. . . God created." This was the point of the story found in first Genesis, the fact that God created. That’s right; today some Christians wish to pass over the contextual importance of the first sentence of Genesis 1. Instead they like to focus on the aspects of how God created. However, what is important is that YAWEH created. How do I come to this conclusion? I look to the historical context of the passage. Some traditionalists like to hold on to the teaching that Moses himself wrote Genesis, but biblical scholarship has shown that the date of Genesis, as we know it, to be around the 6th or 5th century BCE. This date also corresponds to the date of the Jewish exile in Babylon, which leads us to the reason as to why who is more important than the question of how in the creation account.
Now, Scholars also like to point out that the Jewish story of creation also has similarities with the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish. The main similarities lie in the fact that the earth was created in a similar order (light, firmament, land, heavenly bodies, man, and rest). Coincidence, possibly, but just think about it from the point of view of a 6th/5th century BCE exile. If you’re a displaced people, in the land of your enemies, you are going to hear their story over, and over, and over. At some point you’re going to be afraid that the next generation of your own people will come to forget your stories and take up the stories of your conquerors. So what do you do? You say no, no, our God created, not their gods. Thus making the key point of your collected story not about the way that the earth was created, but about who created. Which as we know from scripture was YAWEH.
For now, we will stop here, and digest on the main point of Genesis 1. In the next part of the “In the Beginning” series, I will focus on some of the different creation myths that are found in scripture. Feel free to comment on my post, all opinions are welcome.
