The Bookends of Creation…Imitation Dei

Who wrote the Bible? God or Divinely inspired men? How long is a day without the sun and the moon to mark the passage of time? The answers to these questions are unknowable. I don’t know who authored the Torah, but studying the Biblical story of Creation may help us feel more comfortable with that uncertainty.

The Torah or Old Testament is full of “bookends.” The first book of the Bible, Genesis, opens with God creating a home (world) for mankind. The second book of the Bible, Exodus, concludes with the Israelites building a home (Sanctuary) for God.  Bookends.

There are two creation narratives in Genesis that serve as bookends to each other. I thought that the second was an elaboration of the first. I was wrong; these are two separate stories with different styles and different story lines. In the first Creation Story, God is Transcendent, beyond this world. In the second Creation Story, God is in this world or Immanent.

The first creation story begins with Genesis 1:1 “When God began to create Heaven and Earth…” and ends in Genesis 2:4 “such is the story of Heaven and Earth when they were created.” The repetition of Heaven and Earth form the bookends which frame this first narrative of creation. This story is tightly structured and repetitive. Each day of creation is numbered, and God said that it was good on each of the days of creation. On the sixth day, God creates land animals, man, and woman in this order. Man and woman are created together at the same time. In this narrative, God is called Elohim.

The second creation story commences in Genesis 2:4 with “When God made Earth and Heaven…” This story is not structured; it is meandering. It lacks the repetitive phrasing of the first story.  In this narrative, there are no days of creation and God creates man, animals, and woman in this order. Eve is created from Adam’s rib. In this story, the Garden of Eden is first mentioned, and God is called YHVH.

In the first story, God is majestic and transcendent. He is distant and beyond this world. He creates everything, ex nihilo, out of nothing, using the Divine Energy contained in His words. In the second story, God is down to Earth, present, and immanent. He is approachable. He speaks to Adam and Eve; His footsteps can even be heard in the Garden of Eden.

The first Creation story is seven days in length. Against all scientific evidence to the contrary, are we to believe that God created everything in a mere week? Must Jewish people believe in the seven days of creation story? Well, how could this be when the sun and the moon, our two measures for the passage of time, were created on day four? Psalms 90:4 states that for God “a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past…” Might the seven days of creation be more like the seven millennia of Creation? Like many other parts of the Torah, the story of Creation may be a metaphor, in this instance, for the process of evolution from a state of primordial chaos and confusion to our present state (of confusion). How can a day be 24 hours in duration when there was no sun and no moon with which to mark the passage of time. Perhaps the Hebrew word “yom,” which is translated as day is more like an era, epoch, or millennia of time.

The second Creation story is unstructured and lacks the demarcation of time. Time is less important than the outcomes of this story. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that a closed system progresses from a lower to a higher level ofentropy (a greater degree disorganization). The Entropy (disorganization) of the Universe is always increasing.  Genesis 1:2 says that the world was “tohu u vohu;” without form and void, characterized by confusion and emptiness.  The next sentence is “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”  So, God inserts both the Energy of his words and the Energy of Light into a system that is highly disorganized (which He created) and transforms disorder into order.  Over seven millennia, chaos evolves into day and night, water and land, vegetation and photosynthesis, sea creatures, land animals, and mankind.

There are two creation stories and thus there are Man1,2 and Woman1,2.  Genesis 1:27 says “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” together. Some Biblical scholars’ postulate that Adam1 was a hermaphrodite, having both male and female characteristics. Others think that when God created Adam1 from the dust, He also created Woman1 at the same time. She was named Lilith. Tradition says that they could not get along and Lilith ran away from Adam.

Genesis 2:7 says “And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2:21,22 states “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept, and He took one of his sides, and He closed the flesh in its place.​And the Lord God built the side that He had taken from man into a woman, and He brought her to man.” In this second Creation story, Eve was created from Adam’s rib.  Adam and Eve lived together in the Garden of Eden until they were both expelled from there.

Two Creation stories. Two Adams. One Lilith. One Eve. Seven Eras of Creation. Creation through the energy of God’s words. Whoa, not quite as simple and linear as taught in Hebrew school. Was the Old Testament dictated to Moses by God, or are multiple storylines edited into the present text? I do not know. But perhaps Greek philosophy and Latin can help us move from Creation to Action.

Imago Dei is the notion that all of mankind is created in the image of God. Imitatio Dei is the concept that we should walk in, or act in, God’s ways. God buries the dead. God gives clothes the naked. God visits the sick. God supports the poor. We should all do the same. Granted today God works both through His Divine Agency and through our Human Agency.  The essence of Judeo-Christian theology may be found in Deuteronomy 28:9 “The LORD will establish you as His holy people, as He swore to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways.” In other words, the world can be repaired (Tikuun Olam) and we can be redeemed, by walking and acting, in God’s ways.

I am a text-based Jew but I am unsure who wrote the text.  It matters less as to who authored the Torah: Moses or an editor of multiple story lines.  What matters is our actions; behaving in a God like manner, Imitatio Dei, will improve mankind’s state and help to repair the broken world which we all share.