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notes
Creation story of Genesis 1:1-2:4
Observations
- Poetic nature
- Evening and Morning vs Morning and Evening... should stick out to us as westerners
- "It is good" is something God sees regularly
- Plants created on day 3, sun not until day 4, so how do the plants survive or anything?
- Days are only measured, in human history, by the sun - so how are the first 3 days even days?
- this poem is not about how the world was made, but about who made it
- The poem is not only about creating but also resting...
- Day 5 corresponds to day 2 where day 2 is separation and day 5 is filling
- Day 4 to day 1
- Day 6 to day 3
- God doesn't actually create much - he separates and brings order to the chaotic nothingness - to-hu wa bo-hu
- Chiastic structure of the creation narrative
- The first part of the story mirrors the last part
- Genesis 1 is both types of chiasms at the same time
- from a literary (like looking at the words) perspective we see ABCDDCBA wherein the paragraph's structure is chiastic in its form... day 1 is a "baby paragraph", day 2 "mommy paragraph", day 3 "daddy paragraph" etc. except that day 6 is not a "baby paragraph" because the creation of man sticks out a bit - making it kind of hard to see.
- from a material perspective, as noted, it's the other kind of chiasm of ABCDABCD where day 1,2,3 are separation, and days 4,5,6 are filling of the things that were separated on days 1,2,3 respectively
How can we be sure it's poetic?
A: patterns...
- 3 days mirror 3 days, so we'd expect some patterns of 3.
- The god is creator, word, and spirit
- the poem is about rest
- bara (create) shows up in 3 places, beginning, middle, and end
- at the end it shows up 3 times in rapid fire
- 7 days making us think of patterns of 7
- verse 1 has 7 words
- verse 2 has 14 words
- earth shows up 21 times
- God shows up 35 times
- it was so shows up 7 times
- God saw shows up 7 times
- Are there patterns of 10?
- to make, according to its kind, and God said all show up 10 times
- And God said...
- around 18 minute mark?
Bookends
* Story starts with "chaotic nothingness" (to-hu wa bo-hu)
* Story ends with God resting (doing nothing)
* So the story is bookended by "nothingness"
So what's the center?
- mo-ed - the day for "seasons" in the creation on day 4
- Sabbath is a "season", a festival, and is a common theme. It's put forth that the entire story is about rest, bookended by nothingness and the center "treasure" is rest.
Why?
- Israel spent 400 years in slavery, valued only by how many bricks an individual can produce.
- Gods' story outlines how he feels about humanity and creation... the creation of man sticks out weirdly from the chiasm, and is the last thing made before "it was very good", and then on the 7th day there is no "evening and morning"...
evening and morning
The Hebrew day begins with rest, not with waking up and thinking about what to do... very opposed to the western mindset where our day begins with waking up. In God's economy, the day begins with rest, not with thinking about what we can do to prove our worth