Editors note: This post follows up on my previous post on March 24, 2025, which focused on a new view of science and religion.
Genesis: The Creation Story
The innocent first chapter of Genesis, only eight hundred or so words, has borne the weight of much of the conflict between science and religion in recent centuries. The need to read it literally as written so that it was all accomplished in 168 hours (7 days) contorts the Genesis account and the entire Bible, faith, and science into something it is not. The Bible contains a great deal of history but is not a book of history or science or an exact timepiece.
As spoken of in my last posting, it is time to move on from the model of either science or faith. There are plenty of other ways to test faith (mostly based on our ability to love). The demand for belief in 168 hours is one of the worst and most misdirected.
- Genesis was most likely written in two sections. Chapters 1 – 11 cover creation through the Tower of Babel. God and the whole world. During ancient times about which little is known. Chapters 12-50 describe God’s relationship with Abraham and his family.
- This posting will focus on the first chapter.
- In chapter one, we get the highlights of creation, the miracle of all miracles: that the cosmos exists as an act of a benevolent God. This is given without much elaboration, explanation, philosophy, or theology. There is plenty of room for interpretation. As was the custom, the rabbis did a lot of commenting for all of the Torah, as recorded in the Midrash.
- In the sciences of evolution and physics, we get the details. In the beginning, the world was void and without form. Or, as astronomy has said, Earth was first a gaseous cloud filled with specks of dust circling the sun. Geneses describes the creation from the perspective of a person 3000 years ago using all of the observational skills any person had. Astronomy with its many more newer tools updates that view. It does not contradict it unless you have a restrictive view of biblical truth. Essentially, science reflects how God created and continues to create. The Bible tells us that God makes the rain to fall. (Leviticus 26:4, Psalms 147:8). Physics tells how he does it: by using gravity.
- Geneses Chapter One seems to divide into two groups of three verses. The first group focuses on the spheres and basics of light and dark and sky. The second group focuses on specific features, land and sea creatures, and vegetation until creation arrives at humanity. Evolution is built into the narrative in remarkably intuitive, inspired ways.
Now for a review of some of the fascinating details and questions that arise with the specific verses.
- 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. The Hebrew word is past tense, indicating in remote, unknowable time of antiquity. It is sort of a preface. A puzzling feature is that it does not say who is speaking here.
- 2. “Without form and void” implies confusion, chaos, or perhaps emptiness. The same Hebrew words are used in Isaiah 34:11. Creation begins with nothingness exploding into the ‘everythingness’ as in the Big Bang as spoken of in Quantum Physics.
- 3 And God said, “And Let there be light,” and there was light. This phrase is repeated several times as though God decreed or willed it, and it happened. Again, astronomy provides more details of how the process occurs
- Vs 4. “And God saw that the light was good and separated the light from the darkness.” Begins with a fundamental. If you’re sitting in Israel several thousand years ago, you have no sense that the earth is spinning on its axis, let alone orbiting the sun. But you are very aware of light and darkness. Again, the intuition is that everything is still unformed and chaotic, blowing through a previously black universe, bringing light with it.
- 11-12. Vegetation, plants growing things to feed what was coming. But for the first time, the Earth is bringing it forth—part of the long-term design.
- 20. Creatures, those with fins. The Hebrew implies crocodiles, sharks, and fish are included with whales, from the gigantic to the smallest.
- 24. Then beasts of land. Also, with the intuition of life beginning in the seas, as is understood with evolution.
- 26-30. Finally, humans. After the others. Evolution continues. Humans were created in the image of God, with their particular responsibilities of having “dominion.”
- 28 specific orders us to be fruitful and multiply. This is perhaps the verse in the Bible that humanity has fulfilled most fully. In the beginning, there were only a few, and now, there are eight billion. We got that one right, perhaps too right. We need to face the problems this creates.
- Then God rested not because she was tired but knew this part was finished.
Nothing to fight about or argue with. Mostly a story written from the perspective of the sixth century BCE with amazing intuition into the process outlined by science several thousand years later.
Finally, sometimes, it is the poets who understand well enough to melt the conflicts of others into the beauty of love.
We must learn to walk again
like the first man
like the first woman
to venture out
from an encampment
a cave
to view the vastness of creation
for the first time
that intaking of breath
the naming of things in bloom
in flight
as fear became curiosity
curiosity melting into love
have declared in action
in poetry
the song and dance routine
of our forefathers.
Gabriel Rosenstock
Resources
Bible commentary.
Genesis chapter 1.
Gabriel Rosenstock’s poem is found in Hymn to the Earth: Photographs by Ron Rosenstock. (Ron is a local photographer. Gabriel is a poet in Ireland. They are not related.)
