Title: Two Creation Stories
two creation stories
Genesis 1:12:4-7
Who witnessed and wrote the biblical creation story when the universe was created? Of course not. If there is such a person, he is probably ‘God’. The story of creation is not a record in the beginning, but a confession in the middle of history. It is also an answer to their survival questions under the threat of Mother Nature. In this article, it is futile to try to discover the question of creation or evolution, the mystery of the creation of the universe, or the scientific process of evolution, which are of interest to modern people. These questions are the questions that modern people have faced since the advent of the theory of evolution. In the pre-evolutionary era, even in the biblical era, it was very clear that the whole universe was created by God. They did not need to reveal the obvious facts because they had no other world than what God had made.
The creation story in Genesis consists of two stories if you look closely. The first story is from Genesis 1:1 through 2:4 first half. Here, the world appears as full of water before God created it.
“The earth is chaotic and empty … … The Spirit of God was moving on the water” (1:2).
God appears in a world full of water and begins his creative act. In the first story, God's creative act is shown in the form of removing water to give dry land to humans. The ancient Babylonian cosmos thought that the whole world was filled with water. God makes a bow-shaped expanse in the sky to keep the water from falling to the earth (the second day of creation). God also collects the water on the earth into the sea and gives dry land for humans to live on (the third day of creation).
On the other hand, in the second creation story, which starts from the second half of verse 4, the world before creation is in a dry state without a drop of water.
“Because the Lord God did not send rain on the earth, and no man had yet to plow it, the earth had no trees, and the grass had not yet sprouted” (2:5).
Therefore, God's act of creation also causes water to spring up from the earth and water the whole earth. A spring springs up from the center of Eden and flows in all directions as rivers, making Eden fertile.
Why are the two creation stories so different?
The first story was formed when the Israelites were taken captive by the rivers of Babylon (587-538 B.C.). They lived in a flooded area downstream where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet, and when the flood flooded, the entire home they had cultivated was in ruins and turned into a sea of water. In the midst of this, they confessed that God is the One who gives people dry land so that they can maintain a comfortable life.
The second creation story is set in the arid Canaan region and was collected during the Davidic dynasty (1,000-921 B.C.). The land of Canaan is a desert region, and water is very precious. The rare springs and oasis were the precious lifeline of their lives. The God here, on the other hand, was the One who made a spring spring up in the middle of the garden and a river to flow in all directions.
Also, the order of creation is different. The story of Chapter 1 fits in similarly with the sequence of the theory of evolution. God created fish and animals, and finally man. On the other hand, in the story in Chapter 2, people were created first, and then plants and animals were created. This is because the first story is more than four hundred years later, and it was written in Babylon, the center of the greatest civilization at that time, because it reflects the science developed about the structure and organization of animals and plants.
The story of creation in the Bible comes from the fierce field of life and is also the story of the struggle to overcome it. Human power was too small and insignificant compared to the huge natural environment (floods and droughts) that threatened the survival of the ancients. As a result, they were forced to sit helplessly in the face of the threatening attack of nature. In this environment, we confess that God Himself is working to create a good environment for them. He takes the lead and blocks the water, and sometimes even sends a stream of water in all directions. This confession calls for renewed will to individuals who are discouraged in the face of the ruthless destruction of nature and to fight against every threat that destroys their lives.
Until now, Western theology has seen “salvation” only in the relationship between God and man. In the story of creation, God's command and the origin of human sin against him have been told. A very inner, psychological, and personal salvation is spoken of, and this was sufficient as a religious act taking place in a closet, a prayer house in a mountain, or a church. So nature was not taken into account. As in the story above, it would be rather a disaster if God caused a stream of water to spurt out in the area of Babylon where the flood overflows. Now, we must see God's salvation in the three-way relationship of God-man-nature. Here, nature refers not only to the natural environment, but also to the society, situation, and history in which humans live. Talking about “salvation” out of context with the society we live in is abstract and empty.
Although the creation story is repeated in Genesis as well as in Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs and New Testament epistles. Creation faith is continually confessed whenever human life is threatened. God's creation is not a one-time event in the past, but an ongoing one. In particular, environmental pollution or damage to nature like today is hindering God's creative act, and today we are asked to confess another creation.
In the old days, our ancestors tried to harmonize with the flow of mountains and water, even if they built a house or set up a grave site. The oriental tradition knew as the basis of all human history the principle of adapting and conforming to nature so that the artificial did not go against nature. However, Western civilization has arbitrarily cut, damaged, and altered nature. The basis of this Western thinking is that it stems from the five commands of God mentioned in the following verses.
God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. Conquer the land. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
The five propositions above are mobilized as the basis for Western expansionism, is that true? These texts were written in the Book of Exile. If so, is the phrase “conquer and rule” really appropriate for the current situation in captivity? W. Brueggemann raises a question here, saying that these directives should be understood as counter-refutations of the prisoners of poverty, defeat and despair suffered by their predecessors, and as declarations of human rights in the face of their oppression.
Grows/no more offspring
Thrive/no longer desolate
full of the earth/no longer freed from the earth
conquer / no longer subordinate
to rule/to no longer be ruled
Western history applied these words to human affairs as well as nature and incited them religiously, driving Christians into the medieval crusades, the conquest of the new continent, and the modern wars of colonial expansion in the West. However, these propositions are not the logic to justify the position of conquering and ruling, but rather the declaration of the great human right on the part of the dominated and exploited, that no human being should be ruled or subordinated to others.