into Syria. Babylonia was the most prominent of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdoms at least as it relates to ancient Israel. Ancient Egypt itself had similar primeval stories inscribed on stone walls and coffins (making it a little hard to fit them into Alexandria’s library!), but these stories were later copied and collected together with other religious writings in what is known as the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts. All these primeval stories could be called “etiological narratives”; that is, they depict in story form “why things are the way they are,” describing the nature and function and purpose of common realities in the storyteller’s lived experience (realities such as deities, religious worship, human beings, ethnic groups, languages, and so on) by telling a story of the origins of those realities. A more specific type of these etiologies is a “cosmogony,” an account of the origins of the earth and life on earth from the perspective of the storyteller or her community.
Ancient etiologies and cosmogonies such as Enuma Elish and the stories in the Pyramid Texts were not so much concerned with the precise when and how of these origins, or whether the stories happened in history exactly as described—though undoubtedly many ancient Babylonians and Egyptians believed the world had been made just as their stories said. Rather, these stories functioned at a deeper level to shape the worldview of these peoples by answering the who and the what and the why of human existence in the world: Who are the gods? What is the world? Who are human beings? Why do human beings exist? What is our purpose related to the gods and the world and one another? What (if anything) is wrong with the world? How (if at all) can things be made right? This is in fact the way truth works in such ancient etiologies. Enuma Elish, for example, reinforced some important values for ancient Babylonian culture: that the gods are personalized manifestations of nature, strong but capricious; that the natural world is therefore powerful but indifferent toward the fate of human beings; that human beings were created to serve the mightiest god, Marduk, by appropriate temple ritual; that human beings can function as servants of Marduk to stem the tide of chaos in the natural world; and so on.
Genesis, then, is an ancient Israelite etiology, and the creation stories of Genesis 1–2 are more particularly ancient Israelite cosmogonies. In fact, these Genesis creation stories resemble the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian stories of origins in many respects. This should be expected considering that these two cultures—one directly to the northeast and the other directly to the southwest of Israel—were extremely influential in every other way on ancient Israelite society. As the geographical bridge between these two regions, Israel could not help but breathe the same cultural air as Babylon and Egypt. So, for example, the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian language of “image” used for filial, royal representation is reflected in Genesis 1, and the Babylonian picture of human beings created out of clay mixed with the divine essence is paralleled in Genesis 2. Also, for example, these ancient origins stories think of creation in terms of cosmic order being brought out of primeval chaos, a notion shared by the first creation story of Genesis. More specifically, these ancient cosmogonies are very concerned to demonstrate that this created order has a strongly religious element, and even that a crucial focus of this order is a temple built to the god or gods in which ordered religious practices must be performed to bring about order within broader society and the world. This idea is also shared by the Genesis creation stories, with all creation ordered and filled to be God’s temple—as we will explore in the next chapter.
But the Genesis creation stories do not simply parrot the older stories of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Rather, while they share certain motifs and language with these other stories, the stories of Genesis boldly present themselves as the alternative to all other origins stories, describing the one true God, his work in the world, and his purpose for humanity and the created order. Thus, for example, these Genesis stories are unapologetically monotheistic, describing only one true God as opposed to the many gods and goddesses of Egypt and Mesopotamia. And so also these Genesis stories emphasize God’s distinctiveness related to nature: unlike the Babylonian and Egyptian concept of the gods as personalized forces of nature (such as the sky and sea and land), Genesis 1 emphasizes that God created these natural features, that these forces of nature are not God but are rather created things under God’s sovereign control.
We will explore more of this in the coming chapters, but for now this brief introduction to the striking similarities and profound differences between Genesis and other ancient etiologies underscores the kinds of questions Genesis was intended to answer—or, one could say, the way truth works in these Genesis stories. As an ancient etiology (including ancient cosmogonies), Genesis was not written to respond to questions of precisely when or how everything came to exist. Like those in surrounding cultures, undoubtedly there were many ancient Israelites who believed everything came into existence just as their creation stories described—but this is not the point of these stories. The first creation story of Genesis 1, for example, uses the pattern of seven “days” as an organizing principle for describing the ordering of God’s cosmic temple (reflecting the weekly rhythms of ancient Israelite life, with six days of work and one day of worship-rest), but we should take just as seriously the second Genesis creation story using the language of a single “day” to encompass all God’s creative work (“In the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven,” 2:4). Each statement is intended to make a deeply theological point, a point related to the questions Genesis was intended to answer, questions of who and what and why.
One important indication that we are on the right track in seeing these as the key questions these stories are intended to answer is that later biblical texts glance back at these foundational origins stories to answer precisely these questions, and not others. The Christian Scriptures are filled with references to these stories—quotations, allusions, echoes—and none of these later Scriptures employ the first stories of Genesis to describe exactly when or how creation came about. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” the psalmist affirms (Psalm 19:1). Israel should know “from the beginning” that God “sits enthroned above the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22); indeed, God declares, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” (Isaiah 66:1–2). “Since the creation of the world,” Paul says, “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen” (Romans 1:20). These and other biblical appeals to the natural world or the creation stories are made to emphasize who God is, who and what human beings and the rest of creation are, and why God has made all things and continues to care for all things.
Thus, we risk doing a grave injustice to the inspired, sacred text of Genesis when we try to make it answer our questions of precisely when and how. God created all things, to be sure—God himself and not merely some impersonal forces or natural laws—this is affirmed not only in Genesis but throughout the Christian Scriptures. But Genesis was simply not intended to answer the sorts of modern questions Christians have of exactly when or how God created all things. We are not taking the text of Genesis more seriously by trying to make it answer these questions; we are in fact taking the text of Genesis less seriously, forcing it to answer our questions, rather than making its questions our questions and submitting to the answers it was intended to give. If we truly wish to hear the voice of God through the text of Genesis, if we truly want these stories of Genesis to shape our thinking and our living in line with God’s purposes, then we need to seek the text’s answers to the deeper worldview questions of who and what and why: Who is God? What is the world? Who are human beings? Why do human beings exist? What is our purpose related to God and the world and one another? What is wrong with the world? How can things be made right?
And so it is to these sorts of questions we now turn, reading the primeval stories of Genesis to shape our theology and our practice as the people of God created in the image of God out of the stuff of earth to do God’s will in his very good—though death-cursed—world.
A Story of Creation (Genesis 1)
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over
