You know how construction always takes longer than you think? Yeah, so maybe it’s felt like a bit of a slog as we’ve wended our way through these Genesis verses, but a foundation is important, since it’s meant to hold up the whole structure.
Just a quick word about the two different versions of the creation story we’ve seen, and the contributing traditions to the Old Testament. Scholars consider the Torah1 (1st 5 books) to have been compiled from four sources — the Yahwist (or Jawhist in German), the Elohist, the Priestly, and the Deuteronomist, or J, E, P, D. We don’t really need to delve into that, but it’s helpful for you to know that both the Old and New Testaments are made up of material from a lot of different sources, oral traditions, times, and places.2
The first version of the creation story, Genesis 1-2, is considered by scholars to come from what is called the Priestly tradition. The second version in Genesis 2, is the older version3 and is widely accepted as coming from the Yahwist tradition (hence the use of Yahweh4). Basically, these are oral traditions that tell the story of “how the heck did we get here?” in different ways.
Happens in families all the time, right?
Mom: “No, Uncle Bob did not go to Detroit first, he made a side trip from Nashville to St. Louis, and that’s where he bought the Buick.”
Aunt Della: “Well, that’s not how he told it when he came for Thanksgiving dinner two years ago, he says he was in Detroit when he found out about the car in the first place and that the guy held onto it for him till he could drive down to St. Louis to get it.”5
And so on.
Anywho, here we go with my “flooring” for The Treehouse and what I’ve come to think of as the opening pages of a love story:
My starting place? There is a God…
…a God who hovers and broods as part of creating.
Brooding and hovering puts me in mind of a parenting bird. There is something doting and intentional about this imagery.
This God created everything that is out of the sheer creative energy that is Its very essence and that’s powerful enough to call into existence the whole universe…
…including human beings who are made in God’s image.
I don’t think we know yet from these texts what “let us create humankind in our image” means except that people are created as relational beings. In both Genesis versions the fullness of humanity seems to have been created to be with and for each other, and certainly in the second version to have been created to also be in relationship to God, and in both versions to be in relationship with the whole created order.
Beauty matters to this God. Things are “pleasing to the sight” in a way that is far beyond utilitarian and almost seems gratuitous. “Pleasing to the sight” is a clearly a necessary part of creation. (God as the original artist and art appreciator. There is something in here that to me that rings of a doctrine of enjoyment and delight.)
Somehow (insert shrug emoji here) something at crossed purposes to God appears on the scene (hint: it’s the snake that apparently seeks to undo whatever relationships are forming between and among Yahweh Elohim and the ish and the ishah)
How is it that God, who summed up Creation with everything being “good,” also created what is bad or destructive? And why? But note, the verses where everything is tov (Gen. 1-2) is a different version from the second story where the snake appears (Gen. 2). Begs the impossible question, I know.
God said, “Don’t eat that,” but did nothing at all to prevent the humans’ choice to definitely eat that, so here we go with free will. (Gary Larson fans may remember the cartoon with the giant broken jar on the ground, some nakey people running out, and the words “UH-OH” coming from a big cloud in the sky.)
If humans have been created by love and for a loving relationship with the Creator, then free will is an intrinsic part of the relationship, because love cannot be coerced or bought. When we “love” out of fear of reprisal if we don’t, that’s not really love. If our “love” is tinged with a perceived transactional benefit, that’s not love. By its very definition, love has to be freely given.
God took the biggest risk there is, because nothing makes you more vulnerable than love, and there is absolutely nothing that will cost you more.
I go back to the question from Yahweh Elohim in the garden, “Where are you?” I hear it as an invitation, not a command, offered with a tenderness that I believe is borne out in the conclusion of this story that follows and that we’ll get to next time.
What we have is a tale of breach and repair, and from here on out, that’s pretty much the whole book.
See? I told you it was a love story.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are called Torah in Judaism and referred to as the Pentateuch (Greek for five scrolls) by Christians.
For some, the idea is disturbing and even threatening to say the Bible was not dictated by God and written down verbatim. On the contrary, I marvel at the many, many threads that have come together to weave a thematically cohesive tapestry telling one big compelling story.
How come the older version doesn’t come first? Any writer knows, how you arrange the material shapes what you want your reader to know and experience. Hmmm….
More later about the use of Yahweh, because it’s one of the most essential pieces of my theology.
The point is, Uncle Bob bought a Buick from someone at some point, and he loved that thing almost as much as he loved Aunt Alice, and he’d give all the kids rides in it to go get ice cream, and when he died, he left it to his daughter, which upset his two sons, but she drove it for years anyway and donated it to a local museum, where for a dollar you can go see it today.
Footnote #2 resonates strongly with me! I agree wholeheartedly with your take on that.