Reflections on Biblical Themes by an Octogenarian. Reuben J. Swanson
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same degree that the religious philosopher approaches his or her task. If there is any difference in degree of subjectivity, it is only the difference from observer to observer, whether scientist or religious philosopher, each of us being in bondage to a greater or lesser degree to our previous conditioning. We are never completely free from our past and from our conditioning. We are subjective in our observations and in our conclusions just because we are human. Our growth towards objectivity is always the struggle of a lifetime and wherever we are on the time scale of life the horizon before us is always growing and enlarging with new and exciting possibilities. Even what has just been said is only a possibility and not at all a probability, depending entirely upon our openness to the future.
The big-bang theory of the origins of the universe or the theory of evolution are neither the answer nor the obstacle in the way of our holding to a concept of creation. Rather they are working hypotheses that offer plausible explanations for some aspects of existence but not for all. This writer has no quarrel with these working hypotheses except to qualify some points with reference to the theory of evolution. The pattern of development set forth in the model of a tree with the beginning of the first one-celled plant or creature and the proliferation of all higher and more complex forms of life in a great series of mutations from that one beginning seem to this writer to be too narrowly circumscribed. If it was possible for carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and steam to spontaneously evolve into life once, why not a number of times and in different places? And why not in different mixes, so that the resulting life forms were more or less complex and thus the bases for the resultant genera? Inasmuch as the basic building blocks of life, the amino acids and nucleotides, only differ qualitatively in all forms of life, there is a high probability that this goes back to their very beginnings. This possibility has greater plausibility to this writer than the explanation customarily offered. There are areas of the universe and of our existence that have not yet been explored, in part because of our ignorance of their existence and in part because we lack the tools for investigating many of the deep recesses of the universe and of human life. We forge ahead into the unknown both in our scientific and in our religious investigations with expectation and hope, always aware that the last word has not been said and that there are new concepts and new possibilities awaiting the intrepid and the open-minded.
The Biblical accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis are not to be taken as literal and factual descriptions of how and in what order things came into being. They are expressions of the faith of the community that identified itself as the people of God. The existence of the community as an historical entity was comparatively young when these accounts or confessions of faith were made. They reflect the cosmology, the world view, of the time in which they were composed and are not to be interpreted as appropriate for a twenty-first century understanding of the genesis or of the evolution of the universe and of life. The twenty-first century reader must see them against the backdrop of the time in which they were composed and the purpose for which they were intended. For example, the unusual feature of the author’s account of creation in chapter one of Genesis is the affirmation that God created light on day one and only placed the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens on day four. Obviously, this cannot be the true order, for there could not have been vegetation and fruit-bearing trees on day three without the sun in its place. This order of the author results not from any observations of the way in which things happened, but is an expression of his religious intuition. If we are to understand the intention of the writer, we must divest ourselves of our twenty-first century presuppositions and enter into the historical and religious milieu of the sixth century before Christ.
The Creation Stories as a Confession of Faith
The most meaningful understanding of the cosmology and religious presuppositions reflected in chapter one of Genesis is to assume that this story of creation received its final formulation in the time of the Babylonian exile when the community of God’s people had been uprooted from their land and taken as captives into a foreign country. In Babylon they were exposed to a high level culture and to a highly developed and sophisticated religion. The Babylonian empire was one of the greatest and most powerful of ancient times and its capital and religious center at Babylon on the Euphrates River was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The attractiveness of Babylonian culture and religion severely tested the faith of the captives, diluting and threatening their loyalty to their own religious and cultural tradition. The land of Judah was devastated, the temple at Jerusalem in ruins, the royal family and the leading citizens in captivity. The pathos, the tragedy, of the people is reflected in one of their hymns: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137.1–2, 4). Moreover, Marduk, god of Babylon, had overcome Yahweh, God of Israel, in his own land. In ancient times the gods were closely identified with the land and with the success or failure of a people in warfare. Natural disasters too were expressions of the anger of the god who ruled the land. Thus the exiles were sorely tempted to reject their ancestral faith, their religious heritage, even their God who had failed them in their time of crisis, and to adopt a new and more powerful god, Marduk. The great temple tower of Babylon towering high into the heavens was a far more impressive building than their own modest temple in Jerusalem that was now in ruins. The author of this creation story perceived the threat to Israel’s future and formulated a confession of faith as an expression of the historic faith of Israel and also as a critique of the Babylonian religion.
Such an occasion for a confession of faith is not unusual. A parallel example would be the formulation of the Nicene Creed, one of the major confessions of the Christian community that was shaped and molded in a time when the community was under severe attack from within as to the verities of the faith. The great principle set forth in the confession of faith shaped and molded by the forces unleashed from without against the very existence of Israel as the people of God was that Elohim, the God of Israel, is the Creator and Lord of all. This is the firm conclusion of the author pronounced with assurance and certainty, in spite of the very fragile nature of the existence of the people of God.
A comment upon the name of God, Elohim, used in this confession of faith is in order here. This is a plural form of the god name, El, meaning “mighty one,” common in ancient Mesopotamia and in Canaan before the coming of the Israelites from Egypt. The common use of the plural form, Elohim, does not refer to a plurality of gods, but rather to the divine power taken as a whole as it is revealed without any idea of a clearly defined divine person. Although we have said that the setting for this confession is Babylon in the sixth century before our era, the author gives to the confession the imprimatur of antiquity by using the earliest name for God from before the time of the patriarchs.
The name of God introduced to Israel in the time of Moses, Yahweh, meaning “he who causes to be,” is reserved by this author for the Mosaic time period and thereafter when its use is historically correct. The god of Babylon, Marduk, who was now competing with Yahweh for the allegiance and loyalty of the Israelites, was the sun, that heavenly body worshipped most frequently in ancient and primitive cultures as the source of being. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, ruled by divine election, chosen and appointed by Marduk for his exalted position as ruler of Marduk’s land. Marduk is supreme among the gods, the author and source of light and life, the very sun in the heavens. The author of our confession reduces Marduk to a lesser status, however, by the simple expedient of declaring that the sun, the moon, and the remaining heavenly bodies were created by Elohim, the one true God, and only on the fourth day of his creative acts. Light, the very essence and radiance of light, came to be in the very beginning as a result of the powerful word of Israel’s God. The order of the creative acts is not only a defense of the God of Israel, but an attack upon the Babylonian premise that the sun is god. How can the sun be preeminent if it was placed in the heavens long after many other and more significant events had already occurred? The God of Israel is the source of light, not the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars.
The Place of Man in the Cosmos
Another significant feature of this confession of faith is the place of man, that is, the true Israelite, in the cosmos. Man, in Hebrew the word is Adam, is created in the image of God. This does not mean for the writer that man resembles God in any way physically, mentally, or spiritually. Rather man is given dominion, that is, authority, in the earth. He is to administer and exercise