GENESIS: THE STORY OF CREATION World Literature I Presentation by: Ralph Monday Creation Of Adam 1512 Michelangelo 1475-1564 Creation of Eve Michelangelo 1512 1475-1564 Adam and Eve Marc Chagall 1912 Adam and Eve Lucas Cranach the Elder 1531 Pre-Israelite History • The first eleven chapters of Genesis hint at the earliest ages of human life and civilization (see Chapter 1). While these chapters do not convey history in a scientific sense, they do show awareness of the momentous moves to civilization attested in anthropology and archaeology: Genesis Authorship • The book of Genesis was written by a number of authors who assembled material from three traditions: • "J,” named for the Yahwist tradition who referred to God as Yahweh (translated "the Lord" in English). • "E,” named for the Elohist tradition who referred to God as Elohim, which was derived from the name of the Canaanite God El (translated as "God" in English). • "P,” named for the Priestly class who were primarily concerned with history, genealogies, etc. • the first construction of cities, the domestication of animals for human use, the conflict between agriculture and shepherding, the development of bronze and iron tools, and the invention of musical instruments and the fine arts. Ancestral Period (2000-1550 B.C.E.) • No exact date for the period of Israel's ancestors, the patriarchs and matriarchs, can be determined. • A widely-held guess is that Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob's family were of the Middle Bronze age, thus living sometime between 2000 and 1550 B.C.E. • Historians have also placed them both earlier and later than this. Unfortunately, there is no external evidence that can confirm the existence of any of the ancestors. • They exist for us only in the story in the Bible. • Almost everything we know of Israel's ancestors comes from Genesis 12-50 (see Chapter 2), nothing from Mesopotamia or Egypt. Old Testament Covenant • The God who was later identified as the God of Israel encountered Abraham and made a covenant with him that included • promises of future well-being, including the inheritance of Canaan as a family homeland and the growth of the family into an international empire. William Blake Elohim: Creating Adam 1795/c.1805 GENESIS • The book of Genesis is the book of origins. It begins by describing the creation of the world, and along the way it conveys basic features of the Hebrew view of • God, the universe, and humanity. Genesis also accounts for the origin of the nation of Israel by telling tales of its ancestors. • Genesis is such an important book that it gets two chapters: • Chapter 1. Genesis 1-11: the Primeval Story and Chapter 2. Genesis 12-50: the Ancestral Story. Genesis: The Primeval Story • The origin stories of Genesis 1-11 the Primeval Story, referring to the earliest ages of cultural development. • The Primeval Story is a sweeping account of the earliest events, from the creation of the world to the spread of humanity over the face of the earth. But the writer only mentions those seminal events that fit his purpose. • The primeval story is not history. • The earliest events of creation had no human eyewitnesses. • Stories such as we find in the early chapters of Genesis are mostly myths and sagas. • A literalistic approach to Genesis 1-11 would confuse history with myth and reality with symbol. • Applying such terms as "myth" to Genesis in no way devalues or demeans the stories. • Indeed, a mythos communicates powerful human “truths.” A Creation Mythos Spiral galaxy NGC 1232 • Deep human questions give rise to creation myths: • Who are we? • How did we get here? • What is the purpose of life? Definition of Myth • Myth is a culture’s means of understanding fundamental realities. • A myth is a traditional story of supposedly real events that is told in order to explain a culture's beliefs, practices, institutions, or a phenomenon of nature. • Often myths are associated with religious rituals or doctrines. • Both ancient cultures and modern ones have their particular myths. • The cosmology of the "Big Bang" is a contemporary myth that strives to account for the universe. • It remains a construct under frequent revision, even though it is backed by scientific evidence and reasoning. Visual Metaphor for the Big Bang Genesis: Two Accounts of Creation • The book of Genesis contains two accounts of the creation. The first account comes out of the Priestly document of the exilic period. • The second account is earlier and comes from the Yahwist narrative. While the Yahwist creation and flood stories deal primarily with the problem of sin, • the Priestly writer was intensely concerned with the gift of divine blessing expressed as the structure and ground of all life. Priestly Creation Story (1:1-2:4a) • The Priestly creation story opens with an earth that was "shapeless and void." This world was dominated by vast depths of ominous and unruly water. • Into the watery wilderness God injected his voice and created life, along with the means to sustain it. First came light, then the firmament to control the waters, then land and vegetation to sustain life. In succession God created birds, fish, terrestrial animals, and human beings. Separation of Land and Water Michelangelo (1475-1564) • The individual creative acts are spread out over six days and culminate with the creation of human beings as the image of God. • There is an order and a rhythm to the creation, as the following table demonstrates: Table 1.1 Bilateral Symmetry of Genesis 1 Day Environment Day Inhabitant 1 Light 2 Sky and Sea 4 Sun, Moon, Stars 5 Birds and Fish 3a Dry Land 3b Vegetation 6a Land animals 6b Humanity “Let There Be Light” Orion Nebula Mosaic Yahwist Creation Story (2:4b-3:24) • In the Yahwist creation story, the LORD God, YHWH Elohim in Hebrew, created the shape of a man out of clay and breathed life into him. • The Yahwist story of creation is the first episode of the Yahwist narrative. Its stories of Genesis 1-11 establish the basic plot of the Primeval Story. • Important human questions are asked in this section: • Where did we come from? • To whom are we accountable? • Where did sin come from? • Why do we have to die? The Fall: Adam and Eve Tempted by the Snake, by Hugo van der Goes (1440-1482) Adam and Eve, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) (1507) Michelangelo Original Sin (1512) The Triumph of Death Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) (1562) Michelangelo Expulsion From Eden (1509-10) WAYNE SCHOENFELD Expulsion From Eden Contemporary artist Works Cited • Bandstra, Barry L. “Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.” Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www. hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/. 22 Sep. 2004. • Conflicting Christian Views of the Bible’s Creation Stories. Religious Tolerance.Org. http://www. religioustolerance.org/ev_crest.htm. 22 Sep. 2004.