Lection 2

THEOLOGY FOR BACHELOR IN IRGA & COMMA 2024-25

TH1&2

In the Bible the knowledge of God is the revelation of His relationship with human beings;
The knowledge of God takes place by revelation; God discloses and reveals himself. While He acts in history shows himself.
What’s the proper language with God? FAITH!
Theology class takes this point: “the experience of faith is fully human, rational, universal and intelligent”; it is the “form and frame of conscience and consciousness”
Trust is not a choice, an option among many. You can believe differently but "you cannot non-believing"!

Bob Dylan expresses it in different words in his famous song Gotta Serve Somebody:

You may be an ambassador to England or France

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavy weight champion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage

You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage

You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief

They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

"Gotta Serve Somebody" is a song by Bob Dylan from his 1979 studio album Slow Train Coming. It won the Grammar Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Male in 1979. It is a piece with a strong religious theme, influenced by Dylan's recent conversion to

Christianity and by the artist's adhesion to the fundamentalist Christian sect ‘Vineyard

Fellowship’. After concluding the long 1978 world tour, Dylan spent the first five months of 1979 taking a Bible study course.

John Lennon, who was very critical of Dylan's conversion, will write a poisonous critical parody of Gotta Serve Somebody titled Serve Yourself, recorded in 1980 but released only in 1998:

Well you may believe in devils and you may believe in lords

But if you don't go out and serve yourself, lad, ain't no room service here!

Sure, Dylan’s song can be interpreted in many ways, but the issue he posed is correct and true. It’s the matter of the goal, of the purpose of life. It’s a very present issue in classical and modern philosophers, which they called the question of the telos (the end of life and of the existence of each one).

 Telos (τέλος) has been consistently used in the writings of Aristotle, in which the term, on several occasions, suggests 'goal';

 Telos is the root of the modern term ‘teleology’, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions. Teleology is central in Aristotle's work on biology and in his theory of causes. Aristotle's notion that everything has a telos also gave rise to epistemology. It is also central to some philosophical theories of history, such as those of Hegel and Marx.

 Aristotle: the telos of everything is "what it was made for"

 We study theology by the view of faith;

 Theology aims to analyze (explore data, investigate with reason) the leap of faith through his own sources like the Bible and other religious experiences;

 Studying theology means to consider the faith as an anthropological dimension of life concerning everyone;

 Terrorism isn’t faith but fundamentalism;

 The ideology of the master race is fundamentalism; The master race (Herrenrasse, also referred to as Herrenvolk) or "master people" is a concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative Nordic or Aryan races, predominant among Germans and other northern European peoples, are deemed the highest in racial hierarchy. Members of this alleged master race were referred to as Herrenmenschen ("master humans") vs. Untermenschen (inferior non Aryan people).

THE FUNCTIONS OF LIVING MYTHOLOGY

Myths symbolize human experience and embody the spiritual values of a culture (Rosemberg). Every society preserves its myths, because the beliefs and worldview found within them are crucial to the survival of that culture. Myths usually originate in an ancient, oral tradition. Some explain origins, natural phenomena, and death; others describe the nature and function of divinities; while still others provide models of virtuous behavior by relating the adventures of heroes or the misfortunes of arrogant humans. Myths often include elements from legend and folklore. They depict humans as an integral part of a larger universe, and they impart a feeling of awe for all that is mysterious and marvelous in life. Psychoanalyst Rollo May, in his book “The Cry for Myth” suggests,

“A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are the narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Myths are like the beams in a house: not exposed to outside view, they are the structure which holds the house together so people can live in it.”

Although most of the myths in traditional mythology were created by people who lived in societies that were much different than our own, they address fundamental questions that each thinking person continues to ask: Who am I? What is the nature of the universe in which I live? How do I relate to that universe? How much control do I have over my own life? What must I do in order to survive? How can I lead a satisfying life? How can I balance my own desires with my responsibilities to my family and my community? How can I reconcile myself to the inevitability of death? Therefore, myths are an important way to understand ourselves. Because they provide a variety of answers to these questions, they present us with new possibilities, and by considering these possibilities, we gain insight into our own attitudes and values. As well as those of our fellow travelers throughout the corridors of time. Myths are a part of every culture in the world and are used to explain natural phenomena, where a people came from and how their civilization developed, and why things happen as they do. At their most basic level, myths comfort by giving a sense of order and meaning to what can sometimes seem a chaotic world.

Mythology (from the Greek mythos for story-of-the-people, and logos for word or speech, so the spoken story of a people) is the study and interpretation of often sacred tales or fables of a culture known as myths or the collection of such stories which deal with various aspects of the human condition: good and evil; the meaning of suffering; human origins; the origin of place-names, animals, cultural values, and traditions; the meaning of life and death; the afterlife; and celestial stories of the gods or a god. Myths express the beliefs and values about these subjects held by a certain culture.

Myths tell the stories of ancestors and the origin of humans and the world, the gods, supernatural beings (satyrs, nymphs, mermaids) and heroes with super-human, usually godgiven, powers (as in the case of the Greek myth of Heracles or Perseus). Myths also describe origins or nuances of long-held customs or explain natural events such as the sunrise and sunset, the cycle of the moon and the seasons, or thunder and lightning storms. Scholars Maria Leach and Jerome Fried define mythology along these lines:

[A myth is] a story, presented as having actually occurred in a previous age, explaining the cosmological and supernatural traditions of a people, their gods, heroes, cultural traits, religious beliefs, etc. The purpose of myth is to explain, and, as Sir G.L. Gomme said, myths explain matters in “the science of a pre-scientific age.” Thus myths tell of the creation of man, of animals, of landmarks; they tell why a certain animal has its characteristics (e.g. why the bat is blind or flies only at night), why or how certain natural phenomena came to be (e.g. why the rainbow appears or how the constellation Orion got into the sky), how and why rituals and ceremonies began and why they continue. (778)

From the many definitions of myth in books and on the web, we can see that myths have four basic attributes in common:

They are cultural—they reflect the beliefs and values of a group of people.
They are sacred—they concern the spiritual or divine aspects of existence that human beings cannot understand.
They are didactic—they seek to explain the unexplainable, and they teach humans how to behave, live, and relate to each other and the gods.
They are foundational—they provide basic rules, beliefs, and rituals for a culture to establish shared beliefs and practices.

Joseph Campbell adds that all living myth must serve four primary functions:

Cosmological—Its cosmological function is to describe the “shape” of the cosmos, the universe, our total world, so that the cosmos and all contained within it become vivid and alive for us, infused with meaning and significance; every corner, every rock, hill, stone, and flower has its place and its meaning in the cosmological scheme which the myth provides.
Mystical—Its metaphysical function is to awaken us to the mystery and wonder of creation, to open our minds and our senses to an awareness of the mystical “ground of being.” Many would say that this is the primary function of myth-to find a way to communicate whatever mystical insight has been gained on the journey: an understanding of the mysteries that underlie the universe; an appreciation of its wonders; the sense of awe or rapture experienced. Since this experience often can’t be communicated directly, myth speaks in metaphors, symbols, and symbolic narratives that aren’t always bound by objective reality. o Sociological—Its sociological function is to pass down “the law,” the moral and ethical codes for people of that culture to follow, and which help define that culture and its social structure.
Psychological—Its psychological (or pedagogical) function is to lead us through particular rites of passage that define the various significant stages of our lives-from dependency to maturity to old age, and finally, to our deaths, the final passage. These rites of passage bring us into harmony with the “ground of being” (a term used by Campbell to refer to an unnamed, unspecified universal mystical power) and allow us to make the journey from one stage to another with a sense of comfort and purpose.

Today, in our culture, we often dismiss myth as a falsehood, or fanciful, untrue stories, like urban myths or “false news.”. This is not the definition of myth we will concern ourselves with. For each of the myths we read, the culture from which they arose believed them to be

true and foundational to their individual and collective identities. It was how they understood the great mysteries of the universe and our place in it—How did the earth come to be? How was mankind created? What is my purpose? Can I know God? Is there a life after death?

Today, we are still asking the same questions, and for many people, the answers are in their religious beliefs, many of which have their roots in the myths. Campbell once said, “a mythology is another person’s religion, and a religion is your own personal mythology.”

This first group of myths are Creation myths. They seek to explain “how it all started.” There are 8 basic motifs (a recurring pattern or object) for creation myths:

Conjunction: mingling of waters or primal elements creates a first entity or a livable surface
Divine emission: blood or other body fluids create man or beings or other gods
Sacrifice: a god sacrifices himself or is sacrificed to achieve creation of the earth or humans
Division/Consumption: marriage of earth and sky or separation of earth and sky creates livable space for humans
Cosmic egg: all humans, and the earth sometimes, are contained in a great egg to be opened when the god wills it
Emergence: first “people” emerge from an original cramped or hostile world into a new world or a series of worlds
Deus Faber: the god consciously crafts the world and humans out of a substance necessary for the survival of mankind (like clay, mud, stone, corn)
Ex Nihilo-out of nothing: creation by thought, breath, dream or word

These eight methods are creation are easy to see in the myths we read. What might each method say to the people about their importance to the gods? Think about this question as your read the myths.

As you read, you will see that myths are narratives; they tell a story. It is the culture’s way of trying to explain the creation of the universe and mankind in a way everyone could understand. These stories (myths) were passed down through generations orally because they existed long before humans created writing.

We don’t know for sure, but it is likely that the myths evolved over time as they were retold, perhaps to include new myths from other cultural groups, or to reflect man’s more sophisticated understanding of the world and the gods. Often these myths were retold in celebrations of a religious nature, such as a New Year celebration or the beginning of spring, or at the harvest. The myths, although simple as narratives, are complex in trying to explain existence and the gods. In some cases, you will find contradictions, missing pieces, and some just plain confusing ideas. Remember, these are myths, not fact-based explanations. We need to read them differently than we would a history or science book. But when we know how to read them as intended, as metaphors for the journey of the soul back to the ground of its own being, then they can reveal timeless truth to us, whether we “believe” in them or not.

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE? HOW … THE BOOK OF GENESIS?

Theology capability to read a text and understand the message contained is called

«EXEGESIS»;

Exegesis stems from the Greek words ἐξήγησις, ἐξηγητικός, and from the verb ἐξηγέομαι which means «take out, explain, interpret, understand».
Exegesis is the interpretation of a text by way of a thorough analysis of its content in order to clarify its meaning.
Our main task in exegesis is to discover the original, intended meaning of a given text through careful, systematic study.
It is the process of examining a text to ascertain what its first readers would have understood it to mean.
To do a successful exegesis therefore, we need to apply grammatical, lexicographical, and structural tools to “discover” the author’s original intended meaning in a given text.

In Greek antiquity and in the Middle Ages the most remarkable characteristic of the interpretative praxis was the so-called accessus ad auctores (inside the writer); this was a standardized introduction that preceded the editions and commentaries of (classical) authors. There were many versions of the accessus, but one of the more widely used was the following typology of seven questions:

Who (is the author) (quis/persona)?
What (is the subject matter of the text) (quid/materia)?
Why (was the text written) (cur/causa)?
How (was the text composed) (quomodo/modus)?
When (was the text written or published) (quando/tempus)?
Where (was the text written or published) (ubi/loco)?
By which means (was the text written or published) (quibus faculatibus/facultas)?

What are the questions to answer nowadays for writing a good newspaper article or a TV report? The 5 W rule:

Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?

Exegesis is the interpretation of a text by way of a thorough analysis of its content in order to clarify its meaning. Our main task in exegesis is to discover the original, intended meaning of a given text through careful, systematic study. lt is the process of examining a text to ascertain what its first readers would have understood it to mean.
To do a successful exegesis therefore, a person needs to apply grammatical, lexicographical, and structural tools to “discover” the author’s original intended meaning in a given text.
Ex-egesis means using the words of the text in Scripture, through the lens of their original context, to determine their intent.
Bias-egesis means reading into the text with a pre-conceived notion we may have. Although hermeneutics, eisegesis, and exegesis may seem similar, we need to draw a clear distinction between all three.

Biblical Example: Exegesis. Philippians 4:13

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

We may try to read into the text that God will give us the strength to win a tennis match we have on Tuesday or “a business deal.” This and other verses are often quoted, using this misinterpretation.
In the original context of Philippians 4:13, Saint Paul was on house arrest, ready to go on a trial that may end his life. But despite all those difficult circumstances, Paul showed how Christ gave him strength during a dire season.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, gives an account of the origin of all created things and acts, as it were, as an elaborate introduction to God’s later revelation to Israel through Moses. It summarizes the early stages in the history of mankind from the creation to the death of Joseph the patriarch.

The Pentateuch is the name of the first five books of the Bible. The word Pentateuch comes from a combination of the Greek word penta, meaning “five” and teuchos, which can be translated “scroll.” Therefore, it simply refers to the five scrolls that make up the first of three divisions of the Jewish canon. The name Pentateuch can be traced at least as far back as AD

200, when Tertullian referred to the first five books of the Bible by that name. Also known as the Torah, which is the Hebrew word meaning “Law,” these five books of the Bible are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Many conservative Bible scholars believe were mostly written by Moses. Even though the books of the Pentateuch themselves do not clearly identify the author, there are many passages that attribute them to Moses or as being his words.

For most Bible scholars, Moses cannot be the sole author of the first five books of the Bible. Indeed, the verses of Deuteronomy 34:5-8, describes the death and burial of Moses. It is difficult to think that Moses could have described them. Many parts of the Pentateuch in fact would appear to have been added by someone later than Moses.

Jews generally divided the Old Testament into three different sections, The Law, The Prophets, and The Writings. The Torah (biblical Hebrew: תּוָֹרָה Tōrā, which means "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the same as Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses, that contain the historical background of creation and God’s choosing of Abraham and the Jewish nation as

His chosen people. They also contain the instructions and law given to Israel at Mount Sinai.

Scripture refers to these five books by various names: the “law (Torah) which Moses My servant commanded you” and “the law of Moses”.

Unlike the book of Exodus, which follows it and in which the history of Israel as a people begins, Genesis contains the history of Israel’s ancestors, the great patriarchs — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph — and therefore is the history of a family, Abraham’s, from which the chosen people stemmed.

The early chapters of Genesis, written in popular language, rich in imagery, provide answers to the kind of questions every human being, in any age, is inclined to ask: Who made me? Where does the world come from? What is life all about? What is the meaning of suffering, sickness, and death? What explanation is there for war and human strife? Man wants answers to these questions.

Opening the Bible and reading these first chapters is like having a huge family album, full of color and life, in which God shows us not only the origin of the universe but also the causes of man’s unhappiness, the reason for his sense of loneliness, and the origin of suffering and death. But we find more than that; we find that creation results from God’s love and that it is love which leads him to announce man’s future salvation.

We will remember that, in making himself known, it was not God’s intention to give us scientific statements; he was giving us only what we needed to grasp basic religious truths. We should not expect to find here a scientific explanation of the creation of the universe or the origin of man. The Bible has nothing to say about when the world was created, or about various geological periods, nor, let it be said, does it provide any proof of the theory of evolution.

In a sober style, which is quite theological and almost ritual, in a logical order, and in the kind of way a teacher puts things to make it easy for his pupils to remember them, the first creation narrative (Gen. 1:12:4a) describes the creation of the universe in ascending order, that is, working up from less perfect things (earth, sky, animals) to the most perfect (man).

In describing creation as happening over a seven-day period the sacred writer has a mainly didactic purpose. He wants to show the people of Israel that it was God’s express will that they should observe the sabbath rest and treat that day as especially holy, and therefore he says that God himself “rested on the seventh day.”

His purpose is also didactic (and in this he was inspired by God) in setting out the stages in which God went about creation after his initial act of creation, which consisted in creating out of nothing the chaotic mass described in Genesis 1:2.

What the Bible states is that God created man for love, to give him happiness;
For the "technical" details of creation, it is necessary to turn to the scientist and to the discoveries of the scientists;
The Bible therefore affirms that God has opened the possibility of love to man; if it purports to define the precise moment of the evolution in which it happened, it leaves the sown;

The first creation of the Genesis is a sort of praise and profession of faith

The refrains “God said” and “God saw that it was good” they have a mnemonic function

Some elements of the creation story recall widespread myths in the cultural environment surrounding Israel.
Myths are not fables; they are a symbolic way of representing great truths.
In particular, it is important to know how the cosmos was conceived:
The earth was imagined as a floating platform on the water and supported by pillars.
The heavenly vault was conceived as a cap placed above the earth on which the sun and the stars hung.
Above the cap were collected masses of water that descended on the earth like rain, ("the waters that are above the firmament").
Under the earth was the "Sheol", the place of darkness, where the dead were.
The story opens with the expression "In the beginning", that is, the absolute beginning of reality
In the Beginning… (ἐν ἀρχῇ) ἀρχῇ (“arch”) means first as in basis, not necessarily first in chronological time
Creation is not, therefore, the result of a struggle between gods, as for the ancient myths of Mesopotamia, but is born of the will and love of God
The biblical man believes that God created the world with intelligence and love
The expression that returns seven times "God saw that it was good", whose Hebrew word "tob" can also be translated as "beautiful" or "splendid", gives a very positive tone to the work of God.
For the Scripture, everything and every creature is "good" (1Cor 10.25, Col. 2:20) and the essence of creation is to be "gift".
The first word of Scripture, "Bereshit", that means "In the beginning", begins with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet "Bet";
The letter is written as a sort of square closed on three sides, but open to the left, the direction in which Hebrew is written;
Symbolically, it indicates that man cannot know what is under him, nor what is above him, or what is left behind him, but can only walk towards his own future;
The story of the Genesis does not have as its purpose to know what happened at the beginning but it is faith that God is guiding my journey;

IN THE BEGINNING (GENESIS CHAPTER 1ST – 11TH)

Gn 1: 1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. 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, one day.

Genesis wasn’t written by a scientist or a modern historian. Chapter one is pure poetry. Genesis 1-11, “pre-history,” is couched in figurative language.
In Bible or Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal by their words.
In order to discover the sacred author’s intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current.
The first move is to try to establish/discover the literary genre. A genre is a pattern of writing such that the writer asserts some things, not others. In a modern historical novel, he asserts the main line is history, does not assert that the fictional fill-ins are historical.
So - what is the genre of the creation stories? John Paul II in 1979 said: "The whole archaic form of the narrative manifests its primitive mythical character."
The term myth does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content.
The genre of the creation stories is myth; but he explained it is not just a fable. He meant it was using an ancient story to bring out some things that really happened.
«Bible is not a book that fell from heaven, written by a single author in a very specific period: each book of the Bible has its own - often complex! - history of composition, which may have lasted even centuries».

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF GENESIS

The book of Genesis is divided into two main parts: the history of the origins (chap. 1–11) and the history of the patriarchs (chap. 12–50). Each of these two parts had their own development process.

Gen 1-11 presents a horizon that concerns all of humanity and, through genealogies, the historical determinations of peoples.
Gen 12–50 story of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. God is the God of the fathers. These chapters state that only the descendants of the patriarchs will be members of the people of Israel and heirs of the promises.

The Genesis narratives are therefore not exact or inaccurate accounts of creation. This is not to say that they are not true. The same event is presented in such different and complementary ways, which shows the desire to preserve the mystery of creation, a mystery which is only spoken of with symbols. The purpose of these stories is therefore not to scientifically clarify the origin of the world and man, but to call man back to wonder and amazement, to lead him to recognize the Creator.

A certain current of Enlightenment thought still very widespread today in European high schools believes that the truth of a given, fact or event derives from its scientific correspondence. So, one thing is true if it is scientifically demonstrable. About the relationship between science and truth it is appropriate to ask:

Does the non-scientifical description of the facts mean not true?

Does the exact description of the facts immediately mean truth?

THE LITERARY GENRE OF GENESIS BOOK

The literary genre of the creation stories is mythological o symbolical
Symbol comes from the Greek word συμβάλλω which means to put together, to compare, to set beside, to liken.
In the use of the ancient Greeks, συμβάλλω was a mean/tool of recognition consisting of two parts obtained by irregularly breaking an object in two (for example, a coin or a piece of wood), which the descendants of different families kept as a sign of mutual friendship.
Myth is not simply a figment of the imagination and is not synonymous with fable, but an intuitive expression of the form of reality.
The myth has as its object the reality and history of man.
The myth is not polytheistic in itself, but expresses the reality of the divine according to the environment in which it is used.
The myth is not anti-historical or a-historical, but it is a poetic form of reading history, with a sapiential type procedure;

Genesis 1.1–2.4a

The opening chapters of the Bible are essential for our understanding of the rest of it. These opening chapters tell us what had been desired by God from the very beginning. The intent of the creation story is not to give a lesson in physics or biology, but a lesson in the theological order of things. We can read the first chapter of Genesis Book

1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters

In the beginning: The verse refers to the beginning of the world as we know it; it affirms that it is entirely the product of the creation of God. But there are two ways that this verse can be interpreted: (1) It may be taken to refer to the original act of creation with the rest of the events on the days of creation completing it. This would mean that the disjunctive clauses of v. 2 break the sequence of the creative work of the first day. (2) It may be taken as a summary statement of what the chapter will record, that is, vv. 3-31 are about God's creating the world as we know it. If the first view is adopted, then we have a reference here to original creation; if the second view is taken, then Genesis itself does not account for the original creation of matter. To follow this view does not deny that the Bible teaches that God created everything out of nothing (cf. John 1:3) - it simply says that Genesis is not making that affirmation. This second view presupposes the existence of pre-existent matter, when God said, "Let there be light." The first view includes the description of the primordial state as part of the events of day one. The following narrative strongly favors the second view, for the "heavens/sky" did not exist prior to the second day of creation (see v. 8) and "earth/dry land" did not exist, at least as we know it, prior to the third day of creation (see v. 10).]

The key to understanding this reading is contained in the second verse. Before creation, there was no shape to anything and everything was empty. God created everything out of nothing.

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, one day.

First, he introduces order into this chaos, dividing light from darkness dividing the higher waters from the lower waters, distributing land, sea, plants. Then he ornaments creation: sun, moon, stars; fish, birds; animals; man.

A careful reading of the verses shows that it was not God’s intention to give exact scientific information about the creation of each of these separate beings. His purpose was primarily one of teaching religious truths which we might summarize as follows:

All creation is the work of God alone. With creation time begins as a means of measuring physical phenomena. Creation therefore occurs without there being any preexisting matter. Hence the first effect of creation is the appearance of the chaotic mass previously mentioned.
This shows that only God is eternal. Everything else owes its existence to God, that is, is God’s creature, which means that God is distinct from the world and prior to it; he neither proceeds from nor depends on that initial chaos, as Babylonian or Assyrian cosmogonies make out: he transcends and is distinct from matter.

6 And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

God created: “bara”, means to bring into existence by cutting it out, as a tailor cuts out a garment. Therefore, everything in the material world was not created from nothing, but God used words to cut matter out of the spiritual reality in Himself. Bara occurs 57 times in the Bible, and every place would make good sense if we translated it cut out (or down, etc.). Gen 1:1 would be just as accurate if we translated it, First God cut out the heavens and the earth... God cut the material, psychological (animal, and human), and the human spirits out of the spiritual reality within Himself. It is used at three strategic places in Genesis 1. In v. 1 God created matter, then made various parts of the universe from that matter. In v. 21 God created soul life, and made various types of living creatures from that soul life. In v. 27 God created spirit life in Adam (and separated Eve from Adam), and from those two all humans have been made, with a spirit in the likeness of God, with a soul in common with animals, and with a body in common with the earth. In all the other verses the word made is used, Hebrew, asah. It means to make from existing materials. God created all things by His Spirit from within Himself by means of words. His words are spirit and life, John 6:63. They were the force by which spiritual reality was projected from inside of God into material reality.

Day 2 = sky and water

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 put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon 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, a third day.

Day 3 = land and vegetation

At the end of 3 days (three being the number of completions in Hebrew numerology) we have a creation which is no longer formless; God has completed forming it.

This creating, eternal, and totally transcendent being is the only true God; he cannot be confused with the polytheistic and pantheistic gods believed in at the time Genesis was written and to which the Israelites themselves were very inclined. Since God was separate and distinct from the universe he created, the Israelites were shown, in this new light of revelation, that God could not be confused with the sun or the moon or with the gods of the Assyrians: anything other than the transcendental God, the one true God, was his creation and therefore unworthy of worship.
Finally, God appears in this first creation account as almighty: “God said” . . . “and so it was.” Creation calls for no effort on his part, full of power and majesty, he provides everything with existence; and, furthermore, he maintains in existence everything he has created, by an act of his will. In creating things, he communicates to them his goodness: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). It could not be otherwise, because there is only one Creator, God, who is an infinite being and therefore infinitely good.

Now let's continue looking at the creation story:

14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament 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 firmament 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; he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon 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, a fourth day.

Day 4 = sun, moon and stars (which have dominion over the creation of day 1)

20 And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens." 21 So God created the great sea monsters 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, a fifth day.

Day 5 = birds and fish (which have dominion over the creation of day 2)

24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle 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 cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon 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 air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon 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 air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon 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 air, 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, a sixth day.

Day 6 = animals and man (which have dominion over the creation of day 3, as well as the creation which rules over day 2)

At the end of the second group of three days (again, the number of completion) the earth is no longer void; God has completed filling it. He has created rulers for the realms.

2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.

Day 7 = rest

The third group of days (once again the number of completion) is the seventh day (7 in Hebrew numerology is the number of perfection, which means the day of fullness, of the fulfillment of the covenant between God and his people). God has completed covenanting ("sevening") Himself with His creation and He has blessed it (given it the place of primacy) and made it holy.

TIME SPACE LIFE

A further element that testifies to the symbolic and unscientific construction (as it’s understood by positivism) of the account of creation according to the book of Genesis is the literary structure.

The illustration above shows the six directions, six keys of interpretation in which to read the story of biblical creation that presents itself according to a dynamism like a from ... to. God's intervention, God's creation is a gradual, growing action that radically changes reality.

A first horizontal line (the first three days) transforms the formless into full, the confused chaos into an ordered cosmos;

The second line (the second three days) develops from empty to full (of life), from shapeless space to the plurality of living beings.

There are also three vertical lines from bottom to top that help us understand the meaning of the creation story. Since light and dark were created on day one and the sun, moon and stars weren't created until day four, what do the day and night of day one portray? They describe the time which is measured by the passage of day and night. St. Thomas Aquinas is reported to have asked "What did God do before He created?" He then he answered his own question "Nothing, He didn't have the time."

Time is represented by the sequence of day and night, and corresponds to the creation on the fourth day, of the elements that define them: sun, moon and stars.

The second vertical line (the second and fourth days) shows the movement from empty space to full of life (fish and birds); the third movement (the third and six days) shows the transition and relation from animal life to human life.

The seventh day represents the day of the full accomplishment of the project of creation. It is the day when God rests and contemplates the beauty of creation, of heaven, of living beings and of man and woman. God's rest on the seventh day is not to be understood as a moment of idleness or the effect of fatigue, but rather wants to indicate the goal, the purpose of all creation which is the harmony and covenant between God and humanity, between man and woman, man and animals, man and the environment, among all living beings.

To better understand the meaning of the account of creation contained in the text of Genesis, it is appropriate to take a look at how creation was told among the peoples close to Israel, in the Middle East.

Archaeological excavations in the Near East have unearthed cosmogonical texts connected with mythological traditions about the origin of the world—Syro-Babylonian, Egyptian, Phoenician, etc. When these are deciphered and compared with Genesis, we find that they contain analogies and also basic differences. For example:

In Non-biblical documents:

The creation account is described as a theogony because it describes the birth of the deities: gods and demigods.
They assign no origin to the chaotic mass, the first product of creation.
They have no concept of the unity of the human race: the gods created more than one human couple and a multitude of cities.
They know nothing of covenant, or sabbath day of rest.

In Genesis book:

This is the only cosmogony (theory of the origin of the universe) proper that is theocentric in character.
God the Creator is one, almighty, transcendent, producing everything from nothing.
God formed only one human couple; the rest of the race came from them in a process of generation.
Genesis teaches the sabbath rest.

The analogies to be found between Sacred Scripture and non-biblical documents can be explained by reference to the existence of an initial mixing among different cultures, though in an adulterated form, in the cultures of Israel’s neighbors. However, aberrations in these accounts must be attributed to man’s imagination.

One created being stands out among all the rest as enjoying particular dignity—man. He was created in a special way: God made him in his own image (Gen. 1:27). This creation of man is described in more detail in Genesis 2: ”Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).

However, even though the word adam (= man, carrying no article) is indefinite, its content is then specified: “male and female he created them,” which indicates that initially there were only two individuals in the species, man and woman, whom God endowed with reproductive organs to enable them to carry out the sublime task of continuing God’s work, by multiplying the individuals in the human race, generation after generation. Adam and Eve were the first couple and therefore all other humans have a common origin.

What’s the meaning of «in his own image»?

To creating Adam, God wished him to have others of his kind: “Then the Lord God said: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ . . . So, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of Man (Gen. 2:18-23).

It is interesting to note that the sacred text points up the difference between woman and the animals. Once she is formed out of the man’s “rib” and man is awakened from his deep sleep, he remembers that he is different from all the animals. But now he has the being he has dreamed about, who is completely like him: He exclaims enthusiastically and gratefully: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23). He recognizes the woman as a human being, identical in nature to himself. The sacred writer simply reports this; as in the case of man, nothing specific is said about the matter which God used in shaping woman. The only thing which is made clear is that God worked in a direct and special way in creating both our first parents.

God chooses to introduce Himself to His creation by making a species in His own image and in accordance with His likeness. Rather than describing Himself, God chooses to introduce Himself to creation through the display of humankind. This capstone of His creative effort is created to know God and to be in relationship with Him. Through the observations of the full creation account of Gen. 1 and 2, the creatures created to be in relationship with the Divine can discover a touch of who this God is that created them according to the Divine likeness.

The form of the image and likeness of God is the holistic human being. The image of God in humankind is not limited to any particular characteristic, attribute, or function, but incorporates all the above. Humankind may be like God in the sense that he has the capacities of reason, intellect, self-conscience and personality, but they do not constitute humankind's likeness of God. The human being certainly has a corporeal structure, but it is not definitive of God's image. The image and likeness of God cannot be limited to any characteristic of the human being, but must be understood as the definitive essence of who humankind is. The human being, by definition, in its most foundational essence, is the image and likeness of the Almighty and intangible God. The male and female are God's representative to all creation. If the image and likeness of God were to be removed, humankind would be no more than an animal. The image and likeness of God is what makes adam an adam.

To appreciate fully the image of God in adam, one must consider the cohesive ideas of humankind's form and function. It is, however, entirely insufficient to limit the functional imaging of God to the assignment to rule and subdue all creation. Human dominion is an element of imaging God, but to make it the primary or exclusive aspect oversimplifies the issue by elevating one aspect of human nature and ignoring the clear emphasis in scripture to others.

The accurate understanding of humankind's functional imaging of God is that the human is primarily a relational being at every level of existence. The three relationships introduced in Gen. 1 :26-27, and later developed in chapter 2, are humankind in relationship to God, creation, and each other as male and female.

These three relationships demonstrate the very essence of who humankind is. The human being is uniquely able to be in fellowship and communication with God. The relationship with creation both gives humankind a place of dominion and incorporates the rest of God's creation into His covenant with humanity. Finally, adam is designed as male and female with a deep and intimate unity with one another. Through these three relationships we discover the functional element of the image of God in humankind.

Therefore, the likeness of the image of God in adam is understood to be the holistic (integral, entire) human being as displayed in relational fellowship with God, dominion over creation, and intimate union with each other as male and female. This explanation can only be understood in the unified context of Gen. 1 and 2, as well as keeping in mind the perspective of scripture as a whole.

From understanding what the image of God is, one can then understand something about God Himself. One learns that God Himself is relational, seeking to have relationship with the human being. He, too, has a kingdom, in which humankind is invited to live and work. Finally, and learns that there is a unified plurality in the Godhead, and that He has an incredible love for humankind.

Gen 1 is a hymn to creation that aims to arouse wonder and amazement in man, so that he can associate himself with the gaze of God who for 7x "sees everything he had done and behold it was beautiful / good". The dominant theme of Gen 1 is therefore not revealing how God created the universe and man, but in view of what goal. In Gen 1,1-2,4a we therefore find a synthesis of the theology of history:

the significance of the creation of the world and of man directed towards the fulfillment of the seventh day of God;
man's sense of time in its alternation of working days and holidays;
the meaning of the calendar in use at the time of the authors;
history interpreted as a continuous dialogue between God and man, based on the fact that God himself willed humanity in his image and likeness.

One of the most important principles of Catholic Biblical interpretation is that the reader of the Scriptural texts must be sensitive to the genre or literary type of the text with which he is dealing. Just as it would be counter-indicated to read Moby Dick as history or "The Waste Land" as social science

The dominant theme of Gen 1 is therefore not revealing how God created the universe and man, but in view of what goal.

The author of Genesis simply wasn't doing what Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Hawking were doing; he wasn't attempting to explain the origins of things in the characteristically modern manner, which is to say, on the basis of empirical observation, testing of hypotheses, marshalling of evidence, and experimentation. Therefore, to maintain that the opening chapters of Genesis are "bad science" is a bit like saying The Iliad is bad history or The Chicago Tribune is not very compelling poetry.

In the Genesis account Yahweh (the Hebrew God’s name) brought forth the whole of created reality through great acts of speech: “Let there be light”, and there was light; “Let the dry land appear and so it was.” In almost every mythological cosmology in the ancient world, God or the gods establish order through some act of violence. They conquer rival powers or they impose their will on some recalcitrant matter.

The Mesopotamians and Canaanites also knew of an earthly paradise such as Eden. Similarly, the Babylonians told of the formation of humankind from clay. But, whereas in the pagan tale the first man’s function is to serve as an earthly menial/slave of the gods, in the scriptural version his role is to rule over all other creatures. Already in the Babylonian myths of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis describe this situation. The creation of humankind was a consequence of a war among gods. The Igigi gods rebelled against the Annunaki gods, because they were forced to work hard. That is why they have decided to create human beings as slaves in their place.

But there is none of this in the Biblical account. God doesn't subdue some rival or express his will through violence. Rather, through a sheerly generous and peaceful act of speech, he gives rise to the whole of the universe.
This means that the most fundamental truth of things – the metaphysics that governs reality at the deepest level – is peace and non-violence.
Can you see how congruent this is with Jesus' great teachings on non-violence and enemy love in the Sermon on the Mount? The Lord is instructing his followers how-to live-in accord with the elemental grain of the universe.
Secondly, we are meant to notice the elements of creation that are explicitly mentioned in this account: the heavens, the stars, the sun, the moon, the earth itself, the sea, the wide variety of animals that roam the earth. Each one of these was proposed by various cultures in the ancient world as ‘gods’ and objects of worship.
Many of the peoples that surrounded Israel held sky, stars, sun, moon, the earth, and various animals to be gods. By insisting that these were, in fact, created by the true God, the author of Genesis was, not so subtly, de-throning false claimants to divinity and disallowing all forms of idolatry.
Mind you, the author of Genesis never tires of reminding us that everything that God made is good (thus holding off all forms of dualism, Manichaeism and Gnosticism), but none of these good things is the ultimate good.
A third feature that we should notice is the position and role of Adam, the primal human, in the context of God's creation. He is given the responsibility of naming the animals, "all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts" (Gen. 2:20).
Naming God's creatures in accord with the intelligibility placed in them by the Creator, Adam is the first scientist and philosopher, for he is, quite literally, "cataloguing" the world he sees around him. (Kata Logon means "according to the word").
From the beginning, the author is telling us, God accords to his rational creatures the privilege of participating, through their own acts of intelligence, in God's intelligent ordering of the world.
This is why, too, Adam is told, not to dominate the world, but precisely to "cultivate and care for it" (Gen. 2: 16), perpetuating thereby the non-violence of the creative act.

In the book of Genesis we find two different stories of the creation of man and woman, probably due to two different origins and narrative strands.

The Two Stories of Creation

| First Story of Creation • Genesis 1:1–2:4a • “seven days of creation” • the setting is water •Order of creation: plants, animals, humans • man is created at the same moment in the “image of God” | Second Story of Creation • Genesis 2:4b–25 • setting is barren land • order of creation: human, plants, animals • God creates man out of the mud and “breathes life” into man • man is named: Adam and Eve | | --- | --- |

Genesis 1st chapter:

6 And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. 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.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament 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 firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.

20 And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves.

24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 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 air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon 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 air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

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, a sixth day.

Genesis 2nd chapter:

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
6

7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
20

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
The Bible or Holy Scripture are not one type of book but a library of books. They contain many different types of writing.
While the Torah (= it’s a Jewish term concerning the first 5 books of Bible) gives two different accounts of creation, these accounts are not contradictory narratives but are intended to overlap one another.
The first account of creation (Gen 1:1-2:3) is general and cosmological, describing the six days of creation and a seventh day of rest;
The second account (Gen 2:4-25) elaborates upon the general statement given earlier that man was made by b’tzelem Elohim = in the image of God on the six day (Gen 1:2627).
In other words, Genesis 1 describes the general structure of the six days of creation, whereas Genesis 2 provides clarifying details regarding the creation of man during the sixth days of creation.
The second account immediately follows the description of the six days of creation, just after we read that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day because on it He rested from all his work that he had done.
Why are there two, especially two that seem to contradict each other?
In particular, mankind is created after the animals and plants in chapter 1, but before them in chapter 2. Scholars tell us the two accounts were written at very different times by different people;
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Genesis wasn’t written by a scientist or a modern historian. Chapter one is pure wisdom. Genesis 1-11, “pre-history,” is couched in figurative language;
The questions of our age are scientific: HOW did the world begin? WHEN did it come into being, and by WHAT exact process? WHICH came first and how did the next being evolve?
The questions of the ancient world were different: WHO created? WHO’s in charge? WHY am I here, and HOW do I relate to other beings? WHY is there evil and can anything be done about it?

The “days” of creation are symbolic

 Genesis 1 is poetic, and poetic structure has meaning. Sequential days are not there for themselves, to show time sequence, but rather to show order and hierarchy. (If the goal had been sequence, the sun would come before the light!).

 Notice that all begins in darkness, formlessness, and emptiness. On “days” one through three God banishes the darkness and brings order to the chaos: heaven and sky, earth and land. On “days” four through six God fills the void, populating each realm in the same order. God makes people only after everything is ready for them to live in and rule. They are the “end” as in purpose, not sequence, of the created universe.

 The march of days also forms a sort of literary “arrow” pointing to chapter two and the seventh day. It reveals the grand purpose of creation: that everything is ordered to the Sabbath and worship of God.

 Genesis 1 is a prologue to the rest.

How fitting that this poetic tribute, which was probably written much later than chapter two, is placed at the start of Genesis. It functions like an “Entrance Hymn” to the great drama of salvation. While it is sung, God fills the stage and the other players take their place around him as created things and beings, each with its own dignity within its own sphere. All is in order and very good.  There’s a perspective shift between chapters.

In Genesis 1, the reader’s a distant observer of the creation of the universe. Genesis 2 zooms in for a close-up on the “man” God created everything for.

 Sequence shows relationship in chapter two.

Once again, sequence is not about time. Events are arranged to show truth about humanity in relationship to God, the animals, and the world. Chapter 1 told us man was created in God’s image, given dominion over the earth, and told to be fruitful and multiply. What does that mean, and how are we to understand it?

 Human being creation in Genesis 2nd chapter. By starting—not ending—with the creation of man, the author is able to show many things, among them:

Man is made from dust. He does not evolve from something else and no other being is used to create him; there is nothing else.
Vegetation is for man’s food and pleasure and to teach obedience—he is creature, not creator, and must learn to relate to God.
The animals are created so man will know his special status—that he’s made for more. He doesn’t come from them; they are brought to him and he names and rules them.
Man is only complete when God brings from his body another, the woman. Side by side, they will not only rule, but fill the earth. Together they are in God’s image: male and female; ruling the earth; fruitful. They live in harmony with creation, with each other, and with God.