The Lost World of Genesis One (6 page)

Though this text dates from well into the Hellenistic period,
the functional orientation is obvious. Another example selected
from a millennium earlier (twelfth c. B.c.) and from the opposite
end of the ancient world demonstrates how pervasive this perspective was. In the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, Marduk defeats the rebellious gods and then does his work of "creation" in tablet five, focusing on several key functional features:

• Lines 1-24 show Marduk organizing the celestial sphere: stars, constellations, the phases of the moon.

• Lines 25-45 are not represented in many of the translations
included in the major anthologies of ancient texts. Even in their
broken form, however, their basic content can be discerned.' In
38-40 Marduk makes the night and day and sets it up so that
there is an equal amount of light hours and night hours over
the course of the year.10 On line 46 he fixes the watches of
night and day. These creative activities have to do with organizing time.

• Lines 47-52 are more legible and deal with the creation of the
clouds, wind, rain, and fog, and appointing himself to control
them. Here the functions that concern the weather are
created.

• Lines 53-58 tell of the harnessing of the waters of Tiamat for
the purpose of providing the basis of agriculture. It includes
the piling up of dirt, releasing the Tigris and Euphrates, and
digging holes to manage the catchwater.

• Lines 59-68 conclude with the transition into the enthronement of Marduk and the building of his temple and the city of
Babylon-the grand climax. It is no surprise that a creation
text should ultimately be about the god who controls the cosmos and about the origin of his temple. We will see below that
cosmic origins and temple origins are intricately intertwined.

Finally, in a Sumerian debate text still another millennium earlier (third millennium), The Debate Between Winter and Summer, Enlil is involved in creation in these same areas (day and
night/time; fertility/food; sluices of heaven/weather and seasons):

An [god's name] lifted his head in pride and brought forth a
good day. He laid plans for ...... and spread the population
wide. Enlil set his foot upon the earth like a great bull. En lil, the king of all lands, set his mind to increasing the good
day of abundance, to making the ...... night resplendent in
celebration, to making flax grow, to making barley proliferate, to guaranteeing the spring floods at the quay, to making
...... lengthen (?) their days in abundance, to making Summer close the sluices of heaven, and to making Winter guarantee plentiful water at the quay.11

In conclusion, analysts of the ancient Near Eastern creation
literature often observe that nothing material is actually made in
these accounts. This is an intriguing observation. Scholars who
have assumed that true acts of creation must by definition involve
production of material objects are apparently baffled that all of
these so-called creation texts have nothing of what these scholars
would consider to be creation activities. I propose that the solution is to modify what we consider creation activities based on
what we find in the literature. If we follow the sense of the literature and its ideas of creation, we find that people in the ancient
Near East did not think of creation in terms of making material
things-instead, everything is function oriented. The gods are
beginning their own operations and are making all of the elements of the cosmos operational. Creation thus constituted bringing order to the cosmos from an originally nonfunctional condition. It is from this reading of the literature that we may deduce a
functional ontology in the ancient world-that is, that they offer
accounts of functional origins rather than accounts of material
origins. Consequently, to create something (cause it to exist) in
the ancient world means to give it a function, not material properties. We need to note the contrast: we tend to think of the cosmos
as a machine and argue whether someone is running the machine
or not. The ancient world viewed the cosmos more like a company
or a kingdom.12

Would they have believed that their gods also manufactured
the material? Absolutely, for nothing can be thought to stand
apart from the gods. But they show little interest in material origins. Such issues were simply insignificant to them. If we paused
to think about it, we might begin to wonder why material origins
have taken on such central significance to us. Consider:

• As employees we pay little attention to the history of the company we work for. We are more interested in its corporate structure and what responsibilities each department has. We want
to know about who reports to whom and who is in charge of
certain operations and tasks.

• When we go to the theater, we may have passing interest in the
construction of the set and stage works, but we understand that
the play exists in the roles of the performers. When a person
comes late and asks what has happened so far, the question is
not answered by information about the costume designer, script
writer and the hiring of the cast. Telling the person about all
that would be offering the wrong sort of origins information.

Some sorts of origins are more important than other sorts of
origins.

In summary, this chapter has noted that our own material
definition of existence is only one of the possible ways to define
existence. I have suggested that in the ancient world they defined it differently. They thought of existence as defined by having a function in an ordered system.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Clifford, Richard. Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and
the Bible. Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 26.
Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994.

Hyers, Conrad. The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Sci ence. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1984.

Simkins, Ronald A. Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview
ofAncientIsrael. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994.

Stek, John. "What Says the Scripture?" In Portraits of Creation,
edited by H. J. van Till, pp. 203-65. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1990.

Walton, John. "Creation." In Dictionary of the Old Testament.- Pentateuch, edited by T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker,
pp. 155-68. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER PRESENTED evidence that creation accounts in the ancient world characteristically showed interest in
the functional level rather than the material level. Furthermore it
proposed that the ancient world defined existence in terms of having a function in an ordered system. This functional ontology indicated that the line between existence and nonexistence was
functional, not material.

We now turn our attention to the creation account in Genesis 1
to discover whether it will follow suit or not. Our first matter for
discussion is the Hebrew verb bares , translated as "create" in verse
1. What exactly does it mean? Here we cannot be content with
delving into the English verb "create"-though that shows an
amazing amount of flexibility. Instead we must focus on the verb
in Hebrew and how its users would have understood its meaning.
If we are trying to understand whether the Israelites thought of
existence in functional terms (like the rest of the ancient Near
East) or material terms (like we tend to do), one of the places we
might expect to find help is in observing what is involved in bring ing something into existence. "Create" is the English word for
bringing something into existence. If existence is defined in material terms, creating is a material activity. If existence is defined in
functional terms, creating is a function-giving activity. We cannot
assume that creating is a material activity just because our ontology
happens to be material. We must let the word and its usage speak
for itself.

It is interesting that many people who discuss Genesis 1 express
an interest in interpreting the chapter "literally." By this they generally mean that it is to be taken exactly for what it says rather than to
understand Genesis 1 simply in metaphoric, allegorical or symbolic
terms. Of course we recognize that sometimes writers intend to
communicate by means of metaphor or allegory. When someone
insists that Genesis 1 should be interpreted literally it is often an
expression of their conviction that the interpreter rather than the
author has initiated another level of meaning. Our interpretive commitment is to read the text at what I will call "face value." I will have
more to say about this in proposition 11. For the moment, let us
consider the concept and challenge of "literal" interpretation.

The English reader must face a difficult fact: one cannot comprehend the literal meaning of a word in the Old Testament without knowing Hebrew or having access to the analysis by someone
who does. It does us no good to know what "create" literally
means-we have to know what bard literally means.' Before that
leads to frustration or despair, we can recognize that even those
without knowledge of Hebrew can check the data of the Hebrew
analyst at some level. A quick review of words and how they work
will help us all to see how this is so.