How then are we to think about these 6 days if they seem to appear out of order?
Day 1 light & day 4 sun moon and stars.
But try to think about the six days this way. The first three days depict God’s ordering of habitable space, while the last three depict God’s creation of residents to dwell in those spaces. To put it another way, God takes the “formless and empty” world and gives it “form and filling.”
Here’s what I mean.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
On day one, God creates light and separates it from the dark. We’re not told the source of the light or how it is regulated. “Evening” and “morning” mark off the first day. But then we have day 4.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
So it’s not until day four that God creates the sun, moon, and stars. This is the day in which the domains of light and darkness are populated with residents. Although the heavenly bodies are not living, they are appointed “to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness” (Genesis 1:18). They also “mark sacred times, and days and years” (Genesis 1:14). That is, they designate festivals and cycles of time. Day four is far more than the origin story of the sun, moon, and stars. It unveils their purpose.Days one and four together celebrate the origins of the calendar and the basis for human culture. Although the lights are embedded in the heavens, their purpose is to illuminate the earth. Here is our first clue that Genesis 1 is something more than a historical report. The heavenly bodies that mark “days” are not yet present for “days” one, two, and three. The days of creation must be a way of framing the creation event.
The symmetry continues with days two and five.
6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
On day two, God separates the waters above from the waters below, opening up the skies between them. Ancient people imagined a dome that held back the waters of the sky, resulting in open air. (They knew the sky held back water because sometimes it leaked out and watered the earth).
20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
On day five, God populates the domains of sky and water with birds and fish. God blesses these first living creatures with the mandate to multiply and fill the waters and the air (Genesis 1:22). Again, we have both form and filling, resolving the “formless and empty” problem from Genesis 1:2.
Days three and six are special, each containing a double creation event.
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
On day three, God separates the waters and the dry land. Then he creates vegetation with fruit and seeds. That is, he makes food, though no one is present to eat it yet. All of this is preparation for day six.
24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Day six is in which God makes land animals and then humans to populate the dry ground.
God gives humans a special status as his “image.” According to Genesis 1:26, our human identity as God’s image entails a responsibility to “rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the beasts, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth” (my translation). Like the sun, moon, and stars, humans have a governing role in creation. While the heavenly bodies bring order to the calendar, humans bring order to all other living things and their habitats. As with the fish and birds on day five, God blesses humans with a mandate to multiply and indicates that the food source for both humans and animals is the vegetation provided on day five.
Understanding days one through three as domains and days four through six as residents helped to solve certain conundrums that puzzle us . (How is there light with no sun on days one through three? How do plants survive without the sun? Why do fish and birds get their own day apart from the other animals? How are some animals already domesticated before humans exist?) To tell the story of creation as unfolding over six days is a way of organizing the cosmos into habitable spaces and their inhabitants, gradually bringing order to disorder through separation (light from dark, sky from water, dry land from seas).
This explains the kind of rhythmic feel of Genesis 1 that is achieved by the repetition of certain words and phrases in sets of what he calls “symbolic numbers.”
• “God said” occurs 3× for humans and 7× for everything else (=10×).
• “Let there be” occurs 3× for heavens and 7× for the earth (=10×).
• “To make” occurs 10×.
• “According to their kind” occurs 10×.
• “Blessed” occurs 3×.
• “Create” occurs in three places in Genesis 1, and the last occurrence is triple.
• “And it was so” occurs 7×.
• “God saw that it was good” occurs 7×.
But none of these sevens corresponds precisely to the seven days. We have no ordinary history, such as might be written in response to a simple request to be told what happened. Here we have the work of a Master whose thought is profound and expansive.
Why would someone go to all this trouble to consciously arrange creation as a week?
Scholars suggest that the week of creation is meant to be the “archetype of human work” providing a “theology of the sabbath.”
Let me show you what I mean.
Genesis 1 is actually structured as a chiasm, which is a set of opposing parallel structures that point towards a center, like ABC-CBA or ABC-ABC. When you read Genesis closely, you begin to see that Day 1-3 corresponds to Day 4-6.
But there’s more to it; Jewish writing also loves numerology. So since there are 7 days of creation (God rests on the seventh day), there are also patterns of 7 throughout.
The first verse has 7 words (7x1). The second verse has 14 words (7x2). And so on and so forth. By the seventh verse of the poem, there are 35 words (7x5). The word for God is mentioned 35 times. I could go on and on about numerology, but I’m no expert, and I just want to reinforce this–
Genesis is a chiasm: a poem with a center.
Most of your average bible reader is unfamiliar with Hebrew poetry. The reason for that is we because we have a different cultural value.
In the west, we think of teaching as a transference of information (hence the emphasis on didactic teaching in Sunday services). But Jewish teachers believe that learning only happens through a process of discovery. So the poem is carefully crafted like a treasure hunt: a map we follow until we find the “treasure” of the center.
When we take numerology and poetic structure into consideration, we discover that the center of the creation story is the Hebrew word “moad” in Genesis 1:14 on Day 4…
“And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.”
Again, because of translation, this initially might be a confusing center for a creation story. But “moad” or “sacred times” is one of four words that translates into “Sabbath” and the ideas of Sabbath–festivals, parties, resting.
(IF THERE IS TIME)
This message is clear whether you read Genesis 1 as a historical account of how God made the world or as a liturgical celebration of God’s purpose in creation. Either way, the week is a template for humans.
Perhaps your head is spinning now. Mine was, too, when I first discovered all this. It has helped me to realize that the Bible was not written to answer my questions. It often does, of course. But the Bible addresses ancient people in an ancient culture using a language that is not my own. The Bible was inspired by God to address their questions and concerns in language that made sense to them. It is only after attempting to read it with these concerns in mind that I can begin to consider its relevance for contemporary debates.
Ancient people were apparently unconcerned about the origin of physical matter. Their creation myths relate to purpose rather than process. This is not to suggest that the methods of creation don’t matter, only that ancient people weren’t wondering about it. What they cared about was fruitfulness. If food didn’t grow, they could not survive.[1]
[1]Imes, C. J. (2023). Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters(pp. 9–18). IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press.
