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O l d T e s t a m e n t G u i d e
GENESIS
By ANTONIO FUENTES
The first book of the Pentateuch, Genesis, gives an account of the origin of
all created things and acts, as it were, as an elaborate introduction to God's
later revelation to Israel through Moses. It summarizes the early stages in the
history of mankind from the creation to the death of Joseph the patriarch.
Unlike the book of Exodus, which follows it and in which the history of Israel
as a people begins, Genesis contains the history of Israel's ancestors, the
greatpatriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph--and therefore is the history of
a family, Abraham's, from which the chosen people stemmed. Before concentrating
on this family, in order to explain its background, the first eleven chapters
deal with the history of the world and of man, the history of civilization and
culture, tracing the early outlines of God's plan of salvation and the role
Israel is to play in it.
These early chapters, written in popular language, rich in imagery, provide
answers to the kind of questions every human being, in any age, is inclined to
ask: Who made me? Where does the world come from? What is life all about? What
is the meaning of suffering, sickness, and death? What explanation is there for
war and human strife? Man wants answers to these questions. He wants to know how
he can re-establish peace, how and by whom can he be restored to spiritual
health. He realizes his limitations and those of others,and yet in the depths of
his soul he feels an infinite capacity for peace and happiness which no one and
nothing on earth can satisfy.
Opening the Bible and reading these first chapters is like having a huge family
album, full of color and life, in which God shows us not only the origin of the
universe but also the causes of man's unhappiness, the reason for his sense of
loneliness, and the origin of suffering and death. But we find more than that;
we find that creation results from God's love and that it is love which leads
him to announce man's future salvation.
Readers may be surprised to find that there is a lot left unsaid and that some
of the explanations contained in these early chapters seem inadequate or
far-fetched. For example, what does the Bible mean by saying that God created
the world in just seven days? What is this about God creating man from dust? Is
it not rather childish to say that the first woman was made out of man's rib?
Surely God had no hands for shaping man's body; he did not work like a surgeon
to take out his rib and sew him up again. Objections of this sort mean that a
person does not understand biblical language, particularly not the literary
genre of the first three chapters of Genesis. The inspired writers were using
the language of their time, which was culturally backward. It was the only
language available to them and the only one their audience could understand.
We will remember that, in making himself known, it was not God's intention to
give us scientific statements; he was giving us only what we needed to g.asp
basic religious truths. We should not expect to find here a scientific
explanation of the creation of the universe or the origin of man. The Bible has
nothing to say about when the world was created, or about various geological
periods, nor, let it be said, does it provide any proof of the theory of
evolution.
The teaching authority of the Church has rejected "absolute"
evolutionary theory, which says that man--all of man--is descended from one of
the higher animals. But, as Humanae Generis put it, "The Magisterium
of the Church leaves the doctrine of evolution an open question, as long as it
confines its speculations to the development, from other living matter already
in existence, of the human body. (That souls are immediately created by God is a
view which the Catholic faith imposes on us.) In the present state of scientific
and theological opinion, this question may be legitimately canvassed by research
and by discussion between experts on both sides. At the same time, the reasons
for and against either view must be weighed and adjudged with all seriousness,
fairness, and restraint, and there must be readiness on all sides to accept the
arbitrament of the Church, as being entrusted by Christ with the task of
interpreting the Scriptures aright, and the duty of safeguarding the doctrines
of the faith. There are some who take rash advantage of this liberty of debate,
by treating the subject as if the whole matter were closed--as if the
discoveries hitherto made, and the arguments based on them, were sufficiently
certain to prove, beyond doubt, the development of the human body from other
living matter already in existence. They forget, too, that there are certain
references to the subject in the source of divine revelation which call for the
greatest caution and prudence in discussing it."
What the sacred text provides, therefore, is revealed doctrine about the basic
principles of our faith, clothed in primitive literary language. The main
principles it contains are these:
In a sober style, which is quite theological and almost ritual, in a logical
order, and in the kind of way a teacher puts things to make it easy for his
pupils to remember them, the first creation narrative (Gen. 1:12:4a) describes
the creation of the universe in ascending order, that is, working up from less
perfect things (earth, sky, animals) to the most perfect (man).
In describing creation as happening over a seven-day period the sacred writer
has a mainly didactic purpose. He wants to show the people of Israel that it was
God's express will that they should observe the sabbath rest and treat that day
as especially holy, and therefore he says that God himself "rested on the
seventh day."
His purpose is also didactic (and in this he was inspired by God) in setting out
the stages in which God went about creation after his initial act of creation,
which consisted in creating out of nothing the chaotic mass described in Genesis
1:2.
First he introduces order into this chaos, dividing light from darkness dividing
the higher waters from the lower waters, distributing land, sea, plants. Then he
ornaments creation: sun, moon, stars; fish, birds; animals; man.
A careful reading of the verses shows that it was not God's intention to give
exact scientific information about the creation of each of these separate
beings. His purpose was primarily one of teaching religious truths which we
might summarize as follows:
1. All creation is the work of God alone. With creation time begins as a means
of measuring physical phenomena. Creation therefore occurs without there being
any pre-existing matter. Hence the first effect of creation is the appearance of
the chaotic mass previously mentioned.
2. This shows that only God is eternal. Everything else owes its existence to
God, that is, is God's creature, which means that God is distinct from the world
and prior to it; he neither proceeds from nor depends on that initial chaos, as
Babylonian or Assyrian cosmogonies make out: he transcends and is distinct from
matter.
3. This creating, eternal, and totally transcendent being is the only true God;
he cannot be confused with the polytheistic and pantheistic gods believed in at
the time Genesis was written and to which the Israelites themselves were very
inclined. Since God was separate and distinct from the universe he created, the
Israelites were shown, in this new light of revelation, that God could not be
confused with the sun or the moon or with the gods of the Assyrians: anything
other than the transcendental God, the one true God, was his creation and
therefore unworthy of worship.
4. Finally, God appears in this first creation account as almighty: "God
said" . . . "and so it was." Creation calls for no effort on his
part, full of power and majesty, he provides everything with existence; and,
furthermore, he maintains in existence everything he has created, by an act of
his will. In creating things he communicates to them his goodness: "God saw
everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). It
could not be otherwise, because there is only one Creator, God, who is an
infinite being and therefore infinitely good.
Archaeological excavations in the Near East have unearthed cosmogonical texts
connected with mythological traditions about the origin of the
world--Syro-Babylonian,Egyptian, Phoenician, etc. When these are deciphered and
compared with Genesis, we find that they contain analogies and also basic
differences. For example:
Non-biblical documents:
1. These are really theogonies--accounts of the origins of the gods.
2. They assign no origin to the chaotic mass, the first product of creation.
3. They have no concept of the unity of the human race: the gods created more
than one human couple and a multitude of cities.
4. They know nothing of any sabbath day of rest.
Genesis:
1. This is the only cosmogony (theory of the origin of the universe) proper that is theocentric in character.
2. God the Creator is one, almighty, transcendent, producing everything from nothing.
3.
God formed only one human couple; the rest of the race came from them in a
process of generation.
4. Genesis teaches the sabbath rest.
The analogies to be found between Sacred Scripture and non-biblical documents
can be explained by reference to the existence of an initial revelation to our
first parents, which was passed on and was still echoed, though in an
adulterated form, in the cultures of Israel's neighbors. However, aberrations in
these accounts must be attributed to man's imagination. Whereas the people of
Israel were kept free of error, thanks to new revelations to Abraham and to
Moses, other peoples retained vestiges of primitive truth, mixed in with their
various myths.
One created being stands out among all the rest as enjoying particular
dignity--man. He was created in a special way: God made him in his own image
(Gen. 1:27). This creation of man is described in more detail in Genesis
2:"Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7).
Gregory of Nyssa noticed the indefiniteness of the phrase used in the text, when
it says that "God created man," and "by using this indeterminate
phrase the text is saying that God created mankind." However, even though
the word adam (= man, carrying no article) is indefinite, its content is
then specified: "male and female he created them," which indicates
that initially there were only two individuals in the species, man and woman,
whom God endowed with reproductive organs to enable them to carry out the
sublime task of continuing God's work, by multiplying the individuals in the
human race, generation after generation. Adam and Eve were the first couple and
therefore all other humans have a common origin.
As far as man's body is concerned, man derives from the earth, but his soul--the
breath of life--is created directly by God. To create it God does not use any
pre-existing matter. Man's soul is completely spiritual. This means that man has
certain spiritual faculties which not only ensure his dominion over the rest of
creation, but also enable him to be gratuitously raised by God from his natural
level onto a level--the level of grace, a supernatural level--to which his
nature gives him no right.
In addition to creating Adam, God wished him to have others of his kind:
"Then the Lord God said: 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I
will make him a helper fit for him.' . . . So the Lord God caused a deep sleep
to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its
place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made
into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, 'This at last is
bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she
was taken out of Man (Gen. 2:18-23).
It is interesting to note that the sacred text points up the difference between
woman and the animals. Once she is formed out of the man's "rib" and
man is awakened from his deep sleep, he remembers that he is different from all
the animals. But now he has the being he has dreamed about, who is completely
like him: He exclaims enthusiastically and gratefully: "This at last is
bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (2:23). He recognizes the woman as
a human being, identical in nature to himself. The sacred writer simply reports
this; as in the case of man, nothing specific is said about the matter which God
used in shaping woman. The only thing which is made clear is that God worked in
a direct and special way in creating both our first parents.
The main points in this teaching about the creation of man are:
1. Man was created in a special way. God took a pre-existing piece of matter (in
this respect the creation of man was done in the same way as that of animals),
but he infused a soul into it--the breath of life--which meant that man was
enabled to share in God's own life by means of grace.
2. Created in this way, man is higher than all the animals, whose lord he is, as
he is over all other creatures, but man himself is subordinate to God, his
Creator.
3. The dignity of woman, also created by God, stems from her being like man,
exactly the same in nature as he, created to complement man, but in no sense to
be his slave. The image of the rib in fact confirms that God has given man and
woman the same nature and the same purpose.
4. In addition to telling us about the creation of man and woman, the sacred
text also asserts the divine origin of the institution of marriage; marriage is
one and indissoluble. The text specifically states that: "Therefore a man
leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one
flesh" (Gen. 2:24). Later on, in the New Testament, Jesus Christ
authoritatively adds, "So they are no longer two but one" (Matt.
19:6).
5. God specifically states that the primary purpose of marriage is its
fruitfulness, the generation of children. He blesses the couple and says,
"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen.
1:28). He thereby makes them cooperators in the tremendous task of generating
each single, unrepeatable human being.
6. The second chapter of Genesis also states that there was no concupiscence of
the flesh, due to the state of innocence in which our first parents were
created; it tells us that after man and woman were married they "were both
naked and were not ashamed" (Gen. 2:25). Their reason had perfect control
over their external and internal senses, and all their faculties were perfectly
synchronized.
7. Man's original happiness and his elevation to the supernatural order are
indicated by the images, so meaningful to Orientals, of the peaceful garden and
the rivers watering it, and by the ease with which Adam and Eve related to God,
speaking to him face to face; they were truly God's friends.
God laid one commandment on man: "You may freely eat of every tree of the
garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in
the day that you eat of it you shall die" ; (Gen. 2:16-17). This was a
reasonable commandment, and man at first accepted it without raising any
objection.However, the devil, who appears in the third chapter of Genesis in the
form of a serpent, tempted the woman: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of
any tree of the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1). He, who had already fallen, seeks to
seduce the woman to imitate him by also disobeying God. He begins by
exaggerating God's commandment; he questions God's justice and honesty and tries
to undermine our first parents' trust in God.
The woman falls into his trap and begins to dialogue with the devil. At first
she defends God, but she soon becomes less sure of herself as she listens to
what the devil has to say. As soon as she begins to think about the forbidden
tree, her sensuality is awakened and it rapidly becomes more intense. At last
she reaches the point where she feels herself totally attracted to the apple and
mistakenly sees it as the key to contentment. The woman's disobedience and then
that of her husband constitute the first sin in the history of mankind--what we,
their descendants, call the "original sin," a sin which affects all of
us--the basic cause of the breakdown of man's friendship with God.
By abusing their freedom in this way, our first parents suffered death with
respect to the life of grace to which God had gratuitously raised them, and they
also lost what are termed their preternatural gifts. God had created them to be
immortal, but one sin was enough to deprive them of this gift--as he had warned
them (Gen. 2:17). Through their sin death entered the world and, as Paul affirms
(Rom. 5:12), it spread to all men because all are descended from Adam and Eve
and all of us sinned in them.
Physical death brought with it a whole cumulation of evils--diseases, effort
demanded by work, pains, anxieties, unrestrained concupiscence. In the spiritual
sphere, in addition to the loss of sanctifying grace, it brought disorder in
man's higher faculties, resulting in pride, sloth, ambition, envy, and
self-assertion: in other words, estrangement from God, man's Creator.
Paul VI sums up this teaching in these words: "We believe that in Adam all
have sinned. From this it follows that on account of the original offense
committed by him, human nature, which is common to all men, is reduced to that
condition in which it must suffer the consequences of that fall. This condition
is not the same as that of our first parents, for they were constituted in
holiness and justice, and man had no experience of either evil or death.
Consequently, fallen human nature is deprived of the economy of grace which it
formerly enjoyed. It is wounded in its natural powers and subjected to the
dominion of death, which is transmitted to all men. It is in this sense that
every man is born in sin. We hold, therefore, in accordance with the Council of
Trent, that original sin is transmitted along with human nature, not by
imitation but by propagation and is, therefore, incurred by each
individually" (Credo of the People of God 16).
In spite of Adam and Eve's disobedience, God still acts as a true Father to
them. He knows what they have done, but he still seeks them out, as Genesis
describes in this way: "They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called
to the man and said to him, `Where are you'?" (Gen. 3:89).
Man's first reaction after committing sin is to feel totally ashamed and afraid
of God's presence. He finds it difficult to recognize his sin. But, even so, God
comes to his aid; he wants man to be happy, which is why he wants him to admit
the truth. But man makes excuses; he does not want to take responsibility for
his own free act, and at last he resorts to putting the blame on his wife.
She, in turn, is also reluctant to recognize that she has offended God, and she
blames the serpent, who "beguiled me and I ate." Eventually man loses
the state of happiness in which he was created, and there is nothing he can do
to recover it.
Just when Satan thought that he had totally defeated man--which he saw as a
victory over God himself--a great light shines out, the promise of a future
Messiah: "I will put enmity between you and the woman," God tells
Satan, "and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and
you shall bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:15).
From this point onward, when our first parents are still in paradise, God's
infinite mercy shines out on man. After punishing Satan in the serpent (Gen.
3:14), God announces a relentless struggle between the devil and the woman's
offspring. The final outcome of this struggle will be the victory of man over
Satan: It will be one of Adam and Eve's descendants who will crush the head of
the serpent.
The message of salvation which God gives us in Sacred Scripture is the working
out in history of this promise made in paradise. It starts in the Old Testament
and reaches its climax in the New with the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ,
our Savior. All the events recounted in the Bible symbolize or foreshadow the
Savior to be born to the Blessed Virgin in Bethlehem.
Genesis has nothing to say about the long period between Noah and his family,
the survivors of the great flood, and the appearance of the quite outstanding
figure of Abraham, who marks the beginning of the unfolding of God's plans of
salvation. We know nothing until we come up to around the year 2000 B.C., the
historically dated period in which Abraham lived. This silence is easy to
understand if we remember, as Augustine points out, that Sacred Scripture is not
a scientific treatise; the Holy Spirit--who speaks through the inspired
writers--did not wish to tell men things which had no part to play in the
attainment of eternal salvation.
After the fall of our first parents, God announced that a Savior would redeem
man from the power of Satan. The first step toward the fulfillment of this
promise was God's choice of Abraham, whose faith would make him the father of a
great people. God tells Abraham, "Go from your country and your kindred and
your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a
great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be
a blessing" (Gen. 12:12).
From this text and from non-biblical documents we learn that around 1850 B.C. a
man by the name of Abraham, the son of polytheist parents, a shepherd living in
Ur of the Chaldees, moved with his family to a new land, Canaan. He did so
because of his unconditional faith in a calling he received from God, a calling
which had nothing to do with any merit on his part.
The same thing happens when God chooses Isaac rather than Ishmael and Jacob
rather than Esau. He calls whomever he wants to use as an instrument of his
grace. Being chosen by God in this way is an honor but it is also something very
demanding.
In contrast to Adam's disobedience, Abraham responds to God's call in total
obedience. His faith is the cause of the very existence of the chosen people,
just as Mary's act of faith marks the start of the New Testament.
In response to Abraham's faith God makes further promises. He promises him an
innumerable posterity, despite the fact that he has no children and his wife is
barren and past childbearing age: "Look toward heaven and number the stars,
if you are able to number them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your descendants
be" (Gen. 15:5). He further promises to give the land of Canaan to his
posterity: "To your descendants I will give this land from the river of
Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen. 15:18).
In return for this God asks Abraham and all his offspring to believe in him, the
one God. This monotheistic faith will now grow vigorously in the midst of the
reigning polytheism. Circumcision will act as the mark to show that one belongs
to God and obeys his commandments. From now on Abraham belongs completely to
God, who changes his name from Abram to Abraham (= father of a multitude) (Gen.
17:5), and God describes himself as "El Shaddai" (Gen. 17:1), God
Almighty.
This build-up of relations between God and Abraham is concluded by a covenant,
which seals their promises to one another. This alliance or pact is made in the
manner typical of the culture. The contracting parties immolate animals which
have previously been divided into two sets of pieces; they face one another and
then pass between the bloody pieces of the sacrificed animals; this shows that
they are tying themselves to contractual obligations and that if they break them
they accept that they will suffer the same fate.
In Abraham's case, to show God's transcendence there is a variation from the
normal procedure: God shows his presence in the form of fire. "When the sun
had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch
passed between these pieces . . . 'As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you
and your descendants after you through their generations'." (Gen. 15:17,
17:9). It is only God who passes between the pieces, because only he commits
himself totally, since man cannot provide anything to balance what God promises.
The covenant made here with Abraham is personal and individual; later on God
will make it again with the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, with Moses acting
as their representative. All these covenants, sealed with the blood of animals,
symbolize the definitive covenant which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, will seal
with his own blood, when he gives himself up on the cross to redeem mankind
eternally (cf. Heb. 9:12).
God's pact with Abraham is the first stage in this definitive covenant. Hence
the extraordinary importance of Abraham in the history of our salvation. The
gospel proclaims this at the beginning of the messianic era in the Benedictus,
the canticle of Zechariah (Luke 1:72-73) and in Mary's Magnificat (Luke
1:54-55). The Church's liturgy invokes Abraham in the first canon of the Mass,
in the ceremony of adult baptism, in the Mass for marriage and the Mass for the
dead.
A little further on God will renew the same covenant with Abraham's son Isaac
(Gen. 26) and with his grandson Jacob (Gen. 28:12).