Creation

Ruth Kertzer Seidman
D’var Torah, Shabbat Bereishit,
27 Tishrei 5776
October 10, 2015

I would like to dedicate this D’var Torah on Creation to my late mother-in-law, Rose Seidman, whose yahrzeit was on the fifth day of Sukkot.  She loved the natural world, and she was what we call a “people person”, so I think this very first part of Bereishit fits in well with our memories of her. 

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Today in our Torah reading, Chapter 1 of Genesis and the very beginning of Chapter 2, we heard a story about the creation of the world.  The actual Torah portion for this week continues for several chapters.  The rest of Chapter 2, which I will also discuss, tells what most scholars consider to be an alternate story of creation.  

Religious communities generally have creation myths, also called cosmogonic myths.  It is said the community’s myths are stories that express the basic values of that religious community.  Once we have looked at the two creation accounts in Genesis, I think it will be interesting to consider what these stories tell us about the values of the our ancestors who originally told them, and about the values of the Jews of today as we read  these stories once again.  

There are many types of cosmogonic myths.  Here is one way of looking at the various categories

  1. Creation by a supreme being who is wise and all powerful and who exists alone prior to the creation of the world.  Often the supreme being is a sky deity.  Examples are found in African cultures, among native Americans, and in all parts of the world. 
  2. Creation through emergence.  In these stories, the creation seems to emerge through its own inner power from under the earth, gradually, in continuous stages.  An example is the Navaho myth of emergence.
  3. Creation by world parents.  Here the world is created as the progeny of a primordial mother and father representing earth and sky; they appear at a late stage of creation, after a period of chaos.  The Babylonian myth Enuma Elish represents this story.
  4. Creation from the cosmic egg, the totality from which all creation comes.  The egg is also a symbol of procreation, rebirth, a new life, and the possibility of perfection.  These stories are found in Mali, ancient Greece, China, and in Hinduism and Buddhism.
  5.  Creation by earth divers.  Waters are present before the earth has been created.  An animal plunges into the eater to secure a portion of earth.  The animal is a prehuman species.  In some of these stories, in central European myths for example the devil appears as God’s companion in the creation of the world—the devil is sent by God to bring the earth from the bottom of the waters. In some of these stories God and the devil become adversaries, and this is an explanation for the existence of evil in the world.

As we will see, the Genesis story in Chapter 1 is largely of the first category, creation by a supreme being.  However, the account in Chapter 2 also brings in the idea of creation by emergence from below, with a welling up from the ground and water, and the creation of Adam from the dust. 

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And now to our Torah portion:  The Hebrew Bible has two stories of creation.  If you are familiar with the documentary hypothesis of the origins of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, you might be interested to know that the first story Is ascribed to the P (the  Priestly) source, and the second to the J (the Jahwist) source. 

The first story (Genesis 1:1 to 2:4):   God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  There is darkness and void, and God creates cosmic order out of the primeval chaos.  Day 1, day and night.  Day 2, sky.  Day 3, dry land, seas, and vegetation.  Day 4, sun, moon, and stars.  Day 5, living creatures including great sea monsters.  Day 6, “And God created man in his image…He created him, male and female.”  God blessed them and said “be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it: and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”  On the seventh day God rested.  God blessed the seventh day and called it holy.   (We read all of this today.)

The second story (Genesis 2:5-24):  God has made the earth and heaven, but there was no rain, no vegetation, and no humans, “but a surge (or flow) would well up from the ground and water all the face of the soil”.  Then God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  God planted a garden and put the man in it, with the tree of life in the middle, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

The four rivers, including the Tigris and the Euphrates, are described.  This places Creation in Mesopotamia.

The man is told to tend his garden and is instructed that he is free to eat of all trees but the tree of knowledge of good and evil “for as soon as you eat of it, you will die.”

God then says that man should not be alone and needs a helper, and gives him wild beasts and birds “formed out of the earth”.  Adam names them all, but finds among them no fitting helper.  So God casts a deep sleep on Adam, takes out one of his ribs (also translated as his side), closes up the flesh, and fashions a woman and brings her to the man.  Adam says:  “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  This one shall be called Woman for from man she was taken.”  The text then says:  “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.”

What are some of the differences in the two stories? 

  1.  The name of God:  Elohim in the first version and the Tetragammaton YHWH in the second.  (Yahweh—Yod Hey Vav Hey)  (explain the two terms)
  2. In the first the creation of plants (3rd day) precedes the creation of Man (6th day).
  3. Animals are created after Man in the second version.
  4. Male and female were created together in the first account, both in the image of God.
  5. The Sabbath is not mentioned in the second account.
  6. The second account does not mention day and night, seas, sun, moon, stars, but goes immediately to man created from the dust.
  7. The second story is considered to be from an earlier source (at one time called a more primitive source, but we don’t use that terminology now).  The first story thus has more values expressed, such as that God calls “good” each stage of creation, God gives blessings, God rests on the seventh day and blesses it.  Adam is made in God’s image.

Both stories are said to have their roots in earlier Mesopotamian creation stories—Egyptian and Babylonian.  Some themes are:  creation by divine fiat, the importance of water in some traditions and of the dust of the earth in others, the presence of sea monsters, the plural “let us create” referring back to a godly king and his divine council. 

The major difference between the earlier stories from other cultures and the stories in the Hebrew Bible is the conception of a single, omnipotent Creator.  We do not have a story of God’s origin—the God of the Hebrew Bible has always existed.  In technical terms:  “Cosmogeny is not linked to theogeny”.  The pre-existence of God is assumed.  In other cultures, the universe results from a battle between various gods (water, earth, sky); Genesis has no such stories. 

There are some traces of these earlier myths from other cultures elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, but they do not appear in the Genesis story.  I will give two examples.  In Isaiah 27:1,

On that day the Lord will punish,
With His great, cruel, mighty sword
Leviathan the Elusive Serpent—
Leviathan the Twisting Serpent;
He will slay the Dragon of the sea.

This is from the sea monster myth of older cultures.  A footnote to the JPS translation (2nd. Ed.)—I assume to help the modern reader—states that the monster is the embodiment of the chaos before creation, standing for the forces of evil in the present world.

Another mention of the sea monster preceding creation (Psalms 74:12-17)

God….it was You who ….smashed the heads of the monsters in the waters
It was You who crushed the heads of Leviathan
…It was You who set in place the orb of the sun
Who fixed all the boundaries of the earth
Summer and winter—You made them.

Let’s get back to the question of what these stories tell us about the values of those who passed them on from one generation to another and finally chose these two stories to include in the Bible.  (This selection process is called canonization.)  We will then consider the values that Jews today can find in these stories.  I will suggest some possibilities and would like to hear your ideas. 

In the ancient document:

  1.  God is the supreme creator, to whom one owes everything—the world and all that is in it, and one’s very life.  As I mentioned earlier, God is eternal–the existence of God is assumed to be forever in the past, present, and future.  This is an underlying principle of ancient Judaism.
  2. Ours is a good and an orderly world.  Order was created out of that which was unformed and void.  The implication is that one is to lead an orderly life, and maintain the order of creation.
  3. Humans are also told to be fertile and increase—fill the earth and master it. 
  4. The Priestly version says that the first human was made in God’s image.  This has profound implications for human behavior, at least as an ideal.  Yet in the J story, man is made from dust.  This is carried out later in the third chapter of Genesis, when Adam is told as he is expelled from Eden:  “from dust you are and to dust you shall return.”  How do we reconcile these seemingly divergent concepts?
  5. In the Priestly version, we have the concept of holiness—God blesses the Sabbath as holy. Later in the Bible, in Leviticus, Parshat Kedoshim, we are told that God is holy and that the Israelites as God’s people are to be a holy.  This was an important value for our ancestors.

What do these creation stories tell us about what the Jewish community values today?  As post-halakhic Jews (we do not feel bound by Jewish law), we still dutifully read these stories at the beginning of every Jewish year.  I assume that we do not look on them as history, but rather as the beginning of our community’s basic text.   I will suggest a few possible ideas for values,  and in the process raise some questions.

  1.  An orderly world.  I think that we still believe in this, even more so because of what scientists of the last several hundred years have discovered about the physical and biological world
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  2. Humans made in the image of God.  For those who believe in a divine Being, this belief can follow.  For those with a more nuanced idea of God as a force for good in the world, this concept can still work.  Think about what it means to be made in the image of God, when we see God as a force for all that is good.
  3. “Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and master it.”  I’ll take these two concepts one at a time.

These are just a few ideas about applicability to our lives today.   

-Be fertile and multiply.  Some Jews take this quite literally.  I, however, interpret this in terms of creating and providing for future generations.  This includes such things as creating and supporting educational institutions, preserving and passing on our civilization.  (I am a librarian and information specialist, so preserving and communicating knowledge has been a big part of my life.)

-Fill the earth and master it.  “Mastering the earth” is more problematical.  It has led to the despoliation of natural resources, the idea of manifest destiny, and a justification for empire building and colonialism.  Many years ago when I was working for the Environmental Protection Agency, I was at a national environmental conference.  A very prominent environmentalist saw my badge (in an elevator) and asked me if I was protecting the environment FOR people or FROM people.  This is a good question and one that our society grapples with.  I think I told him I hoped it was both. 

4. The two stories of the origin of the sexes.  In the first story, the male and female appear to be created at the same time. “And God created Man in his image, in the image of God He created him; male and female.”  In the second, probably older, story, man is created first, and the female, designed to be his helpmeet, and comes later.  Needless to say, contemporary commentators, particularly feminists, have had a lot to say about this.  One story supports woman’s supposedly traditional role and the other story supports the more liberated attitude of equality that many of us espouse. 

5. Sabbath as a day of rest and rejuvenation.  In my opinion, this concept is valuable today as so many people are seeking peace of mind and tranquility.  They try everything:  exercise, yoga, cruises, tranquilizers, alcohol, counseling, support groups, massage, aromatherapy, and probably many things I’ve never heard of. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with some of these approaches—I partake of some of them myself—but I would think that a day of rest every week might be a something to consider. 

Much more could be said about the creation stories in the Hebrew Bible, but I will stop here.  I’d be interested in your thoughts on any of this, and your take on what these stories tell us about what was important to our ancestors and to us.